In public appearances and in his latest book, France’s most famous public intellectual has been quoting from the work of Jean-Baptiste Botul, putative author of The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant. M. Botul (founder of the Botulisme school of thought) is, in fact, the creation of a satirist who writes for Le Canard enchaîné. (Lévy has been a remarkably good sport about the embarrassment.)