He was one of the most brilliant, lively and cultivated minds of the French intelligentsia. He was also, and perhaps above all, one of the most talented, lucid and courageous journalists of his generation and, at the same time, always blessed with an infallibly exemplary uprightness within the French press.
More: he was an absolutely free spirit, resolutely independent, neither left nor right, iconoclastic in his own way, perhaps even revolutionary at heart, and therefore, in this indomitable or glorious title, outside, truly, of any ideological divide, too reductive for his taste as a man unfailingly attached, in fact, to his sacrosanct conception of freedom of thought!
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Because, in fact, this precious intellectual honesty – an ethical quality that is too rare, it must be admitted, these days – Jean-François Kahn, who has just left us, at the respectable age of 86, on this disastrous 23 January 2025, put it, above all, at the service of the noblest of journalism: this intellectual journalism, typical of the demanding and beautiful French spirit, that pens as incisive as those, as the only but emblematic examples of Jean Daniel and Françoise Giroud were at the highest level of this venerable profession.
Jean-François Kahn, cet intelligence of the heart as well as of the reason
This intelligence of the heart as much as of the reason, Jean-François Kahn, for whom I had enormous intellectual and human esteem, but who also honored me in return with a faithful and sincere friendship, also bestowed it on me in such a manner. generous and disinterested when he allowed me to publish, already in the early 1990s, my first columns in the important weekly he had founded at that time: Thursday Event.
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-Unfailing intellectual honesty
I remember. At the time, it was the war in former Yugoslavia that was making headlines daily. Most of the intellectuals themselves, who had unilaterally taken up the cause of the Bosnian Muslims, sometimes for the Croats and almost always systematically against the Serbs, then spread their opinions all day long, often sinking into the narrowest Manichaeism, if not caricatured and even outrageous, in platforms then singularly lacking, through the blindness of their dogmatism as well as their fundamental intolerance in their speeches of the time, of nuances, for supposedly fine and subtle minds, in the neutral and objective, even impartial, analysis of this terrible, bloody and cruel conflict in the bruised heart of Europe.
But, fortunately, at that difficult time there was, precisely, Jean-François Kahn, who, always endowed with this intellectual honesty which characterized him without flaws, and therefore inevitably anxious to thus re-establish the truth of the facts, opened its columns. Because, yes, we then had, he and I, the same perception, more complex than that which the majority of German-speaking intellectuals then gave to see, of this accursed war in ex-Yugoslavia: the condemnation, certainly, of the bellicose fascism of the nationalists Serbs, while at the same time refusing the demonization – unfortunate and counterproductive effect of a primary “anti-Serbism” – of an entire people and, at the same time, the angelization, equally partial and absurd, no less fanatical and just as nationalist, in those disastrous years, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who, as far as the latter were concerned, were moreover already placed, at least among their main leaders political, under the emerging rule, in this turbulent region of the Balkans, of what would effectively become, a few years later, Al-Qaeda, since its first military training camps, in Europe, were created, in fact, in Bosnia.
Jean-François Kahn, particularly enlightened mind and perfectly informed journalist
Yes: this is all that my friend Jean-François Kahn, a particularly enlightened mind and a perfectly informed journalist thanks to his persistent documentation, had already understood, before anyone else, to the point of graciously opening up to me to this thorny subject, in “The Thursday Event” first of all, then, on this other painful occasion that was the Kosovo war, at the end of the 1990s, in Marianne then, a weekly that he founded with identical success!
In this regard, I still remember with undisguised emotion, today, a televised debate, as heated as it was intense, that we had together, this same Jean-François Kahn and me, but then also flanked by 'another of our accomplices in the matter, the late Paul-Marie de La Gorce (then editorialist at Diplomatic World), with a famous four aces, certainly one that could not be more estimable despite our differences on this level, among some of the most prestigious French intellectuals: Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut and Pascal Bruckner, themselves then supported, in the studios, by Olivier Rolin and Jane Birkin, who, for her part, was preparing to go to Sarajevo to promote her latest record.
This happened, in fact, in 1995, during this cult program that was, in those years, the famous “Cercle de Minuit”, a program broadcast daily, in the second part of the evening, on France 2 (Antenne 2, at the time), which was then presented, following Michel Field, by the very valiant, combative and passionate, Laure Adler. It was there, during this memorable debate, that the links, which we had already forged four years ago, between Jean-François Kahn and myself were strengthened, made of a reciprocal esteem, infallibly.
So, on this wintry, cold and gloomy January 23, 2025, is this a close and long-time friend – a friendship of 35 years! – that, even beyond his dazzling intelligence and profound erudition, I lose, today filled with infinite sadness, with the painful disappearance of my very dear Jean-François Kahn, that, heaven is my witness, I will never forget for everything he gave me, professionally, intellectually and, above all, humanly.
To him therefore, in this modest but very sincere tribute, all my entire and authentic gratitude!
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