Bruno Bérard
ParisMeet Bruno Bérard, author and series editor at L'Harmattan.
Studies, readings, projects... Here is his testimony!
Could you introduce yourself? What are you currently doing?
To earn a living: At the age of 60, I am drawing to the end of a career as a senior executive in international industry (with French, Swiss, German, and American groups) and as a consultant in industrial and commercial strategy (for American, British, French, and Italian groups), primarily in the aeronautics sector but also in thermal regulation.
To live: For about fifteen years, I have been running several series at L'Harmattan on a voluntary basis, overseeing the publication of some fifty French works and translations, mainly in philosophy (metaphysics, religions, and traditional esotericism). These include works by Jean Borella, Robert Bolton, Frithjof Schuon, Gilbert Durand, François Chenique, Wolfgang Smith, Kenryo Kanamatsu, Françoise Bonardel, among others.
This work has enabled me to direct collective volumes such as What is Metaphysics? (2010), The Metaphysics of Fairy Tales (2011), Metaphysics and Psychoanalysis (2013), and, after seven years' work, Physics and Metaphysics, published simultaneously in France and the United States (2018).
Since the 1990s, I have been writing books, primarily on religions and a philosophy of knowledge – although my first publication did not appear until 2005.
Additionally, I voluntarily support young entrepreneurs in launching or developing their businesses (in sectors such as catering, consultancy, and psychosocial risk management, among others).
What memories do you have of your studies and your teachers?
I have no fond memories of my school years. Apart from a mathematics teacher in Year 10 and a literature teacher in Year 12, my schooling was a nightmare, which I regarded as a complete waste of time. My higher education, however, remains a positive memory, notable above all for an unforgettable lecture by Jacques Séguéla.
Fortunately, outside formal studies, I was fortunate enough to meet and spend time with remarkable philosophers and thinkers—first and foremost, my father—along with figures such as Lanza del Vasto, Jean Borella, and François Chenique.
Which philosophical book particularly captivated you? Is there an author for whom you felt a true passion?
My encounter with the work of Jean Borella proved pivotal to my philosophical development. Largely self-taught until my doctorate (in Religious Studies and Systems of Thought), I found in his writings—and gradually made my own—a sense of philosophical method. More than that, I witnessed intelligence in action—what it truly means to think—especially in the highest domains, those of metaphysics.
From that point on, regardless of the undeniable intellectual capacities—far surpassing my own—of powerful thinkers such as Kant, Heidegger, Quine, Russell, Lewis, Armstrong, Derrida, or Nef, I came to see their brilliance as ultimately in the service of a rationalist reductionism.
Reason alone, when reduced to the mere calculation of ideas—constrained by logic and limited to what it can perceive or conceive—stands in opposition to intelligence. Just as reasoning (pure calculation) differs from the understanding of that reasoning, or a concept from genuine comprehension of it, so constructed lexical meaning differs from the deeper sense and significance that mere logic cannot generate.
In this way, words and arguments can ensnare thought, while intelligence can set it free. At the boundaries of thought (metaphysics), transcending concepts is the only path to genuine knowledge, even if that knowledge takes the form of nescience.
Could you tell us about your works? What are your current projects and research interests?
My first published book was a "synthesis" on religions, exploring their teachings through a metaphysical lens. In it, Christian dogmatics are brought into dialogue with other faiths (Introduction to a Metaphysics of Christian Mysteries, in Comparison with Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Judaic, and Taoist Traditions, 2005). The exposition of doctrines received the imprimatur of the Catholic Church and was accompanied by a remarkable afterword by Jean Borella: "The Problematic of Religious Unity".
While working on this first book, I discovered the works of Jean Borella. This led me to write my second published book, a synthesis of his oeuvre—three thousand pages distilled into three hundred and fifty—covering a broad sweep of the history of philosophy, from the Presocratics to deconstructionism (Jean Borella: The Metaphysical Revolution; After Galileo, Kant, Marx, Freud, Derrida, 2006).
Between 2006 and 2018, I contributed numerous articles and participated in collective volumes. I also published my doctoral thesis on a 19th-century metaphysician and released an Introduction to Metaphysics (2009). Most recently, I completed a philosophical essay on knowledge: The Metaphysics of Paradox (forthcoming). I have no idea how it will be received — the bibliography alone runs to a thousand works.
All these books are featured on my website dedicated to metaphysics: Metafysikos, a site I created in 2024, where I also maintain a blog devoted to this noble discipline!
Currently, I am working on a Metaphysics of Sex, aiming to revisit and renew the perspective offered by Julius Evola's 1958 work. This study distinguishes between sexuations (male, female, and others), genders (feminine, masculine, and others), and sexualities (heterosexual, homosexual, and others), as well as their various combinations within a single individual and between partners. The aim is to discern, beyond both ideals and practices, what constitutes the essence of homo sexualis.
The book also explores the physiological disjunction between the functions of procreation and pleasure, examining ancient Indian and Chinese sexual techniques alongside their modern Western counterparts (Tantra, Tao, Karezza). These practices are understood as engaging body, soul, or spirit according to the cultural orientation of each tradition.
Above all, the work highlights that intimate encounters with another person (an alter ego, in the Aristotelian sense) engage—potentially or actually—each level of the human tripartite structure (body, soul, and spirit). It suggests that alterity (otherness) is more fundamental than sexuation and that horizontal human otherness can open onto a more radical, vertical Otherness.
Incidentally, sexual activity emerges neither as an absolute necessity (total abstinence, after all, is widespread) nor as the ultimate explanation of human nature. Freud himself was disappointed when his Oedipal schema—intended as a universal theory—was called into question by ethnologists' discoveries of other societies. Instead, sexuality emerges as one of the many paths by which human beings can participate in something greater than themselves.
Thank you, Bruno, for sharing your story!
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