Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jews and Bulls: A French Philosopher Defends the Corrida

When Jews try to fight bulls, the results can end in tears, but the simple desire to watch bullfights has a more ambiguous outcome, as proven by the latest book by the French Jewish philosopher Francis Wolff.

An author of academic works on Aristotle and Socrates who teaches in Paris, Wolff should not be confused with the late German Jewish jazz photographer of the same name. France’s Francis Wolff has organized seminars in honor of Jacques Derrida, but he is more noted — or notorious — for his defense of bullfighting, both in France and Spain.

As a follow-up to his 2007 “Philosophy of the Corrida” from Les éditions Fayard, Woolf, who frequently lectures on bullfighting’s ethics and aesthetics, has just published a new short book, “50 Reasons to Defend the Corrida” with Mille et une nuits/Fayard éditions.

European talk radio hosts report, according to Wolff, that only two topics incite home listeners to write thousands of angry letters: the “corrida and (I’m ashamed to link the two, but so goes human nature) the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.” Wolff adds that “disproportionate” responses in the context of vast worldwide suffering are “always irrational.”

Wolff scorns animal rights activists who dare to compare bullfighting to Nazism, hyperbole that he describes as “approaching a kind of Holocaust denial.” While bullfighting was exploited as a popular spectacle by Spain’s dictator Franco, Wolff notes, it is not inherently fascist. Instead, Wolff states, like religion in Karl Marx’s famous definition, bullfighting may be the “opium of the people…the spirit of a heartless world.”

Wolff warns against blaming bullfighting on the “dark history of Spain,” along with tragedies like the 1492 Jewish Expulsion, or the Inquisition. Instead he cites creative personalities, many of them Jewish, who have been inspired by the corrida, including the Belgian painter of Russian Jewish origin Pierre Alechinsky, author Gertrude Stein, and the filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Abel Gance.

Preferring “ceremonial rituals” like bullfighting over “pagan rites,” Wolff asks if we ban bullfighting, “who or what will be banned tomorrow?” Wolff compares those who wish to ban the corrida outright with the Afghan Taliban who destroyed giant statues of the Buddha, even linking bullfighting and Buddhism as being “deeply rooted in history and inserted into today’s modernity.”

Wolff may not cause many animal rights activists (or Buddhists) to shout “¡Olé!” but he has eloquently argued his case.

Watch Francis Woolf discourse in 2009 on the relationship between man and animal:

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.