In his review of my book How The French Think (Review, 11 July), Steven Poole misrepresents my argument. He upbraids me for disliking Cartesian rationalism, but on the contrary I defend it as a “bold, ambitious, and fluent” way of thinking. He further accuses me of ignoring the existence of ordinary Parisian people – an eccentric charge, as I describe them admiringly as the source of French radical and insurrectionary traditions, and celebrate their enduring capacity to take to the streets in defence of republican ideals. He lambasts me for disliking “much” of French intellectual life – but almost all the book is a celebration of the creativity of French thought. I merely criticise the recent French turn towards a closed and xenophobic ethnocentrism. Poole calls my approach “peculiarly snide”. But my general tone is playful and irreverent – hence the book’s subtitle: “An Affectionate Portrait of An Intellectual People”.
Sudhir Hazareesingh
Oxford
