The death of Claude Lévi-Strauss reminds us, again, of the moment in our planet’s geological history when the Earth tipped violently and all the intellectuals in the world ended up in France.

No other country has quite this same cadre of men and women who can be introduced as “intellectuals” without making everyone else struggle to contain a smirk. In Britain, “intellectual” is almost a term of abuse, rarely used in polite company. Instead, we use euphemisms, like “too clever by half”, as if to voice a stupider opinion would be worthier. And we are the poorer for it.

In France, thinkers like Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Aron are so confident about flaunting their opinions that they never beg forgiveness; they beg only to differ. What’s more they are just as famous as Johnny Hallyday. Bernard Henri-Lévy fills as many gossip columns as Catherine Deneuve — even if he is an intellectual poseur who is known as much for the hairy chest that peeps from his white shirt as for his views on existentialism.

And their amorous liaisons give the lie to the old quip that intellectuals are people who have discovered something more interesting than sex. Their Left Bank cafés are well known to Parisians. Their views are craved and courted on chat shows. Our chat shows court soap stars.

Yes, Britain has scholars and pundits. But on the intellectual spectrum they enjoy a status somewhere between being and nothingness. France’s “intellos” serve as the moral conscience of their age, speaking freely on the political and social mood. Intellectuals lift the national debate. They fertilise political thought. A country too embarrassed to embrace them is, well, too stupid by half.