talking of overrated French philosphers: Voltaire. dear god.
No. There are just about a million french philosophers who deserve to be called out before Voltaire, just off the top of my head :
Fienkelkraut - massive knee-jerk reactionary who, as one journalist puts it, "confuses the decline of his own life for the decline of Civilization itself"
Onfray - bistro philosopher who loves to talk on absolutely every subject while descending into laughable levels of paranoia about The "Maastrichtian state" and how the media and particularly Laurent Joffrin are trying to frame him as a neo-Nazi or a right-wing anarchist.
Bernard Henri-Levi - Poser and favorite of the French establishment who advocated intervention and arms trading in Libya as a way of promoting civilization while writing puff piece plays about himself. Acts as a sort of Simon Cowell of Contemporary French Philosophy, with the same dress sense too.
Lacan - inspired an entire procession of word salad (what is a synonym?) and games philosophers including Zizek with bizarre psychonalaytical pseudo-science.
Comte-Sponville - another expert in everything and nothing who is currently re-doing the rounds of various TV plateaus complaining that Corona is ushering in the "dictatorship of medical sciences" - hope he gives up his hospital bed to an essential worker.
Ferry - The sigher-in-chief of French philosophy in the mid-2000s who became Minister for Education. Thinks he´s original because he imagines a future society of technology and gadgets and man's relationship to it without going into any of the depth that some of the Anglo-Saxon social theorists are engaging in.
Castoriadis - A dude who litterally thought Athenian democracy was more democratic than Western liberal democracy -- never mind the fact that women, slaves, under-35s etc were not allowed to vote.
Do I need to go on?
Voltaire is a key figure in the Enlightenment.
