Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy was eighth in rank to be awarded the agrégation in philosophy in June, 1971.  To tell the truth, philosophy was not his only vocation at the time.  He had, of course, earned his master’s degree in philosophy (Formation et déplacement des concepts scientifiques selon Georges Canguilhem ).  But he had simultaneously earned a master’s in history and nearly finished studies at Sciences Po that would have made him eligible to apply for entry to the ENA.  Better still, in the fall of 1970, he registered for the agrégation in History and geography, and this was the agrégation he began to prepare.  It was only several months later, probably in January 1971, that, under the influence of Louis Althusser, he definitively changed directions and made philosophy his primary subject.

That year’s program centred around three great authors:  Leibniz,  Aristotle, and Nietzsche.

The subject of his «Grande Leçon» (the grave oral exam, key to the test, based on a subject selected at random for which the candidate had six hours to prepare, secluded in the Sorbonne’s Grande Bibliothèque)  was “Pleasure”.

We have succeeded in finding the subject for the written exam, “La Grande Dissertation”, another major aspect of the competitive exam.  It was «The Unknown».
After the agrégation, Bernard-Henri Lévy began teaching at a lycée, as is expected of all agrégés. He was assigned to the Lycée de Luzarche, in the Paris area, where one of his colleagues was Pierre Manent, another Normalian who has since written Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie (Julliard – réed. Gallimard 2006) and  La Raison des nations (Gallimard, 2006).

He also taught epistemology at Strasbourg’s Université Louis Pasteur.

During the same years, 1972 to 1974, he returned to the rue d’Ulm to teach a course entitled «Politiques de Nietzsche» to students of the aggregation.

However, he rapidly cut his ties to teaching to join the staff of Grasset and begin the career with which we are all familiar.

Laurence Roblin