Background

Luc Ferry was born on January 3, 1951, in Colombes, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to Pierre Ferry and Monique (Faucher) Ferry.

Education

Luc attended the Sorbonne and the University of Heidelberg.

Career

Luc Ferry was an assistant lecturer at the University Teacher Training College and Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. He also was a Professor of political science and political philosophy at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon from 1982 to 1988. Besides, he taught and directed graduate research at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, and at Caen University. He was a professor at Paris Diderot University (since 1996) but did not teach there.

From 2002 to 2004, Luc served as the Minister for Youth, National Education and Research on the cabinet led by the conservative Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. During his tenure, he was the minister in charge of the implementation of the French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools.

Achievements

• French academic Luc Ferry is known as the author of numerous well-received books on philosophy and creator of the comic book series La Sagesse des mythes which is based on Greek mythology and is published since 2016.
  
  He is the 2013 Telesio Galilei Academy of Science Laureate for Philosophy. He was enthroned to Chevalier De La Dive Bouteille De Gaillac on the 20 march 2012 together with Max Karoubi and Francesco Fucilla.

Works

More photos

• audiobook

  • Arthur Schopenhauer: L'œuvre philosophique expliquée 2012

• book

  • Man Made God: The Meaning of Life

    (Luc Ferry argues that modernity and the emergence of secu...)

    2002
  • Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age

    (Can subjective, individual taste be reconciled with an ob...)

    1993
  • Heidegger and Modernity

    (Heidegger and Modernity is an intervention in the Heidegg...)

    1991
  • The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life

    (A fascinating journey through Greek mythology that explai...)

    2008
  • Le droit: La nouvelle querelle des anciens et des modernes 1984
  • The New Ecological Order 1995
  • Qu'est-ce qu'une vie réussie ? 2002
  • Mythologie et philosophie 2016
  • La révolution de l'amour 2012
  • Vaincre les peurs: La philosophie comme amour de la sagesse 2006
  • La sagesse des mythes - Apprendre à vivre 2 2014
  • De l'amour: Une philosophie pour le XXIe siècle 2012
  • Le nouvel ordre écologique 1992
  • Dictionnaire amoureux de la philosophie 2018
  • Apprendre à vivre 2013
  • Sagesses d'hier et d'aujourd'hui 2014
  • La révolution transhumaniste 2016
  • What is the Good Life? 2009

Views

Ferry's Heidegger and Modernity, written with Alain Renaut, constructs a very ambitious political philosophy. Ferry and Renaut’s philosophical project is to preserve the most valuable aspect of modernity, the idea of human rights which are shared by all simply by virtue of the fact that we are human, whatever our particular circumstances. The book develops in great detail some ideas only briefly alluded to in French Philosophy of the Sixties.

According to Ferry, philosophy is one of our culture’s two main inventions that promise salvation. Like religion, philosophy helps us come to terms with our own mortality through symbolic escapism. A large part of the volume is devoted to a comparative analysis of the two mutually exclusive systems of beliefs, values, and learning patterns. Unlike religion, which promises salvation through the other (god), Ferry explains, philosophy encourages one to seek it in oneself, and although the first path might seem easier and more comfortable, the second brings clarity and freedom of thinking.

Written with no ambition to cover the entire history of thought, Ferry’s text traces the development of Western philosophy and the way it has been influenced by Christianity, as well as by cultural, scientific, technological and economic revolutions of the past centuries. Starting from the stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome, he takes the reader through the darkest age of philosophy, which remained in the shadow of religion until the Renaissance, to the rationalism of the modern age, Nietzsche’s militant anti-Christian writings, deconstruction and postmodern relativism - and finishes with the paradigm of today, informed by the advent of the Internet and technological advances that were unimaginable half-a-century ago.

Quotations: "We must try to understand why and how men pass from one model of reality to another. Is it because the accepted version no longer satisfies, no longer convinces? After all, several versions of reality are inherently plausible."

Membership

Luc Ferry is a former member of the Saint-Simon Foundation think-tank.

Connections

In 1974, Ferry married Schuyler Stephens, but they divorced in 1987. In 1989, Luc married Dominique Meunier, an administrator, but they also divorced in 1997. He then married Marie-Caroline Becq Fouquières.

Father:

Pierre Ferry

Mother:

Monique (Faucher) Ferry

Wife:

Marie-Caroline Becq Fouquières

ex-wife:

Schuyler Stephens

ex-wife:

Dominique Meunier

colleague:

Alain Renaut

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010