Jean-Pierre Faye (born 19 July 1925) is a French philosopher and writer of fiction and prose poetry.
Faye was born in Paris. He was member of the editing committee of the avant-garde literary review Tel Quel,[1] and later of Change. He received the Prix Renaudot for his 1964 novel L'Écluse (Éditions Seuil). He is a regular contributor to Gilles Deleuze's literary journal Chimère. With Jacques Derrida and others, he authored the "Blue Report" (French: Le rapport bleu), which led to the Collège international de philosophie, an open university, in 1983. He soon turned against deconstructionism and postmodernism, as he reflected in Langages totalitaires 2: la raison narrative (1995). His essays, including Théorie du récit and Langages Totalitaires, remain influential studies of the use and abuse of language by totalitarian states and ideologies. Faye is credited with creating the horseshoe theory.[2][3][4]
Jean-Pierre Faye's famous horseshoe theory (according to which extremes meet) finds verification here more than in other places, and the two states of delirium often mingle and meet, unfortunately spreading beyond these extremist circles. But contrary to the legend deliberately maintained and/or the commonplace believed in good faith, Israel and the United States have not always been allies; on several occasions, their relations have even been strained.
A commonly received idea, one strengthened by the post-war debates about the nature of totalitarianism, is that 'extremes meet.' Rather than a straight line between the Left and Right poles, the political spectrum would look more like a circle, or a 'horseshoe,' a metaphor the philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye used to describe the position of German parties in 1932, from the Nazis to the Communists.
The so-called centrist/extremist or horseshoe theory points to notorious similarities between the two extremes of the political spectrum (e.g., authoritarianism). It remains alive though many sociologists consider it to have been thoroughly discredited (Berlet & Lyons, 2000). Furthermore, the ideological profiles of the two political poles have been found to differ considerably (Pavlopoulos, 2013). The centrist/extremist hypothesis narrows civic political debate and undermines progressive organizing. Matching the neo-Nazi with the radical left leads to the legitimization of far-right ideology and practices.
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