20th-century French essayists

Didier Raoult (French pronunciation: [didje ʁa.ul(t)]; born 13 March 1952) is a retired French physician and microbiologist specialising in infectious diseases. He taught about infectious diseases at the Faculty of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University (AMU), and in 1984, created the Rickettsia Unit of the university. From 2008 to 2022, Raoult was the director of the Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes. He gained significant worldwide attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for vocally promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease, despite the lack of evidence for its effectiveness and the subsequent opposition from NIH and WHO to its use for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients.As of 2024, nine of Raoult's research publications have been retracted, and another 55 of his publications have received an expression of concern from their publishers, due to questions related to ethics approval for his studies.

Joseph Malègue (8 December 1876 – 30 December 1940), was a French catholic novelist, principally author of Augustin ou le Maître est là (1933) and Pierres noires. Les classes moyennes du Salut. He was also a theologian and published some theological surveys, as Pénombres about Faith and against Fideism. His first novel is, following the French historian of spirituality Émile Goichot, the most accurately linked to Modernism. Pope Francis quoted in several circumstances, among them in El Jesuita this Malègue's view about Incarnation : ‘’ It is not Christ who is incomprehensible for me if He is God, it is God who is strange for me if He is not Christ.‘’

Brice Parain (10 March 1897 – 20 March 1971) was a French philosopher and essayist.
He appeared as himself in Jean-Luc Godard's 1962 film Vivre sa vie. In Éric Rohmer's film My Night at Maud's (1969), conversations about Pascal's Wager are directly inspired by a similar debate between Parain and Dominique Dubarle in an episode of the television series En profil dans le texte called l'Entretien sur Pascal ("The Interview on Pascal") in 1965, also produced by Rohmer.

Henri Cueco (19 October 1929 – 13 March 2017) was a French painter, essayist, novelist and radio personality. As a self-taught painter, his work was exhibited internationally. He was the author of several books, including collections of essays and novels. He was also a contributor to France Culture. A communist-turned-libertarian, he was a co-founder of Coopérative des Malassis, an anti-consumerist artists' collective. He was best known for The Red Men, a series of figurative paintings depicting aspects of the Cold War like the May 1968 events, the Vietnam War and Red Scare, and his 150 still lifes, or "portraits," of potatoes.

André Glucksmann (French: [ɡlyksman]; 19 June 1937 – 10 November 2015) was a French philosopher, activist, and writer. He was a leading figure of the new philosophers. Glucksmann began his career as a Marxist, who went on to reject Marxism–Leninism and real socialism in the popular book La Cuisinière et le Mangeur d'Hommes (1975), and later became an anti-Communist and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russian foreign policy. He was a strong supporter of human rights. In later years, he opposed the claim that Islamic terrorism is the product of the clash of civilizations between Islam and the Western world.

Jean-Claude Renard (22 April 1922, Toulon – 19 November 2002, Paris) was a French poet.

Pierre Hadot (; French: [ado]; 21 February 1922 – 24 April 2010) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy specializing in ancient philosophy, particularly Epicureanism and Stoicism.

Guillaume Dustan (November 28, 1965, Paris – October 3, 2005) was an openly gay French writer. Dustan's 1998 novel, In My Room, brought the author instant notoriety for his masterful use of autofiction and depiction of gay glamour and romance in mid-1990s Paris.

Alain Etchegoyen (6 November 1951 in Lille – 9 April 2007 in Le Mans), was a philosopher and novelist. He was the last Plan Commissionner before that Commission was abrogated. He wrote some twenty books, essays and novels.
A former student of l'École Normale Supérieure, he was a professor in classes prépas at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and in a professional lycée in Hauts-de-Seine.

René Sédillot (2 November 1906 – 21 October 1999) was a French journalist and historian.