The wisdom of love

The Wisdom of Love (La Sagesse de l'amour) examines the seemingly contradictory claims of universalism and partisanship for the ethnic or racial Other. In discussions of topics ranging from the work of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s to the contending positions of right and left in the recent culture wars in Europe and the Americas, Finkielkraut cautions against both an unreflective universalism and an equally inflexible advocacy of the Other. He argues instead that genuine respect for the Other is inseparable from calls for universal justice and equality. Rather than being opposites, otherness and universalism are, for Finkielkraut, inextricably bound to one another. The Wisdom of Love makes a unique contribution to today's culture wars by examining love as a critical ground for social thought. Ultimately, Finkielkraut's anti-assimilationist position is committed to universalism and to the preservation of the Other's difference.