Don't sweat it: Nicolas Sarkozy steps back into the Elysée Palace after a run. Photograph: AP/Christophe Ena.

Nicolas Sarkozy is facing criticism from that formidable quarter in French cultural life: the intellectual classes. But not (yet) for any plans to introduce privatisation, slash state spending, or cut subsidies to farmers.

No, it's much more serious than that. Nicolas Sarkozy, says the left bank crowd, goes running too much. Jogging is rightwing, philistine and fundamentally not French. Why not adopt a more contemplative and poetic recreation, such as walking, asks Alain Finkielkraut.

Behind this, perhaps, one might suspect that the practice of political leaders donning shorts and running shoes is regarded by some in France as altogether too "American" - since, certainly from the Clinton years, jogging has become virtually de rigueur for US presidents. At the same time, it is almost universal for those in the arts to feel somewhat suspicious of and hostile towards those whom they perceive as more interested in a cult of the body than the life of the mind.

What do you think? Can you be physically fit and still capable of maintaining intelligent conversation on an elevated plane? Or are the philosophes right and is jogging a signifier of philistinism?