French essayists

Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule; 30 October 1992) is a French writer.

Patrice de Plunkett (born 9 January 1947 in Paris) is a French journalist and essayist who specializes in analyzing social issues. He was the editor of Le Figaro Magazine, one of the major French weekly magazines. After leaving this magazine in 1997, he has written a number of books.
In 1983, he received the Renaissance Award for Letters from the Le Cercle Renaissance. [1] He also received the Award of History of Institutions and of Social Events from the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris.

Paul-Marie Coûteaux (born 31 July 1956, in Paris) is a French politician and author. He served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2009 for the Movement for France, and since 2022 has been a member of Reconquête.

Bernard Lazare (14 June 1865, Nîmes – 1 September 1903, Paris) was a French literary critic, political journalist, polemicist, and anarchist. He is known as the first Dreyfusard.

Jean-Gaspard-Félix Laché Ravaisson-Mollien (French: [ʁavɛsɔ̃ mɔljɛ̃]; 23 October 1813 – 18 May 1900) was a French philosopher, 'perhaps France's most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century'. He was originally and remains more commonly known as Félix Ravaisson.His 'seminal' 'key' work was De l’habitude (1838), translated in English as Of Habit. Ravaisson's philosophy is in the tradition of French Spiritualism, which was initiated by Pierre Maine de Biran (1766–1824) with the essay "The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking" (1802). However, Ravaisson developed his doctrine as what he called 'spiritualist realism' and 'spiritualist positivism', and – according to Ravaisson scholar Mark Sinclair – can be thought of as founding 'the school of contingency'. His most well known and influential successor was Henri Bergson, with whom the tradition can be seen to end during the 1930s; although the 'lineage' of this 'philosophy of life' can be seen to return in the late twentieth century with Gilles Deleuze. Ravaisson never worked in the French state university system, in his late 20s declining a position at the University of Rennes. In 1838 he was employed as the principle private secretary to the Minister of Public Instruction, going on to secure high-ranking positions such as Inspector General of Libraries, and then the Curator of Classical Antiquities at the Louvre. Later in his life he was appointed as the President of the Jury of the Aggregation of philosophy in France, 'a position of considerable influence'. Ravaisson, was not only a philosopher, classicist, archivist, and educational administrator, but also a painter exhibiting under the name Laché.

Louis Gustave Fortuné Ratisbonne (29 July 1827 – 24 September 1900) was a French man of letters.
He was born at Strasbourg. He was the son of the banker Adolphe Ratisbonne and his wife Charlotte Oppenheim (daughter of Salomon Oppenheim), and the nephew of the priests Marie Theodor Ratisbonne and Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne. He studied at the school of his native town and at the College Henry IV in Paris. He was connected with the Journal des Debats from 1853 to 1876; became librarian of the palace of Fontainebleau in 1871, and three years later to the Senate.
Louis Ratisbonne's most important work was a verse translation of the La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy), in which the original is rendered tercet by tercet into French. L'Enfer (1852) was crowned by the Academy; Le Purgatoire (1857) and Le Paradis 1859) received the prix Bordin.
He is also the author of some charming fables and verses for children: La Comédie enfantine (1860), Les Figures jeunes (1865) and others. He was literary executor of Alfred de Vigny, whose Destinées (1864) and Journal d'un poète (1867) he published. Ratisbonne died in Paris.

Through the influence of Thiers, Ratisbonne was appointed librarian at Fontainbleau, where he succeeded Octave Feuillet, and later he was transferred to the Palais du Luxembourg.

Jean-Marie Guyau (28 October 1854 – 31 March 1888) was a French philosopher and poet.
Guyau was inspired by the philosophies of Epicurus, Epictetus, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Fouillée, and the poetry and literature of Pierre Corneille, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset.

René Huyghe (3 May 1906 – 5 February 1997) was a French writer on the history, psychology and philosophy of art. He was also a curator at the Louvre's department of paintings (from 1930), a professor at the Collège de France and from 1960 a member of the Académie Française. He was the father of the writer François-Bernard Huyghe.

Claude Nahon, (20 April 1933 – 11 September 2016), better known as Claude-Jean Philippe, was a French film critic, essayist, diarist, director, and producer who realized numerous documentaries. He was also active on the radio. Occasionally, he was also a screenwriter or an actor.

Gisèle Halimi (born Zeiza Gisèle Élise Taïeb; 27 July 1927 – 28 July 2020) was a Tunisian-French lawyer, politician, essayist and feminist activist.