Bernard-Henri Levy in conversation with Adam Gopnik

The Virus in the Age of Madness

published by Yale University Press

This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.

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Event is free, but registration is required

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(Purchase Book Here) link to be posted soon!

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World-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic—and what they tell us about ourselves.

With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around the world.
Drawing on the philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Lacan and Foucault, Lévy asks uncomfortable questions about reality and mythology: he rejects the idea that the virus is a warning from nature, the inevitable result of global capitalism; he questions the heroic status of doctors, asking us to think critically about the loci of authority and power; he challenges the panicked polarization that dominates online discourse. Lucid, incisive, and always original, Lévy takes a bird’s-eye view of the most consequential historical event of our time and proposes a way to defend human society from threats to our collective future.

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and the author of over thirty books. He is widely regarded as one of the West’s most important public intellectuals. His books include Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, In the Footsteps of Tocqueville, The Spirit of Judaism, among others.

Adam Gopnik is an award-winning writer and essayist. Since 1986 he has served as a staff writer for The New Yorker, contributing nonfiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism. He is the author of the books Paris to the Moon, Through the Children’s Gate, and A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, among others.