Luc Ferry is a contemporary French philosopher who breaks from the "norm". While the establishment flatters itself in an anti-American free for all, he conducts a serious reflection upon the potentialities of a truly democratic culture. What is a work of art? Only recently has this question been raised with real interest and intensity. In ancient times, the answer appeared self-evident, one simply referred to the absolute authority in such matters: tradition. A work of art was intended to reflect the traditional world order. It derived from this expectation its sacredness as well as its stability. Egyptian illustration, for instance, stayed essentially unchanged and unquestioned for thousands of years: what was beautiful was what was sacred, and what was sacred was what followed "The Canon". Today, many of us refuse all given traditions, all given world orders, all given canons. Rather than having inherited a given cosmos, we have inherited a democratic spirit that questions the authority of tradition. We no longer expect works of art to be the sacred reflections of an ordered universe, but the secular reflections of an individual, be he or she a "genius". But does this imply artistic judgement are just a matter of "feelings" («to each their own taste"). Is the quality of a work of art entirely relative? Can there be a democratic cosmos (starting from man rather than from a given model), and works of art that reflect it? What are the foundations of a truly democratic culture? In Homo Aestheticus Luc Ferry addresses these problems, and traces with remarkable clarity a number of important moments in the history of Aesthetics: from the classicists, to the romantics, to Kant; from Hegel to Nietzsche to Heidegaar. An important book for anyone who is concerned with the present evolution towards a "McCulture". An important book for anyone wearied by the monotonous newness of contemporary art.

Ferry has researched his topic thoroughly, perhaps the only one worth lifelong investigation. Also worth checking out:

"Treatise on the Gods" by H.L. Mencken
"How to Think About God" by Mortimer J. Adler
"Essays and Aphorisms" by Arthur Schopenauer
"Twilight of the Idols" by Friedrich Nietzsche
"Existentialism and Human Emotion" by Jean-Paul Sartre

Not necessarily easy reads, but worth every moment.

This book is an astute critique of some of the naive and even undemocratic tendencies in Deep Ecology. But it is unfair to associate Deep Ecology with fascism without pointing out that fascism has other political heirs far more powerful than any ecologist.
The book leaves you feeling the author prefers needling theories to grappling with the ecological crisis in its true depth. This can't be done from the calculative, rationalist basis he finds comfortable. If Deep Ecology needs a new basis, Ferry gives few clues what that might be and settles instead for enlightened smugness.

Luc Ferry raises some very important and pressing questions about the implied praxis behind deep ecology. Does the vision of society espoused by deep ecology depend on an authoritarian social structure? Does deep ecology demand a level of political correctness which places its premises beyond question? Ferry is not the first to raise these questions. The Institute for Social Ecology, led by Murray Bookchin, has made the critique of deep ecology its bread and butter. Of course, there are plenty of ideologues within radical ecology, but they do not make up the whole story. Particularly glaring is Ferry's one-sided depiction of eco-feminism. In fact, some eco-feminist work in the U.S. has been particularly sharp at questioning the orthodoxies of both radical ecology and feminism. The questions which occupy Ferry should be asked by every person who is involved in radical ecology, and many of his criticisms are on-target for a specific body of work. But he doesn't bother to see the whole picture, and readers should be careful to read beyond the quotes cited by Ferry and to study deep ecology and ecofeminism on their own terms.

In this book, Luc Ferry uproots the animal rights movement and the ecology movement. He does this because of these movement anti-humanist thrust. But Ferry is not against these animal rights or the enviroment. He just thinks that we should protect the enviroment in the name of man and not the protect it in the name of rocks and .

Ferry and Renaut split this text into three major subjects: an overview of May 1968, four French thinkers who are household names, and an overview of the "subject" of man. The first part is mainly informative, laying the groundwork for a humanistic critique of the postmodern/Marxist left in the second part. People unfamiliar with the politics of the period will find it particularly useful in putting modern French thought in perspective. The second section, a metaphorical crucifixion of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu, and Lacan, respectively, is a little more uneven. The best of the group is their critique of Derrida, whose philosophy they refer to playfully as "Heidegger+Derrida's style". The Bourdieu section seems the weakest, as his links to French Marxism seem tangential compared to those of Louis Althusser. The final section of the text is highly illuminating in pointing out the thought of these two gentlemen. While trenchently aware of the critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger, they by no means see this as a sign to throw up one's hands and give up any chance of pursuing a humanist agenda. They posit a post-Cartesian, nonmetaphysical humanism that will be familiar to anyone who has read of Ferry's other books.