Pascal Bruckner, philosopher: ‘Covid has revealed an allergy to work in the Western world’

The apocalyptic mantra in 2020 was that nothing would ever be the same after the pandemic. Four years later, it could be said that, in reality, almost nothing has changed, especially the things that would have been healthy to transform. The Paris-born philosopher Pascal Bruckner, 74, believes that the confinement of the world’s population has given rise to a new generation of lazy people, men and women who are afraid to leave home, to love, to expose themselves to life. Beyond not learning certain lessons, we have come out worse from the pandemic, confined in ourselves and in our fears, says the thinker in The Triumph of the Slippers: On the Withdrawal from the World, which came out in June in English. At the end of October, Bruckner is scheduled to participate in the Thought and Debate cycle of the Condeduque Center for Contemporary Culture in Madrid, Spain.

Bruckner, a member of the New Philosophers movement along with other authors such as André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut or Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of fabulous works such as The Temptation of Innocence, also embodies a kind of rebellion that is common among a certain class of French thinkers against neo-feminism, wokeness and the perceived condescension towards Islamism of certain political currents that are allegedly seeking voters in suburbs inhabited by migrants. All these movements, explains the thinker in his house in Le Marais — the quintessence of modern posh of the French capital — do nothing but separate us. “In the end, we will have sexual relations in the presence of a lawyer,” he announces in a tone somewhere between provocative and mischievous, the trademark of the house.

Question. You won’t believe it, but on the way here I came across two guys walking down the street in slippers and pajamas.

Answer. It’s funny, on Sundays I also see people shopping in slippers.

Q. You don’t even use them at home. How did you get through the pandemic?

A. Very well. I stayed here, separated from everyone. My partner lives in Belgium, and we spoke three times a day. Also with my children, but I was able to work. The second lockdown was a horrible repetition, although I managed to escape and go skiing with a friend, so there are good memories.

Q. It seemed that the pandemic was going to mark our memories and change our habits, the border between two different lives. Now it feels that it didn’t even exist.

A. Forgetting is society’s most effective weapon. We erase and then we build a memory. For my generation it was not so bad, we had friends, we had built careers. For young people and those starting out in life, it was terrible. There are mental illnesses that are derived from that. It was also a test of human genius to deal with it.

Q. Your book seems more like a critique of a generation than of a society.

A. In France, people loved the first lockdown. They were paid to stay at home, you look at the videos and it was like a break.

Q. The idea of living without working persists. In social and philosophical movements. Even Elon Musk himself predicts a future where AI will work for us and we will receive a universal subsidy.

A. Covid-19 has revealed an allergy to work in the Western world. In the U.S., a little less so, perhaps because of the Protestant ethic. But here, the most pampered generations no longer want to work. The other side of the coin is immigration. Since the French don’t want difficult jobs, the migrants do them.

Q. Many people went to the countryside. Did they idealize it?

A. Of course; life there is hard. They had Rousseau’s vision. But the life of the peasant was terrible, they were slaves of society. And in the 19th century many Parisians wanted to escape pollution and brutality, and ended up dying of boredom in Provence. That’s the difference between utopia and reality.

Q. In any case, it is a movement led by people with a medium or high purchasing power who, generally, had second homes or jobs that allowed them to work remotely: designers, architects...

A. There were stories from chic people saying how wonderful it was to be near the Loire, the good weather... But of course, they were in their second homes.

Q. There is a widespread idea that work is something undignified that deprives us of our real life.

A. Yes, and with this movement people earn less and societies become poorer. The average American earns the same as the rich Frenchman. Europe is entering into impoverishment caused by bad political decisions, and by this idea of young people working less, but having the same social benefits provided by the State. France is on its way to becoming Greece. Look at the risk premium. We are the kings of Club Med.

Q. You have had problems with certain left-wing groups. Also with other intellectuals linked to social democracy.

A. The left has lost its intellectual class. They only accept their own ideology. They have no contact with living thought.

Q. A profile in Le Monde defined you as reactionary, macho, white and Western.

A. This left is dying of dogmatism. Le Monde lives between two generations, the old one, which is a universalist and open left, and a new one that is the daughter of MeToo, racialist, and repeats all the clichés of wokeness. Even Kamala Harris has officially repudiated it, yet here we are still singing its praises.

Q. Did you not like MeToo?

A. It was useful, there was progress. But it risks being destroyed by its own extremists. Accusations are made without foundation, and those who are innocent remain guilty. I am thinking of Woody Allen or Ibrahim Maalouf, accused by the daughter of some friends who later said she had lied.

Q. Well, these are just a few cases against a system of years.

A. There are many cases; MeToo does not come from legality, but from revenge. Many of its lawyers are violent in their words, and they do not accuse the rapists or aggressors, but all men in general. White men. And if all men are guilty, there will be no possibility of relationships between men and women. It is a form of sexism or gender racism. It is not progress. Rape is prohibited, and it is simply not true that it is inscribed in the cultural and democratic system. That is false!

Q. Do you not believe that there was a patriarchal system that dominated relationships?

A. Yes, I do. But patriarchy is dying in our countries, while feminists do not denounce it where it exists in its maximum expression: in Muslim and African countries. I am very shocked by the silence of official feminists on Iran or Afghanistan. There is only one culprit, the Western white man. The others are exonerated because they are racialized, colonized...

Q. Have you followed the Pelicot case?

A. Monstrous, the Marquis de Sade in the age of the internet. A mass rape by ordinary people, the banality of evil. And she was very brave for asking for a public trial.

Q. Because of the normality you talk about, many see it as a trial for men in general.

A. 50 men are not half of humanity. And if we start blaming everyone for the crimes of a few, that is not justice, it is insensitive totalitarianism. If some African immigrants steal your car, are they all thieves? It is true that men are more violent than women, but these are easy and gratuitous generalizations that instill suspicion between the two sexes. We are not facing a moment of rebalancing the forces between the sexes, but of revenge against the male sex. And that will separate us.

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