A French moralist and political philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy (born 1948) won wide recognition as a social critic (especially of Marxism), an advocate of ethics and justice, a cultured non-despiser of religion, and a flamboyant intellectual maverick.

Bernard-Henri Levy was a French moralist and political philosopher of the late 20th century, one of the leading lights of the New Philosophers (Nouveaux Philosophes) school. This group, disenchanted with communist and socialist responses to the near revolutionary upheavals in France of May 1968, articulated a fierce and uncompromising moral critique of Marxist and socialist dogmas years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In contrast to the "neo-conservatism" of ex-leftist anti-Marxist American intellectuals, however, neither Levy nor the New Philosophers embraced capitalist ideology on the rebound.

Testifying to strong rhetorical skills, timely concerns, and forceful argumentation, Levy's first book, Barbarism with a Human Face, published in 1977, sold over 100,000 copies. This was quite...