Rémi Soulié's 'Avec Benny Lévy' Examines the Philosopher's Trajectory from Mao to Moses

Fabrice Hadjadj reviews Rémi Soulié's book 'Avec Benny Lévy' in art press n°364 (February 2010). The book traces Benny Lévy's transformation from Maoist militant Pierre Victor to a Jewish thinker, a shift he described as 'from Moses to Moses via Mao' rather than the simplistic 'from Mao to Moses.' Soulié, a Catholic writer with a vigorous style, engages with Lévy's thought, which critics like Alain Badiou (who called Lévy a 'sectarian rabbi'), Jacques Rancière (who denounced his 'hatred of democracy'), and Alain Finkielkraut (who feared his assertion of 'The Book' against 'books') have challenged. Lévy is portrayed as antimodern yet ultramodern, pushing modernity to return to its foundations, suggesting that 'under the cobblestones of politics lies the beach of theology.' Soulié identifies an error in Lévy's reading of Saint Paul, which Lévy and Jean-Claude Milner accused of inventing an 'easy universal' that levels and homogenizes. Soulié argues that Lévy and Milner should have avoided relying on Alain Badiou's exegesis, as Badiou is an interesting philosopher but a poor theologian. Instead, Soulié critiques Lévy from within, using thinkers close to Levinas and Rosenzweig. With Éric Marty, he affirms the necessity of both Jewish and Catholic messianisms—one of Return, the other of Advent. With Michaël Bar-Zvi, he recalls the mutual involution of Text and Land. The book is presented as a living dialogue with the irreducible Jew, in a common openness to the Wholly Other.