As I was hearing French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lévy discuss his new book, “Israel Alone,” the other night, it struck me that it must be daunting for a man of intellect to confront the very antithesis of intellect: the gruesome savagery of Oct. 7.

How does one bring intellect to the mutilation, rape and gleeful murder of 1200 human bodies?

What can a philosopher say about murderers whose philosophy revolves around the very idea of murder?

It feels like a disconnect: the most primal and brutal dimension of humanity clashing with our most refined and sophisticated dimension.

And yet, God knows Jews have plenty of experience with that disconnect.

The clash of the primal and the cerebral has plagued us throughout our history. Violence against Jews is never just violence against Jews. It’s also violence that interrupts a prayer service, a Talmud class, a family meal, a communal gathering, an artist at work or simply the peaceful rhythms of a neighborhood.

For much of our journey, the assault on Jewish bodies has forced Jewish scholars and spiritual leaders to interrupt their contemplation of big ideas to deal with the reality of brutality. Not much has changed on that front.

In her new book, “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Yardena Schwartz does a deep dive on another story of Jewish carnage. She quotes a British High Commissioner Chancellor who wrote in his diary on Oct. 8, 1929:

“Fifteen days after the massacre, the floors, the walls, the bedding were still stained with blood…I do not think history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years.”

Indeed, the idea of “recording” lies at the heart of “Israel Alone.” Lévy confronts that day’s atrocity through clear, on-the-ground reporting, something he’s done in many of his books, however unusual that may be for a philosopher.

“I will never forget my first impressions,” he wrote from Israel the day after Oct. 7. “The smell of sour milk that filled the bullet-pocked, blasted, half-burned houses; the contents of their kitchen cabinets scattered in the rooms, as if blown away by a hurricane. The neatly laid out streets lined with pretty houses with their shrubs intact but empty of birdsong and human voices; or the consistent accounts of survivors and rescuers who recounted how the dead were collected, some of them decapitated and dismembered, others burned, others riddled with bullets and their hands torn to shreds as if they had fought until they dropped.”

Perhaps it’s the deepest expression of philosophy to understand that the straight reporting of evil, as Holocaust writer Primo Levi showed us, is the most forceful way to convey truth. And if the search for truth is not a mission of philosophy, then what is?

Lévy’s deep knowledge of philosophy, history and geopolitics are brought to bear throughout the book, as he helps us make sense of the madness of our post-Oct. 7 world and Israel’s predicament– not least the enduring madness of antisemitism.

But there is also an aesthetic quality to his prose that moves the reader. When Lévy writes, for example, about “neatly laid out streets lined with pretty houses with their shrubs intact but empty of birdsong and human voices,” one detects a subtle, defiant tone, a voice that insists on injecting humanity and elegance even when describing the indescribable.

In many ways, we’re all facing similar questions in the wake of Oct. 7.

Can we wallow in ugliness without becoming ugly ourselves? Can we peer at the darkness of despair without losing sight of the light of hope? Can we internalize interminable sadness without losing our capacity for joy? Can we confront hate without eroding our love?

When poets and artists and writers and musicians bring their talents to an “Event” as bewildering as Oct. 7, can they do justice to monstrosity without losing beauty?

The unspeakable horror of that fateful day has tested our humanity like nothing else. Whether we’re philosophers or not, that may well be the challenge of our time: dealing with inhuman acts while staying human.