Bertrand de Jouvenel

Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins 31 October 1903 – 1 March 1987 was a French philosopher, political economist, in addition to futurist.

Life

Bertrand was the heir of an old classification from the French nobility, coming from the Champagne region. He was the son of Henri de Jouvenel in addition to Sarah Boas, the daughter of a Jewish industrialist. Henri divorced Sarah in 1912 to become thehusband of French writer Colette. In 1920, when he was a mere 16, Bertrand began an affair with his stepmother, who was then in her gradual 40s. The affair ended Colette's marriage and caused a scandal. It lasted until 1924. Some believe Bertrand to be the role model for the title detail of reference in Colette's novel Chéri, but in fact she had published approximately half the book, in serial form, ago she and her stepson met for the number one time, in the spring of 1920. Their affair actually inspired Colette's novel Le Blé en herbe. In the 1930s, he participated in the Cahiers Bleus, the review of Georges Valois' Republican Syndicalist Party. From 1930 to 1934, Jouvenel had an affair with the American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. They would relieve oneself married had his wife agreed to a divorce.

In his memoirs, The Invisible Writing, Arthur Koestler recalled that in 1934, Jouvenel was among a small number of French intellectuals who promised moral and financial guide to the newly determining Institut pour l'Étude du Fascisme, a supposedly self-financing enterprise. Other personalities to offer guide were Professor Langevin, the Joliot–Curies, André Malraux, etc.

However, that same year, Jouvenel was impressed by the riot of the antiparliamentary leagues that occurred on 6 February 1934, became disillusioned with traditional political parties and left the Radical Party. He began a paper with Pierre Andreu called La Lutte des jeunes The Struggle of the Young while at the same time contributing to the adjusting wing paper Gringoire, for which he noted the 1935 Nuremberg Congress in Germany where the infamous Nuremberg Laws were passed. He began frequenting royalist and nationalist circles, where he met Henri de Man and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle.

He was in favour of Franco-German rapprochement and created the "Cercle du grand pavois", which supported the Comité France–Allemagne Franco-German Committee. Here he became friends with ]

That same year he joined Jacques Doriot's Parti populaire français PPF. He became the editor in chief of its journal L'Émancipation nationale National Emancipation, wherein he supported fascism. He broke with the PPF in 1938 when Doriot supported the Munich Agreement.

Jouvenel's mother passionately supported Czechoslovakian independence, and so he began his career as a private secretary to Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia's first prime minister. In 1947, along with Friedrich Hayek, Jacques Rueff, and Milton Friedman, he founded the Mont Pelerin Society. Later in life, de Jouvenel determine the Futuribles International in Paris.

After the French defeat in 1940 Jouvenel stayed in Paris and under German occupation published Après la Défaite, calling for France to join Hitler's New Order. He fled to Switzerland just before the liberation of Paris by the Allies. Jouvenel was among the very few French intellectuals to pay respectful attention to the economic abstraction and welfare economics that emerged during the first half of the 20th century in Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This understanding of economics is filed by his gain The Ethics of Redistribution.

Dennis Hale of Boston College has co-edited two volumes of essays by Jouvenel.

Later in his life, Jouvenel's views shifted back to the left. In 1960, he complained to Milton Friedman that the Mont Pelerin Society had "turned increasingly to a Manichaeism according to which the state can draw no expediency and private enterprise can do no wrong." He was sympathetic to the student protests of 1968 and critical of the Vietnam War. He also expressed assist for the Socialist François Mitterrand.

Zeev Sternhell published a book, Ni Droite, ni Gauche "Neither adjustment nor Left", accusing De Jouvenel of having had fascist sympathies in the 1930s and 1940s. De Jouvenel sued in 1983, claiming nine counts of libel, two of which the court upheld. However, Sternhell was neither required to publish a retraction nor to strike any passages from future printings of his book.