Revel attacks the education system. He claims that universities have stopped teaching how to think and instead teach what to think. By prioritizing specialized jargon over general logic, higher education produces graduates who are highly informed about narrow fields but utterly incapable of connecting those fields to public policy or moral truth.
At first glance, the title La Connaissance Inutile (Useless Knowledge) seems counterintuitive. Revel was an intellectual, a man of letters who dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth. Why would he declare knowledge to be useless? La connaissance inutile.Jean-Francois Revel.pdf
Revel famously coined the phrase (intellectual blindness). He argued that this blindness was not accidental but voluntary. It was a refusal to utilize critical thinking when it mattered most. The tragedy, according to Revel, is that this knowledge was available; the crimes of the 20th century were not committed in the dark, but under the gaze of a public that chose to look away. Revel attacks the education system
For those downloading the PDF, this historical pivot is crucial. Revel wrote in an era before the internet, yet he predicted the paradox of information overload leading to decision paralysis. At first glance, the title La Connaissance Inutile