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We have all noticed how many of the people whose intelligence we respect use their thinking abilities rather… stupidly. Did Camus not state that there are two forms of intelligence: the intelligent one and the stupid one? The latter generates the kind of standardized thinking that we find in evidence everywhere. Yet it is not easy to describe this phenomenon of contemporary conformity.
The aim of this essay is not to denounce, as is often done, stupidity in its widest form, but, rather, the opinion of informed people, those who have had the time to acquire knowledge and culture and yet remain the victims of narrow-mindedness and common prejudice.
In thirty six brief chapters, La bêtise s’améliore explores issues such as love, politics, the economy, language, desire, happiness… The essay takes the form of a three-way dialogue: Gulliver, the angry man, is the driving force of the reflection; his friend, the narrator, is indulgent and curious; and Clara, the narrator’s fiancée takes the philosophical debate towards questions of ethics.
There are no remedies to conformity; all we can do is to remain alert and La bêtise s’améliore can certainly contribute to keeping us aware of it by calling on our intellectual responsibility. First and foremost, this book is a celebration of intellectual freedom and a warning against the current threat of contemporary thought becoming ossified.

Belinda Cannone is a novelist and essay writer. She has published five novels and several essays including L’Écriture du désir, Calmann-Lévy, 2000 (awarded the Prix de l’essai de l’Académie Française 2001) and Le Sentiment d’imposture, Calmann-Lévy, 2005 (awarded the Grand Prix de l’essai de la Société des Gens de Lettres 2005).