Customer Reviews

War, Evil, and the End of History

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War, Evil, and the End of History
Recently finished Bernard-Henri Levy's latest book, War, Evil, and the End of History. There's so much in it, on a variety of different levels, it is difficult to capture in a paragraph. Bottom line: The book is a response to a number of philosophical arguments, ranging from Foucault to Fukuyama. Levy takes his personal transformation, comparing himself to, and distinguishing himsef from, Benny Levy in the Bangladesh civil war and May 68 events in Paris, as well as personal confessions from BHL travelling to hot spots today, such as Sri Lanka, to make a number of points:

*No single philosophical or political system can cope with the problems of war and evil, they are permanent features of human existence which must be confronted constantly.

*History does not "end." And the smaller and more remote regions are even more affected by it than the central powers.

*Islam is not the only movement that spawns terrorists and suicide bombers. There are fanatics and mass murderers wherever one looks for them, from Burundi, to Sri Lanka, to Rwanda, to Sudan--and his chapter on Sudan, written years ago, is particularly relevant today.

The style is intensely personal and stream of consciousness. But combining journalism with philosophy is pretty interesting reading--BHL's references to Malraux seem appropriate.

War, Evil, and the End of History combines theoretical reflection with striking descriptions of some forgotten messy realities. It is a good reminder that there are lots of loose ends out there, that politics is not the answer to everything, that academic writing removed from the facts of life has some shortcomings. It is also an antidote to the triumphalism of the "End of History" school, that briefly mutated into "Unipolar world" advocacy. This book shows us that facts and actual lived human experience are every bit as important as theoretical paradigms.

Fascinating, and challenging. Put War, Evil, and the End of History on your summer reading list.

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to connect to more recent books.

There are some gems in this book, but it is *not* anywhere near the kind of blindingly brilliant, deeply philosophical work that the publicists would have you believe. He is a talented and very wealthy (inherited wealth) Frenchman of the Jewish faith who could be called the Bill Gates of French philosophy, fwith irst-rate marketing.

The author is clearly a courageous and inquisitive individual, and I would rank him third, after Robert Young Pelton and Robert Kaplan, in the "journalist-philosopher-adventurer" category. He has been to all of these places, he has seen with his own eyes, and he writes thoughtfully, if often tediously, about what he has seen.

The real gem in the book is the connection he makes between 9-11 and our deliberate ignorance of the many wars, genocides, crimes against women and children, torture, corruption, etcetera that we in the West have manifested. He writes with conviction and insight about the "meaningless war" across Africa, South Asia, around the globe, where entire regions have descended into a chaotic hell of kill and be killed, work and die, slavery or death, rape then death. His point, which I like very much, is that history does not end, it recycles, and in 9-11 and the global war on terrorism what we have is a "homecoming" of all these wars to America and its Western allies.

This is not, however, completely original, in the sense that the "Map of World Conflict & Human Rights" that I have been handing out to my adult students (thanks to Berto Jongman in The Netherlands for creating it, and to the European Centre for Conflict Prevention and Goals for Americans Foundation, among others, for funding its creation) ably documents all of this is a single compelling document, and many books in the 490+ that I have reviewed cover all aspects of these "ungovernable regions" in great detail.

The author is half absurd and half correct when he condemns the United Nations for its zealous pursuit of Israel as a racist and terrorist state, while the United Nations largely ignores the many genocides taking place from Russia and China to Indonesia and Brazil and Central America and onwards. He is absurd on the first count, correct on the second.

The book is fully worth four stars, definitely worth purchasing, for its articulation of a European view on "the heart of darkness" as it exists today. I was especially taken with his discussion of Buddhist versus Hindu terrorism and extremism and the use of child soldiers in Sri Lanka, since it makes the point that other religions, not just Islam and Christianity, spawn cycles of terrorism and ethnic violence.

The book concludes on a note worthy of the greatest philosophers, a reflection on the death of memory within Western civilization, the death of *moral* memory. Having just returned from Denver, where I was privileged to observe a two-week Office of Personnel Management course on National Security, a first-class endeavor, I was struck by the recurring theme, across virtually all of the world-class lecturers: "morality matters." Morality has a tangible value in helping nations, organizations, and individuals "get it right." The last two pages of the book are the best, and conjure up clear and frightening pictures of billions of dispossessed swarming over the European and US cities, bringing the despair we have ignored to our doorstep. Ignore history, ignore evil, and it will eventually, inevitably, come to your doorstep. We--or perhaps even more sadly, our children and grandchildren--will pay for our moral cowardice and our historical blindness. In these final reflections, the author does demonstrate a brilliance that requires us to attend to his future reflections.

More recent books supportive of this author's insights:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy

After seeing the author on TV I was intrigued enough to buy all three of his books -- sadly, his newest, American Vertigo, was terrible. It seemed all the more so, however, in comparison with his other two books, which were both wonderful. Who Killed Daniel Pearl was a real thriller and very smart, but this book, War, Evil, and the End of History, was absolutely brilliant. It seems to be almost a model for American vertigo - reporting, followed by philosophical consideration of the reporting. But this book is about people and places that really matter -- Darfur, Sri Lanka, etc., not Sharon Stone and Warren Beatty. It is brave work -- Levy went to some very dangerous places -- and his writing about those places is stirring and beautiful. Thought provoking and like a trip to a totally different world and way of thinking; it made me see the world differently. Skip the new ones, read the old ones, especially this one.

L'auteur narre ses aventures sur le terrain des conflits mondiaux. Il souffre du mal qu'il constate et des nombreuses injustices criantes, de la même façon que le téléspectateur devant le journal télévisé du 20h00 s'écrie: "que la guerre est moche!".

Ce qui surprend, c'est la teinte "philosophique" qui colore le reportage, non pas qu'il soit hors de propos de vouloir réfléchir sur le mal, entre la soupe et le fromage, mais parce que la réflexion de l'auteur est uni-dimensionnelle. Hegel est à l'honneur dans ce livre ainsi que son disciple Kojève. L'auteur semble donner l'impression qu'en dehors de ces deux référents, malgré les limites qu'il pressent parfois, rien ne saurait être pensé.

Si le livre était un film, il aurait rang de navet recuit. A éviter.

Bernard-henri Levy is a French hero and intellectual. How many phiolospher can there possible be who would write a book called war, evil and the end the history? Unfortunately I do not read French and therefore cannot judge the quality of the translation of this book from the original text but I have heard Mr Levy spoke on TV in English with an excellent command of the language. I suppose he approved of this translation of his original text. If you are not intimately famililar with recent French,German,Amercian philosopher/writer/phychologist (I am not) you will lack the proper foundation to enjoy this book. Randomly selected from this book, he quoted Michel Focault, Nitzche, Jung, Kant, Proust and Fukuyama with great frequentcy and ease and most times without much introduction and explaination. For example , to expalin the End oF History as part of the title of the book, he stated: "Secondly, Benjamin. The Benjamin. Once again, of the These on the Philosphy of History. And the portrait, in "Thesis IX," of the one he calls "the chronicler" whose characteristic is that he "narrates events without distiction between the great the the small" (nothing, from the viwpoint of the chronicler, "nothing of all that has ever happpened" can or should be considered "of no use to History")...A philsophical logic: an effect no less mechanical, of the deconstrcution, following Franz Rosenzweig, of the concept of universal Histroy and the great signifying scenes summoned up-to say that History as such, does not exit, is to admit that there is no longer, anywhere, an authority or a judement upon which one can determine the meaning that should be accorded events" (Page 287) (What does "accorded" events mean? Does the author mean recorded events?)
Some very provocative ideas and persuasive also, but who the heck is Benjamin and Franz Rosenzweig? Either the author nor the translator provided any backgroud or introduction to these writers and their thoughts. This book are full of examples of such event: beautiful ideas supported by famous and not so-famous writers of Philophopy and literature but with the writing style sometimes can make comprehension a little tought. (Translation problems or his style? Lots of sentences are not even sentences at all.)
Despite my minor complaints regarding his style, this book gave me a better understanding how to percieve the world in this "WAR ON TERROR" kind of enviornment. He stated that war is just like birth, sex, sin and taxes--all unavoidable facts of life-war will be always with us and always be with us despite technological progress and the unfortunately invention of nuclear weapons. Mr Levy has personaly met some of these people who were waging wars around the world:Afganstain, Bosnia, Sudan, Iraq, and just from these interviews that he mangaged to get were well worth reading the book.

This book consists of two parts: "The Damned", a collection of BHL's adventures in war torn countries, and "Reflections", philosophical ramblings intended as "extended footnotes" to "The Damned". ("The Damned" is 1/3 of the book, "Reflections" 2/3.)

"The Damned" is not bad. BHL wanders through Angola, Sri Lanka, Burundi, Columbia, and Sudan and witnesses much devastation. (Note: Wandering seems to be BHL's MO -- it is never clear what he is doing in any of these places.) The combination of BHL's aimlessness and the observed devastation, plus the absence of any historical background, give these pieces a wistful, dreamlike quality. Despite all of his traveling, BHL seems to hardly interact with anyone, and provides little insight into what's going on.

"Reflections" is awful. It reads like a pastiche of college student stream-of-consciousness writing exercises. With absurd amounts of (philosopher name)-dropping. I suppose this might be acceptable if BHL's points made sense, unfortunately... His suggestions that these wars are different from previous wars and that they are especially meaningless, endless, or nihilist sound very philosopher-ish but gloss over reality. These wars are clearly fought over land, resources (e.g., diamonds and cocaine), religion, and power by men with tastes for such things. This is not new and neither is anything BHL writes here.

BHL clearly wants the world to be a better place; it's too bad he's a philosopher. Despite my opinion, I hope that this book will raise awareness about the wars we've ignored.