[1] Revel moved to Lyon to prepare at the Lycée du Parc for the competitive entrance examination to the École normale supérieure (ENS), where he was admitted in 1943.

Later, however, Revel became known, particularly in the context of the Cold War, as a champion of classical liberal values such as liberty and democracy at a time when many pre-eminent European intellectuals praised Communism or Maoism.

[1] The publication of his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun signalled the transition of his views to liberal "philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron.

A year after the September 11 attacks of 2001, Revel published Anti-Americanism, a book in which he criticized anti-Americanism and Europeans who argued that the United States had brought the terrorist attacks upon itself by misguided foreign policies: "Obsessed by their hatred and floundering in illogicality, these dupes forget that the United States, acting in its own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interests of many other countries which are threatened, or have already been subverted and ruined, by terrorism.

According to the daily, on October 23, 2023, the Paris public prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation into accusations that these "men" had repeatedly sexually abused Inès Chatin over several years when she was a child (aged 4 to 13).

[9] Belgian-Australian essayist and sinologist Simon Leys notes that "...what strikingly set [Revel] apart from most other intellectuals of his generation was his genuinely cosmopolitan outlook", as "on international affairs, on literature, art and ideas, he had universal perspectives that broke completely from the suffocating provincialism of the contemporary Parisian elites.

"[10] Of Revel's political thought, Clive James wrote that while he was "always characterized by the bien pensant left as a die-hard right-winger", he was "in fact a liberal democrat who was genuinely concerned that doctrinaire gauchiste measures would leave the underprivileged less privileged than ever.