The Invention of Society: Psychological Explantations for Social Problems

THE INVENTION SOCI ETY OF

Z_6

SERGE MOSCOVIC I

I

The Invention of Society

THE INVENTION OF SOCIETY Psychological Explanations for Social Phenomena

by SERGE MOSCOVICI Translated by W. D. Halls

Polity Press

This English translation copyright© Polity Press 1993 First published in France as

La Machine a faire des dieux© Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1988.

This translation first published 1993 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd and with the assistance of the French Ministry of Culture. First published in paperback 19%.

Reprinted 2005

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Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: The problem

The two faces of the researcher: the fox and the hedgehog The fault lies with psychology Is there a psychological explanation for social facts? Between economics and psychology one must choose

viii

1 1 7 12 17

Part I : Religion and Nature a s the Origins of Society

1

2

3

The machine for the creation of gods

27

Thou shalt, I must In religion there is something eternal God is society Religion cannot be explained without mass psychology Men like gods Religions are never extinguished

27 31 37 44

48 65

Crimes and punishments

69

The science of malaise Confessional societies and professional societies The consciousness of conformity and the conformity of consciousnesses

69 73

A science difficult to name

96

From one society to another Between the Charybdis of psychology and the Scylla of sociology

96

81

1 04

vi

Contents

Part II: The Power of the Idea 4

5

6

Social 'big bangs•

113

The spirit of the times Charisma and reason Institutionalized society and society as institutionalizer

113 120 128

The genius of capitalism

136

The search for the origins of the modern world The Puritan diaspora and the disenchantment of the world The Puritan minorities create a culture of dissent From homo religiosus to homo oeconomicus A society of solitary human beings As honest as a Huguenot This is not psychology

136 143 152 163 172 176 179

The mana and the numina

190

Revolutionary societies and normal societies Legitimacy, the prohibition of criticism and the domination of charisma How can one recognize whether magical powers are true or false? The cycle of charisma: from emotion to reason This relates to psychology

190 194 205 210 217

Part III: One of the Greatest Mysteries in the World 7

8

The science of forms

231

Style is sociology, sociology is style The search for a third way between the individual and the collectivity

231

Molecular sociology: its networks and representations

235 243

Money as passion and as representation

256

The missing link The world of objects and the world of values Sacrifice as being at the origin of exchange and money The new miracle Money is the homeland of the stateless

256 261 275 287 292

Contents

9

The world that has vanished

vii

298

�

The prime quality of money is its quantity From the 'approximate society' to the economy of precision But then, where has society gone?

298 306 322

Concluding remarks

336

Notes

370

Index

393

Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright material: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. for extracts from E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, tr. J. W. Swain, Allen & Unwin, 1 964; Macmillan Publishers Ltd. and The Free Press for extracts from E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, intro. L. A. Coser, tr. W. D. Halls. Trans­ lation, Copyright© 1 984 by Higher & Further Education Division, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Copyright© 1 984 by The Free Press; Routledge for extracts from G. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, ed. D. Frisby, tr. D. Frisby and T. Bottomore, 1978, 2nd edn, 1990.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arra ngement at the first opportunity.

The author' s deepest thanks go to Nelly Stephane, whose efficient assistance and critical vigilance have accompanied him throughout this book.

Introduction: The problem

The two faces of the researcher: the fox and the hedgehog It is often helpful to consider a problem from a limited angle, and to approach it at first in a practical way . Through contact with the human sciences, and under their influence , one acquires the conviction, as unquestioned and indis­ putable as a dogma, that the movements, crises and phenomena produced in society can and should be explained by social causes. On the other hand, one should avoid resorting to psychological causes, or at least refrain from doing so for as long as possible , until this becomes inevitable. In thi s book I should like to return to the premises that lie behind this dogma and demonstrate that this is merely an ideal of earlier times which has crys­ tallized into a deep-rooted prejudice, even a superstition. This is the sole justification for my work. I do not claim to develop any theory or set out any discovery I have made, except that of having suffered this prejudice myself, out of a desire to conform and through lack of curiosity about the reasons for it. Questions such as : ' What is a human being? ' and ' What are the relationships between human beings in society? ' are the themes of even our most modest studies. To respond to them we turn to the primary source of all knowledge: everyday life and lived experience. There we grapple with a host of phenom­ ena constantly present to our gaze, but which we must still perceive for our­ selves. Nevertheless, we should be on our guard. At the outset some appear to be social, and are classified as such: means of communication and forms of language, the movements of crowds following precipitately in the wake of a leader, or propaganda, power and hierarchical relationships, racism, unem­ ployment, the family, religion, etc . Other phenomena are indirectly social, such as a person ' s fear of infection from AIDS, feelings of love and hatred towards our neighbours, the suicide to which isolation can lead, one ' s manner of speech and behaviour in public, and mental and physical illnesses that may ruin our lives, to cite only very few examples. Whether undertaking original studies or working from secondary sources, every researcher attempts to grasp these phenomena according to some

2

Introduction: The problem

method: by observation, experimentation, or the collection of archive docu­ ments. In any case researchers are always on the look-out for the significant detail, the unusual or unforeseeable fact, and a law arising from a series . To know anything means primarily this. So we consider as intriguing but idle fictions ideas and hypotheses that seek to bypass such efforts. From where does the researcher' s interest in such phenomena spring? They are probably at the root of the universal curiosity of human beings asking themselves where we come from, what we are, and where we are going. To such questions are added our choice of an occupation and the requirements of action and practical matters, which give form to what would otherwise be a merely metaphysical anxiety. Consequently the researcher seeks to understand how things occur and why they happen in one way, and not another. Nothing is so deeply ingrained in us as this tendency to describe complex effects, and to explain them by simple causes that might be said to be uncovered as if by energetically wielding a chisel. Engaged in this work, the researcher gives the impression of being a strange animal, half-fox, half-hedgehog. Among those verses of the poet Archilochus that have survived one can read this line: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one big thing. ' The same is true of the researchers. So long as they are describing, one sees them exploring aggressively, like the fox, the numerous trails that criss-cross the topology of society, combining dissimilar facts and ideas and manipulating methods without the slightest compunction. Provided that the results of such incursions and depredations allow movement forward, to capture some glimmer of the truth, no one re­ quires a certificate of origin for research findings. Nor does anyone bother whether they conform to the principles of economics, psychology, sociology, or linguistics. Only researchers' capacity for discernment counts, and, in the final analysis, their success or failure. As with artists, the quality of the work is more important than re spect for the rules. This fact is too self-evident to need emphasis. From this viewpoint, as Einstein has written, the researcher behaves as

a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among 1 sensory experiences. As soon as this researcher assumes the task of explaining the corpus of results arrived at, everything changes. Like the hedgehog, he involuntarily rolls up in a ball and sticks out his spines, that is, he rejects what clashes with and contradicts his own views. He examines the results from within one single discipline, and in the light of one single cause, which represents for him the key to all enigmas. He relates them to a system of theories whose authority is acknowledged. One speaks then of a paradigm. Nothing, or almost nothing,

Introduction: The problem

3

escapes or resists this. Indeed, explanation consists in uncovering this one cause - power, the class struggle, self-interest, the Oedipus complex, etc. which reduces the unknown to the known. As soon as the cause has been found, one has the impression that all has been made clear and that everything holds together, as in a chain of which the cause is the first link. Whoever queries this by connecting the chain to a different link - that is, a different cause - incurs censure and almost commits heresy. You are aware of the anathema pronounced against those whom psychoanalysis or Marxism has outlawed as guilty of Iese-majesty against sexuality or the class struggle. The ordeal of some of these demonstrates to us, writ large and occasionally in the heroic mode, what is acted out practically everywhere on a lesser scale, and more prosaically. Naturally one must not paint in black and white a picture that is of all different shades. Yet in the end the selection of a cause involves the values of a society and determines the hierarchy of the sciences. Quite simply, the choice manifests the spirit of the times. We live in the age of economics and sociology. Our natural incJination is to explain any kind of phenomena in terms of economics and sociology. If needs be we carry this to the point of absurdity. Otherwise the prestige of truth would suffer, and even more the consensus of the scientific community, and of culture itself. As we can see, foxes and hedgehogs tackle the questions that are our concern in a very different spirit. We do not adopt the same attitude when we seek to understand a concrete phenomenon as we do to account for its causes. On the one hand, we are dealing with a practical matter of discovery; on the other, we are reaching down to the foundations of knowledge , and even to a definition of what we term reality. We cannot embark upon discussion of these foundations calmly and dispassionately , far removed from prejudice. We have not yet advanced so far. It is often repeatedly stated that the human sciences are more recent than the natural sciences. Is thi s absolutely certain? Many reasons may be advanced for believing the opposite to be true, if we take into account the variety and richness of institutions that over thousands of years have been grafted on to an often rudimentary technology. Such institutions assume a wealth of know­ ledge about the forces in society and human behaviour, as testified to in myths, religions and popular wisdom. In any case the incomplete nature of the human sciences is less disturbing than their rigidity - the age of the heart being, so to speak, less than the age of the arteries. The researcher ' s dual nature of fox and hedgehog is particularly relevant to these sciences. At the very first glance one perceives that their descriptions and methods advance in concert. One sees them borrowing techniques from one another, swapping concepts, and keeping up a permanent exchange. Progress in stati stics, surveys and observation techniques, as well as the analysis of data, are quickly transmitted from economics to sociology, from linguistics to psychology, from anthropology to history, and v ice versa. Hypotheses sustained in one field are adopted to feed research in another. We cannot emphasize enough the spread of these various research possibilities opening up here and there, nor the fact that traces of their

4 Introduction: The problem influence are to be found almost everywhere. And so over the last hundred years there has grown up this enormous body of knowledge, an extensive complex of fields relating to the study of societies, as well as a mode of discourse allowing them to be held together more closely. Nowhere do any absolute discontinuities or insuperable contradictions appear. Everyone judges a study, whether it is good or bad, and regardless of where it is produced, in the same way . I believe my description requires little alteration. However, when it comes to explanations, matters appear in a different light. The hedgehog bristles ! In other words, we seem caught up in the relationships and divisions of a past era, at a time when the science of human beings took shape. Each of us doggedly falls back on traditional models of causality and polarities. These may serve to enhance the esteem in which a specialism is held, improving its position as compared with its rivals and leaving in place a hierarchy. One could well assert that the tribulations that have turned our lives upside down, the terrible, muddy waters in which hi story has floundered, the revolutions that have transformed the landscape of all the sciences, includ­ ing the human sciences, have brought forth nothing new under the sun. It should therefore come as no surpri se if I hark back to the problem of the most quintessential of all divisions, on which all others still depend, that between psychological and social causes. Undoubtedly this division runs deep and is repeated in various forms. It would be absurdly pedantic to ask : ' Do you understand the reason for it? ' How could you not do so, when you have learnt it in the lecture room and come up against it so often? There is in my view no need to reopen the great debate about the two systems of explanation that derive from it. Each allegedly corresponds to a reality characterized by particular symptoms. No one confuses the emotions, thoughts or desires of an individual with the institutions, the violence or rules that apply in a collectiv­ ity. If a person strides the streets of Paris proclaiming : 'I am de Gaulle ' , he is suffering from a psychological disorder. Yet if a crowd of 1 0,000 acclaim him, shouting : 'We are Gaullists ! ' we are left in no doubt that we are dealing with a political movement. It is unquestionably true that, when we come together to form a group, something changes radically. We think and feel quite differ­ ently from what we do as individuals. We may argue about the meaning of this difference, but we cannot deny its existence. Feelings of love or hatred become more intense, arguments more extreme and more heated. The charac­ teristics of the actors are transformed when they pass from the individual to the collective state. Now, to sustain this divi sion it is maintained that this transformation comes down to a difference in nature between these two states. What was psycho­ logical has become social, with each condition possessing causes peculiarly its own. Durkheim wrote : In addition, these consciousnesse s must be assoc iated and combined, but combined in a certain way. It is from this combination that social life arises and consequently it is this combination which explains it. By aggregating together, by interpenetrating , by fu sing together, individuals give birth to an entity, psychical if you will, but one which constitutes a psychical individ-

Introduction: The problem

5

uality of a new kind. Thu s it is in the nature of that individuality and not in that of its component elements that we must search for the proximate and

determining causes of the facts produced in it. The group thinks, feels and

acts entirely differently from the way its members would if they were iso­ lated. If therefore we begin by studying these members separately, we will understand nothing about what is taking place in the group. In a word, there is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuity as there is between biology and the physical and chemical sciences. 2

Although this conclusion is not mandatory, everyone subscribes to it. It has important consequences that merit further consideration. First, it establishes a hierarchy in what is real . The social domain represents objectiv ity ; the psy­ chological domain subjectivity. The social domain corresponds to an essence whose movements are determined by external, impersonal causes: interests, common rules, etc. The psychological domain expresses rather what is appar­ ent, with its movements springing from within us. They contrast vividly with movements in the social domain because of their unstable character and the fact that they derive from experience. Moreover, the social is rational, since all actions and deci sions follow a logical pattern, taking into account the relationship between means and ends . The psychological, by contrast, is al­ legedly irrational, subject to the promptings of desires and emotions. Conse­ quently logic postulates the impossibility of explaining social phenomena through psychological causes, or the characteristics of a collective entity through those of the individuals who constitute it. This has been trumpeted abroad in all kinds of ways for a century. Such explanations are not only impossible, but bound to be erroneous. Durkheim sums up a view widely held : ' Consequently every time a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psY.chological phenomenon, we may rest assured that the explanation 3 is false.' In this hasty formulation - similar ones are to be found in Weber - the sociologist goes to extremes. No matter: he or she is enunciating a rule whose authority has become indisputable. It signifies that an explanation is complete and in conformity with science when it arrives at social causes. Moreover any appeal to phenomena that are subjective or result from experience must be eliminated as being a source of error. The more one is successful in eradicating any trace of psychological elements as determinants of action and human choices, the closer one approaches obj ectivity. But the very ease of the oper­ ation and its rough and ready character should assuredly put us on our guard. However, the tautology that what is social is objective because it is social, meets with such approval that no one disputes it. Karl Popper writes: 'It would therefore be more hopeful to attempt to explain a reduction or interpretation of psychology through sociology than the other way round. '4 Rightly or wrongly, the consensus is that once the forces and institutions in a society are known, the rules that govern them can decipher and predict what is taking place in the hearts and minds of its constituent members. Thus the equation of cause and effect to which we rally runs : ' Given a state of society , the psychological state follows from it.'

6

Introduction: The problem

Yet to make such a speculation is highly presumptuous. It assumes that we possess an infallible criterion for objective reality and its subjective reflection, and that we can distinguish any ancillary psychological cause. It is as if, for example, noting the capacity to heal that the miracle-working kings of France displayed (when they merely touched the thousands of sick persons that had come from the most distant provinces : ' The king touches you, may God heal you '), one could discern the secret of power or some collective psychology. Moreover, such an examination is then supposed to j ustify our deciding that the first kind of cause is more basic than the second. Marx, in a phrase that rang round the world, stated unequivocally: ' It is not the consciousness of human beings that determines their existence, but their existence that deter­ mines their consciousness . ' It assumes that we are capable of delving down, from the outside, to the pure ore of human existence, provided we remove the dross of representations and beliefs enveloping it. In this way the proposition is allegedly verified that, from the way human beings live, we can deduce how they think and feel . Marx, Durkheim and their disciples were firmly opposed t o any interpreta­ tion that placed the emphasis on psychological facts. If occasionally they resort to it, it is as if resorting to symptoms that allow one to return to a social reality more substantial and more recondite. Thus all the richness and colour of the world of experience, the spiritual reefs that order its ebb and flow, are rendered flat and are eaten away, reduced to metamorphoses of subjectivity, ideology, false consciousness, and maya ' s other veils of illusion . One there­ fore loses interest in the minutiae of human conduct, becoming wary of its innermost movements and rejecting what is peculiar to their mental life. One learns about the individual consciousness from the outside, starting from what it is not - but this has the advantage of suiting everybody. It would be superfluous to dwell further on thi s tendency to underestimate psychological phenomena. Whether one deems that they are determined al­ ready, or whether one rules out taking them into account and studying them, the fact is perfectly clear and does not need to be more amply documented. What is one to conclude? So long as we continue with our research, each busying himself in his own field with tracking down, collecting and analysing facts, we are hardly aware of this .exclusion. At least we are not conscious of it, since we are accustomed to it. We only perceive it when, having to account for our facts, we clash in their interpretation. Undoubtedly the collision is with other people, but it is also with ourselves. For in the main we have accepted the general view that sociological explanation is the queen of all explanations. It should occupy the place of the organ in a choir of musical instruments, at the head. So we are forced to play down other explanations, resorting to them only as an afterthought. ' Everything is water, ' the first philosophers used to say. 'Everything is society , ' we say , and this principle orders and brings together the results derived from the various fields of enquiry, thus giving a synthetic picture of reality, the meaning of life and the position of humankind in nature. However thi s may be, we proceed as if we knew the explanation even before we embarked upon a study of the facts. Then it is no longer a matter of

Introduction: The problem

7

verifying the causes for each set of data, leaving sufficient latitude for these to be developed from any opposition they encounter. Thus a dose of uncer­ tainty, as it is explained away , assures that social causes alone have been adroitly selected. Yet it is very often a matter of exerting constraint in order to fit the diverse nature of reality to a principle of determination that a priori is held to be both necessary and sufficient. Just as in trials where the verdict is known before the accused have been summoned to appear, here too we know the causes before we have marshalled the facts. Then we no longer proceed according to the rule of reason, but by faith. In the last lines of his moving Apologie pour I' histoire Marc B loch warned us against such a practice: 'To sum up, in a word, in history, j ust as in other fields, causes cannot be postu­ lated. They must be sought after. ' Failure to do so robs them of all the value they possess for exploiting them and consequently of all power of discovery. When one knows their secret in advance, the drama of life and knowledge i s prevented from unfolding.

The fault lies with psychology It is high time to descend from these heights and uncover a reality that affects us closely. If we turn our attention to the network of the human sciences, the division I have spoken of is faintly visible almost everywhere. The separation of sociology, or what is linked to it, from psychology, is for the human sciences equivalent to the separation of physics from biology in the natural sciences. This is the first separation but, as with all discrimination, the rule establishing it becomes a prohibition and even an anathema. Do not prejudices and exclusions generally rely on some fanciful, scholarly principle? Nothing indeed stirs up so much malice as 'psychologism ' , which has become a blind alley to be avoided , a sin against scholarship, and a label of infamy. No sooner has the word been uttered than we know an error has been committed, that someone has thought what he or she should not have done, hence taboo. It i s certain that the term affects enormously the questions we ask ourselves, and the way we observe reality and judge the truth of a theory. To seek to explain social phenomena by psychological causes is deemed an error, and openly condemned. Here I am not discussing the arguments put forward by those who condemn, nor the merits of the works they place on their black list. The important point is that a division in science has ended up by becoming a cultural proscription, which conditions us accordingly. More seriously, this is why pressure is brought to bear to make us repudiate psychological factors in our knowledge of human beings and their relationships in society.

Floods of rhetoric nothing to do with the reality have engulfed this subj ect. What follows is a prime example of such an anathema, taken from very many. In a book that is often quoted, Castel, the French sociologist, utters some forthright criticism of psychoanalysis. In particular, he charges it with being too divorced from social aspects when practised, and blind ' to the principles 5 that underlie its power' . If this is true, then psychoanalysis becomes, as does

8

Introduction: The problem

all psychology, the major obstacle in our time for understanding and resolving our problems. Even worse: it plunges from the heights of science into the murky depths of ideology. This is what happens when anyone launches into an explanation of political and social phenomena through psychoanalysis. And what an ideology: psychologism ! To quote Robert Castel, ' The ideology pro­ duced in this way displays at all levels the characteri stics of old-style psycho­ logism, but in a form much more elusive and subtle, and one which reinforces its powers. '6 Certain psychoanalysts have vainly hoped that by distancing themselves from psychology they would purge themselves of their original sin. They are like those German Jews who not so long ago dissociated themselves from their Polish and other co-religionists and denounced their racial atavism in the very language of the anti-Semites. Even more recently, one of those Slavophiles of psychoanalysis that flourish in our midst declared himself ' convinced that contemporary psychologism is in the process of submerging this basic ques­ tion [that of the family] under a welter of theories, sought after like market 7 products rather than worked out' . Is anything simpler, clearer or more con­ vincing? Robert Castel perceives these arguments as a mere ruse , dust thrown in the eyes of those who cannot keep them wide-open. 'Psychoanalysis , ' he repeats , 'even if it revolutionizes it . . . is a branch of psychology. '8 Reading him, one gains the impression that there can be no graver impugn­ ment of psychoanalysis nor one that harms it more among a cultured, scientific audience. According to him, such a public, as soon as it hears the abominated word, realises that in the political domain it represents a threat and in the scientific domain a pseudo-form of science. One is apparently convinced that psychology, in whatever form, undermines the powers of reason and conceals from us the true c auses of the anguish in society. This is why the neo­ Freudians, declares Ferraroti , the Italian sociologist, put a blindfold on the eyes of youth. He wri tes:. ' The spontaneous "psychologizing" of hard social facts, in their Durkheimian sense, has ultimately the effect of destroying any serious critical stance vis-a-vis existing institutions and of programmin � thought for the sake of demands and needs as exacting as they are ephemeral. ' This view is far from being an isolated one. Thus, delivering a diatribe against psychologism, Jean Baudrillard goes further: If there are any who overestimate their own psychological processes . . . it is indeed Freud and that whole psychological school . The j urisdiction exercised by the psychological mode of discourse over all symbolical practices (such

as the most striking ones relating to savages, death, ghosts, magic, as well as our present-day practices) is more dangerous than the economist ' s mode of discourse - it is of the same order as the repressive jurisdiction exercised .10 by the soul or the conscience over all the repressive v irtualities of the body

Why such intemperate language? We are perhaps approaching that threshold where scholarly thinking becomes scholarly censorship, not worthy of the name of thought. But the most regrettable part about the numerous authors who paint psychology (and psychologism) in the blackest colours is not the

Introduction: The problem

9

image of it they convey, nor the conclusions they draw about it. It is the quasi -theological ponderousness of their premises. They claim to know what is true science, ultimate reality , and the right explanation of human affairs , in order to denounce their opposite, false science, ephemeral and apparent, and, of course, the diabo/us ex machina. I will guard against asserting that this anathema is peculiar to France, or that it is only used to treat psychologism as reactionary. In the USA also, one must be cleansed of all suspicion, as is shown by the following remark, made in the introduction to his book on the Reformist movement, by the historian Chris­ topher Lasch : Even the effort to understand where it came from, unfortunately , will strike

some readers as an insidious attempt to discredit the ideas of radicals and

reformers by 'psychologising ' them away. For some people, it is enough to say that the reformers were moved by the spectacle of human injustice; to 1 say anything more is to deny the fact of injustice. 1

However, it would be wrong to suppose that the rejection of everything relating to lived experience , to human motives, and to a subjective perception of reality , implies only political censure . For many people these indicators are, in addition, the symptoms of an 'illness ' , which is a cause of embarrassment to science. For what reason? B loor, the British sociologist, draws his argu­ ments from the philosophy of language. One of the conclusions at which he arrives expresses a common opinion . B asing himself upon the authority of Wittgenstein, he writes: There is, said Wittgenstein, a kind of general d isease o f thinking which always looks for (and finds) what would be called a mental state from which all our acts spring ' as from a reservoir ' . He gave a s imple illustration. Thus

one says ' the fashion changes because the tastes of people change' . . . ' The taste is the mental reservoir' . Notice how the c ollective phenomenon, the fashion change, is represented in psychological terms. The social event is

referred back to the mental states of the indiv iduals who participated in it, and these mental states are then cited as the cause of the change. The emptiness of this particular example is clear, but some explanations of this kind can be difficult to detect. Their common feature is the attempt to analyse charac­

teristically social phenomena in psychological terms. For this reason the ' dis­ 12 ease ' to which Wittgenstein referred is usually called ' psychologism ' .

There are certainly words placed in inverted commas. B ut what is read into them and highlights them does not make them any the less significant - on the contrary. However strange it may appear, the allusion is indeed to a pathology of knowledge and the need to be preserved from it. How can one evaluate these 'mental states ' ? I see no simple answer to this question. Nor do I believe that anyone has seriously attempted to give one, at least success­ fully. There is none to be found in the passage I have just quoted. A few years ago Jiirgen Habermas attempted a vast synthesis of various theories, among

10 Introduction: The problem them those of the social psychologist Mead. Drawing on Mead 's works and those of his followers, Habermas nevertheless reproached all of them with mixing psychological elements in with the theory of the interaction of human beings in a society. Then, 'it is only consistent when the theory of society shrinks down to social psycho/ogy.'1

3

The reproach sounds like a rebuff,

tinged with scorn: it is no longer the core that has gone rotten, but the whole fruit! At the very least one can read into it regret that scholars with such brilliant ideas can accept so outdated a theory, just good enough for social psychology itself. Even Raymond Boudon, apparently so level-headed a man, has similar reflexes. In a preface he wrote to a book by Simmel on history, in which psychology is dealt with a lot, the French sociologist avoids as much as possible both the word and the thing. He seems anxious to reassure the reader who might fear to be contaminated, going to some lengths to guarantee 14 that Simmel ' s theory ' does not run the mortal risk of psychologi sm ' . And this is what is occasionally written in the name of science ! Anthropologists are no exception. In their v iew also, for a long time any recourse to psychology signified an error, the blame for which could be made retrospective. As Dan Sperber in a trenchant text reminds us: ' Tylor, often considered the founder of modern cultural anthropology, was guilty, in the 15 eyes of his successors, of the sin of psychologicism. ' Let the anathema b e pronounced publicly and almost everyone will deny any thought that might fall under its shadow. It is as if invisible j udges were sitting somewhere, before whom one would be brought to defend oneself against the charge of infringing the rule that bans psychology . As if forced to make a confession, Jean Starobinski, whose studies of Rousseau are delightful for their depth, recently wrote: ' As regards myself, I would like to clear up a misunderstanding, at the risk of appearing immodest. In my work some have thought they see a return to the "psychological" approach of Jean-Jacques, and thus a retrograde step compared with the systematic clarifications made by Cassirer . . . Yet my intention has never been to

reduce Rousseau' s thought to

the manifestation of a more or less sublimated or transferred desire, operating 16 Although expressing himself in according to unconscious mechanisms. ' these terms, he has nothing for which he need account. He nevertheless feels constrained to explain his forays into the inner affective life of a man who in fact introduced that very form of life into our culture. Who therefore decided there was any retrograde step? What is reduced through the operations of the unconscious? And if it were true? The question as to its truth is never put at all, but only that of his innocence and his conformity to a rule. This kind of covert rule is, in a manner of speaking, incompatible with the practice of science, and yet one feels obliged to follow it, whatever one ' s own convic­ tions. History puts forward data that support it, fitting it to the spirit of the age. Paul Veyne confesses :

Our age is so convinced that great rational or material forces guide the course of history from behind the scenes that anyone who is content to explain modes of behaviour (which of necessity pass through the psychology of their

Introduction: The problem

11

actors, i.e. through their bodies if not their thought) and does not resort to the use of these explanaton- forces will be accused of cutting short his 17 explanation at psychology. Whether the charge is fair or not is an idle question. But the effects of the censorship it imposes upon thought appear devastating. Suddenly research no longer revolves round the passionate discovery of reality, but tries to flee from what might be revealed. One ploughs on, knowing that something that is plainly visible must not be seen or lingered over. Yet it is difficult to study violence or religion without injecting an element of affectivity and summoning up lived experiences. But at the end of the day one no longer knows whether one has injected too much or too little. It is therefore con­ sidered preferable to steal a march and defend oneself before any accusation is made. Thus Rene Girard has written in La violence et le sacre: 'In attempt­ ing to formulate the fundamental principles of sacrifice without reference to the ritualistic framework in which the sacrifice takes place, we run the risk of 18 appearing simplistic . Such an effort smacks strongly of "psychologizing" . ' Here we see the dawning fear that the social element will not be given its due, and thus all credibility will be lost. Consequently one is threatened with the charge of ' psychologizing ' as if with an illness or with scientific incompetence. For the moment I will content myself with noting the terms 'guilty ' , ' illness ' and ' ideolog y ' , which vividly describe an atmosphere. Their purpose i s to play down or exclude any taking into account of psychological reality. To those who complain there is not enough science, the retort is made that this i s because there is too much psychology - even social psychology . Thomas Mann has described perfectly this anathema, widespread in the human scien­ ces, and even beyond them:

Psychology - God warrant us, do you still hold with it? That is bad, bourgeois nineteenth century. The epoch is heartily sick of it, it will soon be a red rag to her, and he will simply get a crack on the pate, who disturbs life by psychology. We are entering into times, my friend, which will not be hood­ 19 winked by psychology. I have actually n o ambition here and now t o w i pe out such a stigma. The segregation of the psychological from the social has become institutionalized in our culture. Although independent of any critical reason, this segregation resists every kind of criticism. Those who risk calling this into question come up against censorship, and, to begin with, censorship of themselves. Politic­ ally, they are going against the tide of history . Without too much exaggeration, it can be maintained, at least in France, that most of the human sciences anthropology (with the exception of Levi-Strauss), political science, econom­ ics, history (and there are others) - have undergone this peculiar double censorship. Contacts with general and social psychology are rare, if not non­ existent. Thi s is not to mention sociology which, as Edgar Morin states, has ' detached itself from psychology, history, and economics . . . and this prevents .20 the exercising of thought'

12

Introduction: The problem

In fact, lack of attention to the psychological aspect of social phenomena has led to lack of attention to reality, as well as to the simple fact that such phenomena are made up of human beings. This omission is then passed on from the scientists to the politicians and is especially true of the conventional left- wing parties. Their vision of things and relationships is dominated by seeing, thinking, and consequently ac ting, in economic and social ways. They are wary of what is subjective and spontaneous - not rational , so it is said. But since they are concerned with the masses and the media, for whom the laws of collective psychology are decisive, why should one be astonished if their actions suffer and lead to results contrary to those they sought? They are lacking in psychology, in the proper meaning of the word. This is manifested in the difficulties that have beset socialist governments and in the present-day decline of communist parties. B ut I will let future historians take care of establishing this.

Is there a sociological explanation for social facts? As we proceed you cannot have failed to say to yourself: although it may be exaggerated, there are good reasons for this primacy of what is social . Why does he keep harking back to the subject? Nevertheless, to say the least, there is not always sufficient reason for making such primacy a universal condition for a knowledge of reality. The reasons must be closely scrutinized to see what the position is. In love and war every form of attack is permissible. In science every form of attack is required, and the first one consists in making a response to the state of a question, a sol ution to that of a problem. Thus the form that at present concerns us becomes: is there a sociological explanation for social phenomena - or human phenomena in general , including psychological phenomena? We postulate this automatically when, in an enquiry, we want to ascertain to which social class and profession those who vote for a party belong , so that we can account for their opinions or interests . If such a relationship of cause and effect does not manifest itself, we fall back on the values, beliefs or feelings they hold in order to explain why they fail to act according to their interests or class. The same postulate is used when, in order to explain the growth of racism or violence, we initially ascribe them to unemployment or the modern crisis in the modem family. In the same spirit, by studying power relationships we seek to account for educational inequalities or the chances of sickness or death . The same tendency occurs when we study the state of art, literature or law. As Paul Veyne has written : 'In our century , the natural inclination is to explain sociologically the creations of the mind; with any artistic work, we 1 ask : "What was it designed to contribute to society?" ' 2 Faced with any kind of problem, we are told: find the social element in it. And clearly this can be found, as Doise has skilfully demonstrated by examining detailed research 22 carried out on phenomena viewed on the grand scale. Examples, which could be multiplied, however prove nothing in regard to pri nciple s. Now, as I have

Introduction: The problem

13

stated, a sociological explanation assumes two preconditions. First, that one should eliminate the subjective aspect, the emotional and mental capacities of individuals. To express it more precisely, these in no way determine the content and structure of community life. On the contrary, nothing, or almost nothing, may exist in the psychology of individuals that does not depend upon society and bear its hallmark. Individuals' ways of reasoning, the phrases they frame, the habits they have in moving around or feeling, originate in the social world, forming an integral part of it. Whether by tradition or a learning process, they become personal dispositions once they have been drawn out of the common source. This is a subtle version of the individual, like the famous ' black box' that would remain empty if it were not filled by stimuli and reflexes conditioned by some external training process. The second precondition is that we should make available theories con­ ceived from purely social causes, that is, causes that differ from those of economics or biology - such as those of utility or the struggle for existence but ones nevertheless necessary and sufficient to explain relationships be­ tween human beings, their institutions and their ways of thinking and acting. Efforts have most certainly been made to satisfy these preconditions for so­ ciological theories, yet apparently the results arrived at are the opposite of those which in principle were expected. I am in no way qualified to speak as a sociologi st , and shal l be careful not to do so. Thus I shall content myself with putting together a set of assumptions regarding these theories. I shall then sum them up, expressing a conviction that has become natural to me. Finally, I shall indicate the use to which it may be put. Having examined your own experience, making a tabula rasa of all your own preconceived ideas and everything you need to believe in so as to live, can you deny the part that in all circumstances returns to the subjective? Undoubtedly common elements that arise from the environment exist. B ut others appear to be irreducible any further. This is true as regards our bodily and biological equipment. It is fruitless to seek to eradicate their individual character. Moreover, our intellectual and even our affective faculties, rooted in the brain , determine the possibility of our communicating and associating with one another, and impose certain limits on what we are capable of achiev­ ing. It is true that the logic behind these faculties can be moulded by our life in the community . Nevertheless , whether transformed from what is individual into what is soc ial, or vice versa, the nature of this logic, like that of language, retains something that is invariable. For example , whether a change in our way of speaking originates in something that the individual or the group have discovered , it obeys the rules of syntax and semantics. This is doubtless a truism, but it emphasize s how greatly the physical and the mental - what is most individual and universal in a human being - appears to be a double gateway through which every social element has to pass in order to achieve its effects. It is difficult to maintain permanently the antinomy between what is indi ­ vidual and what is collective. Thus nowadays we label as personal a neurosis

14 Introduction: The problem of hysteria or possession that once passed for a collective belief and a duly institutionalized ritual. On the other hand, a mode of behaviour that was once personal and pathological - for example , remaining unmarried or living alone - has changed to become a not uncommon way of living. This superposition of an i ndividualized social state on a socialized individual state, analogous to the superpositioning of light rays, colours our existence. Thus one realizes how extraordinary it would be if the psychological substratum necessary for the survival of institutions and communities failed to determine in any way the manner in which they exist and evolve. Uvi-Strauss has expressed this in that turn of phrase of which he possesses the secret:

Thus in one sense it is very true that every psychological phenomenon is a sociological phenomenon, the mental element being identified with the social one. But, in another sense, everything is reversed. The proof as to what is social can only be a mental one; in other words, we can never be sure we have fathomed the meaning and function of an institution if we are not capable of reliving its impact upon the individual consciousness. As such an impact is an integral part of institutions, any interpretation must aim to match the objectivity of the historical or comparative analysis with the subjectivity of the experience as it has been lived. 23 So much, therefore , for the first precondition. Let us now consider the second, and ask whether sociological theories explain social phenomena. More precisely, let us ask whether they have discovered a set of causes peculiar to these phenomena. A survey, cursory for the time bei ng, reveals this not to be the case. Generally these theories may be likened in form to a comet. In their solid part they contain, as they need to do, a system of categories and ideal­ types that allow the facts to be described. Thus one obtains a schema that leads to empirical observation and the amassing of statistics designed to validate it. The novelty of these categories and types is one of the most important achieve­ ments of sociology, and is what distinguishes the various theories from one another. These categories allow us to get rid of false notions of common sense, and avoid accumulating examples at random, setting our imagination free to enable us to grasp 'how ' things happen in society. This can easily be seen in Weber's theory regarding the domination of one human being over another. With masterly precision he isolates the three categories - charisma, tradition and reason - that legitimate the power of an individual over a group. The categories define the field of observation and the facts to be selected. They al so allow us to envisage in each case the kind of relationships that determine the manner in which the power to command is exercised as well as the manner in which it is obeyed. Through a vast comparative enquiry Max Weber demon­ strates the existence of these forms of domination and their universality. A similar procedure is to be found in Durkheim. By contrasting mechanical solidarity with organic solidarity he seeks to define the characteristic peculiar to traditional society and that peculiar to modern society. Traditional society is made up of individuals simi lar to one another, and modern society of individuals differing in their activities or occupations, although these are

Introduction : The problem

15

complementary t o one another. The first type maintains the cohesion o f its members through a very powerful collective consciousness, the second by a division of labour that makes them dependent on one another. We note how these categories of similarity and difference, of collective consciousness and division of labour, determine the religious, economic and legal aspects in any society. In each of these cases, we are presented with a definition, a taxonomy and an ordering of phenomena. The elongated tail of the comet, sometimes named its 'hair ' , extends these theories, rounding off their contours. As a general rule, from these descriptions we can induce a tendency inherent in social phenomena that prescribes the direction they will take. This confers on theories, particularly the most import­ ant ones, the character of being both necessary and general. Auguste Comte ' s famous law, whereby humanity passes from a religious stage t o a metaphysical stage, and then to a scientific stage, was the prototype for this. To emphasize these ideas we may cite the trend highlighted by Max Weber. Modern society is moving towards a rationalization of the economy and of a relationship based upon the possibility of deliberate calculation in every sphere of existence. Society organizes the management of human beings as it does of things; it bureaucratizes cultural values and, through science, secularizes beliefs. Com­ mitted to tangible achievements, it discreetly obliterates the millenary vestiges of myth and magic , and the illusion that life has meaning. It advances con­ stantly towards a future era of the ' disenchantment of the world. ' There is no necessary relationship between the description of what such a trend portends and the facts that illustrate it. This is not only because all tendencies predict the same thing, almost down to the very vocabulary, but is also because, apart from commonly held impressions, one cannot see exactly how the relationship can be verified. However, it sustains a necessary dis­ course on society, a critique of the state of things, and puts forward a vision of what must occur in principle, by design or chance. Since Weber' s time we have learnt of other states towards which society is evolving: the end of ideology, the era of opulence, the programmed society, etc . It would be inappropriate here to go into these in detail. By predicting such tendencies sociology appears to be, in Gramsc i ' s phrase, like ' an attempt to draw out by experiment the laws of evolution of human society so as to foresee the future with the same certainty with which one can foresee the oak-tree developing from the acorn ' . 24 And human beings should contemplate this with neither joy nor sadness, just as one looks at things that occur daily in due season. Thus sociological theories describe and prescribe, but do not explain. This may be disconcerting but is not necessarily surprising. However, the fact remains: the explanations they yield - what, so to speak, joins the nucleus to the tail of the comet - are either economic or psychological. No third kind exists of a purely sociological nature. On this point I will not venture to speculate, but confine myself to what I can see . You will be aware that economic reasons - self-interest, consumer preference for goods, social class, or profession - are invoked as explanations, and this appears normal to you. Yet resorting to psychological causes seems contrary to a methodological rule,

1 6 Introduction: The problem although it is probably resorted to most frequently. We have just spoken of Weber and his theory of the three types of domination. What explanation does he give of obedience and of the motives that legitimate each of these types? Suffice to say that their ' cause ' is the reason, the emotions and the sentiments for, respectively, rational, charismatic and traditional authority. In his admir­ able history of sociology Raymond Aron focuses attention on this through the embarrassment he feels. In fact he writes: The classification o f the types o f domination relates t o the motivations of those who obey, but these motivations are essential, and not psychological, in nature . The citizen who receives his income tax demand will pay the amount demanded by the tax collector most frequently not because he is

afraid of the bailiff, but from a mere habit of obedience. Effective psycho­ logical motivation does not necessarily coincide with the abstract type of 25 motivation that is linked to the type of domination.

Each of these disavowal s can be read as an admission. When dealing with social phenomena, Raymond Aron apparently insists that it is impossible for motivations to be psychological. However, when he declares that they are ' essential in nature ' or of an ' abstract type ' , he substitutes incomprehensible causes for real causes , which are the only ones acceptable to science . If, as he says, one pays one ' s taxes out of habit, this is the outcome of a learning process and an act of consent that, as much as fear, carries with it a psycho­ logical factor. Such a stratagem is, as we must acknowledge, purely a matter of words. It is not dissimilar to that of Lukacs, the Marxist thinker, who in a notable book criticized opposition to him because it 'mistakes the actual,

psychological state of the consciousness of the proletarians for the class 26 consciousness of the proletariat' . Thus he opposed a category both abstract and, we may add, reified - to concrete individuals and the masses, just as if the French nation were something other than, and of a different nature from, the French people as a whole . This kind of substitution is not always witheut practical consequences. Thus when fascism was gaining ground and addressing itself to flesh-and-blood working people, the socialists were losing ground because they were haran­ guing ' the proletariat ' generically. This was not the only reason for their failure , but was at least the one invoked by Ernst Bloch : ' The Nazis spoke lies, but they spoke to human beings. The socialists spoke the truth, but they spoke about things; now we must speak entirely truthfully to human beings 27 about their concerns. ' Let us go even farther. Are we dealing, as it happens, with a special example? I cited previously the golden rule that Durkheim formulated: ' Any psychological explanation of social facts is false. ' This sheds light on the embarrassment felt by Raymond Aron as he tries to respect this rule and the truth at the same time . We shall see later what v iew we should take on this. The fact is that the rule has been applied by nobody, not even by the one who laid it down. Durkheim ' s theory of religion is most definitely the acme of his sociology, as well as one for sociology in general. After having expounded it,

Introduction: The problem

17

this i s the conclusion reached by Evans-Pritchard, the British anthropologist: 'I must however . . . make a final comment on his theory of the genesis of totemism and therefore on religion in general . It contravenes his own rules of sociological method, for fundamentally it offers a psychological explanation of social facts , and he himself has laid it down that such explanations are invariably wrong. '28 The great French sociologist did not sin against his rule. Like every good legislator, he had simply formulated a law whose application revealed itself to be impossible, and which therefore remained a dead letter. I have selected this evidence , from so much more, in order to give some verisimilitude to my purpose. If it is true that sociological theories possess no explanation peculiarly their own, they have nevertheless available a different possibility, which they do, in fact, realize. This consists in combining explana­ tions of economic and psychological origins, thus bringing together what otherwise would remain separated. Alternatively, they exercise a kind of policing action by decreeing when it becomes necessary to resort to the one kind rather than the other. This has an advantage. After all, it is not at all exceptional for one science to single out causes discovered by another science and adopt them. Molecular genetics did not hesitate to take up those of physics and chemistry in order to explain heredity in living creatures. That a science should claim to reject such causes and exclude them is a different kettle of fish. I will admit that the welter of psychological explanations disconcerts me from the outset. How is it that sociological theories have been led to multiply such explanations , after having anathematized them and castigated their use? It is because their history forces them to do so.

B etween economics and psychology one must choose It would be presumptuous and unrewarding to pass judgement on such power­ ful theories. I am neither their historian nor their interpreter, but merely one of their users. Moreover, their construction, as you may well imagine, is more subtle than the outline I have given of them. The fact remains that they do precisely what they have forbidden both to themselves and others: they seek a true explanation in psychology, and this should have rendered it erroneous. A number of circumstances have played a part, and continue to do so, but I have selected mainly three. First, when originally embarking on their under­ taking, the sociologists tum away from the classical v ision of the human being. They no longer see in him, as did the economists and philosophers of the Enlightenment, a free individual, in control of his person and property, who associates with others in a voluntary contract. Nor do they consider that calculated reflection and a deliberate consensus are sufficient to constitute the body politic and sustain economic life. They reject the classical account: 'In the beginning was the individual ' , and oppose to it another that starts : 'In the beginning was society ' . Society is the matrix conferring on all individuals

18

Introduction: The problem

their characteristics, assigning them their place and i nstilling in them rules and values. Consciousness does not begin with ' I think, therefore I am ' , but ' you must, therefore you act' , with the result that one associates and communicates with others. Consensus, the authority of the laws, the avidity with which human beings sacrifice their property and their life for family or country are not the effects of reason. Dostoievsky wrote in his Notebooks: 'If everything happened rationally in the world, nothing would happen. ' All such behaviour is the result of irrational or involuntary forces within society. This is why non-logical actions that elude experimental and scientific logic occupy so important a place in Pareto ' s sociology, or affective and chance elements in Weber 's, and beliefs and ultimate values in Durkheim 's. I know few authors who employ with such frequency and compulsion the words ' emotion ' or ' sentiments ' , or their synonyms. Each writer thus maintains that life in society spreads a rational form over a fundament that is not rational, but from time to time reaches the level of consciousness. Mauss describes as follows a time when it will be r ipe to reveal this: ' Then perhaps we shall be able to understand those movements of masses and groups that constitute social phenomena, if, as we believe, they are instincts and reflexes only rarely illuminated by a few ideas, but with signs attached, through which human beings associate and communicate together . '29 Next, sociologists should shun the principles of economics. How can one accept that the utility of an action or thing for a human being, the egoistic interest of a particular individual, can determine a stable and coherent social relationship? Utility, fluctuating predominantly according to the moment and the person, can only destroy and ruin the relationship. Likewise it is believed that everything can be explained when the self-interest of a class, an individual or a nation is known. One even seeks to discover this interest in the origins of their beliefs and sentiments. Yet in so doing it is forgotten that sometimes these are unknown, and sometimes human beings act against their alleged interests. Children of the bourgeoisie or the ari stocracy may revolt against the privileges of their class, and the children of workers and peasants may defend their chains and their oppressors. The laws of society are therefore not the laws of the market, even if the market includes the whole of society. B y wishing t o remove the economy from the power o f i nstitutions an d beliefs one drains it of the ideas and values it has in abundance, reducing it to a mere insensate mechanism. Now , it is clear that the philosophical or religious representations we have dictate our interests, define what is useful or harmful to us, and what makes us happy or unhappy. In short, the economy is rent by, and even determined by, powerful intellectual and moral curre nts. But this is not all. Those who distance themselves from economics and criticize it do so be­ cause of their opposition to socialism, and particularly to Marx. His explana­ tion of society in terms of the class struggle and economic relationships has stirred up a resistance and hostility which we have great d ifficulty in appreci­ ating. His thought is treated as shallow in every sociological theory that has opposed him. Two of the three or four most important books on sociology -

Introduction: The problem

19

Weber 's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Simmers Philo­ sophy of Money - were undoubtedly written as a counterblast to Marx ' s theories. The consequence i s foreseeable: b y moving away from economic causes to explain social phenomena one inevitably draws closer to psychologi­ cal causes - a balancing act that is not at all curious. Parsons clearly indicates that this is the principal reason why ideas of ' dynamic psychology ' have come to be of such importance to the sociologist. As soon as the latter wants to go beyond description and the taxonomy of a ' formal sociology ' , sociological theory 'must be adequately integrated with the theory of personality precisely in the modem psychological sense ' . 30 One may argue about this option and even reject it, but one cannot go back in time, reversing a fait ac:c:ompli and erasing its effects on the human sciences. In the end the true originality of these theories has been to underline the fact that societies easily disappear and have ceased to last. This is because they have incessantly worked to become different ones through revolt and sedition, but also because of the continuous progress made by sc ience and technology, which present the world with the spectacle of an irreversible dissolution of traditions and usages. Doubt and reason cut through any bond that attempts to establish itself permanently. Lautreamont expressed it strongly: ' Doubt has always existed only as a minority . In this century, it i s in the maj ority. The v e ry pores o f our skin exude our breach o f duty. ' I t is a s if we can only live b y changing institutions, and amid the tumult o f the masses - in short, in a state of insecurity. Already Stendhal had spoken of ' the precarious State that, lacking any special designation, we call by the word republic ' . It was no mere accident that caused an upheaval in society, but on the contrary a manifestation of a new and dominant feature, the result of a mechanism unfathomed by science. Thus the problem that besets sociologists is not at all , as has been main­ tained, one of order, which is a desire, but of duration, which is a necessity. They very swiftly arrived at the observation that our representations, attach­ ments and ideals form the indestructible component of all collective life. These are, in the end, the symbolic and affective factors that infuse it with energy, preventing it from collapsing and perishing. They provide a precari­ ous, perhaps archaic, reference point, but one indispensable for the bonds that unite us to one another. In my v iew modem sociology has taken over what I shall call the Fustel de Coulanges postulate. Of human beings, he writes:

To give them common rules, to institute authority and make them accept obedience, to cause passion to give way to reason, and the reason of the individual to public reason, something is most certainly needed that is loftier than brute force and more respectable than self-interest, more sure than a philosophical theory, more immutable than an agreement, something that is likewise to be found in the depths of every heart, where it holds sway. That . . 31 th mg 1s a bel"1ef. It does not matter whether this belief is sustained by a myth, an ideology or a science. As soon as it comes into existence human beings feel the vital nature of the bond that unites them, the unique strength of their convictions, and that

20 Introduction: The problem attraction towards a goal that causes them to act as one. 32 If there is no salvation outside society, it is because without society there is no faith. In this way one can grasp Durkheim ' s flash of illumination: what is social is relig­ ious; and why, like Weber, he devoted the major part of his work to religion - and this in the twentieth century ! Nowhere would one have been able previously to equate society with religion, or show how power depends on legitimacy, and thus on the trust of the governed. However material and brutal its constraints , one may observe: ' But the strength of every society is in the last resort a spiritual strength. •33 It is not that soc iety lacks cohesion and system, but, since it was created in haste and is constantly evolving, this power alone allows it to endure, strengthen­ ing it against the apathy of its members. In one sense homo oeconomicus is much too rational in his methods and withstands badly the erosion of time. Sociology sets against him, in contrast, homo credens, the man of belief. He is doubtless a strange creature, but what is new is always strange and difficult to define. About him one can merely learn the general statement that if the economic element is the oxygen for his existence in society, the ideological or religious element is its hydrogen . The proportions of each are open to question, but not the relationship . Is this view as outlandish as it once ap­ peared, or as daring as it was once said to be? What then is introduced that is ' so disturbing? Doubtless it is this symbolic, affective aspect of social phe­ nomena, of which one has wished to be rid by attacking it as an illusion or an epiphenomenon. I have of course simplified matters in order to stick to the essentials and to what is known. Everything happens as if, for each circumstance - self-interest for its non-logical nature and values, the opposition to Marx and the distancing from economics - the emphasis put on the factor of conviction were inclining the objective nature of society towards greater subjectivity . As Durkheim declared, 'Thus there is one division of nature where the formula of idealism is applicable almost to the letter: this is the social kingdom. Here more than anywhere else, the idea is the reality. ' 34 The clear contrast leads one to suspect a subtle genetic link. It is he who brings in psychology, so vehemently ex­ cluded from the description of social facts, reinstating it as indispensable to any explanations. Expelled from sociology through the door of a methodologi­ cal rule , it comes back in through the window of theories that cannot do without it. If the themes that I have set out converge, it is because a secret vision unites them; a direct intuition allows us to grasp this. Everywhere society springs from within us, as passions arising from each of us which are knit together by countless acts on countless occasions. Being associated with one another, and being carried along together in this way, we feel ourselves different, and appear so, since each one of us is endowed with greater energy. An ultimate purpose is injected into human affairs, even if history warns us of the impossibility of verifying or attaining it without unleashing undesirable secondary effects .

Introduction: The problem

21

Now this was precisely what worried the first sociologists . Under a society made up of institutions, so real and visible, in which we live, they caught a glimpse of, and sought to explore, a society made up of the passions that flow through our lives. Who could doubt that these passions act as a stimulus to the great inventions of politics and religion, and are generally a sign of cultural innovation? From time to time they strengthen the vital spark of individuals in danger of falling into indifference. Our primal links between one another, much more than a blend of intere sts and thoughts, are the movements of the passions. These are what cause people to participate in that phenomenon, which in the end remains a mystery, called a collectivity. This is not only because , as has been said, nothing great - and nothing on a modest scale either - is accomplished in this world without passion. And not only because - as Marx affirms - it is inherent in the nature of human beings : Man as an objective sensuous being is therefore a suffering being and because he feels what he suffers, a passionate, being. Passion is the essential force of man energetically bent on its object. '35 But it is particularly so when the birth and rebirth of a society coincides with the eruption of such a passion. A wave of enthusiasm is stirred up at that moment, dominating reality . A need to invent instruments, and types of knowledge and values, seeks satisfaction. We need not argue whether it should be called charisma, sacrifice, effervescence , community, a symbolic exchange or a revolution. To conceive a science from this passion in society and from its evolution towards everyday life and the rational - this is what is novel. Every theory in sociology seeks , each in its own way, to comprehend why this passion ari ses and how it can transform an amorphous mass of individuals into a genuine collecti vity. As you will have realized, this leads to explanations of a psycho­ logical order. The problem is to know whether such explanations of social phenomena are possible and fruitful. I do not i ntend to examine this problem exhaustively, but mean to tackle it from a very special viewpoint. Leaving aside the state­ ments of what a science should be, we need to redi scover what the various authors have constructed, that is, the theories themselves. As we have noted, they proceeded to an entirely novel description of social facts and trends. Then, in order to understand and explain them, they invented psychological concepts. We do not know whether this was because they had no others ready to hand or because they forbade themselves to adopt those that already existed. The fact remains that we are dealing with great psychologists who scorned psychology. Durkheim was aware of this when he wrote: ' Socio­ logy understood in this way is therefore very far from being a stranger to psychology. It arrives itself at a psychology, but one much more concrete and complete than the one psychologists construct. '36 It is as if the overt break with psychology also signified a different way of di scovering and developing it. To tackle this problem I might have chosen contemporary theories, thus facilitating my task, since they are more familiar to me. B ut, out of a desire for objectivity and in order to avoid controversies irrelevant to the problem,

22

Introduction: The problem

it seemed preferable to choose classical theories that have been fully elabor­ ated. They have penetrated into most of the human sciences, from anthropology to economics via political science, and given direction to twentieth-century social thought. In this sense they are topical, and any conclusion will have a general bearing. More precisely, my study will start with the work of Durk­ heim, then of Weber, and finally of Simmel - works which 'are, in a very real 37 Thus you will be able to

sense, the essence of contemporary sociology ' .

perceive how far the sociological explanation of social phenomena remains an ideal, if not a desire, for since then no one has gone further than these three writers. What are my reasons for choosing this task? It is not at all to resolve the points at i ssue between psychology and sociology. Moreover, these two dis­ ciplines are not the sole ones concerned. I am nevertheless convinced that the separation of the two has had the effect of partially emptying psychology of its content, fostering the illusion that one day it might become a branch of biology. On the other hand, the separation limits sociology as regards the proofs at its disposal and its potential for progress in certain directions, which it denies itself through obedience to a rule. It is like those peoples who, for religious motives, do without certain facilities and resources available in their particular environment. I am not alluding to its tendency to become once more what the English call social theory, a form of philosophy that works from second- or third-hand materials, and thus constitutes a discourse about society, a modem pharmakon that is both remedy and poison. B ut it therefore runs the risk of envisaging social phenomena in a static way, almost in a state of repetition. Yet it is the need to discover the dynamism of these phenomena that gives importance to the mental aspect, as well as the affective aspect of a passion held in common. If these aspects are skimped the machine of society begins to resemble one of those 'bachelor machines ' born in the inventive brain of Marcel Duchamp, that is, one made up from parts of reality, but unable to function as a machine, working for the sole delight of artists, the intelligence of critics and the amusement of spectators. Then I have a more immediate reason, which I must admit to. Generally, for a researcher the study of theories is the last thing he or she undertakes. When bereft of interest and ideas, then, in despair, he or she begins to worry about questions such as : 'What is science?' or ' What will be the future course of science? ' However, I shall not content myself with writing about these theories but will take advantage of the opportunity to carry further certain lines of thought that have led me to one or the other of them. Thus the psychology of crowds can perhaps be deepened through a study of Durkheim ' s work. What we have discovered concerning the nature of activist minorities and the phe­ nomena of innovation throws light on Weber' s work and, in its tum, is illumi­ nated by contact with him. Finally, what we know about social representations helps us better to penetrate the arcane mysteries of Simme l ' s thought. We may term it an opportunity to carry out experiments in thinking about research hypotheses, but conceived at the level of society itself. And, on the way, we shall arrive at conclusions that express a personal viewpoint.

Introduction: The problem

23

The most difficult task now remains to be done: to demonstrate that we have not erred about the meaning of the problem raised and the solutions to it that have been agreed - but with which we no longer agree at all . To grasp this problem with both hands might well help in extricating ourselves from the dead end in which we have been enclosed by our pigheadedness.

PART I

Religion and Nature as the Origins of S ociety

1

The machine for the creation of gods

Thou shalt, I must This machine is, of course, society, as we can affinn without hesitation. But of what does it consist, and by what effects can it be recognized? It will be said that it can be perceived spontaneously through the many individuals that it brings together, a contract that binds them in association, the domination that man exercises over his fellow-man, the exchange of goods, etc. You will most certainly be right. However, go back to your everyday experience and ask yourself whether these kinds of links do not possess something in com­ mon. Immediately you will perceive that this something, one that is so familiar and tangible, is a constraint. Constraint exists when you enter a classroom, or when you meet in an assembly in order to take a decision . Even more constraint exists in relation­ ships with a superior, or a public administration that brings pressure to bear upon individuals, imposing choices upon them that often go against their wishes and their own preferences. Constraint even exists in so intimate a relationship as that between two lovers, or parents and children, and even between friends : in the name of the couple , the family or friendship, certain actions or views are prescribed. A social fact can be recognized from the external constraint that it exerts upon our lives, marking our gestures, thoughts and feelings. In many respects it resembles another constraint to which we submit, that of the physical world. By instinct the body knows vaguely the limits of its strength, the moment when it must break off activity to rest, eat or sleep. We know that we must dress lightly in summer and warmly in winter, or stoop when we go through a doorway for fear of bumping our head. Men have likewise to cover their heads when entering a Jewi sh place of worship and uncover them in a church, and bow when greeting certain highly placed people, so as not to run the risk of rebuke or punishment. All such gestures seem to us inevitable and even necessary . However, a social constraint is not to be confused with a physical one, although their effect may be the same. If their distinct character appears self-evident, we still need to know in what it consists. Do not be misled by

28

Religion, Nature and Society

the simplicity of the examples or expressions I use. It is not from a concern to clarify what is at stake here, but because we are dealing with a human experience that is apparently elementary, but is not really so at all - one that every individual has always experienced essentially as a dilemma. If we may be allowed to invoke the novel as reflecting the questioning that goes on within a society , we shall be prying into the most personal of all dramas in order to discover the meaning of this constraint. It is because all drama arises from the feeling that one has the power to withdraw from some­ thing from which there is really no escape and is able to refrain from doing what one must do. Anna Karenina is most certainly one of the most famous novels in world literature. The heroine is a beautiful woman, basically of a sincere and noble character. Married when still very young to a high-ranking Russian official whose career promised to be a brilliant one, she leads a happy life. She is received into the highest circles of St Petersburg society, adapting herself effortlessly and with good grace to their rules and etiquette. She adores her son, loves her only brother, and respects her husband, who is twenty years older than she. Clever and lighthearted by nature , she takes advantage of every opportunity that her wealthy surroundings offer her. But one day , returning from a trip to Moscow, she meets Vronsky, a young, aristocratic officer, and falls madly in love with him. This love seems to transform her, and also everything that surrounds her. Human beings and things appear to her in a different light. Her passion for Vronsky becomes an explosion of fire that consumes her former world, causing it to disappear like an area covered by the lava of an erupting volcano. Anna Karenina is not only a woman in love. She is a complete woman, endowed with a flawless moral sense that governs her actions. Thus unlike, for example, Balzac ' s heroine, Dulcine de Nucingen, she cannot accept a ' permissible' adulterous relationship. In contrast to Emma Bovary, she is not a woman able to compromise in order to preserve the appearance of an unsullied bourgeois existence and yet realize her dreams of love in the bed of a succession of lovers. Anna therefore goes off to live with Vronsky, first in Italy and then on the estates he owns in central Russia. Their life together is far from bringing them the happiness they had expected. Whether living abroad or in the country, they are restless and, so to speak, banished from their class, seen as an illegitimate couple, and thus to be scorned. Wearying of this cruel existence, they return to St Petersburg. But the social circle in which they move despises them because of the false position they occupy, one neither emancipated nor regular, that is, honourable. In reality, their social circle, like many another, accepts seducers but does not tolerate adulteresses. Anna Ka­ renina arouses anger, is insulted and hissed, condemned and stigmatized. In the eyes of everybody this upright woman who dares to face up to them represents the height of perversion and immorality. She is driven to despair by the hostile attitude of her class as well as a temporary lover's quarrel, so that one Sunday in May , she throws herself under a goods train. Vronsky then realizes his own superficiality and failure. He leaves to fight for Russia in the war against Turkey, so that he may meet with the kind of death befitting his rank.

The machine for the creation of gods

29

Anna Karenina, one of the greatest love stories ever written, is most cer­ tainly not the drama of a love that, despite being overlaid with shadows, was perfect. Obsessed by religious and social problems, through his characters Tolstoy poses vital questions. His heroine is tormented by the question of discovering what a person who is genuine by nature can do in the face of society. What is the nature of the bond from which the individual cannot escape , when one feels the burden of an obligation to which one is subjected at every moment in life? We acknowledge this obligation when it is expressed with the authority of a duty : ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour', ' Thou shalt obey thy father and thy mother' , or 'Thou shalt not kill', ' Thou shalt not commit adultery' - in short, an imperative. In this way one's life and actions in a society trace out a path marked with such prescriptions and prohibitions. We renew these at every moment, without realizing it. B ut the symmetry is deceptive, because generally it is the prohibitions that predominate. Of the biblical Ten Commandments, seven of them take the form, 'Thou shalt not . . . ', and the others are only positive in appearance. When you are bidden : ' Love thy neighbour', you are enjoined, 'Do not hate him at all', as you might like to do. Parents very often bring up their children by ordering them: 'Don't do this', ' Don't touch that', before conceding, ' You can do this', ' You can touch that'. It is reasonable to claim that we are obliged to carry out these duties, whatever the bounds put on them, or the rewards or punishments that flow from them. On this point Wittgenstein writes: ' Thus the question relating to the consequences of an act must be of no interest.' This does not mean that we carry out our duties easily. Human beings who did so would acquire no merit nor feel any constraint being exercised upon them. On the contrary, constraint exists solely insofar as the individual resists the duty imposed upon him by the group, or when he makes a sacrifice and renounces any advantage he might have expected or pleasure he was counting on. The Koran stipulates this expressly when it forbids the believer to eat pork: ' Do not say: I do not like pork. Say : I would like to eat it, but my father, now in Heaven, has forbidden me to eat it.' If we feel a tension but are loath to submit to it, it is because a constraint exists that stops the constraint. It is the extreme evil against which all societies struggle and must struggle, whether we call it desire, selfishness, sin, self-interest, deviance or any other name. There is a clash , and because of the clash, the pressure of everything that imposes an obligation upon us, and to which we must yield, is acknowledged as such. Anna Karenina was a happy , well-balanced woman so long as she fulfilled her duty to her son, her husband, her family and St Petersburg society. She paid for this with her youth and spontaneity , and was aware this was so. Tolstoy is at pains to demonstrate it: Anna's existence remained a model of comfort and inner peace provided that she accepted these sacrifices. The drama of her liaison with Vronsky does not, however, arise immediately she has committed adultery and failed in her duties. She could have continued to lead the same existence, to have one or more lovers, to love Vronsky with the complicity of everybody, including her husband. After all, this kind of situation was very

30 Religion, Nature and Society common in the circles in which she moved, and no one required her to behave any differently. It would have been enough to make compromises, as did most people accepting obligations out of habit, without fulfilling her own. B ut a genuine person could not resolve to do so; such an individual attributes a personal and absolute meaning to duty. By obedience to society and one ' s neighbours, and the values they hold, one seeks t o o be y oneself. The dramatic situation of Anna Karenina erupts because she can no longer do so. In the break that occurs, the ties that bind her are revealed; in her freedom, the inner constraint becomes apparent. By her marriage Anna Karenina had promised to be Karenin ' s wife; by bearing a son, she had promised God to be a good mother, and when she met Vronsky she had promised him her love . It is true that the verb 'to promise ' and the expression 'I promise ' are stereotyped formulas. B ut they carry heavy consequences. When they are used in relation to oneself or to others, it is more than a declaration of intent or making a statement: one is giving a pledge. More precisely , we are contracting an obligation to carry out an action, to respect a relationship for which society or conscience holds us responsible. One might almost regard it as swearing an oath. Thus those who make a promise place themselves in the clutches of an 'I must' that is frequently tyrannical . Is this not exactly what is felt by people who feel themselves charged with a mission, who have strong convictions or, who, like the artist or the saint, believe themselves to be responding to a call or fulfilling a vocation? For their part and, so to speak, freely, they consider themselves bound to submit to rules , and if needs be, to renounce their comfort, or their very life, in order to point up their excellence. You have most certainly felt that the imperative ' Thou shalt' acquires a severity of a different order when an inner voice echoes it and ordains, ' I must ' . Now, with Anna Karenina it i s impossible for her not to hear it. She does not possess the necessary hypocritical strength to go back on her promises, reducing them to a joke or a pretence, as do her acquaintances. She does not bring about her own death because she had sinned against the sacra­ ment of marriage . Everyone would have forgiven her that ' gallant' form of sin. Nor does she kill herself because she has cheated in regard to the rules of a society that really cared little about them. She might have been able to live within it, using one of those devious expedients that save face. Tolstoy em­ phasizes this through one of the characters of the novel, Princess Betsy, who leads a serene existence shared between a husband and a lover, without being reproached by anybody . But - such is her character - Anna Karenina' s failure in her duties towards her husband and her intimate acquaintances reminds her of her obligations . The real reason for her suicide, which ties and unties the dramatic knot, becomes apparent: she has committed perjury, betrayed her promise. For a while a struggle goes on between the two duties, which she tries to reconcile as best she can. B ut this struggle has drained her of every­ thing, her love and her will to live. When Anna takes her life, she does not denounce society by casting her dead body in its face. On the contrary, she denounces herself by opting for an

The machine for the creation of gods

31

infamous and public death. This i s the only free act that i s permissible, and thus the sole moral one - the only one for which she can assume responsibility: ' I must ' . In a way she returns to her pristine state of innocence, before she met Vronsky . Does not the plot take shape when the officer learns that a rail wayman has fallen under the train? And Anna says : 'It is a fatal omen . ' It ends when the heroine deliberately lets herself be run over by a train. One may assume that Tolstoy makes this the symbol of modern society, which oppresses the individual, great lady no less than workman. We know what is the prime interest of the novelist. For him love cannot be entirely concerned with the physical, nor entirely selfish, flying in the face of higher values. For this would make it unlivable, or artificial. The only existence for a love compatible with morality and a genuine society is one in which the individual respects what he promises and promises what he is under an obligation to respect. Tolstoy illustrates this, by antithesis, in the exemplary love affairs and marriage of Levin, who is his spokesman, and Princess Cherbansky. By plumbing the depths of such a fictional character there is revealed to us the distinctive characteristic we are seeking. In it we can discern a physical constraint in what are plainly the bounds and the resistances we encounter in what we can and cannot do. Thus we will never be able to build a machine that would perform more work than it consumes in energy, nor discover a medicine that allows us to cheat death. But what imparts to a constraint its social quality, making it distinctive, is the obligation imposed upon us by others and that we impose upon ourselves. It indicates what we should or should not do. It may well prohibit what is impossible, such as incest between very young brothers and sisters, or allow what is possible, such as eating an animal species that is taboo to another social group. In this can be observed the difference between the physical and the social : the former necessitates, the latter commands and prohibits. The nature of what is here forbidden and there commanded matters little. The main point is that relationships between human

beings are defined through the meaning they place upon the formulas ' thou shalt' and 'I must ' , and the objects to which they apply them. It is these that make society a moral creation.

In religion there is something eternal How does it happen that the choice of obligation as the distinctive charac­ teristic comes to us as a surprise? It is because for us today, political and economic interests are closer to reality, just as prose seems more faithful to

reality than does poetry. Yet social bonds are forged by a power of authority of a different kind. This feeling is no illusion. It carri es with it the clear assurance - although this is concealed - that the pressure exerted upon us always comes from within. This is one of the two sources of these bonds - the other is nature - that governs them and alone can impart a perfection of meaning to them. If such a pressure exists, which is capable of producing a

moral effect, prescribing us to do this, or ordering us not to do that, it needs

32

Religion, Nature and Society

must appear to us as not of this world. How otherwise could it possess a value imposed upon us all, almost without exception, in equal measure, and that no one can freely accept or reject? Furthermore, each individual must support it, and feel a strength from having respected it in others, from having shared it in unison with others, particularly in times of trouble, accident and danger. When he or she hears the collective voice speak, ordering: 'Thou shalt' , the individual echoes back: 'What will happen if I do not do so? ' and accepts the answer. The synonym for this pressure is religion. Paradoxically, it is made up of things in which one cannot believe: words, gestures, stones, sticks of wood, and the like . Or it consists of things that are there as representations of what we cannot believe in: the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead, the alliance with Heaven. Yet by constantly causing us to bel ieve in what is absurd, or - and this comes to the same thing - in impalpable forces , it demonstrates the strength of the ties that bind us together, reinforcing their cohesion, the open wound of a religion, but also the balsam that will heal it. Durkheim ' s step was a decisive one when he drew the consequences from the fact that religion is an indivisible part of, and incorporated into, our common way of life. F. Chazel has written that he is ' the true founder of modem sociology ' . I t i s difficult to be the interpreter o f another's thought. Instead o f resurrec­ ting, through what one writes, the world invented by another person, at every moment one is tempted to revert to one ' s own. We revert to it by the very nature of things, and primarily from the conviction that the representations we share, the myths, the religions, the vision we have of the world - the name is of little importance - are the very substance of the links that bind us. The essence of this has been set out for us by Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. I did not take advantage of this admirable book in my previous study The Age of the Crowd, 1 in which I dealt rather with the hypotheses posed by Freud in his Totem and Taboo. The two books are close to one another in their subject, and were published about the same time. Both authors, Durkheim and Freud, were inspired by the same British anthropolo­ gist, Robertson Smith. They tackle the same problem - the origin of religion and explain it by mass psychology. The remarkable thing is that both consider religion as the template of the bond between human beings and society. However, if for Durkheim it is a pattern in which society fails to recognize itself and hides from it, for Freud it is one in which society does recognize itself and exults in it. How very different has been the fate suffered by the two books ! Totem and Taboo has become one of the myths of Western culture; who has not heard of the murder of the father? By comparison, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life i s almost a private book, although it is the most consummate of all Durkheim ' s works. It is written in that oblique and repel­ ling style peculiar to sociology that discourages one from reading it. Yet, if one lends one ' s ear to it more closely, an enchanting music swells up from every page, like an underground river whose murmuring accompanies one in the forest. One is disconcerted. The scholar ' s tongue is loosened, and is raised up to that of the prophet and visionary. As I listened to it I understood why

The machine for the creation of gods

33

he was constantly reminding those close to him: ' You must not forget that I am the son of a rabbi.' In any case, his theory of religion enlightens us better as to the identity between social fact and moral, even psychological, authority. Compared to this great book all his previous works are like the scales the pianist practises or the rough sketches the painter makes. Religion has been the condition for social life in all ages and climes. Thus, in Durkheim's view, there is ' something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has success­ ively enveloped itself. There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and collective ideas which make its unity and its personality .' 2 Religion is a set of representations and practices that account for the functioning of the universe and allow the reproduction and maintenance of the normal course of life. It can indisputably be seen to fulfil political functions in the service of the State, and economic ones, such as the accumulation of riches in the hands of a class of priests or kings. And the various strata of society, masses and elites, or aristocracy and bourgeoisie each possess the beliefs and rituals that corres­ 3 pond to their own interests. However, throughout this variety of situations and relationships there exists a symbolic form of communication and understanding that knits human beings together and shapes their collective personality. In other words religion pro­ vides individuals with the possibility of living and thinking as a society; this is the enigma that preoccupied Durkheim. Rightly or wrongly, all else seems secondary to him. What is more, he does not speak of it. What is a religion? No, wait, let me put the question in a different way. How is the religious recognizable? How can we distinguish the representations and practices that possess the characteristic from those devoid of it - particularly magical rep­ resentations and practices? The great French sociologist elaborated his theory by seeking above all to define the phenomenon we are dealing with. His way was to proceed as follows : first, to lay down categories, then to spell out ideas in detail, and finally to put the facts in an order. Thus it is by a search for antitheses, opposing realities, that the overall plan is traced out. Durkheim did not indicate from the outset what the leading theme was behind these anti­ theses. From where derives the force within a society which distinguishes religious phenomena from those that are non-religious? Religious phenomena stand in isolation, protected by prohibitions and prescripts. These prohibitions and prescripts apply in our daily life to the non-religious phenomena. Among all such prohibitions there is one that predominates above all others, namely the prohibition of contact. It is known to be universal. We are forbidden to touch certain objects or certain persons that are held to be impure, on pain of becoming impure ourselves. Durkheim acknowledged that 'before all are the interdictions of contact; these are the original taboos , of which the others are scarcely more than particular varieties. They rest upon the principle that the profane should never touch the sacred. '4 One can hardly imagine a more gripping fear than that evoked by having laid hands on a consecrated object, or fastened one's gaze upon a creature

34

Religion, Nature and Society

reputed to be so. When SalammbO catches sight of the sacred veil stolen by Matho, she feels horror, and later, despair. At the same time, so Flaubert tells us, ' she experienced a kind of joy, an intimate sense of pride ' . It is the pride in overstepping a line of separation and contemplating what fascinates pre­ cisely because it is forbidden. Any contamination by an object or a creature deemed to be impure is experienced as a grave offence and a sacrilegious disorder. If a case occurs, the same seriousness is attached to any relationship with the person who had not to be touched, for example during menstruation or an illness. Among these untouchable persons must be numbered those who are strangers to the tribe or clan, chiefs and individuals endowed with extraordinary powers. This feeling has not yet completely died out, since it characterizes our attitude towards those suffering from a handicap, or mental disorders and infectious diseases. I shall not dwell upon the rules that lay down how such contamination is to be avoided, nor the rituals designed to purify those who have transgressed them and thereby sullied themselves. They range from making a simple offer­ ing to the death of the gui lty person . The more one examines these prohibitions the more one feels impelled to note their relationship to a certain duality in human nature. It is to be found in all peoples and in all ages. It is expressed in the old distinction between the soul and the body, the immortal and the mortal , the spiritual soul and the vegetative soul, among other distinctions . Everywhere these states or instances are conceived of as being substantially different, the former being superior to the latter, because in some way they are more pure and ideal. Now, this duality takes on a religious character when it sets up against each other two classes of things or forces, the first being termed ' sacred ' , and the second 'profane ' . The former induce respect, in certain ways inspire fear, and one tries to avoid all contact with them. Something life-giving neverthe­ less exudes from them, and this brings human beings together, exercising an authority that, naturally, is a moral one over them. The latter remain in the sphere of daily life and require no special precautions from us. The dis­ tinctive sign by which we recognize them is through something lacking and excluded. In the book of Zohar of the Cabbala one reads: ' What is pro­ fane does not participate in the sacred, but belongs wholly to the other side, to what is impure. ' Whoever wishes to pass from the profane world to the world of the sacred must submit to rituals either of purification or of initia­ tion . Such initiation rituals concern especially the young. At the appropriate age they are admitted to take part in the activities of the social and reli­ gious group, after having successfully undergone certain tests prescribed by religion. This, then, is Durkheim ' s grand idea, whose significance we shall now examine. What is it that causes us to recognize that a practice or a belief is religious in character? It is not because they refer to a divinity, although in most cases this divinity shines through. Nor is it their association with a force or a supernatural existence that permeates the things of nature, conferring some extraordinary character upon them. It is in fact the presence of that

The machine for the creation of gods

35

fundamental distinction in human thought that opposes the sacred to the profane. It allocates things between two worlds that exclude and are antagon­ istic to each other. In addition it serves to shape the framework in which we conceive of space or time as a force or movement. In thi s are to be found, if we go back to their origins, the outlines of the principles of philosophy and science. Objects and representations wrapped round with the dignity of the sacred are, by their very essence, superior to objects and ideas that are profane. We ascribe to them greater power, particularly over human beings, who pros­ trate themselves before them, offering all kinds of sacrifices to them, ranging from the gift of material possessions to the abandonment of life itself. Some pretend to laugh at them, and scorn them. They tum their wrath upon the idols that have failed to help them or have brought down some misfortune upon them. But this in no way prevents them from believing in them and from bowing down before them. It is because the pre-eminence of the sacred is that of society over those who belong to it. The sacred embodies the collective consciousness, made real and visible. Or, if you prefer, it is society ' s work, given substance in its actions , its formulas and objects . Durkheim declared: ' Religious force is only the sentiments inspired by the group in its members, but projected outside of the consciousnesses that experience them, and objec­ tified. To be objectified, they are fixed upon some object which thus becomes 5 sacred. ' We can clearly perceive how its effectiveness and dynamism are manifested. The more cohesive a collectivity is, the closer its members are to one another and the sharper becomes the opposition between the sacred and the profane, between beliefs and practices . The religious force that emerges from it will act upon each individual , preventing him or her from confusing the two or from transgressing the bounds between them. The prohibition is thus doubly reinforced by the deep-rooted distinction between two worlds that mutual ly exclude each other. Durkheim pointed this out: S ince the idea of the sacred is always and everywhere separated from the idea of the profane in the thought of men, and since we picture a sort of logical chasm between the two, the mind irresistibly refuses to allow the two corresponding things to be confounded , or even to be merely put in contact with each other; for such a promiscuity , or even too direct a contiguity , would

contradict too v iolently the dissociation of these ideas in the mind. The sacred thing is par excellence that which the profane should not touch , and 6 cannot touch with impunity.

Thus, although the sociologist expresses it as a somewhat arid abstraction, the polarity of the sacred and the profane constitutes the framework of our existence . The prohibition against any contact between the two expresses something solid and intangible. It may be perceived of as a logical impos­ sibility, but it does not fail to be concrete and emotionally charged. It is remarkable that it is the general idea of the sacred, and not that of God, a supernatural and all-powerful person, that defines what is religious. And if the idea comprises a number of facets that are subject to caution or are exceptions - the notion of the sacred is almost absent from the Bible - one cannot deny

36

Religion, Nature and Society

its importance. It affords a framework within which one can classify and reflect on the facts of belief. It cannot have escaped Durkheim that the definition I have just outlined applies as much to religion as to magic. Both share the same categories, and oppose sacred realities and profane realities. How can one distinguish between religion and magic? Can we attribute their differences to specific practical and intellectual operations, in the way that we distinguish science from magic, and chemistry from alchemy? We c annot be assured that we will be successful in so doing. What apparently is certain is that there is no religion without a Church. What does this mean? Let us acknowledge that magic is an individual activity and religion a collective, visible creation. Pascal already declared this: ' The Church is not the intangible and indiscernible community of the predes­ tined, but is properly the body of the hierarchy, in short, of all baptized.' Furthermore, it assumes a collectivity of the faithful that share its creed and respect its ritual . No one can start a Church in any way he or she wants, or to order. Whoever wished to do so and claimed to make of it something that was individual, his or her thing, would mistake the essential condition of life and of religious effectivene ss. The notion of the sacred, coupled with that of a Church or community of the faithful , defines the social phenomenon with which we are dealing . Durkheim concluded:

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say , things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices

which unite into one single moral community, called a Church, all those who adhere to them. The second element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than the first; for by showing that the idea of relig ion is inseparable from that of the Church, it makes it clear that religion should be 7 an eminently collective thing.

It has been said that this definition betrays the Jewish antecedents of its 8 author. Even the division between the sacred and the profane might have such an origin, as Evans-Pritchard notes with some disgruntlement: ' I think Durk­ heim was here generalizing from his own Semitic background. '9 This is hastily said, but is not untrue. However, a Church possesses a secular arm that exercises constraint upon the faithful and is independent of whether they agree to it. Up to modem times the version that was current shows that this com­ pliance was in no way voluntary. No matter: in Durkheim's view the external constraint, and the hierarchy that sustains it, are secondary aspects. They could not impose it without the inner moral authority conferred upon them by the faithful. The main thrust of a Church is to induce people to rally round the same sacred phenomenon. Imparting a strength that forbids contact, the Church encloses by physical and mental barriers a collectivity whose cohe­ siveness it ensures. I am not arguing here about the value of this definition of religion, which is so very widely accepted. B ut I remain conv inced that it is the prohibition regarding contact that constitutes its real foundation. Through the theory not having highlighted this, we must admit that it lacks any clear underpinning and evocative power.

The machine for the creation of gods

31

God is society For Freud, God is the father; for Durkheim, God is society . E. Evans-Pritchard,

Theories of Primitive Religion

' God is dead' - this was the slogan of a century , but also the starting-point for philosophical and scientific reflection. We killed God in two stages. We did so, by first relegating him beyond the world and human affairs, dispos­ sessed of those attributes and powers that allowed him to make his presence and authority felt. He still reigns, but no longer rules. Then, we did so by depriving him of his very existence, so that we can govern this world, man­ aging affairs as we will. B ut what are human beings who believe they can live without him? How is a society without God possible? The definition we have j ust established gives us the answer: such a society is impossible. At a time when we have become aware of the lava-like stream of millions of human beings flowing in the wake of a pope and of the explosion of Islam that is shaking the very foundations of Africa and Asia, the answer is by no means academic. It corresponds to what we are witnessing at this very moment. But in the end, whether academic or not, any attempt at definition goes hand in hand with a certain indifference. For what is the act of defining save a means of stripping away from an object its exceptional status and also an act of violence by which it is swallowed up in a mundane whole? An act is all the more violent because a definition is always limited and of an unsustainable simplicity. It never does j ustice to things. If you were to object that the definition given above lacks qualification, you would draw down upon you the ripose of Durkheim: 'Ah ! Qualifications of meaning! This is the grandilo­ quent phrase of human beings unwilling to think.' 1 0 In any case if, on the one hand, by being defined in this way religion loses the aura of the extraordinary that it possesses in the eyes of the faithful, on the other hand it gains legitimacy in the eyes of reason. Here is the sacred placed at the very heart of collective life. Without it, without this irrational , apparently useless element, no society 11 would hold together. Thus in theory soc ieties have all they need at any time to give themselves the gods they require. And it seems certain that the time must never come when science will be able to let them do without them, or create afresh a substitute for religion . Now that we know what religion is, it is appropriate to go further, describing it and analysing its various jurisdictions. What better way to proceed than by turning our attention to the most simple religion, the most archaic and, in this sense, the most original one that we believe we know of? In it we hope to find the fundamental, common components that are at the basis of the great reli­ gions of more recent creation . Is this not what physicists do when they search for the elementary particles of matter, or naturalists when they are exploring the most primitive forms of life, and even cosmologists when they scrutinize the surface of the planets in order to decipher the evolution of the earth? In the same way we hope to perceive, greatly refined, the relationship between

38

Religion, Nature and Society

sacred beliefs and rituals on the one hand, and societies on the other. Thus Durkheim arrived at the idea that totemism embodies the seeds of every religion. The other religions, Christianity and Buddhism for example , have then developed them, bringing them to fruition . By examining these seeds very minutely under the microscope of the mind we can arrive at general conclu­ sions. He formulated this idea in the following terms: Then we are not going to study a very archaic religion simply for the pleasure of telling its peculiarities and its singularities. If we have taken it as the subject of our research, it is because it has seemed to us better adapted than any other to lead to an understanding of the religious nature of man, that is to say, to show us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity .

12

A page or two later he continued: ' Thus, in the end, there are no religions that are untrue. All are true in their own way; all respond, although in different ways, to the actual conditions of human existence . . . All are equally religions, just as all living creatures are equally alive, from the humblest amoeba to man himself. ' 1 3 N o one will readily concede that such an intellectual leap can be made. Hence the interest lies in attempting to do so. What is there apparently more simple than an Australian tribe? It is a kinship group not formed on the basis of consanguinity . The group occupies more or less permanently an area of land, gives itself over to hunting and gathering, acknowledges one chief and employs its own dialect. It might be conceived of as an atom or a socially isolated entity , if it did not maintain a multiplicity of neighbourhood relation­ ships and exchanges with other similar clans. Each of these identifies itself by the name of its totem, to which it pays respect. The individuals that make up the clan consider they are united through this totem. It serves them as an emblem or coat of arms in the same way as do for us the Tricolour or the Gallic cockerel . The connection is immediately discernible. Values and emo­ tions always tend to be awakened by an object. If this object is not easily accessible another is substituted for it, the sign or symbol of that object. Thus we are moved by the sight of the flag, and we rally round this symbol of our native land, even forgetting that this flag is no more than a substitute and a sign. When we meet together it is the colours of the flag and not the repre­ sentation of our native land that rise to our highest level of consciousness . For the clan this role is taken by the totem. At one and the same time it is the external and visible form of the god and the symbol of that kind of society. There is an upsurge of fervour and affection towards it that is felt for the clan itself. If it is thus perceived as the representative of the divine and the social, must one not say that the divinity and society are one? How are totems chosen? The Australian aborigines take as emblems for their clans the most lowly of the creations that surround them, whether animals or plants. Let us make it plain that the totem does not represent a single entity but indeed an animal or vegetable species. It is considered to epitomize the distinctive characteristics of the c lan and is consequently hedged round with certain rituals and prohibitions. Among other things, c are is taken not to harm

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it or to eat it. Thus the clan expresses its identity by linking itself to a species, such as the kangaroo or the frog, the bamboo or the spinach plant. In reality, representations of these species are venerated more than the creatures or the plants themselves. They are represented as long poles made of wood or stone, often in the shape of shuttles, the churinga, some of which are carved with symbolic signs or pierced with holes and utilized as a kind of horn . Ritual practices that recall those observed for the totemic creatures themselves are devoted to them. One may even assert that the clan exercises great vigilance in insisting on this respect for these material images or artefacts . It is as if it were less serious to touch or consume the totem, if the need should arise, than 14 to destroy a duplicate or a substitute for it. No one can equal its power, or can disobey it, whether the material it is made of is real or symbolic. Considering it more closely, we see that the totem takes on a religious character. Durkheim observed:

These totemic decorations enable us to see that the totem is not merely a name and an emblem. It is in the course of the religious ceremonies that they are employed; they are a part of the liturgy; so while the totem is a collective label, it also has a religious character. In fact, it is in connection with it that 15 things are classified as sacred or profane. It is the very type of sacred thing. It is as sacrilegious for the Australian aborigine to attack the totem, to infringe the prohibitions regarding it (to eat it if it is an animal, to pick it if it is a plant) as it is for us to destroy or burn the flag, to smash the emblems of the Republic - Marianne is our totem, just as the kangaroo can be the emblem of the Australian aborigine. The prohibition does not apply to books, which may be tom up or burnt, for they are not sacred things. Finally, besides the totem itself and the objects that it represents, sacred qualities are attributed to a third category of creatures : the members of the clan. In this way they fonn a community of the faithful united by a real bond of kinship, as Durkheim made clear:

Every member of the clan is invested with a sacred character which is not materially inferior to that which we just observed in the animal. This personal sacredness is due to the fact that the man believes that while he is a man in the usual sense of the word, he is also an animal or plant of the totemic species. In fact, he bears its name; this identity of name is therefore supposed 16 to imply an identity of nature. A human be ing is therefore not sacred in his own right but through the totem to which he is attached. Hence to infringe prescriptions and religious practices is not only to expose oneself to physical reprisals. It is unerringly to draw censure, to unleash against oneself the vengeance of the gods, which is both harsh and implacable. Whoever would be tempted to do so is held back by the fear of certain punishment. What is it therefore that is revered and consecrated through the totem? The totem is a principle that orders the whole universe. By analysing the materials at his disposal concerning the Australian tribes and other tribes originating in

40 Religion, Nature and Society America, Durkheim established that they did not make the same distinction as we do between the human and the non-human world. For these tribes, the natural elements form a part of society, and the members of the tribe part of nature. On each occasion a terrestrial phenomenon or a heavenly body are assigned to a particular clan . They belong to its domain and have the same totem as the members of the clan. A different terrestrial phenomenon or another heavenly body are allocated to another clan and bear its totem. Thus, for example , the sun and the moon have not the same totem. Accustomed to this procedure, Australian aborigines classify everything surrounding them things, plants, animals - according to the model in which human beings are grouped in society. Thus they arrive at an overall view of the universe, in which everything fits together and everything i s explicable . Do they not even go as far as to derive this universe from some distant ancestor and an event recounted in their myths? Such insights reveal to us that the totemic principle reduces cosmology to a concept, elevates language to an instrument for classi­ fication, and attributes an intelligible meaning to reality. We can go still further. B y constructing a system on the basis of diverse human and material phenomena totemism has made possible philosophy and science. At least we find in it the beginnings of our logic of relationships and categories, as well as our idea of force. For a long time we were unwilling to see in it any more than a welter of aberrations and exotic superstitions. However, through the descrip­ tions and analyses he made Durkheim transformed what was considered either 7 as ' a collection of curiosities or observations, or as relics of the past ' , 1 into a coherent picture of beliefs , notions and modes of behaviour. It suffices for the field he studied to be revealed for the first time as a way of life that was fully social and wholly religious. As such, these primitive classifications and archaic notions constituted in his view the first philosophy of nature. We have stated that the Australian aborigines saw the domain in which religious forces were exercised as the whole of nature. Thus what is sacred does not spring from the totemic object, whether plant or animal. Furthermore, the feelings the sacred inspires are shared both by the members of the clan and the representations that they make of it. Their religious character has its source in an element common to everybody . It confers upon them a spiritual power without the latter losing its peculiar nature. Aboriginal beliefs do not separate this power from the objects (men, animals, plants) in which it is embodied. More advanced societies, in Melanesia, call it mana. Mana is a diffused energy, anonymous and impersonal, which permeates humans asso­ ciating together and whose psychological influence is set free and intensified during ritual ceremonies. On it depend also the success or failure of an action. The man who possesses it vanquishes his foes in war, and his herds and cultivated fields thrive. The arrow that hits its target and the canoe that moves along the water are charged with mana . What is present here is the totemic principle within each individual, in some way his soul , which through contact is suffused into the obj ects he possesses. We should understand that this principle is the clan, is society itself. Imagina­ tion personifies it, giving it the visible characteristics of the animal or plant

The machine for the creation of gods

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totem. Society i s a representation everywhere, i n every name , every image, every species that individuals hold in veneration. It has indeed all the attributes needed to awaken in human beings the sense of the divine, 'for to its members it is what a god is to his worshippers ' . 1 8 It enjoys absolute power over those who have learnt to depend on it, and imposes upon them ends that are its own. It can exact sacrifices and at every moment a compliance that life in common makes possible: Whether it b e a conscious personality , such a s Zeus o r Jahveh, or merely abstract forces such as those in play in totemism, the worshipper, in the one case as in the other, believes himself held to certain manners of acting which are imposed upon him by the nature of the sacred principle with which he

feels that he is in communion. Now society also gives us the sensation of a perpetual dependence. Since it has a nature peculiar to itself and different from our individual nature, it pursues ends which are likewise special to it;

but, as it cannot attain them except through our intermediacy, it imperiou sly 19 demands our aid.

Society therefore enjoys the same privileges and exercises the same tyran­ nical hold over us as do the gods of religions . In other words, the Old Covenant that the Jews had entered into and the New Covenant of the Christians are in reality not alliances with a conscious transcendental personality, but with their immanent, flesh-and-blood community. If the community lacked that moral authority that the sacred confers upon it, it would not arouse in individuals that unanimous obedience. Individuals would not tum to it on every occasion when they felt threatened and abandoned. To conceive of that authority as outside themselves, all-powerful and absolute , requires a vast series of trans­ formations. Since neither material constraint nor external power can succeed in subjugating them to rules of behaviour and thought, a moral attachment and an internal influence are needed, as Durkheim asserted once again: Even if society were unable to obtain these concessions and sacrifices from us except by a material constraint, it might awaken in us only the idea of a physical force to which we must give way of necessity, instead of that of a

moral power such as religions adore. But as a matter of fact, the empire which it holds over consciences is due much less to the physical supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral authority with which it is i nvested. If we y ield to its orders, it is not merely because it is strong enough to triumph over 20 our resistance; it is primarily because it is the object of a venerable respect.

It is in this way that religion justifies itself, and justifies and elevates society in all our eyes. Yet, and I stress this, if it welds together the lives of human beings, it is not because it is a set of beliefs; on the contrary, it is because of our inner sense of belonging and participation in the collectivity . It ensures for its members an upsurge of life. It exalts the ardour and enthusiasm which all of us need in order to carry on our tasks. The believer not only knows things of which the unbeliever is ignorant, but can also accomplish more. We feel ourselves surrounded by superior forces that hold sway over us and sustain us, and we share in their superiority. We think ourselves capable of

42

Relig ion, Nature and Society

overcoming the difficulties of existence, of imposing our will upon the world, forcing it to satisfy our desires : ' The trials of existence find within [a man] more strength to resist: he is capable of greater things and demontrates thi s by his behaviour. It is this dynamic influence generated by religion that explains 21 his ability to endure. ' And it is through it that society tr ansmits to the individuals of which it is made up a share of its all-powerfulness and person­ ality. A part of its aura shines through each one of them. I do not know whether it is easy to experience such an exceptional feeling and whether it has the effects that are ascribed to it. Nevertheless let us follow the logic of the hypothesis. You will note that totemism as conceived by Durkheim is, recalling one of Bergson ' s ideas, a religion placed at the service of the group for its own preservation. Through its mediation the group ensures its unity and remains present in the consciousness of its members. At the same time it marks out the boundar ies within which they must live. Now, we should note carefully that the totem that establi shes a kinship between the members of a clan sets them apart from the rest of humanity. It is the sign of the collective personality, which identifies all those who share in it in any way whatsoever - individuals , animals, plants - and through this all others are excluded. These can be abhorred and despised, since they do not possess the same inheritance of beliefs and gods . Thus the sacred puts people in touch with one another, bringing them together, on condition of prohibiting all contact, of separating and opposing. Thus Raymond Aron rightly concludes : ' Hence , if a religious cult is aimed at societies, there exist only national and tribal religions. In that case the essence of rel igion might be to inspire in human beings a fanatical attachment to partial groupings and to dedicate the attachment of each individual to a collectivity and, at the same time, to 22 manifest his hostility to other groupings . ' Thus no religion is one of love if it is not one of hatred, unless it is one of a kind completely different from those occurring throughout history. These are religions whose vocation is the preservation of society, conferring upon it extraordinary power over individuals. Totemism might no longer be the simple form, appearing at the dawn of humanity, of all the sacred beliefs and practices that have emerged since then . It is certain that nothing justifies our deciding in favour of continuity or discontinuity in this matter. Bergson tended to favour a discontinuity. He refused to grant totemism the privilege of enshrin­ ing, so to speak, the genetic code of revealed religions, whether Islam or Chr istianity . This choice has no longer for us the importance it once possessed. Durkheim ' s hypothesis shocks in some respects. It assumes that all religions are sacred as soon as social conditions correspond to them. It abolishes the distinction between true rel igions and those in which some see only peculiar beliefs and superstitions. Moreover, it supposes a unity in religious facts and a determining role throughout history. In order to believe in the reality of a group and its goals, one must first believe in the power of its illusion, and of the emblem or symbol that it represents. A society that disdains it or gets rid of it grows weaker, crumbling away and losing its authority over its members.

The machine for the creation of gods

43

No phenomenon has appeared during the course of hi story that has not created sacred things and sought at all costs to impose them on societies. In spite of its caveats and its hostility towards religious sects the French Revolution was obliged to set up the cult of the Supreme Being and of the goddess of Reason. Men imbued with the philosophy of the Enlightenment constructed altars, invented symbols and proclaimed festivities in honour of these new deities. The difficulty is that natural selection is at work for the gods as it is for mortal s - and these gods scarcely survived the events that gave them birth. The hypothesis shocks yet again because it asserts that we render divine what most religions hold to be sacrilege. If, by adoring sacred creatures, human beings have done no more than worship their own society transfigured and personified, this means that they have been either idolaters or impious . More­ over, it is not enough to possess the faith: you must possess it in common with others, within the community. According to Durkheim, the indiv idual on his own could not believe in or respect a god. He could certainly pray to it, kneel to it, and humble himself before it. But such a situation removes the constraint imposed by the sacred. To illustrate this, if we say that today we have become less religious and attend churches and chapels less frequently, it is not because we have become unbelievers, and have been enlightened by modem science and civilization . On the contrary, it is because modem science and civilization have isolated us, making us solitary and individualistic, that we have become unbelievers. The terms Durkheim employed could not be more categorical :

We can say of it what we just said of the divinity : it is real only insofar as it has a place in human consciousness, and this place is whatever one may give it. We now see the real reason why the gods cannot do without their worshippers any more than these can do without their gods; it is because society, of which the gods are only a symbolic expression cannot do without j individuals any more than these can do without society . 2 There is nothing more profound than this sentiment, which expresses not only kinship but also the mutual interdependence of the div inity and soci­ ability . Above all there i s the way of representing them as the manifestation of a more general need, although one more concealed, for communion of human beings one with another. My opinion on thi s or my judgement of it are of no

importance. There are doubtless peoples older than the Australian aborigines who have not experienced totemism. And totemism is not exclusively a reli­ gion for clans, nor is it the simplest of all religions. Durkheim cavalierly ignored facts that did not fit in with his theory. What we have learnt since has

finally stripped it of much of its veri similitude. Nevertheless it produces a reversal that puts society in the place of God in the pantheon of religions. Let us ask what this means for science itself. What happens when one projects the obj ect of one ' s investigation , on the basis of a theory of religion , into the very heart of the sacred? By a strange turn of events, that object becomes in some way divine, a means of salvation. It must be venerated, as once were wor­ shipped pl ants, animals and spirits. It changes into an emblem and a mana that dominates our reality. This truth already emerged from the ironical comment

44 Religion, Nature and Society of Remy de Gourmont, a contemporary of the birth of sociology . In the

Paradoxes du citoyen he writes: Holy Sociology deals with the evolution throughout the ages of a group of metaphors, Family, Country, State, Society , etc . These words are among those termed collective nouns, and in themselves have no meaning. History has used them from time immemorial, but soc iology, using adroit definitions, brings out their vacuity whilst continuing to proclaim the ir idolization. For

all collective words, and above all those u sed in the vocabulary of sociology, are the object of a cult.

I thought formerly that, through his theory of religion, Freud had succeeded in conferring upon the family a permanent and sacred character. We have just seen that Durkheim rendered the same service to society. Each of them thus vouches for the authority of the science of which he is the founder.

Religion cannot be explained without mass psychology In order to endow a canary with a more melodious voice , it is enough to put out its eyes with the help of a red-hot iron. A similar operation has been undertaken on Durkheim ' s thought. By cauterizing his psychological view of religious phenomena, we think to give sociology a more harmonious tune. Yet this view was one he cheri shed greatly . If not, how can we explain why he devoted so much space and time to it? It has the extravagance and originality of a creative work that has eluded the pressure of specialists. His vision is arrived at naturally, and one feels obliged to take account of it. Seeking to define what a religion is, we began by establishing the fundamental division between sacred and profane things on the one hand and, on the other, the existence of a community of believers and a Church. Together they outline a system of beliefs and practices that is placed above all else. Then, armed with this definition, we followed up the various descriptions and analyses of totemism. There was no need to go into detail, because today they have for the most part become outdated. Moreover, many present-day anthropologists deny to Australian totemism the paradigmatic character that makes of it a religion. However, the descriptions and analyses have supported the hypothesis that, in all that is sacred, including the totem, human beings worship their own transfigured and idealized society . The direst punishments are promised in the book of Revelation for those whose brow is not marked ' with God ' s seal ' . Everybody will be spared except them. It follows that individuals living in a society they do not revere, one which does not mark them with ' the seal of the sacred ' , suffer torments on this earth itself. It becomes Hell for them. Durkheim wrote: S ince the gods are only personified collective ideals, as is testified to by any

weakening of faith , it is because the collective ideal itself has grown weaker; and it can only weaken if the v itality of society itself is under attack. In short,

The machine for the creation of gods

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peoples inevitably die when the gods die, if the gods are mere ly peoples themselves thought of as symbols. 24

One may question the reasons and the consequences but one cannot deny the logic of this. It is this which brings us to a new, and final, question : why does society personify itself, becoming an object of belief or worship? The question can be understood in a different way : why does religion give society such energy and vitality? The solution to this problem comes from the psychology of crowds or of the masses. Steven Lukes, the author of the best book on Durkheim that we have, writes with accuracy : ' Crucial to Durkheim ' s theory of religion as socially deter­ mined was his claim that certain social situations , those of "collective effer­ 25 vescence", generate and recreate religious beliefs and sentiments. ' This idea, he adds, has been inspired by the host of studies of mass psychology that appeared at the time, a source of inspiration that did not escape his contem­ poraries either. One of them, Goldwei ser, wrote in 1 9 1 5 about The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: ' Notwithstanding the tremendous importance as­ cribed to it, society for Durkheim is but a sublimated crowd, whilst the social 26 setting is the crowd-psychological situation . ' Although such a formulation is crude, the idea behind it is not false. The fact is that, after hav ing spelt out what religion is in general, and analysed Australian aboriginal societies, Durkheim arrived at his powerful hypothesis: societies are personified in their gods. However, to round off his thinki ng, he had still to uncover the underlying forces. How can we account for this renunciation of self, which goes hand in hand with possession by imaginary creatures? From where does thi s hold over us, exercised by imper­ sonal forces and the worship we give them, derive? To penetrate the secret behind this relationship of each indiv idual to the collectivity as a whole , the psychology of crowds provides us with a key. At the risk of repeating myself I would emphasize that this theory of religion defines and describes social facts, which it explains by psychological causes . To cite the words of a great British anthropologist: ' Fundamentally, Durkheim elicits a social fact from 27 crowd psychology. ' His resorting to this is no chance action : the models that allow us to spell out a phenomenon and account for it are rare - in any case much less numerous than the theories that are compelled to make use of them. The psychology of crowds forms one of that small number of models that have arisen in the human sciences. Like it or not, it is a necessary transition for anyone wishing to understand anything that relates to beliefs and ideologies 28 in general . Although Steven Luke s ' s statement is accurate, we can scarcely agree when he adds that Durkheim would have been the last to consider Le Bon a scholar. Moreover, he is alleged to have moved away from psychology because 'he did not see crowd behaviour as pathological, undesirable, and an argument against 29 democracy' . Nothing could be more false and more naive. The j udgement makes Durkheim out to be a narrow-minded specialist, filled with prejudices against Le Bon ' s Psychologie des Joules, dismissing the author as a journalist

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Religion , Nature and Society

and dilettante. Why should he have taken the subject less seriously than did Weber, Freud, Adorno or Michels? I part company with the British sociologist, in spite of the respect that his work inspires in me, for two reasons. First, because the evidence we have from that time says - if there was any need to do so - the opposite. Even if criticisms exist and reservations are made regarding the psychology of crowds, Essertier, who knew the Durkheim school intimately, has written that one does not accept it any the less when the analysis of crowd phenomena in his last book [The Elementary Forms of Religious Life] plays a preponde­ rant role; by a singular tum of events books such as those of Dr Le Bon,

which in fact were subjected to c riticism by Durkheim when he treated the psychological explanation in sociology, explicitly or implicitly carry author­ 0 ity in the Durkhe imian schoo t . 3

Next, the misunderstanding of the psychology of crowds on which such neat formulations are based leads to erroneous statements. I need only cite those of Evans-Pritchard, which change Durkheim ' s theory of reli gion into a cari­ cature of itself. We read in the British anthropologist: It was all very well for him to pour contempt on others for deriving religion from motor hallucination , but I contend that this is precisely what he does himself. No amount of j uggling with words like ' intens ity ' and 'efferves­ cence ' can hide the fact that he derives the totemic religion of the Black­ fellows from the emotional excitement of individuals brought together in a small crowd, from what is a sort of crowd hy steria. 3 1

Nevertheless, to class all these phenomena under the heading of collective hysteria is to fall back upon a notion that is very popular, it is true, but one that science has attempted to rule out. Undoubtedly it has persi sted and has lost none of its deprecatory acrimony when levelled against all collective manifestations. But, in the event, to use it as a kind of ad hominem argument surely signifies a refusal to grasp Durkheim ' s explanation and to understand why it is indispen sable. It al so reduces its logic, very closely argued as usual, to a mere juggling with words. One can dismiss its logic or display no interest in it, but it does have a meaning. Thus it is preferable to opt for the sober approach of Raymond Aron who, in his penetrating study of Durkhe im 's theory , simply gives a summary of his explanation. In a few lines he sketches out the crowd as it assembles, dancing and shouting, before concl uding suc­ cintly: ' These phenomena of "effervescence" are the very paradigm of that psychological and social process in which religions are born. '32 So long as one moves in thi s way from error to condemnation , one removes from this basic work in sociology both its versatility and its force . I would add that all this is of little importance. It is much less a matter of positively knowing or not knowing whether Durkheim drew his inspiration from crowd psychology than one of understanding what he made of it, and why. Now, this psychology provided him with a clear picture of what a group of human be ings in the process of formation might consist of, and indicated to him the reasons prompting their actions. Yet, given the question it poses,

The machine for the creation of gods

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the picture cannot be complete for him. Does this spring from the fact that the image conjures up a picture of the behaviour of crowds as 'undesirable ' , or pathological? He knows Le B on and Tarde, the authors he cites , at first hand, since he discusses them and not through mere street gossip, as did a number j of his contemporaries. 3 And he knows from experience that neither author had served up such absurdities. More substantial reasons divert him from the existing theory regarding crowd psychology and inspire him to present a different one. We can indeed envisage a great number of these reasons, but two of them seem to me to be essential. First, - and this is a matter of deep conviction for Durkheim (I would say it is his postulate) - the individual in isolation lacks vital energy. He remains incapable of interesting himself in the external world. He slavishly follows a routine, dragging himself around and reacting like a neurotic towards his fellow human beings, with apathy and indifference. Solitude and a lack of strength go hand in hand for him. Only society can deliver him from this state, and then the human being becomes greater than the individual. Society stimu­ lates him, galvanizing his powers and urging him on to perform all sorts of actions. He successfully goes beyond the limitations of the senses , taking pleasure in associating with his fellows, and in thinking of reality as other than what it is; in short, he becomes able to conceptualize and live out an ideal, namely, the divine, space, time and the other categories of the understanding that are a loftier expression of society . Then - and this is a more specific reason - the task of a religion is to induce the members of a society to commune and communicate with one another, to invest their energies in a higher purpose. It is their principal, if not sole, source of cohesion and interaction. Durkheim did not restrict himself to the interplay between categories (differences in age, sex and power) that orders relation­ ships between them. For him every collective situation was characterized by the bond between the individual and the group. He reflected on how the group becomes homogeneous or heterogeneous, or gains or loses authority over its members. We may attempt to express the reasons for this by saying that, on the one hand, we see the social element manifesting itself within the psycho­ logical element and, on the other, the reverse process. We are accustomed to contrast the two and envisage each as exclusive of the other. Yet we can also consider them as two complementary viewpoints of reality, just as the wave and the particle are complementary viewpoints of the same physical object. This problem of what is sacred highlights the striking resemblance between Durkheim and Freud. Their research leads them on to the same kind of psy­ chology: the one asks from it a means of explanation, the other provides one. They achieve their ends by pulling in opposite directions: Durkheim towards the conscious extreme that psychology refutes, and Freud towards the uncon­ scious extreme that it uncovers. It is true that comparison does not provide a reason. Nevertheless, in order to grasp how Durkheim conceives this psycho­ logy, we must stop to consider those collective and religious acts that are called rituals.

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Religion, Nature and Society

Men like gods How do men go about creating gods? I shall try to explain this art, the most ancient one there is. My exposition does not claim to be complete, but merely instructive. We halted the discussion at beliefs and symbols. To penetrate into the heart of religion and understand its link with society, we must now examine the rites or ceremonies that it prescribes. We are mistrustful of what should be called - according to Flaubert - the ' masked balls of the imagina­ tion ' that these rites constitute - but how can we do without them? To some extent they are noticeable everywhere. With the patience of an entomologist Durkheim classified and named them. Thus he distinguished between positive and negative rituals. Positive rituals constitute the heart of the ceremonial. Thus, for example, the aboriginal tribes of Australia celebrate at the right season the festivals of the lntichiuma . Their role is to ensure that the vegeta­ tion grows, that the animals are abundant, and that nature in general is boun­ tiful. The festivals are in two parts. The first part is devoted to rites that are observed in order to ensure the prosperity of the animal or plant that serves as the tribal totem. Then this celebration is interrupted, without in the mean­ time the religous effervescence decreasing in intensity. The second part fol­ lows: the festivals recommence with the ritual consumption of a part of the totem. These are accompanied by songs that glorify the exploits of former members of the clan, whether these are human or not. Certain observers have found in this type of ceremony the prototype of sacrifice that plays such an important role in more elaborate religions. Indeed, sacrifice allows the human being to commune with the divine. The human beings that carry it out acquire the sacred attributes of the god whose flesh they eat. On the other hand, the negative rites decree the taboos and prohibitions that set out the limits between sacred and profane things. Their purpose is to fit individuals to enter the religious domain. To do so they move away from ordinary life by donning special garments and bedecking themselves with ornaments. They must also submit to difficult tests, such as fasting for a certain time. Finally, we should not forget the specific rituals, and more particularly those of mourning, whose importance is demonstrated in almost every culture. Human beings are indeed racked by the fear that after their death these rituals will be neglected, with the result that they will be excluded from the com­ munity. Sorrow and affliction predominate. Among Australian aborigines mourning ceremonies reach a paroxysm of feeling, and the word ' panic ' has been used to describe it. This is because the unity of the society is at stake. Here again abstentions and prohibitions constitute the rule. Thus, after the death of a person one was close to, for a while it is forbidden to pronounce his name, or for members of his family to pursue their customary activities, such as hunting and fishing. Elsewhere they are not allowed to leave the spot where the death took place. The tears that are shed and the formulas uttered are so as to express the differing degrees of sorrow and respect of family or clan members. Rituals are classified in this way , however useless or illusory

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49

they may seem to us. Yet they have held sway over human beings for thou­ sands of years and regulated their exi stence. Nor is this all. Essentially, each ritual appears to us to have a dual effect. On the surface it sets in motion rules of conduct to which a special purpose is assigned: fertility, success in hunting, initiation or mourning. Thus the ritual is distinct from all others by the series of actions, the formulas that link these together, and the particular moment when they take place. The ceremonies and assem­ blie s that give rise to the ritual are supported by a belief that gives a meaning to the ritual and explains its effectiveness. Thus the cult of the dead rests on the conviction that the deceased retain links with the liv ing; the cult of fertility assumes the kinship of men and animals. In this respect the rituals embody the common representations that live within the consciousness, instilled into it by education. Beneath all thi s, however, these religious practices have only one real function : to celebrate the clan, to arouse passionate feeling for it among its members. This feeling mounts to a paroxysm when individuals are incited to represent the collective feelings in the form of the totem. Thus the relationship between the rule that has to be observed, the behaviour to be followed, and the goal to be attained remains arbitrary. It is not the content of the ritual that makes it effective. No matter whether it is one of mourning or fertility , of healing or making some entity divine, the essential point is that through this ritual society recharges its energy and reinvigorates its contacts. If the ritual requires a reason for existing, any kind of reason will suffice, provided that it chimes in with the existing belief. These religious practices are the mainstay and ideal of every collective movement or association. They account for the creation of the social order as well as for its persistence throughout one ' s routine occupations and daily life. What explains the ritual and the necessity for it likewise explains all the rest. During every period of tension, when a grand ceremony is being prepared, people meet together and wait. After a time that may be shorter or longer, they all begin to act together. Without any one single person expressing his or her thoughts or will, they seem to come together as one. At that moment each individual participates fully , and feels this participatory bond with the group tighten once more. Then the bond is sustained even when the ceremonies are over. The effectiveness of the ritual does not lie in what it accomplishes, but in the very fact that it is accomplished, and in this way each individual plunges into the very source of what the gathering of the group represents . It seems to me that one can get some idea of this by making the comparison with the Olympic Games. Each branch of sport, swimming or running, jump­ ing or throwing the javelin, brings together a varying number of individual s, demands distinctive physical capabilities, and takes place under rules that are its own. In appearance, the contests have as their aim the improvement of performance, the selection of champions, and the arousal of the competitive spirit among the rising generation. Yet their real function is quite different: to bring diverse publics together and to revive in them the sentiment of belonging to a nation and, if needs be, to assert the superiority of their country over all

50 Relig ion , Nature and Society others. The need for the games arises less from the organized contests that are arranged, and their avowed purpose - the establishment of records, the assess­ ment of human abilities, etc . - than from the energy and passionate feeling that they unleash, and the common spirit they occasion among fellow human beings . Reverting back to rituals, I assert, as did Durkheim, that they favour a certain mood propitious to the creation and effusion of religion. Durkheim wrote:

In fact, we have seen that if collective life awakens religious thought on reaching a certain degree of intensity, it is because it brings about a state of effervescence which changes the conditions of psychic activity. Vital energies are over-excited, passions more active, sensations stronger; there are even some which are produced only at this moment. A man does not recog­ nize himself; he feels himself transformed and consequently he transforms 34 the environment which surrounds him. We shall therefore remember that religious rites stir up these mental and affective tendencies because the clan or the tribe are assembled together. The

reasons why they are assembled are of little importance. And their members,

who comprise the believers, commune in one and the same thought and action. The occasion plays a minor role. The essential is that they should draw a similar strength and enj oyment from it. The rituals of sorrow and deprivation that death demands are no exception. To be with one 's fellows and take part in the mourning ceremonies restores confidence in oneself and also in life. The depression in each participant is transformed into a curious euphoria. This was Durkheim ' s view when he asserted: ' When emotions have this vivacity, they may well be painful , but they are not depressing; on the contrary, they denote a state of effervescence which implies a mobilization of all our active forces, and even a supply of external energies. '

35

All this may nowadays surprise us. We no longer have much lived experi­ ence of faith. Nevertheless it is certain that, through the twin actions of repeti­ tion and meeting together, ceremonies arouse in their participants a peculiar psychological state. Entities and ideas arise that do not require any solid basis. It is enough for them to gain acceptance and reinforce enthusiasm for them to become sacred in everybody 's eyes. One recalls what Bataille wrote: ' What I a short while ago called sacred, using a

mere unleashing of passionate feeling. '3

furely pedantic term, is in the end a We would be inclined to discern in

it a secondary state: the community that is plunged into it invents gods and symbols, whilst restoring confidence in those already existing. On a deeper level , the community , through them, reveals itself to itself, and for a while occupies the place ascribed to the sacred. Let us sum up. At the source of the state of ferment we have just recalled, we have found very different rituals with one single function. Their aim is to induce individuals to participate, to place them in communion with one an­ other and to revivify their feeling of belonging to society. Moreover, society becomes the inventor of religious practices and beliefs. B ut to learn what prepares it for thi s task and to explain it, we must tum to mass psychology. It

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5l

is a truth derived from common observation that human beings who associate with one another, combining and merging with others, are transformed . The contacts, the ideas they exchange, all that is said and heard, act upon the feelings in the consciousness . The ebb and flow of impressions and emotions flood through the brain and the heart, until a group or mass is formed. In that situation it is as if the indiv iduals have acquired new qualities and become different people. This is because in the group or the mass they feel, th ink and act differently than if they were isolated. We also note that, even if they do not give up their reason, they let themselves be filled with emotions. They are caught up in a kind of exultation , the frontiers of their being swept away. They become someone else; they no longer recognize themselves. Without their wishing it, images and impressions of the past surge up in their memory, particularly the memory of great collective events and the faces of person­ alities who have played a prominent role in history, people with whom each individual identifies. On such an occasion French people revive the memory of the capture of the Bastille or of 6 June 1 944, as if they had lived through them, or of Napoleon and de Gaulle as if they had known them. Now the effect of all this, as we have seen, is to strengthen the ties between the members of the group, which becomes an entity superior to each one of them. Two notions are held by all those who have written about them: the masses

have ideas that are different from those of the individuals of which they are made up, and emotions that are more intense; and a psychological power is at work. Durkheim was among these writers, and made the ideas the basis of his theories. Let us deal with what divides him from the then current views on crowd psychology and what gives his own their originality . If we follow these ideas to their logical conclusion, the outcome is that the masses are not capable of any creative art or thought, or of resolving the problems they encounter. Only i solated individuals, speciali sts drawn from an elite, can do this, as they engage in solitary reflection . And yet languages, poetry , myths, songs and religions, just like hunting and agriculture, were collective discoveries. Durk­ heim rejects the conclusion of Le Bon and Tarde . Mass psychology, as he conceives it, is that of t.he ' crowd which an ideal brings together' , one capable of intellectual and religious creation. This principle is his point of departure. From now on it will also be ours. What therefore occurs when individuals form themselves into a mass? Ac ­ cording to crowd psychology, a phenomenon of

regression occurs, during

which each individual consciousness grows weaker. It reverts to a state like that of primitive man, a child or a neurotic. At the same time there is liberated the substratum of atavistic values and customs that constitutes the subcon­ scious basis of the group. Consequently the latter has a lesser, more superficial intelligence than its members possess as individuals. They fuse together, becoming imitative, suggestible, impulsive and even violent. When Durkheim observed what goes on when they come together in this way, he noted that at the beginning, whether isolated or not, each individual is shut up within his or her own world like some monad unable to communicate directly with other people . He wrote:

52

Religion, Nature and Society In fact, if left to themselves, individual consciousnesses are closed to each

other; they can communicate only by means of signs which express their internal states . I f the communication established between them is to become a real communion, that is to say , a fusion of all particular sentiments into one

common sentiment, the signs ex f.ressing them must themselves be fused into one single and unique resultant. 7

What makes it possible for individual consciousnesses to open up, so that their inmost depths meet externally and merge together? Their psychology must explain the metamorphosis, the passage from a state of society in which the indi viduals are turned inwards upon themselves to one where they com­ mune together and fuse as one, instead of dissolving confusedly in the crowd. Now what makes such a fusion possible is the phenomenon of possession. Under the influence that they exert upon one another, individuals can be seen emerging from their mental prison cells, overcoming their phobia of contacts , and harmonizing their feelings and representations. In a state of exultation, they behave as if imbued with an extraordinary power that unleashes their physical energy and intellectual enthusiasm. Apparently it seems as if they are lifted out of reality, anaesthetized against all that does not consist of the group acting within them and upon them. In reality , the majority frequently attain an inward clarity and a consciousness that goes beyond what is normal. It is very well known that possession is everywhere associated with religious and magical rituals from which it draws its effectiveness. 'The conditions for this are laid down by tradition, ' observes Levi-Strauss. ' Its value is guaranteed 38 through collective participation in them. ' Here we are dealing with the real content of ' collective hysteria ' , 'a state of excitement ' , or the ' psychological process' mentioned previously. We are dealing with the moment when the passionate feeling for society and for being in that society is manifested at its peak . At such a time we are not living on a single plane of consciousness, and we realize that each of us possesses a dual nature. Each of us is both the individual person and the collective person. Possession brings the two together and each stimulates the other. In order to express this Durkheim uses the very neutral, and more general, although vague word, 'effervescence ' . As we have already seen, this desig­ nates the particular state that rituals create in a society, raising the temperature and setting it in motion. Its members begin to behave together in a more reckless way , putting at risk their interests and reputation, even violating the rules they have laid down for themselves. The relationships they forge draw them into a moral and physical intimacy that would be unbearable in the sober light of day. They find themselves in other people just as they would within themselves. It is amid this effervescence that gods are conjured up from the imagination, religions invented, and the forces they possess are acknowledged. To explain this comes down therefore to explaining the origins of both gods and religions. Yet if we wish to have a clear idea of this effervescence , seeing it in its true light, it is to the institution and practice of possession that we must return. This is a psychological and social reality that appears shocking.

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But one is even more shocked to see it being assigned so prominent a role, when so much has been done - depending upon the era - to exorcize it as being diabolical or pathological . However, who could deny the link between effervescence and possession, to which everything points, the phenomena that Durkheim selected, the function he assigned to them, even down to the very words he used to speak about them? In a happy state of possession, one genuinely religious, the believer deliber­ ately seeks a state of trance, the ecstatic enthusiasm through which a revered being introduces itself into one 's body . The difference between the external and internal world disappears. The self and the other being enter into and communicate with each other. This is an astonishing, even mysterious fact. It is the great mystery that one encounters in all religions, when gatherings are held that celebrate the crowd and its faith. Thus in the B ible young Saul hears the prediction: ' And afterwards when you have come to the hill of God . . . you will meet a group of prophets, coming down from the high place, with harp, tambourine, flute and a lyre before them, and they will be prophesying. And then the spirit of the Lord will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with them and be changed into another man ' ( I Samuel, I O: 5). The expression ' prophesying ' (Hebrew: nabi) means to be possessed. The equivalent of this is found in the festivals of Dionysus in Greece . Borne along by music and dancing, processions of believers joined themselves to God. Differences between the classes became blurred in the cult, into which everyone was absorbed, in obedience to the sacred word: ' Forget any differences and you will find an identity, join yourself to the group and today you will be happy. ' In the state of trance indiv iduals seem to have changed their personality . A god, a spirit, a dj inn, or an ancestor has taken possession of their body . It substitutes itself for them and acts in their place . Posse ssion is a widespread phenomenon throughout the world. Christianity was familiar with it through its processions and the cult of saints. 39 At these occasions for meeting sentiments of fraternity were spontaneously unleashed. Believers found the community they had lost, social barriers were lowered, faith breathed into them its spirit of wannth. In Africa there exist numerous societies inspired by the spirit of possession. During their ceremonies the ir members feel as one the indefinable presence of the particular divinity. La­ plantine, the French anthropologist, writes: What is striking when one penetrates these groups is the intense partic ipation of believers , the fervour they irradiate , their somewhat unexpected warmth in an age when reserve and an almost death-like coldness in our daily rela­

tionships are held up as models of behaviour. In short, their determinedly charismatic character evokes irresistibly the ardour of the first Christians. 40

This is evident on solemn occasions in ceremonies, food feasts and sexual orgies . Nevertheless, whatever the circumstance s, possession causes to mingle together human beings coming from every social level , transfonns them and opens up to them visions and sensations that stand out from the ordinary. They

54

Religion, Nature and Society

display a superabundance of sociability and activity just as if they had burst open a dike. Instead of being absorbed in themselves, they seem to give way to a k ind of inspiration and a hitherto unknown creative power. This phenom­ enon must have riveted Durkheim 's attention and it forms the main thread of his thinking. Both the idea and the thing had been familiar to Europeans ever since the Greeks . One has only to think of how they constantly gave divine

participation and possession as the cause of the inspiration of poets and oracles. We need only recall Plato, for example, who attributes to a delirium inspired by the gods the gift of the poet who in his odes and epics celebrates the lofty deeds of the city. But he likewise insists upon the felicitous effects of rites of purification and expiation. In the

Phaedo he writes:

Delirium is for us the source of the greatest good, when it springs from divine favour. It is in fact through delirium that the prophetess of Delphi and the priestesses of Dodona have rendered many outstanding services to Greece, both to individuals and to the city-states; by maintaining a calm they have hardly, or not at all, been useful. Let us not speak of the Sibyls and other seers inspired by the gods who through their predictions have guided many into the right path: it would lengthen my discourse without teaching anybody anything. I shall not lengthen mine either. These psychological and collective mani­

festations are attested to in most religions. We tend to view them as a tempor­

ary bout of madness in which the feeling of reality succumbs in the face of passion. Every episode in which emotion escapes our control and prevents us from soberly appreciating our real situation seems a precursory sign of mad­ ness, or at the very least an indication of the precarious state of our reason. Durkheim, however, gave these manifestations the status of a general mechan­ ism that one must needs find everywhere when human beings are gathered

together en masse. Thus it is a mechanism of social life, the most elementary of all. Needful, wished for, sustained by rituals, save in its appearance there is nothing morbid or abnormal about it. One recognizes it every time from its two essential phases : first, the ecstasy of individuals as they escape from themselves - in the literal sense, ecstasy is the password that allows you to escape from yourself. Next, enthusiasm, a means of access to a different world, that of the god we carry within us. Gemet sums it up as follows: ' Ecstasy is 41 a "way out" ; enthusiasm is a "possession". ' Those anthropologists who have investigated simi lar facts in different cultures describe them roughly in the same terms. It is certainly a fact that Durkheim found the idea in the anthropologists, grasped the use that could be made of it and extended it, as we know. He did so without shrinking from any of the consequences, including the one that recognizes that when the religious life attains a certain level of intensity through psychological exultation, it turns into delirium. However, he qualified this:

But if, for this reason, it may be said that religion is not without a certain delirium, it must be added that this delirium, if it has the causes which we have attributed to it, is well-founded. The images out of which it is made are

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not pure illusions . . . they correspond to something in reality. Of course it is only natural that the moral forces they express should be unable to affect the human mind powerfully without pulling it outside itself and without plunging it into a state that may be called ecstatic, provided that the word be taken in its etymological sense; but it does not follow that they are imaginary. Quite 42 on the conttary, the mental agitation they cause bears witness to their reality . I could multiply quotations of this kind. They would enable you to experi­ ence more strongly Durkheim ' s constant conviction of the tonic quality of every ecstatic communion with others. It is, in fact, this that allows us to grasp thoroughly the intimate collusion between the individual psyche and the col­ lective psyche under the most strenuous pressure from the group. No more than this is necessary for beliefs of a religious character, and the magical beliefs attributed to it, to become effective. Do not let us therefore be astonished if, during possession, the arts contribute to it, becoming the sup­ porter of that consent which, in every age, generates meaning, and even realities. Here Mauss ' s observations are valuable to us, because they bring to life the scene in which the members of the clan

mingled in the transports of their dancing, in their feverish state of agitation no longer form more than a single body and a single soul. It is only then that the body social is effectively realized . . . In such conditions . . . the universal consensus can create realities. All these Dayak women dancing and wearing sabres are in fact acting out a war; this is the way they do it, and this is why they have faith in the success of their ritual. The laws of collective psycho­ logy here violate the rules of individual psychology. The whole series of phenomena, normally taking place in succession, the will, the idea, the movement of the limbs, the satisfaction of desire, all occur absolutely sim­ ultaneously. It is because society is gesturing in this way that magical belief 43 prevails, and it is because of magical belief that society gestures in this way. Such is the inevitable consequence of a principle that, under different names, is always the guide: to transform the discontinuous into the continuous, fusing together at one moment what at another it shatters into pieces. Let us sum up the above. One can see in crowd psychology a phenomenon of regression, sparked off by the spectacle of the crowds, or the seemingly irrational violence of the revolutionary masses. The consciousness of indi­ viduals and their critical intelligence are lowered and changed. Durkheim, with religious rituals and processions in mind, perceived in them a phenome­ non of possession in which each member of society is projected outside himself or herself in order to discover fellow individuals. Life renewed in this way stimulates the faculties of imagination and its possibilities of acting at an extraordinary level. Yet at no moment is the individual 's contact with reality broken. Through its discharge of energy the world of possession complements that of morality and religion, making the latter possible. It brings closer together individual desires and social needs, which the world of reason con­ stantly draws apart. This preliminary condition was necessary for a new vision of religion to be realized: before being belief or dogma it is passionate feeling and enthusiasm that brings believers together.

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Religion, Nature and Society

If scientists ever invent a machine capable of going back in time it would be interesting to reinstall ourselves in the age and environment that gave birth to such a concept. This discovery would doubtless allow us to verify that much of what Durkheim has written corresponds to his own religious experience and to his reading of Plato. The Platonic element is undeniably present with him; in the first place there is the belief that there may be present in things ideas that may be more real than the things, and which account for them. If posses­ sion is important to him, it is because it implants ideas in the masses , charging them with effectiveness. I would even say, with health, because for him, as for Italo Svevo in The Confessions of Zeno, social life, like life as a whole, ' somewhat resembles an illness: it too proceeds by crises and depressions ' . What i s the collective psychology that Durkheim imagined i n order to explain the upsurge of energy that allows human beings to create the sacred? During these states of effervescence we note firstly that modes of behaviour, beliefs and movements become polarized. They become both more extreme and more alike . Individuals gathered together cry and shout out, give them­ selves over to ritual gestures, express frenetically their sorrow or their joy. Their attention is required simultaneously by the same things, the same images and the same personalities. A kind of irresistible contagion of words, ideas and emotions is generated, which are channelled in a single direction, that of the totem or of the officiating person. What is more, as each individual increasingly participates, the mass of people is welded together, individuals draw closer to one another, acting in a unison of body and mind to achieve a very acme and paroxysm of emotion, which even overcomes all prohibitions. It is paradoxical that the suspension of the rules and prohibitions is the very condition for their authority and of respect for them. Many times Durkheim insisted on the radical character of the transformation that occurs in the people that have assembled together: When they are once come together, a sort of electricity is formed by their collecting which quickly transports them to an extraordinary degree of exal­ tation. Every sentiment expressed finds a place without resistance in all the minds, wh ich are v ery open to outside impressions; each re-echoes the others, and is re-echoed by the others . The initial impulse thus proceeds, growing as 44 it goes, as an avalanche grows in its advance.

Elsewhere Durkheim speaks of his fascination for the changes he observes, changes which are not merely of shades and degrees; men become different. The pas sions moving them are of s uch an intensity that they cannot be s atisfied except by v iolent and unrestrained actions, actions of superhuman heroism or of bloody barbarism. This is what explains the Crusades, for ex ample, or many of the

scenes , either sublime or savage, of the French Revolution . Under the in­ fluence of the general exaltation, we see the most mediocre and inoffensive bourgeois become either a hero or a butcher. And so clearly are all these mental processes the ones that are also at the root of religion that the indi­ v iduals themselves have often pictured the pressure before which they thus 5 gave way in a distinctly religious form. 4

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The pictures that Durkheim sketched out for us are extremely vivid, even if occasionally his v ision lacks depth. I personally do not seek to explain the aspect of possession that causes individuals to participate in the community and to become extreme. I merely want to show that possession corresponds to what is observable in moments of ritual ferment. Furthermore, it carries with it a duplication of personality. While taking part in the ritual individuals are both themselves and another person, living in two worlds, the sacred and the profane. This is not a novel remark. Human beings who are possessed have the impression that someone else is speaking through their voice, imprinting gestures upon them, dictating feelings and giving them an energy that they do not normally possess. They do not identify themselves with a personality father, God, etc . - and do not say to themselves, ' I am another person. ' Rather they share in that person, in the meaning given to this by Levy-Bruhl: the self is, and yet is not, another person. Existence proceeds on several planes. The individual turns inwards to that realm of fanciful creatures and gods that lend him or her their facial features and voice . This does not prevent a heightened sharpness of the senses during the trance itself. The entranced do not lose the feeling of reality, know perfectly where they are and what they have to do, right up to the very last, fantastic time of trial. This is proved by the fact that they carry out the rituals with great precision and, in the rhythmic movements of the dance and singing , take their physical environment into account. This duplication allows an individual to belong to two worlds. Freed from the self, just as a snake wriggles out of its old skin, caught up in movement, everything is just as though he really were transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where he ordinarily lives, and into an envir­ onment filled with exceptionally intense forces that take hold of him and metamorphose him. How could such experiences as these, especially when they are repeated every day for weeks, fail to leave in him the conviction that there really exist two heterogeneous and mutually incomparable worlds? One is that where his daily life drags wearily along; but he cannot penetrate into the other without at once entering into relations with extraordinary powers that excite him to the point of frenzy. The first is the profane world , the 6 second , that of sacred things. 4

In this way society is united and intense . Each one of its members is ' dupli­ cated ' , consisting of a physical human being and an ideal one, divine, if one so wishes to call it, and consecrated. Finally, during the state of.,Possession, one witnesses what I have called a 4 ' resurrection of the imagos' , revitalized emblems and symbols whose effect is profound. In the ordinary course of existence they are reduced to the level of conventional signs or artefacts : the totem, for instance, is a trivial object, the word ' motherland' a banal word, or the flag a piece of multicoloured cloth rolled around a pole . At celebrations and festivals they regain their sacred value and, so to speak, become incarnate. Their power is regenerated from the moment when the sap of community life begins to circulate once more, and the depths of memory are stirred. Durkheim declared:

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Relig ion, Nature and Society

The common faith becomes reanimated quite naturally in the heart of this reconstituted group; it is born again because it again finds those very condi­ tions in which it was born in the first place. After it has been restored, it easily triumphs over all the private doubts which may have arisen in indi­ vidual minds . The image of the sacred things regains power enough to resist the internal or external causes which tended to weaken it. In spite of their apparent failure, men can no longer believe that the gods will die, because 48 they feel them living in their own hearts. It is difficult to express more strongly the idea that, if individuals existing in isolation grow weak, losing confidence in their beliefs and the signs that represent them, once they come together they again find their original vitality. How can one remain i ndifferent to these resounding declarations that seem to have been tom from the author' s very flesh in order to suggest the truth? They throw a disturbing light, like that of a lighthouse piercing the surface of the sea, on propositions that are linked together, page after page, in intentional, almost incantatory, monotony. It is as if uniformity was the only form of brilliance allowed to science, j ust as the uniformity of a black or grey colour on the canvas of a Rothko is the sole brilliance in his painting. As one turns the pages, one senses that the only thing for the author that he judges to be unlivable, and even unsociable, is the apathetic existence and indifference of the daily round. Coming through his sociology one hears the echo of Pascal ' s thought: 'Nothing is more unbearable fo r a human being than t o exist in a state of full repose, w ithout passion, without any business to carry on, without distractions, without things to which he can apply himself. ' We should note that possession, by polarizing group beliefs, by duplicating individuals and their world, by causing symbols and emblems to surface in their memory, makes human beings sociable and their exi stence bearable. In such privileged moments it is an upsurge of rituals and an exaltation of the mental faculties that evoke and stimulate creative acts. They are creations which we associate, moreover, with other forms of inspiration, particularly in science and art. Is this the way that Durkheim saw things? At least it is the way we see them in his numerous works. Specialists who confuse his descrip­ tions, definitions and taxonomies with the ultimate goal behind his theory, which is to explain, mainly pass over the psychology that lies at its base. This is the case with the majority of them. They do not take the trouble to examine the psychology, as if it consisted only of 'padding' and chit-chat. Not to recognize in this psychology a theory of what the human being and life in common mean for Durkheim, comes down to deceiving others as well as oneself. The psychology is always present, whatever the moral, industrial and political facts with which he is dealing. That it is even indispensable is because reason would be powerless to forge the bonds between human beings and sustain their actions. This is the reproach Durkheim levelled against a German sociologist who claimed to base everything on reason :

What then will the crowd do? How can you procure from it any devotion to common interests? We are undoubtedly loath to admit any antinomy between the heart and the mind. Yet on the other hand sentiment seems to us to be

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too complex a matter to be displayed by everybody without danger. Seek out an ordinary person and, through a scientific education , rid him of his instincts and habits; impart to him full consciousness of himself; make of him pure reason. Transformed in this way he will no longer understand the greatness 49 of patriotism, nor the beauty of sacrifice and altruism. Nor will society either be able to achieve those peaks of energy and intense feeling that cause it to rise out of the ordinary and create itself, like the artist's work. Let us return to the Australian aborigines. This is how they are described by Horn in the celebrated expedition that penetrated into central Australia in 1 894:

The central Australian aborigine is the living representative of a Stone Age who still fashions his spear-heads and knives from flint and sandstone and performs the most daring surgical operations with them. His origins and history are lost in the gloomy mists of the past. He has no written records and few oral traditions. In appearance he is a naked hirsute savage, with a type of features occasionally pronouncedly Jewish . . . Religious belief he has none, but is excessively superstitious, living in constant dread of an Evil Spirit which is supposed to lurk round his camp at night. He has no gratitude except that of the anticipatory order, and is as treacherous as Judas. 50 Like any foreigner, this celebrated ' native ' , on whose shoulders many of our own indigenous careers have been built, is not perceived as an individual but as the representative of a race or culture. The gaze we cast upon him keeps him always at a distance and compares him to the one who is closest to him, another foreigner. The gesture that Durkheim was undertaking here, and rightly so, I would say, in the light of these testimonies and similar descriptions, consisted, on the contrary, in comparing these Australian aborigines with ourselves. He treats them as individuals, robust, poor, but in any case pious. Their life in the clan consists of two phases, as in every village at the time. During the first phase individuals carry on their pursuits of hunting or fishing either alone or in small bands. They live a very sparing, monotonous existence, a prey to their individual instincts , busy above all with domestic matters. In 51 their scattered state life is ' uniform, languishing and dull ' . B y contrast, during the second phase the population is concentrated together. An event, happy or otherwise, even if it is not the celebration of a religious cult, brings people together. In particular, at times when fishing or hunting are impossible, the opportunity is seized to celebrate marriages and tie up transactions. They are so many occasions for great gatherings. Individuals are seen to mass together, stirring one another up, communicating animatedly with one another, and remaining in a state of agitation until the tumult is regulated and ritualized. The group is reconstituted and is massively asserted with exceptional force through the spirits of the totems. Boomerangs are cl ashed together, the bull­ roarers are whirled around and bellow forth. Durkheim dec lared:

This effervescence often reaches such a point that it causes unheard-of actions. The passions released are of such an impetuosity that they can be

60 Religion, Nature and Society restrained by nothing. They are so far removed from their ordinary conditions of life, and they are so thoroughly conscious of it, that they feel that they s2 must set themselves outside of and above their ordinary morals. One sees in this all the visible effects of the entry into a state of possession of the reconstituted mass of the clans. With them, as everywhere, there then follows intenningling and outpourings of feeling, sexual orgies and incestuous unions, which interlace the religious solemnities. All that society reveres and all that it condemns, all that it forbids and all that it stirs up, fuse together in one common upsurge . One can easily understand that the forces brought together and stimulated are greater than those of individuals, and bear down upon them unconsciously . To reach this state of j ubilation and unanimity human beings must feel in some way possessed. They excite one another feverishly during the period of trance, which is carried along in one direction : towards reunion with what is sacred, no matter whether the occasion is one of feasting or mourning. In the latter case also, as Durkheim asserts, it is the same frenzy that talces hold of the believers , the same tendency to sexual debau­ 53 chery, the infallible sign of a state of nervous over-excitemerit. The fervour and spontaneous feeling that spread everywhere bear the mark of this over­ excitement. It is the sign of the effervescence stirred up by ritual that summons up religion and that religion summons up. In Australia the activity to which it gives rise and which creates it is ' almost entirely confined to the moments 54 when these assemblies are held' . More strongly than at any other time, common beliefs and traditions are really present for each individual, shaping his feelings . Here we find a characteristic feature of all states of possession; human beings believe they are dominated by an external superior power. Here also individuals united in celebration experience strongly the religious force of their totem and are convinced that it inspires their words and governs their behaviour.

They feel it present and active within them, for it is this which raises them to a superior life. This is why men have believed that they contain within them a principle comparable to the one residing in the totem, and conse­ quently, why they have attributed a sacred character to themselves, but one less marked than that of the emblem. It is because the emblem is the pre-eminent source of the religious life; the man participates in it only indirectly, as he is well aware; he takes into account the fact that the force that transports him into the world of sacred things is not inherent in him, but ss comes to him from the outside. In reality strength comes to him from the collectivity that has gathered together. Increasing the number of contacts, and malcing them closer, it changes the content of consciousness, making possible actions of which the individual, if relying on his own inner forces, is incapable . Images and formu­ las gain in life and vigour. Confused memories join the present to the past, real to unreal beings. There is assuredly a method in these bouts of ecstasy and enthusiasm. It responds to a need and its goal is effectiveness. I will spell

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it out more precisely. S o long as individuals remain languishing in isolation, lacking any fiery passion, the community seems far removed from them. It figures little in their reasoning and actions. B ut once caught up in these periodic manifestations, it becomes intense and omnipresent. Religious life then penetrates to a depth that gathers up the individual in a verbal exuberance that borders upon delirium. The collective representations that arise in these circumstances bear the mark of this, not because they are religious, but because human beings in this state of intensity create them together. One is inclined to say this is the normal character of any representation. Durkheim asserted:

Moreover, if we give the name delirium to every state in which the mind adds to the immediate data given by the senses and projects its own sentiments and feelings into things, then nearly every collective representation is in a sense delirious; religious beliefs are only one particular case of a very general law. Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which 6 really exist only in our own minds . 5 For similar reasons , I once remarked that a social representation represents us and represents itself, just as much as it represents some thing. How could it be an objective and logical reflection, in the formal sense of the word, when 57 we represent ourselves in it? If it were so, it would not be social. It is not that together we reflect in any less intelligent a manner. Nor is it either because collective thought is simplistic or concrete, as is claimed. But it is because such a representation is conceived of in special circumstances and possesses goals that are peculiarly its own. Let us go further. Let us ask whether the affective ' colouring ' of this state of effervescence fades away in the representations created during it, and explains them. It has often been said that anguish and fear are the reasons why peoples have religions. The maxim primus in orbe deos fecit timor does not however sum up all one can observe during the rituals and ceremonies of the Australian aborigines. Rather is it exultation in things found again, stirred up by songs and dances and regulated by pictorial representations. Is there then need to recall that the divinity inhabits the same environment as do human beings, or that it penetrates into them, becoming a tangible part of themselves? Thus, in Durkheim ' s v iew, this maxim is false . We must look for the origins of totemism rather in a 'joyous confidence ' and a vigorous outpouring. The gods are neither jealous nor terrible , nor do they bear down with their force upon the members of the clan. Is this a characteristic peculiar to totemism? The effervescence of a com­ munity, its songs and dances, gesticulations and bouts of ecstasy - all that which, observes Durkheim, is a characteristic of the religious life of the Australian aborigines, can be just as well observed among the Dionysians, or 58 elsewhere. He himself had been able to examine it closely among the Pietist sects , and even more so among the Hassidic Jews. I myself have found a very great similarity between the descriptions of Durkheim and certain passages in the writings of Isaac B ashevis Singer that depict the Polish village com­ munities, with their rabbis and their ' holy fools ' .

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Thus everything tends to make us believe that his explanation of the motives for men to create gods arises less from the peculiar nature of Australian aboriginal religion than from the psychological act of communing together that gives rise to it. This psychological world, and the festivals and ceremonies that sustain it, can only last for a very limited time. Having reached its peak, the intense energy relaxes, the movement slows down and each participant withdraws to resume more useful occupations. The Australian aborigines dis­ perse and the affairs of the tribe or the clan go from their mind. They no longer interest themselves in anything save what is immediate and close at hand the home , and the hunting and fishing that they wish to be as profitable as possible.

When the Australian goes away from a religious ceremony, the repre­ sentations which this communal life has aroused or re-aroused within him are not obliterated in a second . The figures of the great ancestors, the heroic exploits whose memory these rites perpetuate, the great deeds of every sort in which he, too, has participated through the cult, in a word, all these numerous ideals which he has elaborated with the cooperation of his fellows, continue to live in his consciousness and, through the emotions which are attached to them and the ascendancy which they hold over his entire being, they are sharply distinguished from the vulgar impressions arising from his daily relations with external things. 59 I like the word ' vulgar' at th is juncture. It expresses the return to the prosaic life. So long as he is in a state of possession, caught up body and soul by society, elevated and inspi red, the Australian aborigine is more than a human being, as the sacred connotes. Having come down to a routine that makes him lackadai sical and is repeated day after day , he may wonder how he let himself be carried away in these acts of gesticulation and extravagance, of ecstasy and enthusiasm. Yet he remains nostalgic about them and looks forward to return­ ing to the bosom of the revitalized community. Thus, just like the ' disconti­ nuities of the heart' for Proust, the ' di scontinuities of the sacred' for Durkheim affect social relationships . 60 The piety of the Australian aborigine experiences conditions where ' complete aton y ' alternates with ' hyperexcitement', and the whole of common existence undergoes the same variations . We can recognize in this a psychological and collective rhythm of life that marks that of other societies, so much is religion a component of the relationships between their members. In another sense, I would say that the totemism of the Australian aborigines is a temporary religion, fluctuating, as does the clan itself, between the sacred and the profane. For religions to become permanent an organization is needed, with qualified priests who celebrate the rituals throughout the year, and in the end a Church which has a monopoly of the state of effervescence and specializes in it. B ut the first stage is the creative communion of god and rituals, one which favours this prodigious capacity to consecrate and idealize something or another, including society itself. Durkheim ' s psychology seeks to make us understand why. I have sketched it out in a comparatively summary form, considering the huge amount of space 61 he devotes to it. When one enlarges one ' s field of vision, one sees how

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Durkheim 's psychology is distinguished from that of his contemporaries . Most crowd psychologists, whether they wish to do so or not, conceive states of the masses as bordering on collective hysteria, modelled on individual hysteria, as described by clinical psychology and psychoanalysis, or even as the famous ' dual insanity ' of the leader and the masses . Durkheim, for his part, as is clear, has mania in mind, as characteristic of the state which indiv iduals experience during ceremonies of possession , as described by the ancient philosophers and dramatists. It is a state followed by isolation and languor, and even unaccount­ able depression. Thus he envisages social life as an alternati on of moods and relationships in a cycle that proceeds from mania to melancholy, and so on. Mauss backed this up, if there were any need, when he wrote that Durkheim ' already was really employing those notions of the sthenic and asthenic, of courage and weakness in the face of life . . . Moreover, Durkheim made plen­ '62 tiful use of these ideas in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life. We do not know exactly where to locate the origin of this sequence, nor where it will lead. On the other hand there exists a remarkable agreement, although formulated in different terms, regarding the observation of the tran­ sitions that take place within each sequence in a kind of chain reaction. Reflecting upon it, hypotheses that are altogether absurd come to mind. I am inspired to consider one of these by the conclusions reached above and by my 63 own work on the psychology of crowds. It is certain that a large number of relationships in the life of societies - for example, between governments and governed, prophets and disciples, or those carrying out market exchanges go through alternating sthenic or asthenic states, of exultation and apathy. Such relationships would suffer from being irremediably fragile if there was no oscillation between the joy aroused by the resurrection of the group, which, if need be, is embodied in a god or the flag, and the state of mourning that descends if this resurrection is temporarily deferred. The alternation between the periods when consciousnesses are changed, as in states of ecstasy and possession, and those when the normal , lucid consciousness returns , is capital. The primitive urges grow sharper, then become lukewarm and are channelled away in accordance with the imperatives of reality . Then, as Voltaire wrote to Mme du Deffand, ' S adly, reasoning gains credence. ' As reflection, held at a distance, gains ground, the emotions are repudiated, the bonds between individuals become more impersonal and the behaviour of each human being follows a logical course. The dreariness of the daily chores, of duties mechan­ ically performed, of managing affairs, infects the existence in general of society. There is nothing unusual about the ebb and flow of these two states of consciousness and the relationships to which they correspond. It may be deduced that this universal phenomenon, proved by the observa­ tions of mass psychology, religions , forms of power and the economy, has some connection with the crises we suffer, and the way in which we live through them. However, little attention is paid to this, and it is just as if it did not exist, or as if our civilization was an exception. Perhaps, on the other hand, we should take it into account, because it is when we seek not to acknowledge the inevitable that its hold over us grows. Looking back over history we

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perceive - and this is what Durkheim means - that the cultures that have preceded our own and which still form the majority, have succeeded in institu­ tionalizing mania. They have, so to speak, acknowledged and conquered it through all these rituals of possession and ecstasy that occur periodically, according to well-established rules of interest to specialists. All the techniques of healing, hunting and fertility bear this hallmark . One need only look through the studies of festivals, ceremonies, medicine or astronomy in a large number of peoples in order to be convinced. One could give no better illus­ tration than the treatment of mental illnesses in Africa, or the cults of Dionysus and Catholic processions in Europe, or indeed all those phenomena that lead into the sacred and sustain it. By contrast, our modern culture tries successfully to institutionalize melan­ choly. Willy-nilly, the desire to secularize beliefs and practices, to rationalize the economy and to manage by c alculation and quantification lead to this. I am unclear as to whether the origins of this lie with the Protestants or with bourgeois capitalists, if we wish to discover the causes. Yet whatever they are, you realize that the scorning of ceremony and ritual, the struggle waged against the passions on grounds of self-interest, and against collective out­ bursts of enthusiasm in the name of organization could only end in this way. This condition of active indifference flows logically from a life that becomes egocentric and isolated, and from relationships dominated by laws that are neutral. In a world that desires to be secular, and of which we are supposedly the authors, everything must be devoid of enchantment, condemned to a state of irredeemable languor in order to be understood and controlled. It is not by chance that the science assumed to explain a number of social phenomena, to foresee in principle the stages of history and guide our actions - I mean political economy - was christened by Carlyle ' the dismal scienc e ' . The expressions of mania, ecstasy and rituals, then, play the part of the ' superflu­ ous ' that must be exorcized, abridged and concealed, because otherwise soci­ ety would again be in harmony with religion. There is no need to go into further detail . You can easily perceive the cause of the hold that the sacred and the profane have over sensibility, and what affective needs these must meet. The same holds good for the two phases of consci ousness that have been instituted in different ways in two periods of history, first in a culture of mania and then in one of melancholy , especially our own. At least it is a hypothesis of this kind that suggests how the character of the psychological and the social is interwoven, made up of phases of the individual and of the collectivity, and there are abundant proofs of this. What may we conclude? Life in society , as conceived by crowd psychology, is the result of a regression, and it has a large dose of hysteria in it. This is one of the many reasons for the presence of the archaic and hallucinatory. As envisaged by Durkheim this social life, sustained by possession, is a manic depressive one. What clearer contrast is there? Yet in thi s analogy is there not a very enlightening aspect? It allows us to understand that the dividing line does not run between those that judge the behaviour of crowds to be patho­ logical and those who esteem it to be normal. Such an antithesis makes little

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sense. No, this dividing line runs, as and when necessary, between those who stress the disorders that occur in history and those that stress the cycle of mania. Durkheim is numbered among the latter. Moreover, it is possible that these explanations have a value that goes beyond religious phenomena. Speaking of Australian aborigines who till their plot of land, or prepare for fighting or a boat race, Malinowski observes a 64 similar state of effervescence, one of an entirely secular nature. Furthermore, it has been asserted that this psychology of the masses ascribes too great a role to affectivity. According to Levi-Strauss, the origin of the sacred is not to be found where it is located by Durkheim, whose theory entails special pleading. He writes : ' it is not present emotions, felt at gatherings and cere­ monies, which engender or perpetuate the rites, but ritual activity which 65 arouses the emotions. • All this is true, but less damaging than one might suppose. Where is the weak point in the theory to be found? The theory has the defect of not going far enough, of not going beyond long rhythms and general causes, in order to concern itself with the content of sacred rituals and representations. Through this shortcoming it is reduced to what is extremely abstract and objective . Is this content therefore so arbitrary and so little in harmony with the inner life of those who create it and share in it? Immediately Durkheim ' s psychology is content to search for signs of this wherever there is meaning. Where is the difference, you will ask? Let us go back to those fertility festivals of the lntichiuma at which the assembled tribe together consumes its totem. Freud explores the meaning that this might take on among the partic ipants, and the specific emotions it might arouse. Through this interpretation he ends up with his celebrated myth of the death of the father. Durkheim takes pains to decipher the 'grammar' of the ritual in order to establish what is non-specific to it, and what is common to others . He demonstrates, if there were need to, that this is a roundabout way for the clan to rediscover its periodical state of effervescence. It is as if he were examining formulas and gestures not in order to understand what people are saying and doing but how they are doing it and expressing it. Or, to draw even closer to what appears to me to be the truth, he only examines particular cases through categories, and not categories through particular cases . Thus he diminishes his discovery and restrains his boldness, having deified society to such an extent and invested it with such extraordinary powers. The whole is impressive, without the shock having been produced . A chord has not been touched in us that might have been .

Religions are never extinguished A society without religion is a singular sight; yet this was the complete innovation that the French Revolution presented to our gaze. We had already seen the bourgeoisie triumph over absolutism throughout the continent, and a monarchy sink without trace under the storm unleashed by a people in revolt.

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But a nation that put the Rights of Man in the place of the divine command­ ments and followed philosophical principles instead of respecting the dog­ mas of the faith - this had never been seen before. No thinker or politician failed to ask: can such a society last? Can it institute a social compact whose sole foundation is the free will of its citizens? This is what R'1 inet, 6 the historian , calls ' living as a body of people without any religion' . As a scholar Durkheim posed the same question to himself, but turned it upside down: what causes a society to last? It inspired his book, and his reply was plain: it is beliefs and sacred rituals. Without them, no society can be preserved and inspire in its members the loyalty and respect for it that are 67 indi spensable . Then, concretely , the problem is no longer of knowing whether a religion is necessary or not: it is a matter of knowing which religion. A human being cannot found one off his own bat, however much of a genius he is. What more would it be than a ragbag of memories and artificial ideas such as Auguste Comte produced? Or might it be the narcissistic cult of a prophet who has sprung from nowhere, of which Nietzsche 's superman is perhaps the chimera? In any case it would possess the chill of philosophical and solitary matters unwarmed by any collective fervour, inhabited by not a single passion :

For before all else, a faith is warmth, life, enthusiasm, the exultation of the whole mental life, the raising of the individual above himself. Now how could he add to the energies which he possesses without going outside himself? How could he surpass himself merely by his own forces? The only source of life at which we can morally reanimate ourselves is that formed by the society of our fellow beings; the only moral forces with which we can sustain and increase our own are those which we get from others . . . these 68 beliefs are active only when they are partaken by many. If religion cannot therefore spring from the meditations of one man alone, should we restore one of the religions of the past, such as Chri stianity? This idea has been put forward since the Revolution, and continues to be advanced even today . Durkheim considered this no longer possible. Who would enthuse passionately about it and find in it a stimulus? It has been party to many acts of inj ustice and no longer corresponds to the aspirations of the modem era. One can no longer assume it possesses the power to re-establish the confidence and thrusting quality needed in a secularized world. Chateaubriand ' s question arises once more : ' What religion can replace Christianity? ' The schol ar has no pat reply, but he does know a few things that may point the way . First we may postulate that it might be thought out from above , by a class of specialists, and propagated through violence and collective suggestion. It would be one 69 of those religions that I have labelled profane, which cause the individual to withdraw in favour of the crowd, and in which the contemporary period so abounds . For this a charismatic leader is needed with whom one can identify, beliefs that summon up ancient emotions and values , and finally an adequate organization . It is true that such religions are rarely lasting, but they bring large numbers of people together, uniting them and pointing their actions towards a precise goal.

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Durkheim is not thinking of these. He cannot think of them, because in his time hardly any were known, or they were not thought possible. Generally and this is his view - sacred religions have been generated by the masses in society in a flash of inventive genius and ecstasy. Those that develop in the same way will lift human beings from the mediocrity in which they wallow:

A day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence, in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity; and when these hours shall have been passed through once, men will spontaneously feel the need of reliving them from time to time in thought, that is to say, of keeping alive their memory by means of celebrations which regularly reproduce their fruits . . . There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason 7 for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones. 0 We know that death is inevitable, but none can say in what manner and when it will come. The same is true of religion. In an intellectual climate where religion is contested and held to be a thing of the past, Durkheim predicts that it has a future. He thus reconciles the theological assertion of its everlasting­ ness with the Positivist aspiration for its renewal. I know of no other book in 71 which this viewpoint appears so convincing and is so hotly defended. The irony i s that most of those who today are followers of Durkheim stress the punctilious aspect of his thinking, in which he comes closest to imitating a system. They take as essential what is subordinate - the opposition between the sacred and the profane - and as subordinate what is essential, namely the opposition between what is a state of effervescence and what is institution­ alized in society. Moreover these are joined to the intellectual aspects - the cognitive ones, as it is said - that correspond to the social structures. Doubtless it has been forgotten that for him relig ion is the original source of all forms of knowledge. The same explanation is therefore valid for all forms, and without this the integral ity of the theory vani shes. It is evident that this aspect accords better with the conscience of human beings who are living in a society moving forward in good order. Nevertheless they fail to grasp what he wrote about a society in a state of upheaval and effervescence. Even more certainly, they let the tap of warm thoughts flow until they tum flat and insipid. If I mention this shift in his theory, it is not without a reason. Durkheim foresaw it, and the efforts that he put forth to prevent it more than once obliged him to stray from the path he had mapped out in advance. Thus there is in his book another book in which there dawns the vi sion of human beings who are both believers and rational, rational because they are believers. For long periods you feel the strains of the inspired voice of one of those founders of religion, but who wishes only for a cult of science , one of those creators of a god whose name he does not dare to pronounce , except to substitute for it the more familiar name of society. Raymond Aron vehemently reproaches him for it: ' It appears to me simply inconceivable to define the essence of a religion through the worship that the individual devotes to the group, for, at least in my view , the worsh ip of the social order is the very 72 essence of impiety. '

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It is because the theory shows us that a religion arises and is perpetuated in impiety that it still exercises some fascination for us. In every age philosophy has assigned to itself the task of producing proofs of the existence of God, or, if you prefer, of the sacred. Sociology does the same for our time, but by reversing the terms: it is no longer man who provides one of the proofs of the existence of God, but God who provides one of the proofs of the existence of man . If there is impiety, it lies most certainly in this.

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Crime s and punishments

The science of malaise The human sciences are nostalgic for the past, optimi stic for the future, pessi­ mistic about the present. Inspired in times of crisis and malaise - and what age is spared these? - they depict in the worst possible light the period we are discussing. One might well believe that their main difference from the natural sciences is that from the latter we always expect the working of a miracle , and from the former the diagnosis of a misfortune. We can easily understand the impression of serenity that arises from the pages Durkheim devotes to the Australian aborigines. Filled with respect, he approaches with boundless tender­ ness the humblest of their customs and representations, the sparks of an origin common to all societies. But the tone changes as soon as the sociologist turns to our own society. Two feelings strike him: sadness and indifference . One might say that as it has strode through history since the Renaissance, modernity has ravaged the European continent through its industries, destroying the bonds that held us together. Only the individual survives the rout of religions and the break-up of immemorial communities: the tribe , the Greek city-states, the Roman re­ public , the medieval guilds, etc . The consciousness of thi s loss, and nostalgia for what we have lost, haunts our v ision of society from Rousseau to Marx. It is precisely because the individual is the heir of these engulfed collectivities, a real Atlantis of memory , that he appears as the one who has extinguished them. Auguste Comte springs immediately to mind, because for him the individual is ' the sickness of the Western world' . It is a sickness inseparable from the di sorder and dissent that daily gnaw away at the body social . One can also add the names of Tocqueville, Bonald and Nietzsche, who share the same view. The latter ' s pessimism is complete when he announces that ' a man of late cultures and broken lights will, on average, be a rather weak man ' . 1 Let it be said in passing that this theme, like most others of the time, also suffers eclipses and knows its moments of glory . Today the view is re-echoed in the work of Louis Dumont. What key will allow us one day to make an intelligent appreciation of their weight of reality? Durkheim shares

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this attraction to a paradise that today we continue to c all the community, and diagnoses in modem society an insidious malaise that cries out for a remedy. He detects it in those 'currents of depression and disillusionment emanating from no particular individual but expressing society ' s state of disintegration. They reflect the relaxation of social bounds, a sort of collective asthenia, or social malaise, just as individual sadness, when chronic, in its way reflects the poor organic state of the individual. ' 2 Worn out through solitude, having been wrenched from h i s fellows, drained of any collective energy, modern man is the brother of that Abraham that Hegel imagined in his youth. He has departed from his ancestral lands, broken away from the ties of life, and is no more than ' a stranger upon the earth ' . 3 Such depression and disenchantment may well be the singular contribution of our civilization to human misfortune. It leaves individuals a prey to their desires, rent by passions that they cannot assuage, and prompts yearning for the impossible. It is in the very nature of desire never to be fulfilled; its object seems to grow more distant as one draws near to it, just as the line of the horizon vanishes before the oncoming ship. This searching after enjoyment, more desperate than the quest for the Holy Grail, sets individual against individual, and self against self. It enfeebles and demoralizes the individual destined to know only disappointed passions, and to pursue goals that are aimless. Durkheim stated:

This is why times like our own, which long for the infinite, are necessarily sad. Pessimism always accompanies boundless aspirations. The character in literature who may be regarded as the incarnation par excellence of this feeling for the infinite is Goethe's Faust. Thus it is not without good reason 4 that the poet depicts him for us as one racked in perpetual torment. On the other hand, a society cannot be produced by mixing individuals up together, any more than one can create matter by combining atoms together. Something else is needed to conquer this 'passionate and exaggerated love of self that causes a human being to relate everything to himself and prefer 5 himself to everything ' , in short, this egoi sm. Hemmed in within a circle of exclusive interests, individuals engage in merciless confrontation and competi­ tion, which borders on being a war of everybody against everybody. More or less consciously, more or less deliberately, they dally with deviance, running the risk of distorting values. It is a criminal act directed not against one of their fellows , but against the life lived in common i tself, without which neither a brute nor even a god can exist. ' If anomie is an evil , ' wrote Durkheim, ' it is above all because society suffers through it, since it cannot exist without 6 cohesion and regulation. ' Nevertheless, the individual is not spared. Predisposed to ' depression and disenchantment ' , he or she is also their first victim. We look in amazement at the sombre colours that Durkheim squeezes on to his palette to depict his era. It was an age that, in an explosion of creativity, had seen giants of the novel arise - Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy - Impressionist painting, thermodynamics, non-Euclidian geometry , and natural selection in the sciences. After drama

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and struggle, there had also emerged trade unions and labour parties, nations and democracy in the modem sense of the word, not forgetting the most extensive colonial empires that history had ever seen. The shades of colour and feeling that Durkheim employs are not those of a Manet or a Zola, nor those of his sc ientific colleagues, who confidently expected boundless dis­ coveries; nor those of the builders of new states or of men mobilizing the masses for revolutions yet to come . In all such forces of modernity, which for Durkheim were forces of disintegration and disruption, he found few traces of inventiveness heralding the birth of a new world. He seemed to forget that if every break brings with it crises and causes destruction, without it soc iety is emptied of its content and slides gradually into a state of inertia. He has bequeathed to sociology that sober distance from the events that plough the furrows of history, throwing up prophets and enthusiasts. In his eyes grace was to be only passionate feeling held in check and the reflective discipline of the ascetic s. Malaise is not the problem of sociology, but its basic theme. I have used up my time, and yours , in gathering these testimonies in order to highlight that theme. It denotes the loss of community, the wearing away of bonds between human beings, and, in individuals, asthenia. These are symptoms described by everyone, and in every kind of tone. Some denounce them, and others rail against them, as belonging to the potential and limitations of our age. Durk­ heim ' s discovery is to have discerned their causes in soc iety , and to have wanted to remedy them. Significantly, when studying modem anomie, he chose the example of suicide. It is certain that reasons both of theory and method dictated his choice. However, one would show oneself to be as nar­ rowly Positivist as his band of biographers if one did not recognize the deeper meaning. Suicide, the means whereby we depart from our fellows of our own free will, is one of the symbols of myth in the West. Individuals, triumphantly mastering their own destiny, precipitate themselves into the nothingness of boundless desires and into the meaningless. They embrace Gobineau ' s phrase : ' There is work, then love , and then nothing. ' Just as abandoned as a child without its mother, the individual renounces life in a gesture that none can foresee or halt. It is one that each person looks upon without manifesting either blame or approval, just as one looks upon things that occur daily with regu­ larity. Indifferent to others, the individual succumbs amid their indifference. Did Durkheim feel this consciously? Did he borrow from the spirit of the age the conviction that B alzac expressed in a few superb phrases in the preface to La Peau de chagrin : 'As man becomes more and more civilized, he takes to suicide; and this striking agony within soc ieties is of profound interest. ' In any case Durkheim made suicide the emblem of sacrifice in modern society, which condemns those whom its task is to save. It is moreover the badge of the destiny of individuals who, through the war they wage against themselves and their fellows, gain one single victory : over their own existence. In con­ trast, the collectiv ity shows up as the very source of life: 'A group is not only a moral authority regulating the life of its members, but also a source of life sui generis. From it there arises a warmth that quickens or gives fresh life to

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Religion, Nature and Society

each individual, which causes him to empathise, causing selfishness to melt 7 away . ' We already ·know in part how this is so, and soon will know more. The fact remains that the individual receives from it an additional surge of energy and purposefulness that allows, and forces, him or her to live out to the very end an existence that without this would be bereft of energy and purpose. In reality society, through its rules and institutions, ensures the goal of all species, which is to reproduce itself. Roger B acon asserted this a long while ago, in his own turn of phrase : ' Men have been generated for men . ' They are born of a father and mother in order to become in their turn father and mother, and to pass on what they have received as their heritage. This is why the strengthening of social bonds and those that link us to life comes down to one and the same thing. 'A life lived in common ' , asserts Durkheim, ' i s attractive, yet at the same time it exerts a coercion. Undoubtedly constraint is necessary to induce a human being to rise above himself, and superimpose upon his physical nature one of a different kind. But as he learns to savour the charm of this new existence, he develops the need for it; there is no field of activity 8 in which he does not passionately seek after it. ' Everything else flows from this pleasure of communing with and being one 9 with the many . On the one hand, in theory society is a real organization, but one dominated by the ideal that ensures its bonding . On the other, the repro­ duction of mankind, through beliefs and practices, is an essential phenomenon. Thus sociology is the science of this phenomenon, just as much as biology. I have frequently read that Durkheim was preoccupied with the mechanisms that ensure the integration of the individual and the maintenance of social cohe­ sion. This is absolutely correct. But I have much more rarely seen the reason for it spelled out. It is asserted that it was because he wished to resolve the problem of order. I think that his need to know how to integrate the individual or maintain cohesion is e xplained by the need to understand how and why societies reproduce themselves. Thus it is not how to install an order, but what makes it viable and worthy of being lived. However this may be, the individual is in opposition to the collectivity just as is the principle of death to the principle of life. In relationship to the individual, the collectivity comes first, just as the fact of living comes first as compared with the fact of dying. It is an immortal being made up of indi­ viduals whose destiny is to perish. Then one may ask oneself: how therefore is individuation possible? In this sense, this is the sole problem posed for a science of modem society. Durkheim 's first book, The Division of Labour, is entirely given over to the study of that society. Even if it is demonstrably a failure - we shall see why later - it contains the essential themes of his work which, once they have been grasped, make the rest appear a powerful com­ mentary upon them. From the outset Durkheim formulated in the preface the problem that sociology has to resolve both in theory and practice : 'The ques­ tion that has been the starting point for our study has been that of the connec­ tion between the individual personality and social solidarity . How does it come about that the individual , whilst becoming more autonomous, depends ever 10 more closely upon society? '

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One should really change the terms in which this question is posed so that it becomes: how can opposing and selfish human beings establish a consensus? Or, how can the two modern tendencies, individuali sm and socialism, be reconciled? But Durkheim was patriotic. So he asked: how does it come about that Frenchmen have become individualistic, in a society that is not? Durk­ heim opposed English individualism to French individualism. To a society that had perfected the market and spread it through its traders and industrialists he contrasted a society that had seen the rise of the modern nation, which the Revolutionary armies had spread all over Europe. Taking the path of com­ 1' promise, he searched for an answer. French society, still haunted by revolu­ tions and tempted by restorations, was one he wished to reconcile with the reality of a world given over to industry and involved in accelerated change . As is normal, the imperative of reality triumphs over dreams of a return to the past. But the task must be achieved without the increasing autonomy of individuals putting at risk the reproduction of the whole. In short; it is a matter of changing the evil into a remedy for evil.

Confessional societies and professional societies I shall begin by describing an impression that is not mine alone. It is of a split between the notion of society and the weakened reality to which it corres­ ponds. Durkheim never missed an opportunity to expound learnedly and at length on its specific qualities. He presented, and meticulously refuted, the 12 arguments of those who claimed to reduce it to a set of individuals. For him it formed a whole superior to its parts. But society, our habitat, the stage on which we act, remained for him almost empty. He searched through space and time, and among very different peoples, for the most common characteristics, which, it is clear, are the weakest. Where does this society exist? In what place and in what moment of time should it be located? Of what flesh-and-blood human beings does it consist? Which are the classes that shape and dominate it? Why do we find they possess one kind of economy or religion, and not another? What are the institutions of authority and war with which a society equips itself in order to sustain its members in life and death? We glimpse only what I would call fleeting hints of these, as if all this were of little importance . This is disconcerting and even exasperating, because it reduce s society to a monumental, hieratic edifice, in which one feels lost, lacking any direction. The backcloth is more reminiscent of a court of law, or even a school, than of a parliament, a market or a bustling town. Bergson reproached Durk­ heim for seeing ' in the individual an abstraction, and reality solely in the body 13 social ' . Now, in his books, with the exception of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, it is rather the opposite that strikes me. The individuals are tangible and mobile, and are endowed with consistency, whereas society re­ presents a lyrical abstraction, lacking any geographical or historical locus. Nevertheless, we must sketch in its contours. Before Durkheim the tendency was to proceed from the individual. Interests and special motivations were

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attributed to individuals; these placed them in touch with other individuals and things. Such relationships, which may consist of negotiation or exchange, form a s� stem: the market, according to Spencer, or the State, according to " Hobbes. Once established, the system is so powerful that no individual can escape its grip, and everyone must submit to its rules and authority. What can one quarrel with in that? Durkheim had an easy rejoinder: there are no indi­ viduals in isolation. If any existed, their anti-social tendencies would render any stable, harmonious relationship impossible . There are two such tend­ encies: first, as we have seen, there are boundless desires, and next, a clinging above all else to egotistical self-interest. This unerringly makes individuals antagonistic to one another, as competitors in the market or rivals in politics, each seeking to attain his or her own objectives at the expense of everyone else. As soon as these goals are attained, individuals separate from one other and start on the quest for different partners with whom to exchange or negotiate, with the prospect of forming a new association. If individuals change their partner in accordance with their interests and remain associated with someone only so long as they derive some benefit, no stable bond can be formed. They are like two unmarried people who come together for mutual enjoyment but do not succeed in forming a permanent couple. Durkheim remarked: ' Self­ interest is, in fact, the least constant thing in the world. Today it is useful for me to unite with you; tomorrow the same reason will make me your enemy. Thus such a cause can give rise only to transitory links and associations of a fleeting kind. ' 15 Contract can also be the second obstacle to a stable association. Super­ ficially, the opposite seems true : two or more individuals select one another and create rules that place them under an obligation to one another. Thus a man and a woman get married, citizens form a party, colonists found a settlement. Promises are made, rights and duties are laid down, and sanctions are drawn up for cases where the parties do not respect these. It is undoubtedly true that a contract binds individuals to one another, but at the same time it dissociates them from society. They think they are the sole contracting parties, and they have set up the contract themselves. They forget that society, through educa­ tion, has disposed them to do so, has provided them with the means of coming to an agreement - language and reasoning - and it is society that guarantees it. Real individuals are subjected to rules of association and action they have not created, of which they are not aware, but which they nevertheless respect, even when they lay down new ones for themselves. What, in the final analysis, guarantees the contract between them are indeed the physical or moral con­ straints, the State or tradition, that oblige them to honour it. Durkheim has reminded us of this : ' Yet we must bear in mind that, if a contract has binding force, it is society that confers that force. Let us assume that it does not give its blessing to the obligations that have been contracted; these then become 6 pure promises possessing only moral authority. ' 1 This means that contract cannot be the foundation of a society, as the Philosophes of the eighteenth century thought, because it presupposes the

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existence of that society. It cannot be the cause of that of which it is really the effect. Chateaubriand had already grasped this when he remarked, con­ cerning the contract thought up by Rousseau : ' To reason in this way there is 17 no need to suppose any pre-exi sting society . ' What is more , as in every agreement between individuals, a contract requires them to interpret their interests in a similar manner, to be engaged in complementary occupations, respecting certain values and sharing at least a glimmering of c ommon feeling. The remark bursts forth under the pen of Durkheim: ' In reality, for men to acknowledge and mutually guarantee the rights of one another, they must first have a mutual liking , and have some reason that makes them cling to one 18 another and to the single society of which they form a part. ' An active, passionately sympathetic feeling for one 's family , one ' s fellow countrymen or one 's occupation is the invisible but decisive part of the al ­ liance of which agreements made between individuals are the visible part. Fluctuations in self-interest and mere contracts cannot bring about social life. What kind of society would we produce by binding together a bunch of solitary individuals? There must be at the outset some predilection towards others that sustains them in society. This is the clear conclusion to be drawn from these 19 observations. Rene Char has said it much better than I can in his Lettera amorosa: ' If there were only us on earth, my love, we would lack both partners and allies. ' I t i s not enough to promise something through criticism. We must still keep that promise through theory. In these passages and in others previously cited one thing is noteworthy . We do not rely on the idea of a society that exerci ses its authority by force or maintains its cohesion under the pressure of the economic or physical needs shared by its members. It is neither fear nor deprivation that holds them together and causes them to assoc iate with one another. What then allows human beings to overcome their anti-social tend­ encies and induces them to come together? Undoubtedly constraint is shown to be indispensable, but of what kind? It is of an order of solidarity that makes them communicate with one another and forces them, within this, to act together, conforming to its rules. ' The fu ndamental characteristk of associa­ 1 20 So Proudhon speaks of it, and this suffices to convince us tion is solidarity. that a certain agreement exists around this definition, particularl y when he adds: 'Association is in no way an economic force: it is excl usively a bond of the inmost depths of consciousness, and ineffective, or rather harmful in effect, when relating to work and wealth. '21 You will recognize in this a trend in French socialism. One would like to know more about this, and in greater detail. It is clear that Durkheim continues 22 this tendency , is inspired by it, and incorporates it into his theory . So when we speak of solidarity, we can affirm that it corresponds to a need for order, harmony or agreement that exists in each one of us. But it is a need of a moral nature. At least it was understood in this way by Durkheim, for whom 23 a real rule or social bond can have no other reason for existing or lasting. He wrote :

76

Religion, Nature and Society In conclusion, social life is none other than the moral env ironment, or better

still, the whole of the different environments that surround the individual. By terming them moral, we mean that they are env ironments constituted by

ideas; this is why they play the same role in relation to indiv idual conscious­

nesses as physical environments do to organisms. Both are independent realities, insofar as they exist in this world, where everything is linked by 24 things independent of one another.

By this very fact these environments hold us together and we maintain our­ selves through them, like particles held in a force field. Nevertheless, if solidarity is characterized by the bond of consciousness and moral force, one must be able to recognize it. One need only seek it out. We know that it manifests itself as a consensus. This idea derives from Auguste Comte , and sociology has taken it on board. It gives us a picture of social and biological convergence between several persons, and of the psychological phenomenon whereby individuals ' give their assent ' . In it can also be seen the uniformity and unanimity of belief among the members of a group, a party or a Church, which so regulates itself that it thinks and acts in the same way. There is no need to dwell upon this. Consensus expresses solidarity in all its density, just like language. When we say, ' We understand one another [ ' nous nous enten­ dons ' : literally, ' We hear one another' - Translator] : we are speaking the same language ' , the expression must be taken literally. The spoken word is the most outstanding vehicle for solidarity, since it always assumes a consultation and a communication for it to be formulated. Two factors ensure social solidarity. On the one hand there is the collective consciousness, which includes the sentiments and beliefs shared by the com­ munity. Diffused throughout its members, they are handed down from one generation to another, recorded in individual memories, the language and all kinds of works of art. They are recognizable in traditions or proverbs, in prescripts and prohibitions, and even in reactions to offences committed against social or religious norms. Together they form an autonomous system which is that of a consciousness distinct from those of individuals and which one may term collective. ' It is the psychological type of society,' asserts Durkheim, 'one which has its properties, conditions for existence and mode of development, just as individual types do, but in a different fashion. For this 25 reason it has the right to be designated by a special term. ' It is not the word that is disputable or in dispute, but the thing, which seems to require greater delineation. It is assumed to ensure a kind of pre-established harmony and cohesion among individuals who gather together. What makes it possible is supposedly a moral discipline that the habitus common to the whole society 26 has inculcated in them. On the other hand, there is the division of labour. The first kind of division, that of men and women, clearly has a sexual aspect. In order to have children a union of complementary partners attracted to each other is necessary. Each sex has its own function, particularly in primitive societies. The women are the gatherers and cultivators, and devote themselves to domestic tasks. The

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men hunt and fish, look after the cattle herds and go off to war. From this division, and modelled upon it, spring divisions according to age, trade etc., which every time increase the possibilities for action and forming relationships within a society . Now, this separation of functions forces individuals to ac­ quire different but parallel functions. Consequently they become dependent upon one another in order to live, produce and think. None of these functions would be effective if there were not cohesion between those who carry them 27 out. This is well known. But what is not perceived sufficiently clearly is that this division of functions - every man to his last, runs the saying - has as a corollary its converse , namely the integration of human beings - from a moral viewpoint, let it be understood. ' We are therefore led to consider the division of labour in a new light. In this case, indeed, the economic services that it can render are insignificant compared with the moral effect that it produces, and its true function is to create between two or more people a feeling of 28 solidarity ' . The collective consciousness breaks down the barriers that separate individ­ uals, causing their minds and feelings to bond together in union. The individ­ ual is therefore totally absorbed by the group. Bougle wrote : ' Up to the present 29 no society has been able to do without this initial bonding. ' As for the division of labour, it represents a collective force that increases the number of individuals and their distribution between the various occupations and func­ tions. It separates them by differentiating them according to their skills and interests, at the same time holding them together and obliging them to cooper­ ate. Thus on the one hand consensus is ensured by the identity of the collective consciousness, and on the other, by the state of dependence that is created by the division of labour between the members of the group. Now, the two factors in solidarity are seen to change in importance as things evolve . As the moral and social impact of the one grows, that of the other diminishes. The collective consciousness is a source of harmony and cohesion in the simplest societies. To the moral and social association that underpins them Durkheim has given the name of mechanical solidarity. Individuals come together because they resemble one another, both psychologically and even physically. They worship the same gods, exercise related activities, and re­ spect identical prohibitions and values. To employ Gobineau ' s expression, they are human beings ' living under the direction of similar ideas and posses­ 30 sing identical instincts ' . The image of this can be seen in an Indian or Israelite tribe, a peasant collective, etc. Naturally, this common consciousness has a religious content, and is re­ spected because of its sacred character. As much may be said of the actions and minutely regulated ceremonies that rule out any failure to participate and discourage any dissent. Durkheim spelled this out: This gives rise to a solidarity sui generis which, deriving from resemblances, binds the individual directly to society . . . [This solidarity] does not consist merely in a general, indeterminate attachment of the individual to the group, but is also one that concerts their detailed actions. Indeed, since such collec­ tive motives are the same everywhere, they produce everywhere the same

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78

effects. Consequently, wherever they are brought into play all wills sponta­ 31 neously move as one in the same direction.

However, as we come nearer to modern times, the division of labour in society tightens its hold, spreading into all the channels of social life. This tendency, which goes back to the Dark Ages, is intensified in Europe towards the end of the Middle Ages, and speeds up under the stimulus of modern industry . Beliefs become diversified and common duties are varyingly inter­ preted according to circumstances. Doubt, once a crime, becomes a virtue, and even a pri nc ip l e of reasoning. Each individual enjoys an autonomy of judge­ ment and sentiment that dissolves the consciousness once shared by every­ body. The gods retire from this world, leaving human beings with an absolute d iscre tion to determine their own goals and actions. 3 2 Yet if there is one truth that history has incontrovertibly settled, it is that religion extends over an ever diminishing area of social life. Originally it extended to everything; everything social was religious - the two words were synonymous. Then gradually political, economic and scientific functions broke free from the religious function, becoming separate entities and taking on more and more a markedly temporal character. God, if we may express it in such a way , from being at first present in every human relationship, has 3 progressively withdrawn. He leaves the world to men and their quarrels. 3

Let

make a di gres sion. We have become accustomed to trac ing evolution and diversification of the spheres of activity - economics, pol itic s , tech nology , etc. - ones that were originally subsumed under the religious sphere. We think as i f they had existed as such - in germ, one might say - in the very fi rs t societies. Now, this mode of reasoning re c al l s what was once fas hionable in physics. It was supposed in fact that matter was made u p of elementary parti cles, bonded to one another, and what was needed to divide it up and b reak it down w as a vast expenditure of energy, so as to free the particles. B ut it was perceived that the particles did not pre-exist as such and were not ' i mpri sone d ' wit hin matter that prevented them from budging. On the contrary , th ey were created and destroyed during very intense interactions that are constan tly occurring. In the same way we have every right to th ink that the very d i ffe rent domains of economics, politics, technology, etc., far from graduall y shak i ng off the domination of the re l igiou s or any other func­ us

back to a l iberation

tion, are conti nually being created and destroyed during the passage of h i story .

Or to

way, they are innov ations that h ave certai nly had their their origin, in the past. The i ndiv i d u al h imself is a brand­ new creature who dates from th e modern era . He i s not a kind of atom taken from the col lective matter of so-called primitive soc ieties who has ended up by acqu i ring his independence as this matter dimini shed i n size, once the god s had departed and the common consc iousness had ev aporated. In real ity evolu­ ,

put

it

another

equi valent, but not

tion i s less a re vel ation of what pre -e x i sted than an unforeseeable creation of what does not

yet

exist.

Let us c l ose this

parenthesis . The division o f l abo ur, b y s eparatin g out causes each one of u s to need others i n

functions and individual i zing persons,

Crimes and punishments

19

order to work, to carry on exchange, or to dominate. Thus a new kind of solidarity, organic solidarity, is formed. It is based upon the complementarity of roles and occupations. Durkheim noted: This social type relies upon principles so utterly different from the preceding type that it can only develop to the extent that the latter has vanished. Indeed individuals are distributed within it in groups that are no longer formed in terms of any ancestral relationship, but according to the special nature of the social activity to which they devote themselves. Their natural and necessary environment is no longer that in which they were born, but that of their profession. It is no longer blood relationship, whether real or fictitious, that determines the place of each one, but the function he fulfils. 34

More generally, a new attitude is emerging. Now more numerous, individuals communicate more and belong to very diverse groups. Although competition and the ' struggle for existence ' set them more drastically at odds with one another, they also increase the opportunities for contact. But, as is evident, the common consciousness becomes weaker, particular beliefs and sentiments proliferate and personal differences multiply. If, however, society does not disintegrate into a tangle of antagonistic beliefs and individuals seeking only their own interest, it is because consciousnesses converge upon one another. They find themselves in the same cult - the individual cult that replaces the cult of the group : ' As all the other beliefs and practices assume less and less religious a character, the individual becomes the object of a sort of religion . We carry on the worship of the dignity of the human person, which, like all strong acts of worship, has already acquired its superstitions. '35 This also imposes duties . As moral persons, and even simply as persons, we are obliged to conform to it. However, although it draws its strength from society, it links us less with society than with ourselves . Contrary to the cult of the group, which creates a social link, the cult of individuals therefore sanctions their breaking the link. The collective consciousness, drawn from the deeper reaches of the consciousnesses of individuals, becomes in some way the unconscious substratum of all solidarity. In saying this I may be moving away from Durk­ heim ' s idea, although one cannot escape this consequence. Durkheim stresses two things : first, the moral character of the social bond, and then the need for solidarity to which it corresponds. The latter either in a mechanical way brings together individuals possessing a common conscious­ ness, or in an organic way persons carrying on different but complementary activ ities. By using these terms, which after all are artificial , is not Durkheim pinpointing two forms of society that are fairly familiar? At the same time is he not saying that these two alone are fundamental? They cannot be economic forms, such as capitalism or slavery, or political, such as democracy or dictator­ ship, for the simple reason that the moral element in these is not decisive, but only secondary. It can never be repeated enough: for Durkheim, what relates to the economy or power in society remains subordinate. It is certain that mechanical solidarity refers to the vision of a confessional society. This would be the case in very simple , archaic societies, held together by a religion, and

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Religion, Nature and Society

whose members are at the same time believers, as well as the case of a Church or sect, or even parties inspired by a unique faith. They all have a creed, and gather round symbols universally recognized and strengthened by periodical ceremonies. For its part organic solidarity evokes the image of a professional society in which individuals exercise a precise occupation and use their abilities accord­ ing to the rules that appertain in a very specialized branch. These are rules that define what is competence in a particular field and allow coordination in full confidence with others exercising different activities. This is the case when several occupational organizations build their own tower block, or when medical consultants come together to make a diagnosis in a serious case. This revitalizes the representation of a society as a set of separate organs coopera­ ting together in a common task. We are reminded of the famous speech of Menenius Agrippa before the Roman plebs revolting against the aristocracy, which is taken up by Shakespeare in Coriolanus. The limbs accuse the stom­ ach of being idle, content to swallow down food, whilst all the other servants of the body are busy seeing or hearing, walking or thinking, and mutually assisting one another. To which the stomach retorts that it is most certainly true that it is the first to receive the food, but then it sends to each organ the natural sufficiency that allows it to live, and concludes: ' What you receive from me is the pick of everything, and you leave me only the rubbish. ' We must not make too much of this similarity between the solidarity of the bodily organs and that of occupations and functions that are separated. Let us rather think of the coherence of aims that emerges from it and the harmony in values that allows human beings to live together. According to Durkheim, both spell out a maxim that is categorical: ' Put yourself in a position to fulfil a definite function usefully. ' This leads us to burn what we once worshipped, advising disdainfu lly against what was once respected and sought after, namely, general culture. We substitute the ideal of the professional for that of the amateur, who dabbles in everything, exercising several arts or trades. We should not regret this. Durkheim declared: It appears to us that such a state of detachment and indeterminateness is somewhat anti-social. The man of parts, as he once was, is for us no more than a dilettante, and we accord no moral value to dilettantism. Rather do we perceive perfection in the competent man, one who seeks not to be complete but to be productive, one who has a well-defined job to which he devotes himself, and carries out his task, ploughing his single furrow. 36

The passage is admirable for its preciseness and powerful expression. In Durkheim ' s view, the tendency that distinguishes modern society is the pro­ fessionalization of life. Whether it be in the economic , the scientific or the political field, everywhere society ensures the superiority of competence and of a rationality limited in its application. Only this exists, in fact, to draw closer together and integrate classes or groups that isolate themselves and oppose one another. Only education directed towards an occupation is favour­ able to the development of the individual whilst at the same time disciplining

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him - just as the exercise of a special activity gives the individual a sense of autonomy and choice. A morality emerges which, as compared with that of confessional societies possesses something more human, and consequently more rational, about it. It does not cause our activity to depend upon ends that do not directly concern us. It does not make us the servants of some ideal powers completely different in nature from ourselves , powers who follow their own course without heeding the interests of men. It requires us only to be charitable and just towards our fellow-men, to fulfil our task well, to work towards a state where everyone is called to fulfil the function he performs best and will receive a just reward for his efforts. 37

Put more simply still : to each according to his ability. The trend that is emerging through the economic anarchy of the market and the upheavals of expanding industry is summed up in this formula. According to Durkheim, there was no other way to resolve the ' social question' that was agitating France than to hasten the coming of the conditions in which this formula can be realized. Between a political economy that j ustifies the class struggle - 'to each according to his needs ' - and mass psychology that predicts uncon­ 38 trollable revolts, sociology extols the just mean between peace among occu­ pations and a reasonable individualism. It can be stated that in one sense it 39 opposes, and is a substitute for, socialism. Yet in another sense it extends certain trends in socialism that expect the regeneration of a society from the moralization and organization of labour, from working people associating together. 40

The consciousness of conformity and the conformity of consciousnesses

Now we have firmly grasped this, we can make progress in our discussion. It is no longer a matter of knowing what these types of solidarity consist of, nor what kind of societies they reflect. We must first explain why each ensures the maintenance of a consensus among the members of a group, and then what reasons exist for the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity. The two questions are independent of each other and I shall deal with them consecu­ tively. It is no easy matter, as you will see. In my exposition I can merely hope for clarity, sticking as far as possible to factual proofs. From the facts I shall select those that are most evident and simple. It is important from the outset to discover the source of the consensus that unites individuals in a society, making them solidly linked to one another and to that society . It is indisputable that the constraints of the physical world, the need to cooperate together, and to exchange in order to satisfy the needs of existence, are imposed upon everyone. Nevertheless these constraints remain ineffectual so long as they have not been interiorized. Their action must really take place inside human beings, and induce them to seek that 'inner

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41 solidarity ' where they meet spontaneously together, animated by similar feel­ ings and forming unanimous judgements. This 'innemess ' is explained by the play of influences inclining them to think in a similar way, avoiding any disharmony among themselves, or, more precisely, by a mechanism of conformity. In fact we all know that a social cohesion exists whose cause can be traced to a certain conformity of each indiv idual consciousness to a common type, which is none other than the psychological type of society. Indeed under these conditions all members of the group are not only individually attracted to one another because they resemble one another, but they are also linked to what is the condition for the existence of this collective type, that is, to 42 the soc iety that they form by coming together.

In other words, the idea that conformity is the source of our relationships, that which causes their cohesion, is at the heart of Durkheim ' s theory. We are actors in and full members of a society, so long as we proceed along the lines of conformity . What is more, the importance of conformity derives from the very nature of human consciousness. According to Durkheim, each one of us is dual. On the one hand, we possess a collective consciousness embracing beliefs and representations we hold in common with others, either by tradition or by consent. On the other, we possess an individual consciousness that includes the ideas and perceptions peculiar to us that we have acquired through experience or through reason. These two states of consciousness are split, 43 and oppose each other; our existence would be greatly disturbed if society did not harmonize them both. It succeeds in doing so, either through individual consciousness conforming to the collective consciousness, or by a conformity of 44 individual consciousnesses that sustain and complement one another. Cut­ ting out all the subtleties, one can recognize that the former would lead to mechanical, and the latter to organic solidarity . This signifies that the strength of conformity and its base in consciousness are essential to society. Here, however, a problem is posed: how is one to know this? Neither states of consciousness nor moral facts lend themselves easily to direct observation. In order to recognize them and study them scientifically , we must look for some external indication. According to Durkheim this is provided for us by j uridical laws, which have this in common with prescriptions and pro­ hibitions: they are obligatory and sanctioned by the community. They define formally the offence or crime committed by an individual and so regulate the punishment that respect for the law is re-established. The annals of the law are therefore those of humankind' s moral consciousness, the collection of the traces of its evolution that remain from its timid beginnings up to the present day. Although the law arouses passions and justifies the worst injustices, it is held to embody what has been most deeply thought out and what is most impersonal in society. The ' thou shalt' that is addressed to each individual takes on an irrevocable meaning as soon as it is uttered, and everybody is obliged to understand it in the same way. First of all, of what do crimes consist? What can there be in common between such varied offences as homicide, theft, treason, incest, drug abuse,

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abandoning a child, etc .? It is plain that they all consist of a deviation from the norm or rule. This deviation strikes at prevalent values and beliefs. It is of l ittle importance that at the same time interests are damaged, states of happiness destroyed, lives wiped out and harmful effects produced. The es­ sential point is that the collective consciousness has been offended and intense feelings have been wounded. Durkheim warned us: But by the mere fact that a sentiment, whatever may be its origin and purpose, is found in every consciousness and endowed with a certain degree of strength and prec ision, every act that disturbs it is a crime. Present-day psychology is increasingly turning back to Spinoza's idea that things are good because we like them, rather than that we like them because they are good. What is primary is the tendency and disposition: pleasure and pain are only facts derived from this. The same holds § OOd for social life. An act is 4 socially ev il because it is rejected by society .

On this view, we should not, for example , say that people who take drugs are committing a deviant act because they are taking a substance dangerou s to themselves and harmful to others. The act is a dev iant and criminal one because it offends against the norm and shocks the common consciousness. If the latter is permi ssive, it will tolerate any kind of offence or crime, and may even laud it to the skies. Tolerance of failure to obey the rules. and of individual nonconformism, can be a philosophical principle. Durkheim in­ clined rather to place it among the signs of an asthenia of the consciousness and of the collective sentiments. Now, this supposition necessarily impl ies another: that punishment has as its purpose to stimulate what has grown weaker and to re-establish the adherence of each individual to the norms and values of society. It seeks less ' the death of a sinner' or punishment for his or her actions than the restoration in ' virtuous' people of confidence in their own actions. Rather than discourage those that become deviants, one seeks to justify and encourage those that conform. Thus crime allows a society to prove to itself that it is alive and strong, and at the very right moment. It must not evade the obligation to punish, even though this is essentially arbitrary, since it is only a question of a proof that nothing objective validates or invalidates. As Parsons observes: 'Punishment is thus a kind of declaration that "you are either with us or against us," and tends to mobilize the sentiments of solidarity with the group in the interest of continuing conformity. A good deal of it therefore is not directed at the criminal himself, but at the others who might potentially become criminals. •46 In this sense - and this is what is important here - all crimes and punish­ ments are instruments for cohesion. Insofar as juridical rules are general instructions to act or refrain from acting in a certain way, two categories of rules can be distinguished, the first penal, the second civil or restitlltory. The former assert that beliefs or powerful feelings have been wounded; a penalty or a reprimand is imposed on those who have committed such a crime. The sanction strikes at their honour or family, at their liberty or life, and is intended to make them suffer. The rules in the second category relate merely to the need to respect certain norms and appearances so that all the wheels of the

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social machine - politics, industry , commerce - continue to tum . Thus impos­ ing a sentence entailing the payment of damages and interest may be inde­ pendent of any penal sanction. Its sole aim is to restore those relationships in society that have strayed from the norm. The penal laws are possibly the most ancient. According to Durkheim, they correspond to a state of mechanical solidarity . The restitutory laws, more recent, institute organic solidarity. Leaving out the details in order to arrive at the substance, we can perceive that both types, in spite of their differences, contribute to the same goal of society: to reproduce itself in an identical way. By slightly shifting the emphasis, as I am doing, without modifying the essen­ tial, what does one observe? The two types of rule rest upon two types of conformity , the one repressive, the other restitutory . This entails at least one not inconsiderable implication. If we pose the question as to whether we know if legal rules express the reality of the consciousness and the morality of living, the answer is: doubtless not. A gap still persists between the sentiments and reasoning of individuals and juridical considerations and procedures. How­ ever, one cannot doubt that the latter represent certain ideals in society and impose a uniform model for relationships between individuals. Thus they require conformity to an ideal. It is probably in this sense that Durkheim 's distinction really applies. And his choice of the law as the expression of the consciousness and morality in living, although indefensible, is justified by this fact. Generally a repressive conformity assumes that a collective consciousness is present through the language, symbols and practices that each individual shares - a consciousness sustained by participating in it. This idea is reinforced if one goes back to pre-modern societies, where a religious faith inspired them and invested them with a sacred authority . Thus in most of the civilizations of India, Egypt and Judaea, and even in Rome, laws had a sacred character and the priests administered justice. Even where it was exercised in tribal assemblies or by the people, it was held that the laws emanated from a god or were founded on an inviolable tradition. The guilty were punished for having harmed the collectivity : a breach of morality, an offence against religion, a disdain for authority, etc. This can be verified in the B ible, in the Twelve Tables of Rome, and among the Germanic tribes. In Athens Socrates was condemned for having defied the gods and corrupted youth. Prescription and prohibitions were firmly fixed, leaving no room for individual interpretation. The requirement of universal acceptance prevented anyone from believing he was exempt. Nietzsche formulated as follows the imperative that each indi­ vidual has to make his own: ' You shall obey, in every respect and over a long period of time, otherwise you will perish, and lose all respect for yourself. ' Without such obedience the virtues of consciousness are dissipated and the unity of the community is flawed. Doubt follows a tortuous path, compromi­ sing the moral force of the rules. Things happen in this way in all confessional societies that are held together by a doctrine that requires complete and utter compliance.

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Crime, and anything similar, signals a lowering of the moral fibre, a de­ crease in the eagerness with which the prescripts are respected and the pro­ hibitions defended. To everybody it presages the weakening of the collective consciousness in the one who commits the crime, and also in those who suffer by it, like a slack spring that no longer responds. The common norms and institutions are not called into question. Yet they seem to have lost their authority; they are believed in less , or not at all. Crime is therefore the 47 symptom of an apathy among the members of the group : they uphold their tradition with less vigour and participate only half-heartedly in the perfor­ mance of their duties. Crime entails uncertainty, fostering insecurity in each individual. Following in the steps of believers who tum away from their rituals, and citizens who do not vote , in refusing to participate criminals and deviants impoverish the very springs that water social life, Durkheim asserts : ' Every strong state of consciousness is a source of life; it is an essential factor in our general vitality. Consequently all that tends to weaken it diminishes and depresses us. The result is an impression of being disturbed and upset, similar 48 to what we feel when an important function is halted or slows down. ' Janet once described these states of psychological weakness whose presence can be recognized in certain neuroses; here it affects the whole group. Let us say for the time being that Durkheim, just like Janet moreover, made them a cause. We shall see the significance of this for our argument. Thus the collec­ tive consciousness runs a danger of breaking up through the lack of a prompt response to the particular extent of the threat. Now, the best way of fighting indifference and apathy is to mobilize one 's passions and symbols. This sug­ gests a repression that inflicts upon the dev iant suffering not proportionate to his or her act, but to the group 's need to recharge its energy and vitality. The value of the punishment lies in this possibility of directing the feelings of everybody against one individual , in order to restore to the rule that has been attacked the necessary intensity, the tension that has been lost. We cannot therefore be content with stating, as does Raymond Aron, that 49 ' the function of punishment is to satisfy the common consciousness ' . Punish­ ment rather resembles a religious ritual, where good and evil are put on stage. It rouses the social field to a white heat, incensing passions everybody feels, but one single individual endures at their peak. Its function is therefore cathartic: it eliminates crime or deviance as one would a sickness or disturb­ ance of the bodily humours. In the first place - and this was Durkheim ' s conviction - punishment consists of a reaction of passionate feeling; judge­ ment only follows later. This characteristic is all the more apparent when societies are less developed and carry out sentences before the assembled people . Public stoning, lynching and branding restore to the people the in­ crease in confidence and vitality that is expected. Durkheim wrote that these peoples: punish fo r the sake of punishing, causing the guilty person t o suffer solely for the sake of suffering, and without expecting any advantage for themselves

from the suffering they inflict upon him . . . When the punishment is applied solely to people, it often extends well beyond the guilty person and strikes

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In this sense the group always aspires to take its revenge, for the objective reasons for what threatens it, diminishing its vitality, are of no interest to it. It knows which prescript or prohibition has been violated, and seeks the opportunity to re-establish its authority over everybody. Truth is not always well served, but the collective consciousness emerges from it purified and reinvigorated, in short, purged. It follows that one may never dismiss this factor of passionate feeling required to restore common security and con­ fidence . It is a covert means of deriving a certain degree of compensation for all the deprivation imposed by respecting the prohibitions that forbid the pleasures of adultery or incest, or acts of violence against those we hate, or simply the consumption of a certain food. It is also a way of making those who have dared to transgress ' pay for ' the enjoyment the forbidden fruit may have procured them. In whatever circumstances or culture, punishment always serves to take revenge upon some person present here and now by making her or him expiate a past crime . The rigour of punishments when regimes change, ranging from death to ostracism, attests to thi s, when supporters of the regime that has collapsed are struck down. Among the examples are the former officers and soldiers of Napoleon for the Revolution, or hostages in contem­ porary history for the colonialism of their fathers, not to speak of the witch hunts that periodically occur. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth : the law of talion is also a law of vengeance. To ensure the latter applies, penal law defines the crime in minute detail, but not the punishment, which is left to the discretion of the col lectivity that has been harmed. What determines the punishment, therefore , is neither the nature nor the gravity of the acts, but the strength of emotion they have aroused. How can we mistake Durkheim 's view on this, after reading this passage, which is even more trenchant: since the sentiments that crime offends within a single society are the most

universally collective ones of al l, since they represent especially powerful

states of the common consciousness, they cannot possibly brook any oppo­ sition. Above all, if this opposition is not purely theoretical, if it asserts itself not on ly in words but deeds , since it then rises to a peak, we cannot fail to

react against it passionately . A mere re-establ ishment of the order that has been dis turbed cannot suffice. We need a more v iolent form of satisfaction. The force that the crime has come up against is too intense for it to react with

so much moderation. Indeed it could not do so w ithout becoming weakened, for it is thanks to the intensity of its reaction that it recovers , maintaining the 51 same level of vital ity .

These resounding phrases, as passionate as the passionate feeling they de­ pict, should soften the reputation of an author who is notoriously dry to read, particularly among those who have not done so, or who on reading him, have not paid heed to his words . Against apathy, a state of psychological weakness, vengeance arouses a state of psychological strength and serves as a remedy. Everything is explained here by the circumstances of group psychology : this

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postulates that the intensity of a feeling or belief increases in proportion to the extent that these are shared by a greater number of people that have a mutual relationship. Durkheim takes up this postulate, which was established by Espi­ nas in the first work ever written regarding animal societies. Combined with the idea of a fluctuation between psychological strength and weakness, it serves to explain the excessive character of collective reactions. It also shows why , across the diversity and the evolution of societies, punishment has remained what it was for our forefathers: an act of public vindication. For ' what we are avenging, and what the criminal is expiating, is the outrage to morality ' . 52 Certainly we no longer express ourselves in this way. The term morality has fallen into disuse or disrepute, and we are forced to a greater broadminded­ ness. Yet, beneath our delicacy of expression and our understanding, our passions still l urk. They are all the more blind because we refuse to bring them to the light of day, and repress instead of educating them. ' Everything must be done in a cool and self-possessed way,' Flaubert wrote to Louise Colet. In any case the punishment is applied in such a way as to make the members of the group bind themselves even more to the type of collectiv ity and stress their mutual similarities. The task of conforming is carried out all the better when societies have well-defined norms and clear prescripts. ' Thou shalt not kill ' , 'Thou shalt not commit adultery ' - these duties are formulated clearly and succintly. Every individual knows them and ascribes the same meaning to them through hearing them repeated. Moreover, the pressure to conform is all the greater when the common beliefs and feelings are greater in number than those that belong to individuals alone. Then the pressure leads to solid­ arity, and thus to a consensus that may be termed genuine. By this I mean that the agreement of individuals about the opinions and actions of the group is direct and complete. Their ' I ' at the same time expresses a ' we ' that is its living, vitalizing basis. It is recognizable in the unanimous attitude towards crime and the application of punishment. This is all the more so because the act of punishment procures enjoyment and benefit that could not be obtained otherwise: it allows everybody to gain approval because one single individual has been blamed. ' B ut the intense excitement is the same. We may therefore assume that the explanation for joyful rituals may also be applicable to sad ones, just by reversing the terms. ' 5 3 This harmony resembles what one might call in other circumstances ident­ ification, so much so that one might almost mistake the one for the other. But this is not the case. Everything occurs within a clear, immediate consciousness for which no past experience has prepared it, or obscured it. Whatever it may be, its effects are beneficial. It rewards those who respect and defend the common rules by giving them that additional energy they require . From Durkheim ' s viewpoint repressive conformity could well be the supreme task of archaic societies. Today we know these societies, and our own, better, and this allows us to refine the hypothesis. If it is not true, it nevertheless remains evocative. We shall now tackle the second type, that of restrictive conformity. It disposes individuals exercising different occupations and playing different roles to find

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cohesion among themselves. This is observable in modem societies in which the division of labour is predominant. Its expansion has inevitably had a concomitant proliferation of rules that appertain to each occupation or func­ tion . Such a division can only progress at the expense of the strength of common beliefs and sentiments . These, which make up the collective con­ sciousness, are still present, but more discreetly and more imprecisely . Con­ sequently the psychological type of society is blurred, becoming more abstract and losing its clear-cut contours. Each individual is free to interpret beliefs according to circumstances and to put them into practice according to personal convenience. As the collectivity grows and diversifies it is less and less possible to maintain respect for norms and ensure individuals ' adherence to them. Durkheim stated: The more general the common consciousness becomes, the more scope it leaves for indiv idual variations . When God is remote from things and men, his action does not extend to every moment of time and to everything. Only abstract rules are fixed, and these can be freely applied in different way s . Even then they have neither the same ascendancy nor the same strength of res istance . s4

Hence the passionate reaction of vengeance for failure to observe the rules fails to be sparked off, not through a lack of passion, but through lack of an object on which to focus. In a social space in which individuals go about their separate occupations, the important thing is to allow them to reproduce them­ selves and differentiate from one another. When an error or an act of deviance occurs, the sole possibility is to restore things to order. Thus for their perpet­ rator this means continuing to fulfil the function that society has assigned him. So the punishments for commercial theft and admini strative fraud are aimed above all at putting right the damage caused and making the law respected. They are not aimed at inflicting suffering upon the miscreant for having transgressed the rule, but at re-establishing the rule of law . They are even applied by a special form of jurisdiction, an administrative or appeal court, and not by the community coming together as both party to the action and its judge. Such a procedure is possible insofar as the crime does not impact upon deep moral feelings, and no general sanction is laid down. In brief, rules where sanctions are restitutory either constitute no part at all of the collective consciousness, or s ubsist in it in only a weak state . Repressive law corresponds to what is the heart and centre of the common consciousness.

Purely moral rules are already a less central part of it. Lastly , restitutory law springs from the farthest zones of consciousness and extends well beyond ss them . The more it becomes truly itself, the more it takes its distance.

Should we understand that our emotions are less involved? Doubtless this is the case. The rules of mutual dependence as defined by the various kinds of law, commercial, domestic and constitutional, describe social links in a definite sphere. This avoids conflicts and allows institutions to function nor­ mally, in spite of a diversity of individuals, roles and occupations. However, the violation of these rules does not reach down ' to touch to the quick the

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common spirit of society, nor, at least not usually, that of these special groups. Consequently the infringement cannot provoke more than a very moderate reaction. All that we require is for the functions to work together in a regular fashion . Thus if this regularity is disturbed, we are satisfied if it is re­ established. '56 In other words the rule and consciousness of the rule have become two distinct things. Let us, however, note the difference upon which Durkheim indefatigably insists. Repressive conformity calls into play the central area of the collective consciousness, which is also its sacred part, at a time when that part is in direct contact with the group. Thus the behaviour of each individual is determined, and any breach of conduct goes beyond the individual, threatening society and even the universal order. This is because such a breach could cause the rain to cease to fall, render hunting and fishing barren, and entail the extinction of the whole group. (In the same way, a dissident is said to be the enemy of the people, ruining the revolution and impeding the course of history ! ) When there is a risk of such things occurring, it is a sign that customs and prohibitions have been infringed. No one is spared; all individuals feel themselves guilty and wonder: ' What have I done? What prescript have I violated? What price is to be paid for it? ' In one sense, expiation punishes criminals as much as the group punishes itself through them. This continues to be true in all confessional societies, nowadays as in the past, although in a more covert manner. On the other hand, restitutory conformity, which only lightly touches the soul of a society, aims above all at maintaining a balance between numerous individual conscious­ nesses. It is a matter of respecting certain major principles and of remaining within certain bounds. Once this is done, each individual is free to follow her or his own rules, to follow personal variations from them, on condition that these do not stray beyond a certain point at which the cohesion and the unity of society are put at risk. The criminal, the drug addict, the fraudster and the deviant become a threat as soon as a certain mean has been exceeded. Thus the first type of conformity , which is repressive, is aimed at each individual, and can be called determinist. The second type , restitutory, is aimed at the group as a whole without exactly imposing a constraint upon the individual. It can be termed statistical. However, it would be a miracle if the division of labour maintained such a conformity without hindrance and was able to re-establish it without difficulty. Inevitably the diversification of occupations and the multiplying of exchanges produce undesirable consequences, ripping social cohesion apart. Instead of ending up with forms of solidarity, they bring with them the dissent and conflicts peculiar to modem society. Durkheim observes that bankruptcies or the class struggle between capitalists and workers are the fruits of the divi­ sion of labour that accompanies industrialization . Thus, far from preserving the integrity of norms and enhancing their authority over individuals, it favours dispersion and divergence. These are anomies that bring about confu­ sion in rules and functions - in short, a dysfunctioning within the body

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57 social. The idea is plain: the mechanism that was to ensure its good health malfunctions, becoming a cause of illnesses and malignant mutations. Dur­ kheim asserted: In the same way cancer and tuberculosis increase the diversity of the organic tissues without it being possible to see in this a fresh specialization of the biological functions. In all these cases there is no allocation of a common function, but within the organism, whether it is individual or social, is formed another one that seeks to live at the expense of the first one. There is even no function at all, for a way of acting does not deserve that term unless it 58 concerts with others to maintain life generally .

In other words, this reproduction of individuals in society has a quality of anomie because it generates tension instead of harmony, or even an organism ' other' in its nature, foreign, and not the one that it should reproduce. We have seen this as regards the relationships between capital and labour: it is not consensus, but the struggle between workers and bosses that results. Even worse, the high suicide rate in present-day society demonstrates that the division of labour, far from stimulating individuals to live, incites them to seek their own death. If the collectivity imposes excessive demands or does not succeed in gaining respect for its norms, anomie sets in. Durkheim makes this the cause of a spate of suicides. All individuals are egotistical creatures, swayed by their desires, eager for pleasure and never satisfied. Normally society trains us to discipline our inclinations, mastering our desires and renouncing pleasure in order to fulfil duties of a higher nature. It leads us to seek satisfactions of a different order, occupational or intellec­ tual, through our common life, the gratitude and sympathy of our fellows. Voluntary homicides characterized by anomie are allegedly due to an absence of collective feelings and beliefs, to a lack of solidarity that leaves the indi­ vidual defenceless. Nothing, or almost nothing, then counterbalances egotist­ ical tendencies. Detached from the group, individuals are thrown back on their own resources, like children whose parents no longer look after them. They no longer follow firmly laid-down rules. No longer does any obligation constrain them. They no longer have any recognized place in the world, or goal that protects them against their own inner disarray - not to mention the fact that in a prosperous society everything gives them the impression they can follow their personal inclinations. They are c alled upon to succeed, even if this is to the detriment of others. Yet the more they depend upon themselves, the more they feel the lack of satisfaction of their boundless desires, coupled with a satisfaction, sad and abstract because it is shared with nobody else. The uncertainties of success and the consequences of failure are, because of this, the harder to bear. Thus the suicide rate goes up in periods of economic well-being because of increa­ sed competition, appetites increasingly whetted, and personal defeats all the more keenly felt. Bougie sums it up: ' Lack of any framework, disintegration, the absence of any order to keep each individual in his place and sustain him, 59 whilst prescribing his task: this is the deep-rooted cause of suicide. ' Let us admit this is so, but on condition, incidentally, that we recognize that once

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again Durkheim ' is transgressing his own methodological rule by explaining suicide in terms of a diathesis inherent in the psychology of an individual ' , 60 since the unconstrained desire of the individual leads him to suicide if it is not sublimated by common goals or disciplined by social norms. It is true that Durkheim transgresses the rule also because he makes an individual act, a response to a common situation, out of what is undoubtedly a social act. Goethe ' s novel The Sorrows of young Werther, published two centuries ago, sparked off an epidemic of suic ides throughout Europe. It was on such a scale that in several countries the authorities became worried and banned the sale of the book. Philips , an American sociologist, has established similar facts. When the story of a dramatic suicide is spread over the newspa­ pers it is immediately followed by numerous others in the area where those newspapers circulate . Thus between 1 947 and 1 968 suicide statistics in the United States show that for each one of these stories in the press, the average number of suicides grew by 58 over two months. It could be said that each story brought about the death of a further 58 persons, by showing them, so to speak, the path to follow. But the same sociologist has drawn out an even more surprising conse­ quence. For family or economic reasons, such as shame or the insurance policy that would not be paid out to their relatives, some candidates for suicide disguise their self-willed death, making it look accidental . A car or plane crash gives them the means of doing so. The frequency of such ' accidents ' also increases considerably after publication in the press has highlighted a suicide, over the whole region where the newspapers are sold. Moreover, these acci­ dents, occurring under certain influences, tum out to be more v iolent than if they were the result of chance . This is because the intention to die incites people to take the most foolish risks. Here too the statistics speak for them­ selves : the number of persons killed in such accidents, therefore, after the publication in the press of a suicide story, is three times greater than in the 61 week preceding thi s publication. These investigations strengthen our own view of suicide. Although anomic, suicide none the less results from a sug­ gestion coming from the environment in which one lives. We can see in this the sign of a society that, through its news network, causes an increase in a type of act that it does not explicitly condemn, and which can even correspond to some of the values it holds . Organic solidarity can only be maintained by limiting the opportunities for anomie to exist. How can it be avoided, and once it has broken out like a forest fire, how can it be controlled? Only the force of conformity can succeed in doing so. If a conflict occurs or acts of deviance arise, this force is immedi ­ ately unleashed in order to counter them. On a very simple level we observe it when several persons are engaged in a task that requires a decision, whether it is as a jury in a court of law or on a committee of experts . If one person contradicts, raising objections, and persists in disagreement, immediately the rest seek to reduce him or her to silence and to make him or her bow to their authority. Durkheim expounded upon the importance of such a force, whose

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task is to oppose everything that divides a society and turn its members into specialists : 'Undoubtedly we must also work towards realizing within our­ selves the collective type, in so far as it exists. There are common sentiments and ideas without which, as one says, one is not a human being. The rule prescribing that we should specialize remains limited by the opposite rule. ' 62 At this stage it becomes clear that if we examine what kind of conformity it is that would support this ' opposite rule ' , we see that in order for it to be effective it prevails at two levels: first, within each local group, each special role or occupation. The contacts and closeness between those who share the same way of thinking and acting and, for example, carrying on the same occupation, entail a certain uniformity . They learn how to compare themselves with one another, and how to judge the success or failure of an action, by basing themselves on exact norms. Not infrequently they set up for themselves a code and punish any infringement of it, such as when scientists falsify the results of their experiments, or doctors break their Hippocratic oath, etc. These specialized groups have therefore a tendency to create their own common morality ; the individuals who share in it conform with one another because they share the same interests, beliefs and values, etc. All this promotes professional consciousness, respect for duties towards one another, and social cohesion: Where restitutory law is very developed , for each profession a professional morality exists. Within the same group of workers a public opinion exists, diffused throughout this limited body which , despite the lack of any legal sanctions, is nevertheless obeyed. There are customs and u sages common to the same group of functionaries which none can infringe without incurring 6 the reprimand of the corporation. 3

B ut then another problem is posed, and one of considerable proportions. Although the customs of a group, and conformity to its norms, draw its members closer together, they distance it from other groups and oppose it to them. As soon as an esprit de corps or a regional patriotism are reinforced, immediately a strong hostility arises towards other social entities or regions. Would not special codes of morality and their sectarian interests generate disorder and anomie rather than cohesion in a society? What can prevent the various collectivities from distancing themselves from one another, and how does one succeed in reuniting them? As you are aware, we cannot seek the answer to these questions in the constraint exercised by a State that rules over them or in an economic system that obliges them to associate together in order to carry on exchange and production. This would run counter to Durkheim ' s theory b y which the separate parts of a single society are united by a moral factor. The solution that he recommends is therefore different. I will attempt to outline it. The conformity that arises within each division of society will only ensure cohesion and harmony among its members if it is complete. This means that it is extended by an agreement between individuals that exercises a different but complementary function. It is realized that in order to build bridges and fill in any moral gaps such an agreement must be explicit. When the transcendent element or tradition that ensures the continuity of reciprocal

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obligations grows weaker, something important has been lost. B ut it is not entirely lost: even distantly, a collective consciousness subsists, which shapes the ideas and behaviour of individuals, offering them a framework within which they can rediscover a common language, feelings and purposes. How­ ever, this must be expressed in something more formal and concrete. Nevertheless, this set of common norms impels each single individual, from within herself or himself, so to speak, to seek a consensus and adhere to it. It is like a contract, which binds as strongly as does a tradition, if it is drawn up in the correct and appropriate form. Durkheim concludes : It is undoubtedly incorrect to believe that all social relationships can be reduced to a contract, all the more so because a contract assumes the exist­

ence of something other than itself. However, there are special ties that originate in the will of individuals. There is a consensus of a certain kind that is expressed in contracts and that, in the higher species, represents an . 64 " th e general consensus. important fact m

This consensus is not obtained without a certain influence being exerted over the parties, who convince themselves of the need to trust one another. But this arises from the influence they undergo of their collective beliefs and senti­ ments. In fact, here we are very close to the idea of the American psychologist Festinger, according to whom the beliefs and sentiments in a �oup pursuing a common end spontaneously generate pressure for uniformity. 65 This comes into action immediately deviance or conflict occurs, allowing the group to reaffirm its consensus or its ideas and moral values and to reintegrate those who are going astray. This is the way Durkheim conceives the remedy lies for suicide arising from anomie and for other forms of deviance. Thus one can see that restitutory conformity has become the principle of cohesion in modern societies. Repressive conformity preceded restitutory conformity in time, j ust as mech­ anical solidarity, which stems from repressive conformity, probably preceded the organic solidarity that restitutory conformity accounts for. The logic of societies based on repressive conformity has given way to a logic of societies based on restitutory conformity. How is this demonstrated? It is through the transition from penal law to civil law in the course of historical evolution. Durkheim tries to convince us of this by a close examination of archaic and modem forms of legislation - I do not possess the necessary competence to pass judgement on this. For the moment the only hesitation I have arises from the fact that this view suggests a society of deceptive simplicity. Any real, historical society undoubtedly practises several modes of establishing consen­ sus among its members, just as it uses several modes of exchange and produc­ tion. Side by side with the most advanced societies we see existing the most traditional forms of artisanry. Thus, side by side with restitutory conformity, we may indeed also well see repressive conformity flourish. It may even be assumed that both are complementary and coexist in every society : the one to avoid a lowering of its energy and ' body tone ' towards apathy , the other to

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maintain its norms and values that are threatened by anomie . Do not good reasons lead us to associate repressive conformity with our political and religious institutions, and restitutory conformity with economic and adminis­ trative affairs? Yet what appears to me to be most convincing is the confidence that Durkheim places in both to rectify any falling away from the norms, to cure any individual shortcomings, and to put an end to social crises. The word ' shortcomings ' , which I quoted from Durkheim, says much about this. It is not surprising that a thinker who lived before the First World War displayed such pacifism, confident that the invigorating qualities of a life in society lived to the full , that is, a moral one, would spare France the agonies of a social revolution and the sufferings arising from unchecked individualism, for which misfortunes it was up to a point itself guilty. Diderot' s phrase in the preface to his Fils Nature/ occurs to me: 'Only the wicked person remains alone. ' Traces of this pacifism are to be found, for example, in Parsons or Habermas, but for different reasons. However, it is less this pacific character that makes Durkheim ' s confidence so little plausible than the experience of history itself, which at some time was bound to give it the lie . Crimes and punishments that were thought to have ensured the moral cohesion of societies have revealed later a more pernicious facet. It was the fate of Marcel Mauss, Durkheim's nephew and collaborator, and his spiritual heir, to discover this in 1 936. Aghast at the Nazi ceremonies at Nuremberg, not yet knowing that these same Nazis would force him to wear the yellow Star of David like his medieval ancestors, he wrote to a Norwegian sociologist: That great modem societies, which moreover have more or less emerged from the Middle Ages, can be acted upon by suggestion, just as are Australian aborigines by their dances and by being generally stirred up like a children's game, is something that we [Durkheim and his school - Author] had really not foreseen. A relapse into the primitive had not been the object of our thinking. We had contented ourselves with a few allusions to states experi­ enced by crowds, whereas this was something quite different. We had been content also to prove that it was in the collective spirit that the individual could find the basis and sustenance for his liberty, independence, and per­ sonality, as well as his critical spirit. All in all, we had not reckoned with 66 these new and extraordinary means.

What can we add to these lines? Poignant they certainly are, but also what a confession! Here is a man of great integrity, who has studied the most diverse societies, convinced by the idea that they were machines for the creation of gods. And suddenly comes the revelation that they are also capable of fabric­ ating demons, that the divine machine can change into a satanic machine. In a state of lucid terror, he finds this integration and harmony that he had so vaunted as a principle of life could be also a source of oppression and a principle of death for members of a society. Moreover, how could he not have observed this return to the primitive - and to childhood, if one sticks literally to his words - that was staring him in the face? We will not speak of the homage that v irtue pays to vice. Mauss acknowledged that the sociological

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school had been inspired by crowd psychology without having followed it through to the end, that is, without taking seriously what already in Durk­ heim ' s lifetime psychology had predicted. Now, it was indeed a matter of ' something quite different' . A picture composed in minute detail of psycho­ logical and social life crumbled away . Moreover, some years later, Mauss was to conclude his thoughts as follows: 'I think this is a veritable tragedy for us, too overwhelming confirmation of things we had pointed out, and proof that we should have expected this confirmation through evil rather than good. ' Did he mean that conformity and harmony in any collectivity, which they had so long advocated, end in a state of evi l rather than well-being? I cannot make up my mind. Let us pass quickly over the Messianic aspect of the reason that incites Mauss to compare the Australian aborigines to the Nazis, just as it had incited Proust to compare the military men who had condemned Dreyfus to Apache Indians. It is why we are moved to invoke these ' savage' peoples, whom we normally admire, every time a 'civilized' people commits incon­ ceivable atrocities. None of these primitive peoples was ever so docile nor did it exterminate several different peoples in an outburst of collective enthusiasm. Mauss, who had spoken about them with such tenderness of feeling knew this well . But we cannot gloss over the fact that, in spite of repeated experiences, this reversion to the primitive, which reveals a terrifying weakness at the very heart of the theory of society, remains beyond the scope of our thinking about societies in general. What should we conclude from that? If reversion there is, it magnifies certain aspects of our common life that we condemn. That is to say , the retention in the present of the negative character of its stability and uniformity, and proj ection into the future of the other part, solidarity and unity - to some degree, the more noble part. Now, on this point Durkheim ' s ideas, like those of Marx, moreover, have been swept away by the wind of the holocausts. At least this question can be raised when we read Mauss's letter of premonition, and can answer that, in the sciences, it is always the tests of history that are decisive.

3

A science difficult to name

From one society to another

Although it is now unfashionable , the not uninteresting question has been argued as to whether Durkheim was a conservative or a reformer. He was a Jacobin, and that says it all. He would certainly not have repudiated the words spoken by Robespierre on 1 8 Aoreal: ' The crowning task for society would be to create in man, as regards morals, an unerring instinct that, without the tardy intervention of the reason, would incline him to do good and shun evil; for the individual reason within each man led astray by his passions is often like a sophist pleading a cause . ' And in order to make his meaning perfectly clear the Revolutionary leader added: ' What produces or replaces this precious instinct, what compensates for the shortcomings of human authority, is the sentiment of religion. ' From every viewpoint, and with the greatest ease in the world, conformity is the unseen source of this instinct of a new kind. The capital importance assigned to it and the forms it has assumed are perhaps the most significant feature of our civilization. Am I nevertheless right to set out with such a wealth of detail how conformity generates and explains solidarity? After all, a number of its aspects form part of common sense, and we are familiar with them. They may have already been part of it before it began to be a concern of sociology. Yet I seem to have thrown new light upon them and pinpointed some new aspects. I must confess I was surprised by the evidence of psychological causes in social life as Durkheim conceived it. One cannot fail to have noticed just how greatly his language is shot through with them and incline him to be amiably subjective. He very often indulges in introspection in order to sketch out with greater veri similitude the psychological type that he imagines to be peculiar to a given society. We should now proceed further. We have answered the first question, and explained mechanical and organic solidarity by the kind of conformity peculiar to each type. Now we arrive at the second question: why does the passage from one form of solidarity to the other occur? How does it come about that an initially homogeneous society is transformed into a hetero-

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geneous one such as our own, in which the family, religion, industrial life and functions are so autonomous and so narrowly specialized? No one has found the incontrovertible causes of such an evolution, and no one any longer expects them to be discovered. A problem has no value if it remains one for ever. Yet Durkheim thought it soluble. According to him the traditional soci­ eties, ranging from the primitive horde to the Greek and Roman cities, are formed from similar segments (tribes, clans, etc.), resembling one another in occupations, beliefs and physical or psychological characteristics. Each of these collective monads exists as an autarky, with its own gods and special symbols. Such societies leave no room for the individual, except for their chiefs, who ' in fact are the first individual personalities who have risen from the mass of society ' . 1 Between these autonomous collectivities made up of identical segments few contacts or exchanges occur. Hence the moral gaps between them are wide. That which is most spontaneous in their social life, and is strongest, is held in the firm grip of a local patriotism. We know that an increase in the division of labour is accompanied by the break-up of these segmented societies. It requires the formation of relationships where none previously existed. In this way groups once isolated come into contact with one another. Barriers be­ tween the different life styles and the various beliefs of such societies gradu­ ally crumble after the establishment of these relationships. As combinations occur, the homogeneity of each society disappears and individuals are freed from the constraints it imposed. Thus flows of exchange and communication arise, bridging existing gaps. Division of labour increases because of popula­ tion size , which speeds up such exchanges and communications as much as did the struggle for existence in groups once separated. Furthermore, this physical size is reflected in a closeness and frequency of contacts, which create a 'moral density ' unknown in simpler societies. This is plainly at its strongest where human beings are spread over a more limited area, such as in towns : ' Finally, there is the number and speed of the means of communication and transmission. By abolishing or lessening the vacuums 2 separating social segments, these means increase the density of society. ' In other words the division of labour acts as a dynamic factor, effecting a moral density that grows stronger as the society evolves. Durkheim put forward a general law for this: the increase in size and density within a society has a directly proportional effect on the growth in the division of labour. The latter has increased continuously throughout history, since the population grows consistently and contacts multiply. However, the explanation was not entirely satisfactory to him, since in the last analysis it depends on a biological phe­ nomenon. This caused him on several occasions to make clear that this bio­ logical phenomenon is only important to the extent that it underpins the psychological and sociological phenomena of this moral density. Above all, it is the frequency of the interactions and contacts that counts. Durkheim declared: Thus no other variable remains than the number of individuals who have

entered into relationships, and their moral and physical proximity , that is, the

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volume and density of society. The more numerous they are and the more closely they exert their action upon one another, the more strongly and rapidly do they react together. Thus, as a result, the more intense social life 3 becomes. It is this intensification that constitutes civilization.

The reverse of the medal is that the collective consciousness grows smaller, and beliefs and feelings backed up by tradition and held in common lose their intensity. Individuals carrying on their specialized occupations, living as one of the crowd, feel themselves less under surveillance and more autonomous. The need to resemble others and obey the same rules is either less felt or changes in nature. The division of labour, till then less important, takes pre­ cedence. It ensures the coordination of distinctly separate functions and the interdependence of autonomous groups. The economic function tends to domin­ ate all other functions, whether these are political, religious or concern the family. From this point onwards it is not difficult to assert that this accounts for the passage from mechanical to organic solidarity. Curiously, we are left with the clear impression that the shakiness of this explanation has not escaped its author. Is it because the facts give the lie to it? At first sight this appears plausible. B ut the logic brought into play is more complex and more interesting. Quite objectively, of what value is the key discovered to solve the question of the passage from mechanical to organic solidarity? And what is the value of the idea that the collective consciousness retreats where the division of labour advances? It forms no part of my intention to follow over the years the stages whereby the paradox that follows is arrived at. Yet let us imagine that the first form of solidarity is that of the primitive horde, which is an autarkic and closed society. Individuals as such do not exist, except for the chief. Yet, as it increased in size and broke up, it allegedly brought about the opposite effect, an open society, one that communicates and is made up of individuals that are opposites but complement one another. Thus a particular type of society would entirely by itself have changed its structure and laws, without any other form of intervention. In short, the same solidarity - mechanical , naturally - instead of reproducing itself encompasses its own decline and the birth of a different kind of solidarity, which is precisely the opposite. As if aware of this, Durkheim expressed it in somewhat obscure terms as follows: Thus it is entirely mechanical causes which ensure that the individual per­ sonality is absorbed into the collective personality, and it is causes of the same nature which ensure that the same individual personality can free itself. Undoubtedly this emancipation is useful, or at least is used. It makes advan­ ces in the division of labour possible. More generally, it imparts more flex­ 4 ibility and elasticity to the social organism.

This passage evokes a host of criticisms. Let us limit ourselves to the main one. In no way does Durkheim enlighten us on the transformation from a homogeneous state in society into a heterogeneous one. He experiences the same sort of difficulties as are met with in biology : how, arising from simple,

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primitive life forms, there appear in the course of evolution more differen­ tiated .and more complex life forms. In many respects his explanation resem­ bles that of Darwin and suffers from the same major defect. Darwin' s explanation fails to elucidate how the transmission and mutation o f species occur. However, Darwin did advance some hypotheses, before Mendel' s gene­ tics propounded better ones. Durkheim suggests none, and in certain respects rules them out. It is certainly important at least to indicate the path followed in creating something new, as well as discovering who, in a human group, is the innovator. I have previously put forward the following solution: in every state of society, one comparatively less differentiated and rendered homo­ geneous by the act of reproducing itself, additional resources in terms of human beings and know-how arise; these remain marginal. They may be under­ utilized and of secondary importance, as were farmers and agriculture before the New Stone Age, or as were engineers and the mechanical arts four cen­ turies ago. What else can these human beings do save devote themselves to inventing and improving these techniques, which have been disdained, and on which their existence depends? And then what more can they do save break into the social network and create a situation where new divisions operate to their advantage? As a consequence, each time the population and the ' moral density' increase . What was once a secondary resource becomes the main resource, whilst reproduction of the society as a whole and relationships 5 between human beings are profoundly disturbed. The logic of this solution, which is partly innovatory, accords with Ilya Prigogine ' s ideas. This Belgian theoretical chemist has shown that disturbances that initially are very weak end up through repetition as points of di sjunction and differentiation of a material order. The question remains: setting aside the flaws indicated, does Durkheim ' s theory accord with the facts? H e must have been the first t o perceive h e had underestimated the role of penal and repressive laws in modern society. We have merely to consider the punishments prescribed for workers ' strikes and political offences to be convinced of this. Even collective reactions over the Dreyfus affair or at the time of the Paris Commune are marked by a passion and violence that the most insensitive spectator cannot fail to observe. On the other hand, a wide variety of restitutory sanctions are met with in pre-industrial societies. Ranging, for an offence, from mere reparation to mediation , these are noticeable even in collectivities lacking any kind of task specialization. Thus there is no direct relationship between the division of labour and the type of solidarity and morality that characterizes a society. Explaining why the division of labour increases does not enlighten us as to how solidarity and morality mutate. Durkheim ' s theory therefore clashes with the facts. But let us consider the matter from a different angle. Throughout his analyses his constant preoccu­ pation was to safeguard the authority of society and its primacy over the individual. In other words, he sought to show that the individual springs from society, and not the contrary, that is, as a society arising from individuals coming together. If this is true, then the collective mass must break up before

1 00 Religion , Nature and Society any separating into occupations and functions can take place and indi­ vidualities become more strongly defined. He stated: Work is not shared out between independent individuals who are already differentiated from one another, who meet and associate together in order to

pool their different abilities. It would be a miracle if these differences, arising from chance circumstances, could be so accurately harmonized as to form a coherent whole . Far from their preceding collective life, they derive from it.

They can only occur w ithin a society , under the pressure of soc ial sentiment and needs. This is what makes them essentially capable of being harmonized. Thus there is a social life outside of any division of labour, but one that the 6 latter assumes.

What arises out of chance circumstances cannot be harmonious, and an environment is needed to generate agreement. Let us concede this, although the laws of physics and biology maintain the contrary. What is this environ­ ment if it is not the collective consciousness? Now, two opposing requirements are demanded from it. On the one hand, for the specialization of the tasks to be performed and autonomous roles to flourish, the consciousness must be weakened. On the other hand, in order to preserve a modicum of harmony and consensus, the pressure it exerts must be unremitting. But how can it achieve such contradictory aims? It is true that, vibrant and active within each indi­ vidual, there exist beliefs and attachment to a language or territory , all inculcated by tradition. Loyal devotion to an occupation, a city or a country arises from these. This seems reasonable . Yet is this the affair of the same collective consciousness? Does this not change its nature? So long as it pre­ dominates in theory over the psychological type it coincides with the social reality. Whether one devotes oneself to one ' s daily work or to the ritual of a cult, whether one marries or elects a chief for the tribe, the consciousness exerts an external constraint through prescriptions and usages. Yet as soon as a division of tasks is initiated, and persons obey their individual consciousness, things no longer remain the same. Each segment of society - industry, the administration, party or class - has its own consciousness, with its own values and rules. If any collective consciousness exists, it can only ensure harmony from within each individual. In the end it becomes a psychological reality that is concealed by this new social reality made up of organic forms of solidarity. Consider for a moment the question of expiation . In ancient societies it determined the perpetrators of a crime and the execution of punishment, carried out with passionate feeling. In principle present-day society clings to the laws of reason and excludes expiation. It has disappeared from our beliefs and is combated wherever it raises its head. Nevertheless, from the psycho­ logical viewpoint it subsi sts, exerting an influence on the punishment inflicted by judg e or jury on certain categories of guilty persons. The same crime is punished with more or less severity, depending upon the individual 's past record or the climate of public opinion. The death penalty continues to attract numerous supporters, not because it is held to be effective, but because of the longing felt to make the criminal expiate his crime. The collective conscious­ ness subsists in the same mode , subjectively , one might say, so as to draw

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individuals closer together and to force them to conform to the psychological type of society. All this may perhaps be only a way of expressing something as commonplace as it is true, as Raymond Aron states in most persuasive terms: Even in a form of soc iety that allows everyone to be himself, there remains a remnant of the collective consciousness within the consciousness of the individual that is more important than we think. A society characterized by organic differentiation could not continue if, outside and beyond the domain of contract, there did not exist imperatives and prohibitions , collective values and sacred elements that bind persons to society as a whole. 7

We understand immediately the difficulty - we will not say the failure - of the theory. It delineates clearly, even if not explaining , the way in which the social consciousness is transformed, and the reasons why its social reality becomes a psychological reality . The theory switches from what is extraneous to individuals to what lies within them, just as in the course of evolution the external environment becomes the internal environment of organisms. I ven­ ture to state that in this lies the real difference between a mechanical and an organic society , and the corresponding types of solidarity. For the theory, as we have just seen, explains no more than this. It does not account for a true change upon whose completion the division of labour would be promoted to be the motive force behind social relationships. Durkheim was aware of this when he wrote: 'It is . . . a derived and secondary phenomenon [which] occurs on the surface of social life, and this is particularly true for the economic 8 division of labour. ' Such a proposition is difficult to sustain, and it denotes a vagueness in his thinking. At its root, there is always the same difficulty: one cannot explain a movement by starting from a position of rest, or change from a state of equilibrium, or innovation from conformity . All in all, no reply is vouchsafed to the second question regarding the passage from one form of conformity to another. The silence that follows on this subject is symptomatic of this. Durkheim may well have written numerous articles and books, but he scarcely any longer mentioned these notions. He had doubtless j udged the distinction to be hardly satisfactory, and the explana­ tion hardly tenable. Thus he gives up the idea of placing the division of labour as the prime fact and returns to the collective consciousness as the origin of all consensus . The American sociologist Nisbet observes: On the contrary, soc iety - in al l i t s guises, functions and historical roles -

becomes, for Durkheim, a compound of social and psychological elements that he had first relegated to folk or primitive society . Not only is normal society founded, he would ever after declare, on such traits as collective conscience [sic] , moral authority, community and the sacred, but the only appropriate response to modern conditions is the strengthening of such traits. Thus, and thus only, will suicide, economic conflict, and the growing frus­ 9 trations of anomic life be moderated.

From then on his sociological work was concerned with what ensures balance and cohesion, and is unchanging. As Bergson declared, the static

1 02

Religion , Nature and Society

condition takes precedence over the dynamic . B ut there is something even more important. The failure to explain the transition from mechanical to organic society leaves untouched the other explanation concerning the main­ tenance of each type of solidarity. What other course remained open to Durk­ heim than that opened up by the theory of the two types of conformity set 1° out in the preceding chapter? Clearly the two types are opposites. What in the first type appeared, so to speak, as the seeds of a failure of the indi­ vidual is to be found as the generator of intense feeling in the collectivity. The group, when confronted by a crime, closes ranks and is revitalized by punishing it. For the second type, a state of dissension is a normal mode of expression among the parts and individuals in a society, but is a threat to governance and manifests anomie towards society as a whole. Punish­ ment by the group appears to be an effort directed towards reparation and conformity , because the group had not been able to foresee the crime. In a different way , the two types are complementary. Repressive conformity stir up the energies and passions of the group. Substitutive conformity watches over the order it has established, extending its rules from one field of social life to another. Both types finish up by becoming in one form or another the main object of the science that Durkheim aimed to create. In any case his researches - and here we can call upon the authority of the American socio­ logist Parsons - 'lead to a theory of the motivation underlying conformity and deviation, and hence to a theory of the mechanisms by which solidarity is established and maintained. ' 1 1 The same author concludes elsewhere that the dimension expressed by the pair 'conformity ' and 'deviance' is cen­ tral ' to the whole conception of social action, and hence to that of social 12 systems ' . As you are aware, a host of studies have everywhere been devoted to anomie, to a failure to observe rules and moral values, from which anomie is alleged to arise . The questions posed relate to how to prevent or cure this state. As soon as a form of deviance is observed - homosexuality, drugs, skin colour - or a violation of the norm - theft, divorce, rebellion - or any kind of failure to adapt, the remedy is the same. The advice is that cohesion should be strengthened, and rules and duties tightened up - in short, conformity . So much is this the case that this remedy, recommended so mechanically, arouses indignation: 'To grant such a primacy to conformity and, through it, to social order - whatever may be its importance for the sociologist as a subject of study 13 - is sociologically unacceptable. ' Meanwhile, however, it is fully accepted in its various forms. 14 There is no need to return yet again to this debate. Here we note above all the importance assigned to thi s phenomenon . It represents the living, active basis for what is expressed in the ideas of integration, system and reproduction which are so often invoked. At the same time the lack of them is likewise invoked. As Durkheim 's biographer observes: Remove the uniquely Durkheimian content of contemporary analyses of social disorganization, of delinquency, of problems such as narcotics addic­ tion, alcoholism, family breakdown, mental illness, sexual deviance, suicide,

A science diffic ult to name

1 03

and others which fill the pages of the textbooks on social problems, and there s would be very little left above the level of simple description and enumeration. 1

And this has been the case for three-quarters of a century. One experiences a degree of shock when one realizes the true contribu­ tion made by Durkheim ' s sociology, which is that of the model of perfect confonnity. Once this model has been sketched out, as I have tried to do above, it defines the laws of stability for any kind of society whatsoever, particularly for a society such as our own in which the convergence of opi­ nions and unifonnity of action ensure the necessary cohesion without the direct intervention of tradition or authority. This model reverses and supple­ ments that of perfect competition, the guiding force behind exchanges and relationships in a market economy. The model of competition separates and opposes individuals whom the other model of perfect confonnity seeks to draw together and harmonize . The competition model increases the centrifugal tendencies of each individual, whereas the other rev italizes and reinvigorates the centripetal tendencies in everyone. Confonnity, in the essence of this meaning, is even the precondition and psychological state for competition. It is only if those who are opposed to, and fight with one another, speak the same language , agree on the same rules and attach the same meaning to their interests, that they are able to struggle for those interests in a reasonable and non-violent fashion . Without this the market would become a battlefield and competition a form of warfare. Thus certain psychological laws relating to confonnity, as rigorous as the economic laws of competition and utility , are acknowledged. Durkheim enunciates them almost in quantita­ tive fonn. It is appropriate to reproduce them in full, for they have sub­ sequently mainly been confirmed, and to summarize them would remove their savour: 1 The relationship between the extent of the common consciousness and that of the individual consciousness. The social bonds are stronger the more completely the former overlaps with the latter.

2 The average intensity of the states of the collective consciousness. The relation­ ship between the extent of the c ommon and indiv idual consciousness assumed to be

equal, the degree of intensity has more effect upon the indiv idual the more energy it possesses. If, on the other hand, that intensity radiates only feebly , its capacity to steer the indiv idual in a collective direction can only be feeble. Thus the more easily will he be able to go his own way , and solidarity will be less strong.

3 The degree of determinateness of these same states. Indeed the more beliefs and practices are clear-cut, the less room they allow for indiv idual divergences. They act

as uniform moulds in which we all cast, in a uniform fashion, our ideas and action.

Consensus is therefore as perfect as possible; every consciousness beats as one. Con­ versely, the more general and indeterminate the rules of conduct and thought, the more

indiv idual reflection must intervene in applying the rules to particular cases. B ut such reflective thinking cannot be aroused without diasagreements breaking out. As it varies in quality and quantity from one human being to another, all that it generates is of this

character. Centrifugal tendencies thus continue tfl multiply at the expense of social cohesion and harmony in the workings of society. 6

1 04 Religion , Nature and Society Pursuing the parallel further, one might observe that the principle of maximization of growth or profit has its equivalent in a principle that sustains these laws. By this I mean, that relating to the maximization of consensus and of passionate feelings all hold in common. Moreover, Durkheim explicitly stated this elsewhere: If there is one rule of c onduct whose moral character is undisputed, it is that

which decrees that we should realize in ourselves the essential features of the collective type. It is among lower peoples that it attains the greatest inflexi­

bility. There the first duty is to resemble everyone else, to have nothing that is personal, whether as regards beliefs or practices. In the more advanced societies, the similarities that are required are fe wer in number. However, as we have seen, some exist, the absence of which constitutes for us a state of moral error. 1 7

In this respect - no more than in others - societies are not distinctive as regards depth. They greatly need to reduce the area over which their members are scattered, at one time bringing it near to zero, and another letting it extend more widely. Each model is therefore intimately bound in with the other, so as to reach the necessary degree of cohesion. In principle, upon this close mutual involvement contemporary societies, or, more precisely, Western soci­ eties, rest. S ince the connection is one both of conformity and of competition, they cannot partake of the one without partaking of the other. It is the indi­ vidual ' s responsibility to ensure parity between the two. In seeking to gain distinction and excel , to optimize performance in his or her occupation or the economy, each must also attain uniformity in other aNas of the life shared in common with others. Hence those opposing imperatives that bid us at one and the same time, ' Do not be like other people' and, 'Do be like the others . ' The dissatisfaction that arises from modernity, the melancholia peculiar to it, and the knotty problems it raises - all these are perhaps linked to the impossibility of striking the right balance. The ubiquitous nature of conformity can hardly surprise us . Like everything else in our civilization, it has become an industry. It is manufactured on a production line, orchestrated by the media, propaganda campaigns, opinion surveys, advertising and a process of education, all using the same means. Now it is no longer, as it once was, conformity that poses a problem. It is the opportunity not to conform, to rai se the voice of dissent and 18 possess an individuality of character. Between the C harybdis o f psychology a n d the Scylla of sociology

'Who is not aware that Durkheim carried his hostility to psychology, in its different connotations, to the point of purely and simply suppressing it? ' 19 Indeed who can not know this, if one is to believe a great Italian sociologist, well familiar with the corpus of Durkheim ' s work, which he has interpreted to generations of students. Now we can do nothing more than accept this banal statement, since we have not succeeded in shrugging it off. But what precisely is the question?

A science difficult to name

1 05

The story of Christopher Columbus is well known. Seeking a new passage to India, he discovered America. The adventure can also happen in reverse. Some bold navigator, having set out in search of an unknown America, dis­ covers a new route to India. What connection is there between this not im­ probable story and the lengthy voyage we have just accomplished? We know - how often has it not been recounted? - how , equipped with the chart of the sciences, both those known and those still undiscovered, drawn up by Auguste Comte, Durkheim wanted to fill the slot left empty and labelled ' sociology ' . I n order successfully to accomplish this, h e built u p one of the most powerful and fecund bodies of knowledge in the human sciences. One is never tired of admiring the delicate architectonics of his theories, and the connections he established between phenomena only very distantly related. In the thousands of pages he wrote, one single enigma stands out: how can individuals draw from within themselves this world of society that is so opposed to them? And the sociologist labours unceasingly to prove that, despite what one may think, the individual cannot. This point seems utterly elementary . What is excep­ tional is to see Durkheim completely committed to demonstrating that society is a prime reality superior to the individuals of whom it is made up. This is indisputably his own discovery; it imposes order upon all the facts of religion, law and morality, and brings together in a coherent whole all the facts of language, exchange and knowledge. This is the justification for allocating a special science reserved for this entity. Yet, as we read his work, we ask ourselves, as he does: Which science? This is indeed the whole question : what science did he really discover? The answer hangs upon what we understand by the individual and what ' social ' means. For Durkheim and his followers society appears firstly to be a set of practices and beliefs that brings human beings into association with one an­ other and forms their common consciousness . It embodies itself in their in­ stitutions and symbols, which impose themselves, exercising a constraining effect. Nothing is more natural than the coming together of 'psychological beings ' , just l ike the assembly of cells in an organism, in a new and different ' psychological being ' . Just as the human body as a whole is something differ­ ent from the sum of its parts, the social whole constitutes an entity that possesses a reality sui generis. Thus it is in the nature of that individuality , and not in that of its component elements, that we must search for the proximate and determining causes of the facts produced in it. The group thinks , feels and acts entirely differently

from the way its members would if they were isolated. If therefore we begin by studying these members separately, we will understand nothing about what is taking place in the group. In a word, there is between psychology

and sociology the same break in c ontinuity as there is between biology and 20 the phys ical and chemical sciences.

Psychological reality is emphatically different in essence from social reality, which arises when individuals congregate together, communicating and acting in concert. Durkheim interprets the external, unitary outcome of numerous subjective psychological processes as the result of a unitary psychological

1 06 Religion , Nature and Society process that unfolds within the objective collective consciousness. The two realities differ in that the latter appears to be external, and coercive in its action upon the former. This is felt in the pressure exerted upon each one of us by the language we speak, the values we share, and by the various institutions. Natu­ rally differences ensue between their respective sciences. Thus we can under­ stand that Durkheim vigorously contrasts sociology with individual psychology. He very often harks back to his favourite argument: society as a whole cannot be reduced to its parts nor explained by them. In this way he preserves the autonomy of the collectivity , and even more so that of the individual. Why remain silent? These reasoned arguments designed to justify the spe­ cificity of sociology suffer the great drawback of being neither original nor precise enough, and can be summed up in one sentence: human beings think, feel and act differently when they are assembled together from when they are alone. Who would deny this? B ut similar arguments have already been used to distinguish a ' spirit of the crowd' or a ' spirit of a people ' from the minds of the individuals of which these entities are made up, so that authors have concluded there is a necessity to create a variant of psychology, a Volkerpsy­ chologie, a psychology of peoples. Let us proceed further. What lies behind Durkheim ' s statement according to which the ' psychological being' of the group determines and explains the 'psychological being ' of its members? The answer is: nothing more than the principle of totality - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - and a comparison with the biological organi sm. That organism, functioning as a whole, conditions the functioning of each particular organ. Now, are proofs of superiority more justifiable than those that would maintain the opposite? I do not say that Durkheim is wrong. I say that, as too often in such matters, he takes as proven what has to be proved. This is even more true because in his own studies, far from distinguishing between and contrasting the two types of ' psychological beings ' , he constantly lumps them together. I need only cite the example of that implicit theory of conformity whose outline I have sketched out, and which still retains its empirical value. It combines in very intricate fashion the living experience of human beings with institutional facts, the psychology of the former with the sociology of the latter. Durkheim knew only too well to what extent this combination is obliga­ 21 tory. Why then his reluctance to admit this? His fear was that we may by chance confuse them. From the beginning he was mainly bolstered by the conviction that social reality remains as irreducible to psychological reality as the reality of the living creature does to physical reality. Let us confess that this is pure metaphor, and that the discoveries of biology have been dis­ credited. No substratum peculiar to life exists, and genetic matter obeys the same laws as any other physical or chemical body in the universe. This is indisputable. Strictly speaking, the French sociologist knew that he was con­ structing his science on a site that he had not chosen. Whilst seeking to distinguish it from the other sciences, he could not remove it completely from its natural location. When he was reminded of this he reacted with a mixture of vehemence and compromise. In a letter that Durkheim wrote to Bougie in

A science diffic ult to name

1 07

December 1 895 there appears the following , which summed up his position: ' Once again, I have never dreamed of saying that one could study sociology without hav ing a psychological culture, nor that sociology was anything other than a psychology . . . A phenomenon in individual psychology has the indi­ vidual conscience as its substratum, a phenomenon of collective psychology a group of collective consciousnesses . ' That is an extraordinary proposition, given the opinions current today. But the equating of sociology with collective psychology is true for him and for all those anthropologists and historians that have drawn inspiration from it. Beside it the meagre criticisms so liberally proferred count for very little. However this may be, psychology appears a powerful lubricant for his theories of religion, social cohesion and morality. Since this fact is evident, I have been less eager to establish its role than I have in winkling out this ' new 22 psychology' that he began to use. Yet it cannot be denied that this role became increasingly important. About midway through his intellectual career, although he had hardly reached his forties, Durkheim had come no longer to 3 have interest in anything save anomie and religious phenomena. 2 He wrote that it was a ' revelation ' . Yet it was also a change of course, among the reasons for this being the Dreyfus affair and the opposition to Marx . I think also that he bowed to his failure to explain the passage from mechanical to organic solidarity. 24 The division of labour did not allow him to account for the rise of individualism or the maintenance of cohesion in modern society . In order not to leave hi s sociology exposed to criticism, he fell back on the collective consciousness, which assumes the preponderant role in this respect. It more or less evokes primitive mentality, the spirit of the crowd or the spirit of a people - this summary of mine is too cursory. It represents perfect conformity and moral authority. Against it Durkheim placed the individual ; but negatively defined by the weakening of this consciousness. In short, he looked at it from the aspects of anomie and deviance. Anomie has become more general in our time because the conditions, in­ stitutions and values that serve as the basis for our common life are constantly changing. The rate of this change has a knock-on effect in the group under­ going it: the group becomes unstable, wavering , loses its roots, and ends up by bursting apart. The tendency reaches its peak in suicide, when the free rein given to the desires that make up the individual is the mirror-image of the collapse of the collective norms and rules. Between the state of conformity and that of anomie are to be encountered all the gradations of a conformity that is in decline and of a growing disintegration that distinguishes simple societies from our own. Have I elucidated sufficiently the consequences of this failure , which began at the outset as a renewal of the theory? Not entirely, and I do not claim to have done so. But further explanations are required. However strange it may appear, although not without reason, Durkheim concerned himself even more than before, if not exclusively, with establishing how rules, actions and beliefs are interiorized in the conscious mind of individuals. They are in fact the repositories of the collective consciousness, since there does not exist - nor

1 08

Religion , Nature and Society

could there exist - a group mind. Here we have just touched on a point where everything is turned upside down. It suffices for us to observe that a new vision of the collective 'psychological being ' , of society, emerges. It ceases to be defined as a constraint that is a force or a cause envisaged objectively as an external phenomenon. It becomes at one and the same time duty and attraction, that is, the sum of rules and values envisaged subjectively through its reper­ cussions on the consciousnesses of its members . Its authority aims first at being a moral one, exerting itself from within, as one may see in the essays dealing with religious life. All this is now backed by strong evidence. But it has a corollary: since the collective consciousness is the preponderant factor in the social bond, and this bond is in itself moral , symbolical and a novel idea, its representation must express ' inwardness ' . Things here become clear. By examining what kind of notion appears desirable, one reveals the nature of the science one has in mind. One of the most highly esteemed historians of sociology puts a name to it: 'It is apparent in Durkheim ' s essay "Individual and Collective Representations" . . . that he was tantalized by the idea of social psychology. '25 We prefer to state more prudently that he was searching for a psychology that would correspond to his total vision of society. I think the two elements allowed him to come close to this and take decisive steps in this direction . On the one hand - and this is well known - there is, appropriately, the discovery of the notion of collective representation. This designates all the systems of knowledge, beliefs and symbols (religion, science, philosophy, language, magic, etc .) that result from the fusion and penetration of individual repre­ sentations. The vitality of the emotions and modes of behaviour shared among them depends on the strength that results from this fusion. If it effects ad­ herence to the group and achievement of consensus, the awareness of belong­ ing to it becomes inseparable from the feeling of being closely bound to particular individuals. Furthermore, to form a representation is to endow an idea with an object, and an object with an idea. Such a formulation leads one to acknowledge that representations are often material things such as monu­ ments or money, or the modest churinga of the Australian aborigine. This is purely and simply because material things are a more concrete way of expres­ sing social relationships and convictions than abstract concepts. Here we only need recall that, according to Durkheim, the authority of such collective representations is fundamental , insofar as they are interiorized into the consciousness of a society ' s members, which continues to exist inde­ pendently of them in language, institutions and traditions. These repre­ sentations constitute the environment in which we live together, whether, as in archaic societies, they are religious, or scientific, as in our own. They possess a marvellously ethereal quality, yet nevertheless have something con­ crete about them that has always disconcerted English-speaking sociologists and anthropologists. One consequence, neither far-fetched nor forced, flows from this. Any sociological explanation that holds them to be causes must, as Mauss has written, attribute 'a preponderant role to the psychological element .26 in social life and collective sentiments and beliefs '

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1 09

Moreover, in my belief one notable happening brought about this renewal of the conception of what social phenomena are. The birth of crowd psycho­ logy indeed attracted more than curiosity and disdain. Durkheim certainly did battle with Tarde and did not let himself be ensnared by Le Bon ' s Psychologie des Joules, which was a work that did not attract him overmuch. At the same time this new discipline sustains and renders credible the idea of a psycho­ logical phenomenon developed at the level of the collectivity. For a host of reasons it opens up a breach in the barrier that had hitherto separated social from individual facts, and acknowledges a capital role for the symbolic. Be­ cause of the explicit although somewhat vague, ties established between these disjunctive elements, it was attractive to Durkheim in his later work. All that concerns the study of representations of the sacred most certainly bears its imprint. B ut Durkheim also resorted to it in his study of suicide, in order to have a basis for his theory. It seems one may fear contamination if one invokes crowd psychology as regards this subject. At the heart of contem­ porary reactions was the threat of intruding, or encroaching without justifica­ tion, as soon as this subjective and emotional element was invoked to account for occurrences in the social domain. However, Bougle, Durkheim ' s disciple and close colleague , had no such hesitation when he wrote : When Durkheim in his book on suicide discus ses Tarde's theory of imitation, his point of departure is crowd psychology . If human beings in a mass allow themselves to be carried away by a common emotion , the honour of achiev­

ing this , according to Tarde ' s theory, should go to s ome leader or other whose eloquence succeeds in persuading the group to share his own feelings. Yet,

looking more closely, we perceive there is also an effect of the group upon its leader, and the effect of his audience upon one another. A kind of effer­ vescence arises from the very fact that human beings come closer together, an exaltation that removes from the individual his self-control and inclines him to allow himself to be swept along in the collective flow of emotion. 27

The same idea, formulated more generally, had already on several occasions occurred to us. It needed to be highlighted, given the fact that it went unrecog­ nized, having being consigned to areas of the obscure and irrational made up of illusions, emotions and archaic beliefs. Yet the conclusion cannot be avoided indefinitely. As the notion of collective representation became pre­ ponderant, as Durkheim advanced into the no man ' s land of religion and anomie to arrive at the study of suicide, he abandoned the specific charac ­ teri stic of social reality , which is constraint. He discovered here, there and everywhere the effects of an internal pressure, of an authority peculiar to practices and beliefs shared in common. Once this was acknowledged hi s theories aimed at supporting the division of psychological reality itself into a branch peculiar to groups and another peculiar to individuals. This is not the outcome of any interpretation of my own . I state it on the basis of documents in which he frankly acknowledged: 'I have repeated a number of times that to place sociology outside the individual psychology was simply to say that it constituted a special psychology having its own subject-matter and distinctive method. ' 28

1 10

Religion , Nature and Society

This distinction produced shock waves that echoed throughout the human sciences. It relied on the discovery of mass psychology, which Durkheim used to support a definition of his own neighbouring field. 2 9 The paradoxical gap between the prof�ssed ideal of the science and the actual work of the scientist has often been remarked upon. 30 This is true for the content of his theories as well as for the language he uses, which allows him to proceed unhampered in any direction when interpreting the facts. It is as if from a certain moment he had made up his mind to redefine the field of his science around a reality that 31 is social but does not cease for this reason to be psychological. Have I sufficiently elucidated this novel psychology that Durkheim dreamed up in order to explain what binds together an entire set of individuals in a society? From where, therefore, comes our power to think and act in common? Why is there both a conformity of norms and a deviance that causes their failure? Weighing matters up, we note that the voyage intended to land Durk­ heim on the continent of sociology has in reality caused him to discover a new passage towards psychology. We ought not to deem this to be a gross error, or a mere side-effect of science, although it is often considered as such. On the contrary, it is a breakthrough. To deny this truth and to make it taboo, is to remain suspended between the Charybdis of psychology and the Scylla of sociology . Whereas, for reasons we have described, sociology has never severed the umbilical cord that joins it to psychology. I do not for one moment believe that the facts I have set out can shake this rejection. What is more, I never set myself the task of doing so. At least I hope I have clearly set out to what resistance is being offered, and shown that what represents an obstacle for us was a challenge for the discoverers of the human sciences. They had of course a freedom we have lost, the advantage of being able to map out freely the boundaries between the sciences. If they sought to be the pioneers of what was indisputable , we have, through habit, become its prisoners.

PART II

The Power of the Idea

4

Social ' big bang s '

The spirit of the times

I shall begin with the symptoms. There can be no doubt that during the greater part of human history every society has shared a common fear: the fear of ideas. Everywhere there is mistrust of their effects, as well as of those who disseminate them. In every age, to begin with, groups who propagate a new doctrine or belief are rejected: Christians in ancient times, the Philosophes of the classical Enlightenment, socialists in the modem era. A similar rejection is general for every minority bold enough to focus itself around a forbidden idea or an unacceptable vision - a disconcerting art form, an unknown science, an extremist religion, the promise of revolution - every minority that seems to live in a world turned upside down. S uch groups go so far as to hold untenable positions, where they expose themselves to most terrible accusa­ tions: the crime of heresy as it relates to reason, the people, a social class or a Church. The Romans bequeathed us the expression 'enemies of the human race ' to designate such persons, and this obliges everyone else to take up the cudgels against them. One needs to grasp the profound significance of this epithet in order to feel the fear and acts of cruelty that emanate from it. For centuries - not excepting our own - countless human beings have perished in this unrelenting war, when fear dating from time immemorial has made out to be a crime the right to resist and dissent inscribed in all constitutions as one of the inalienable rights of man. It has come to such a pass that one spectacle haunts most states : the spectre of contagious ideas that today they cause to be condemned, just as in former times plants and animals were condemned for sacrilege. The ideas, like those who hold them, are shut away, labelled - the very term epitomizes it - as prisoners of conscience. More than one of them then repeats that line from Faust: ' That's your world ! And that is what is called a world. ' You should not think I am describing an exceptional situation or an extreme view, on the pretext that I am dealing directly with facts. Most cultures are aware that their effects can be as sensitive, and of the same nature, as physical forces . At the end of the long chain that binds us to one another is always to

1 14

The Power of the Idea

be found a force whose effect is analogous to the effects produced by physical matter. We undergo its pressure and share in its condition. Ascribe to 'power' any meaning you like : magic, domination, suggestion, prayer or communica­ tion; replace that of 'idea' by a term that to you may seem more precise: ideology, vision of the world, myth, information, or social representation. The prime intention remains: human beings, by associating together, transform something that is mental into something that is physical. This intention must be borne constantly in mind so that it is imprinted deeply upon us. By saying that in an idea a power exists that operates like a physical energy we do not mean the term to be taken metaphorically. On the contrary, by it we define the substratum without which we are nothing to one another. Without it there is no chance of lasting social bonds being forged. We are constantly calling upon a power of this kind. But from where does it arise, and how does it establish itself? We know that ideas cannot be transmitted in the same way as knowledge; they require a certain psychologi­ cal state, one of relationship. To achieve this state - and herein lies a paradox - they choose the path of persuasion, which is held to be against nature, and is not that of reason, which is the natural path. Everything springs from this inversion, one that Pascal regretfully acknowledges in his Ecrit sur I' esprit geometrique: Everyone knows that there are two doors through which pass those opinions that are received into the soul: these are the two main powers of under­ standing and will. The most natural is that of understanding, because one should accept only truths that have been demonstrated; but the more common path although it goes against nature, is that of the will, for everything within human beings is almost always swept along to belief not by proof, but by pleasurable feeling.

What we are dealing with here is not thought, but the action of society, and this justifies the inversion. For my part, seeking to summarize as concisely as possible the experiences accumulated over the years, it is c lear that thousands of individuals cannot be instilled with an idea in the same way as one can with a handful of individuals isolated from one another. Generally the objective value of an idea or message is neglected in order to obtain the assent of one 's 1 fellows and to conform to the j udgement of the group. Yet when intelligent people abandon a goodly part of their critical faculty, see lines of equal length as being unequal and a moving light as stationary, this is perhaps not without a motive. The motive is the fact that they wish to act in concert and share an identical reality. They are more concerned with the commonality of an action than with its success. I know of course that the one does not go without the other, but their preference shocks one. 2 One can likewise be shocked by the realization that a belief held to be absurd and even irrational by the majority can end up by carryi ng the day and in being accepted by it. Here a tension exists that cannot be resolved in any other way . This explains 3 why dissident minorities convert a majority, in spite of all the odds against them. They are like swimmers who dive beneath the surface of individual

Social 'big bangs'

1 15

consciousnesses and conformities, holding their breath until they surface where they are not expected. Again, this is an observation derived from experience. 4 Nothing is more instructive than to see ideas that have been spread abroad draw additional power from a censorship being imposed upon them. Instead of completely subduing them, censorship gives them pro­ minence, making the pressure they exert more unbearable. Thus, in order to relax the tension, they are ultimately adopted, even without thi s being realized. Finally, once their hold is firml y established the world appears different, and relationships between individuals take on a different aspect. When the idea changes, the reality in which we live together is no longer the same . One ' s ear would have to be ill-attuned to the voice of science to keep these meticulously detailed researches apart from the large-scale phenomena that are the daily material of history . To summarize: it is a proven truth that an idea, no matter what form it assumes, has the power of making us come together, of making us modify our feelings and modes of behaviour and of exercising a constraint over us just as much as any external condition. It matters little if it appears irrational , dissen­ tient, and even having undergone censorship. In the beginning it disconcerts, stirring up hostile emotions. Yet the very fact that it spreads itself abroad creates a climate of perception and a collective atmosphere that allows it to be accepted. In retrospect, it will become normal and rational, and thus effec­ tive . Otherwise it would continue to exist as before, as a mere idea. Its successful propagation means that in social life it possesses a power - but the converse is not true. From then onwards it increasingly looms large in the collective imagination, stirring up feelings of exaltation. It cannot be emphas­ ized enough that this power should be understood in the strict sense, although this has been questioned. Gandhi explained it as follows to a journalist, who told the story in his biography : ' You cannot grasp what we are trying to do or our way of doing it unless you realize that we are fighting with the strength of the soul. ' 'With what?' I asked. 'The strength of the soul', he replied emphatically, and allowed a short pause to see if this had gone home in my mind. I began to realize that he was a man of infinite patience. ' We call it Satyagrana,' he we:lt on. Gandhi knew from experience, and he was not alone. Did not Napoleon say: 'I make my plans from the dreams of my s lumbering soldiers' ?

To rule out this power, treating it as an illusion, as is often done, may appear convenient. The very ease and haste with which the operation is accomplished should guard us against it. To remove an illusion does not mean to dispel a shadow so that reality may be perceived, but to weaken the power of one idea in order to increase the power of another. The reality of the i llusion and the illusion of the reality are so solidly bound up with each other that one cannot distinguish between them. One should always attempt to do so but, theoreti­ cally and practically, it is risky. Marc Bloch, dealing with the healing of scrofula by the touch of the thaumaturgic kings, observes how greatly the strength of belief both in the sick people and in society contributed to the cure. Those who claimed they could give a factual explanation to it he reproached

1 16

The Power of the Idea

with ignoring the extent of this strength and its effectiveness. He writes : 'Their error lay in wrongly formulating the problem. They had too deficient a know­ ledge of the history of human societies to measure the strength of collective illusions; today we have a better appreciation of their astonishing power. '5 To keep one ' s bearings one certainly needs both a clear head and a decisive mind, since it is true that the dispelling of illusions makes us more robust, but that we accept them through a kind of failure of intelligence and character. Yet in this very widespread failing, which persi sts in spite of attempts to eliminate it, I recognize the necessity of insisting on that power, despite the perplexity which we all share. History bears witness to it: the power is not imaginary - without it nothing can happen. It is poured into the crucible of every action in order to transmute human beings, just as seekers after the philosophers ' stone began by putting gold into the bottom of theirs. Although Marx remains indifferent to the way in which it operates, he admits it as axiomatic and enunciates it in a phrase too often repeated to be understood: 'Theory becomes a physical power as soon as it takes possession of the masses . ' It n o longer obeys the conditions o f thought and necessity , i t rules them. To state that collective ideas and beliefs undergo this fate and have these consequences is not novel. One may find it strange that so little benefit is derived from these well-establi shed truths . Equally strange is the silence on the perspectives they open up concerning our relationships in society. I do not look for reasons for this, but I note that Max Weber grasped them, and developed them to an extent hitherto lacking. Put in simple terms, his whole work starts from the principle that the representations and view of the world spread by irrational means form the background to our ways of life and most rational practices. This is because they are somehow in place beforehand within the society where their power is diffused and evolves. He wrote: 'The main types of rational and systematic modes of living are characterized by irrational presumptions, accepted as such and incorporated into these life styles . ' 6 Let us in passing recall that among these presumptions must be included the religions and ideologies that have shaped our Western civilization. In fact we find the power of the idea expressed in Weber' s work in the most varied forms . Strictly speaking, it lies at the foundation of modern capitalism, through the mediation of the Protestant ethic, with Protestants as its promoters. It is also the energizing power of modernity, bringing together reason and the religious element, the renunciation of traditional values, as well as the adop­ tion of the instruments of science and technology . In this a principle of rationalization is the generator of the plasma inherent in all aspects of social life, and explains them. It is a Protestantism of the mind, and possesses the same invigorating power. On this all will agree. To be convinced, we need only accept that the notion of charisma, Weber' s most popular discovery, is a term that can be applied to the power of the idea in the political and religious domain. When other people subjugate us and submit us to their influence, it is always through a representation or a belief that they express their position and feelings, which take on extraordinary strength. The same effect is felt by all

Social 'big bangs'

1 17

who allow themselves to be hypnotized or enter into a state of possession. Charisma is plainly an idea that enters into us and one we share, and without which nothing would happen. It may be obscure and fluid, yet have a singu­ larly concrete effect, provided that it remains unique. Abstract and indetermi­ nate , it is nevertheless wholly effective. Its symbolic nature, one rich in imagery and complexity, prevents us from reacting logically. We must needs content ourselves with undergoing its action, as one does a physical reality. As a result the social position of individuals may be in a direct ratio to the degree of charisma they possess. Power is deemed to be the result of charisma, and in certain cases it marks out a collectivity or the prestige of a party or a belief. In short, Weber' s theories postulate such a power which, roughly speaking, proceeds from the internal to the external, from the world of ideas to the world of realities. To it societies owe their dynamism and stability. While pursuing this study how often have I not thought that, rather than lingering over theories, I would more quickly show that they explain social phenomena by psychological causes if I discussed the philosophical writings of sociologists - and of these they have produced many ! My procedure is close to that of painters: when a scene has caught their eye, they repaint it in their own way, and thus understand it better, whereas the critic or historian would proceed by analysing its aesthetic value. Nevertheless, how can I justify the course I have taken, and my silence concerning these philosophical writings, so often commented upon, without running the risk of passing for an ignor­ amus? However, their usefulness may really be questioned when one realizes that their prime aim was to cut the links with philosophy. The battle-cry 'No more social philosophy ' has resounded far and wide because, as Edgar Quinet declared about the philosophy of revolution, ' one does not topple a god without making a noise . ' Yet, apparently , it has been much noise to no effect, since they have continued to practise philosophy by other means. This can be seen in the ambition of every theory to assume a ' total ' viewpoint, as each, without exception, seeks to explain facts categorized as belonging to the most diverse disciplines, from economics to history, from anthropology to psychology. It would be extremely difficult to find an example to match that of Einstein, one moreover common in the sciences. The great physicist explained electro­ magnetic phenomena by a theory of fields, and quantum phenomena by a statistical hypothesis, which is the opposite of the former method. Even if this displeased him, he did it in order to conform to reality . Who among us would dare to explain industrial phenomena in terms of the class struggle, and polit­ ical phenomena by mass psychology? We would be accused of eclecticism. Yet, insofar as each theory claims to contain this principle of totality, one ends up, on the contrary, by a balkanization of the human sciences, in which each possesses its own autarky and world, remade in its own image. To return to Weber. His method, expounded in many places, seeks to under­ stand social facts before explaining them. To understand a fact is to give meaning to it, to go back to the values and intuitions of individuals in order to insert it in the chain of effects from which it has emerged. Only in this way can it be distinguished from an event, from a raw phenomenon conditioned by

1 18

The Power of the Idea

the environment. In the end, Weber's mode of procedure leads him towards the perspectives that we have just outlined. It is to the power of an idea that we must relate in order to grasp the vocation of certain individuals or certain groups, and understand the tyranny that it exerts in order to induce them to bind themselves to, or break loose from, the bonds of a society . Thi s is indeed in the nature of the energy that impels them, like an inspired artist or a scientist obsessed by a hypothesis, to create a reality from visions, from goals they themselves set, instead of submitting to reality. This itself indicates where the appeal of values originates, and why these enthuse the masses, as if they had caught an echo of them. Thus every historical trend begins as an ethical passion, lived out in reality. Only afterwards does it settle, becoming crystallized into a State system or a Church. Weber treats as an enigma what at first sight, albeit only in a hurried glance, appears a platitude. Do not assume any circumspection on my part. I am merely indicating a line of thought, the source of those ' elective affinities ' between Weber and our own times . It makes interesting, and even captivating, some common experience of life in society, close to which each one of us, at one time or another, has passed without stopping, but not without reflecting. However much goodwill I showed, would I have been able to impart greater topicality to Durkheim ' s ideas? Most assuredly not. We are certainly indebted to him for having given us a new idea of what is social. We are also grateful to him for having founded a new science through his theory of solidarity and religion. We admire the analysis he undertook of suicide, as an example of his scientific method. But his thoughts on politics and education scarcely any longer hold our attention. A heavy cloak of respectability has enveloped his sociology, which has become exclusively academic. Inside the groves of Academe and between the covers of textbooks it continues to dominate. The blood would still flow vigorously through its veins if it were drawn out of its sclerotic state and stripped of the gloomy, mechanistic sociological ' - appearance it has taken on.

-

I almost wrote ' purely

Let us be fair. Of all the classical sociologists only Max Weber interests and even thrills us. The ever-endearing charm of his work lies in his sense of history, in his critical spirit, which is backed by a militant pessimism that chimes in well with our age. Despite the fact that his work is unfinished and is in a certain state of ruin, it possesses one great virtue, and one alone. It speaks of ourselves, of the origins and destinies of Western societies. I allude to the familiar experience of the loss of meaning, and bureaucracy, rational­ ization, the economy and power, which all of us can observe in our own personal life and in the life of our country. His work expresses the malaise of a world that lacks spirit and any sense of vocation, where nothing is any longer in its rightful place, because there is no longer any rightful place where 7 anything definitively should be. There was an element of mysticism in this man so enamoured of reason, and of the judge in this professor who suffered from nerves speaking in front of a handful of students. In contemporary society Marx is the one who has best

Social 'big bangs'

1 19

dissected the heart of the problem - in other words that of the tension between tradition and innovation, which maintains the state of malaise. Weber's strength lies in the fact that he acknowledges this before analysing it in his own way. And his opportunity lay in having chosen a mighty adversary worthy of the fight, to whom we owe admiration, and whom we desire to resemble. By obliging those who disagreed with him to rise to his heights, that of genius, by forcing them to defend themselves, Marx acted as an in­ comparable spur. Without him Weber could not have found a solution that rehabilitated the upper classes and the bourgeoisie, or uncovered the danger that threatens Western civilization through a regime of bureaucracy, that is, the lack of any consuming passion that is peculiarly its own and of an ethos that gives an answer to individuals when they ask: 'What must we do? For whose sake should we do what we are doing? ' And this lack is inevitable in the light of rationalization, whose driving force, continually increasing in society, is the sciences. It is a rationalization that brings about uniformity in the professions, in technologies and in relationships. We can doubtless forecast and shape the course they will all take. But that course is bereft of meaning, is like a ship that lacks a port of destination. Moreover, neither physics nor biology, neither psychoanalysis nor economics, nor sociology, nor indeed all the sciences put together, can provide this destination. This privilege is reserved for prophecies alone, as Weber announces with a baroque pathos : The destiny of our age, which is characterized by rationalization, intellec­ tualization and above all by disenchantment with the world, has led human beings to banish the supreme, and most sublime, values from public life. They have found refuge either in the transcendent realm of the mystic life or in the fraternal feeling derived from direct, reciprocated relationships be­ tween isolated individuals. There is nothing fortuitous about the fact that the most outstanding art of our times is intimate and not monumental, nor in the fact that today only in small communities, in face to face contact between human beings and in muted fashion, is to be found something that might correspond to the proP.hetic pneuma that once enveloped large communities, 8 uniting them together.

The pleasing aroma that exudes from such lines brings with it a nostalgia for a world filled with emotional feeling, whose fervent religion was its soul, one peopled by exceptional beings, who had not the normal tendency to boast, or of taking petty acts of revenge on fate. A different destiny awaits human beings today, who are forced back on a choice between two possibilities: either a renewal due to ' entirely new prophets or a powerful renaissance of ancient ideas' , or one due to 'a mechanical process of petrification rendered pleasur­ able by a sort of convulsion of vanity ' , consequent on bureaucracy and the rationalization of social relationships, with everything being handed over to ' soulless specialists lacking in vision, and heartless seekers after pleasure ' . As we know, faced with such a dilemma, Europe has at least elected not to choose - unless, however, it has combined both alternatives in a most sinister manner that takes in both prophets with a convulsive vanity, as well as a mechanical renaissance of ancient, petrified ideas.

1 20

The Power of the Idea

Charisma and reason If one were required to define in one word the circumstances surrounding Weber ' s work, it would be ' revolution ' . Durkheim was concerned with cohe­ sion and consensus because for almost a century revolutions in France had succeeded one another. Was not France the epicentre of all the national and social upheavals that shook Europe? We had not finished feeling the shock waves of the French Revolution before Paris had become the meeting-place for all those - Germans, Russians, Italians - who were preparing for a new revolution. Here was seething a hotbed of culture, here human beings were working furiously to resolve the social question once and for all. From being French, socialism was becoming international. The period was an unstable one that propounded riddles and demanded solutions from science. By contrast, among all the great nations of the West, Germany alone remained ignorant of revolution. It resi sted it by taking a diversion. Beyond the Rhine, in small, serene , hard-working towns, philosophers, it has been said, were arranging the history of the modern era into a system that other peoples had arranged with no system. In any case there was no Cromwell or Robespierre, nor, a fortiori, a German Napoleon that Goethe could admire, in whom Hegel could contem­ plate the soul of the world. Yet revolution was constantly being thought about. It was reckoned that the next revolution , that of the proletariat, would break out in Berlin. Who then would have thought that the largest workers ' party in Europe would abdicate from the perilous honour of giving a new society to the world? Thus it was natural for a German sociologist to pose the opposite problem to that which was preoccupying Durkheim: how to break up and transform the order of things. This is not because Weber was a revolutionary, but because he took on the cares of history, in whose shadow he was living, and sought to discover a meaning in them. His whole sociology is characterized by the problem of innovation - not any kind of innovation, but one that encounters the resistance of ingrained tradition and destroys it. It is an innovation that the old order could not foresee and did not expect. Thus it is held to be irrational, because it cannot be deduced from what has gone before, the significance of which is not perceived until after the event. Weber enunciated this as follows: The inner orientation towards s uch regularities [custom and convention] contains in itself very tangible inhibitions against ' i nnovations' , a fact which

can be observed even today by everyone in his daily experience, and it constitutes a strong support for the belief in such binding norms . .

In view of such observation we must ask how anything new can ever arise in this world, oriented as it is toward the regular as the empirically valid [Present author's emphasis ] .

.

9

He was not the first to formulate this dilemma. Nevertheless, throughout his work one can follow the conflict between the two principles of tradition and inno­ vation, which have struggled against each other from the very dawn of history.

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We are accustomed to look for innovations i n a source outside ourselves, whether this be the environment, or technological conditions, or the lack of resources. These allegedly bear down upon us from outside so as to change our life style and way of acting . We learn, and adapt to circumstances, and in this way we progress. Thi s i s therefore the cause that, so it is said, makes human beings resemble grains of sand swept along by material, independent forces that determine the course of things. However, if we look at things from an opposing viewpoint, good arguments exist. At least for Weber, true innova­ tion , whose repercussions are the most profound, has an internal source and is directed outwards towards the external world. The following passage allows us to understand how it takes place in spite of everything that opposes and attempts to stifle it. He stated that: No doubt innovations have been induced from the outside, i.e. by changes in

the external conditions of life. B ut the response evoked by external change may be the ex tinction of life as well as its reorientation; there is no way of

foretelling. Furthermore, external change is by no means a necessary precon­ dition for innovation : in some of the most significant cases , it has not even been a contributing factor in the establishment of a new order. The ev idence of ethnology seems rather to show that the most important source of innova­ tion has been the influence of individuals who have experienced certain ' abnormal ' states (which are frequently, but not alway s, regarded by present­

day psychiatry as pathological) and hence have been capable of exercising a

spec ial influence on others . We are not discuss ing here the origins of these experiences which appear to be ' new' as a consequence of their ' abnor­ mality ' , but rather their effects . These influences which overcome the inertia 0 of the customary may originate from a variety of psychological occurrences. 1

One should not say this is valid only for a time when matters of custom and law alone were considered to be of value. The observ ation has a general application. In any innovation an exclusive excess of energy is at work, causing the innovation to occur. Without its assi stance neither the inertias of the reason nor conformity to reality can be overcome . For the slightest dis­ covery an act of courage and an obsessive tenac ity are needed. Doubtless these should be considered as not normal. A leap of conviction is required to pass from a mass of ideas to an action obeying a higher intelligence, despite the ebbs and flows, and the pitching and tossing usual in society. Then one must strike powerfully so as to cause the majority to yield, since they can only deem the innovation to be dangerous and of dubious advantage. Now , the gift possessed by those individuals capable of accomplishing this is the least natural of all . It dwarfs the size of other gifts , or the instinct of preservation in everyday life. What is more , one has only to read the l ives of prophets and revolutionaries to see how those who possess it must be convinced of their mi ssion if they do not wish to be destroyed or broken, for all the cards are stacked against them. Such a gift can only be sustained from within a person, from the subjective part of individuals caught up in a culture, having compelling goals that they see themselves obliged to cause to prevail. Their folly , in the eyes of others,

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The Power of the Idea

is to make a personal matter of something that is not one, devoting themselves utterly to it. Often an innovation will fail because what is lacking in its originator or originators is not intelligent insight, but the quality of possessing an unreasonable, pitiless character. You may argue that this is a romantic conception that mistakes the gut convictions of personal sentiment for the light of objective reality . I agree, but I know of no other conception that is truly its opposite. The very people that denounce it hasten in practice to make use of it, a little watered down, it is true, as you can see when you open any history book. In any case I shall hold on to it, at least for the time being, because it is shared by the scholars with whom we are dealing here. You will excuse me if I pause for a moment to draw a consequence I fear you will call exaggerated. When innovation is envisaged in this way as spring­ ing up from an inner source, we are led to give equal status to both psycho­ logical and social factors in order to account for it. Durkheim was so completely aware of this that he wrote, when concluding a review of a work of sociology setting out the current viewpoint:

To sum up, social evolution is exactly the opposite to what the author describes. Its direction is not from the outside to the inside, but from the inside to the outside. Customs make the law and determine the organic structures of societies. The study of socio-psychological phenomena is there­ fore not a mere appendix to sociology; it is its very substance. If war, invasions and the class struggle have an influence on the development of societies, it is on condition that they act upon the consciousnesses of indi­ viduals. Through these everything passes, and from these everything ema­ nates. The whole cannot change, unless its parts change, and in the same 11 proportion [present author's emphasis). The words Durkheim used are very much stronger than even a psychologist would dare to employ. Those used by Weber are even more revealing. He describes a strong and sudden action that sets in train a new movement that will endure until it is halted by another. And he invokes the mystical and patho­ logical qualities in those human beings whose energy transforms things, turn­ ing them upside down. The first of these qualities is to feel a vocation to do so. Our vantage point will therefore be that of innovation. For a few centuries Europe has honoured a tradition of innovation, although this does not prevent scandal from breaking out every time any innovation sees the light of day . No one takes it with a light heart, neither those that initiate it nor those that follow after. Nietzsche writes as a connoisseur in the matter: 'To be an exception passes for a guilty act. ' It forces one to live that separate existence entirely devoted to one purpose, along whose road harsh tests are strewn. It is for those whom peoples make into civilizing heroes, prophets, geniuses, lawgivers of the city and founders of an art. They hold the key to a unique event, an absolutely new beginning, one associated with their name - Christ, Lenin, Moses, Freud, Mahomet or Robespierre. To explain how events such as Christi­ anity, Islam, or the Soviet Revolution occurred raises the question: how is an innovation born? Should we assume that it results from a progressive

Social 'big bangs'

1 23

evolution that prepares the way for it, and ends up as a new variation or an overturning of what previously existed? This would be the case in mutation: individual organisms are given the possibility of selecting certain mutations in order to adapt to the environment, and thus are the starting-point for a new species. Should we think, as does Auguste Comte, that a civilization passes automatically from a religious to a metaphysical phase, and from this to a scientific or positive phase, j ust as the individual passes from childhood to adulthood? Is there a progressively rational awareness of the social and intel­ lectual forces that lead towards it? Whatever value these viewpoints possess, Weber does not appear to share them. Passing on rapidly, we may say that he considers innovation, in funda­ mental cases , to be a creation and not the outcome of evolution. Certainly it does not take place from nothing. But whether the work of an individual or a group that plays the part of a demiurge , it constitutes an origin. For him the idea of creation is absolutely central . We see him hark back to it every time that he accounts for the collapse of a tradition and a new breakthrough in history. The manner in which he envisages creation is similar in a number of respects to the contemporary vision of the big bang from which our universe has arisen. It is opposed to the conception of an evolution, and an innovation brought about externally, like the image they had in the last century of worlds revolv­ ing uniformly like a clockwork mechanism. By this I mean that for Weber innovation is something sudden and immense, having the appearance and significance of an event that represents an abrupt change of course. Clearly it is here of interest to us to follow almost word for word what science has pointed out to us. Characterized by a peculiar state of matter, everything starts initially from one single moment. Before this peculiar state, neither time, space, matter nor movement exist. Only by framing a hypothesis concerning the extension of the laws of physics as at present known can we trace the universe back to before this special state. For instance, we can assume a perpetual sequence of oscillating cosmic cycles each of which is born, l ike the legendary phoenix, from the ashes of its predecessor. In any case, according to certain scientists the laws of physics do not yet apply at this phase . There may therefore be a beginning, not of time but of our present era, that is preceded by a catastrophe, knowledge of which escapes us. Georges Lemaitre supposes there was an explosion from which billions of years separate us. Matter was concentrated into a lump of extraordinary density , a kind of 'primitive atom ' . It spread out over what became space and condensed into galaxies. From these amorphous masses were gradually born the stars and planetary systems. Other researchers, among them Georges Gamow, have refined this theory. According to them a block of primitive matter called ylem comprised protons, neutrons and electrons in a kind of unstable state of radiation at an extremely high temperature. This supra-energy bomb, burning at a white heat and of extreme density, exploded 13 billion years ago. In an instant it combined protons, neutrons and electrons so that they compacted together, spreading out

1 24

The Power of the Idea

and creating three-dimensional space as we know it. Consuming energy, nuc­ lei, particularly those made up of heavy hydrogen, and then the galaxies which were formed, absorbed and lowered the temperature. Three billion years after the explosion or big bang there appeared the first heavenly bodies of our own galaxy . Five billion years later our earth became solid. Henceforth everything proceeded quickly: a billion years further on living matter arose on a surface that had cooled down sufficiently. Five million years later ' social matter' first took root. In short, an intense, brief explosion was followed by slow condensation during which thermal radiation changed into the matter of galaxies, stars and finally organisms. What happened at the very beginning in a few seconds, during a dense combustion phase that characteri zed the primordial universe, influenced all subsequent phenomena. All the forms the galaxies and the planetary systems have assumed owe their existence to these first events, the nature of which is partially obscured by the passage of time. I am of course presenting to you only in outline that process of evolution from which the universe emerged. From it one comes quite naturally to com­ paring the cosmic big bang to the unfolding of a novel phenomenon, such as 12 religion, modem capitalism, or even a revolution. Later we shall see how , in order to explain them, we can usefully employ a mode of thinking that may be summarized in very simple terms as follows. Let us grant that innovation has a single point of origin, the moment when all that is old is shaken, heralding the possibility of all that is new and still indeterminate. Thi s under­ goes its first, explosive phase : the collectivity, like a superhuman burst of energy, combusting fiercely and therefore unstable, breaks with the fetters of 3 tradition, shaking off its states of inertia and sluggishness. 1 Problems no longer intelligible remain unresolved, but preparations are made for conditions of existence and action whose consequences are not yet foreseen. There follows a second phase of rationalization and adjustment to the needs of reality. Original enthusiasms and impulsions grow cool and are channelled according to political and economic imperatives. This corresponds to the installation of a new framework, an ' iron cage ' in which the collectivity becomes a willing pri soner. One may prolong the analogy in one further respect. The outward-expanding radiations of the big bang continue to exist long after the explosion and can be measured in the interstices of matter, within which they are trapped. In the same way the repercussions of a funda­ mental innovation persist in the interstices of society. They can be recognized from traces they leave in the collective memory, in emotions the innovation continues to evoke, and in the desire sometimes experienced by human beings to relive that instant of intensity. Such is the significance of the Reformation for Protestants, the exodus from Egypt for the Jews, as had been the foundation of Rome for the Latins. When one reflects deeply upon it, this analogy between cosmic happenings and human events, although a very old one, is curious. Yet it would remain incomplete if one did not add that these phases assume a 'primitive atom ' , a primordial lump of matter, the ylem, 14 possessing a fabulous energy, often

Social 'big bangs'

1 25

compared to a ball of fire. Now, it appears remarkable to me - for it was not born of any necessity - that a parallel is to be found in Weber's theory, whereas , so far as I am aware, none exists in any other theory . This primordial matter can be associated from a number of aspects with charisma . This is not only because the notion points towards a singular state of effervescence, affective and intense, but also because it represents the extraordinary gifts and unusual forces indispensable in overcoming the inertia of habit and indif­ ference. What significance can such a mysterious idea possess? For three­ quarters of a century, nothing has been done, and almost no attempt made to throw light upon it, and little more is known of it than at the beginning. If in the end charisma is no more than a word, if we accept its existence whilst knowing little or nothing about its nature, has not the time come to acknow­ ledge that we have been subscribing to a fascinating myth? It certainly con­ tains myth. But myth itself is not a matter for indifference, and we shall come back to this on several occasions . Meanwhile we note that the innovations explained by charisma do not occur through ordinary social and historical channels. The American sociologist Blau accuses Weber' s theory of not including ' an analysis of the historical conditions and social processes that give rise to charismatic eruptions in the social structure ' . 1 5 Why should it contain one when very clearly such innova­ tions have a non-historical origin? Moreover, they differ from the eruptions and changes that occur in a fully constituted society just as primordial explo­ sions may happen through channels different from those of the universe we inhabit. They could be due to laws of physics different from our own. How­ ever, we should not push the analogies too far. What alone is important is the general way of thinking about crucial moments and revolutions as so many big bangs. The great stream of history engulfs them in a rational , social form until one can no longer distinguish their origin. Let us therefore return to charisma, which might well be creative energy in its primitive state . Not for the first time in the hi story of the sciences has a scientist propounded an idea so foreign to the phenomena that it purports to explain, nor one so difficult to grasp. The magnetic fluids of the physicists, the phlogiston of the chemists or the vital forces of the naturalists remind us of this fact. Each in its own way set up a causal relationship that sufficed to account for the knowledge of reality at any given moment. However, it is most certainly the first time in the history of scientific thought that a religious idea is matched by so perfect a theoretical rigour and enjoys such a vogue. In theology cha­ risma signifies grace and those gifts of God that allow humans to perform an exceptional task. St Paul expresses this: 'Through the grace of God we have different gifts ' (Romans 1 2: 6) . Answering a call, individuals place themselves at the service of others, whether in teaching or leading, in helping the afflicted or effecting healing. It is a particular way of sharing in a genuine community. St Peter asserts this: 'Serve one another with the particular gifts God has given each of you, as faithful dispensers of the magnificently varied grace of God ' ( I Peter 4: 1 0).

1 26

The Power of the Idea

In the course of its transfer to the social domain the notion retains a precise meaning. It designates a 'grace ' , both in the sense of divine election and in the psychological sense of inner assurance and magnetic attraction for others. We understand it as meaning a person being obsessed by a 'vocation ' and possessing exceptional qualities that confer prestige upon him or her. To sum up, charisma represents both the presence of an extraordinary power and an extraordinary absence of power in a nascent community in which 'persons feel 16 full members of their community ' . A vital emotional power exists that has the capacity, if the need arises, to encompass a restoration of intensity and vitality in human relationships. Looked at in this way, we might be tempted to see in it a determinate quantum of power and action, just as the libido signifies a quantum of sexual energy. Whatever the gloss we put upon it, charisma here represents something that is pre-rational, but it is a pre-rationality of origins, if I may so express it, dating from a time when everything occurs directly between human beings, in a personal and subjective manner. 1 7 More precisely, it is manifested by setting aside religious and political institutions, as well as the economic interest of the individual . Viewed in thi s light, charisma is 'a typical anti-economic force ' , refusing any compromise with ordinary needs and the profits that ensue 18 from them. . This is why the revolutionary and communist movements based o n self­ interest and reason may not possess charisma. Weber expressly denied them it when he wrote : Modem communist movements are, so far as they aim for a communist

organization of the masses, dependent on ' value-rational ' appeals to their disciples, and on arguments from expediency in their [external] propaganda. In both cases , thus, they rest the ir position on specifically rational considera­ tions and, in contrast to the military and religious communities, on considerations concerned with the everyday profane world. Their prospects of success under ordinary conditions rest on entirely different subjective conditions than those

of groups which are oriented to exceptional activities, to other-worldly

values, or to other primarily non-economic conditions. 1 9

It is very clear that Max Weber is falling into an error, but for the moment this is not our main concern. We should understand that charisma is manifested as a charge of emotion and passion that suffices to remove oneself from the immediate reality and lead a different kind of existence. Individuals feel an excessive abundance of strength that carries them along, or have the im­ pression that they are possessed by a higher power unleashed and made irresistible by a common action. It impels them, so to speak, from within, like an engine receiving additional power from a touch on the accelerator. In order to attain this stage cultures have devised procedures designed to infuse this charge of emotion and passion. Weber often referred to them: ' It would seem that a much more lasting form of possession in a state of charisma is promised through those gentle kinds of euphoria that one feels either as a md stical, dream-like enlightenment, or more actively as a moral conversion. ' 2 These procedures, it must be admitted, are closely related to a

Social 'big bangs'

1 27

state of possession, or of intoxication by drugs, dancing or music. Nor are they limited to archaic cultures and times, or peculiar to a religious or magical charisma. Yet why venture further into this field, when its contours are so vague? Doubtless it is because each of the aspects described reveals to us that cha­ risma is a kind of higher form of energy, a materia prima that is given off in moments of crisis and tension, shattering habits, shaking up states of inertia, and bringing to light an extraordinary newness. In order to delineate its nature more clearly I shall speak of a primary charisma, insensitive to the constraints of daily life and spread throughout the collectivity , whereas a secondary charisma is a quality specific to an individual that attracts and acts upon others. We shall return to this later. The former comprises passions shared in common that are received as necessities of nature. The other represents a force that prescribes a precise direction for these passions to follow in order to realize some political task or religious vocation. Furthermore, it is because these facets highlight those characteristics that are in opposition to reason that, Weber asserted in Economy and Society, chari sma is the great revolutionary power of eras bound to tradition. It differs from the power, likewise revolutionary, of the ratio which acts directly from outside by changing the conditions and problems of life and through this, indirectly, the stance one adopts towards them; ratio may also act through the process of intellectualization. Charisma, by contrast, can con­ sist of a transformation from within. Born of necessity and enthusiasm, it usually signifies a change in the direction of opinion or in the facts, an entirely different orientation given to all positions taken up regarding every particular form of life and the 'world '. In pre-rationalist eras, tradition and charisma between them accounted for almost all the directions assumed by 21 action. What occurs under the aegis of the ratio i s precisely a tale that enthrals us from the outside, and carries us along with it as passengers. On the other hand charisma brings with it abrupt explosions within a society, converting its members to a course of action the outcome of which depends on their qualities. The former progresses in a continuum, whilst the latter constantly brings discontinuity, interrupting the feverish course of events. Such a contrast brings irresistibly to my mind an analogy with the 'big bang' of language, as set out by Levi-Strauss: Things could not progressively signify meaning. After a transformation (whose study does not pertain to the social sciences but to biology and psychology), the transition is effected from a stage where nothing possessed meaning, to another where everything possessed it. This observation, seem­ ingly a commonplace, is important because this radical change has no reci­ procal equivalent in the field of knowledge, which for its part develops slowly and progressively. In other words, at the very instant when the whole universe became in a trice /ul/ of meaning, it did not thereby become better known because of it, even though it is true that the appearance on the scene 22 of language was to hasten the pace of development of knowledge.

1 28

The Power of the Idea

A similar antinomy may exist between transformations that are sparked off by primary charisma and those induced by reason. The former reach a veritable peak , when meaning emerges and their early beginnings are swallowed up in an unfathomable past. They are no longer understood, just as in the same way we have ceased to understand a language such as Etruscan, which is no longer spoken. On the other hand, transformations induced by reason function with clarity and precision, an example of which is provided by economics and technology. One is struck by the insistence with which Weber returns to the contrast, 23 always doing so in order to stress the singularity, one might say the psychological nature, of charisma, or in any case its singular purity, 'foreign to economic considerations ' . Wherever it appears it constitutes a 'call ' in the 24 strongest sense of the term, or a 'mission ' or ' spiritual duty ' . In the end, why should it not be said? The antinomy of charisma and reason reminds one of the famous parable in which Nietzsche contrasts Zarathustra and Dionysus. In his studies of religion Max Weber makes Zarathustra out to be the champion of 'the struggle against the magical cult of intoxication and for belief in his own divine mission' - a step towards prophecy. Dionysus, by contrast, embodies the orgiastic cults of self-intoxication and mystical belief in divine possession. Yet when Holderlin dubs this god the spirit of communion we should realize that for him every individual , the living and the dead, belongs to the community. Hence the fervour that characterizes the Dionysiac festival, the most secret source of intimacy.

Institutionalized society and society as institutionalizer

I am aware of the doubts that the notion of charisma might raise. However, my researches have taught me one thing. All of us fear so much to confess that we are working with notions that are half obscure, whose full meaning we do not know, that we communicate to others only what we believe we have clearly defined. Now, we must acknowledge that we understand most notions with the assistance of a faculty that is aptly named a ' sense of reality ' . This allows us to select ideas that go together and touch upon something vital. It is not that they can be verified by any searching after facts but because they mirror certain general features of life and human experience . Things have reached this point: almost a century has elapsed, but only this ' sense of reality ' helps us to understand what charisma is, without leading us consequently to 25 believe it is true. However this may be, as we have discovered, it allows us to link up once more with the idea of creation, which is so c lose to our own experience and our tendency to envisage the external world as the work of a creator. The result is that what was anonymous is given a name, even if only through a metaphor, as in the expression 'Einstein ' s universe ' . It is important to spell out precisely the meaning of the very idea of creation, which is a tangled web of misunder­ standings. If 'to create ' has as its synonym 'to make something out of nothing ' ,

Social 'big bangs'

1 29

as is commonly asserted, this is not what is meant here . If, on the other hand, we mean that someone is the initiator or the demiurge of the universe, at least the human universe, then the word 'to create ' is not used wrongly or inaccur­ ately . Moreover, the idea of creation, in its proper, exact sense, without any extended and more or less misused meaning, is inseparable from the tradition that brings together in one single lineage Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If you go back to the passages I have cited above you will realize that Weber, fully aware he was doing so, associated himself with this line of thinking. This should be no surprise, since it has penetrated deeply into our culture and influenced our spontaneous explanation of history and the events that occur around us. He himself always attempted to remain close to immediate experi­ ence in order to understand it. In this connection, Lacan, in one of his semin­ ars, stated: 'The idea of creation is consubstantial with our own thinking. You, like anyone else, cannot think other than in creationist terms. What you conceive to be the most familiar model in your thinking, that is, evolutionism, is with you, as with all your contemporaries, a form of defence, a clinging to 26 religious ideals that prevent you from seeing what is happening around you. ' I am sure that one day the most vital part of Weber' s theories will be reckoned to have arisen from this untimely return to the least scientific intuitions. It embodies them, thus setting off trains of thought that are irresistible, because at the outset they strike a chord. In the human sciences we remain sensitive to and are won over to ideas that, far from dispelling mysteries, succeed in safeguarding their prestige. Now, the deepest mystery surrounds the first steps in the formation of a society or institution. Precisely at that moment there appears, as ethnologists and historians have observed, a network of very close, very intense relation­ ships that Weber characterizes as in statu nascenti. Something ' totally other ' opens up in their midst. Incommensurable in its nature with what pre-existed, it is something before which individuals recoil , stricken with fear. Yet here too appears an opportunity for those who put forward new solutions and have the strength to pave a path towards the great stream of history in which they wish to plunge and lose themselves. Let us say they possess a charisma capable of drawing others to them - just as a magnet attracts iron filings - mobilizing them for the accomplishment of some extraordinary task, and in the end seeing an art or a science, a political party or a religion take shape . The whole social field then becomes charismatic. It is in fact in such terms that Weber described the first associations of Christians in the West: The holy spirit would be imparted to all, it would permit the sons and daughters to prophesy , the elders to have dreams, and the young to have v isions and the spirit would be poured out, also, upon servants and maids . The rev ival of the holy spirit in all men accordingly would be a sign of the advent of the Messiah and of the Kingdom of God at hand. This represen­ tation has been dec isive for the early Christian conception of the Pentecostal miracle. The ' spirit' in this specific sense of an irrational godly prophetic gift. 27

Weber added that similar manifestations are to be found in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Protestant sects appear. We know that revolutions

1 30

The Power of the Idea

bear the same characteristics of effervescence and improv isation, individuals feeling themselves carried along, so as to share in the renewal of common institutions and values. One day - who knows? - we shall perhaps have the surprise of freely observing primary charisma. Or, since it may not live up to our conjectures, we shall see the very idea fade away from the scientific landscape . If this is the case, without any risk of it being denied, it will be said that the notion was too elusive, and it will appear strange that it was accepted right into the twentieth century. Meanwhile much remains unknown regarding this first social field in statu nascenti. Yet since we know it to be psychological and thus 'a stranger to economic considerations ' , I shall attempt to draw out its properties. The first is the fluidity of relationships and rules. It goes without saying that these continue to exist in one way or another. If not, chaos would reign. However, they lose some of their inflexible character, and are no longer beyond all controversy and discussion. People cease to subordinate themselves to abstract legal principles and traditional maxims. Concrete rules are drawn up for each particular situation, and these apply depending on the circumstances. Indi­ viduals obey them not out of a sense of discipline but either because they believe they have been revealed or are divine, or because of the faith they have in those who propound them. In this way they hammer out together new and reciprocal duties: ' love your neighbour' , or, ' to each according to his or her needs' . These kinds of precepts, which shake the basis of ethics from the moment they are enunciated, are defined by a spontaneous consensus. Weber wrote: The belief [arises] that the group has a right to enact, recognize, or appeal [sic] laws, according to its own free will, both in general and for an individual case. Under genuinely charismatic authority, on the other hand, conflicts over the correct law may actually be decided by a group vote, but this takes place under the pressure of feeling that there can be only one correct decision, and 28 it is a matter of duty to arrive at this.

The community is therefore sovereign, knowing no other prescripts and pro­ hibitions than the new ones that arise from within it. Life strays so much from the normal path, and individuals feel this so strongly, that they almost rule out any resort to legal and political constraints. The mere pressure upon one another leads them to observe a certain order and to regulate common actions and decisions. The second property of a community in statu nascenti relates to a new solution to the problem: by what are human beings bound to one another? You will easily perceive that, once they have shaken off the bonds of domination and self-interest, only by drawing closer on a personal basis can they be held together. Every individual is delivered from the grip of the past, but only such close proximity is capable of preserving their commitment to a common goal. Because of this they venture to come together without any hierarchical author­ ity, in order to deliberate, to reach agreement and transact their everyday affairs. Such human beings, imbued with a passionate energy, form an emo-

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tional community that is both flexible and constraining, democratic and author­ itarian. The charisma that brings them together is thus affective rather than rational, because the whole strength of the tie between them relies on trust, which, in the absence of all control, is often blind and fanatical . This can be seen in the ' councils ' or 'soviets' , which is the form that this kind of com­ munity has taken in Europe since the French Revolution and about which Hannah Arendt wrote: [They] had sprung up everywhere, completely independent of one another, workers ' , soldiers ' , and peasants ' councils in the case of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case of Hungary ; neighborhood councils that emerged in all residential districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, c ouncils of writers and artists, born in the coffee houses of B udapest, students' and youths ' councils at the universities, workers ' councils in the factories, councils in the army , among the civil servants, and so on . . . The most s triking aspect of these sponta­

neous developments is that in both in stances it took these independent and

highly disparate organs no more than a few weeks, in the case of Russia, or a few day s , in the case of Hungary , to begin a process of co-ordination and integration through the formation of higher councils of a regional or prov in­ cial character, from which finally the delegates to an assembly representing the whole country could be chosen . 29

All this, springing from enthusiasm, spreads like wildfire and cannot be recon­ ciled with indifference or calculation. In such circumstances, in fact, loyalty to the collectivity is a duty that presents a peculiar character in the charismatic community. It forms the basis of a code of honour that regulates relationships and is maintained of its own accord. How could it be otherwise, since in 30 principle each indiv idual accepts it absolutely freely? All such cases concern a group founded on emotion, sometimes one of domination and sometimes not, whose loyal adepts commune together in the same belief and have the same god or leader. One has only to recall the devotion of revolutionaries to the Bolshevik Party, or the love of the soldiers of the Empire for Napoleon. Inevitable disagreements and internal rivalries are played down, although not banished, in order to attain the chosen goal. Nothing helps them more to accomplish this than to pursue, and discover, a lasting closeness, a similarity in their life style that links them by a personal bond: The prophet has his disciples, the warlord his bodyguard ; the leader, gener­ ally, his agents. There is no such thing as appointment or dismissal, no career,

no promotion. There is only a call at the instance of the leader on the basis of the charismatic qual ification of those he summons . . . There is no such

thing as a salary or benefice . Di sciples or followers tend to live primarily in

a communistic relationship with their leader on means which have been provided by vol untary gift. 3 1

Disciples, bodyguard and agents are all the more inclined to combine together in love because in this way they feel united through an act of sacrilege that sets them apart from others. The Protestants who trample underfoot the

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The Power of the Idea

teachings of the Church, insulting the Pope; the revolutionaries who send a king to the guillotine - to take only these two examples - have committed sacrilege. The questions posed daily in the framework of ordinary life are many, whereas life lived out of the ordinary, breaking with tradition, consists of one question alone : who is innocent, who is guilty? Human beings who are accomplices in an act of sacrilege need to join forces as one in order to protect themselves from the consequences of the crime in which they have shared. Moreover, loving devotion and guilt intermingle every time that a community based on emotion comes into being, since these ensure its unity . A third property is revealed in a rationality peculiar to charismatic action. When the attachments to society and tradition are broken, one is necessarily advancing into unknown territory. At that moment no external support is available, nor is there any set of rules according to which one should behave. One improvises, as Lenin thought at the height of the Russian Revolution, and then one sees what emerges from it. For, as Weber noted, There is no system of formal rules, of abstract legal principles, and hence no process of rational judicial decision oriented to them. B ut equally there is no legal wisdom oriented to judicial precedent. Formally concrete judgements are newly created from case to case . . . by virtue of revelation, oracle, inspir­ ation, or of his own free will, which are recognized by the members of the 2 religious, military or party group because they come from such a source. 3

Through creations and improvisations one can nevertheless follow a move­ ment directed towards a goal, just as an arrow is directed towards its target. But what distinguishes a goal sustained by charisma from one that is not? Why is it said about such a goal that only human beings charged with a mission, and who make it their task to do so, can attain it? It is simply that the goal is infinitely distant, even if, in these times of vast, profound upheavals, it is believed to be close . The coming of the kingdom of God, equality between all human beings, a return to nature, the disappearance of social classes, the absolute independence of a nation and many other things are ends to which no final date can be assigned. Now, as the Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen wrote ' an end that is infinitely distant is no end ' .33 It becomes, how­ ever, a direction - do we not speak of the direction of history? - or a cause that assumes a clear shape in people 's minds and impels them to action. It becomes substantialized in a doctrine, in a person, or occasionally in a higher entity to which all refer - nation, God, history, one 's country, etc. If the realization of the direction to take, and the struggle for the cause, imply action, it appears reasonable to remain indifferent to the means, whose relationship to the end cannot be foreseen. All means are of equal value: prayer, sacrifice , heroism, contemplation, martyrdom, to mention only a few. What allows the Christian to decide that the coming of God ' s kingdom will be hastened by prayer rather than martyrdom? How can the revolutionary decide that the favourable moment has arrived and society will be made more just by violence rather than non-violence, by economic efficiency or political democracy? In the same way a scientist is not sure of making a discovery

Social 'big bangs'

1 33

by using one method of calculation rather than another, any more than a sculptor is of creating a masterpiece by using wood rather than marble. It is doubtless true that an end, even if it were the noblest, does not justify any means; not that it is immoral, but because in the event such a justification is impossible. Moreover, it is reasonable to think that every means outside the rules and customs has a chance of being effective in charting a course or serving a cause. In other words it is effective in drawing one step closer to a goal that is far-off, even inaccessible and, in the eyes of the majority, absurd. For those caught up in the crucible of new beginnings, any gesture, any word that seems to lead towards an outcome deemed impossible is rightly a miracle, by the very fact that it has been possible. We know only too well that in societies in statu nascenti the miracle is a way of legitimizing them. Individuals who are con­ sidered to have achieved extraordinary success are treated as if they possessed a ' superhuman ' gift, and all charisma is attributed to them. It is so rare to have first-hand testimony to such an exceptional moment that I cannot resist the pleasure of citing that of Trotsky concerning Lenin, who was credited with such a gift. Describing the October session of the Russian Soviet, Trotsky wrote : Even those nearest, those who knew well his place in the party, for the first time fully realised what he meant to the revolution, to the people, to the peoples . It was he who had taught them; it was he who had brought them up. Somebody 's voice from the depth of the hall shouted a word of greeting to the leader. The hall seemed only to have awaited the signal. 'Long live Lenin! ' The anxieties endured, the doubts overcome, pride of initiative, triumph of victory , gigantic hopes - all poured out together in one volcanic 34 eruption of gratitude and rapture.

Usually only those who possess the faith acknowledge this, feeling a fervour flowing through them. They emerge transfigured from such an eruption, just as the one who is the object of their gaze appears transfigured by the charisma he or she embodies. Here once again is Christ who, in the eyes of his disciples, succeeds in drawing close to the religious goal that consumed him, using the means at his disposal. Weber recorded the path he followed: This self-esteem involved the conviction that his [Christ's] power to exorcize demons was operative only among the people who believed in him, even if they be heathens, not in his home town and his own family and among the wealthy and the high-born of the land, the scholars and the legalistic virtuosi - among none of these did he find the faith that gave him his magical power to work miracles. He did find such a faith among the poor and the oppressed, among sinners, and even among Roman soldiers. It should never be forgotten that these charismatic powers were the absolutely decisive components in 35 Jesus's feelings concerning his Messiahship.

Yet he had to resort to the vehicle of miracles, which he hesitated to perform. It is still miracles of economics or feats of arms that are demanded even today during a period of revolution, in order to convince others of the

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The Power of the Idea

urgency and excellence of a cause . When one has been able to observe such actions backed up by the assent of the masses, one knows that the means of realizing them are decided by values rather than their effectiveness. Thus only individuals and communities passing through an exceptional phase, in statu nascenti, are fitted for it. By this they give proof of their mission and their will to carry it out, come what may . The recourse to values is the sole way for reason to bridge the gap that separates a goal situated at an unspecified distance away - and therefore within human beings - and an action that confirms the possibil ity of attaining it by one means or another. We will not go into this question in detail. There is no culture , ancient or modem, that does not know such moments when energies and passions are mobilized to serve an extraordinary task. External constraints appear to give way, and reality to submit to one 's wishes. A human being then becomes a magician to his or her fellows, persuaded that everything is within grasp. There are no other terms in which to express the charismatic power that generates a universe of beliefs and practices. You will have realized that the concept of charisma from time to time takes on a quasi-religious note, signifying moreover a symbolic, even emotional quality in an individual or group. I have attempted to compare it to one of those anonymous ideas that explains why a unique event originally occurs . Thus it can designate the energy of the big bang from which a new collectivity emerges and a new direction is given to the course of affairs. One can perceive in it a ' field ' that is constituted in primordial moments of crisis and innovation. The properties of this field - fluidity, emotional loyalty and moral action are the very ones of a society that is institutionalizing itself, just as nature becomes what it is, and this is the point of departure for all things. It is this society that institutes a ' history ' in which human beings live in a kind of excessively powerful energy, sustained by enthusiasm, confident of them­ selves and their leader. It is a matter of their being persuaded of the ' all­ powerfulness ' of thought and of their own values, and having no thought for their personal destiny . Later, however, each individual hedges herself or him­ self in with habits and customs. It is the heroes, now become ancestors, who act through them, giving an appearance of continuity, of an uninterrupted succession that runs from the dead to the living. Each individual 's enthusiasm becomes a pressure for conformity that engulfs everybody . Finally, reason separates and coordinates them. It is reason that fashions the face of a society once instituted, analogous this time to a nature that has been realized, in other words, impersonal and subject to laws . As they achieve strength the links binding one to another become more subject to calculation and discipline. The movement described is that followed in every case by Weber's thought. It is the backdrop to his sociology, and in many respects to all sociology. One recognizes in it the same movement as in the cosmogony, which began with an explosive phase and continued with a phase of condensation and cooling­ down. It is known that the deepest rocks are fossils of the creation of the earth, the nuclei of atoms and radiation being the remains of the cosmic big bang.

Social 'big bangs'

1 35

In the same way the organs of a society and the beliefs and accomplishments of a civilization are the fossils of the social big bang. When Weber deplores the fact that in the twentieth century we are 'disenchanting' the world, it must be understood as the process of cooling it down, causing it to close in on itself. Thus history, which begins in spectacular fashion by the ' sacrifice of the intellect' in favour of th()se who possess charisma, ends by 'sacrificing to the intellect ' , which forces upon everybody an austerity of life and elimi­ nates the vestiges of that magical trust. And this is what Entzauberung disenchantment - means.

-

5

The genius of c apitali sm

Invent, and you will die persecuted like a criminal; copy , and you will live as happy as a fool. Balzac

The search for the origins of the modern world

In April 1 5 1 8 Luther defended his Theses before the Augustinian monks, meeting in convention at Heidelberg. The matter was one for the Order and not for the university, but it was taken for granted that professors, particularly theologians, should be invited. After the death of the great reformer the university was converted to the new religion and embraced the doctrines of Calvinism. Within its walls was born in 1 563 the famous Heidelberg Cate­ chism, which soon spread beyond the frontiers of Germany and became the foundation of the beliefs and teaching of the Reformed Church . Then, three and a half centuries later, Max Weber, a professor at the same university, gave fresh vigour to Calvinism and caused its fires to burn more brightly. A singular catechism, enunciated by a sociologist, replaced that of the theologians, at its last gasp. This is a coincidence that no prediction could have foreseen. It has been said that human beings are constantly in pursuit of the golden age - they do no.t know how right they are It is a quest that leads along diverse paths. Some wish to rediscover the atmosphere of a happy childhood, others that of a time that had brought them heroic adventure and success. Certain others turn their gaze further afield, to the image of a world in its birth-pangs, when heaven and earth were not yet divided from one another. Scientists trace their theories back to a golden age of which most retain the memory: it is the nostalgia that is important. This is indeed true in the case of Max Weber. Throughout his work he seems to be in search of a golden age, the origin of an epoch in history. By this I mean that time of new beginnings when the prophets of a new religion, inspired by Luther, trod the earth of Europe , possessed by a passion still intact, haunted by visions drawn from the Bible, and uttering truths that had emerged .

The genius of capitalism

1 37

white-hot from the limbo of the faith. There followed the heroisms of exile, the martyrdom of believers, which in our eyes remains a holocaust, and the proclamation of a teaching that millions of artisans, the bourgeoisie, the nobility and peasants adopted in less than a century. All this occurred with such ardour that over three centuries later we can still hear their voices bridging the arches of memory. It was a golden age in which these ascetics hammered out a code for modern life . Not without melancholy, Weber, at the conclusion of the work we are about to consider, recalled: 'When asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modem economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and econo­ mic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of [us] all.' 1 By applying the Protestant way of life to the needs and harsh virtues re­ quired for an occupation, the Christian ethic becomes that of businessman and bureaucrat alike. The movement that had sprung from an explosion of liberty changes the modem world, as it were, into a strongroom in which we remain imprisoned. But how can one stay locked away in a steel safe? No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrifi­ cation, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ' Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved. '2

To perceive this movement clearly it suffices for science to forget its own prejudices, going back to the bare facts we have recalled. No scholar' s work includes a great number of books and articles of major importance. Only fragments of it represent a definitive contribution to know­ ledge. By this I mean things said once and for all, and to perfection. If there is one book of Max Weber' s that possesses this quality it is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the first version of which dates from 1 905 . It is also his most difficult work. Let us begin by admitting that none of the arguments and facts that it contains is convincing. However, overall the im­ pression they produce is irresistible. I am not speaking of the effect imparted by the delicate architectonics of the work. I have rather in mind the intellectual stimulation that at every instant comes from this study of the big bang from which the modem world has emerged. There is nothing, not even the laboured theological discussions, that does not make us feel we are touching upon a vital subject, worthy of our interest. One has no difficulty in subscribing to the judgement of Fernand Braudel, the historian who has studied the phenom­ enon world-wide: ' For Max Weber capitalism, in the modem sense, may have been neither more nor less than a creation of Protestantism, or rather of Puritanism. All historians are opposed to this subtle hypothesis, although they cannot be rid of it once and for all; it looms up constantly before them. Yet 3 clearly it is incorrect. '

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The Power of the Idea

This may well be so, but how then does one explain its power to shock? Whence comes the fasc ination that it exercises even over those that it fails to convince? Weber maintained that European capitalism is the product of capital­ ists, and not that capitalists are the products of capitalism. He sought to prove that the Puritans became entrepreneurs and industrialists out of a sense of vocation, instead of becoming Puritans out of self-interest. By substituting real persons for blind, mechanical forces the theory assumes the character of a play with its own dramatis personae. These are flesh-and-blood actors playing out a plot unfolding on the stage of history. If, as is the case, it corresponds to a real experience, it is difficult afterwards to reject it. How true is it in detail? Such a problem perplexes only scholars, and at best comes up against the sceptics, who argue that the sociologist took too much liberty with the facts . For Weber, the main point lay elsewhere. The economists had reduced the capitalists to the idea of a social class, dismembering them and stripping them of their moral qualities and the psychological attributes that would have allowed them to demonstrate their novel nature. For the economists they represented the vile face of selfishness and exploitation. They were depicted as adventurers, pleasure-loving men of affairs and captains of industry bereft of faith and legal sense, who by trickery or force appropriated the wealth of everybody. Now Weber puts flesh and blood on them once more, through the mediation of religion, representing them as pious men obeying a higher voca­ tion . He made them out to be saints, even supermen . If they amass money, are industrious and have the will to succeed in their affairs, it is in order to restore the glory of the true God, the terrible God of the B ible. As servants of the Old and New Covenants, of the ancient and new Tablets of the Law , they have not the expectation of profit from their enterprises, but something much more solemn: salvation. In order to merit it, they have heroically borne up against everything: ' bourgeois classes as such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism. It was "the last of our heroisms", as Carlyle, not without 4 reason, has said. ' At once we are plunged into the saga of the creation of capitalist society. We follow it as if it were an episode in creation itself. Profane history, and that of the economy, are transported into the realm of sacred history. Weber takes us back to that golden age when religion and economics had not yet been put asunder, nor the person possessed by faith from the one possessed by money . It was a time when one calculated one 's sainthood on the same abacus as one 's fortune. In other words he takes us back to a primordial event, the Reformation, and to an exceptional man, Luther. The wisest course is to follow him, in spite of the proofs against him. These are not inconsiderable - far from it - but extremely powerless against a theory that henceforth constitutes a part of history. However, the theory is not free-floating. Of all contemporary superstitions, the least unreasonable is doubtless the cult of statistics. We do not rely upon them for the truth but at least they describe faithfully its symptoms . At the

The genius of capitalism

1 39

beginning of his study Weber put forward an interesting correlation between the respective positions occupied by Catholics and Protestants in the province of Baden. Whereas Protestants were more numerous among industrial workers, technicians and bankers, Catholics were less urbanized, less qualified, and held jobs as artisans, shopkeepers and office-workers. In the countryside to the east and north the Protestants used modem methods of cultivation. By contrast, the Catholics in the south and west clung to the small farm and the habits of a subsistence agriculture. This appears to point to a parallelism between economic and technical success and the individual ' s religious convictions. Should one conclude that this success is determined by such convictions? That the zealous Church believer may at the same time be a keen businessman does not, properly speaking, constitute a discovery. Marx, when writing about the Jews, with great ill-temper had already asserted this: Judaism attains its apogee with the perfection of civil society ; but civil society only reaches perfection in the Christian world. Only under the sway of Christianity, which objectifies all national, natural, moral and theoretical relationships, could civil society separate itself completely from the life of the state, sever all the species bonds of man, establish egoism and selfish need in their place, and dissolve the human world into a world of atomistic, 5 antagonistic individuals.

But Weber did not confine himself to statistics. These at first indicate a possibility: the form of Christianity that sustains the coming of the bourgeoisie and of capitalist enterprise is that of the Protestants, or even more exactly, that of the Puritans, However, for this to happen, breaking with the order of things, new values and new psychological motivations were needed. The only driving force that is truly revolutionary is the spirit of capitalism , which carries within it these values and motivations that run so greatly contrary to tradition - a tradition, one might add, in which all civilizations share. Weber made this clear: It was not generally in such cases a stream of new money invested in the industry which brought about this revolution . . . but the new spirit, the spirit of modem capitalism, had set to work. The question of the motive forces in the expansion of modem capitalism is not in the first instance a question of the origin of the capital sums which were available for capitalistic uses, but, above all, of the development of the spirit of capitalism. Where it appears and is able to work itself out, it produces its own capital and monetary 6 supplies as the means to its ends, but the reverse is not true.

How can this spirit be defined? Where can it be understood, if not in the writings of the Puritans, who are the other documentary source of Weber' s study. We may perhaps consider it strange that at the beginning he turned more to practitioners than to the theologians. Yet those who devote themselves daily to the transaction of business afford a more exact social representation of that spirit and how it works. It is in them, and above all in that Voltairean Puritan called Benjamin Franklin, that Weber discovered the maxims that are the

1 40

The Power of the Idea

guide and breviary of capitalism. It must be said that the fellow was obsessed by the idea of rationalizing anything and everything. When still a child he told his father, a pious man who was interminably giving thanks to God : ' Father, it seems to me that if you gave thanks once and for all for the whole caboodle, it would be a great saving of time. ' It goes without saying that Franklin counselled rational behaviour for everybody . A wise bachelor will prefer an older woman to a younger one : her goodness will still survive when the other's beauty has withered. The risk of having children will be less, and therefore so will be the sin. It is a horrible misfortune to deflower a virgin, and a man bears the burden of this his whole life through. Closer to our present concerns, here are his injunctions to those wishing to become entrepreneurs: You will busy yourself with your legitimate affairs with an unceasing zeal. Time is money, so do not waste it. But credit is also money, so look after your credit and use it wisely. Acquit yourself of your obligations punctually. The man who pays his debts and reimburses his creditors ensures for himself the possibility of fresh loans, and thus has at his disposal the funds of others. Keep exact accounts, be sober in your personal life and do not waste your money in frivolities. Every penny counts; it can grow and multiply, increas­ ing the profit by so much more . 7

It is plainly evident that such a mode of conduct of one 's life, the rigorousness of which seems manifest, is the expression of a duty . Weber noted: 'Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one ' s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic . The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty . That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. ' We are faced with a real obligation that must be respected i n all circumstan­ ces. It goes without saying that in exhorting people to work unremittingly, to heap up riches without enjoyment of them, to sacrifice one ' s personal happi­ ness to the success of one ' s business rather than offering up one ' s prosperity on the altar of happiness - such a duty seems irrational. At the very least it seems to go against 'human nature ' . Yet whoever has heard its call submits and conforms to it. Furthermore , it is all the more readily accepted because it has derived its source from a religious vision that lays down the necessity for it. To account for the rise of thi s ethic and interpret the consequences, two questions alone are important. How, in fact, can one explain that this ' spirit of capitalism' has emerged in Europe and given rise to a civilization of a unique kind? Why does what would seem against 'human nature ' and the surest instincts of human beings become for them a rule and shape their personality? According to Weber there can be no doubt that this spirit, from the very beginning, leads to the rationalization both of the economy and culture. On the one hand this comes about by the triumph of calculation and scientific method. Under its impulsion tasks are organized and various activ­ ities coordinated so as to ensure means are better employed and their effects foreseen , leading to an increase in productivity. Rationalization , beginning in industry and commerce, then penetrates into every sector of life. Thus it

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detennines the conduct of individuals, who draw up a balance sheet of expend­ iture and gains in their human relationships and who mistrust sensibilities and enjoyment that bring them no profit. On the other hand, rationalization reduces to a state of deliquescence the magical vision of the world that has been inherited from the past. Experience is the teacher of human beings: they no longer believe in spirits and demons; they no longer succumb to collective states of ecstasy . Liberated from the constraints of the sacred, individuals take for their guide their own egotistical interests. In reality it is not economic materialism or philosophical atheism that have ruined the authority of religions, as has been repeated to satiety. It is the ' spiritualization ' of capital and ordinary existence, which has isolated individuals in soc iety, teaching them to trust only techniques and actions that are foreseeable. They admit the all-powerfulness of reality, which they attempt to control through science and reason. Under the impetus of Protestantism in Europe the rationalization of the world has been completed, leaving human beings to face the universe alone, lacking any means of consolation or escape. Once discovered, this statement can be of use to other civilizations . Max Weber was convinced that it summed up the direction history was taking. The first question deals therefore with the genesis of Western capitalism and its origins in the Puritan sects that created it. The second question relates to innovation in general, to the way in which thoughts and ideas motivate human beings and become active forces. It is a matter of learning how lucrative activities that were discovered or tolerated as a necessary evil, such as profit, financial gain and usury, became a vocation. This phenomenon of innovation, often invoked in Weber' s work, is always conceived of in the same way. The tenns in which it is expressed are: A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator. Often I know of several cases of the sort - regular legends of mysterious shady spots in his previous life have been produced. It is very easy not to recognize that only an unusually strong character could save an innovator of this new type from the loss of his temperate self-control and from both moral and economic shipwreck. Furthermore, along with clarity of vision and ability to act, it is only by virtue of very definite and highly developed ethical qualities that it has been possible for him to command the absolutely indispensable confidence of his customers and workmen. Nothing else could have given him the strength to overcome the innumerable obstacles, above all the infinitely more intensive work which is demanded of the modern entrepreneur. But these are ethical qualities of a different sort from those adapted to the traditionalism of the past. 8 -

The personal anecdote illustrates exactly one fact: entrepreneurs are in a minority made up of one. Their position, no less than their success, depends less on their competence and the means at their disposal than on their moral qualities. These fonn psychological character and dictate consistency in entre­ preneurs ' actions. 9 Moral qualities are at the root of the tenacity thanks to which entrepreneurs can confront a hostile environment and end up by obtain­ ing the support and adherence of everybody. Beyond this particular example,

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The Power of the Idea

the anecdote serves to prove that the ' spirit of capitalism ' flows from values that have destroyed tradition. The two questions, that of the uniqueness of Western civilization and that of innovation, led Weber to examine the role of belief, and particularly that of religion. The latter was for him no secondary phenomenon, a detail irrelevant to the economy, if I may put it in this way. On the contrary the precepts of religion and its rules forge a disciplined mentality and create the conditions for practical affairs. The piety of the believer and the quest for salvation are not ideological 'effects ' , but figure among the prime causes of action. They mould a certain kind of individual , and in the end a certain type of economic system. Weber was aware that the superiority of Protestants over Catholics in matters of finance and industry was a commonplace. The sole originality that he claimed lay in explaining that superiority by the ethical 'vocation ' of the former. He wrote : 'The following study may thus perhaps in a modest way form a contribution to the understanding of the manner in which ideas become 10 effective forces in history . ' I am inclined to think that from this viewpoint the answer to the second question is much more important and general than that given to the first, which we now know to be incorrect. Indeed, if The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism still inspires sociology and history, it is firstly because it provides an outline of a theory of innovation that determines confrontation with the facts. Associated with a theory of active minorities, it allows us, as we shall shortly see, to envisage the ethic and collective action in terms that go beyond capitalism and apply to every movement that arises within society. This is all the more true because we can then give a general answer to the question that Gibbon posed in the particular case of Christianity: through what means did the new vision achieve so striking a victory? In the event, it is strange that we have not discerned that in this lies the prime interest of the theory . 1 1 Yet it is evident that it uncovers the psychological bases through which Weber sought to explain the break with tradition and the innovating power of ' ideas ' in modern society or, to put it more precisely, in capitalist society in statu nascenti. More recently still, the American economist Hirschman has written concern­ ing this: ' For Weber and his critics, as for most of hi s followers, it was first and foremost a question of throwing light on the psychological processes that have been able to lead certain groups of human beings to devote themselves exclusively to the capitalist accumulation of wealth in accordance with rational norms. ' 12 In thi s statement there surfaces a criticism that is both excessive and imprecise. However, it is true to say that according to the apparently distant­ sounding analyses of Weber, a will is activated to grasp afresh the living experience and the intimate motivations of those who have shaped modem history . They are a minority who, having broken faith with their ancestors, have clashed with the authorities and have clearly suffered because of their heresy. Here it is appropriate to quote Nietzsche: ' One cannot evaluate what the rarest, the most refined and most original of minds have had to suffer over the course of history for hav ing always been considered wicked and dangerous, and what

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is more, indeed for having considered themselves so. ' In reality, guilt has from the beginning travelled in the baggage-train of capitalism. The question of innovation surfaces at three moments: an uprooting of tradition at the Protestant Reformation; the creation of a new mode of behavi­ our and ethic - the ' spirit of capitalism ' ; and finally the instil ling of this spirit into a bourgeois economy, whose hegemony is thus ensured. During the transition from one stage to another, the inner world of a myriad of sects becomes the outer world of modem civilization. It would naturally be useless to try to establish a rigid lineage of succession between these three historical stages, but they will serve as a guide.

The Puritan diaspora and the disenchantment of the world

Sorting through the archives of history one can observe that the abrupt rending of the social fabric and the upsurge of revolutionary movements had been in preparation for a long while, just like the final break-up of the earth ' s crust under the pressure of lava spurting forth during a volcanic eruption. The flow of heresies fermenting in Europe since the twelfth century has continued uninterrupted. Their persecution is neither a subject for curiosity nor a museum­ piece lying outside the mainstream of great events. It has spread from one end of the continent to the other, with an insatiable force. It is impossible to ensure the integrity of the Church and the supremacy of the Catholic faith without taking up the cudgels with those who call that faith into question . If the opposite were the case the flabbiness and corruption of which it stands accused and which contemporary authors have recorded would be confirmed. Every­ thing harassing the faith - the flood of the undisciplined and heretics as it sweeps onward - crashes against the barrier of inquisitions and excommuni­ cations. Outside the Church, no salvation - only the stake remains. Yet the heresy of artisans and shopkeepers appears inextinguishable; it rises again from the ashes of sacrilege, proliferating on an unheard-of scale. Scarcely are they thought to have been overcome in one spot before they reappear else­ where, ever more numerous. The uninterrupted wave of dissent flows into the Reformation, its continua­ tion, accompanied by a burgeoning of Protestant sects. I cannot in a few l ines deal with the upsurge of individuals and groups that transfigure Europe . I can only remind you of one major fact: all these minorities have suffered scorn and exile and undergone collective assassination. With the exception of Luther, who won over the German princes and the masses, the Protestant religion is the work of exiles and refugees, such as Calvin, to mention only one. Hounded out of France, he went to Geneva where there had gathered a number of men who had suffered the same fate. The protagonists of the new faith, coming from the most varied social strata, represented a fuse ready to ignite, serving every kind of sedition and all manner of undertakings. In those

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countries that welcomed them, Anabaptists, Huguenots and Quakers all spread enthusiastically a teaching directed against authority in the State, hierarchy in the Churches, and the humiliation of the poor. Yet they also launched out on economic enterprises, since they possessed commercial and industrial skills. This was particularly true for England and The Netherlands, where above all it was Calvinists who stimulated the take-off of capitalism. The 'Calvinist diaspora ' has rightly been defined as 'the forcing ground of the capitalist 13 economy ' . Each time it was one of these scattered minorities who broke with religious customs and institutions to embark on a new enterprise, necessarily ' heretical ' , even if it was in the economic field. Durkheim and Tocqueville saw the French Revolution as the major turning-point in modern society. Weber, for his part, identified this point as occurring at the Reformation with the proliferation of Protestant sects. Most probably each individual forms his or her conception of society in the light of this choice. It seems self-evident to us that minorities lie at the origin of the great innovations in art, science and religion. It seems less self-evident that we owe to them the great advances in hunting, agriculture , industry and the economy in general. Not only does their exclusion from political and social life force them to be entrepreneurial in order to ensure their material existence, inciting them to persevere, but also they are stimulated and liberated by the democracy that arises by chance, bringing individuals with no preconceived ideas together, and forcing them to mix . Moreover it channels them towards those activities and occupations that the majority have abandoned or even scorned. Thus the capitalists of the day were recruited from among immigrants and the children of immigrants . 14 Whether they were Calvinist or not, we know they came from the great commercial centres such as Antwerp, Liege, Como and Lisbon . 15 The Duke of Alba persecuted the Flemings and forced the Walloons to choose between submission to Rome or exile, not to mention the Jews who, hounded by the various Inquisitions, were permanently in search of a place of asylum. Switzerland served as the host country for Italian or French Hugue­ nots. Depending on circumstances, The Netherlands might or might not allow them to settle. The very notion of refugee appears in the vocabulary and was applied to Protestants fleeing from persecution. Many looked upon these immigrants with a favourable eye and considered them a source of wealth. Jan de Witt, the Grand Pensioner of Holland, declared: ' Without the growth in the number of foreigners we could not increase our fishing, our shipping or our manufactured goods . . . And if some newcomer, through his own industrious­ ness, invents some new method or trade, the local inhabitants will still be able to share in its advantages. ' Now, the minorities that arose at that time were faced with a type of economy that had spread almost all over the world, and particularly in Europe. I am referring to capitalist enterprise, with its separate divisions : on the one hand, business, on the other, domestic life; and also to its organization, which implied a work-force that was in principle free, as well as a rational techno­ logy . Computation was needed at all levels, so that the accounting of income and expenditure became a mathematical exercise. But those who carried on

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this fonn of enterprise did so in traditional fashion , sharing the motives and values of their predecessors: The form of organization was in every respect capitalistic; the entrepreneur's activity was of a purely business character; the use of capital , turned over in the business , was indispensable; and finally , the objective aspect of the economic process, the bookkeeping, was rational. But it was traditionalistic business, if one considers the spirit which animated the entrepreneur: the traditional manner of life, the traditional rate of profit, the traditional amount of work, the traditional manner of regulating the relationships with labour, and the essentially traditional circle of customers and the manner of attracting 16 new ones. All these dominated the conduct of the business.

Men were motivated by the acquisitive desire and a thirst for wealth. Winners or losers, all wished to participate under perfect conditions in life ' s banquet. They saw in entrepreneurial activity a means of occupying a position in society and ensuring a comfortable, even luxurious, existence, and of asserting their superiority over others. Why should this astonish us? What would it otherwise serve, if it did not provide its practitioners with security, a feel ing of power and the pleasures that good fortune has always procured. This is reasonable, and corresponds to pe9ple ' s deepest aspiration to happiness. Need we be reminded here that Protestants - at least the members of certain sects - turned their backs on this tradition? They were indifferent to the quest for happiness; for a business enterprise to prosper was for them a matter of duty, and running it a trade or profession like any other. Even better, they believed they could find in this a vocation to which they had to devote their whole affective and intellectual life. The basic question of ethics - what should I do? - became for them the basic question of economics. In Protestant eyes the making of money ceased to be a means of attaining pleasure and security, and changed into an aim in itself. To make their capital grow without squandering or misappropriating it, but with the sole aim of increasing it: thi s was their imperative. If they worked consc ientiously, employing their abilities in the best possible way, they would fulfil a vocation that they esteemed superior to any prospect of profit. If they did not respect this vocation and relaxed their efforts, they would cease to be people inspired by duty and lapse into a miserable, sinful state. This way of looking upon work and capital certainly goes against the in­ grained propensity of all individuals to look first in life to their well-being and enjoyment, which spur them on to work and grow rich. Nevertheless the fact is, according to Weber, that in the long run thi s attitude upsets the very foundation of capitalist enterprise: And, as a rule, it has been neither daredevil and unscrupulous speculators, economic adventurers such as we meet at all periods of economic history, nor simply great financiers who have carried through this change, outwardly so inconspicuous, but nevertheless so decisive for the penetration of eco­ nomic life with the new spirit. On the contrary, they were men who had grown up in the hard school of life, calculating and daring at the same time,

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The Power of the Idea above all temperate and reliable, shrewd and completely devoted to their business, with strictly bourgeois opinions and principles. 1 7

How did it come about that they imposed such a strict discipline upon themselves, adopting psychological attitudes that dictated such strict behavi­ our in every circumstance of life? How did it come about that a code which in the last resort was moral and religious had provided them with an incentive to seek after profit, which in itself had become a specific occupation? In this way they opened up the path to expansion of a voraciously hungry economy, even one so rational as a capitalist economy. All this is alleged to have been the achievement of the foregoing minorities. There is nothing surprising about this discovery, if we look closely into the heart of the matter. In times of turbulence and crisis only a fraction of the masses in a society is capable of challenging authority, preferring the dangers of dissidence to the comforts of servitude, and seeking out new solutions. Weber was aware of this, but hesitated to acknowledge a l ink between these minorities and economic innovation. He wrote : It is a fact that the Protestants (especially certain branches of the movement to be fully discussed later) both as ruling classes and as ruled, both as majority and as minority, have shown a special tendency to develop economic rational­ ism which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics either in the one situation or in the other. Thus the principal explanation of this dif­ ference must be sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their religious 18 beliefs, and not only in their temporary external historico-political situations.

The argument is too vague, in too flagrant contradiction with the facts for it to be taken into consideration. Weber feared that by giving more weight to the circumstances that had breathed fresh life into the form of the economy the importance of religious beliefs would be diminished. We shall see later that his fear was ill-founded. Yet once the argument had been put, it helped in demons­ 19 trating just how much these beliefs had arisen at the same time as the sects, and how much they bore the mark of a precarious existence in a hostile environ­ ment. 20 In brief, Protestantism owes as much to the fact of being the religion of a host of minorities as do these minorities to the fact of being Protestant. Having broken with the rest of society , the minorities derived an exceptional capacity for resistance from their religion, above all a capacity for dissent and a necessary tenacity in pursuit of their goal. Protestantism gave them a faith that corresponded to the recurring desire to start with a clean slate, from a new point of origin, the active realization day by day of the consonance between what one says and what one does. Through this they could break away from the psychology of the masses, which pins human beings down in a state of obedience to a political and religious hierarchy. Ceremonies orchestrated by priests, a consolation offered to them for their suffering, and rituals producing magical effects : such is the daily fare, the nourishment provided by their faith, that is offered to the majority. Music and prayers in monumentally large churches stimulate a semi-hypnotic suggestive power that turns them away

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from an undesirable reality. This is the property of all religions when they speak to the masses. Elsewhere Weber stated: 'By themselves the masses, as we shall see, have everywhere remained engulfed in the massive and archaic growth of magic - unless a prophecy that holds out spec ific promises has swept them into a rel igious movement of an ethical character. ' 2 Now, the Protestant minorities, like any other minority that believes itself to be the repository of such a prophecy, had to struggle within themselves against that psychology in order to hammer out another, more sober, more in accordance with their will. It is worth while dwelling on this point. Under what conditions can a handful of individuals who are shut out of society, who are deviants and strangers in it, create a new religion, found a new community or launch a new movement? First, they need to come into contact with a social stratum that is disturbed and oppressed, but has aspirations to freedom. At the same time they need to put forward a way of salvation for individuals, one that will unite them with others and let them feel they share a common destiny. Then this handful of pariahs is changed into an active, powerful minority. It welds the masses together, j ustifies their anxiety, and can sweep them on towards a common goal. From this a social movement arises, which a minority sets in motion and for which the majority provides the necessary rank and file and strength. The great conquests and huge transformations occurring in his­ tory are the handiwork of such human beings, who are set apart and over the 22 communities associated with them. So one is not astonished to find that charisma, both a stigma and a badge, legitimizes their exceptional gifts and justifies the gratitude heaped upon them. They are considered to possess such gifts, just as are the creators of an art or a science, the founders of a people, or religious or political trend-setters that unite - and this is a rare occurrence - the many and the few . Such a psychology of active minorities i s fundamental . I t would b e wrong to deduce it from the substance of the belief or self-interest that urges them on, so general is it. On the contrary, both belief and self-interest in statu nascenti are marked by thi s psychology. It would certainly be overstating the case to maintain that the imprint left by Protestantism on the Western men­ tality and its economy is due exclusively to its sectarian or local denomina­ tional character. Nevertheless, much of the evidence for such an assertion is strong. At this point one may ask how such a psychology may be successfully cultivated. This would not only take too long but is difficult to express. But one of its vehicles is what Weber calls the 'disenchantment of the world ' . It is perhaps even the main vehicle. Why is this so? On the one hand, it involves a trial of strength directed against the beliefs current among the masses, one sowing unbelief. We should note thi s does not mean that it spreads scepticism, or indifference or irreligion, even less that it saps any affective conviction because of any free examination of the conscience or through reason. It quite simply diverts belief from the object to the subject by showing that belief doe s not exist 'in the world' apart from those who share it by voluntary consent. By so doing, ' to disenchant the world' means, as we know already, to destroy the 'artisti c ' bases of power, to strip it of that prestigious nature which

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is its justification , and of the magnificence that engenders in one a feeling of voluptuousness when one submits to it. In many cases this action stirs up downright hostility towards all authority that tends to abuse power, and arouses a desire to constitute a sect. With the Puritans it was manifested in the ' fundamentally anti -authoritarian tendency of the doctrine, which ultimately undermined every responsibility for ethical conduct or spiritual salvation on the part of Church or State as useless ' . Thi s entailed the banning of the Puritans 'as for instance, by the States-General of the Netherlands. The result 23 was always the formation of conventicles (as after 1 6 14). ' If one seeks to know how the magic of the ' artistic ' bases of power can vanish, one need only read Marc Bloch ' s admirable book on the King ' s Evil,

Les rois thaumaturges.

The author retails a very well-known fact: for centuries

the common people credited the kings of France and England with the gift of healing. It was believed that by laying hands on scrofulas, the inflammations called by doctors ' tubercular adenoceles ' , the kings could make them disappear. In the eyes of the masses their charisma and ascendancy over them sprang from this kind of miracle, which was attributed to the sacred nature of kingship. This in turn supposed a vision of religion and the world in which this was possible, and denoted a ' supernatural ' or ' superhuman ' quality in the one possessing it. Clearly Protestants remained immune to this. So as to free themselves from the psychology of the masses and the hold of the Catholic Church, they rejected many of its practices: the mass, the cult of the Virgin Mary , and prayers for the dead. And with these most of the ' i dolatrous economics ' and ' papal abuse s ' that amounted to the fine art of manipulating the crowd. They went so far as to do away with the priest, a magician in his own way, having power to heal, to grant absolution and to perform the miracle of transubstanti­ ation . They also denounced the bel iefs that justified him, such as the illusion that the soul falls asleep when the body dies and awaits the resurrection, a belief they held to

be magical .

Certain sects made religion a matter of personal

faith and not public ceremony, a kind of faith that does not conquer at the 24 point of the sword. Was it mere chance that they were cal led 'Dissenters ' or strict ' Independents ' [Congregationalists ] ? S ince such a rej ection is favour­ able to it, the indiv idual conscience is awakened and arguments about rituals and articles of faith begin, stripping away appearances . Then how could they have acted otherwise than spurn these miraculous cures in disgust? As with every intervention of supernatural powers in every­ day life, they rightly denounced them as superstition. Marc Bloch wrote:

But it is not only, and particularly not by its specifically religious action, that the Refonnation jeopardized the old respect for the medicinal power of kings. From this viewpoint the consequences were very grave. In the disturbances that were sparked off by it in both England and France, the prerogatives of kingship came under fonnidable attack, and among these prerogatives was that of thaumaturgy . 25 At that time how could one separate religious action from its political conse­ quences? However this might be, by rendering all such beliefs purposele ss,

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the Protestants were able to provide another purpose, that of implanting these beliefs in more sober fashion within their community and occupation. Thi s appears self-evident: no political or religious movement can detach itself from an intellectual or moral environment without denying the reason for the exi st­ ence of such an environment, and without giving up the attractions and even the security promised by its subterfuges. Weber wrote of the B aptist sects :

The radical elimination of magic from the world allowed no other psycho­ logical course than the practice of worldly asceticism. Since these com­ munities would have nothing to do with the political powers and their doings, the external result also was the penetration of life in the calling with these ascetic virtues. The leaders of the earliest Baptist movement were ruthlessly 26 radical in their rejection of worldliness. They were neither the first nor the last to do so. This clearly demonstrates that the cause was not the religion they had extolled, but indeed - at least at the outset - their situation. Moreover, the disenchantment of the world signified their discovery of that narrow path which leads to a ceaseless watchfulness in the life of the senses and the emotions . This was not through habit or fear of their inappropriate virulence , but because those who believe themselves charged with a mi ssion may have no other course open to them . They did not wish to be tempted to a different kind of life, because none other than their own was so exalted. Goethe said: ' You will remain as you are. ' It was as if by control ling the senses and the emotions they were proving to themselves that it was the world that would adapt to them, that would fol low the dictates of their reason, and not the opposite . This led them to overestimate their own merits and their self­ confidence, even to the extent that they felt themselves capable of committing a criminal act, since they were certain they had freed themselves of all illusions and were face to face with real ity . Theirs was a very special kind of crime : not of breaking the law, but of thinking and acting as if it lay in humans ' power to create a law; from this sprang their heretical character. Weber declared :

In this case the world is presented to the religious virtuoso as his responsi­ bility. He may have the obligation to transform the world in accordance with his ascetic ideals, in which case the ascetic will become a rational reformer or revolutionary on the basis of a theory of natural rights. Examples of this were seen in the ' Parliament of the Saints ' under Cromwell, in the Quaker 2 State of Pennsylvania, and in the conventicle communism of radical Pietism. 7 You will doubtless recognize this image of the v irtuoso among the reformers and re volutionaries of our century , whether religious or not. Who could doubt that from the Reformation through to the upheav als of modern times there has been only one path to follow , one that all will take? From the psychological viewpoint those who follow it resemble one another. They plainly resort to the same spiritual methods. Confining one self only to the Protestants, they attributed their adherence to the path that leads, in religious terms, to a state

of grace. The sacrifices they consented to make by leading an ascetic life,

intolerable to most of their Catholic counterparts, might perhaps onl y be

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acknowledged long afterwards. but at least they were certain they would not have made them in vain. Weber stressed:

It was this doctrine in its magnificent consistency which. in the fateful epoch of the seventeenth century, upheld the belief of the militant defenders of the holy life that they were weapons in the hand of God. and executors of His providential will. Moreover. it prevented a premature collapse into a purely utilitarian doctrine of good works in this world which would never have been 28 capable of motivating such tremendous sacrifices for non-rational ideal ends. Their doctrine had taught them. as it has recently socialists and nationalists in Europe, that beyond the tyranny of an ideal there can exist no passion or life worthy of the name. Each sect clearly conceived the 'holy life • in its own way . imposing it with varying degrees of severity. Believers. bound to the task prescribed by God. are thrust into the vanguard of a quest. They demonstrate this daily by the rigour of their task. a frugal existence. and assiduous reading of the Bible. They also demonstrate it by a spirit of initiative that has made them inventors in the crafts and sciences. indefatigable prophets of political reform. and the pioneers of a new people. for instance that of America. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed the ocean just as did the ancient Jews. who crossed the Red Sea before they plunged into the desert under Moses • leadership. seeking the Promi sed Land where they could live out their faith. They were not like the Conquistadors under Christopher Columbus. who sought a shorter route to India in order to dispose of their merchandise and bring back gold. Inventors, pioneers or prophets, the Puritans submitted themselves all the more humbly to their religious duties because they had the proud feeling of being the ' elect' . In this feeling subsisted one of the many vestiges of Jewish belief, insofar as now it was they who had become the chosen people. The ethic of minorities entirely devoted to a ' cause • is always marked by this characteristic: they believe themselves destined. by a higher will than their own, to encompass the regeneration of the world. They also have the feeling that their mission singles them out and sets them apart. Weber noted:

In addition to the relationships already pointed out. it is important for the general inner attitude of the Puritans, above all, that the belief that they were God 's chosen people saw in them a great renaissance. Even the kindly Baxter thanked God that he was born in England, and thus in the true Church, and nowhere else. This thankfulness for one's own perfection by the grace of God penetrated the attitude toward life of the Puritan middle class, and played its part in developing that formalistic , hard, correct character which was peculiar 29 to the men of that heroic age of capitalism. What a searching scrutiny was cast upon this era. when the heroes of the faith were changed into bourgeois capitalists. and the obj ects of that faith , the poor, into objects of capital. Luther's cry, 'I was a saint. I killed nobody, unless it were myself' , was now uttered from the lips of thousands of women and children daily weighed down by the new piety, crushed by the steamroller of this new duty to make money . It was the natural order of things: the more one believes oneself to be among the elect, the more one shows oneself to be

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pitiless towards oneself and others, because in reality the more one believes oneself damned. Is it not in the nature of saints to wonder unceasingly whether they are not committing a sin, or if they have not already committed one by the mere fact of having thought about it? Hence the castigation of the Puritans, as they were depicted by Max Weber, as colourless, tenacious individuals, obedient and hard-working. The closer one looks the more one is inclined to believe that the ' disenchant­ ment of the world ' can be recognized from its power to bring about cohesion between convictions and actions, which it makes a duty of conscience for individuals. It establishes an ethic that leads one to be extremely severe towards oneself and the collectivity to which one belongs. Considered from this angle, the psychology of a minority relies on its members ' ethical sense. Indeed on what else could it rely when the force of constraint is missing, and any form of consensus is by definition fragile? If this seems in conformity with reason it i s because each person ' s duties are clearly defined, his or her conscience reminded of them, and they are sub­ mitted to a discussion that involves the whole person. Thi s sense of ' Thou shalt' reminds him of the need for loyalty in striving towards a common goal, whether this be faith in Christ, revolution or the rights of man, depending upon time and place. It binds, for example, all those who claim allegiance to a sect, determining relationships with those close to them, their fellow workers or fellow countrymen. One even identified Puritans by this. Their label as Ana­ baptists or Quakers determined their family life, and all the actions they might perform as citizens, as members of an occupational group, etc. Thus member­ ship of a sect involved a man or woman utterly, at the deepest level, causing them to stand out from other people. Until very recently the same held good for those who belonged to the communist party when it represented a minority in the vanguard of the working class. The Hungarian philosopher Lukacs has commented on this as follows:

It is only when action within the community becomes a central, personal matter for the whole individual who is participating in it that the gulf between law and duty can be bridged, a gulf which is the way in which the separation of a human being from his own socialization appears organizationally, and 3 the way in which he is tom between the powers that dominate him. 0 Moreover, he was aware of this and reminded us that this ethical sense, mobilizing the entire person, has been common to revolutionary movements and sects in the past, not excluding those which are our present concern. Doubtless this disenchantment is the ultimate point in a long history , and a phenomenon of civilization. On the other hand, one must accept its affinities with the psychology of minorities - Weber often termed them ' pariahs ' obliged to exercise their own critical faculties and work out their own modes of thinking, feeling and acting. They seem to have conceived this, and done so extremely effectively. This point emerges from Weber:

That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and,

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The Power of the Idea in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as s uperstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magic and sacramental forces on 31 salvation, should creep in.

Of what process can one ever say that it has reached its final point? This kind of practice i s constantly being refurbished under one form or another, whether in religion, politics or mass communications. It seems very strange to see the successors of the B apti sts and Puritans in the USA today using superstitious means that their ancestors had so clearly condemned. It is equally strange when one becomes aware of the devotion with which the Russian revolutionaries, who had been borne along by the truths of a rational science, preserve an embalmed corpse, and bow down before it, as did the priests of ancient Egypt. In the final analysis mass psychology, like a law of nature, reasserts its rights.

The Puritan minorities create a culture of dissent By so emphatically denying the place due to the minority , by seeking to rule it out from his concerns and his explanation , in the end Weber achieved no more than making its characteristics more apparent. In fact, he spelled out in precise terms what a minority united against, what it rejected, and how it based itself upon an ethic that was to become dominant in the modern world. The most remarkable thing was not its isolation, nor the selection of persons that operated. Doubtless indiv iduals removed from political life in thi s way were motiv ated, in order to compensate, to spend more time on their trade, or to cultivate the religious v irtues . For us a more important consequence is that they formed a close-knit, intense community, ' built up of human beings ' , in which everyone participated to the ful l . Weber wrote : ' It is the distinctive characteristic of every sect . . . that it is based on a restricted as sociation of individual local congregations . ' From this principle, which in Protestantism was represented by the B aptists and the Independents, and later by the Con­ gregationalists, one passed imperceptibly to the organization of the Reformed 32 Individuals who joined burned their boats and interiorized the Church. qualitie s the group required : the forgetting of self, a proud awareness of their peculiarity , and a passion for a belief shared in common with others. It has been said of all pariah groups of thi s kind that they possess naive , fanatical minds . The Protestants acquired these qualities to the utmost, and when we speak of the naivety of tough American s , it is these qualities that strike u s . H o w has the minority nature of these sects , Churches and Protestant con­ venticles marked the religion that emerged from the Reformation? If its mark has been left anywhere , it is first by the deliberate overthrow of values and rules then binding on every Chri stian. To prescribe what is forbidden: ' Do what you should not do ' has never been an easy thing to ask of someone , or

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to carry out. Yet thi s was the stance adopted b y Protestants from the outset, in order to set themselves apart from the Catholic majority , and from what they represented, as well as to free themselves from the hold the latter had over them. No doubt sects that castigate credulity , idolatry and the cult of images have valid theological motives . But by standing out against the ritual of the Church at the same time they undermined that ritual . This distinction is one that operates on the religious plane . This can be seen in the case of the Anabaptists , whom in England their opponents called the Family of Love. Their doctrine forbade them to chri sten newly born babies. According to them, anyone who would embrace the faith can do so only by a personal, voluntary act, and consequently at the age of adulthood. This clearly contradicts the Catholic dogma according to which human beings belong to the Church as soon as they have received the waters of bapti sm, whether they are conscious of doing so or not. Consistent with themselves , the Anabaptists proceeded to treat every institution in the same way . Thus they refused to swear oaths, alleging that a religious ceremony i s degraded if it is used t o serve military o r political, and hence profane, ends. Other denominations rejected any obligation imposed upon them to bear arms or to go to war. The same held good in the economic field. It is known how severe was the prohibition the Church put upon the practice of usury, the lending of money at interest. Occasionally it closed its eyes to this, but the rule, and Christian duty, were none the less clear on the matter. It was a sin to lend at interest, one that was placed at the door of the Jews. The sects abolished thi s prohibition and indulged in this activity, generally considered to be de spicable and sacrilegious . One cannot enumerate all the reversal s of dogma and toning down of prac ­ tices upon which they embarked. These touched upon every aspect of a be­ liever ' s life and characterized every dissenting movement . The first Chri stians in Rome turned away from the laws of the city , refusing to take up any office and to take an oath . Closer to modem times, the Cathars rejected any kind of allegiance, any verdict of a court or any resort to violence , and regarded all war as proscribed. They denied authority to the secular power and, carrying this further, applied i t also to the C atholic Church . In spite of all their dif­ ferences, this is what drew Protestant minorities more closely together, as well as all the heresies that had preceded them. By this means they asserted their individuality and traced a line that separated them off from the rest of society. This protected them against the temptation to be in any way slack in their faith, and j ustified the new isolation of those who joined them. It was a solitude that arose from a duty not to think or act like their fellow human beings. Virtue this side of the frontier becomes v ice beyond it - the converse is also true. It produces human beings strict in their behav iour, obeying simple but transcend­ ent rules, and full of the sense of their own superiority. Cursed by most, admired by the few, minorities who believe it i s their mission to smash idols and prohibitions by making such gestures belittle their opponents , declaring them to be impure, and the enemies of true religion and j ustice. The Qumran sect in I srael declared that ' they separate themselves from

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the men of perdition . . . that they separate themselves from all impurity. ' In their recent study of anti-nuclear prophecies Alain Touraine, Zsuzsa Hegedu, Fran�ois Dubet and Michel Wierinka have shown how profoundly the eco­ logists reject and condemn the polluters and the world of those who by their mode of life and work upset the balance of nature. By contrast, each of these minorities proclaimed itself to consist of pure human beings, the bearers of true justice and the true religion . In the troubled beginnings of the Reformation Sebastian Frank, who was close to the Ana­ baptists, declared: ' The true Christians of this world are all heretics. ' Thus the Cathars were the parfaits ( ' the Perfect Ones ' ) and the English Independents started out by calling themselves first ' believers ' , and later ' saints ' . Following the example set by Cromwell ' s army in the seventeenth-century English Revolu­ tion, the whole sect ended up by adopting this last term. To distinguish them­ selves from the social democrats, whom they judged to be opportunists and traitors, Lenin ' s supporters in Russia chose the term ' communists ' . By this they wished to emphasize that they alone were the vanguard of the working class, the true revolutionaries, the only ones faithful to socialism. In every case minorities turned into a stigma what till then had been a symbol respected by all . Their very existence thus became a continual reproach addressed to a privileged class and a Church who were failing in their mission. Yet if one lacks any legitimate certainty one is not bold enough to prescribe what is forbidden or to overturn a custom. In whose name, in the name of what, is one doing so? To find a clear answer to this question is another psychological and social necessity. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a minority that attacks beliefs and confronts authority has a horror of doubt and uncer­ tainty as to whether its actions are warranted. How can the requisite drive be summoned up if it lacks the support of other beliefs and other acknowledged authorities? These can have many faces: history, revolution, Christ, Lenin, Freud, Luther, etc . The essential point is that such a guarantee exists , that it can find concrete expression and, if necessary, be activated. In what way? B y causing i t t o arise from the depths o f feeling, from symbols and personalities that all share in common. It consists of an almost dramatic revival of what was alive in the past and subsists in people 's memories. Thus those who shake the foundations of a religion or a society claim to be heirs to this past and are sincerely convinced they are reviving ties with their origins in order to re­ generate them. Even in the sciences, where researchers may well bring about a great leap forward in knowledge, they nevertheless proclaim a return to ' an early state of science in which the purity of a few hypotheses was a primary 33 characteristic ' . Marx noted, not without displeasure , that revolutionary minorities claim to be following tradition at the very moment when they are laying a sacrilegious hand on all tradition. He wrote:

At the very time when they seem to be engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, when they seem to be creating something perfectly new - in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they are eager to press the spirits of the past

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into their service, borrowing the names of the dead, reviving old war-cries, dressing up in traditional costumes, that they may make a braver pageant in the newly-staged scene of universal history. Thus did Luther masquerade as Paul of Tarsus; thus did the revolution of 1 7 89-1 8 1 4 drape itself successively as the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire; and thus was it that the revolution of 1 848 could find nothing better to do than to parody by turns 34 1 789 and the revolutionary traditions of 1 793-1 795. Into this resurrection of the images of the past plainly there comes a certain element of stage-setting and show. Nevertheless, what good fortune it is to have guides on which to model themselves, to whom they can dedicate a cult, hoping secretly first to equal and then surpass them, j ust as a child hopes to equal and then surpass his parents. From them they draw a psychological energy to match the exceptional task they are in the process of carrying out. 35 Marx acknowledged this, abandoning his ironical tone to add:

the calling up of the shades of the dead took place in order to embellish the new struggles, and not in order to parody the old; it was done for the sake of adding an imaginative halo to the tasks that had to be performed, and not in search of an excuse for refraining from their actual performance; there was a genuine endeavour to rediscover the spirit of revolution, and not the mere 36 making of a ghost to work. All these remarks may seem remote from our subject. They nevertheless apply when we see how Puritan sects and Churches worked. For the most part they claimed to be the successors of the first Christians and hoped to redis­ cover the Church of very early times. This was before the Church changed into a palace whose walls were adorned with the lives of the saints, whose coffers were stuffed full of precious stones, and whose floors were made of marble. It was before its priests gave themselves over to corruption, did not don offensively gaudy attire, and did not organize themselves into a hierarchy. This had inspired in the faithful the belief that corruption, if it decks itself out so splendidly , is no longer a sin but a strange Christian virtue, and caused whole generations of Christians to venerate what probably inspired in Luther his famous invective: ' You are the rubbish that falls upon the world through the Devil ' s anus . ' Indeed the Puritans sought with terrifying obstinacy to revive within them­ selves the faith of the first Christians, one created afresh in a new simplicity. Although banished and persecuted, they nevertheless struggled to make con­ verts, following the example of the ancient martyrs. Had they been able to change their beliefs without being a prey to hostility and ostracism by the world, and without suffering poverty, Protestants would not have felt their own conversion to appear as genuine and sincere as it was. This is why they rejected the compromises of their faith with the power of the State, persuaded, as were the Apostles, that redemption is only possible in a free community, independent of it. Writing about the Baptist sects, Weber noted:

In the first place . . . [there is] the refusal to accept office in the service of the State, which originated as a religious duty following from the repudiation

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The Power of the Idea of everything worldly. After its abandonment in principle it still remained, at least for the Mennonites and Quakers, effective in practice, because the strict refusal to bear arms or to take oaths formed a sufficient disqualification for office. Hand in hand with it all Baptists ' denominations went an invin­ 37 cible antagonism to any sort of aristocratic way of life.

One might well imagine one had returned to Rome, where Chri stians acted in the same way , and accepted all the consequences of their exclusion from public life. Yet, having asserted one is to return to these authentic origins, from what armoury should one draw weapons to tum them against the formidable theo­ logy of the Church whose captive one still feels? Only one source was available, that of the Bible , read and revered by Christ ' s disciples . Although the New Testament had abolished the prescripts and rituals of the Hebrews, the Mosaic Law and its commandments remained in force. Beneath their seeming diver­ sity the Puritans presented themselves as one , the heirs of the people of the

�8

B ible and the spiritual children of Israel. ' Puritanism ' , wrote Weber, ' alwa s felt its inner similarity to Judaism, but also felt the limits of this similarity. '

In thi s way also were legitimized a new piety and a personal faith whose roots go very deep into ancient times. The Puritans busied themselves with proving this in their daily life: 'We should act in our lives as if nobody save Moses had authority over us , ' declared the Genev a Catechism. Indeed one prayed, read and respected the teachings of the Old Testament, whose stories and characters once more peopled the imagination of believers. The idea prevailed that thi s condition prepared the way to true salv ation . Weber re­ marked once more :

The influence of the God-fearing but perfectly unemotional wisdom of the Hebrews, which is expressed in the books most read by the Puritans, the Proverbs and the Psalms, can be felt in their whole attitude toward life. In particular, its rational suppression of the mystical, the whole emotional side of religion, has rightly been attributed by Sanford to the influence of the Old 39 Testament. In my view the word ' suppression ' is not exact. But among these new ' Heb­ rew s ' , the philosopher God of the theologians gave way to Jehovah, the invisible , terrible God of the B ible. Above all, i t is the charismatic communities that most visibly expressed the faith of Christ himself; these heretics wanted the ir own faith at all costs to be equal to his and that of his disciples. To spark off their imagination and satisfy the widespread desire for a genuine life they reverted to a purified, almost secretive cult. Viewed from the psychological angle, we see the se sects pro­ ceed along different paths towards an identical goal: to relive the actions of Christianity when it was in its infancy . This included close links with the Jewish people , which was its missionary and heroic victim . The zeal of redi s­ covery throbbed within the sects , allowing them to surmount crises and give themselves over to prophecies. Better still, it armed them against disappoint­ ments when what had been proclaimed failed to be realized. Instead of letting

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themselves be discouraged by the failures that reality meted out, they drew additional energy from them. Before discounting this remark as mere suppo­ sition we should endeavour to establish if it is true. Some twenty years ago a team of social psychologists led by Festinger 40 undertook an excellent experimental study on this. They took as their subject one of the numerous sects in the USA whose members had christened them­ selves the ' Seekers ' . They had set up very restricted and closed conventicles, and believed that the end of the world, through a new Flood , was near. They alone were destined to be saved, by creatures of human appearance coming from another world . These would land from flying saucers at a stipulated date and place in order to gather up the true bel ievers and snatch them from catastrophe . As you may well suppose , the event, deferred on several occa­ sions, did not occur. One might have expected to see the members of the sect grow discouraged and leave it. Yet, as Fe stinger had predicted, with one or two exceptions, the majority remained faithful to it, and solidarity among them was even strengthened . To combat the danger of apathy and discouragement they embarked upon even greater propaganda efforts and made more converts than before. Just because the prophecy had not turned out to be true, so as to minimize any lack of harmony, the ' Seekers ' felt the need to organize them­ selves better and to convince as many as possible of the truth of their faith. In a sense, they gave themselves credit for having averted the catastrophe through the exemplary character of their conventicles and the high quality of their membership. Thus the failure that ought to have depressed them exalted them, and the test of reality , which should have weakened them, strengthened them, firing them with fresh enthusiasm. The great religions, Christianity no less than Islam, illustrate thi s attitude when faced with the challenges of an eschatology that has not c ome to pass. From the very beginning Protestant sects have had to overcome similar crises, including the failure of the extremely diverse kinds of prophecies they in­ dulged in, following the example of the first Christian Churches. Even in the sixteenth century visions and words forgotten since the time of the Apostles were spread abroad just as if the latter had returned again to earth . The Puritans missed no opportunity when carrying out contemporary revolutionary actions to make plain their original source of reference. It is true that nothing resem­ bling thi s is available to us today. Yet one thing is sure : from the past which they summoned up they drew a toughness and strength to face the trials that history imposed upon them.

The actions of minorities are thus guided by two necessary principles. First,

to overturn the rules prescribed for them. Then, to draw a legitimacy not only from contemporary i deas and techniques, but also from a fund of sentiments and personalities resurrected from the past to bear witness to their mi ssion. Clearly this is not sufficient to overcome the barriers of distrust that lie all around them, or to tempt the majority to j oin them. Like charismatic leaders, they must provide proof of their sincerity and demonstrate the superiority of their belief. How can they achieve this? It is always through

exemplary action,

which bec ause of its extreme and consistent nature impels others to trust them

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and attracts converts . Nietzsche wrote: ' The charm that fights on our behalf, the eye of Venus that fascinates, rendering our very adversaries blind, is the

magic of the extreme, the attraction exercised by any extreme thing. ' Thi s is at least accepted when such actions arouse amazement, and are interpreted by others as attributable to force of conviction. We see this above all when belief goes hand in hand with example: Baptists preferred exclusion from public life to swearing an oath, which would be contrary to their faith; they became outcasts rather than be perjurers. In its absolute form this action constitutes a proof that each individual aspired to make, without being able to conquer the fear that made him or her hesitate, the sacrifice of life itself. Whoever felt no dishonour in dying for a cause, and for the community, bore witness to the inevitable and necessary character of both cause and community. This gave credibility to the words and ideas proclaimed. Robespierre asked: ' What can one object to in a person who seeks to proclaim the truth and consents to die for it? ' Before appearing before the papal legate in Augsburg Luther wrote to his friend Link: ' I know that from the beginning whoever wishes to bring the word of God to the world must be ready to abandon and renounce everything. If this were not so, this word would not be the Word of Salvation . ' Apart from a strong-minded minority, the world i s divided u p into those who speak out of habit and those who do not believe in what they are saying and are not ready to face the consequences. Yet, by choosing to suffer, throw­ ing their life into the balance, individuals are acting to the uttermost. Their victory over the anguish of death and the fear of pain is at the same time a triumph over a different terror: that which truth inspires, causing shock and scandal. Luther says also: ' I know that scandal must come. It is no miracle when a man falls; it is one when he picks himself up and stands upright once more . ' To turn one ' s back on the instinct of self-preservation is one way of disregarding the consequences and following one ' s own promptings. Yet one thing is sure: suffering in all its forms bears witness to courage and to the superiority of a conviction . Is there greater misfortune than to be reminded, day after day , that one did not possess the strength to endure when one should have done, thus destroying oneself utterly; that one has com­ promised one ' s chances of proving that endurance, that the end is nigh, and with it a remorse that nothing can assuage but will consume one for ever? Tolstoy knew how much the ordeal of suffering weighed one down in such a situation. He wrote to Gorky: ' If I had suffered for my ideas they would have produced a very different impression. ' What represents and prolongs the ordeal in everyday life is ascetic duty. For this reason it is a duty practised in every minority, whether religious or not, even at the present time. Isolated, given over to their own thoughts, its mem­ bers are a prey to an agony of doubt, to the temptation to give way to what is ' human, all too human ' , and to the attractions and creature comforts of the external world. To prevent members from succumbing demands an ever­ constant discipline. One must therefore prepare them to show that they are up to their mission when the time comes, by living according to strict principles.

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In this way they prove to their supporters as well as their adversaries the value they attach to their belief, and how much they identify with it. Sacrifices go beyond mere words. Hardly any more violent assault can be made against a dominant religion or Church - but not against these alone - than to conduct one ' s life in accordance with an ideal requiring great acts of renunciation. The human being who consents to do so becomes a witness that all tend to believe, and all secretly envy. Pascal declares: ' I believe only witnesses that allow themselves to be slaughtered. ' Without going so far, by increasing in absolute terms the intensity with which the collective atmosphere is charged, a minority may throw down the gauntlet of asceticism and make it impossible to breathe the air of normal existence. A wave of guilt sweeps over all who come into contact with the gust of clean air that sweeps through a genuine life, and prepares them for conversion. In fact, Protestants constantly resorted to this method. If any persons have devoted themselves to the insensate task of proving the genuineness of a faith already worn threadbare, it was indeed the members of these sects. They all wished to show themselves the equals of the first followers of Jesus, who were to prepare themselves for the coming of the kingdom of God. Their very behaviour administered a sharp rebuke to those Catholics who were leading a fallen existence and to a Church that accommodated itself to the world as it was. We see them refrain in all circumstances from marks of ostentation, assuming an attitude of humility and reserve, lacking all ceremonial save that of simple prayer. Life ' s realities had become so severe for them that they disdained its beauty and neglected external appearances. For example, the Pietists assembled the faithful in conventicles, places for meeting and for ascetic exercises. Weber wrote of these: 'Without going so far as to form a separate sect, its members attempted to live, in this community, a life freed from all the temptations of the world and in all its details dictated by God ' s will, and thus to be made certain of their own rebirth by external signs manifested in their daily conduct. '4 1 Thus, like so many other sects and Puritan Churches, they forbade sport, the enjoyment of the body, the theatre and worldly entertainments, outward show and the desire for elegance. They were immunized against the temptations of the outside world, the pleasures of the senses, and the scandal of beauty; what remained for them save the virtuous and dreary modesty of temperance? Seeking to be worthy of saint­ hood and to sanctify the family, the Puritans - were they the only ones? vaunted a continence no different ' in fundamental principle from that of monasticism ' . 42 It is as if the sole emotion permitted on this earth was related to the austerity of a harsh, colourless, foreign and distressing world. Such statements contained nothing new and conformed to accepted ideas. Let us go further. As is well known, ascetic duty demands the renunciation of the instincts and the most common pleasures. Freud wrote: 'The Prophets are never tired of asseverating that God requires nothing other from his people than a just and virtuous conduct of life - that is, absention from every instinct­ ual satisfaction which is still condemned as vicious by our morality today as well. '43 Protestant practices, obeying the exhortations of the prophets, read

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and revered by everyone, were very clearly aiming at j ust that. Under such conditions ascetic duty i s not only an exemplary act that serves the truth we bear within us, but also a discipline preparing individuals for conducting their lives rationally. In this way they progress, according to Freud, along the road that leads to the renunciation of desire and of the senses. He wrote : ' in the course of the development of humanity sensuality is gradually overpowered by intellectuality and . . . men feel proud and exalted by every such adv ance.

But we are unable to say why thi s should be so. ' 44 In any case those indiv iduals

- a mere handful - who attain this state draw confidence from within them­ selves. From it they derive the satisfaction that gives them assurance in their actions, as well as the impression of succeeding where the majority give up. Consequently they come to esteem themselves as 'pure ' or ' regenerate ' : this held good for the numerous Puritan congregations . Moreover, the duty of asceticism has been zealously practised within the Catholic Church itself. Holy men , monastic orders and hermits have, for ex ample, preached an austerity of morals and a life lived according to the precepts of the Gospel . The perpetual sacrifice accomplished by these men and women, who have of their own accord placed themselves ' outside the world ' , evinces the exceptional, even heretical character of a genuinely reli­ gious life. Now, for Weber the Protestants were inspired by this asceticism ' outside the world' to introduce it into the world and practise it. The word ' religiou s ' evokes an ascetic , a monk leading a cloistered life. The new meaning given to it dates from Luther: he and his companions declared that the religious extended to the whole of life, beginning with one ' s working life in society. To make oneself useful to one ' s fellows signified for them placing themselves ' at the serv ice ' of God. By abolishing the monastic life, the Prot­ estants may have made it more general . By closing the religious houses they may have made each home a religious house. By freeing the monks Luther may have desired every lay person to become one. Such an i dea is attractive because it possesses that quirky charm of presenting things and persons dif­ ferently from what they are. What can be more intriguing than to see in every shopkeeper, capitalist or austere entrepreneur behind his counter a monk sitting in front of hi s desk, one who, although in the world, may have re­ nounced the world? Let us take the idea at its face value. It certainly requires corroboration. However this may be, monk s , like Protestants, performed an ascetic duty, and for the same reasons. We note that the former represented a minority within the Church, and for it, and the latter outside the Church , and against it. On the one hand we have what I have termed , in my book on the psychology of active 45 minorities, an anomic minority that took literally, and to the extreme, the principles of orthodoxy, and on the other a nomic minority that set up against the Church another faith and different principles, and by this very fact plunged into heresy . Moreover, it was not the first time in the Christian world that such a minority chose an ascetic, even a monastic life. The Bogomils, who were scattered all over the Balkan peninsula about 940, taught resignation, a monk­ like spirit and an Apostolic morality . They lived - particularly the ' Perfects '

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like mendicant, wandering monks. Like the Protestants they condemned the

pomp of the Church , the images and prayers, and the authority of the State. One could believe that the ' d isenchantment of the world' began with them. In any case, minorities, whether anomic or nomic, are forced to provide proof of 46 their exemplary mission among peoples . We know that the religious orders did not wait for the Reformation in order to appear on the scene. Not only did they constitute for the Church a symbolic, sacramental army , but they prov ided the ploughmen and shepherds that turned European agriculture upside down, and the artisans who set up the first mills. This know-how did not embellish the arts and sciences alone, but also brought to the theological system the material it required. Depending upon the era, the business of a particular religious order was to educate the officials of em­ perors, as well as to provide the papal inquisitors and the counsellors that accompanied the powerful . As for knowing whether they preached an ascetic life, or if any saw in that life where their duty lay, everything depends on the reply given by the person to whom one is speaking. There were monastic orders that required it, and human beings who accepted it unreservedly . On the whole, however, it was the exception rather than the rule. Nothing really leads us to believe that Protestant ascetici sm emerged from it, unless it be, since the same causes produce the same effects, the sign of a group set apart, and of a state of dissidence within society. Thus it attested an exclusive devotion to a goal, fascinating its adversaries j ust as much as its supporters . Such was the case for the socialist, communist and nationalist minorities who imposed upon themselves rules for living that were often rigorous , as well as restrictions in sexual matters and on comfort in general. One is even amazed at the dose of asceticism to be found in anarchists , punks, hippies and other social marginal s, who are otherwise ready to throw overboard every prohibition. There comes a point when one wonders why human beings wishing to live as naturally as one breathes make such a spontaneous renunciation . It is difficult to appreciate the true significance of these matters . The facts themselves are unsure. However, what is certain is that ascetici sm left its mark comparatively permanently on the Protestant religion more than on any other, for an additional reason . It was because it has never succeeded in taking on a universal form by adopting one creed or having a Church with an exclusive hierarchy . Wherever such a Church exists ' it . . . makes membership condi­ 47 tional upon a contractual entry into some particular congregation ' , and there­ fore on a community having affinities from a social viewpoint with a sect or conventicle. We may also add something that is not without interest. Protes­ tantism caused sects , congregations, denominations and Churches, sometimes ephemeral, to spring up everywhere, but they were always struggling against 48 one another. Asceticism was the form assumed by competition between them, in order to render each one distinctive, and make converts . In this way each one wished to demonstrate its superiority . In religious matters this was measured by the absence of enjoyment, and the degree of purity attained in the accomplishment of religious duties. They demanded from their initiate s

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obedience to the prescripts of the Gospel, and an immaculate probity in everyday life. All Baptist communities desired to be pure Churches in the sense of the blameless conduct of their members. A sincere repudiation of the world and its interests, and unconditional submission to God as speaking through the conscience, were the only unchallengeable signs of true rebirth, and a corres­ ponding type of conduct was thus indispensable to salvation. And hence the gift of God' s grace could not be earned, but only one who followed the 49 dictates of his conscience could be justified in considering himself reborn.

To live and conduct oneself ascetically day by day signified belief in the reality of an ideal. The sacrifices through which the believer assented to what was intolerable acted as a tonic to this purified faith, from which ritual, ornaments and priests were missing, but which was not without a harsh discip­ line. I recall, for instance, that the Methodist was required to note down each day his good deeds and transgressions, and then to read them out publicly, so that he could be judged and, where appropriate, punished. At other times group acts of repentance took place at the penitents ' bench, or there was exclusion from communion of those not considered sufficiently holy. These had the same effect. Such practices were common in this purgatory of Protestants. It was as if they sought only the opportunity to silence the voice of the flesh, even going so far as to make an offering of their death. Nietzsche nevertheless was right to state that ' the ascetic ideal is a ruse to ensure the preservation of life ' . so It should be understood as a ruse by minorities whose lives were constantly in danger, for whom the question was posed: by adopting such harsh rules, did they reckon they could protect themselves against the accusations of debauch­ ery and irreligion that were common, thus proving their right to exist? This was most certainly the case. Yet they also wished to inspire confidence in the possibility of becoming ' different' and of fashioning one 's human nature in the service of something greater than oneself. It is not necessary to give particular examples. The cases of the Puritans we have already examined, and the need for their 'revolution of the Saints ' , 51 are sufficient. The minority character of the Puritan denominations explains the main fea­ tures of their ethic and religion. Much more could be said on this. The psychological type of human being they created bore signs of this: criticism and rejection of rules up to then held to be universal; the revival of the symbolic links with primitive Christianity and the Judaism of the Bible; fi­ nally, ascetic duty as an exemplary action in the world. Together these shaped a rational way of life, coupled with a belief that underpinned it, as Weber reminded us: ' The person who lives as a worldly ascetic is a rationalist, not only in the sense that he rationally systematizes his own conduct, but also in his rejection of everything that is ethically irrational, aesthetic , or dependent upon his own emotional reactions to the world and its institutions. ' 52 We are on firm ground when we note that such a human type, with its own distinguishing marks, has counted for much in the successive movements for reform and revolution that Western civilization has gone through right up to

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the present day. This is at least in part due to their common situation as schismatics and nonconformists - in short, to a pariah psychology. Weber was well aware of this and missed no opportunity to emphasize their resemblance to the ethics and belief of those who in his eyes are the pariah people par excellence. He wrote:

Ritual correctitude and the segregation from the social environment imposed by it ['the conception of a future God-guided political and social revolution' - Ed.] was but one aspect of the commands upon Jewry. There existed in addition a highly rational religious ethic of social conduct; it was free of magic and all forms of irrational question for salvation; it was inwardly 3 worlds apart from the paths of salvation offered by Asiatic religions. 5 If Protestant sects and Churches are directly connected to Judaism (but not with the Jews, whom they persecuted ! ) , it is because of their similar situation, so many years later. Previously, Europe shared in a consensus culture. Its values were conformity to the faith and submission to a hierarchy, however absurd these might some­ times appear in the light of reason. In the end, ethical behaviour itself was nothing more than the obligation laid upon human beings to set these values above all else . The three great forces of theology, art and the Church certainly joined forces to do so. Perhaps a few privileged persons managed to avoid subscribing to them, but this did not undermine the harmony of the whole, which sought after universality. Since then heresy and the secessions of Protestants have led to the devel­ opment of a culture of dissent where criticism, di scord, autonomous action, resistance, and all that is peculiar reign supreme. Are not the Protestants the first to be called Independents, Dissenters, Nonconformists, Antinomians and many other names, which tells us a great deal about them? Resorting to dissent should not be interpreted as a form of anarchy or rebellion, although the great temptation is to do so. They should, however, be seen as a requirement to follow one ' s personal conscience and reason, and to demonstrate this to the extent of cutting oneself off in order to create afresh a community of beliefs and practices, so as to impose one ' s own style of action . This leads to a senseless stubbornness, manifested when embarking upon any undertaking, in zeal in one 's work, and in the certainty that anything previously accomplished will be infinitely surpassed. The West di splayed its singularity in dissent, attaining that moral dimension which allowed it to reform and continually be the judge of itself, yet from this drawing additional vitality.

From homo religiosus to homo oeconomicus We know how and why a whole host of denominations parted from Catholi ­ cism. But why did they invent the ' spirit o f capitalism ' ? Let u s therefore reframe the question: for what reason did people who at this time bore the stamp of the Protestant ethic plunge heart and soul into business? Despite

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everything, it was not for chasing after profit, practising usury or making money that they adhered to the new religion and committed the supreme religious crime, that of heresy. Such profane activities were ones that the Christian faith condemned, even making them out to be sinful. The fact is that Protestants entered the economic field, l ike all the persecuted minorities of

the time, 54 because they had no other means of subsistence. Yet, far from being content to follow tradition, they revolutionized it. They did so with the same ardour they had applied to revolutionizing their faith and political ideas, by creating , if Weber i s to be believed, the ' spirit of capitalism ' . Thus, over­

coming their disdain for mone y , they accumulated capital, following a method comparable to that which they followed to save their soul s, by accumulating virtues. In short, we have to decipher the

psychological sanctions which, originating in religious belief and the practice of religion, gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individual to it. Now these sanctions were to a large extent derived from the peculiarities of the religious ideas behind them. The men of that day were occupied with abstract dogmas to an extent which itself can only be understood when we ss perceive the connection of these dogmas with practical religious interests. We shall not go into the minutiae of such dogmas , but their beginnings are to be found in Luther, who for his part did not go into detail either. This inventive mind abruptly quit the path prescribed by the Church in order to proclaim a more aggressive and more fervent vision of God . At the same time he brought God closer to human being s . He was a theologian who involved himself in an astonishing task : religion for its own sake . In addition , by translating the B ible into German and plac ing it in the hands of everybody, Luther acknowledged the sovereignty of the believer. As we know , previously Chri stians had turned to the most pious among their number and asked them to intercede for them in prayer and worship . Christianity was living, if the term is appropri ate, under a regime of collective property in order to achieve salvation . The Reformation changed it into one of individual property . Hence­ forth individuals had to look to themselves, acquire merit for themselves , and count solely on their own prayers. Luther' s anger and denunciation of a Church that made the divine a fiefdom

of the clergy and the popes are legendary. He inveighed unremittingly against the evils of the time, turned against Rome and rejected all authority , averring that ' to be a prince and yet not be a villain is almost an impossible thing ' . Not content with castigating clerical vices, he restored Satan to his place as a protagonist, as well as restoring the terrifying power that he possessed in people ' s minds . It was S atan himself, so Luther asserted, who presided over the masses and fasts , the prayers and charitable works, the processions and festivals, under the cover of piety and saintliness. Whoever wi shed to go to Heaven had to reckon on be ing saved by his or her faith alone. All true spiritual guidance had to be based on this conv iction , which demolished the barrier separating daily life from religious life. It established an equality between human beings and gave a unity to their exi stence. When Luther

The genius of capitalism

1 65

proclaimed that all Christians should henceforth follow their vocation - their

calling

-

he imparted an absolute moral and religious v alue to the professions

and occupations of everyday life. Such a notion was seditious , not only be­ cause it rejected the di stinction between ethical principles addressed to the bulk of human beings, and the consilia, the advice reserved for the elites of the rel igious orders; it was also seditious because it gave an assurance that one ' s own activities could win salvation , no matter where these were per­ formed, and not in a particular setting such as the monastery, conceived of as being in opposition to the world . To give proof of one ' s faith it was enough to carry out one ' s duties. An analogy comes to mind, that of non-violence . In Hindu c ivilization thi s was the prerogative of a minority of individuals, the

Renouncers,

who lived

apart from the world. They avoided killing animal s , laying hands on another person , or responding to an aggressor by force of arms or in any other way. Gandhi ' s great innovation was to bri ng the religious into the pol itical do­ main, and to give this teaching to the masses. In short, out of non-violence, which up to then had been the preserve of a particular category of people, the Mahatma fashioned a mode of behaviour and duty for all his followers. As much can also be said of ' v ocation ' . It had been reserved for a handful of men who were devoted to the ' holy life ' , or to men carrying on certain occupations. Luther lumped them all together and gave the right to all Chris­ tians to possess a vocation , when, in the light of faith, they are carrying out their tasks. As we know, a minority ' s mission and that of its leader is to spread among the majority ideas and practices that appear to be the prerogative of a small number of people. It seeks to inject into the mainstream of society rare qualities held up to then to be inaccessible , and in so doing to change its course. It has no better way to touch the hearts of people and to carry them along with it. The facts demonstrate that everything that began in solitude ends 56 up in the multitude. Now , the salvation that flowed from a vocation, previously restricted to the few, was promised by the Reformation to everybody. This reinforced Luther' s doctrine and actions , particularly at the beginning . Prodigious sacrifices were not required of human beings, nor were they asked to do v iolence to their feelings or their nature in order to attain salvation. The fear lurking in the pit of Hell , the visions of sin and damnation, the swarms of demons and the cohorts of lost souls in the chain of angui sh of medieval Chri stians no longer had any power over them from the moment that they gave themselves over to their task: ' The effect of the Reformation as such was only that, as compared with the Catholic attitude, the moral emphasis on and the rel igious sanction of organized worldly labour in a calling was mightily increased. '

57

No spec ial

life designed to strengthen them in their religious dignity was preached. Nor was an attempt made to i nculcate such a morality by means of systematic, rational precepts. This was to come later and was the task of the Puritans. Weber adds :

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The Power of the Idea

A religious genius like Luther could live in this atmosphere of openness and freedom without difficulty and, so long as his enthusiasm was powerful enough, without danger of falling back into the status naturalis. That simple, sensitive, and peculiarly emotional form of piety, which is the ornament of many of the highest types of Lutherans, like their free and spontaneous morality, finds few parallels in genuine Puritanism, but many more in the mild Anglicanism of such men as Hooker, Chillingsworth, etc. (pp. 1 26-7)

Why, then, was this so? Weber does not enlighten us, but we can hazard a guess. The new faith, by the prospects it opened up, converted princes and nobles, peasants and artisans, monks and scholars, thus people of every kind. It penetrated into homes and communities, and swept through the portals of churches and political institutions with disconcerting speed. So long as the Reformation continued on its headlong course, attracting Catholics in large numbers and creating new usages and customs in a spirit of communion, it remained true to that emotional, hail-fellow-well-met religiosity. By addressing itself to the masses, in the certainty of winning them over, it adapted itself to their psychology and their spontaneous needs. But Lutheran doctrine soon came up against political and social forces. The Catholic Church took a hold on itself, building up fire-breaks and forcing the doctrine to a halt. From then onwards a profound change came about in the way the Reformers viewed their situation. They might well triumph here and there, but only communities of more or less limited size adhered to the new faith. Fought against and persecuted, they had either to persevere or to evolve within certain bounds. They had also to justify their membership of a religious society that was only one among others, as well as their adherence to the peculiarity of their faith. This is not to speak of their doctrine, which could not fail to generate new schisms. They still remained reformed, but also 'protestant ' . A comparison may be allowed. In the minds of all the founders of socialism from Marx to Lenin, its doctrine, and then the revolution, were to spread like a forest fire, causing workers all over the world to rise up. When the October Revolution broke out it was expected that, from being Russian, it would become worldwide. But the capitalist countries reacted, and circumstances did not permit the hoped-for expansion. From 1 930 onwards a transformation was taking place. There was a rallying round the idea of socialism in one country. Stalin in Russia, Mao in China, among many others, were the exponents of this doctrine. The change entailed new attitudes and practices which before would have been inconceivable. In the same way Protestantism was forced to modify itself. It reconciled itself to the existence of limited communities, sects or Churches living in an environment that remained predominantly Catholic. This fact meant that the kind of salvation that was desired for the whole of humanity became reserved for limited groups. This is not the sole reason, but is certainly one of the main ones that gave strength to Calvin ' s doctrine, facilitated its spreading, and allowed it to take over from Luther's. It was the sole doctrine to which persecuted believers could cling, because it enhanced their alliance with the divine. ·

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They were made the elect of the visible Church, for ever separated from the masses, which were merely the shadow and reflection of the damned. Of Calvin Weber wrote: By founding its ethic on the doctrine of predestination, it substituted for the spiritual aristocracy of monks outside of and above the world the spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints of God within the world. It was an aristocracy which, with its character indelibi/is, was divided from the etern­ ally damned remainder of humanity by a more impassable and in its invis­ ibility more terrifying gulf, than separated the monk of the Middle Ages from the rest of the world about him, a gulf which penetrated all social relations with its sharp brutality. This consciousness of divine grace of the elect and holy was accompanied by an attitude toward the sin of one's neighbour, not of sympathetic understanding based on consciousness of one ' s own weak­ ness, but of hatred and contempt for him as an enemy of God bearing the signs of eternal damnation. This sort of feeling was capable of such intensity 58 that it sometimes resulted in the formation of sects.

Logically the opposite should occur. Within those over whose head was suspended the sword of Damocles, feelings should have awakened images of exile and persecution, with the certainty of being exposed to them for good reason. But when one had arrived at such a level of conviction close to fanaticism, where faith protected one against everything, under love for one ' s brethren brooded scorn and hatred i n the man who had drawn the line across the happinesses of ordinary life. Seated among the elect, only he knew the terrifying panic of damnation. We should reflect upon this, because it is not mere speculation. These are the facts, as history has handed them down to us. But abyssus abyssum invocat, deep calleth unto deep. Why then, amid these outbursts of Messianic feeling and dreams of heroism, did the ' spirit of capitalism ' arise out of Calvin ' s doctrine? The answer to this question affords an explanation for the new economic regime, but not of the way it functions, j ust as the explanation of the origin of the universe is distinct from the way it normally functions today . Let it be said without 59 hesitation that the answer relies on these ' psycho-religious causes ' . The essential thesis of Calvin' s doctrine was the refusal of any dualism between the world of nature and the world of grace, between the God that is hidden and the God that is revealed, between the law of the Old Testament and the law of the New Testament. In this respect he was opposed to Luther, propagating an active faith that only the elect could live out. These were predestined, and therefore saved or damned by divine Providence without their knowing it, and without being able by their conduct to alter its decision. Thus what will happen is what must happen, and was already determined by the absolute ruler of the world. The Apostle Paul says, ' He grants mercy to whomever he wishes and hardens whom he will. ' This is the thesis of predestination, whereby God is separated from human beings by an unbridge­ able gap. In contrast to the God of Luther, who gives himself to human beings, the God of Calvin obliterates them, condemning them to the terrors of

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The Power of the Idea

damnation. All these teachings are summed up in the Westminster Confession of 1 647 : • •

•

• •

There exists an absolute God, transcendent, who has created the world and who governs it, but who is incomprehensible to the finite mind of men. This all-powerful , mysterious God has predestined each one of us to salva­ tion or damnation, without our being able by our own works to modify the divine decree taken in advance. God has created the world for his own glory . Man, whether intended for salvation or damnation, has the duty of working for the glory of God and of creating the Kingdom of God upon this earth. Earthly things, human nature and the flesh belong to the order of sin and 60 death, and salvation can only be for man a wholly free gift of divine grace.

Similar propositions certainly exist in other religions, although taken as a whole these are unique. Lacking any means of influence or intercession, how can human beings know whether they will be saved or damned? Is any torment more terrible for believers than this uncertainty from which no escape is allowed? Protestants cannot resort to magic, and no priest can provide them with consolation. 6 1 I n the face of such a harsh God, whose intentions are inscrutable, followers of Calvin, if they really were ' saints ' , must have seen themselves in imagina­ tion rather as swelling the ranks of those consigned to the torments of Gehenna than admitted to the minute cohort of the elect who will enter Paradise. No one could offer them succour of any kind, since the Son of God himself died only for the elect. Christ's death, they were told, did not redeem the sins of human beings damned for all eternity. Sovereign in this solitude , the believers do not know the delights of innocence. Then what is their purpose in living? Why, they must have asked themselves, take so much trouble and perform good works, whether of piety or otherwise, if nothing could assuage the torments to come? Powerless to point themselves in the direction of salvation, equally powerless to know their own fate, individuals predestined once and for all have fatalism as their logical solution. The conclusion drawn from Calvinist doctrine should therefore have been, as for other similar religions, to resign oneself, abandoning economic and social duties. Yet nothing of this kind emerged. Why was this so? According to Max Weber, a psychological solution prevailed, whose effect was exactly the opposite . It was of the utmost importance for Protestants to know they were in a state of grace. Subjected to such a pressure, the sole means whereby they could lessen uncertainty, lower their state of psycho­ logical malaise and range all the chances on their side , was to devote them­ selves unceasingly to activity. The pastors acknowledged this, declaring that economic success brought proof of divine blessing . It weighed in the balance 6 against the crushing burden of predestination. 2 I should like to reformulate this explanation more precisely. Every indi­ vidual experiences a conflict arising from the contradiction of two beliefs 63 what, following Festinger, has been termed a cognitive dissonance . On the

The genius of capitalism one hand there is the idea that Protestants have a vocation, a

Beruf,

1 69

according

to Luther destined to procure access to a full religious life and qualifying them for salvation. On the other hand, there is the idea of prede stination that only allows access to this kind of life to a certain elite and forbids it to the rest. This occurs by virtue of a divine decree that remains unknown to them and to a certain extent cancels out the sense of a vocation. How can the conflict be resolved between the former idea, which promises salvation to believers through the quality of their works, and the second, which denies it and de ­ prives works of any j ustification for obtaining grace? There is no solution to such a tragedy of destiny, this

Schicksalsdrama

about which the German

dramatist and critic Lessing wrote : ' In the end we are filled with terror at the idea of being swept along in such turbulent waters, committing acts which in the cold light of day we deem abhorrent to u s . ' The only way of re solving thi s dissonance consists in believing that vocation is a sign of predestination . Daily labour in an occupation takes on the significance of a test to which a human being is subjected, one that could affect rel igious destiny. To this end he or she must carry out his every task with assiduous regularity. For the reason we have just seen, Weber explained the birth of this ' spirit' of capitalism as the psychological outcome of Calvin ' s doctrine. In particular, after sifting through the writings of Protestant pastors, he demonstrated that their homilies were aimed at sanctifying work, which placated our feeling of unworthiness and prevented us from sullying our brief lives through sin. They drew up an interminable list of temptations against which he had to guard: worldly pleasures and vain conversation, undue slumber and idle pastimes, right up to and including religious meditation , if it wasted time that should be given over to our vocation, which God himself has desired for us. Weber declared:

In this respect Protestant Asceticism added in itself nothing new. But it not only deepened this idea most powerfully, it also created the force which was alone decisive for its effectiveness: the psychological sanction of it through the conception of this labour as a calling, as the best, often in the last analysis the only means of attaining certainty of grace. 64 By giving their heart and soul to their task, rich and poor were convinced they were practising a form of devotion. B ut how could they judge its effectiveness? Naturally by its fruits, which were a sign that it was pleasing to God. Profit and wealth only smacked of sin when they turned us aside from toil and led us to enjoyment. On the other hand they provided valuable religious confirmation if they encouraged us to seek profit in order to reinvest it. Thus Puritan capitalism

acted powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it res­ tricted consumption, especially of luxuries. On the other hand, it had the psychological effect of freeing the acquisition of goods from the inhibitions of traditionalist ethics. It broke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition in that it not only legalized it, but (in the sense discussed) looked upon it as 65 directly willed by God. S ince God was therefore better served, believers saw themselves forced to examine their lives closely, so that they could perform their task according to

1 70

The Power of the Idea

very strict rules. A minute rationality was introduced into every sphere of everyday life. Taking off from economic life, it penetrated the very fibre of one ' s being, transforming one ' s most intimate reactions. The theory explaining the birth of the ' spirit of capitalism' by the uncertainty of salvation and the conflict that it provokes in the souls of the faithful is based on a hidden supposition, without which it would be incomplete. Why did the Protestants take the idea of predestination so terribly seriously? What made the disharmony between it and the idea of vocation so unbearable for them? In fact, many individuals and groups have accommodated themselves to such doctrines. We often tolerate such disharmonies and conflicts without seeking to resolve them at all costs. Christians have endured similar disharmonies for centuries without attempting to force a solution to them. Ideas and beliefs do not of themselves provoke uncertainty or intolerable tensions. Nowadays we accommodate ourselves extremely easily to the disharmony between liberty and equality, which less than fifty years ago provoked bloody confrontations. Yet this supposition is extremely simple. Like all minorities and heretics, to rid themselves of doubt and discouragement Protestants were forced to cling like limpets to their belief. Their adherence to the belief was fortified by a consensus that each group imposed upon itself, and tended to overesteem. On this condition their members developed a steely-tempered character and triumphed over the outside world. What the American writer Arthur Miller has said about seventeenth-century Salem could be said about many Puritan communities: It was, however, an autocracy by consent, for they were united from top to bottom by a commonly held ideology whose perpetuation was the reason and justification for all their sufferings. So their self-denial, their purposefulness, their suspicion of all vain pursuits, their hard-handed justice, were altogether 66 perfect instruments for the conquest of this space so antagonistic to man.

The major preoccupation of these communities was therefore the preserva­ tion of consensus. Any disharmony or hesitation over the matter of salvation seemed to them unbearable, as it was in other religious matters. From this perspective, with fanatical seriousness, they doggedly persevered in their search for cohesion, which would ensure for them the resolution of their moral and philosophical crises. In accordance with a pitiless logic, they were im­ pelled to prove their faith by work and by success in their occupation, by outdoing one another in their quest for salvation : ' Psychologically considered, man in quest of salvation has been primarily preoccupied by attitudes of the here and now . The Puritan certitudo salutis, the permanent state of grace that rests in the feeling of "having proved oneself", was psychologically the only concrete object among the sacred values of thi s ascetic religion . ' 67 We need to say a little more on this subject. In the Reformed Churches sermons were preached designed to strengthen Christians in their new faith. Those who endangered themselves by propagating it expected no other out­ come and sought no other goal. B ut the needs of the struggle and the evolution

The genius of capitalism

171

68 of doctrines involved them in the business of the economy. Thus the ' spirit of capitalism ' was an involuntary but necessary consequence of Protestant discipline. Pure philosophical or ideological principles would not have en­ dowed these merchants and artisans with such a steely character, nor would it have made them ' self-confident saints ' . 69 Only an ethic grounded in religion - of this Weber was convinced - poured out such psychological benefits, and set in train such lasting changes. He wrote: It is not the ethical doctrine of a religion that carries with it psychological benefits, but the ethical conduct it detennines. These benefits , according [to what religion understands by] benefits of salvation, constitute its specific 'ethos' , in the social sense of the tenn. For Puritanism this conduct was a way of life detennined in a methodical, rational manner, which in the given conditions, has carved out a path for the modern ' spirit of capitalism ' . In all Puritan denominations these psychological benefits were linked to the 'con­ finnation' of the Christian before God, to the sense of assurance of salvation; within the Puritan sects they revolved round the ' testimony ' given in front of others. These two aspects were complementary in their effect and tended in the same direction, thus helping the ' spirit' of modem capitalism to give rise to its specific ethos, i.e. the ethos of modem bourgeoisie. 70

Such very formal and yet so very resounding propositions shook me when I read them for the first time. As I contemplated the sunset, I dreamed of the time when they had come to the author's mind, mingled as they were with rumours of war. Did they not describe a humanity nearing the end of its tether? That end appeared inevitably to be a revolution, an Angst like that felt by human beings who wonder if they will be saved by history, which has reached a turning-point, yet who throw themselves into the fray as if thi s salvation were a certainty. Yet Weber' s thought developed against a background of nostalgia that is all the more sober because the past of which he spoke subsisted only in a few fleeting vestiges. Moreover, it could be said that the heroic feats of the Puritans that Weber revered as a man were not approved by him as the scholar. In reality , Weber gave less prominence to their struggle for their faith and martyrdom on Euro­ pean soil than he gave to their heroic work in shops and banks. Yet how to, and above all, why wish to, separate the two? The veil he drew over the political aspect and, more generally, the social aspect of these ' saints ' , of which the English Revolution provides an example, allow us to see only Puritans carrying on the modest tasks of their occupation, under the gaze of a ' severe and inscrutable' God. The fact remains that Weber evinced extreme astonishment that his discovery of this aspect went unacknowledged and misunderstood, that is, the revelation that an ethical doctrine, through tfie psychological benefits it conferred on individuals, determined their behaviour and their economic system. He wrote: Only in so far as these sanctions work, and, above all, in the direction in which they work, which is often very different from the doctrine of the theologians, does such an ethic gain an independent influence on the conduct

1 72

The Power of the Idea of life and thus on the economic order. This is, to speak frankly, the point of this whole essay , which I had not expected to find so completely over­ looked. 7 1

I t i s a silent omission that runs the risk of being prolonged, unless one sees in it a fundamental postulate of sociology . It can be used to lay down markers for a psychological explanation, as I hope is now plain , but this in Weber ' s mind did not take o n any systematic form. B orn from observation and analysis, it has nevertheless a degree of verisimilitude that justifies our expanding upon it. At the same time we can understand how , once the great innovations had been accomplished and the solution to salvation found, sectarian enthusiasm died down, and the profitable benefits ari sing from the quest for salvation changed into a quest for profits alone . Instead of grace, utility was sought after. Individuals , divested of their religious vocation , had uppermost in their minds their economic competitiveness and success in the temporal realm. In the event, what is essential is therefore the reverse movement. In the end, the meaning of salvation is turned on its head . In religion it is the end of human life. Outside religion, it becomes the means to it. There is then born in the popular imagination ' Robinson Crusoe, the isolated economic man who carries on missionary activities on the side , [and this] takes the place of the lonely spiri tual search for the Kingdom of Heaven of B unyan ' s pilgrim, hurry­

72

ing through the market-place of Vanity ' . In its stead is set up a fair for the selling of one ' s wares. The human being, freed from the passion of possessing the kingdom , previously assumed to be mysterious because of an extremely ascetic life, full of so many anxieties, becomes a piece of merchandise like any others . This is the real modern image of predestination .

A society of solitary human beings How may we tell the moment when the Protestant dream stopped and the capitalist nightmare began? Marx undoubtedly pronounced a solemn indict­ ment denouncing capitalists ' guilt. Spreading everywhere the bitter, unhealthy poison of profit, they had corrupted women, children and the workers. What is more, they had promoted our worst instincts in all of us, delivering every individual over to moral and sexual promiscuity , and to the vices of consumer­ ism, changing her or him i nto an article of merchandise . Thi s allegedly showed the unimpeachable rightness of every accusation made by the workers against the capitalist, and the value of elementary j ustice. But the story as recounted to us by Max Weber, even if it is untrue, indeed particularly if it is, rehabilitated in their innocence these adepts of capital, devoted body and soul to their business ventures. He gave a lustre to an ori ginal era of the past, when the noble Puritans - we are reminded of the noble savages in literature - practised those sober, effective virtues that glori­ fied their God. They were saints preparing, without wishing to do so, for the birth in Europe of an economy and civilization based upon reason . Whatever we

may think of his theory that the spirit of capitalism is derived from the

The genius of capitalism

1 73

quest for salvation , it has immense hidden implications for the psychological complexion of modern society. For, as Weber pointed out, it outlawed all pleasure , all unprofitable use of one ' s energy and time . Human beings had to renounce every kind of satisfaction that might spring from wealth, the senses or the arts. It was incumbent upon them to exist by v irtue of their occupation, and not the reverse. However, individual s succeeded in complying with this through a process of sublimation that transformed their egoistic and sensual tendencies into different ones of an intellectual, practical or ethical kind. It was from these that they expected every satisfaction , just like artists who devote their whole existence to produc ing a work of art, or researchers who live only in the hope of making a discovery , or militants who devote themselves to a cause . It is always the same for a person utterly caught up by one single idea, and completely absorbed by a task that e xcludes everything else. Freud emphas­ ized the value of sublimation when he wrote :

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcis­ sistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society. 73 This remarkable passage affords us a glimpse of what was at work in the Puritan sects and in the culture of capitalist entrepreneurs . For, to carry matters through to the end, they had also - and above all - to sacrifice the enjoyment derived from social relationships in which they might have indulged the ir personal instincts and their desires for sociability. This was the technique of Protestantism : sublimation for sublimation ' s sake. Consequently everything else, amusing oneself, chatting with friends or enj oying one ' s family - all these were changed into temptations exerted by an al l-powerful evil . In order to avoid them the Protestant ethic required individuals to i solate themselves from their fellows, so as either to devote themselves to their occupational ' vocation ' , or to commune with the divine - the B aptists and Quakers were convinced they were able to enter into direct communication with God. When our sciences declare that human beings live in soc iety to work , to protect one another, to maximize their usefulness and to survive , and not in order to communicate and be happy with one another, they express in modem language the eth ic of thi s supreme evil. In any case, Raymond Aron described perfectly the consequence : 'This psychological derivation of a theology favours indi ­ vidualism. Each person is alone face to face with God. The sense of com­ munity with one ' s neighbours and of evolving along with others grows 74 weaker. For my part I could not say whether it grows weaker. But it most certainly combines collective obedience and personal initiative, which together aspire to the highest level.

1 74

The Power of the Idea

Now it is collective sublimation that regularly causes solitude to be trans­ formed into a motivation that is useful for success in an occupation and is stronger than association with others. There is a realization of what occurs once the ' spirit of capitalism' prevails, and this makes it more easily realized. However, it is only scratching at the surface of things to state that the process of sublimation comes down to purifying and transforming the instinctual and social tendencies of individuals in order to adapt them to a sustained, worth­ while activity . One penetrates to a deeper reality if at the same time one acknowledges that a special kind of emotion exists which turns the most ordinary and natural phenomena that exist within us and around us into a kind of test. In his Philosophical Investigations into the Origins of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful B urke put forward the idea that all that is capable of arousing in any kind of way the ideas of pain and danger, all that is in some way terrible or touches upon terrible objects, or acts in a terrible manner analogous to terror is a source of the sublime, capable of producing the strongest emotion that the mind is capable of feeling. Solitude is undoubtedly the most perfected form of modern rejection of any pleasure derived from relationships with others. It is consequently the state where the need for such relationships is asserted in the most apparent way. This is indeed why collective sublimation seems to me to give a meaning to the manifestations ascribed by Weber to the spread of the spirit of capital­ ism. Let us go back to the facts. First, there is a paradox. The Protestant sects and denominations, arising from schism, which is the supreme crime in reli­ gion, demanded from their members a harder life than normal. They required from them constant participation, and proof that they remained faithful in all spheres, including the most personal ones. Those admitted into the community had to possess special qualities, undergo a form of initiation, and lead a life of bleak virtue in order to justify their membership. What decided their enrol­ ment among the elect was the 'charisma of the state of grace ' , which shone through the vitality of their faith. Weber wrote: It can be seen that whether it was a question of authority or of membership of the community itself, the charismatic character did not disappear from sight. In Cromwell ' s army the saints accepted communion only from those who were religiously qualified to administer it, the soldier refused to march into battle under the orders of an officer who did not belong to the same sacramental community as himself. At the very least, among Baptists and the denominations that originated from them, it was demanded that the brotherly spirit of the first Christians should reign among members. Among the various sects many held it to be strictly forbidden to appeal in any way to the State law-courts, and mutual assistance in cases of distress was a duty. 75

We note the extent to which such apostles and such 'conviction Christians' merged together in their communi ty and without grumbling obeyed the duties of prayer, assistance and judgement that it imposed. Some called themselves the children of the Father and addressed each other as 'brother' and ' sister' as a sign of their mutual love. Yet the selfsame community forbade them to find

The genius of capitalism

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repose in its bosom or pleasure in the company of its own people. It refused to them everything that makes secure and attractive not only a life lived in common but also the worship addressed to the divinity and to sacred things. In this situation believers were forced to shun any course that might transform social relations into an end in themselves. What Protestantism demanded of them was not celibacy, as in the case of the monk, but the avoidance of all erotic pleasure; not poverty, but the elimination of all idle and exploitative enjoy­ ment of unearned wealth and income, and the avoidance of all feudalistic, sensuous ostentation of wealth; not the ascetic death-in-life of the cloister, but an alert, rationally controlled patterning of life, and the avoidance of all surrender to the beauty of the world, to art, or to one's own moods and 76 emotions.

In this light the sublimation that occurred was collective , not only because it required the cooperation of everyone, but also because it changed in its object. Having al lowed the transfer of the instinctual elements in the indi­ vidual to society, sublimation was now concerned with the renunciation of society itself in favour of purely economic activity. The real final point of this sublimation, its visible completion, was self-interest elevated to a virtue. In this way also, Puritans justified themselves from the religious viewpoint, as much as by their ceaseless labour. Nothing was more strongly advised against than entertaining feelings of friendship and trust, or even charity, in the professional sphere . By a strange turn of events, from this there followed an ' emptying of faith ' , a setting to one side of Christian values as soon as one entered this sphere. Weber pointed out that: It comes out for instance in the strikingly frequent repetition, especially in the English Puritan literature, of warnings against any trust in the aid or friendship of men. Even the amiable Baxter counsels deep distrust of even one ' s closest friend, and Bailey directly exhorts to trust no one and to say 77 nothing compromising to anyone. Only God should be your confidant.

The Chri stian religion certainly desired to be a religion of love. And the Protestant, as a good Christian, repeated: ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself' , but turned it upside down, taking it as loving yourself as you do your neighbour. This meant loving very little, and nursing secretly within oneself a solid hatred, like that which one harboured against one ' s neighbour, who might be an enemy, the Catholic branded as a Papist, or one outside the sect, or even a rival in one ' s occupation. Above all what was important - and thi s went without saying - was the computation of the amount of ' as yourself' love that each person should give or receive . This was di splayed in the amount of time or money expended, in short, in philanthropy. The cult of love that i s addressed to nobody was pleasing to G od and, as Weber put i t i n Economy and Society, therefore takes on the strictly objective and impersonal aspect of a service efficiently rendered in the interest of the rational organization of the 78 social universe that surrounds us. A profound indifference towards one 's neighbours, even going so far as scorn for them: this was the favourable state for economic rivalry and individual

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success. The entrepreneur was not constrained by solidarity with family or relations, or by loyalty towards coreligionists. Bound by membership of a sect or a congregation, outside it individuals were free to disassociate themselves from it and follow their own devices. Through an impeccable conviction one could avoid the satisfaction that relationships with others, the world of people, procured. One turned aside from these, favouring instead the contentment 79 arising from relationships with the world of things. This explains why the theme of solitude finds its supreme expression in the literature of the United States. Solitude is neither a blessing nor a curse, need not be sought after nor 80 avoided; Americans see it merely as human destiny . In this is certainly to be found one of the roots of that calculated, super­ ficially hospitable sociability, set against a background of real indifference, that one meets with even today in countries in the Protestant tradition . It allows one to sustain social relationships that take no account of the particular nature of persons . People are sorted into general categories according to precon­ ceived norms. This manner of keeping at bay any possibility of happiness procured by liv ing a life in common prepares the individual conscience for dealing adequately with the reality of the economy. Moreover, it ensures objectively the promotion of a bureaucracy of the State or the firm which will be all the more effective because of the consequences of bureaucratic domi­ nation : 'the dominance of a spirit of formalistic impersonality: "sine ira et studio", without hatred or passion, and hence without affection or enthusiasm 81 . . . without regard to personal considerations' . It seems to me, as we already know, that the long-term outcome is more important. The way in which Protestants tied the quest for salvation to professional ethics was unique. By it they conferred a religious significance upon the world as the object of a rational, economic practice in conformity with the will of a transcendent God. Now, as this practice spread and triumphed, obliging human beings to live in accordance with their reason, it ended up by setting God at a distance, making him a stranger to the world. Just as the earth revolves and fossilizes without our realizing it, in the same way the world, or more precisely the society the Protestants fashioned, unbeknown to them, turned away from the divinity indwelling in them. But it also turned away from passion and moral grace, and from personal faith, which have created modernity. And then it deserted this also. 82 As honest as a Huguenot

Commenting on Weber ' s study, the Italian philosopher Gramsci wondered: 83 'Why and how are the conceptions of the world spread about? ' Contemplat­ ing the size of this problem one hesitates to tackle it. The difficulty lies in the plethora of reasons, rather than the lack of them, to explain how the concep­ tions spread. However, one thinks: if the ' spirit of capitalism ' has overcome resistance and has spread, it is thanks to the influence exerted by the ' invisible Church ' of sects , and the imitation � that it engendered. In short, it owes its

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growth to the rigorous, tenacious life style of the Puritans. Before launching into this aspect of the question, it is important to recall how far our investiga­ tions have borne thi s out. For one might suppose that a minority, deprived of physical and economic resource s, dissenting and, what is more, rejected, might have no support other than the strength of its conv ictions and its way of expressing them. It therefore owes it to itself to adopt a consistent style, full of repetitions, and showing coherence between what it says and what it does. It creates tensions and conflicts that are appropriate for questioning prevailing conceptions and generally favouring innovation. 84 In a whole host of experiments we have proved that a minority modifies the judgements and attitudes of the majority by setti ng out its point of view in a consistent, even inflexible fashi on . It can even succeed in changing the perception of the colour of an object, for example, when it asserts consistently that it is green when everybody else sees it as blue . Thus it i s successful in getting others to share in a response that is judged

a priori absurd

by anyone.

Through its style it is possible for a minority to exercise a much more lasting and deeper influence than a maj ority . It causes us to believe that innovations penetrate the human psyche more profoundly than conformisms and customs. By contrast - and this is still what experience has taught us - as soon as a minority becomes hesitant and inconsistent, it loses its hold, no longer exerting any influence. It would not be straining the facts unduly to say that, the more it holds to its viewpoint and e xpresses it in all circumstances, the more intense the conflict it stirs up, and the greater the chance it has of changing the mentality of the members of a group and of converting them. Conversely , it frequently happens that it grows weaker by compromise and is discredited by making any concession. I would not wish to turn this into a philosophical dogma, because one must always take into account concrete situations , but consistency is the key that opens for a minority the mental and phy sical doors to the social world. Thi s is despite the reticence and hostility unceasingly manifested towards it. In all this there is only one certain style in which to behave and express oneself; thi s is the clear sign of a vocation and is destined to make an impression, to give solidity to ideas and convictions and to arouse a modicum of respect, if not admiration . Now, it so happens that the convictions the Puritans displayed resemble in many respects those we found in the laboratory and in the field. In every situation, they testify to the cohesion existing between the v arious aspects - economic , political and religious - of their existence , without allow­ ing themselves any diversion from it. One could believe that merely by reading the Bible they had acquired from the Jews that ' stiff nec k ' of which it speaks. We can see sects obstinately persevering in their singularity and resolve (which must have seemed either foolish or scandalous) to seek to apply to business the same rules as those appertaining in rel igious or moral life . It is as if the whole of reality had to bow to it - and reality did j ust that. In thi s disdain for reality , and thus for habitual rules and mode s of behaviour, there was as much confidence as there was awareness of a desperate situation , in which one could not stray from the course traced out by one ' s belief. Thus the

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Baptists and the Quakers, for example, began by respecting their business commitments with astonishing scrupulousness. This was something that ran counter to the habits of a society in which businessmen were accustomed not to keep their word, to cheat on weight and prices, not to pay their debts, and so on. However, such scrupulousness not only prevented any heightening of the sense of guilt arising from carrying on business in order to obtain divine grace, but also established a link between the members of an invisible congre­ gation. Weber wrote: ' In short, to belong to a sect was for the individual the equivalent of possessing a certificate attesting to one ' s ethics: in particular it bore witness to one 's morality in business matters, and to the difference that was made by belonging to a "Church" into which one was "born" and which 85 spreads its grace upon the just and the unjust. ' This was so much the case that 'duty ' , which should have handicapped them v is-a-vis their competitors, whose freedom of action was unlimited, became a ' fact' that turned to their advantage. Others started to prefer to go to banks and businesses run by Puritans, since the others did not afford the same guarantees of relative honesty. It is not at all surprising that the psychological benefits that accrued were strengthened by economic benefits. George Fox used to say that people came to them ' inasmuch that Friends had double the 86 trade, beyond any of their neighbours ' . The conviction that an honest man could earn more money than others is clearly a paradox , but one with a powerful attraction. Whilst it went against a thousand years of wisdom, it spoke the language of human emotions . It expressed the idea of ' purifying ' and of making virtuous occupations deemed impure and sinful. By resolutely applying an ethical rule, ' Honesty is the best policy ' , to what seemingly ruled it out, the Puritans both responded to thi s desire and ensured superiority for themselves. It was a vital superiority, as you can imagine, for 'a perpetual 87 minority that demands so much confidence in itself' . It is one that, through its success, exercised an influence over its devotees as much as over its adversaries, who were forced to follow its example . The result was that the spirit of capitalism was extended far beyond the boundaries of the Puritan community, so that it became general . If operating with honest and fixed prices allowed one to enlarge one ' s clientele and increase one ' s fortune, so much the better for honesty. It was this which

produced an atmosphere favourable to credit and exchanges, above all those of a monetary nature. Confidence was indispensable. It facilitated and speeded up the course of business, becoming the hallmark of a section of the bour­ geoisie. Weber reminded us:

We know that the Baptists have always claimed the honour of having erected this attitude into a principle. It is doubtless a universal belief that the gods bless by wealth the one who has been able to please them, whether by sacrifice or by the way he has conducted himself. If the Protestant sects have not been entirely alone in consciously linking this idea of the type of religious conduct that befitted the beginnings of capitalism, that honesty is the best policy, they are nevertheless the only ones who have given it this continuity 88 and coherence.

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This is only one example among others. It seems to me to be one typical of the innovations conceived of by these sects and of the consistency with which they propagated them. By collecting them together into an exemplary system of action in conformity with their values, the Puritans, as they say, changed the rules of the game - and through this the game itself, in other words the society around them. Without the metamorphosis of these values into actions that acknowledged the economic implications of Calvin ' s doctrine one would be unable to explain its extraordinary impact upon the capitalist enterprise, which was the instrument whereby it was carried through. B ut once the mu­ tation had come about, the means of salvation became an end. Capitalism subsisted, but the ' spirit' that inspired it had evaporated. There was no longer any need to follow its ethical maxims, and it could function by applying them in the guise of technical and rational formulas. Thus what had been heralded as a quest for grace and an inner vocation became, by virtue of its own success, a constraint and an external necessity that one was obliged to carry out. Of this epic tale of salvation in which so many souls were engulfed we have no more than fragmented memories. Victorious capitalism has turned away from its past, and what began through the faith of human beings is continued by the mechanism of things : ' And the idea of duty in one ' s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. ' 89 This is to under­ state the case, for these beliefs themselves have become a matter for sects and churches, for example in the United States, where they rival one another in wealth, competing in the market of faith. Here we call a halt to the origin of capitalism and of innovation generally in modem society. To know how it functions and reproduces itself in order to carry on is a completely different question. 90

This is not psychology One might say it is a saintly story ! And why should we be astonished at this? In spite of its repeated references to science, what is important about The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is that it is a myth. It is perhaps the sole myth concerning the origins of the modem era to which sociology has been able to give birth. That anything at all can be changed about this fact seems to me to be an illusion in combating which much energy has been wasted. It can be neither proved nor disproved, one can merely acknowledge it. This is precisely what constitutes the unity and grandeur of the exposition, and its irrefutable value . From this it derives its present-day popularity. For us who wish to discuss Weber' s theory intrinsically, without worrying about its historical truth , we must remember that it tackles the birth of capitalism by means of a general thesis: ' the influence of certain religious ideas on the 91 development of an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system ' . Let u s note at the outset that, according to Weber, capital had as its external conditions interests and social relationships created by a special class, the

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capitalists. But the next stage, its modern origin, must be sought in the logic of religious representations, in short, in the power of an idea, that of predes­ tination, which shaped the economic system in the West. Under its sway, Protestants transformed necessary work into a vocation, and the money in earning one ' s daily bread into earning one ' s salvation. At the moment when the power of old ways of thought was considerably shaken, they substituted for them a new one , and gave a different meaning to capitalist interests and relationships. The ' spirit' abiding in them constituted for these disinherited of the faith more a manifestation of the divine than of the human order. This is why Christian Europe alone among all the different civilizations, invented a broadly rational economic system. It was the beginning of a long meta­ morphosis, proceeding from within to the outside world, that inverted the terms of the knowledge equation . Instead of the usual explanation of the beliefs that inspired them in terms of economic factors, one might explain the economic system that resulted by religious factors. Out of prudence, if not modesty, Weber asserted that this was only one possible hypothesis. 92 However, every author who puts forward a theory holds it to be both true and unique : this is taken for granted. Not a trace of doubt can be detected when he wrote about the inventors of the ' spirit of capitalism ' : ' This is the reason for the economic 93 importance of the ascetic Protestant, but not Catholic, minorities. ' I do not need to tell you that what is most impressive is that the theory makes ethics into a creative factor and a Faustian element in society. Under its driving force, the representation of a group or an individual is changed into its oppo­ site : reality. The word becomes flesh, as is already clear. In any case, at its boundaries this theory opens first of all on to a psychology of the masses and a psychology of the individual. Plunged once more into the atmosphere of the Bible, upon reading Weber there came to my mind the story of the aged Isaac. When, blinded by old age, he receives his son Jacob, clad in goatskins, who lays claim to the inheritance of Esau, the elder son, Isaac touches him and says: 'The hands are the hands of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob. ' This is exactly true of Weber's theory . The facts are social facts, of this there cannot be the slightest doubt, but the causes, and the resonance they give off, are psychological. What also appears striking to me is the biting arrogance, even disdain, with which Weber treated the science on which his work is founded and with which, as is very plain, he is extremely familiar. It is worth dwelling on this attitude, which is incompatible with objectivity. When he had resolved his problem and had explained why the doctrine of predestination had as its consequence the overtoppling of economic and social practices, Weber invoked psychological motivations. Here, as elsewhere, this is a procedure he repeated, as even the most loyal sociologists acknowledge , either to justify or to criticize it. Parsons, for example, reproached him for it in these terms: ' In the second place, the typological rigidity appears, in his [Weber's] analyses, in the passage of one to the other, thus tending to link categories of motives to types of action. B y s o doing h e "psychologizes" to the extreme the interpretation o f social action 94 within the framework of social systems. '

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The tendency is more marked and more determinate in The Protestant Ethic. Making it appear a statement, a British sociologist summed up the thesis: ' The logical and psychological pressures generated by the ideas of . . . Calvin led to the development of what Weber calls "worldly asceticism" - at once a new ethical attitude and a new personality structure. • 95 Hence the spirit of capital­ ism. And in a censorious tone the American scholar Strauss concludes: 'But [Weber] does not succeed in linking the spirit of capitalism to the Reforma­ tion , or more especially to Calvinism, save by calling upon historical dialectics or on disputable psychological constructions. ' 96 A whole dossier could be compiled on this, since the phenomenon has been observed many times. 97 However, the tone of Weber himself, as soon as there is any question of psychology, makes me pause even more. Immediately a note of annoyance comes through, avenging quotation marks pepper the expressions and riddle the text, vilifying what must be kept at arm ' s length. One might say that the presence of certain words is an embarrassment to him, and that he needed to make excuses for them. Not only does the serenity he claimed desert him, but logic is blotted out. Is this a simple gut reaction, a matter of philosophical mood? Most certainly not. The presence of these words is too systematic for that, as a few examples show. Weber is interested in innovation, and since this, according to his lights, has to overcome the ' laziness' of habit, it assumes that individuals or a group exert an influence which, by the very nature of 98 things, is psychological. He spelled this out: ' The effects of "empathy", and even more so, of "inspiration" (usually lumped together under the ambiguous term "suggestion") constitute the major sources for the realization of actual innovations . ' 99 What therefore is the point of needing to put ' suggestion ' under the protection of quotation marks and qualifying it, into the bargain, as being ambiguous? It is abundantly clear that it is no more so than the notions of empathy and inspiration. At the time when he was writing it was held to be sufficiently clear in psychology. It was perfectly justifiable to assert that a thought or an original action transformed the behaviour of a society, as a result of suggestion. The same procedure is to be found with even more marked effects. Weber never missed an opportunity, in every one of his books, to describe the emotional states of groups, their swings between ecstasy and depression. Like all the mass psychologists of his time , he saw at work in them now a magical power, now a prophetic appeal. Having highlighted the role of these emotions in the life of a sect, he added, however, in a note : We are here for good reasons intentionally neglecting discussion of the psychological, in the technical sense of the word, aspect of these religious phenomena, and even its terminology has been as far as possible avoided. The firmly established results of psychology, including psychiatry, do not at present go far enough to make them of use for the purposes of the historical 00 investigation of our problems without prejudicing historical judgements . 1

Let us leave aside the fact that the same could be said of any science at any given moment. Yet how vague are the many arguments to justify the refusal to refer to the works of psychologists and discuss them, although he had read

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them and been affected by them. And this occurs at the very moment when he was making use of them in order to examine religious phenomena in terms that no psychologist would have rejected. A little later on in The Protestant Ethic, Weber did not conceal his irritation with those authors who were tempted to draw the consequences, in black and white, of the analyses he had made :

The above sketch has deliberately taken up only the relations in which an influence of religious ideas on the material culture is really beyond doubt. It would have been easy to proceed beyond that to a regular construction which logically deduced everything characteristic of modern culture from Protestant rationalism. But that sort of thing may be left to the type of dilettante who believes in the unity of the group mind and its reducibility to a single 1 1 formula. 0 These remarks are strange. Who would be irresponsible enough to try to do so with more genius than he himself had done? Moreover, is it not frivolous to think that it would be possible to stipulate a set of social relationships in which the influence of beliefs on the material economy was indubitable? We may well be able to assert this is possible in principle, but we know of no logical criterion, nor any empirical one, save one ' s own intimate conviction, that would allow it. I suppose that Weber' s remarks would be j ustified if the ' dilettantes' were drawn from among the practitioners of psychology. Now, the latter had no need to invent a collective psyche, for the simple reason that this was taken as given. What else , in their eyes, would be the ' spirit of capitalism ' ? Being neither a theological doctrine nor an economic method nor an institution, it is indeed a social representation, neither more or less. Finally, to whom are these remarks addressed, who are they aimed at? We would like very much to know the names of these dilettantes, and to know why they should be associated with this kind of summary psychology. Similar allusions are scattered throughout Weber' s writings, so acerbic that the scholar is alerted to exercise caution. And here the main point is set out, pinned between quotation marks in the preamble to his immense unfinished work on sociology:

Hence sociology has no closer relationship on a general analytical level to this type of psychology than to any other science. The source of error lies in the concept of the 'psychic ' . It is held that everything which is not physical is ipso facto psychic. However, the meaning of a train of mathematical reasoning which a person carries out is not in the relevant sense 'psychic' . Similarly the rational deliberation o f a n actor a s to whether the results of a given proposed course of action will or will not promote certain specific interests, and the corresponding decision, do not become one bit more un­ 1 2 derstandable by taking 'psychological ' considerations into account. 0 Nor do they do so through ' sociological ' considerations either. For if such human beings existed in flesh and blood, reflection would lose its magical splendour; and if we were able to know the interests preci sely, who would need any kind of science at all? In this respect psychology and sociology, or

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sociology and psychology , are all the same ! It is beyond dispute that to add up, subtract and multiply have no psychological meaning, so long as one is not concerned with knowing who does it or what is added, multiplied, or subtracted. If we embrace this viewpoint in order to explain the rational behaviour of doctors who diagnose an illness according to the rules of their art, there is hardly any need to consider their experience and their psychological state, since the meaning of their activity is plain. The same is true for engineers, or generals on the battlefield, acting in a rational manner. In his Essays on Scientific Theory Weber wrote: ' To "explain" an activity of this kind can never mean to derive it from "psychological conditions", but on the contrary it is derived from expectations, and exclusively from expectations , which have been sustained subjectively concerning the behaviour of objects (subjective rationality as regards its outcome), and which one was entitled to sustain on the basis of valid experiences. ' Once again, there are quotation marks, but once these are removed, it can be seen that this is only a partial explanation. I will confine myself to the case of doctors. In order to treat a patient as an object, they must hold to an organic representation of the person. At every moment they must suppress sympathy or antipathy and avoid identifying with the sick person. And it is this kind of indifference to suffering that is reached by a kind of gymnastic exercise of the emotions, as a result of not inconsiderable effort. These are the psychological conditions and they are necessary in order to explain the expectations and the rational mode of action of doctors. It is a sign of the healthy state of Weber's instincts that he wished to prove to himself that the science of society can lay claim to independence. His work will indeed survive when all the arguments deployed against it will have been forgotten, arguments that respect alone forbids us to characterize. However, if there is one science with which he sought both to avoid a face-to-face discussion and yet maintain a profound relationship, it is indeed psychology, without the slightest trace of quotation marks. It provided him with the thread of his narrative and the answers to the questions that the individuals of flesh and blood that he placed on the stage of society pose to one another. Raymond Aron is right to say that he had never been able to do without it and that the understanding of social phenomena wavered with him ' between Jaspers ' "psychologism" . . . and the devious path of neo-Kantianism, which only arrives at meaning by first considering value ' . 1 03 This is probable, and I am inclined to think that it could not be otherwise. In a short paper entitled ' Negation ' , Freud observed how much the denial of a thing or a feeling, the fact that they are disputed and rejected, expresses a tendency to suppress them in order to avoid a conflict. To say to someone: 'Don ' t be afraid, I 'm not going to kill you ' , often means exactly the opposite, a wish to instil fear in him, and even to kill him, which I repress for moral reasons. This is why, in his opinion, ' The condemnatory judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression; its "no" is the hallmark of repression , a certificate of origin just like "made in Germany". '

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Now, this kind of judgement is what we encounter in Weber in the dis­ claimers, the quotation marks that invalidate in his theories everything that bears as its certificate of origin 'made in psychology ' . What can he therefore gain by letting himself be guided by the denial? How does it cause his branch of knowledge to progress? Indisputably it is by reserving for sociology the rational side of human actions, the choices that individuals make when fully aware of the means to attain their economic or political ends. However, his resorting to a denial corresponds to a much deeper tension, which here becomes apparent. Indeed the conviction that every society is an ethical one, where moral and religious interests are considered more real than the material interests of normal existence, underpinned Weber' s thinking. This can be perceived when he was dissecting the anatomy of our society in order to uncover the theological and cultural, and even the magical, layers. A minute, faultless investigation is needed in order to recognize, behind the practices of the Amsterdam shopkeeper or the London entrepreneur, the teachings of Luther and Calvin. These are not chimeras, but hypotheses concerning the whys and wherefores of social behaviour and the nature of institutions. They allow us to conclude that religious forces have directed the long upward ascent of the economy in our society . Weber noted: On the other hand, those religious ideas themselves simply cannot be deduced from economic circumstances. They are in themselves, that is beyond doubt, the most powerful plastic elements of national character, and contain a law of development and a compelling force entirely their own. Moreover, the most important differences, so far as non-religious factors play a part, are, as with Lutheranism and Calvinism, the result of political circumstances, not economic. 1 04

It would be difficult to be more trenchant and to make understood more precisely why , as Weber did, one devoted to these ideas the most explicit part of one ' s work. We know that these ideas are similar because of the methods to which one resorts in order to put them into action: confession, an accounting procedure for good and bad actions, the cure of souls, ecstasy, and, for the believer, initiation rites into the group. Yet almost everywhere beliefs differ in their content according to social class and the form of society, For example, the intellectuals and the bourgeoisie determine a Christianity distinct from that of the peasant or the mass of town-dwellers. To go back to the sources of a religion or a doctrine , and to pronounce upon their effectiveness, always consists in discovering the psychological benefits that each individual expects from them. One can foresee one of the implications of such a conception, and it is one difficult to accept. I refer to the fact that, living in the contemporary world, we are persuaded that science and technology are in the last resort the surest and most perfect foundations for a society. We deem that the latter is all the more capable of surviving if it is built upon rational criteria. Now, the experience of history is there to teach us that, amid the beliefs and forms of knowledge, religion presents notable, if not superior, advantages. The institu­ tions that give shape to it and the collectivities that embody it appear robust and made to last. And they do go on lasting. One has only to think of the

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various Churches which, in spite of political and economic vicissitudes and the schisms that have undermined them, are still in existence after thousands of years . Both in practice and belief religion claims precisely the privilege of not being based upon reason and not having to submit to its verdict. No one asks that it be true, or in conformity to reality, but that it ensures the salvation of human beings by making them either guilty or virtuous to some degree. Superficially a banal idea, this comes down to realizing that religion is a set of ideas and institutions that adapts just as well , and even better than science and technology, to the movements of history. Contrary to what one thinks, it has value in understanding the way in which a society continues to survive, and the actions of human beings over time. Thus one comes to let it play the part of an essential force - and Weber did not fail to do so - which either resists , or obliges history to branch off in a fresh direction. He wrote: As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, under all circumstan­ ces - and this is, of course, much more important than the mere encourage­ ment of capital accumulation - it favoured the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it was the most important, and above all, the only 1 5 consistent influence in the development of that life. 0

In our day the matter is more difficult. But similar phenomena and substitutes are invented that determine the sentiments, judgements and actions of human beings. Weber was so convinced of this that he did not shrink from stating: The rationalism of the proletariat, like that of the bourgeoisie of developed capitalism when it has come into the full possession of economic power, of which indeed the proletariat' s rationalism is a complementary phenomenon, cannot in the nature of the case easily possess a religious character and certainly cannot easily generate a religion. Hence, in the sphere of proletarian 1 6 rationalism, religion is generally supplanted by the ideological surrogates. 0

This may well be. I do not seek to criticize or defend this way of looking at the matter. I only wish to convince you how very coherent it all is. B ut, and Weber was less ignorant of this than anybody , this factor shaping an ethic for peoples and historical sects is irrational. This comes quite naturally through its effect, and not because the beliefs that go to make it up are a maze of contradictory notions, or because the practices are of a magical character. They always consist of what is contained subjectively in a duty or teaching that compels human beings to act, duplicating their visible universe with an invisible universe. Now, the theory that confers such coherence upon this factor cannot do without psychology . It must have recourse to it in order to understand why such a duty or teaching causes human beings at one time to shore up the dikes and at another to tear them down in order to plunge into the adventure of a new society. Where else would they find the spontaneity, passion and tenacity as well as the enthusiasm and heroism that are necessary? Weber acknowledged and even stressed this when he declared: But it is precisely on the basis of such rational assumptions that most of the laws of sociology , including those of economics, are built up. On the other hand, in explaining the irraticnalities of action sociologically, that form of

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psychology which employs the method of subjective understanding un­ doubtedly can make decisively important contributions. But this does not 107 alter the fundamental psychological situation.

So nothing is altered? Perhaps not from the methodological viewpoint, but certainly from the theoretical viewpoint. Note how profound was Weber's conviction concerning the subjective and moral forces that govern every soci­ ety, which in the end is an ethical one. Yet what he set out to explain, and what obsessed him, was something uniquely European: namely, the origin of an economic society that seeks to be objective, rational, and indifferent to the twists and turns of personal feelings and tendencies. A man of the nineteenth century, he saw history as adopting the scenario of a Bildungsroman: its hero progressed from the romantic excesses of youth to the wisdom and moderation of maturity . Each adventure, each mistake, carried with it a lesson. In the end he concluded an honourable peace with society, which recognized and ap­ preciated him. In the same way Weber believed he could discern a line of development in a society that sets out by being one of emotion, whose mem­ bers have a face-to-face relationship with one another and are dominated by a charismatic idea. A natural development steers it, according to circumstances - but not always - towards a situation in which it becomes rational, and the relations between its members impersonal or even bureaucratic. Thus the subjective impulsion that determines the existence of human beings at all times and in all places is compressed, and even wiped out. Weber noted: ' The main types of rational and methodical living were characterized by assump­ tions that were irrational, accepted as such and incorporated into these life 08 styles. ' 1 The capitalist way of life went further and broke with this. It replaced the solutions of an ethical and religious nature that were current by solutions of an economic nature. This is why in the civilization that we know, and which has resulted from it this spirit of capitalism might be understandable . . . purely as a result of adaptation. The capitalistic system so needs . . . devotion to the calling of making money . . . bound up with the conditions of survival in the economic struggle for existence, that there can to-day no longer be any question of a necessary connection of that acquisitive manner of life with any single Welt­ anschauung . In fact, it no longer needs the support of any religious forces, and feels the attempts of religion to influence economic life, in so far as they can still be felt at all, to be as much an unjustified interference as its regula­ 109 tion by the State.

Now , the rejection of psychology in thi s matter eliminates one uncertainty. Psychology, as we have seen, is indispensable for understanding the internal strength, if I may so express it, of historical evolution, including the begin­ nings of capitalism. But how far and to what extent does it still contribute to explaining that immense wave of rationalization sweeping across the modern world? The trend to rationalization does not seem to obey the general mech­ anisms and eludes the norms that shaped everything before the interests of the

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economy predominated in our Weltanschauung, our vision of the world. Thus there is a limit to the use of psychology, and yet one does not know where to fix it. This is not all. Weber's disavowals and quotation marks were designed to cover over a greater tension. To tell the truth, he could not accept that our society can distance itself from what it possesses in common with other previous ones. We see him incessantly wavering between his principle that at the heart of all social authority there persists some given moral and irrational element, and the c learly evident reality of this special, Western capitalist structure that seems to be the exception. He then used psychological notions, as he thought fit, creating them according to his needs, refusing to commit himself to the science from which they spring and to which they belong. It was one way of not tying his hands and breaking away from the controversies that were raging at the time. In passing, I note that this tension, far from vanishing, appeared to increase during his lifetime. One of his biographers has remarked: For we are always confronted with the other aspect of Weber, his rejection of modernity and rationality. that great wild beast that rose up from the Victorian subconscious. In the last ten years of his life both his political and religious sociology were impregnated with it to such an extent that even in his harshest criticisms of the crazy political agitation that he saw around him, charisma, the most Dionysian of concepts, although most carefully hedged round with Socratic and Apollonian barriers, dominated the scene. 1 1 0

It then becomes increasingly difficult to stick to ideas peculiar to sociology. The shifting nature of the interpretations becomes general with Weber and one has - happily - more and more difficulty in putting a label on them. This lack of precision is an advantage, because it allows him to adapt them to the most diverse objects, to the needs of very different disciplines, from economics to anthropology, and in this way , to test their fruitfulness, which has hardly grown less ever since . On the other hand, one kind of psychology is undeniably the work of Max Weber. It took shape in the very heart of the Puritan movements. For them to succeed in mastering an economic form that constituted the secret of their power, they had to inculcate in their devotees an ever-present discipline, with all that this implied: an often difficult initiation, a strict control by coreligion­ ists, asceticism in everyday life, yet also reciprocity in the matter of duties. What was the goal : ' In [the] formal psychological sense of the term it tried to 111 combining the opposing demands of solitari ­ make him into a personality,' ness in a soul raised to a virtue, and of an existence lived amid a community and in its service. Whether Quaker. Baptist or Methodist, the individual learnt to become passionately rational and passionately impersonal. It is a kind of personality that one still meets in those countries where Protestant sects retain some hold. It is precisely by comparing the way Weber envisaged psychology in con­ trast to Durkheim that we can grasp the peculiarity of his psychology - and

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something else. To put it briefly, in whatever way the evolution of society is looked at, you become aware that, thanks to the Renaissance and the 1 12 According Reformation, the idea of the individual can be seen emerging. to Durkheim, as the division of labour progresses and the collective conscious­ ness recedes, the authority of society becomes looser. The result is that the autonomy of the individual grows according as the influence of society becomes more abstract, going so far as to become a cause of anomie, the symptom of a disintegration and a lack of cohesion that are fatal. All in all, the personality is built up in a struggle against a society whose aim is to keep a hold over it and to force it to conform. Whether arising from the division of labour or from anomie, the human being that results from it is an emancipated individual. And now , if we follow the psychology agreeable to Weber, one thing clearly emerges : to be an individual appears to be a duty . Voluntary members of a dissenting community whose rules for living they accept, individuals feel all the more their own self because they depend upon the community for their salvation. Now, it is not in opposition to it, but at its behest, that they deny themselves the satisfaction that they might enjoy from communing with others like themselves. They are constrained to maintain a distance that envelops them in an ' inconceivable inner solitude ' . Those who join a Puritan sect or denomination are called upon to ' individualize ' themselves to follow their own path unflinchingly, for no one can intercede between them and their God. In the same way as one dies as a person, so one is saved or damned as a person. It is as if an unwritten law dictated to the consciousness that there can be no solitude for a person without the solitude of everybody. Weber wrote: ' This is a fact which is of especial importance for the interpretation of the psycho­ logical basis of Calvinistic social organizations. They all rest on spiritually individualistic , rational motives. The individual never enters emotionally into them. The glory of God and one ' s own salvation always remain above the 113 threshold of consciousness . ' This is somewhat hastily said and is to belittle the power of the emotions. It is nevertheless probable that, through a collective sublimation, Puritans could give up relationships with other people, and renounce their 'irrational ' motives for associating with them. They succeeded all the more because as had been hammered into him, they rejected, any vivacity of an affective nature and any enjoyment that could arise from life in common. In the allusive language he made his own, Weber wrote: ' It is a case of sublimation when affectually determined action occurs in the form of conscious release of emo­ tional tension . When this happens it is usually well on the road to rationaliza­ tion in one or other or both of the above senses [sentimental rationality and 1 14 value rationality ] . ' Puritans consequently become increasingly preoccupied with their states of consciousness (Gesinnung) and less and less with the external processes of action. To the extent that such a sublimation takes place, the indiv idual modes of behaviour of believers are not subjected to a separate examination with the aim of ensuring they are in conformity with the prescripts of the ethics or

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norms of the society . They are treated as the expression of an internal , auto­ nomous personality . Thus individuals become monads lacking communication with others, not because they do not participate sufficiently in the collective consciousness, but because they participate too much; not because that con­ 1 15 sciousness is removed from them, but because they are too close to it. In this sense it may be said that the Puritan is the prototype of the sublimated individual. Through the opposition between Durkheim ' s thought and that of Weber, another opposition can be perceived, this time between the two types of individuation that have emerged in Europe. The former corresponds to the move towards emancipating the persona from the Church and the State, as a natural right; the latter represents the tendency towards sublimating in the persona - in a new type of human being - the passions that prevent it from establishing its egotistical interests in the face of the world as it is. It affirms its own will, followed to the very end, summed up in the declaration of Luther: Here I stand. Most frequently human beings set tasks for themselves that they will never be able to accomplish and problems that no one could solve. But they would never have been able to do what they have done if so many of them had not been led to renounce, in some strange way, the social desires towards which they are naturally inclined through their senses and the instinct of self-preservation . The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is, to my knowledge, the sole study in which the psychology of this collective sublima­ tion is envisaged from so many standpoints - including the inhuman aspect and in relation to such wide-ranging social phenomena. We shall say no more, for here we are concerned with ideas other than comparison, or the judgement made about a work that is, in the final analysis, definitive .

6 I The mana and the numina

Revolutionary societies and normal societies

Weber' s personal observations, his studies and his abortive excursions into public life led him to the conclusion that a nation is judged on its power, and that its history has no other purpose. In the long run this undoubtedly shifted his viewpoint on society. The sloping incline that led him from one viewpoint to the other can be seen. In the beginning we feel him bound to the conception of an ethical society whose two elements, religion and economics, are as irreducible as the elements of matter. Now, as social revolutions, war and danger threatened Germany, a different conception increasingly took over. It was that of a political society, at whose explosive heart lies charisma, just as uranium is at the heart of a nuclear reactor. Such a society was governed by passions that must be allowed free rei n and even stimulated, so that afterwards one could regain mastery over them and make them bend to the yoke of reason. Without such an internal energy, impervious to any reflective thinking, noth­ ing original or effective could take place. Thus, in his 'Politics as a vocation ' Weber gave a glimpse of the dilemma: For the problem is simply how can wann passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely 1 human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone.

Here as elsewhere irreconcilables are only reconciled from time to time and only in an imperfect way. But domination is the inherent characteristic of those for whom a consuming passion for a cause, for the gods or demons that are their masters, creates a right and duty to act on other human beings. This will therefore occupy us in the rest of this work; a great, a vast subject, you will say. Indeed it is - so vast that I shall only try to present some features of it. Few of us surely have had the opportunity of learning what effect this passion has on the person and on society. Nevertheless I believe that for the most part we have a picture of its power and its role as a motive in familiar situations.

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Now, what underpins the two conceptions of society and at the same time remai ns the principal problem in the theory is innovation. The essence of this lies in the eruption of collective forces, the instabil ity of their relationships, and thus the social 'big bangs ' : · we have seen the principle behind it. Its consequence is to mark out a boundary line, opposing two kinds of society. Weber did not define them with all the clarity that would be desirable , but we can discover them thanks to an analogy. It will soon be thirty years since the American historian Kuhn suggested distinguishing between two sciences, one of which he called normal science, and the other revolutionary science. The first relates to an ordinary situation. Researchers are in agreement on the common theoretical ideas, speak the same language and devote themselves to solving current problems, verifying logical solutions and measuring their ef­ fects with increasing accuracy. In this way results are built up and knowledge is continually progressing. Everything happens in this way until the moment when errors and insoluble anomalies provoke a crisis among researchers and plunge their research into disarray. There follows an attempt to triumph over the crisis, a task that devolves upon revolutionary science. The world that has been shut down in front of the researchers is like an oyster that must be reopened. And they know better than anyone else that it offers ever greater resistance as those striving to reopen it grow older. It is therefore other, younger researchers who embark on an extraordinary initiative by creating a new series of concepts and methods, a new paradigm, overtoppling the old one in one fell swoop. Their science denotes a profound break from the past and launches the evolution of know­ ledge in a novel direction. Whatever such a description may be worth, the duality of the sciences serves as an illustration for our own duality. Here the contrast is between a revolu­ tionary or anomalous society, resulting from a big bang, and normal society, which is formed once the forces behind the explosion have cooled down and the innovations that provoked it have become commonplace . The first kind of society is distinguished by the ebullience of its members and the creative urge they display. Favoured by a state of collective over-excitement, historical and moral energies are released; these change the course of society, which had been assumed to be as little variable as the trajectory of a planet. Emerging from the circle of their own interests and needs, individuals share in a purer or more intense life. Moreover we know how greatly modern mass demonstra­ tions, the first Christian communities, the meetings on the Greek Agora, or the councils of republics that emerged from a revolution summon up concrete images of this. Brought together by a new charisma into exceptional collectiv­ ities, human beings have a feeling that they are or are touching, the very foundations of their world. The Israeli sociologist Eisenstadt writes: ' This charismatic fervour is rooted in the attempt to come into contact with the very essence of being, to go to the very roots of existence , of cosmic, social and cultural order, to what is seen as sacred and fundamental. ' 2 Such a society, however, reduced to its essentials and lived only from the inside, can only be short-lived, in statu nascenti, as the expression goes. To ,

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continue the analogy, it is like an oyster that closes up again with an abrupt snap, as soon as the point of the knife that has been inserted into it has been taken out. Insofar as the day-to-day functions of administration, production and exchange must be carried on and the demands of daily life respected, it is these which once more assume the preponderant role. Society could not fulfil them and recover stability if its legal or customary institutions were not re-established as a single entity . In this sense society becomes normal, capable of laying down criteria for conduct and interests that have passed the test of experience for a large number of people, and allowing them to associate 3 together for a long time. Many words are indeed needed to describe what is imprecise. Nevertheless something clear does emerge. As opposed, for example, to a Durkheim, who makes every effort to opt for a normal society exempt from change and crisis, Weber generally takes an anomalous society as his point of departure, on the model of the medical researcher who starts from a pathological state . It is as if the anomalous society were what had first to be understood, in order to construct a theory from it. Then, by extension, from this there emerges the possibility of describing and explaining the other society, its ultimate goal . In principle, the datum with which he begins is of a rare and irrational character. Through the exceptional, which is unrepeatable, one thus arrives at an under­ standing of something that is habitual and routine. From one to the other there unfolds a process of rationalization in the course of which the innovation is 4 reproduced and becomes normal for human beings. This is a method of enquiry that contrasts with other methods on which we need not dwell. If Weber's work leant towards psychology , if it was a pioneer in the field, it is because of this aspect. In reality, we are less struck in his vision of domination by the richness and delicacy of his analyses than by something stronger and more immediate: he spoke of an idea that had been declared taboo. He reintroduced it into the sciences of history and society , which are interested only in the masses and in objective forces and which hold the idea to be outmoded, and even contrary to reason. However, it corresponds to a conviction that has been lived out, one that represents a source common to peoples and which one sees put into practice by the most modern parties. You are aware of the idea that heroes, great men, leaders, prophets or geniuses, are the rootstock from which human beings produce creative work. Without them, history stands still and is not made. The cult of the exceptional individual is one of the symptoms of our time. It embarrasses us all the more because we expected to see it disappear after the criticism of, and hostility towards, any personal and idolatrous authority. Its persistence stupefies us, and represents a failure of nerve more painful than a failure of values. In the century of the Enlightenment much time was occu­ pied in snatching society out of the claws of great men. Today it seems that we are preoccupied with protecting ourselves against mass anonymity. In the face of the gods of Olympus, or the Jewish or Christian God, even the greatest

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men remained men. By a distorted effect, in the face of the absence of the gods, great individuals have been able to turn themselves complacently into deities or heroic beings, all-powerful and omniscient. f{owever, let us not be surprised. Thomas Carlyle already proclaimed this in writings that have found echoes first in philosophy, and then in science. He was convinced that the great revolutions belonged to the past: the Reformation of Luther, the uprising of the Puritans against the English monarchy and, finally, the French Revolution that crowned this trend. According to Carlyle, after this final act the world needed balance and meaning. Who other than a hero could obtain this for them? He maintained that the hero is at the centre of history and culture, in order to start that impulsion that all await in order to set things in motion once more . Carlyle declared: ' Hero-worship, heartfelt, prostrate ad­ miration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of Many - is not that the germ of Christianity itself? ' 5 Carlyle assimilated the hero to the saint and prophet, even if his mission was secular. If he is absent, the times are out of joint. B ut how can one recognize him? What signs allow us to distinguish the true from the false prophets, to set aside the false heroes in order to retain those who embody a great idea? The people has need of them - that people to whom Carlyle gave the name of ' valets ' , and who later will become the masses. Two qualities are essential to allow us to recognize heroes: sincerity and intuition. They possess them in the right proportions and use them to face up to the reality of things. To Carlyle nothing appeared more detestable than those mechanistic theories of political life that passed over in silence the role of exceptional individuals. His inspiration was poetic and his voice would fain be ancient and pagan. But as the German philosopher Cassirer observed, there was to be heard in it an echo of the Protestant religion: 'Carlyle ' s political theory is, at bottom, only a disguised and transformed Calvinism. True spontaneity is reserved to the rare elect. As to the others, the mass of the reprobates, they have to submit under the will of these elect, the born rulers. ' 6 In spite of the adornments of eloquence and the historical approximations, this vision attracts and conquers a wide public. In this way it integrates once more the great men, the discoverers of nations and the prophets of religions and civilizations, into the spirit and into what has been called the myth of the twentieth century. It renews less a nostalgia for the time when the hero was the measure of all things than the logic of the individual carried to the extreme. There can be seen in it the uphill climb that Nietzsche followed towards the superman, and mass psychology towards the leader. Weber followed the same path, for his political and religious inspiration were drawn from the same sources, and the common heritage of Carlyle invited him to do so. The reper­ cussions of his theory of domination come in part from the fact that it is grafted on that myth which the majority despises without being able to escape from it. And to clothe scientific ideas with a living, passionate conviction gives considerable strength. Thus through him the idea that great men are the life­ blood of our collective life and the severers of the Gordian knots of history passes from poetry to science.

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Legitimacy, the prohibition of criticism and the domination of charisma

Power, in fact, is inevitably the source of relationships between people. Every­ where we see it being exercised, in the school as in the home, in the market­ place as in administration, and - this is self-evident - in the State and in the Church. ' Some must obey the others - the few ' , is the only categorical imper­ ative common to all beliefs. Two aspects are characteristic of power. On the one hand, it is a principle of order that separates the governors and the governed and indicates how the many must obey the few who command. If any institution applies this principle rigorously, it diverts the many from the temptation to command and the few from the ever-strong temptation to obey. On the other hand, power is a principle of action upon which society relies. It imposes a goal upon its members and dictates to them the conduct to be followed for it to be achieved. Without it, decisions taken cannot be applied, nor can the necessary means be demanded from individuals in terms of time and wealth , and occasionally in human lives, as during a war. It goes without saying that a margin of choice and liberty always remains, without which domination would be useless. But as soon as this principle happens to weaken, dictatorships themselves disintegrate and crumble into dust. It is as if power becomes powerless from the very moment when order is maintained, but without being capable of acting, like a beautiful and whole body that is nevertheless paralysed. This is where the question of the instruments of power is posed, which we must look at in more detail so as to examine our subject more minutely. As a principle of order, power is manifested by a singular kind of tool, violence. We would not disagree that sometimes it is changed so much that it has become invisible, but that it should be missing or that one can dispense with it must be ruled out. When it is not displayed, it is nevertheless on show, and when it is denied, it is still asserted. Trotsky said once, ' Every State is founded on force . ' This truth runs everywhere, and is denied by no one. As a principle of action, power resembles a scientific postulate. It is not selected on the basis of experimental or theoretical proofs, but on the basis of a primal axiom that scienti sts ratify. Examples are the postulate of the parallel nature of two straight lines passing through a point in geometry, or that of the conservation of energy in physics. In the same way one ' selects ' the postulate of action in a society in order to justify, with some goal in view and through some method, the one whom, in the name of what and by what right, its members must obey. When a party or a politician work out a plan and lay it before the nation, whatever may be their intentions at the time, they are giving themselves a charter to govern. On one qualification or another power clothes itself in a moral superiority. From this springs the fact that it is never brutal, or imposing force for the sake of force, or a struggle for the sake of struggle. Whatever the power that human beings are faced with, one question is raised : ' Under what conditions do they submit, and why? On what inner

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justifications and what external means does this domination rely ? ' 7 Among such conditions, Weber noted, were the political and military force of the army, for example, or economic interest. Next came obedience to authority by virtue of an acknowledged right, such as by election or inheritance, of one individual to exercise authority over others. On the one hand, therefore, there is violence under different forms, and on the other, legitimacy justifying and setting its seal upon domination. In order to illustrate this contrast, listen to this injunction from the Koran: 'The Bedouins say: "We believe". Say : "You do not believe". Say rather: "We submit'', so long as faith has not entered at all into your heart. ' An inner faith added to external violence in varying proportions - this is the formula for legitimacy. Chiming in with what we already know - and this was the basis for his theory - Weber considered domination exclusively from this last viewpoint. It is not that the military and economic pressures are negligible. But it is by the giving of consent that one obeys best, and by winning con­ fidence, and even love, that one best commands. Ruskin, the English thinker, aptly stated that however, the visible king can also be a real one if ever the day comes when he wishes to weigh up his kingdom according to its true strength and not according to its geographical boundaries. It is of little consequence that the Trent removes a castle from you here or the Rhine includes for you one castle the less there . But it is important for you, a king over men, to be able to say to this man, 'Go ' , and he goeth, and to another, 'Come ' , and he cometh . . . It is important for you, a king over men, to know whether your people hates you and dies for you, or loves you and lives through you. 8 Whatever may be the cause , to submit oneself is tantamount in the end to trusting. We shall return later to this point in order to grasp its psychological significance. For the moment it is sufficient to recall that a grain of doubt sown in millions of people causes a tyrant. even a powerful one, to fall. Dictatorships are contrary not only to human rights but also to the true nature of power. Resorting permanently to violence gives ri se to apathy, indifference and hostility, without forgetting that prudence that La Fontaine termed 'the mother of safety ' . On such barren ground there cannot germinate the slightest trust or any deep-seated allegiance . In such circumstances, a minority, be it ever so small, can wear down the fears and gnaw away the convictions that subsist. Thi s is particularly true when that minority can convince the masses that they are right to withhold the trust being sought from them. It can be stated that Weber did indeed envisage domination in this light and that he considered merely subsidiary what related to self-interest or force. He wrote : Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of soli­ darity between the chief and his administrative staff result. in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation. Normally other elements, af­ fectual and ideal, supplement such interests . In certain exceptional cases the former alone may be decisive . In everyday life these relationships, like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage. But

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In short, the power of a party over a nation, of a teacher over a class, of a leader over the masses, is exercised on condition that the nation, the class or the masses have faith in them and do not dispute their legitimacy. This faith expresses the pressure of society acting within individuals, instilling discipline into them and instructing them in what is good or evil, or just and unjust. This goes on until the rules and values end up by becoming part of individuals, having been incorporated into their personality. They believe in what they are asked to do and carry it out, impelled by invisible powers emanating from themselves or, at the very least, from their will . A power where such a discipline lies at its centre of gravity is legitimate. The German sociologist, Habermas gives a more general definition of it. In my view, his formulation is definitive and this is my reason for reproducing it: 'The legitimacy of a political order is measured by the credibility that it enjoys among those who are subjected to its domination. ' 10 This is what the weekly opinion polls concerning politicians are alleged to measure, or what the Pope is look­ ing for in distant lands when he brings together thousands and millions of people. This is also what is understood when it is said that the President of France benefits from a ' state of grace' [a 'honeymoon period' - Transla­ tor] . Legitimacy is then so great that spontaneously it takes on the form of personal affection. It carries individuals into a different reality, warmer and more intimate, which they have no doubt is by their own choice and action. Credibility is therefore the principal problem of domination. But it is a special credibility that cannot rely solely on sentiment and public opinion, as does any other form of credibility. We only partly understand it if we are satisfied with such vague indicators. It is surprising to see that so many sociologists and political scientists have remained as little explicit about this as was Weber himself. How can credibility remain protected from fluctuations in mood and judgement? As regards legitimacy, durability is an imperative need, as we can see from the care that leaders take to ensure that others will continue after­ wards, and the care they take to lay down a doctrine. In this sense, its psychological and subjective content presupposes some social expression, as I should make clear. It is most certainly in the nature of a consensus of beliefs and values. Yet if this is the outcome of discussion and an exchange of arguments that carry conviction, it cannot rely on these. For it would require constant influence to be exerted to maintain unison among the members of the group and to obtain their consent on every occasion. Quite the opposite occurs: confidence in this consensus, in the relations between governors and governed, relies on and is indeed acknowledged by an absence of discussion. In other words, its singularity lies in that it is based upon a prohibition, one passed over in silence but always present, the prohibition of criticism . By this means a collectivity removes what it holds most dear from

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controversy and disagreement, at least in the public forum. Vital convictions and rules are set apart, and placed above all others, just as gold is placed above paper money. There can be discussion about the best voting system, but the principle of the vote itself is unassailable. Restrictions to be applied to free­ dom can be defined, and this legal codes do, for example the code regarding the press. But liberty itself is untouchable, and no one would dare to erase the word from the facade of our town halls. The same is true for equality, no matter what onslaughts it suffers in practice. What it is forbidden to criticize should no more be proved than refuted. In these affairs each one of us bows to an artificial rule : ' Thou shalt not discuss. ' It found an echo quite naturally in the thinking of the Italian philosopher Vico: 'Doubt must be removed from every doctrine, particularly from every moral doctrine . ' It is because it connotes a defect or weakness to which one can only oppose force, and not one ' s conviction . I could go on enumerating examples of this prohibition and illustrating its universality . Everybody bows to it spontaneously. An invisible, intangible obstacle, it exercises constraint through the violence of the passions that it arouses among us. Those who have a hankering once more to call into question matters that brook no dispute expose themselves to resentment of an extreme violence. One notes the ex­ pedition with which Churches and parties excommunicate at the slightest sign of dissent or even discussion . This gives one some idea. It is laid down in principle that the right to criticize is written into our laws and customs. This is indeed true, but it is very apparent that it is limited by a prohibition, so that these may be respected and their authority legitimized. It is understood in time-honoured commonplaces such as ' My country, right or wrong ' , 'Outside the Church there is no salvation' or ' Silence gives consent' . Such a prohibition i s extremely strong. I n the face of i t conscience falls silent, as doe s the will to investigate further. ' But', wrote the philosopher Kierkegaard, ' silence, or the lesson we have sought after, the art of keeping quiet, is the condition for true obedience. ' 1 1 Through this silence , of which everyone is aware because they have observed it on more than one occasion, we give a pledge of submission and we give proof of our trust. I am aware I am simplifying matters. The fact remains that the ban on criticism is not merely ancient history. Always and everywhere - and this is what is peculiar to it - it demonstrates the existence of legitimacy and a guarantee of it. This comes about by virtue of the fact that it places the beliefs and practices indispensable in order to exercise domination beyond all doubt and controversy. It would be wrong to equate such a silence with a misunder­ standing or a pretence that would make us, the majority in a society, the innocent servants of a force that is invested with symbols. Power, neither a sign nor a symbol, lies j ust as much in the ban that is proclaimed and makes it infallible in our eyes as in the violence designed to give vent to it. 1 2 What i s i t that impels u s to cast a half-anxious, half-scornful gaze o n those in authority? It is not the difference between what they say and what they do, although this comes through at every moment in the demagogy into which they fall, where they so often and so speedily go astray. Nor is it the lack of

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probity, occasionally so evident in spite of the virtuous noises that come from their mouth. All purport to be people that have risen to their eminent position through being carried along by a sense of responsibility and unparalleled courage when faced with the perils of an uncertain, threatening situation. Rather our perplexity ari ses from a vague , indefinable impression. At any moment, in spite of everything, we would be ready to recognize in them qual ities they do not possess, abandoning our attitude of reserve in order to follow them. Yet, like priests who might exhort the faithful to sin against their faith, they force us, through their excesses and deceptions, to come out of our shell and violate the single rule that would make their authority legitimate. And whoever speaks out no longer consents. Now, a consenting silence is the intrinsic condition for the presence of real power. The philosopher Wittgen­ stein summed it up in a formula that is concise in its powerful language: ' Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. ' Riveted in each individual consciousness, the prohibition dries up doubts and stifles the fitful misgivings of the heart. For a power that is discussed, and interpreted in a contradictory way, is already no longer one. Those human beings and groups that have known how to cling to authority the longest are those who have known how to protect an area of principles from controversy, turning it aside, when the time came . Power has the savour of the forbidden fruit: everyone desires to eat it, but few dare to bite into it. It was not domination that interested Weber, but the uniqueness of its charac­ ter. The economy, the family, religion, have a well-defined place in the social order, corresponding to different interests and permanent principles. Now, domination, which is diffused in the social order, has a special status. As a political institution, it poses a problem of method: how to rule? But as a relationship, it depends on a day-by-day obedience that poses the problem of legitimacy : in whose name and in the name of what should one believe and place one ' s trust? If trust should happen to be lacking leaders and led become indecisive: the ship ' s rudder, the State for instance, is in position, but in the engine-room the energy is missing. Such a situation exists today in many countries in Europe and America. Weber was already concerned about this, seeing this energy growing weaker in Germany , above all in the bourgeoisie. Shut off from their occupation in the world of business and industry, they equipped themselves with neither the personnel nor the intellectual tools to govern the nation with any sure touch. Weber did not think that the working class would succeed any better. It came down to the fact that both groups were persuaded that power was rubbish, a scaffolding or a discarded piece of the social edifice. Weber' s breakthrough was to make it into the ultimate dimension of social existence, changing an epiphenomenon into a full-blown phenomenon. All else sprang from this; the vital questions regarding the economy, the administration and religion, among others, are regulated within a form of domination that imposes its own solu­ tions. There is nothing more instructive than to see how the Marxists have brushed up against, and even come into contact with, and yet missed, this

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phenomenon. From then onwards, in the light of this perspective , the forces that cause society to move towards change were no longer linked ' as Marx might have expressed it, among both leaders and led, to the development of 13 the forces of production , but to psychological motives ' . This is a little hasti ly stated, but the main point is made. To sum up briefly, it is the kinds of legitimacy, and thus the beliefs, that 14 condition the form that domination takes . Thi s was the touchstone of Weber' s theory, and one which has most left its mark upon modem know­ ledge. Now, the first type of legitimacy, to which he paid the closest attention is, as you know, that which arises in a period of turbulence and crisis. One might say that it acquires substance in an anomalous, sometimes revolutionary society. It is the only one for which the problem of creating legitimacy is posed in absolute terms, even before an authority has been installed. Is this not the case with a nation in the making, a social movement that is mobilizing its forces, or a Church that springs from the exuberance of sects scornful of establ ished tradition? Thi s is precisely why neither the need for them, nor their destiny, are perceived and why they are even considered to be absurd. As soon as belief in them has spread to the masses, their absurdity vanishes, and any obloquy they suffer ceases to harm. Afterwards the members of such a society have no other force than the direct, personal links between governors and governed to hold it together. Interests are very weak and special abilities are too secondary to contribute in any spectacular fashion to this. This is why authority, which requires heavy sacrifices when faced with an outcome that is uncertain, insists , when success­ ful, on maintaining a quasi-physical presence, within sight and earshot of everybody. As in times of war and revolution, qualities of character and feelings take precedence. If these are lacking, there is a danger that those involved will stand aloof from the common enterpri se . Whatever the circumstances may be, the idea prevails in such a society that only exceptional individuals are capable of facing up to the uncertainties of unknown territory. This is as brilliant an idea as that which in times of disarray requires a leader or a saviour to arise. In his presence they become the prisoners of their own emotions, swallowed up in the crowd, fascinated, and already obedient. These are the seeds of an authority in some way superhuman and personal . Yet what does it mean? How can it be recognized, unless it be through its strange, disturbing character? This seed, 'cause ' or 'origin ' of legitimacy is called charisma. What is designated in this way is not a determinate or determinable power capable of acting in any given circumstances, in order to achieve something or other. In a nutshell, it is the power to act and change things entrusted to one human being of heroic worth, embodying order. Because of this it calls 15 for an extraordinary submissiveness to this person. Weber wrote:

In the following discussions the term 'charisma' shall be understood to refer to an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed. ' Charismatic authority ' , hence, shall refer to a rule over men, whether predominantly external or predominantly internal, to

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The Power of the Idea which the governed submit because of their belief in the extraordinary quality 16 of the specific person.

A s you can see, this i s a strange notion, and one that defies lucid expression. Here too, Weber' s thought was not precise. He boldly affirmed a general proposition regarding a phenomenon or a concept and multiplied examples in support of it. What emerges from this uncertain operation is what is termed an ideal-type . Taking into account his vast historical knowledge, nothing that Weber put forward lacked foundation, but the proofs he advanced were rather of an intuitive order. What takes the place of proofs is an impression of the whole, a summary of arguments for and against. In the event, the impression is one that, in a society that is breaking down, in which all values have become pointless, belief in the exceptional quality of men such as Jesus, Mahomet, Napoleon, Gandhi or Lenin is the real basis for their authority . Over the centuries they constitute a social category that dominates personally and di­ rectly. As soon as belief grows weaker, its influence tends to disappear. It is a phenomenon that we witnessed some twenty years ago, when General de Gaulle resigned. Weber gave a few examples of it:

For present purposes it will be necessary to treat a variety of different types as being endowed with charisma in this sense. It includes the state of a 'berserk ' whose spells of maniac passion have, apparently wrongly, sometimes been attributed to the use of drugs. In medieval Byziti.1 tium a group of these men endowed with the charisma of fighting frenzy was maintained as a kind of weapon. It includes the ' shaman ' , the magician who in the pure type has to be subject to epileptoid seizures as a means of falling into trances. Another type is represented by Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons , who may have been a very sophisticated swindler (although this cannot be definitely estab­ lished). Finally it includes the type of litterateur such as Kurt Eisner, who is overwhelmed by his own demagogic success. Value-free sociological analysis will treat all these on the same level as it does the charisma of men who are the • greatest' heroes, prophets or saviours according to conventional judgements . 1 7 To these could be added the Mahdi of Islam, at one and the same time theologian and warrior, imam, leader and fighter. In his person are combined religious power and the power of making his followers rise up to action. One may add that, in our time, the general secretaries of communist parties of the first generation, if I may so express it, may be added to this category. They allegedly revolutionize the masses and inspire in them the desire to fight their class enemies, to change the lives of their people and, by founding a party, to forge the future. Combining in their person the prestige of a doctrine - were they not called the accomplices of science? - and the power of an avant-garde, they are considered from the outset to be the spiritual heirs of Marx and Lenin, who are termed great and in whom a boundless trust is invested. All build around themselves a fictitious pantheon, whether it be Stalin or Mao, Thorez or Castro, placing themselves in the place of honour. In a very concrete way we note that through the statues erected to them, the

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cities renamed after them, the torrents of praise poured upon them as they pass by, they are reckoned not to be like other mortals. By giving credibility to the thesis that the course of history is changed through these charismatic characters, whose exceptional qualities inspire in the masses an urge to go forward to the future, Weber seemed to go against the grain. By so doing on the one hand he asserted that the character of power is a thing apart, and on the other he affirmed its singularity in a society thrown off balance and in the process of transformation. Yet power is not i solated. The characteristics of the possessor of charisma are similar in every respect to those of the mystic, as defined by Bergson. He can al so be compared to personalities that Freud depicted as follows: Fools, v isionaries, sufferers from delusions, neurotics and lunatics have played great roles at all times in the history of mankind and not merely when the accident of birth had bequeathed them sovereignty . Usually they have

wreaked havoc; but not always. S uch persons have exercised far-reaching influence upon their own and later times, they have given impetus to import­ ant cultural movements and have made great discoveries. They have been able to accomplish such achievements on the one hand through the help of the intact portion of their personalities, that is to say , in spite of their abnor­ malities; but on the other hand it is often precisely the pathological traits of their characters, the one-sideness of their development, the abnormal streng­ thening of certain desires, the uncritical and unrestrained abandonment to a s ingle aim, which give them the power to drag others after them and to 8 overcome the resistance of the world . 1

Is this a well-written page of autobiography or a commentary on the exclama­ tion of the Psalmist, ' The sight of me stirs up fear and wonderment' ? It is of no consequence. The will to believe in these leaders, the gift imputed to them of influencing the course of events, the unreserved obedience and the love of those who follow them - these have been attested to in every culture. Every­ where the charisma of those personages separates the class of the elect who have received it as a gift from the c lass of those who are the called, the majority, who lack such a gift. It is an attribute that has nothing to do with that relating to property, occupation, or military and administrative rank. It can be neither bought nor sold, nor learnt, nor imposed by a hierarchy, nor passed on through inheritance: it is only recognizable in the one who is privileged to possess it. B y separating them from the rest charisma confers on these elect an enormous monopoly in the confidence of each and everyone. As a general rule the possessors of charisma come to power in exceptional situations. Such was the case of Pope John Paul II after the Vatican Council, or General de Gaulle after the Second World War, Castro after the collapse of American-Cuban society, Khomeini after the toppling of the monarchy in Iran, to mention only a few contemporary examples in this century , where they are legion. So true is this that instead of calling it the age of reason, the result of inertia, it should be termed the age of charisma, to emphasize the paradox and to remain closer to reality .

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Now, in these situations human beings can only count on the personal qualities of their leaders. The hope of finding a support in them has more than once sufficed to transform a motley crew of individuals into a community of ' devotees ' , galvanized by anger and enthusiasm, ready to lead a life that devi ates from the normal . One considers oneself marked out by the ' chosen one ' for a ' supernatural ' or ' superhuman ' destiny, and one follows him un­ hesitatingly. Hegel well describes this feeling: B ut to try to resist these world historical indiv iduals is a futile undertaking,

for they are irresistibly driven on to fu lfil their task. Their course is the correct one, and even if the others do not believe that it correspond s to their own desires, they nevertheless adopt it or acquiesce in it. There is a power within them which is stronger than they are, even if it appears to them as something external and alien and runs counter to what they consciously believe they want. 1 9

This power was that of the prophets, Jewish and Christian, of legislators and demagogues who were capable of founding a new faith, a party or a city, or of creating an empire. Or it was that of all the Teutonic or Norman kings who fashioned Europe, claiming their legitimacy not by virtue of their human lineage, but by proclaiming themselves to be the descendants of the gods, who 20 had conferred upon them ' supernatural ' gifts of personality and character. Looking more closely, we see that the charisma that induces human beings to act in an extraordinary way and to submit themselves against their will is the version, in modem Western language, of that virtue of mana that peoples attribute to magicians. Weber wrote : ' It is primarily, though not exclusi vely, these extraordinary powers that have been designated by such special terms as "mana", "orenda", and the Iranian "maga" (the term from which the word "magic" is derived). We shall henceforth use the term "charisma" for such extra­ ordinary powers. • 21 This is tantamount to saying that it is a matter of a quality of illusion shared in a collective way. But what is the subject of the illusion? Did Weber complete ly grasp what the use of the word 'extraordinary ' connotes in this context? To have faith in charisma does not mean to trust oneself to those qualities in an individual that are uncommon. It is to have faith in an omnipotent being responding to the desires of the group, as a deity does for devotees and parents do in the eyes of their young children. What appears apparently to be legitimized in this way is a domination, doubtless personal, but only one institution among others. On another level, and beyond this, it is an almighty power that is not only outside what is common but even outside reality, capable of accomplishing miracles, and which becomes legitim­ ate by universal consent. Thus , by virtue of the character ' naturally of an emotional nature, of abandoning oneself to the leader in whom one has con­ fidence ' , submission may become total, and consequently total itarian in na­ ture . But chari sma is reconcilable with an ideal of freedom and reciprocity when pushed to its extreme limit. It then becomes a factor of subversion , an invincible feeling of being able to overturn a social order. Weber wrote: ' The basically authoritarian principle of charismatic legitimation may be subject to ' 22 an anti-authoritarian interpretation.

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It is precisely in revolutionary times that such a hesitation between one and the other comes about, a permanent plebiscite of power that frequently changes both heads and hands. The mass of supporters shift from one leader to another - the French or Russian Revolutions demonstrated this - and for a moment power loses its fixed, oppressive character. ' Today you reign over me , tomorrow I shall reign over you' : this seems to be what is being said. Yet one must needs believe that charisma is anti-authoritarian in the sense also that the leader can at any moment revoke a decision by bureaucrats, change a law, or the manner of applying it, respond to a request without de lay, and thus give the impression of liberty and choice. Often by representing two opposing possibilitie s a leader attracts the masses: they can expect everything from him. My second remark is that the charisma of an indiv idual is embodied in ' supernatural ' or ' superhuman' qualities, and thus external to society . A divine origin is attributed to them when their source is not assumed to be in a hi gher entity - truth, history, the nation - to which there is a deep attachment. At the same time they are believed to be unique and peculiar to the indiv idual , who has possessed them since birth: the charisma of a de Gaulle or a Lenin is irreducible to anything else . These qualities make those who possess them solitary individuals who follow their vocation as a planet does its orbit, and who by definition are anti-social. All that they say and do eludes control, and goes against convention. Hence prophets may withdraw from the community and threaten or curse those who belong to it, to such an e x.tent that it wonders whether they are enemies. Now, this is precisely what puts prophets ' above' others, allowing them to occupy the key position and to dominate . They fascinate , and their action s, like their words, produce an effect. More generally, this fusion of impersonal, extraordinary powers and per­ sonal qualities stands out because of the fact that charismatic leaders, like magi or shamans, should have a singular history, a physical defect, or a psychological blemish. These characteristics , stigmata they are believed to possess, make them stand out and are revealing about them . They are often unbalanced people, deviants, eccentrics with a strange look, whose intel ­ ligence is abnormal, whose speech is jerky. They are fanatics who do not hesitate to sacrifice their interest and creature comforts, even their family, in order to fol low a goal that is very often chimerical . Their position is also that of an ' outsider' . Weber said they were ' above the world ' , but in fact they are outside society. They come from a different region or another country : Calvin from Picardy, Napoleon from Corsica. They do not belong to the dominant ethnic group. Stalin was Georgian, Marx Jew ish and Pope John Paul II i s Polish. Others stand out because of a particular trait: Moses stammered, Roosevelt was paralysed, and Napoleon was small in stature . In one way or another they appear to be exceptional in the concrete meaning of the word, and vulgar, since what for the majority i s a defect, and there­ fore a stigma, with them becomes a virtue, in short, the symbol of a magic power. It nevertheless isolates them. Peter Brown has remarked th is about the saints:

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The Power of the Idea In late Roman soc iety, the holy man was deliberately not human. He was the

' stranger' par excellence. Now, it has been observed in the study of many small communities , that the burden of difficult or of unpopular decisions inevitably comes to rest on the individual who is the ' stranger' - the church­ man in a chapel village in Wales, the dissociated medium in an African tribe. 23

On this outsider falls the task of sorting out the disorder that threatens existence and of pointing out the road to action. In familiar parlance, one could say that this person who has nothing to lose takes the risk of ' getting wet feet' when everyone else cannot do so without compromising their posi­ tion. B ut in the event of failure it is also easier for the group to spurn outsiders or make them into scapegoats than if they were natives of the group. We should not conclude from this that all charismatic leaders are foreigners, disabled, or fanatics. Nevertheless the beliefs and feelings that these characteristics give rise to set these human beings apart and attribute their authority to a supernatural source. Rumour and legend take hold of them all the more effectively because these appeal more to the imagination, telling of miracles, of impossible cures, of v ictories that have completely turned the tables in a catastrophic situation. Even when they do not go so far as deifying them, the biographies of these leaders or the histories of the movements they have started follow such a pattern, whilst still claiming to be scientific. Let us come to a provisional conclusion. The portrait that Weber traced of the charismatic leader did not lack verisimilitude, and a host of facts described in anthropology and hi story confirm this impression. Yet, viewed from a different angle, it is only a photofit picture. Without much modification it would suit a good number of personages - really, too many : the magus, the Pope, Stalin and Mao, Roosevelt or Gandhi, Hitler, Fidel Castro, Einstein, Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, a television star - or what you will. Let us concede, until we have proof to the contrary, that these exceptional individuals exercise a form of domination that proceeds directly from person to person. Individuals feel themselves bound by a living link to the leader that they venerate and fear. The bond is reinforced when there is the opportunity to acclaim leaders basking in the applause of the crowd, to see them, to touch them at a gathering; or when a prestigious military commander makes the rounds of the troops ' lines and shares a meal with them. Max Weber emphasized this more than once : ' In its pure form charismatic authority has a character spec ifically foreign to everyday routine structures. The social relationships directly in­ volved are strictly personal, based on the validity and practice of charismatic personal qualities. • 24 The relationship is undoubtedly personal , but the authority of suc h leaders is situated above and beyond any relationship. They are hot-blooded monsters, just as the State is people ' s cold-blooded monster. To affirm that one is their supporter, disc iple or subordinate does not mean that one demeans or humili­ ates oneself. On the contrary, one feels oneself lifted up by a personage who is, so to speak, endowed with forces or characteristics that are supernatural or superhuman, or at the very least outside daily life and inaccessible to the

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common run of mortals; or is one who is considered to be God ' s envoy or 25 example, and consequently a 'leader' . To sum up, individuals who range themselves under a leader ' s banner feel in touch with one destined for future immortality, thanks to whom, for a moment at least, they escape from the certainty of their own death. But words fail to describe the relationship that, in Weber ' s eyes, is superior to all others and arouses in us the sole passions that are genuine. Do our societies, steeped in science and technology, still make room for such individuals, or should they be classed among the memories of the past? Contemporary history has already answered this question: charisma is not dead.

How can one recognize whether magical powers are true or false? The common characteristic of the possessors of charisma is that all are dif­ ferent from their fellows and constitute an exception. Charisma is a gift whose antecedents cannot be discovered and which no one acquires by an act of the 6 will. 2 It is something absolutely personal, exercising an attraction over hearts and minds and inducing obedience. This very fact causes us to divine that, in the event, legitimacy 'thus rests upon the belief in magical powers, revelations and hero worship ' . 27 However, two questions are continually being posed. How can these magical powers be validated? By what means can one be sure they exist in the one who claims to possess them? Or, in brief: how can one distinguish the true charismatic leader from the false? The solution proposed must indeed be termed psychological . It could not be otherwise, and you can guess the reason why. No logical or objective criterion gives us grounds for deciding on the existence of so personal a quality , one, in a sense , inborn. It cannot be ascribed to a class, a rank, an interest, a force or a tradition. Nor could one, in principle, obtain it by a socially valid technique or by economic means . Yet no prophets, warriors, founders, revolutionaries or other leaders could avoid the necessity of giving proof of their abilities, if they wished to win the confidence - and more - of their supporters. The first indication that leads one to suppose the presence of exceptional aptitudes, of a vocation to lead, is some exemplary action. Such leaders must be imbued with an indomitable energy and tenacity in any testing . Constantly expressing the same ideas and performing the same gestures to the point of satiety , they dispel all uncertainty and faint-heartedness. We perceive them to be totally involved in the task of ensuring at any price the triumph of an army, a religion, a party or a nation. Their courage in enduring to the end is deeply moving, as those who helped Socrates or Christ in the hands of their respective judges attested. In this can be seen a mark of sincerity, of a consistency between what they say and what they do, whereas the healthy, normal person does not always realize the necessity for this and professes to be incapable of it. Of Robespierre ' s charismatic personality Fran�ois Furet notes: ' Whereas

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Mirabeau, or even Danton, another virtuoso of revolutionary oratory, are in part artists, bilingual in their action, Robespierre is a prophet: he believes he is what he says he is, and expresses what he says in the language of the Revolution . . . This means that for him there is no gap between power and the 8 struggle for the interests of the people, which by definition coincide. ' 2 Thus there exists a feeling of coalescence between the individual and the collective destiny, a conviction that this must be achieved. It causes them to initiate an action from which the majority shrink: Lenin launches the revolu­ tion amid the hesitations of his supporters; Caesar crosses the Rubicon; de Gau lle leaves France and calls Frenchmen to the Resistance when all around him are sinking into a state of cowardice; Moses breaks the Tablets of the Law before the Hebrew people, who are weary of the desert and wishing to return to slavery. Exemplary actions are a clarion call, arousing exaltation and the spirit of emulation. Or, to put it even better, they induce one to believe that an unknown power is making itself manifest, inspiring such unexpected ac­ tions and violating the normal laws. This is why one rallies to it, filled with enthusiasm and 'faith' . At least this is how I interpret Weber when he writes that 'the Actors may ascribe legitimacy to a social order by virtue of . . . affectual, especially emotional, faith : valid is that which is newly revealed or exemplary.' 29 We must acknowledge that it is difficult to be more cryptic about a subject deemed to be of importance. Yet - and I come to my second indication - charisma is held to be a ' supernatural ' power: a human being has it or has not. How can one demon­ strate and make known what one is ' worth ' ? Doubtless by feats of an excep­ tional and visible character, miracles, cures or victories that reassure the masses. All emotions are strengthened, becoming infectious and invigorating when they are faced by such rare and unexpected results. The latter testify that the particular human being does indeed possess inviolate mana. In the end the authority of charisma re lies on the law of success and failure. So long as leaders produce victories, convert opponents, effect cures, make discoveries and ensure the prosperity of their supporters, success confirms their leadership qualities. What is more, people have confidence in their ' star' , their di vine ' grace ' . More thoughtful examination would doubtless reveal the part played by illus ion and the precise points where the ir calculations and successes depend upon objective conditions - such as the sun at Austerl itz . Nevertheless worth is measured solely by results. If the miracles become less frequent, if there are fai lures in the pursuit of an undertaking, a succession of mi litary defeats, a series of cumulative errors in action, then immedi ately a leader' s star wanes. Heaven seems to withdraw its blessing. and the magic evaporates. As Webe r put it: ' If proof or success elude the leader for long, if he appears de serted by his god or his magical or heroic powers, above all , if his leadersh ip fails to benefit his followers, it is l ike ly that his charismatic authority will disappear. Thi s is the genuine meaning of the div ine right of ki ngs . ' 30 It is entirely as if the gift bestowed upon him had lost authenticity and changed from pure gold into base lead. Chari sma that fails is no longer charisma. Reacti on is all the more violent because the disappointment is

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stronger. It is always in rage that believers break the statues of their former gods and sacrifice their prophets, who have turned out to be impostors. In any case these proofs of examplary, infallible success are required of those who assert their vocation to dominate. According to the conception outlined here, leaders are convinced they are entrusted with a mission. They give proof of this to others, but have no need to be approved by them in order to be absolutely sure of possessing charis­ matic powers, nor do they need others ' opinion in order to form their own. It therefore seems logical that their decisions and movements should not be too fettered by social ties, and that their judgement of their companions should hinge on how well the latter serve their plans. Weber declared : No prophet has ever regarded his quality as dependent on the attitudes of the masses towards him. No elective king or military leader has ever treated those who resisted him or tried to ignore him otherwise than as delinquent in duty. Failure to take part in a military expedition under such a leader, even though 3 the recruitment is formally voluntary, has universally met with disdain. 1

Yet a group of 'devotees ' or ' disciples ' forms around such leaders. In theory, there is no machinery of justice , police and administration available to constrain or hold them in check, nor financial resources or food stocks to create a solid network of interests. Living under abnormal economic condi­ tions, such groups set about pillaging or expropriating goods, leading the precarious life of beggars or the hazardous one of predators. Even if they were able to, they would reject the quest for more reliable and more profitable means of existence as unworthy of them. It is only in the initial stages, and so long as the charismatic leader acts in a way which is completely outside everyday social organization, that it is possible for his followers to live communistically in a community of faith and enthusiasm, on gifts, booty or sporadic acquisition. Only the members of the small group of enthusiastic disciples and followers are prepared to devote their lives purely idealistically to their call. The great majority of disciples and followers will in the long run 'make their living' out of their 'calling ' in a material sense as well. Indeed, this must be the case if the movement is not to disintegrate. 32

For them to make their contribution requires contacts of a more or less per­ sonal nature, which motivate them and justify their abnormal existence. This, as we have seen, demands faith in the qualities of the leader to whom they have submi tted. This is all the more so because the collectivity has no hier­ archy or fixed ranks, no rules and rituals determining relationships between members. I am reminded of the first Christian Churches, of the Puritan sects at the time of the Reformation, or communist parties before the Russian Revolution, and most of the ecological, feminist or pacifist movements at the present time. Now, there exists one social bond, a feature of charismatic power, that binds together collectivities under a transitory , crisis regime. It is perhaps the sole

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predominant link: recognition. Individuals break from their former relation­ ships with a family, a class, an occupational group or even a nation. Un­ doubtedly their original membership of these continues to leave its mark on them, because former values and habits are integrated with their personality. But, turning towards the quest for a new principle for life and for a new community , their association together takes on the aspect of a ' choice ' and a ' will ' . This ' choice ' and this ' will ' determine a new relationship that is ef­ fected through the charisma of a personality selected for affective reasons that are often unconscious. At the very first glance the individual recognizes the leader, just as Joan of Arc was able to pick out the king hidden among his courtiers . The reverse of the medal is known to you: adherence to the leader, and, by each individual , the pure gift of self. Devotees do not seek to carve out a career for themselves , the disciples do not expect to be paid. They renounce their own will for that of the leader, with whom they becomes united and from whom they expect leadership and success. Weber stated: It is recognition on the part of those subject to authority which is decisive for the validity of charisma. This recognition is freely given and guaranteed by what is held to be a proof, originally always a miracle, and consists in devotion to the corresponding revelation, hero worship or absolute trust in

the leader. But where charisma is genu ine, it is not this which is the basis of the claim to legitimacy. This basis lies rather in the conception that it is the duty of those subject to charismatic authority to recognize its genuineness

and to act accordingly . Psychologically this recognition is a matter of com­

plete personal devotion to the possessor of the authority, arising out of enthusiasm, or of despair and hope. 33

Indeed they admire him and seek to make his characteristics their own. They wish to be like him, to the extent that this tie of recognition becomes indis­ pensable in order to lead a life out of the ordinary and to remain permanently mobilized, like a nation at war. Removed for a while from economic interests, the constraints of a hierarchy and the discipline of rules, members of the community live in a state of excitement, one of intense participation. The most commonplace events take on the dimension of extraordinary and original experiences. This life, as simple as a myth, as dramatic as a dream, with all the accompanying innocence and cruelty, changes them utterly. Then the charismatic personality brings nearer temporally diffused ideas and beliefs and makes them spatially present. From being a di stant abstraction, pure thought, 34 this personality becomes an immediate , practical psychological real ity . Thus Christ spread the belief in the imminent coming of God ' s Kingdom upon earth, Moses in the existence of a Promised Land that no Hebrew had known of; Churchill and de Gaul le placed victory within the grasp of their peoples; Robespierre and Lenin realized in material form, in history, the outline s of an ideal society. Lacking such leaders, the world would be destined to suffer from a certain lack of reality , which would be harmful to action and scarcely favourable to the resolution of crises. By bringing closer what should be and what is, leaders

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transform the mentality of their devotees and supporters, who change their skin, if I may so express it, purging themselves of their former beliefs and habits and feeling themselves purified by close contact with the leaders. What is more, this fervent ' catharsis' gives devotees the impression of being born again, of renewing themselves, of becoming different human beings . They give proof of this by a conversion that, often abruptly and unexpectedly, completes their unreserved recognition of authority . New initiates are the extension of their leaders, complementing them. In one sense the ability of charismatic leaders to stimulate conversions is a function of their power, one of great innovations that revolutionize history , which only the masses gov­ erned in this way can bring about. The idea is not new, but it opens with a paradox. In many respects charis­ matic domination is the most tyrannical type, since , being exercised by one person over others, it takes no account of the law, the constraints imposed by custom, or the principles of reason. The individual will, hypnotized by what it believes to be its mission, can be pushed to extreme limits of destruction and massacre. We observed this with Hitler in Germany and Pol Pot in Cambodia. Nevertheless, let us leave on one side these most extreme examples. The validity of ' magical ' and ' supernatural ' qualities, once acknowledged, leads to almost complete obedience. Yet the logic of conversion to the possessor of charisma makes submission appear to be a freedom, and almost a favour. This is a surprising, but explicable, effect of the bond of recognition that binds them together. The masses feel themselves uplifted by what abases them, united by what separates them - charisma. In Tocqueville, who was relating the attitude of Frenchmen towards the monarch of the Ancien Regime, one finds a description that comes close to this paradox. B ut each of us has experienced it at least once. He wrote: The king ' s subjects felt towards him both the natural love of children for their father and the awe properly due to God alone . Their compliance w ith his orders, even the most arbitrary, was a matter far less of compulsion than affection, so that even when the royal yoke pressed on them most heav ily, 5 they felt they still could call their souls their own. 3

This is neither the place nor the moment to modify this idyllic picture by recalling the peasants ' revolts and the repressions under the Ancien Regime. One of the puzzling facts of human life is that the singular gifts ascribed to a person transform domination into liberty, and submission takes on a voluntary form. This may be true of every kind of domination. 36 But it can be observed in a purer way in an anomalous society, in statu nascenti, in which the trust accorded to individuals reaches its most vehement expression. Whatever their origin, their prestige is maintained at least so long as they are accomplishing the impossible, that which no one dreams of, and no one has dared, and so long as success crowns their undertakings. And, through conversion, the c ircle of devotees grows larger, as does the hold exercised by the ideas propagated by these ' chosen ' beings. It is true that for many the opportunity will not present itself, but the psychological dynamism

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that offers the chance of dominating and revolutionizing is there . Weber emphasized this: It is characteristic . . . that there should in general be a highly emotional type of devotion to and trust in the leader. This accounts for a tendency to favour the type of individual who is most spectacular, who promises the most, or who employs the most effective propaganda measures in the competition for leadership. This is a natural basis for the Utopian component which is found 7 in all revolutions. 3

I would have thought that the converse was more true. The Utopian dreams that take hold of imaginative and enthusiastic minds incline them to follow those who promise to hasten their realization. Since everything depends on the latter, their power over human beings is absolute. The extraordinary magi­ cal powers ascribed to them no longer pass for a fact of illusion, but are seen as the illusion of a fact.

The cycle of charisma: from emotion to reason

Should charisma be considered a form of domination? Is it really, as Weber thought, ' the specifically creative revolutionary force in history ' ? Its existence is as intriguing as the questions one asks about its origin and effectiveness. I have no words to express the astonishment I experience on hearing mentioned the charisma of such and such a party leader or such and such a historical character, even by thoughtful scholars, as if nations were governed by magic, as if a vocation could buy or sell them, or a superhuman gift could conquer them. Afterwards the very same people express doubts about the hypotheses of psychoanalysis, and scorn for speculation about crowd psychology. It is curi­ ously complacent to seek to explain what is obscure by what is more obscure. However, to admit charisma is also to accept it as the raw material that endures through all forms of domination. In spite of his vacillations, Weber thought this was so when he declared it to be 'a phenomenon typical of prophetic movements or of expansive political movements ' , adding: ' But as soon as domination is well-established, and above all as soon as control over large masses of people exists, it gives way to the forces of everyday routine. ' 38 You are familiar with the conditions for this: an extraordinary power, but one that is contingent, a stranger to tradition and reason, arises in a state of emergency, which is essentially transitory. Human beings live a different life, more intense than normal, and above all one that is determined for them. For according to Goethe ' s maxim, ' to live in an idea means to treat the impossible as if it were possible ' . Charisma itself, under a compulsion to succeed, pene­ trates slowly into institutions already in place by law or technical means, such as justice, the army or the administration. Its 'magical' legitimacy is duplicated and prolonged by a material force that has nothing magical about it and which appropriates it. This was the way the leaders of the French and Russian Revolu­ tions took over the machinery of the State as a military weapon, first to defend what they had accomplished and then to make it an instrument of conquest.

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On the other hand, individuals aspire to return to a famil iar and private existence, like soldiers who, having fought great battles, wish to return to the ir country and set up a home. It may well be a mere question of ' quartermaster­ ing ' , but one must needs busy oneself with current matters, exercise an occ u­ pation, educate one ' s chi ldren, c ultivate the fields and keep the factories ticking over. So Jong as it is a question of opening up a breach in the order of things, of creating a vault of heaven above this earth, the individual is not mindful of these. However, once the climactic moment has passed, the voice of personal interests and needs resounds once more, with al l the more force because for a long while it has kept silent. A life that was flagging, and lacking sparkle, becomes wreathed in poetry. Then one awaits the routinization of charisma, to employ an impreci se but conventional expression . What does this mean? Power, which hitherto had been a sure principle for action and rebellion agai nst the social set-up, becomes reconciled to it and is transformed into a principle for order. Its prophets give way to priests. The artists of history are replaced by the theologians and the experts. Inevitably all that was uncommon becomes ordinary. Along the path of charisma as it grows cold, and at the same time the emotional temperature is dropping, companions, comrades or brothers become subjects, members of a Church or a party , soldiers forced to serve , citizens subject to the law. The pace of this matters l ittle: the fact is that one passes from an anomalous society , in statu nascenti, to a normal society, established within closed bounds. We must here make a digression in order to illustrate just how much Weber ' s theory was, if the expression may be allowed me, the inverse of Durkheim 's. Weber imagined that at the origin there was an event, and Durk­ heim, a situation or an organization. What difference is there between an event and a situation? An event is extraordinary and irregular; a situation presents itself as regular, according to a relatively uniform pattern. Events occur sud­ denly, intermittently and occasionally, whereas a situation tends to be continu­ ous, stable and constricting. An event creates a precedent, a situation expresses a law. This is verifiable in physics as well as in politics. Thus at the beginning Weber was considering a unique event: charisma which is, in one sense, rebellion against the tyranny of things, revolt against being hemmed in by tradition. The individual who passes to action under such circumstances can utter the words of the B ible: ' It is for me that the world has been created. ' For his part, Durkheim supposed the exist­ ence of a collective consciousness that has lasted since time immemorial, is renewed and subsumes all that is thought and felt in society. Those who share in it must say to themselves: 'It is for the world that I have been created . ' The German sociologist conceived of a system of open relationships, held together by the magical powers of an indiv idual; the French sociolo­ gist, a system of relationships closed by the collective power of the members of the community, who are passionately attached to their modes of behavi­ our and thought. On the one hand, the ideal is the elected domination of one over al l the rest; on the other hand, the unanimous domination of all over the one.

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From Weber' s perspective the evolution set in train by innovations and revolutions must later become less sweeping, slowing down until in the end each individual conforms to a continuity and reason shared by all. According to Durkheim, the reverse is true: evolution in fact leads to a progressive relax ation of traditions and social control, as the collective consciousness grows weaker and splits up, so leaving the field clear for individuals to dissent. This is why what is for the one a solution, the opportunity given for people to destroy themselves or to exercise control over society , is for the other a problem, in extreme circumstances one of anomie or suicide, ' the particular passion of modern life ' , as B audelaire had seen it to be. To conclude from this that Weber' s sociology is rather a science of anomalous societies and that of Durkheim one of normal societies would be going too far. Let us, however, end this digression, which deals with too vast a subject, and on which too little light has been shed, in order to come back to the routinization of charisma. In spite of the v agueness of this de scription, Weber indeed presented it as in a state of continually ' cooling down ' , like that of a liquid that is solidifying, or like the slowing down of a body , after its initial drive forward, when the resistance of the air acts as a brake. We note a contradiction in terms when speaking of a routinization of charisma: what is exceptional never becomes familiar, any more than a copy of a masterpiece is only a bad picture, or any more than a god, if he exists, which human beings imitate , is changed into a man. The opposite might even be maintained. If there is charisma, then collectivities concentrate all their efforts on struggling against the erosion of time and on preserving its unique and fundamental character. Thus the Hebrews made Moses out to be the last prophet, and Christians made Christ the Son of God. For the French, Napoleon was not an emperor but the Emperor. Nevertheless it is true that the time span of a charisma is delimited and fixed: from birth to death. When death occurs, two problems arise. Weber was above all struck by the problem of routinization , the return to everyday reality , and particularly economic reality. The second problem, that of legitimacy, held his attention less, as if power were intended to reveal a meaning and justify relationships between human beings. The charismatic leader and his sup­ porters do not feel themselves entrusted with a mission merely because their fellow countrymen may have entrusted them with it. That mission and the authority that flows from it are usurped by them, and are the traits peculiar to them. So long as they attract the crowds and rouse them to recognition, few people give a thought to their astonishment at having legitimized what is illegitimate and even iniquitous. When the leader disappears discord breaks out. Domination subsists but there is need to find a j ustification for it and to renew its credibility. It must be able to count on a certain durability for the leader' s successors to become legitimate and for the traces of usurpation to be wiped out. The return to the time of a charisma that existed outside time, in other words its normalization, is effected amid struggles between riv als and successors, who take away its magic. As the original event becomes more remote, individuals awaken from this common dream and break the enchant-

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ment of the emotional links that bound them to one another. They exorcize the charisma, so to speak, and again find their own freedom of movement and the use of a reason of which communing with the prophet or the hero had deprived them. It is certain that nothing is any longer the same ; representations and values are overturned. B ut from now on the attempt is made to live up to these, outside what was an exceptional state, putting them to the test of everyday living and current discussion. Charisma is then rid of its demons and limited to the memory and to history . Or, by turning a certain aggressiveness upon it, one even begins to hate it, to wish to destroy it, if only its effigy. Why? Is it because one cannot get over its loss, or because, having been awoken, one no longer puts up with its all-embracing grasp? In any case recent history demonstrates that getting rid of the demons of charisma is a necessary path to follow - we observed it after the death of Stalin and Mao - towards the legitimacy of the power they created or consolidated. Whatever may be the circumstances, the awakening resembles coming out of a state of hypnosis. Without being aware of it, the patient has performed all that the hypnotist commanded him to do, and on returning to reality is faced with a stranger, a human being like himself or herself, but to whom he or she had abandoned control. Collective disillusionment is frequent, even if it is not the rule. I think it is the innermost core of what the German sociologist termed a simple way of adapting oneself to external reality. To carry on a collective action and then decide it has lost its meaning - this would be the life cycle for a domination that has accomplished the passage from charisma to rationality. No matter whether in the service of a social revolution, of imperial power or the triumph of a religion, it will create a strong unity of feeling and thought. Yet each time that the crisis in legitimacy that I have spoken of breaks out, the problem of the succession is posed. In principle, it is an insoluble problem, for if the leader has received charisma by divine favour or under extraordinary conditions , it cannot be passed on, nor can there be successors. It must clearly be understood that what is at stake is not the impossibility for leaders' own companions or disciples to assume their legacy. On the contrary, it is the possibility for any one of them to lay claim to it that is the source of difficulty and removes from these gifts their ' superhuman' character. Thus any one of the apostles of Christ or any one of the comrades of Lenin might have been able to succeed them . In a few penetrating sentences Raymond Aron sums up the historical solution to this problem: There can be a search organized for another bearer of charisma, as in tradi­ tional Tibetan theocracy . The oracles and the appeal to God ' s judgement can also create an institutionalization of the exceptional. The charismatic leader can choose his successor, but even then the latter must be accepted by the community of the faithful . The successor can equally well be chosen by a charismatic ' general staff' and then recognized by the community . Charisma can be supposed inseparable from the blood tie and become hereditary. Charismatic domination in this case leads on to traditional domination. The grace with w hich a person was endowed becomes the perquisite of a family.

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It is certain that every solution is the outcome of a bitter struggle between rival candidates for power and is crowned by the victory of a faction. We know that the election of a pope is the object of fierce competition behind the scenes, if not a pitched battle that once used to last for years. In any case, the confidence of the majority in the personal mana, after the crisis of legitimacy, becomes centred on the impersonal numina of a family, a party or a function, whether it was the Communist Party' s general secretary in the Soviet Union or the president in Western republics. Deep-rooted in their power, the numina enjoy their own prestige and have rules that guarantee their durability. They can appear to be magical because, although they preserve the facade desired by their initiator - such as General de Gaulle for the succession of presidents of the Fifth Republic - they are really a common or garden edifice that resembles many others. Yet none of these numina possesses that mysterious power of being able to start up a new life cycle and accomplish a creative mission amid the tumul t that ensues when the chain of time is broken. Thus something charismatic takes on a normal character and adapts itself to the requirements of the masses. What this means is that once the charisma has created the subjective conditions for common action and united the majority, it must invent the means of making domination acceptable in an objective way. This inevitable moment is always marked by a strengthening of the economy, scorn giving way to submission in the face of its necessities. According to Weber, The process of the routinization of charisma is in very important respects identical with adaptation to the conditions of the economy, since this is the principal continually operating force in everyday life . Economic conditions in this connexion play a leading role and do not constitute merely a dependent variable. To a very large extent the transition to hereditary charisma or the charisma of office serves as a means of legitimizing existing or recently 4 acquired powers of control over economic goods. 0

As the economy once more assumes its rights, it puts a stop to the illusion of al l -powerfulness and to the break in continuity represented by the charisma.

Thus there is a phylogenesis of power. Let us attempt to reconstitute it, only, it is true, in hypothetical fashion. On the primary and oldest level, the type of leg i t i macy consi sts in the recognition of the ' superhuman ' or ' supernatural ' g i ft of the leader, who is embarking on an extraordinary mission. This recog­ n i tion is peculiar in that instead of being treated 'as a consequence of legit­ i macy, it is treated as the basis of legitimacy . . . The personally legitimated charismatic leader becomes leader by the grace of those who follow him. ' 4 1 On a second level, domination receives a type of legitimacy that rests upon tradition, belief in the authority of habits and ideas accepted by the majority. It can be seen as a fall-out from the 'big bang ' , charisma having sparked off

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an eruption of new values and new social relationships. These, propagated among the masses, create a swing in consciousness to such an extent that modes of behaviour and opinions that previously would have aroused disap­ proval come to be judged as normal and inevitable. The indignation they aroused becomes quite simply incomprehensible and somewhat derisory. One even arrives at the point of seeing what breaks with tradition as being a continuation of it, experienced with the same sentiments as one originally had for it. When the Red Army of the revolutionary commissars put on the uni ­ forms of the officers of the Tsar's White Army, or when Napoleon conferred titles of nobility upon his generals of plebeian origin, the new had revamped the legitimacy of the old. The representations and feelings of yesterday were mobilized to include the past and appropriate it to themselves. Those who exercise command do so in the name of an eternal yesteryear and are obeyed in the name of a hereditary privilege that should never have stopped because ' it is easy for charismatic norms to be transformed into those defining a traditional social status ' . 42 However, most frequently it is ancient societies, corporations and Churches that justify authority by appealing to the customs and judgement of their predecessors. Leaders are obeyed because of rules that are sacred and trans­ mitted over time. By invoking the wisdom of his predecessors, as the Amer­ icans do the Founding Fathers, the Pope declare s himself to be the successor of St Peter, and the Puritans invoke the Bible . This way of referring back to one ' s forerunners, of setting them up as judges, is to be found in the patriarchal and patrimonial system characteristic of the type of traditional legitimacy. It goes hand in hand with the confusion between private and collective property, or the fact that the powerful expropriate revenues and profits in arbitrary fashion. They bestow favours or cast into disgrace, and are free to do so as much as they please, provided that traditional forms are not violated. Essen­ tially, this means respecting 'precedents ' , 'prej udices ' and ' examples ' , and for the rest the leader's decisions are personal. Like the feudal lord, the leader can expect an equally personal loyalty from subordinates . In that case one is not obeying official regulations or sacred imperatives, but an individual whom 'customary law ' justifies, by reason of family, age, seniority, etc., and who is designated as being at the apex of the hierarchy. Whether tradition has newly arisen from a revolution, or dates from time immemorial , the confidence accorded to leaders stems from the fact that it stands above all controversy. Their 'immunity from all rational or other criti ­ cism '43 gives the enviable power of being accepted unthinkingly and of obliter­ ating all resistance. Now the prohibition that lies at the source of this, which I have spoken about above, is here substituted for charisma, in so far as the leader is fascinating and ' superhuman ' , and thus protected from doubt and discussion. It must be the fruit of necessity, since for the religious and political movements - one thinks for example of communist parties and the Puritan denominations - that have prospered by calling everything into question, there is nothing more urgent than their declaring themselves and their doctrines to be infallible, as soon as the masses have been won over. To restore the ban

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on criticism is always and everywhere the signal for a traditional legitimacy or, if you like, a dogmatic one - that places under the protection of time what the charismatic leader places outside time, that is, acts of power. Weber wrote: The primary effect of traditional domination in economic activities is usually

in a very general w ay to strengthen traditional attitudes. This is most con­ spicuous under gerontocratic and purely patriarchal domination , which can­ not use an administrative machinery against the members of the group and hence is strongly dependent for its own legitimacy upon the safeguarding of 44 tradition in every respect.

A similar concern can be observed in former feudal regimes and in today 's parties of notables, and, I assume, among what was called the nomenklatura once in power in the countries of Eastern Europe . As we perceive, the belief in inherited virtues becomes a column raised up from the base to the top, which supports the automatic obedience of the masses. ' It is decreed . . . ' - and immediately and without hesitation each individual carries out what he or she is ordered to do. 45 At the third level there appears legitimacy of a legal type. The ties of domination created by tradition are only maintained by continual, repeated effort. If one is forced to change, it is in order to economize effort and to reach greater efficiency. The internal discipline stamped in by habit is then changed into an external discipline of which legal and administrative rules are the expression. Only then does authority take on a truly impersonal character, and is believed in precisely for this reason. Even if these rules are inherited and upheld by the consensus of generations, they can be adjusted and made to conform to reason by each generation. They are accepted on this sole condi­ tion, and Goethe ' s words, 'What you have acquired from your ancestors, win it in order truly to possess it' , dictate the conduct of each and every individual. In the event, it is a matter of true rational,ization, of a process diametrically the opposite of charismatic power. It is a reaction that tends to displace inspiration in favour of technique, setting a precise goal in place of a vague vocation. Above all else, those involved seek to enjoy a monotonous kind of authority, the calm, foreseeable grasp on things that is ensured by competence. They form groups, such as those in the top branches of the civil service, who are interested in managing the social order to their advantage. They shape the various administrations, the bureaucracies made up of officials, chosen ac­ cording to procedural rules, appointed for their competence as experts and for the most part coopted by their peers. As an illustration of this one recalls that in France political elites are mainly recruited via the grandes ecoles, and in the Soviet Union from among industrial engineers and party functionaries. The impersonality and formalism that have been learnt should maintain their incli­ nation ' to treat their official function from what is substantively a utilitarian 46 point of view in the interest of the welfare of those under their authority ' . You will have noted that making a career in these institutions implies on the part of the civil servant or the State employee a need to assimilate the written regulations that all must obey, acquiring the qualities of detachment

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required i n order to apply them objectively. I t can occasionally be ' a life of calm despair' , but one that proceeds according to definite criteria within a rational hierarchy. According to a faultless logic, it stipulates regular promo­ tion, a fixed remuneration and honours methodically bestowed. In principle, all this constitutes a domination motivated by reason, and by virtue of know­ ledge, with precisely this aim in mind. In this sense alone the servants of the State , party functionaries, Church prelates, international experts or permanent union officials come together to maintain the same form of domination. For this reason alone the maxim, ' to know is to be able to ' , seems valid. There is nothing further removed from the subjective and affective than this regime that demands we submit, not to people, but to laws. Does the sequence that proceeds from the charismatic mana to the numina of tradition and legality signify a movement towards greater reason and more individual autonomy? The logic at work is more complex and more interesting. From the first domination springing from a ' big bang' lying outside recorded history, to the subsequent dominations at work in history, everything that occurs is as if a stream of living and oral beliefs began by legitimizing a group, as represented by the hero that is its leader. This then became an unwritten custom, tinged with the aura of an eternal yesteryear, before being enclosed within rules and institutions that constitute the law. In short, this means a written formulation that sums up the existence of power as not being some­ thing in perpetual motion but as a search for an equilibrium. Consider two European paradigms: the Roman Church since its inception, and the Soviets in Russia since the Revolution, and you will have a picture of this. It is crystal-clear that the strength of the ordinary ends up by supplanting the magic of the exceptional. T. S. Eliot wrote, 'This is the way the world ends I Not with a bang but a whimper. ' This relates to psychology

In history these different types of domination are always encountered together. Incorporated within it each possesses protective defences and institutions that guarantee its individuality. They may be considered from two viewpoints. First, as a means of classifying political and religious relationships within a society or across societies. This represents the general trend. B ut this classi­ fication of phenomena of domination into various types is not sufficient for us. It explains nothing and does no more than constitute an inventory. It would be useful if it allowed the discovery of general characteristics and brought out a means of describing them rigorously, as do, for example, the taxonomy of chemical elements in Mendeleyev ' s table or of the animal species as in the system of Linnaeus. There is nothing like this in the present case. Not only was Weber uncertain about his method of classifying types of domination, but what is more, he provided no criterion for distinguishing between them, nor did he give the reader any assurance that he had exhausted the universe of the

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phenomena being studied. How can one rely on the taxonomy, when it serves above all to compare a large number of examples, without pausing to verify any of them? We have little evidence that he ever tried to do so, and none of the sociologists that followed him has filled the gaps. He leaves us clutching a bundle of illustrated metaphors that risk being discredited, not, as in the case of an idea, because of observations hostile to them, but, like a myth worn threadbare, by the spirit of the time. This is worrying for the science to which such a theory belongs. Next, we can consider the types of domination - as we have done - from the viewpoint of phylogenesis. This leads us to the idea of the essential unity of power. We have seen in what ways the various beliefs that legitimate it may well have sprung from a single one: belief in the charisma of their founders. It is indeed true that a tradition or a law are things that are foreign to or even opposed to this. Yet they always assume something more attractive than the authority of the past and the ability of reason to gain the confidence of the governed. They need a majesty of words, a ceremonial of acts that sets them above disciplined behaviour and vulgar calculation, a cult that commands the respect of all. Lincoln ' s monument in Washington, Lenin ' s tomb in Moscow, the Pantheon in Paris have as their sole reason for existence the fact that these men did without reason or law in order to win obedience. Thus we can understand how in the last analysis every form of domination retains a char­ ismatic element. A trace of its initial explosion survives everywhere, like the radiation of the first fireball from which the universe emerged. It provides for us the sole documentary evidence that demonstrates the time and space zones that have been traversed. In a period of disturbance and crisis it is the only element that allows a country to rediscover its identity and the legitimacy of its institutions. I therefore consider the theory to hang together better when it attempts to explain the genealogy of the forms of power rather than when it claims to establish a taxonomy. But we need not linger too long over what has become evident. Let us rather express our amazement at seeing that in explaining the origins of charisma, the theory assumes an innovation of which it might be the primal force, doubtless affective, and thereby bereft of any rational cause: ' What there is about charismatic domination is that it is "irrational" in rela­ tionship to a pre-existing order, since , in its pure form, it depends only on

belief in the extraordinary power of the leader. '47

Since charisma is personal it follows that under its influence things do not come in any logical, complete order. Everything depends on the day-to-day choices made by the leader and on the enthusiasm of the followers. All in all, if we accept Weber' s idea, factors judged to be subjective send a signal allow­ ing one to get out of a crisis situation. In the same way a revolution is prepared by believers and sparked off by sudden action. The communist writer Fischer, describing that of October 1 9 1 7, gives a concrete illustration of this idea:

Although the Bolsheviks had behind them in October great masses of workers and peasants, the socialist revolution in Russia was not a logical necessity. It must be attributed to Lenin's genius, the nature of his

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disposition, an enormous concentration of audacity. intelligence an d will­ power. This dominant weight of subjective factors, this faith in the all­ powerfulness of the will when it is allied to a high level of consciousness, was determining, and brought about this unprecedented victory and its prob­ lems. The consolidation of this victory seemed almost impossible and de­ pendent upon a miracle; thus when persons - who were not among the most stupid in the West - predicted that authori� would collapse, they were basing 48 themselves on well-founded arguments. I do not wish to reopen a well-aired debate, nor pronounce on its substance, but merely to give some idea of this irrationality, which is associated with

revolutionary charisma. It might be neglected, put down to some kind of chance occurrences, and thus held to be subsidiary. But Weber reversed the

priorities and invited us to consider it as a social phenomenon in its own right. The conviction is expressed that human history, contrary to what Durkheim

and Marx thought, is not rational. Hence, on the question of the genesis of

power, its motivations, and the faith that it arouses in the qualities of a dominant personality, it is normal that Weber' s explanations should be of a psychological nature. What else could they be? Certainly, as a method, he recommended abandoning such easy expedients and adhering to the rigorous­ ness of sociology. But he spoke like the rich who always preach Christian renunciation because they are never called upon to renounce anything at all. As for Weber, within his discipline he reconstituted a psychology that has its original aspects, to live as it were as an autarky. Let us change the perspective. One might say that to stress the irrational aspect of power relationships does not imply that one should account for them by psychological causes . In spite of everything, they are social relationships. Why not explain them in accordance with sociological conditions? No science, psychology included, has a monopoly of the knowledge of what is irrational or anomalous. And the transfer of the concepts and language of psychology does not mean that the phenomenon itself, in this case charisma, is psycho­ logical. Often notions are transferred from one science to another, as for example that of information from cybernetics to biology, or that of the atom from mechanics to chemistry, without the biological facts becoming cyber­ netics, or the chemical facts mechanics. I accept this. But, as regards Weber's theory, we are not dealing with borrowings or metaphors, but with a result of his method, and even of his philosophy. On principle, the theory idealizes the meaning of phenomena, whether they are religious, political or economic. However, seeking to be concrete, the idealization remains close to living experience - the experience of salvation, bureaucratic rationalization, etc. - and anchored in the awareness that human beings have of them. In contrast to Durkheim, Weber did not link them, come what may, to external or even independent indicators such as penal or restitutory law and suicide statistics. In short, the significance of the action for those who are acting is one of the determining elements. He wrote: ' The external processes of religious behaviour are so diverse that an understanding

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of this behaviour can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the subjective experiences, ideas and purposes of the individuals concerned - in short, from 49 the viewpoint of the religious behaviour' s "meaning" [Sinn] . ' Next, he looked for a dynamic that might take on a simple form in a rare moment of history when motivations and mentalities were being transformed. To do this, the phenomenon chosen was defined as entirely foreign to the realities of the economy and to social constraints imposed from outside. This leaves a very large margin for non-sociological interpretations, to say the least. In other words it is not the character of the relationships but the method that leads to the psychological aspects being given pride of place . Let us return to charismatic power, and then we will see this more clearly. In certain circumstances, and only then, an individual by nature possesses different qualities from those of the majority of human beings. They motivate personal domination, doubtless, but impel the feelings and behaviour of every­ body in the same direction. This is a sign, sometimes unconscious, that one is subjected to the heroic or prophetic appeal of the leader, divorced from any consideration of self-interest or historical opportunism. As has been observed, ' Weber defines charisma as specifically a-historical. In fact, it connotes more o a psychological than either a sociological or an historical property. ,s Let us go a step further. Charismatic domination is distinguished by one essential feature. Other forms of domination may well rely from the very beginning upon an institution (a party, a Church, a bureaucracy etc.) and customs, or upon an accumulation of economic and intellectual resources. A hierarchy always provides a framework of juridical, ideological and even educative techniques, in order to impose a belief and to legitimize the author­ ity of the dominant classes in society. When a pope or the president of the Republic are elected, they have all these elements available. On the other hand, let us think of individuals who might be said to have come up from nowhere and were nothing but names before they exercised a function - de Gaulle before he became President of the Republic, Bonaparte before he became Emperor - and who declare that their task is to mobilize human beings in order to break up the existing order of things. Charismatic characters possess none of the elements mentioned. They needs must create for them­ selves a position from which they can obtain resources and transform them into power. What else do they dispose of in order to attain this, other than ' fine words' and ' fine appearance ' , writings or unusual actions, which are capable of stirring up enthusiasm and inspiring faith? We know only too well that this suffices for a charisma to be recognized. We can see it in the prophets, who in Weber's eyes, represented the supreme symbol of all those who possess charisma. With them is found 'that vital emotional preaching which is distinc­ tive of prophecy, regardless of whether this is disseminated by the spoken word, the pamphlet, or any other type of literary composition (e.g. the suras of Muhammed). The enterprise of the prophet is closer to that of the popular leader (demagogos) or political publicist than to that of the teacher. ' 5 1 Charismatic power has therefore as a preliminary condition a personal gift of being able to convince, whereas traditional or legal power exists from the

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outset, and relies on impersonal qualities and means. Let us in fact imagine that such an individual (or group) wishes to win confidence by appealing to a new religion, by invoking the creation of a new science such as psychoana­ lysis, or by founding a revolutionary movement. The majority will only recog­ nize his authority and accept the truths he proclaims and follow him if they change their opinions or feelings. Thus they must be persuaded of the virtues of a prophet, or led to believe that psychoanalysis is a true science, one preferable to orthodox psychiatry, or that revolution, far from being an illu­ sion, is the only way out of a crisis. Although Jesus performs miracles, there is still need to present them to the people and persuade it that they are signs of God ' s will. Although Mao causes the peasant masses to rise in revolt, they must be convinced that they are making a revolution, the key to which he holds, and not a mere uprising, and so on. Different classes in society have divergent views as to the meaning of ' miracles ' , or the chances of success for such movements, and about their value. Thus suggestion must be applied unremittingly to sentiments and feelings in order to win 'devotees ' , recruit 'disciples ' and arrive at one ' s ends. What does this mean other than that charisma must create a belief in its legitimacy before it is exercised, whereas it is rather the reverse for the other forms of power? B ut I need labour the point no further. It is evident that charismatic power is created and increased through influence, just as capi­ tal is increased through the medium of exchange. This is why Etzioni could write, in somewhat veiled terms, that it represents first and foremost ' the ability of an actor to exert an influence over the normative tendencies of 52 others ' . Charisma is bound up for the most part with such an influence, and we can consider it as being the effect of it. We have all been able to verify this for ourselves. In the presence of such leaders, when the spoken word and the atmosphere around them grow intense, an absolute devotion is stimulated. Whether we wish it or not, this relationship, which explains the authority of charisma, has a psychological basis. From this v iewpoint a consensus exists, and a German sociologist has summed it up as follows: Charisma, on the other hand, belongs to what is nowadays called the theory of influence; it concerns the modes of behaviour governing the mutual rela­ tionship of leader and following, Undeniably, charisma has its source in the person of the charismatic leader. But it can be effective only if it evokes a response from those to whom it is directed, that is, arouses belief in the leader' s exceptional and supernatural mission. Charisma, then, is a category 53 belonging to the disciplines of mass and social psychology .

I do not lay claim to so much. Yet is this not already perceptible in the choice of examples, in Weber's remarks and the language, always charged with emotion, that he employed? The word returned to his pen as often as did the thing. We have become familiar with the universality of these phenomena in political and religious regimes. Sociologists and anthropologists have drawn up a precise and superabundant catalogue of them. Thus their place in one science or another is justified. Only the explanations of the authority of

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charisma fall short of being classed with sociology and anthropology. Quite naturally they belong to the psychology of collective phenomena. These explanations are simple and can be compressed into a few words, because in fact we have already touched upon them. Nothing is more striking to the imagination than the situation in which the charismatic quality occurs. Whatever the reasons, the distance between the members of a collectivity is abolished and, reciprocally, mimetic resemblances proliferate. Social life is filled with ever-accelerating forces that break up resistances within the mind and cut the ties with the past. Fostering this state of participation and over­ excitement, moral and historical energies are mixed together, and individuals who have hitherto been apathetic become active once more. At the same time the whole collectivity experiences a startling injection of ' infused grace ' , of value and confidence that are superior to that wrought by the exclusive adher­ ence of its members. So long as this grace subsists, each individual feels that she or he is leading a different existence, possessing a courage and moral force that are never normally exerted. It is as if, snatched away from normal conditions, from compromises and habits, the individual were being purified and finding anew the meaning of a genuine passion. It is not a state of possession analogous to that which I described in the chapter on Durkheim, but a state of regeneration: the human being feels himself or herself to be truly transformed, to have triumphed over the objective limits of reality. Hence the expressions that one often meets with to describe the individual : ' regenerated ' , 'purified ' , ' chosen ' and s o on . In the course of this metamorphosis human beings very dissimilar in their beliefs, their position in society, their intelligence etc . find themselves facing in the same direction, like the waves of the sea, and ready to act with the same intensity . Weber perceived it as a mode of catharsis, a key notion in his psychology of collective phenomena. It penetrates all great gatherings and all great movements, in times of crisis and abrupt change. He attributed to it the effects that the Marxist philosopher Gramsci described in terms that he himself might have used. Regarding catharsis, Gramsci wrote:

This also means the passage from the ' objective' to the ' subjective ' , and from ' necessity ' to ' liberty ' . The structure of the external force that crushes the human being, assimilates him to itself, making him passive, transfonning itself into a way to freedom, into an instrument to create a new ethical and 54 political fonn, to be the origin of new initiatives. Clearly there must be an object of common interest that evokes similar ideas and emotions in the mind of each actor. Furthermore there must be a feeling of enthusiasm arising from the fact that these ideas and emotions of the collectivity are capable of linking with reality. Thus the chances are increased that even the wildest visions are destined to last. Yet, through symbolic and exemplary actions, that obj ect happens to be combined with a special person­ ality , endowed with 'supernatural' and ' superhuman ' qualities, such as de Gaulle and the Resistance, Galileo and the new science, Luther and the Re­ formation, etc. The nature of these qualities varies according to the times, but

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as a necessary precondition they have always had an atmosphere of catharsis. Its apogee is reached with the recognition of the possessor of charisma, elected by acclamation, voted in directly by the fervour of the popular gaze, by applause, or by voices that converge upon him like iron filings towards a magnetic pole. It could be said that the discovery of the new leader frees the community from its burden of uncertainty and tension, so that it knows at last who will be capable of purifying and regenerating it. You will re­ call the picture that Trotsky paints of that memorable moment when a member of the Russian Soviet points to Lenin, who immediately becomes the one chosen. Much restraint must be exercised in these matters, so sparse are the facts revealed and so varied are the impressions. What indeed do we know of the prerogatives and means at the command of heroes, prophets and modern demagogues? Very little . But in the end their power seems to be the most absolute that can be imagined, not because nothing can stop it in reality, but because nothing can stop it as an ideal . We may well assume there is a logic to account for it, explaining the reasons why the possessor of this power is obeyed. Now, as you know, this logic is one of identification with the person that possesses it and can confirm his or her charisma. The German sociologist Elias notes: ' With this leader as the living incarnation of the group, the majority of its members identify as long as the hope and faith remain alive that he will lead them to their common goal or secure the position already ,ss reached on the way to it. Those forming part of that majority really do not know exactly why they are in his thrall. They claim it is a decision arriv ed at after reflection, or from a deep conviction, and sometimes both. The outcome is the same: the charisma of one single individual is validated by the spontaneous attachment to him of all. In other words, and it is appropriate to stress this, in the event domina­ tion does not depend on any self-interest, force, or rational calculation; in many respects these are subsidiary considerations. One may even assert that the majority leave them out of account, despising them and judging them harmful to belief in the leader's legitimacy. Individuals give up their auto­ nomy, not in order to enjoy any advantage or through constraint, but to identify themselves with the leader, because of what he embodies for each individual in the community: a hero, a genius, a father-figure . However, the bond of authority established in this fashion plainly acts differently upon leaders than upon their followers. Leaders acquire greater assurance concerning the real nature of the qualities attributed to them, act with greater vigour and dare to say what they would not dare to under normal conditions. Their supporters are ready to assume their characteristics and name. They willingly recognize in leaders a personage or an ancestor that is cherished in the collective memory and believed to be resurrected in the current leader, and that they are in contact with that person, who has been venerated previously by successive genera­ tions. The trust they place in the leader is an extension of that accorded to this 56 character from the past, from whom legitimacy is transferred to the leader; 57 at the same time there is identification with the leader. This is true, for

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instance, from Christ to the popes, from Caesar to the Roman or German emperors, from Gandhi to Indira Gandhi . In spite of all our efforts to seize hold of it, charisma eludes us, and eludes our belief. Making due allowance for our hesitation in seeking to explain what is not observable , or only very vaguely so, these two notions of cathartic participation and identification must nevertheless be grasped, because they allow us to come closer to understanding it. At the very least the notions clarify for us the psychology that Weber expressed in a vocabulary that was changing and diverse. He seemed to avoid the concise expression that could risk shutting out a host of images and facts that are merely glimpsed. But by ruling out such a formulation from his theory, he renounced the empirical verification that is indispensable for the propositions he puts forward. Without being entirely aware of it, we find it strange that Weber was so vague about the reasons for the ascendancy over people exerted by charismatic leaders. Why do they follow them? Is it because a state of crisis predisposes them to believe in the personal qualities of saviours, or because of the doctrine and ideas they represent? What caused crowds to rally round a Gandhi, a John Paul II or a de Gaulle : confidence in the person or in the ideas he put forward? In the first case one would obey the individual admired, in the second, the convictions one shares with him. 58 On the one hand, the cause of power is personal, and on the other, collective . Weber's preference seemed to be for the personal magnetism the leader gives off. 59 Yet he does happen to refer to the religion or doctrine that the leader embodies. Hence he is continually vacillating: at one time he relies solely on the ability of the leader to dominate, and at another on the leader 's powers of suggestion over the masses to be converted. The leader can easily induce them to fight for the triumph of a belief during a revolution, or to defend the soil of their native land, or even, in sporting competitions, for glory and honour. The Italian sociologist Cavalli strengthens my impression when he writes: Weber gave great relevance t o this point, but h e never examined it in depth.

Nevertheless he suggested a useful distinction between a pre-modem era and the modem one. In our modem era the people ' s trust seems to derive mostly from the leader' s personality, and principally from the strength of the leader' s

o w n conviction. This gives the leader that power of suggestion of which Weber spoke somewhat occasionally, giving to the term a double meaning already developed by Hellpach and leaving on one side . . . the philosophical

and psychological problems related to such a stand . . . According to Weber the general condition for this development is the irrationality and emotion­ ality that characterize the masses , two qualities in obv ious connexion also w ith the phenomenon of suggestion, even though Weber did not deal w ith them in that context. 60

The sociologist is perhaps driven by a desire to limit to a certain extent the various facets of the phenomenon. However, one thing is astounding: namely, that the ' supernatural ' or ' superhuman' qualities of an individual can of them­ selves suffice to arouse confidence. Thus one would explain the miraculous

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nature of these qualities, the gift of a god and not the work of human hands, by another miracle, that of the spontaneous conversion of those who hitherto 61 were ignorant of them, and thus without the leader exercising an influence in order to achieve recognition by the masses. It is nevertheless such a miracle that Weber appeared to assume when he wrote that charismatic power has emerged from the submission of subjects to the purely personal 'charisma' of the ' leader'. In fact, this type (of domination) leads us to the source of the idea of vocation, where we discover its most characteristic features. If some abandon themselves to the charisma of the prophet, of the leader in time of war, of the very great demagogue within the ecclesia or a Parliament, this means that these figures are held to be inwardly 'called' to play the role of being leaders of men, and that they are obeyed, not because of a custom or a law, but because one has faith in them. It is certain that if he is more than a petty and presumptuous upstart, a temporary phenomenon, he lives for his class and seeks to carry out his task. On the other hand, the devotion of his followers is addressed solely to his person and his personal qualities, whether 62 they are his disciples, or believers, or even militants attached to their leader.

How can one account for this devotion? Whence comes this belief in the extraordinary qualities of a person? It must be due to some doctrine or some social representation connected with the leader to whom people have pledged themselves. One could not conceive of these qualities without these doctrines or representations, which codify and give meaning to them. By skilfully manipulating them leaders win over the collectivity and succeed in achieving 63 recognition and acceptance of their authority. There is only one way to resolve the difficulty : it is to start from the fact that influence is the source and agent of charismatic power. To believe in these extraordinary qualities is to persuade others and to make them believe in them. There can be no doubt that the balance can be tilted either in favour of the ' superhuman ' qualities of the person, or in favour of the 'infallible ' qualities of the doctrine. On the one hand, people are converted to the ideas that leaders represent; on the other, enthusiasm is stirred up for their superior gifts by building up from nothing the cult of their personality . The modem media, for instance, know precisely the recipe for doing this, as we contemplate the succession of idols that are adored and then shattered. In fact, the vacillations I have emphasized are explained by confusion between the two modes of influence, the one directed towards the power of the idea, the other towards the power of the individual, and between the two forms of domination being reduced to one single one. Apart from this there is confusion in the psycho­ logy of the masses between the two classes of leader that I have contrasted: Mosaic and totemic leaders. One thinks, on the one hand, of Robespierre, Lenin, Calvin, Marx , Freud, Gandhi; and on the other of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, Napoleon - the list could be added to indefinitely. At least this is what we see around us, where charisma has become one of the most precious and rarest of qualities. I am astonished that so indifferent a gaze is turned towards what, with the atomic bomb, is one of our most panic-evoking discoveries.

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Mosaic leaders are more preoccupied with propagating their doctrine and beliefs among the masses than with winning them over through their person. Filled with zeal, knowing only the goal that has to be achieved, they adopt an attitude of reserve and discretion, as if they feared to do harm to their mission. Capable of a receptiveness that is as flexible as it is deep-seated, they guide as leaders should, whilst following their disciples. This spontaneously active and passionate passivity demonstrates their understanding of ordinary human beings, their will to remain like the rest, whilst differing from them. The Greek maxim: ' Know that thou art a human being and nothing more ' , a warning against presumption, seems to direct the actions and words of these moulders of the collective consciousness. This is the view we have from a distance of Socrates, Moses, Marx, Lenin, Gandhi or Freud. In every circumstance their authority dispenses with pomp and bears the mark of sobriety . Such leaders hypnotize their followers and the crowds by the passion of their conviction, the genuineness of their confidence in the ideal and the tenacity with which they pursue it. Hence the humility attributed to them, that of Moses, or Lenin, or Mahomet, of whom the poet Rumi said: 'The Prophet (blessings be upon him) was very modest because all the fruits of the world, from the beginning to the end, were gathered within him. Thus he was the most modest. ' When humility and modesty serve to depict a leader, they summon up a simple image: the person of the leader is insignificant in comparison with the merits of the ' cause ' , the importance of the ideas. Leaders spread ideas for their own sake, and not for the sake of the rewards or material advantages, and the pomp, to which they might lay claim. Disinterestedness and gratuitous action, the refusal to make it a real occupation, these are the signs of a vocation to leadership. To convert and gradually to form a community, a party or a movement that shares in the vocation demonstrates the strength of the leader's conviction. They endeavor to create a congregation whereby the personal following of the cult will assume the form of a permanent organization and become a community with fixed rights and duties. Such a transformation of a personal following into a permanent congregation is the normal process by which the doctrine of the prophets enters into everyday life, as the function of a per­ manent institution. The disciples or the apostles of the prophets thereupon become mystagogues, teachers, priests, or pastors (or a combination of them all) serving an association dedicated to exclusively religious purposes, 64 namely the congregation of laymen.

The same is true if the ends are national or political. Leaders must necessarily attach themselves to the crowds borne along by the current of ideas and capable of suffering the tyranny of them in their normal existence. The ele­ ment in leaders that is characterized on the whole as both fanatical and reserved restores a unified meaning to social and historical events. In short, these leaders do not ask for obedience to their person, but to the vocation that they themselves obey. Whether it be j ustice, freedom for a nation, the reform of a society or the law of some divinity is of little consequence. Only this vocation must be acknowledged by their disciples and followers.

The

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By contrast, totemic leaders seek to propagate the idea that 'exceptional ', 'magical ' gifts, needed in order to emerge from a crisis, are to be found combined in their person. They encourage the masses to believe that such gifts exist and confer the power indispensable for putting into practice the beliefs and ideas which they proclaim. They usually present themselves as the per­ sonal saviours of the masses in a crisis situation. These do not have the patience or time to check whether the vocation is genuine. Thus, whatever the period of history, wishing to impress the crowd, such leaders present them­ selves in order to arouse collective emotions more effectively, to capture the imagination by arts such as marching, dancing and music , often at the same time. Weber observed: Whoever possesses the requisite charisma for employing the proper means is stronger even than the god, whom he can compel to do his will. In these cases, religious behaviour is not the worship of the god but rather coercion of the god, and invocation is not prayer but rather the exercise of magical formulae. Such is one ineradicable basis of popular religion, particularly in India. Indeed such magical coercion is universally diffused . . . this is the original . . . origin [sic] of the orgiastic and mimetic components of the reli­ gious cult - especially of song, dance, drama, and the typical fixed formulae 65 of prayer.

This is certainly the path that most of these leaders follow, combining together a relaxation of the most elementary feelings and mechanical obedience to the most monotonous and simple of formulas; this is simply the path of rhythm and repetition , depriving the masses of their critical capacity. Fascinated, they confine themselves to listening, venerating as they would an idol men such as Napoleon, Mao or John Paul II. The ideas these lay claim to, the doctrine they seek to spread, merge with the devotion paid to their person. Has psychology yielded to us all that we were entitled to expect from it? It has not sufficiently elucidated the relationship between influence and power. It is clear, and this is regrettable, that Weber above all envisaged totemic charisma. In that case alone , it is the abnormal power of individuals that acts 66 upon human beings and incites them to obedience, to the point where they instantly become indifferent to what their idols do and how , what they say and how. The two types of leaders - and this is self-evident - are each subsumable to the other. This is not the place to judge their role and its consequences for the life of a society. The problem of their psychology will one day be resolved. Meanwhile, these are the findings to which we are led through focusing our attention upon these forms of domination. In my view it is very likely, and even inevitable, that the findings mean their explanation must be in psycho­ logical terms, at least so long as the framework outlined by Weber retains its validity. His passion for politics and his ambition to promote an elite capable of governing are well known. But we also know of his certainty that power is impotent when those called upon to exercise it lack that indefinable quality of charisma. No real form of domination can do without it, and all forms combine together, almost chemically, in order to survive. Weber noted:

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The Power of the Idea The comparison of this belief [in legitimacy] is seldom altogether simple. In the case of ' legal authority ' , it is never purely legal. The belief in legality comes to be established and habitual, and this means it is partly traditional. Violation of the tradition may be fatal to it. Furthermore, it has a charismatic element, at least in the negative sense that persistent and striking lack of success may be sufficient to ruin any government, to undermine its prestige, and to prepare the way for charismatic revolution. For monarchies, hence, it is dangerous to lose wars since that makes it appear that their charisma is no longer genuine. For republics, on the other hand, striking victories may be dangerous in that they put the victorious general in a favourable position for 67 making charismatic claims.

The first type of leadership was fatal in the First World War for the emperors of Germany and Russia; the second type propelled Caesar and Napoleon to the top. To these common-sense conclusions concerning the essential unity of power there is nothing, or almost nothing, to add, unless it be that they conceal the incessant struggle of human beings to conquer or free themselves from that power. The violence of that struggle evoked this thought from the Russian poet Babel : 'The cruelty of human beings is indestructible ! ' This has the accuracy of an irrefutable observation and the force of a lamentation.

PART III

One of the Greate st My sterie s in the World

7 I The science of forms

Style is sociology, sociology is style

A rambling work, made up of rough drafts, cannot be easily understood. Concentrating upon one single subject of enquiry, it is nevertheless dissipated in a host of topics that appear unrelated. How can it be classified when it rules out beforehand any attempt to do so? What order can be discerned in someone who wastes his energies so systematically? A penetrating scrutiny can dis­ cover, long afterwards, the logic of his meanderings . But it will necessarily be an artificial view. Nobody can reconstitute a work that remains incomplete, or an account over which no control has been exercised. This is why today we read Simmel - since it is he we have in mind - with a blend of admiration and regret. There is admiration for his vision and power of ideas. What spontaneity and impulsiveness are reflected in the need he felt to touch upon everything, his thirst for discovery, the Don Juan-like nature of an intelligence constantly changing the object of its attention ! There is also his haste to pass on such a hotch-potch of intuitions and so many incomplete thoughts. No matter: we are envious of this inconstant researcher' s success when, in spite of these caveats, in the end science responds wholeheartedly and positively to him. There is added regret at seeing all this work and these discoveries end up by being epitomized in one of those sign-board formulas - ' disenchantment of the world' , ' anomie ' , ' the class struggle' - by which one identifies the mark left by a man of talent on a whole era. It goes without saying that Simmel exerted great influence over his contemporaries. One of his most celebrated disciples, the Marxist philosopher Lukacs, has even de­ clared that: ' A sociology of culture, as has been undertaken by Max Weber, Troeltsch, Sombart and others - however greatly they all may have wished to distance themselves from him from a methodological viewpoint - was un­ doubtedly only made possible because of the foundations laid by him . ' 1 Yet this influence has remained limited to a small intellectual circle and has not gone beyond the adepts of sociology in France and Germany. Simmel would certainly have considered it strange to be ranked among the founders of any branch of knowledge at all, and even more to have been proclaimed

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the 'Freud of sociology ' , as has been the case. 2 He was indeed the sociologist who, instead of envisaging development and change as disturbances in some­ thing called society , which was normally stable , saw in stability itself a temporary balance between the opposing forces that shape it. In short, at the heart of every society there is a conflict out of which it arises and into which it dissolves. This problem often recurred in Simmel ' s writings. However, he did not describe the forces that lie at the origin of this conflict, as did Freud. In any case, he did not become a cultural hero, surrounded and idolized by swarms of disciples but, on the contrary, one of its forgotten number. From what he sowed Simmel seemed to expect no harvest. He was sure that he would disappear lacking any successors, and had foreseen precisely what would be the future of his work. In his short autobiography he wrote : ' I know I shall die without intellectual heirs - and that is as it should be. My legacy will be, as it were in cash, distributed to many heirs, each transforming his part into use conformed to his nature : a use which will reveal no longer its indebtness to this heritage. '3 It is a strange way of stripping himself bare, and of letting himself be stripped, of those many questions and ideas that, under such a diversity of names, are current in the human sciences, but which arise from the legacy he left. He is no longer mentioned, just as the majority of telephone or computer users are unaware of the names of the inventors of these machines that have transformed their lives. A few biographical details are not without interest. Simmel was born in 1 85 8 , in the same year as Durkheim, into a Berlin Jewish family . From his early years he lived in a cultured environment in which the arts, and particu­ larly music, and literature played an essential part. The whole of his higher education - philosophy, history, psychology - was at Berlin University, at a time when the rule was rather to change one ' s university almost every year. It was also at Berlin that, for some thirty years, he taught the philosophy of science, ethics, sociology and social psychology . His lectures attracted a very large audience, but he did not succeed in being appointed a titular professor. A French sociologist familiar with his life and work cites the reason for this as jealousy: ' Simmel ' s success was comparable to that of Bergson at the same period, save for the fact that, not being a professor, he aroused a jealousy that harmed his university career. ' 4 His contemporaries did not bother to indulge in such pious subterfuges. It is public knowledge that the obstacle to his career was the somewhat unsystematic nature of his work but, above all, anti­ semitism. If he was rejected by Heidelberg in 1 908 it was because he was known to be of Jewish origin and it was feared that he would bring with him in his train those Jews from Eastern Europe who were so numerous among his audience. 5 His final years were spent in Strasburg, where at long last he had been appointed to a chair. It was there that he died in 1 9 1 8. What reason can be invoked in order to explain the sustained unpopularity into which his work has fallen? Should we attribute it to his marginal position in the university? This is assuredly not the case. The conceptions that have most made their mark on both our science and our society - I refer to Marxism and psychoanalysis - arose outside academic institutions and spread without

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their knowledge. Now, the way in which he occupied a marginal position seems more significant to me. There is only one fact on which practically all the writings devoted to Simmel are in agreement, whether they emanate from thinkers who are hostile or favourable to his work. This is: that he was interested in several matters at once and dealt with them from many varied viewpoints. This earned him the nickname of ' master of the cross-section ' given him by the German writer Emil Ludwig. At a time when the continual mobility of society moulded the collective mentality, and in which nationalities, professions and classes confronted one another, a new life was beginning. It was manifested against the background of the large city, with its concentration of industries , the beginnings of large department stores, of high finance, of the rural exodus, and the proliferation of the sciences. Understandably such an upheaval gave rise to novel passions, imparted a vigour to social trends and fed the struggles centred round the possibilities for the future, the most imperious of which was socialism. 'The question of socialism ' , Simmel declared, 'is the hidden "monarch" of all social questions. ' It occupied a chosen place in the culture emerging through the innovations in art and literature, which were the first to record all these symptoms. And this complex character, ever-watchful, anxious not to lose one single morsel of these events - social, philosophical, artistic or political - drew his subject-matter from this whole superabundance of mater­ ial. He became even more its seismographic observer and analyst because he was living in Berlin, which was one of the budding metropolises. From his observation post he picked up every signal , all the more easily because he maintained a ' salon ' and frequented the most diverse circles, in which the keenest minds in science and the arts came together. He did so perhaps as a dilettante - but who could not be one, more or less, when in the very middle of the ebb and flow of an epoch where so many revolutions were flowing over one another? Undoubtedly all this contributed to his dissipating his attention over a number of varied social currents, without giving preference to any one of them. This was all the more so because he was not hampered by any academic position or political involvement that imposed a choice, and therefore restric­ tions, upon him. In one sense was he not himself the stranger about whom he wrote so much? This, I believe, explains both the impossibility he felt of settling on his subject, and his need to treat questions that were so very ill-assorted, capable of interesting and attracting audiences extremely different from one another. Of the great sociologists, S immel is undoubtedly the only one who is really cosmopolitan, mainly free from national obsessions, reli­ gious nostalgia and political ambition. These, to tell the truth, were forbidden to him. Hence the complete relativism of his approach and his many-sided curiosity about the most insubstantial facets of culture. This can also be seen by the quantity of his articles and pioneering books in so many areas of sociology and social psychology, as well as the variety of the subjects he dealt with. These range from an analysis of secrecy to one of the foreigner, from social differentiation to mass psychology, from conflict to money , and many

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more. This is to leave on one side his continual attention to poetry, art and aesthetics, as demonstrated in his works on Goethe, Michelangelo and Rem­ brandt. One can discern a universal suspicion that in his work Simmel tended to treat 'fashionable ' subjects, and complementary to this a tendency to be deeply interested in a small number of subjects which preoccupied him throughout his life. Behind the most trivial subject-matter, and in this lies his immense talent, he revealed to us new aspects of psychological or social reality. He bestowed philosophical meaning upon them, in the manner of a poet who can transfigure everyday words. There can be no doubt that his breadth surpassed that of his contemporaries, who worked upon the same materials, and his range of subjects carries with it endless shades of meaning not to be found in theirs. The smoothness of his exposition, but his lack of facility in dealing with detailed questions, often upset his students and colleagues. If one wished to compare him with anyone for his disconcerting thinking, his encyclopedic dynamism, his 'almost anti-academic ' imagination, 6 the way in which he bestrode one field of knowledge after another, it might be said that Simmel was the Borges of sociological literature. Like the Argentine writer, he touched upon the most serious questions casually but with relevance, weighing up possibilities in turn, but gladly leaving to the reader the task of drawing conclusions. Without exhausting his subject, he would move on to a different one, devoting himself to it with the same feverish passion for nuances of meaning and the same care for elegance. His work might be described as a sociology of the aesthete, or a sociology of literary salons. This is not untrue. Yet his investigation ranged so widely and delved into so many important subjects that the label does not do him justice, unless this judgement is to be understood in a different connotation. How does sociology appear in Simmel 's work? We should remember that for Auguste Comte, who created the word before the subject, it was the ultimate field of knowledge. To his mind sociology had to be for the modern world what theology was for the medieval world: the queen of the sciences. In other words, it was the whole system of scientific truth, the positive study of the most complete reality known to human beings: society itself. Inspired by such a grandiose vision, Durkheim, and to a lesser extent Weber, to mention the two names that the river of history has thrown up on the shores of memory, drew up the charts and undertook the work needed in order to construct this science, which was to overarch all others. Nothing could be more opposed to Simmel ' s own thinking. Such a sociology would be too burdened with dogmatism and transcendency for an era a prey to the relativity of values and to the increased complexity of relationships. In any case it would be incapable of capturing the fluidity of a culture in a state of crisis, destined for tragedy. The sociology he envisaged was not made to take the place of theology. Why should one bring together, under this new label, facts already dealt with in political economy, the history of religions, demography or statistics? In his collection of essays entitled Brucke und Tur Simmel wrote:

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For, given the fact that legal science and philology, political science and literature, psychology and other subjects, which have shared out among one another the field relating to what is human, will go on existing, one will have accomplished strictly nothing at all if one throws the whole of the sciences 7 into one basket upon which one sticks a new label - sociology. The label itself is not the knowledge , just as fine feathers do not make fine birds, and a new label does not make new knowledge. Thus, in spite of appearances, sociology must be one science among the rest, in a society that creates many such sciences, and changes them often . In the flock of the human sciences, sociology has not to tum itself into the shepherd, the keeper of order, but is rather the scolding, vigilant watchdog that speeds up movement and exchanges between the sciences. Durkheim, in covert language, reproached him for this kind of democracy of knowledge. In the end sociology is above all a style. In Simmel ' s eyes, it may well be only a new vantage point from which to observe facts already known, as produced within and by society . Its position allowed it to intervene ' in every special field of research, whether it be that of political economy or the history of culture , of ethics or theology ' ,8 without wishing to swallow them up. It i s indeed a s style that a science generally asserts itself, just a s a n art obeys a technique, and a literary genre fonns of composition.

The search for a third way between the individual and the collectivity One of the obsessions of our age is to explain important phenomena by some kind of cause . This failing is especially apparent when, in some theory, we link a very unremarkable cause, such as a material interest, an informed choice, a relationship between forces, with a host of effects that are discernible in hundreds of societies, but reduced to the lowest common denominator. Whether it be a strike or a revolution, a religious belief or an ephemeral opinion, racial prejudice or class antagonism, these are accounted for in the same way by means of a single cause . But beforehand one will have distin­ guished the economic cause from the political cause, and the political cause from the social or psychological cause, and so on . This is independent of the experience that corresponds to it among human beings belonging to the same culture. In this way reality is sliced up into ' low-ranking ' and ' noble-ranking ' sections, and secondary and primary causes that can be assigned to the various human sciences according to rank. The carcass of society is mistaken for a living society . One ends up with an emotional view of human beings who, conscious of their own interests, needs and position, react in such a way that they can adapt themselves to external circumstances. This attenuated fonn of rationalism has as its response a social life lacking in drama, an individualism bereft of liberty, and action indifferent to the twists and turns of a reality that i s unforeseeable. In fact, the fear of subjectivity and the automatism of the human sciences go hand in hand. We may say that

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anything passionate or enigmatic for the human sciences is lacking in consist­ ency. Today we could level the same reproach that Marc Bloch made about history books against most of the works of psychology and sociology: 'How­ ever, there is no psychology save that of the clear conscience. Reading certain history books one could think that humanity was made up entirely of logical 9 wills, whose motives for action would never be in the slightest secret. ' This question may appear secondary. One is nevertheless struck by the extreme care with which Simmel sought to arm himself against this intuitive vision whose eventual destiny he foresaw. Like a doctor, he assumed that no exclusive causal relationships exist in any field of social behaviour. Just as the cancer researcher would not rule out atmospheric pollution as one cause of cancer, merely because it is established that tobacco is another cause of this illness, in the same way Simmel did not exclude a psychological cause from a historical phenomenon just because it had been explained by an economic cause. For him every science was a vantage point from which one could observe reality and grasp the direction being taken. Sociology serves as a bridge over an abysss, one intended to link these vantage points . This follows the example of mathematics, about which the Austrian novelist Musil has written : 'Might not one say that it is a bridge that has piers only at either end and which one would cross no less happily than if it were complete?' 10 Against all expectations, to be able to cross it: in this is to be found the justification for sociology. One must bear this consciously in mind if one wishes to venture into the field. Simmel, with his abstract, subtle, but not eclectic mind, wished to construct it, crossing it like a bridge, without worrying as to whether it was complete or not. Now, in making this attempt, psychology is not for him an obstacle, a cock-shy, a dummy set up in order to practise breaking it up or knocking it down - what it has become for many. Rather is it a support. However this may be, I need seek no arguments to sustain what he himself defended. This is: that the knowledge of psychological factors leads to the explanation of social and historical facts. This makes him ' the forerunner of a cluster of themes in sociology that many deal with today . In any case he was one of the first theorists of social psychology, which, through Simmel, came to us from 11 America' . But he created neither the word nor the thing. Nor had he any need to transport it across the ocean, since social psychology had arisen much earlier almost everywhere in Europe - as everybody knows, or should know. We must needs affirm that among all the founders of sociology Simmel was the only one who publicly professed the psychological approach. In 1 9 1 5 when he unsuccessfully applied for the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg that university ' s faculty of philosophy singled out as his main merit the transformation and completely new foundation of the soc ial sciences, through which too the philosophy of history has experienced a transformed,

infinitely fruitful orientation. In three maj or works On Social Differentiation, The Philosophy of Money and Sociology he has grounded social science anew

- which hitherto had become a hotbed both of arbitrary and personal caprices and a rigid positivism - he has drawn its boundaries, established its method,

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formed its concepts and above all brilliantly carried out its psychological foundation which had always been required but never achieved. 12

This approach is to be found throughout his work. It is as if the impermanent nature of the individual and society obliged him to use it in order to understand how things occur that lie outside our consciousness and power. We must not mistake the wood for the trees. It is a distortion of language nowadays, following upon specialization in the sciences, to treat as a 'psychologist ' the person who uses solely the term 'psychology ' , but who is not inspired with any exclusive preconceived idea. Simmel did not resort to it any more system­ atically than did Durkheim or Weber, and in this respect was no more inven­ tive than they were. I would even maintain the opposite. Yet, on the one hand, he considered sociology to be a science that describes social phenomena and classifies them into homogeneous categories. At least this was his position when he asserted: Sociology is at the very most at the point that astronomy had reached in Kepler's day. The laws concerning the rotation of the planets that he dis­ covered are not natural laws but are, so to speak, historical descriptions of the order of complex phenomena; the real law relating to them was only discovered when Newton found the real force that acts on the smallest elements of these phenomena. 1 3

On the other hand, social phenomena suppose a n exchange between indi­ viduals cooperating with or competing against one another, 14 of feelings of hatred and love, of envy, and pleasure at living with one another. In short, they always imply psychological elements. One cannot therefore dispense with hypotheses about these in order to explain the forms that human relationships assume. Hence the conclusion follows, as he wrote: 'Thus there is a science that is peculiar to society, because certain specific forms, within the complex­ ity of history, permit of being reduced to psychological states and actions that derive directly from the reciprocal action of individuals and groups, and from 15 social contact. ' However, there i s something more: political economy, and above all history, are reckoned not to have to take these into account. Under the impetus given to them by Marxism, these subjects categorically exclude any psychological causality. Examples are not lacking of events that succeed one another without being influenced by the consciousness and the subjective inclinations of those who are actors in them. Neither will, desire, nor ideas are alleged to intervene in any determinate fashion; interests alone unite individuals or oppose them to other individuals. Thus it is important to select the objective factors with care : their meaning does not count for much; it is their material and institu­ tional weight, their economic power, which one needs be mindful of. Simmel disputed this. He stressed that with history we have to do with facts of consciousness, ideals, personal motivations and moral or religious actions that leave a certain mark upon events. To seek to eliminate them, by offering as excuse the large number and huge part played in history by vast organisms -

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States, Churches, parties etc . - in reality leads to their being reified. Simmel, who must be quoted on this, expressed his conviction as follows: 'The mental status of historical processes, therefore, seems to require the following ideal for historical inquiry : history should be a form of applied psychology. If there were a nomological science of psychology, then the relationship between history and psychology would be the same as the relationship between astro­ 16 nomy and mathematics. ' This is too much to ask from a human science, even as an ideal. Let us nevertheless ponder upon the fact that the negation of psychology is one of the essential principles of the conception of history and society, so that we can measure how great is the heresy advanced by our author. Deviating from historical materialism and from those who accept its premises, the German sociologist was however close to the French historical school. It is one that, under the aegis of Febvre, B loch and Braudel, was to reveal the mentalities prevalent within the permanent architecture of societies. This view, which is very close to that of Simmel, is summed up extremely well by Bloch: ' His­ torical facts are in their essence psychological facts. Thus it is in other psycho­ logical facts that their antecedents are normally to be found. ' 17 We must not conceal the difficulties that underlie such a correlation. Indeed we do not know the limits within which it can be applied, any more than we know precisely the boundaries that separate psychological facts from those that are not psychological. It calls for great prudence if we do not wish to fall victim to the illusion of a facile explanation, reduced to the living experiences of those actors who are alleged to make history. From now on we have a fairly clear vision of sociology as Simmel conceived it: a science that describes the facts that are produced by society and not only within the framework of society. These are the interactions, conflicts and assoc iations that transform a collection of individuals into a mass, a movement or an organization of a particular kind. Moreover, the ideas and beliefs that go with them are at the origin of the action each one pursues in history . We shall see later how and why . However, so far as problems of method are concerned, S immel, who con­ sidered them as a form of fetishism, composed no treatise about them, nor did he impose any rule upon himself. Consequently he did not prohibit himself from resorting to psychology and its explanations when these seemed neces­ sary. In this respect Simmel departed from Durkheim and Weber. even if they did not reproach him for it. In so doing he rid himself of the burden of convoluted and complicated arguments, and all those logical expedients de­ ployed to preserve the specificity and autonomy of the science that he was founding at the same time as they were. Refusing to prescribe rules that he knew were incapable of being respected, Simmel did openly what the others did in a roundabout fashion. Thus it was with, and not against psychology, that the new science of society had to be established. This is certainly a difficult position, but one that gives him his originality. What therefore did Simmel bring to this point that was new? With the materials at his disposal, primarily those of economics and history , he dis-

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mantled the workings of the relationship between the individual and the col­ lective. Yet he did this in his own fashion, by recommending a middle way that was the most difficult, because it proceeded by rejecting what is simple and evident. For those who belong to the other school of thought, the deeper and most distant in time, the great impersonal entities - religion, the State, social class, the soul of peoples, the collective consciousness, which comprise the notion of society - represent lasting, autonomous frameworks. So far as possible one refrains from associating them with any kind of psychology or from deducing them from it. Psychology only manifests itself where anomalies and patho­ logical states arising from individuals and sentiments make their appearance, as for example in the case of delinquency, criminality, religious excesses or irrational behaviour. Everything depends upon the circumstances, and the pragmatic. The philosopher of science, J. Agassi, put forward an example of this superficial examination of causes, one which is comical but true. He writes: Two very strong reasons exist for the pernicious conduct of editors [of scientific journals, who behave as censors]: cowardice and conflict of inter­ est. Cowardice is a psychological characteristic, and so it does not suffice to account for a social phenomenon. When the role of a brave person is filled by a coward, the coward may very well be quickly replaced. If not, the reason may be that all those who should see to it that the coward be replaced are likewise cowards. This makes cowardice a social psychological phenomenon, inviting a sociological explanation for its prevalence within a stratum or a sub-culture. Another reason for the non-removal of a coward from the position of a brave person is maybe that there exist institutional arrangements which 18 prevent the necessary replacement. This, too, is a sociological explanation .

Clearly in such a case the search for explanations proceeds from the indi­ vidual to the collective. The explanation based on psychology relates to a defect, a lack of courage, and remains ultimately linked to personal character. By contrast, the one that draws its support from sociology expresses a char­ acteristic feature of censors, the interest they may have in preventing the publication of certain articles, or a regular practice of the institution - scien­ tific journals - accustomed to employ cowards. Everything would change if one speculated on the nature of this censorship and whether it was not inherent in science itself. Cowardice and conflicts of interest then become superfluous, because one is faced with a norm that is both conscious and unconscious. It cannot therefore be social without at the same time being individual. The real question then becomes: why is censorship necessary to science? Or: is a society possible in which information circulates freely, where neither selection nor exclusion are practised at all? Doubtless the answer is no, but this will not willingly be acknowledged. Therefore the courage or cowardice of indi­ viduals, or competition between interests are invoked, in order to conceal the norm itself. Going beyond this example, you will observe that, in accordance with this tendency, the main point is always to explain a collective phenom­ enon by another one. After the French Revolution the pioneers of this trend were L. de Bonald and J. de Maistre. Comte revived, and Durkheim definitively

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crystallized it. Now, to adopt the principle whereby the whole cannot be understood from its constituent elements is really to explain very little. On the other hand, the second school of thought would like collective phenomena to be explained after an analysis that reduces them to simpler elements. Just as physicists split matter into atoms, and these into elementary particles, or as one seeks to understand the brain by isolating the neurones and synapses, it is a question of breaking society down into individuals. In other words, the same laws of behaviour and intelligence are to be found at all levels, except for the fact that the data of collective life are more complicated. It follows that all we would like to know about the individual and her or his psyche can be known apart from any revealed social relationship, in a labor­ atory or clinic. How is this position justified? It follows from a widespread belief. Psychology seizes hold of elementary phenomena - reflexes, desires, cognitions etc. - and builds up to complex phenomena emerging from the former. The lowest area within the psychological domain of the individual contains the origins of what is to be found in the highest areas, in the collect­ ivity . Defenders of this include in particular Tarde, who esteemed that the laws of imitation allow us to explain social opinions and relationships. To a certain degree a Weber, a Freud or a Parsons, either openly or covertly, 19 may also be counted among its supporters. A direct conclusion may be drawn from this: a sociological theory should express the properties of the whole, starting from the properties of the individuals that constitute it. And, consequently, it explains too much. Simmel rejected the first viewpoint, which considers society as an irredu­ cible entity and an essence embodied in the collective consciousness, the soul of a people, and so on. Such a perspective is repugnant to the spirit of science, which in one way or another tends to separate out the simplest elements. Did he consequently adopt the second viewpoint? Doubtless not. He would charge it with splitting up society, its object, into vague fragments, and with forget­ ting its specific nature . Do not the rules for emotion and the intelligence change radically when we move from the person to the group, from a collec­ tion of individuals to the masses? The creators of society, individuals are also its products - modem ones, it is fitting to mention. For his part, Simmel proceeded along a parallel path, but in the opposite direction. Instead of wishing to break up what is complex in order to reduce it to what is simple, he attempted to explain how the simple gives rise to the complex . Human beings who have arisen as isolated creatures in the course of history have followed its course and produced the social forms that are common to them. Thus society is not an autonomous whole, preceding or outside the relation­ ships that bind its members together, whether in work or religion, domination or exchange. It develops at the same time as they do, just as a body does not exist before its cells, its trunk or anns. The question of knowing what comes first, society or the individual, has no meaning and cannot produce any clear answer. The structures or collective functions that seem to us to be autonom­ ous are really reciprocal actions between human beings who have succeeded in ' objectifying ' themselves, in the same way as money, which 'belongs to

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this category of reified social functions. The function of exchange, as a direct interaction between individuals, becomes crystallized in the form of money as • 20 an independent structure. Simmel told us that in this kind of institution everything of a subjective character becomes fixed and takes on substance. However, it suffices for these institutions to lose contact with the concrete forces that feed and sustain them for them to cease to respond to the impulsions that have given rise to them. They immediately seize up or crumble into dust. Reciprocal actions have generated them, others make them change direction or disappear. The appear­ ance of calm on the surface of a lake is the result of an equilibrium between billions of particles of water engaged in a Brownian movement. Likewise the stability of these social institutions is the result of the movement of thousands or millions of individuals who engage in exchange, select, love or hate one 21 another, or fight one another. Simmel ' s procedure may be termed genetic. Contrary to the reductionist tendency o f a Tarde o r a Parsons, i t does not even aim at reducing the law of these social entities to one of personal elements, but to discover the contexture of the interactions occurring between the latter. Psychology does not explain, even approximately , the properties of collective phenomena by the intellectual or affective properties of individuals, but the genesis of the former from the latter and their specificity. It is based on a hypothesis that must be spelt out: orthogenesis is isomorphic to philogenesis. This is why the series of modes of behaviour and representations in the evolu­ tion of individuals relates to the linkages observed in history. Simmel wrote: no matter how much we appreciate the gain in the understanding of a phenomenon that is derived from a study of its historical development, its substantive meaning and importance often res t upon connexions of a concep­ tual, psychological or ethical nature that are not temporal but rather are purely material. S uch connexions have, of course, been realized by historical forces, but are not exhausted by the fortuitousness of the latter. 22

Let us return to the example of money . From the historical viewpoint we know that societies, up to about the Renaissance period, saw money as a substance passing from hand to hand. They only trusted it so long as it could be counted in hard cash, with gold having preference. As the money economy expanded, with its commercial networks and financial rules, in Holland, in Germany or in Florence, the value of money was detached from its physical backing so that it could be recorded on a piece of paper, becoming a mere figure. It was appreciated according to the services it rendered, its velocity of circulation and the rate at which it could be accumulated. It took on an increasingly impersonal, abstract character, giving rise to strict calculations. A budget replaced the purse. In Europe money ceased to be a thing of value in itself and became, as we perceive daily, the sign of the value of things. Let us now consider the other side of the picture. In a similar way , the value of money and objects, hitherto linked to a substance that can be touched and perceived, is liberated, and breaks away, becoming one concept among others. It goes without saying that individuals ' capacity for abstraction and reasoning

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is sharpened and prevails over their faculties of sensibil ity . They submit money to logic and treat it as an idea. In that case, the transition is made from observation and the contact of the senses with empirical objects to reflections on the relationships and general properties of the abstract object that money has become. In other words, its economic metamorphosis, changed from a substance into a value of exchange, goes hand in hand with a mental evolution of individuals in modern culture. Which one proceeds from the other, or is of greater importance, will never be known, so greatly is it an illusion to wish at any moment to separate the two. It is not very extraordinary that Simmel refused to do so. He merely maintained that, taken together, they allow us to reconstitute the process that has made money what it is in the modern world. To sum up, psychology has a part to play in the desire to explain the genesis of social forms. This is the third path that Simmel followed, and it is the one for which even today he is with difficulty forgiven. He knew this, and yet persisted in it. The procedure he followed, and which gives his sociology its originality, was to seek out the necessary psychological characteristics, at various stages and in accordance with the level of these forms :

The methods to be followed in order to study the problem of how phenomena are associated are the same for all the comparative psychological sciences. They are based on certain psychological assumptions that are peculiar to them alone, without which no historical science can exist: the phenomenon of seeking help and of giving it, love, hatred, avarice, and the feeling of satisfaction arising from an existence shared with others, individual self-pres­ ervation . . . and we must assume a series of other psychological processes in order to be able to understand fully how the sociative state comes about, as also the formation of groups, and individuals' relationships with the whole in its entirety, etc. 23 I do not claim that everything here i s perfectly clear or free from contradic­ tions. A fair number of these contradictions may be detected, and Simmel can be blamed for wishing to base sociology on a science that has the reputation for being its exact opposite. This is true , but is not at all exceptional in the history of the sciences, which are less afraid of contradiction than of sterility. He followed the rule whereby a new science, in order to establish itself, uses the results and procedures of an older science - in the event, psychology. We may go further. As opposed to sociology and history, which despite applying every possible means, learn nothing, Simmel assumed a harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm - a mystical idea if ever there was one. All large-scale social relationships and social transformations must therefore find corresponding ones in the relationships of one individual to another. Thus the silence must be broken concerning the most intimate links, such as marriage, secrecy, trust - of which the v ast fields of the economy and culture bear the imprint. The ' theatre ' of society becomes more enthralling when flesh-and­ blood actors are seen on the stage, expressing their feelings and hatching their plots, and - this is the ultimate - believe they represent all human beings. Without such actors society remains the somewhat lacklustre mirror of events

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that have shaken heaven and earth, stirring up crowds but leaving only a vestige of memories. Molecular sociology : its networks and representations

With Simmel, as with Durkheim and Weber, we find no system that would assign each phenomenon and each study to its place. One has the impression that, starting each time again from the beginning, he devoted himself to outlines, projects and essays. His accomplishments have only temporary value, within the framework of what he was attempting. Even if one examined those of his writings upon which the title of a system was bestowed, they scarcely merit the designation. This is why, save with roughly one exception, to which I shall return, there is not to be found in his work any book that is worked out in detail, or carried through to its extreme limit. The worth of the whole opus does not rest upon any systematic work, but on the dynamism behind his thought. In that dynamism resides to a large extent the modernity of his work. I see three reasons for this. First, individuals, according to his lights, con­ stituted a complete reality, from both the psychological and the social view­ point. On this plane he can be distinguished from Weber who, it must be confessed, only acknowledged their autonomy in the abstract, and only from a methodological viewpoint. Next, the problems that Simmel dealt with were concerned with civil and urban society, and even more with those of a culture that changes direction under the influence of science and democracy, when these begin to mould the mentality of each individual . Finally, most of his contemporaries understood sociology as a science of institutions, which it is appropriate to describe and explain. Thus it is a science dealing with the generation of religions, of power bases, etc., which have their qualified spe­ cialists and which more or less dominate society. Thanks to rules and social discipline individuals are integrated into it, receiving from it what is essential, even in the most personal matters. But Simmel saw this as an outdated view. For him sociology appeared as a science of associations and filiations. In it everything, whether relating to the individual or the collective, is worked out. In this way he adopted a modem or, if you like , a democratic, representation of society. Tocqueville 's outlook suited him perfectly, when the latter wrote: 'In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of know ledge; on its progress depends that of all others. ' 24 Viewed in this light, the slide towards psycho-social ideas, which alone can explain the genesis of these elementary and ever-changing links, is understandable. I am convinced that if Simmel had lived some ten years or more longer, as his life expectancy permitted him to hope, he would have found justification for his viewpoint in Bohr' s principle of complementarity. According to this principle, the description of physical phenomena as common objects located within space and time - on a human scale, if one may put it so - and that of invisible atomic objects, do not exclude but complement one another. In

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the same way, on the same reasoning, the description of phenomena within the dimensions of society and that which proceeds from individuals would both be necessary in order to account for reality. On several occasions Simmel showed the advantages in the adoption of these complementary viewpoints. This is why the original characteristic of association subsists from beginning to end. I shall be more precise . What must be understood by the genetic process? Simmel used it felicitously, but with variations. In any case, and whatever the results may be, we do not know whether he meant that individuals are the raw material and creators of a society. Yet this is scarcely disputable, although society cannot be reduced to these. To seek to dissect it in order to discover its properties and rules from those appertaining to each individual would be as fruitless as to seek to reconstitute the architecture of a house from the materials of which it is built. Thus it is accepted that a society has a meaning and a form peculiar to itself, and the question is how does it acquire these. Writing about society, Simmel stated A superficial rationalism always looks for this richness solely among the concrete contents. Not finding it, it passes over sociability, taxed with being

a shallow absurdity. Yet it is not without significance that in many European languages, indeed in all, society quite s imply designates a social gathering. Most certainly what is political and economic, the aim of any description, is a ' society ' . But only a ' socializing society ' is a society that lacks any qual­ 25 ifying adjective.

You can believe him in this matter, for he has an advantage over us: he lived in an age when to enter society, to be in the society of someone, was a position that required no justification. And undoubtedly the retracing of our steps that Simmel obliges us to make is instructive . He showed that the sentiments and behaviour of individuals, which depend upon the environment, the relation­ ships of exchange and power, and even the collective consciousness, these catchphrases that certain sociologists admire, do not exhaust the notion of society . It is perhaps convenient to reflect that a good number of societies are made outside ourselves, without our intervention. But a good number of others, the most important - who knows? - arise from our disposition to come together, to communicate and find enjoyment in the presence of other people. This presence is indispensable and brings its own reward and pleasure. It even constitutes the prerequisite for any association that has a political, an eco­ nomic or even a religious aim. In other words, sociability is a passion or desire that shatters any individual schizophrenia and is superior to any constraint or utility that we expect from life lived in common. Whatever the circumstances may be, individuals are always seeking to create this mode of existence for themselves, and to draw an enjoyment from it that gives it a kind of surplus value. Thus they wish to socialize the visible and invisible universe in which they dwell. Simmel wrote as follows about what I have termed a ' genetic process ' : 'There is yet another, completely different viewpoint, according to which we should admit that human existence may be real only in individuals;

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but this does not impair the validity of the concept of society. Taken in its most general form, the concept signifies reciprocal mental action occurring 6 between individuals. ' 2 This final proposition is among those that strike and even shock one. Now that it has become less shocking, and even commonplace, I cannot how­ ever state that the difficulty it raises is resolved. The truly atomic element of society is that reciprocal mental action from which everything springs and to which everything returns. Consequently, we can grasp it directly in anony­ mous actions that occur daily and are transitory. Walking in the street, exchanging ideas, saying good day, queueing outside a cinema, going in to a cafe to have a drink - these are so many ephemeral actions, with little reality. But, by dint of repetition and being combined together, they end up by socia­ lizing us and shaping a unity of interest, mentality and personality between individuals. The mere enumeration of these examples leads me to draw a distinction between two categories of actions : anonymous and nominated actions. Anonymous actions are all around us permanently and are constantly being brought to our notice; some are trivial, others spectacular. They are the 'mini­ happenings ' and 'little actions ' about which Proust speaks, and which we do not very easily separate from one another. We collect them by a scrupulous observation of physical and spiritual states, ours and those of our neighbours. For one of them to cross the threshold of consciousness and become an object of our attention or reflection, it must affect us personally or impinge upon one of our preoccupations. For example, for the Duchess of Guermantes, Swann's illness is an anonymous fact about which he has the good taste not to speak. However, she is put out by it when she learns that he cannot act as her guide on the journey that she intends to make to Italy, for he will be dead, an occurrence that affects her closely. The second type, nominated actions, exist only in categories, have an official existence and conform to a pattern, so that they can be distinguished from one another without any confusion. They are even ranked in order of importance, admired or feared, and in any case, have a family look about them every time that the State, a social class, the town, the market, etc . dress them in unifonn garb. And indeed, they do have a name: But names represent persons - and towns that accustom us to believe them to be individual, as unique as people - a confused image that makes stand out, from their glaring or gloomy sonorities, the uniform colour in which it

is depicted, like one of those posters that are completely blue or completely red, in which, because of the limitations of the process emp loyed or because of the painter's whim, are depicted as red or blue not onlY. the sky and the 2 sea, but also the little boats, the church and the passers -by . 7

Most of these have, as well as a name, a genealogy, and a mode of discourse that try to ensure their enduring nature . If we watch policemen arresting demonstrators, immediately the scene receives in our own mind, or in our conversation, a name that may vary according to the observer: violence or repression, an attack on freedom, or the maintenance of order. And it may

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even, as Proust states, evoke names with ' glaring or gloomy sonorities ' , such as revolution or civil war.

Anonymous actions surprise us, varying from situation to situation; they sometimes move us, and we never know how they are going to develop. They surround the other actions, the nominated ones, just as the sea laps against the volcanic island that rises up out of the waves. Doubtless we think them modest

and even ephemeral, like unexpected meetings in the street or rumours that are passed on by word of mouth. But the imprint left on human thoughts and feelings is as profound as that of memories that have migrated from the conscious to the unconscious. If the classification I am putting forward is adopted, it is therefore important to follow the progress of anonymous actions

to nominated actions, from reciprocal actions into the origin of social domains, whether these be the economy, religion or the law, right up to that uncertain area of science, morality and even art.

However, beneath all the appearances, through so many variations - one might almost be tempted to state, across all the uniformities - the interaction between individual and individual maintains an absolute priority. Simmel declared:

The interaction between individuals is the starting point for all social fonna­ tions. The real historical origins of social life are still obscure, but whatever they were, a systematic genetic analysis must begin from this most simple and immediate relationship, which even today is the source of innumerable new social fonnations . Further development replaces the immediacy of inter­ acting forces with the creation of higher supra-individual fonnations, which appear as independent representatives of these forces and absorb and mediate the relations between individuals. These formations exist in great variety; as tangible realities and as mere ideas and products of the imagination; as 28 complex organisations and as individual existences. Individuals have no reality outside these interactions any more than do atoms in physics; within them, they are the main element. 29 Customs, laws and nations are their manifestation in life lived in common, just as matter is in relation to the atomic forces that bind it together. Society, that improbable structure which results from it, is perhaps one of the weaknesses in a human being, but as yet no one has invented any alternative solution. Thus - and let us repeat it in order to avoid any misunderstanding - there is no question of making behaviour or the representations of isolated individuals our point of departure. The prime datum is not a Robinson Crusoe, or solitary organisms that must first enter into relationships with one another, proposing common goals that bind them together: on the contrary, it is the reciprocal action of a couple of individuals submitted to the gaze of a third party. This significant line of thought must be grasped in all its ramifications. On the one hand, it leads us to extend considerably the domain of sociology, including in it the trivial incidents of daily life and the most ephemeral transactions. There is a continuous chain from these to the relationships that excite the masses, to groups exercising domination, or to beliefs. Nothing should be excluded from knowledge on the grounds that it is merely a transi-

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tory fact; nor must what is flamboyant, nor equally what passes for being stable in society, be favoured. Simmel made no concession when he stated:

It is to conform superficially to everyday language - sufficient, it is true, for external usage - if one reserves the term 'society ' for reciprocal, lasting actions, particularly for those that are objectivized in uniform external forms to which characteristics may be ascribed, such as the State, the family, corporations, Churches, classes, interest groups etc. Beyond these examples there exist an infinite number of forms of relationship and kinds of reciprocal actions between human beings, of middling importance and occasionally even futile if particular cases are considered, but which contribute to the constitution of society as we know it, insofar as these actions tend to be subsumed under more extensive social forms that are, so to speak, official. 30 To the vision of a society reduced to nominated facts, which is that of a Durkheim or a Weber, Simmel opposed the reality of a host of relationships and common forms of behaviour, but which remain to be explored. The genuine sociologist is a 'rummager after detail ' , detail that becomes significant and whose consequences are occasionally disproportionate to its importance. Furthermore, Simmel turns the existing hierarchy upside down, since he considers that these banal facts, banally repeated, and the familiar movements that bring human beings together day after day are the fluids that irrigate the body social. It is by taking them as the basis that one reaches the great faculties of the individual, consciousness, the will, motivation, and the visible organs of society, the State, the family, the division of labour etc. So that, in a reversal of perspectives, Simmel made the edifice of society rest upon what is the most fluctuating and the most momentary. In short, he supported what appears to be to us the most ordered upon what is possibly the least so. Now , this genetic procedure, with its way of considering society , is un­ doubtedly reminiscent of what has prevailed in physics for a century and, more recently, in molecular biology. One of the most characteristic aspects of thi s way of thinking is the substitution of the idea of instability for that of stability. In general, matter and creatures are only apparently in a fixed state. They are entities that are permanently undergoing destruction and reconstruction. More­ over, we explain physical systems, whether these consist of the universe or our body, both of which have a relatively long expectation of life, by physical or biological interactions between non-permanent elements whose expectation of life is occasionally so infinitesimal that they cannot even be observed. All these scientific discoveries, which have provoked such extraordinary changes in human thinking, are fairly close to Simmel ' s attitude. It consisted in seeking to explain the finite number of uniform relationships in society through an infinite number of short, anonymous and reciprocal actions. By observing how they intermesh and then disentangle themselves with no break in continuity, we can penetrate into the molecular fabric of social life. Thus we move from 'the sphere of associations in motion ' to the sphere of reified institutions (languages, religious beliefs, parties etc.), from the ' socializing society ' to specialized ' societies ' , in order to explore how they are woven together. From this there results a hypothesis: reciprocal mental action is presupposed in

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everything that is social. I note that this is a thesis that has since continually broadened its scope, and to which sociologists nowadays assent, even if they do not put it into practice. Only psychology has done so, and then only for a certain time, before it relapsed into an elementary and unintelligent individualism. Thus society is made up of ceaseless transactions between individual elements, of groups as well as persons. This led Simmel to interest himself in social interactions, whether these talce place in mass or in more disjunctive situations. But how can they be described, how can one separate out the irregularities that are worthy of study? Our psychological and social life leaves nothing to chance. The requirement to learn about it in a rational manner at the same time gives it a character of objectivity, of an object subordinated to the impersonal laws of science. The account of this is well known. If things are necessarily so, and if our necessity is such, we must seek a way of discovering the invariable elements, those which persist between the two extremes of a normal destiny. And, as a precondition, we must malce a distinction, carrying out a necessary sorting process. I should like first to spealc of what exists in society, the content that it conceives of as a simple material and biological datum. This may be understood as the cluster of interests, bodily properties, and motiva­ tions - erotic instincts, affective preferences, impulsions to play and to aggres­ sion etc. - that malce individuals what they are and cause them to seek contact with others, ' and thus to arrange their conditions reciprocally - in brief to 31 influence others and to be influenced by them ' . Yet this content - organic, psychological etc. - s o vital fo r their interacting together, is not sufficient to sustain scientific analysis. The elements that malce it up are so varied, so heterogeneous, that the sociologists are faced with a dilemma. If they collect up all the interests and motivations for human beings to associate together, the list will be so long and so varied from one culture to another that it will not be possible to draw up any coherent description. Sociologists will then have to content themselves with assembling the phenom­ ena of psychology, the economy and history without being able to disentangle any specific order from them. If from among this content they isolate a particular sector, such as the economy, religion, or domination, and declare it to represent the outstanding principle of social order, as Marx did first, and then Weber, they then risk distorting reality, and, what is more serious, cutting it off from this continuous flow of reciprocal actions. In any case, for Simmel, if I have understood him rightly, the content was the living matter that had to be transformed into something that was abstract and autonomous, and capable of being known. This means it had to be in aform capable of putting the content into an order and malcing it meaningful. Thus the task of the sociologist comes down to isolating these forms from the hetereogeneity of human interactions and associations. It means, in short, to show that, however diverse the motives and goals that give rise to relationships between individuals, the patterns ac­ cording to which these motives and goals are realized can be identical. For example, war and the division of labour both imply cooperation. Conversely,

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one can discover identical motives and goals in different forms. Political interests can be achieved through an alliance just as well as through conflict. These very simple examples illustrate a fact. In the eyes of Simmel, the forms are the true object of science, and give us privileged access to reality, firstly as an intellectual tool that allows us to encompass a mass of disparate phenomena. Secondly, they do so because, being constructs of the mind, they tend to detach themselves from the data of nature and existence, so as to constitute a well-defined reality, and consequently, one that can be grasped. It is the model and the way in which it is designed that give structure to vague, amorphous materials, just as history does for future transformations. Simmel wrote : ' Generally, transformation is what is not yet history. From this, there seems to me to arise the fundamental problem of all theory of historical knowledge: how does transformation become history? The latter is a form, 32 which the mind makes up from the transformation and its contents. ' These forms are in fact the interpretation of a vision, and much dedication is needed in order to pin down this vision, so that it can be changed from observation into thought, and finally incorporated into various parts of reality. It is a question of summarizing and condensing movements in the course of which one can see crystallizing a number of modes of behaviour and relation­ ships. Following their own logic , the forms leave their mark on modes of behaviour and relationships, representing them in a coherent fashion. In so doing they demarcate a boundary for individuals conscious of them and link them in to a common way of acting, thinking and feeling. Simmel suggested: Soc iety, in the broad sense of the word, exists wherever there is reciprocal action between individuals. From the fleeting encounter between people that take a stroll together to the intimate unity of a family or a guild in the Middle Ages, one can recognize the degrees and the extremely different types of association. The special causes and ends , without which there is naturally no

association, are like the body, the matter of the social process; that the result of these causes, that the search for these ends, necessarily entail reciprocal action , an assoc iation between individuals, this is the form that the content assumes. 33

It cannot be said that the choice of the terms ' content' and ' form ' are very felicitous. So as to clarify such an imprecise concept, I shall resort to a comparison. In order to define the domain of a science of language Saussure contrasted on the one hand the langue, a closed and abstract system of the links between sounds and ideas, and, on the other hand, what he calls the parole. The latter sets this system in motion whenever people wish to express themselves and communicate. The langue is analogous to a musical score, and the parole is the performance of this score by various orchestras. We distin­ guish here the contrast between the collective aspect of language, an institu­ tion, and its individualized aspect. In the same way Simmel distinguished between the form of reciprocal interactions between individuals, and their content, and made this a subject of 'pure sociology ' .

250

One of the Greatest Mysteries Research - it might be called 'pure sociolog y ' - draws out from phenomena the element of filiation, inductively and psychologically detached from the v ariety of their content and goals, which of themselves are not yet social , just as grammar separates the pure forms of language from the kinds of content 34 in which the forms are alive.

But with one difference - and this is a considerable one. For Saussure, the parole was a derived activity: no more, after all, than the use of language in speech by human beings in their everyday life. It did not concern the science of language. Simmel, on the other hand, saw in the content an important datum, the obligatory precondition from which the forms can be disentangled and carried over to the field of science. Human beings are united in this passion for sociability, the satisfaction derived from which depends on personal qualities, such as amiability, refinement, cordiality, which draw us to one another. Some idea of its vitality can be gleaned from meetings between friends, or guests or religious believers etc. Having put on one side ambitions, preferen­ ces and other subjective goals, they seek to shape their relationships in order to make this social moment successful, just as poets work upon language in order to submit it to our ear. Out of their meeting and their conversation they create a social masterpiece and, moreover, a memory of this masterpiece. In any case, for my part I emphasize a conclusion that is doubtless extreme, but which is essential. This is that society is not a sociological notion, any more than langue is a linguistic notion. 35 It is in fact a commonsense idea determined by factors as varied as territory, political forces, the sentiments and symbols of a people, and so on. Now, a science must define or redefine its object, isolating those dimensions in which it occupies a privileged place and those phenomena to which almost everything can be reduced. It is indeed as if certain categories and aspects possessed a value as knowledge that is more marked than other ones. This is why sociology may not be a science of society, but a form and content of sociability that is particularly significant, just as linguistics may be first of all a science of grammar. Fortified by his personal observations and historical studies, Simmel thought he could raise sociology to the status of a geometry of these forms of reciprocal action, starting from the most modest and most immediate data. It would draw upon other sciences - psychology, economics, and history - for its preliminary materials. It must be said that this opposition between form and social content, the logic of which is impeccable, did not attract the slightest attention. Moreover, Simmel knew the obstacle he was up against: sociology is not a geometry and cannot entirely rationalize phenomena, or remove them from the categories of common sense. What remains is the blueprint, the dream of a mathematics of social facts whose markers he sought 36 to erect here and there. What does it matter that this antinomy has not been adopted? In spite of everything it gives us the elements of an image of society that, using present­ day terms, I shall sketch out as follows. On the one hand society appears as a 37 set of interactive networks, through which individuals come into contact with

The science offorms

25 1

one another, communicate and organize themselves. These facilitate their meeting together, their involuntary or voluntary movements, trends of opinion, and interests centred on a common focus. They are so many constellations that link us to one another and form social circles within which each individual moves: day , a t every hour, such threads are spun , are allowed t o fall, are taken up, replaced by others, intertwined with others. Here lie the interactions

On every

- only accessible through psychological microscopy - between the atoms of society which bear the whole tenacity and elasticity; the whole colorfulness and unity of this life of soc iety is ev ident and is puzzling. 3 8

According to Simmel the number and variety of these networks and social circles to which an individual belongs was a standard for cul tural measure­ ment. A culture is all the more advanced - and, let us add, all the more modem - when this number is large. But above all the variety and multiplicity of social circles guarantee a progressive emancipation of the individual, as their oppos­ ing influences guarantee the individual 's originality and a certain inde­ pendence. In other words, the more we associate with others, and in more diverse ways, the more we become truly ourselves, and free . We should add that networks exist that are considerable and dense, such as those of industry, the Church or a party. Individuals are continually involved in them with a large part of their personality. Other networks are tenuous, almost like spiders ' webs, and arise among those involved in a market, or frequenting a cafe, or reading a newspaper. Certain of them such as those of an army or bureaucracy, become substantial in a stable hierarchy. Others are permanently being rear­ ranged and transformed, such as the network of visitors to a museum, or passengers on an aircraft. Undoubtedly the density and stabi lity of the inter­ actions are of importance. But the number of those participating in a network is no less so. And Simmel paid the utmost attention to this. I shall give only one example , and that because of its interest. In fact the possibilities for action change depending upon numbers. As soon as two people , and clearly two groups, are in contact, interactions appear that one single unit excluded. Thus they have the possi bility of giv ing or receiving, of loving or hating. We can suggest, without any risk of error, that the decisive threshold is, however, that of being three in number. This allows alliances and oppositions, the emergence of a maj ority or a minority, and the election of a leader. Here we are reall y moving from the individual to the collective in the strict sense of the word. Furthermore, when a group increases in size and the number of networks multiplies, it has to be gi ven an organization, channels of communication have to be set up, and statutes and rules have to be drawn up. The relationships between its members then become less personal and less direct. These are well-known social forms. It is none the less significant that Simmel analysed the effect of their demography on life in common, whether this meant the masses, or associations into which individuals were recruited by cooption. He wrote : ' Some contribution to the formation of a social con­ sciousness is precipitated as the caput mortuum of every human relationship

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and every act of self-interest that is not purely self-defeating. This occurs after their products have been extracted from the individual consciousness and 39 distilled through thousands of fine channels. ' This is not necessarily so. Moreover, the reciprocal actions - need we be reminded? - from which these networks arise are of a mental character. In my view, they set in train social representations whose notions and images filter out motives, desires and preferences, so that there remain only those that can be exchanged and shared. If you wish to communicate successfully with another person you need to select the gestures and to convey meaning to interests depictable in a framework accessible to you both. Without this, no dialogue takes place, and both of you remain imprisoned in your own, incom­ municable experience, like a tourist travelling in a country without knowing language. These representations prepare the various heterogeneous and indi­ vidual kinds of content - psychological, economic etc . - for taking on a collective form. Simmel wrote: ' It is only once these contents have been absorbed in reciprocal actions between individuals that they become social. ' 40 The representations indeed allow one to try out mentally the course these actions will take , to perceive the forms it is appropriate to give them and to foresee their consequences. They even allow us to invent very varied ones in our imagination, as town-planners do when they are drawing up plans for a town, or revolutionaries do who wish to see a new dawn upon earth. The architecture of these imaginary networks of society, which are superimposed upon the tangible ones, is abundantly provided for. In this sense society is ' my representation in a completely different sense from that of the external world; 1 that is to say, it rests upon the activity of the consciousness. ' 4 It will be readily agreed that such mental constructs can be extended into reality. Before we associate with a person or a group, we must certainly have some idea of possible links, and foresee the way in which they will be forged and the satisfactions we shall obtain from them. It is like drawing a map of the walks we want to take and the places we would like to see before we visit a town. Certain sectors of thi s map sometimes become as familiar as those in our own town. In a word, the social forms, whether in the field of relationships or geography, are representations as well as being real. Let us quote Simmel once more : 'The dreadful conflict between the whole and the part is mainly resolved for the mind through its ability to represent the whole as a form. ' 42 Here we shall not go into the whys and wherefores. What is significant is the fact that these images and notions, which are produced at every moment, in the course of more or less ephemeral encounters, through conversations, disputes and rumours, have such wide repercussions. This is even more so because, once they have arisen, we are capable of objectifying them, of caus­ ing to exist in the outside world what we have conceptualized in our own inner world. Thus the representations are not so much mental creations that have social effects as social creations that are constituted through the channel of the mind and consequently become real. Simmel emphasized that: The objectification of the mind provides the fonn that makes the conservation and accumulation of mental labour possible; it is the most significant and the

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most far-reaching of the historical categories of mankind . For it transforms

into a historical fact what is biologically so doubtfu l : hereditary transmission. If to be not only a descendant but also an heir denotes the superiority of man over animals, then the objectification of the mind in words and works, organizations and traditions is the basis for this distinction by which man 3 takes possession of his world, or even of any world at all. 4

When representations have undergone this slow elaboration, their hold is considerable, because they are no longer distinguishable from the world of collective experience that reifies them. Insinuating themselves into every kind of reciprocal action and every social circle, they become - I risk this analogy, for which I crave indulgence - the genetic code of successive combinations. It is as if the mental mass that is circulating were shaping values, behaviour, languages and personal qualities, associating them into a whole, each cell of which sustains and completes the rest. It is a whole whose reality begins to resemble its image, and this is why human beings seize possession of it. A Simmel is not easy to fathom. He can never be caught in the act, so greatly do shades of meaning and lines of escape proliferate. His conception of society and sociology defies any kind of analysis that wishes to crystallize it at some fixed point. Admittedly I have expressed this conception in an abridged fashion, and even altered it in several respects. Nevertheless it seems to me to retain what is essential and to take into account the antinomy between the molecular and the mass scale - physicists would say the ' field' scale - which is the principle behind it. It is a principle that reduces to very little the antagonism so often evoked between individualism and the collectivity (or the holism, if you wish) , but which conceals real problems. In the human sciences as in the natural sciences, these problems deal with relationships between microscopic interactions, based on spontaneous movements, and more com­ plex and more reified configurations. 44 To tackle the former we must overturn the hierarchy of facts in the social sciences that began with ' States and unions, the priesthood, family structures, the nature of corporations and factories, the formation of classes and the industrial division of labour; all this, as well as the principal organs and analogous systems, seem to constitute society and thus constitute the field of the science that is concerned with it. '45 At least, this is how I have understood it. Consequently, for me the vision of a society made up of two subsets acquires meaning, the one arising from the networks created between individuals who are constantly forming them and splitting them up; the other arising from the representations they share in order to shape a common reality. I would add that these notions suffice to describe most interactions in a general way, above all those of daily life. But, in my view, they are more especially appropriate to our de-industrialized, or post-industrial society, as it is called. After being rendered comparatively harmless, and having codified the solidarities occur­ ring in sickness, education and even work, institutions henceforth exert their action upon it from a distance. The administration and the army, those bureau­ cratic monsters, have withdrawn from the daily scene . They seek to make their

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presence neutral, their action painless. They become intermingled with, and even melt into, technology, so that one pays less attention to their specific characteristics. The Ch urch itself, formerly ever-present with its strident cere­ monies and flow of priests, monks and nuns, is retreating, effaci ng itself and literally closing down. When the same priest says mass in several parishes, the pari sh priest is fini shed: he has become a second-rank person as discreet as his religion. One can hardly any longer distinguish the representatives of these institutions by their dress or speech, and even less in their mores (how can one recognize a soldier in civilian clothes or a priest who no longer wears a cassock?). It is as if they had dropped out of everyday life, and left the stage of society. Where, therefore , does observable social life exist? It is in the daily contacts, the comings and goings of human beings moving around, working, coming up against one another, eating out more often than at home, exchanging conver­ sation and news, contacting each other via the ' M initel' telephone system, jostling one another in the big stores, jammed together in public transport, invading the tourist attractions in waves, establishing relationships that make men or women into concubines, and that break up just as easily. Everything that occurs in statu nascenti is everything that is manifested in society. What is public here meets up with what is private, and individuals both dissolve into the collective networks and yet set themselves apart from them, affirming their individual status. What is constantly asked is: where does the individual end, where does society begin? Here we find the present-day answer: society exists where the individual is real. In the end, this vision justifies a psychological explanation of social phe­ nomena. It excludes the absolutes that 'freeze ' reciprocal action between individuals and imposes external ends upon them. Simmel evinces no great nostalgia for a society of origins, whether it be the authentic community or the cohesive society, as with Durkheim. No more does he trust h imself to a society ' of arrival ' , towards which those of the past and our own might be moving, such as a rational and socialist society. Only the ebb and flow of social forms, the disquieting mobility of history, count. In that fragment of detailed original truth that constitutes his autobiography, Simmel described it: In c ontemporary history the dissolving of all that is of substance, is absolute and eternal, into the flu idity of things, into historical mobility and psycho­ logical reality, seems to me protected from an incons istent subjectivity and scepticism, if for consistent values of s ubstance we substitute the reciprocal and living activity of elements that in their tum are subjected to an infinite 46 process of dissolution.

Now, if one considers the matter closely, this ever-moving relativity of actions between individuals maintains them in a state where they are both subjects and objects in a society. They never cease to be present, with the experience they have lived through, their beliefs and the wound of what is ephemeral in their heart, because nothing scars over or for long becomes matter to sustain them. This is what, in the light of history, explains why Simmel opted in favour of psychology . I need not justify this choice, as I

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previously did for Durkheim and Weber, because he took it upon himself to do so. I have even less need to excuse him, as many have believed themselves 47 in duty bound to do, in order to admit him into the company of the founding fathers of sociology. If they deem it necessary to amputate from him the most vital parts of his thought, and at the same time disable themselves, I am not keen to follow their example. From this viewpoint his work retains an undeniable originality . It is true that it can be approached through very many of his writings, which are full of passion and disparate, and often brief and incisive. But we shall content ourselves with only one , which gives access to the main point: The Philosophy of Money. Starting from the characteristics of the economy , of which money is the motive force and symbol, he revealed the culture that makes it possible. Rarely has the enigma of the bonds between the material and intellectual forces that shape an era - our own - been delineated with such vigour. I see no sociological work that has gone so far, and in several directions at once, whilst preserving such methodological rigour. His analyses provide me with an opportunity to emphasize the cognitive and mental aspect of social phenom­ ena, of which there has been very little question up to now.

8

Money as passion and as repre sentation

T h e missing link

In every age passions have arisen that money has incarnated. Before capital­ ism ' s obsession with profit, humanity had known the fever for gold, and, at the time of the Renaissance, the desire to hoard it. Certainty of its magical powers had been shared by most of the peoples of early antiquity and many others. Yet money is pre-eminently missing from the human sciences. How does it come about that this ever-present and powerful factor of modern times has concerned research so little, whereas we expend so much energy in earning it and we handle it every day? Why is this form of communication that we learn about from our earliest childhood and which colours our relationships subject to censorship? Why does it not interest those who assiduously study group morality and individual rationality? Will it be said that such a study is a part of economics? This is undoubtedly so, but we must remember that it is 1 ' of a nation, an institution and a faith of which we speak ' . Money does indeed summon up both powerful images of wealth and endless figures, but it is the very unending nature of the figures that blurs their value and reveals the powerful hold they have over us, making us like grasshoppers and ants, exciting our cupidity and avarice. And, on this score, we learn in vain that the number of banks exceeds that of bookshops and museums, that corruption is a widespread tendency, and in vain we wax indignant over the poverty of some and the opulence of others, because research obstinately fails to recognize the role of money. By a strange paradox , we speak of communica­ tion, of consumer preference, of c lasses and social roles, of feelings of love and hatred between individuals, as if we were living in a society that had not invented money or credit. Do not these serve as a backcloth for the numerous relationships between individuals, as if we were living in a society that had not invented money or credit. Do not these serve as a backcloth for the numerous relationships between individuals, do they not epitomize human aspirations at any given moment? One might well doubt this as we leaf through 2 a famous book devoted to these relationships, and another that depicts French society today in a most detailed fashion, dealing with everything - emotions,

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motivations, duties, powers, table habits, body care - everything except 3 money. It is as if no one was seeking to grow rich, no one judged other people according to their bank account, and no one purchased sentiments and convictions. 'Your money is of no interest to us, ' the human sciences seem to say to those that are the object of their study . Yet it is enough to pronounce the word before a crowd of people to see, absolutely immediately, how their gaze becomes one of admiration and how they bow their heads. It awakens in them the desire to enjoy money, no matter how varied the ways in which this desire is satisfied. It is a figure of pleasure and power, reflecting the image of the countless possibilities concealed by possessing it. The epitome of all human appetites, money exercises over the individual and collective mind a sort of fascination that makes it the sole element in our secular civilization which is both devilish and divine, the one dominating all others. At the same time it is revered and feared, and judged to be both monstrous and miraculous. We behave as if it is forbidden to possess or even touch it. It is hidden away as if it were something that cannot be gazed upon and about which we should never speak. At the same time we covet the prestige that its stigmata confer, as if it were superior to that of one ' s good name, merit, reputation and honours, and was the epitome of them all. The great intellectual and social revolution of the nineteenth century was needed for the role of money to become recognized and valued. Then it became endowed with an affective and metaphysical power hitherto unknown. The imperative of pleasure, ' Thou shalt earn money ' , replaced the imperative of toil : 'Thou shalt earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow. ' I think we can perceive this feverish circulation of cash, with banknotes and coins formerly felt to be impure and contaminated, passing from one hand to another, in Tocqueville 's portrait of societies in which money has acquired an extreme mobility - that is to say it changes hands incessantly,

raising or lowering the prestige of individuals and families - everybody is feverishly intent on making money or, if already rich, on keeping his wealth intact. Love or gain, a fondness for business careers, the desire to get rich at all costs , a crav ing for material comfort and easy living quickly become 4 ruling pas sions under a despotic govemment.

These themes predominate in the classical novels. Money, an ostentatious passion representing modernity, is the guiding motif of the plot. As the bearer of illusions and hopes, reasons and arguments hinge upon it in a Trollope or a Balzac novel. It serves as a pivot for the traits of the characters, providing the motives for their action. It marks off some, carrying them to the very pinnacle of society, where, because of their fortune, they make a name for themselves, and others it casts down into the mire and into obscurity. In Me/moth reconcilie Balzac describes the all-powerfulness of the Bank of France: It is a place in which one tots up what kings are worth, where peoples are weighed up, where systems are judged . . . where ideas and beliefs are given numerical values . . . where God himself is a borrower and gives as security

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the revenue he gets from souls, because the Pope holds his current account here. If I can find a soul with whom to negotiate, is it not there?

Throughout his work he lauds the great accounts book as the sole book of the century. Zola summons up the magical power of these two short syllables, ' money ' , in the whirlwind o f speculations that sweep through those new temples, the stock exchanges. Filthy lucre takes on the appearance of a Homeric epic or a harsh human comedy in which the reader shares the excitements and vicissi­ tudes, until the victorious new heroes pass through the gates of money that open on to happiness and opulence. That is, unless defeat does not deliver them over to the vilest debauchery and the worst violence, pushing them down into society ' s underworld. Like science, the contemporary novel is not interested in money. It no longer mentions, as being among the motives that make characters tremble, their investments and their incomes, the dreams awakened by good fortune. Wealth no longer serves to seduce men and women, taming their impulses and causing them to turn aside from a love affair or a marriage and plunge into another, to the neglect of their old friends. On the other hand, it has become natural to evaluate and classify books, beyond their intrinsic merit, by the number of copies sold - the magic of the bestseller! - by the advance paid to the author, and by speculating upon what the royalties will yield. Behind the scenes commercially the question is asked whether it is better to entrust one 's destiny to such and such a publisher who is past master of publicity, skilful in ' hyping ' through advertising a work that he or she seeks to promote, rather than to another publisher who possesses a quality logo but who employs less rumbus­ tious means. Only the sensational press and the televised soap operas that flatter the public taste still have money as their diabolus ex machina, the tempter, corrupter or saviour. It has certainly not disappeared, for as Peguy wrote: 'When no name is given, it is this which is named. When no introduc­ tion is made, it is this which is introduced. When one does not think, it is of this that one is thinking. •5 But this transformation in literature, from a ceaseless discourse about money to utter silence, is symptomatic of how a discovery slips out of the conscious­ ness into the banality of a shared unconscious. On what everyone talks about, there is nothing more to say. It is thus relegated to the domain of economics; the works that tackle the subject in the other sciences are few. It is as if one believed that each of us knows too much about it to risk talking about it, that, according to Ernst Jiinger's expression, ' money which represents one of the greatest mysteries in the world ' conceals too many secrets in our societies to be brought into the light of day. This highlights Simmel's audacity when in 1 889 he presented a paper entitled ' On the psychology of money ' .6 Several articles followed this, which proves that the subject was close to his heart. At the turn of the century the task was to explain a world in transformation. What distinguished it and constituted its originality? What situation had it thrown up for a new culture and intelligence

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to become so necessary? Simmel conceived of money as having broken free of the bonds that had up to then fettered it. Through it an era was coming, not to discover itself, as the saying went, but to manifest a potential of energy with unsuspected properties. It was not only the importance of the economy that would cause the triumph of such a powerful force, but a brand-new, disturbing vision that was luring humanity into paths unexplored throughout history. The error of the majority who imagine that money is the form of things themselves, of capital and the market, and nothing else, was quite simply incomprehensible. But the singular feature of money - namely, that it has its own laws and is concerned with itself alone - had been forgotten. Yet this is the reason for its attraction and power. That someone should seek to possess it quite simply for the sake of doing so, whether a miser or a spendthrift, when it eludes being really possessed by anyone, when it sets the most original minds working, when it is the thing that is most despised, is astounding. This astonishment characterized the era. Simmel sought the key to modernity in money, through the articles I have referred to, expounding this in The Philosophy of Money, a book published in 1 900. It is as if, through a succession of apertures, he allowed us to glimpse a reality that seems far distant. Turning his back upon economics, before returning once more to it, Simmel asserted that everything relating to money touched upon the most intimate details of culture and life in general. He wrote: The historical phenomenon of money, the idea and structure of which I shall attempt to deve lop out of feelings of value, out of praxi s in relation to things

and the reciprocal relationships between people as its presupposition, is studied in the second part of the book in its effects upon the inner world upon the vitality of indiv iduals, upon the l inking of their fates, upon culture in general. 7

Money is much more than money : this is one mean ing of this preliminary statement. What therefore is the daunting question that it poses to human beings? It is the old enigma of the value of things and of exchanges between them - in short, of the creation of a bond that is peculiar to them. The question has become all the more daunting because money has become for many the true bond that our society has forged, and the model of our culture. In other words, although for a very long time money has played a role in exchange, production and domination, it has never been so determining as it is today. This is why the modem economy is monetary before being capitalist or indus­ trial. In this spirit it fashions relationships between indiv iduals, their senti­ ments and modes of thought. The formula for the corresponding new human type must be sought in money. Simmel enlarged this viewpoint. We must share thi s, if we wish to under­ stand both the society in which we live and why nothing that is inhuman is foreign to that society. Simmel had one unchanging view, however: if econo­ mics makes money the focus and key to our modes of action and relationships, economics is by no means the focus and the key to our social existence. We must dig beneath and discover the inner, and even unconscious, roots of the

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One of the Greatest Mysteries

human type homo oeconomicus of which it is the outward sign. This is one of the aims of his book and one of its rare merits, as was immediately 8 recognized. But why, if l may be allowed the expression, beat about the bush? For Simmel the enigma of money lies not in our economy but in our psycho­ logy . Thus we must go beyond the point where Marx had left matters. In his Preface Simmel wrote : -

-

Methodologically, this basic intention can be expressed in the following

manner. The attempt is made to construct a new storey beneath historical materialism such that the exploratory value of the incorporation of economic life into the causes of intellectual culture is preserved, while these economic forms themselves are recognized as the result of more profound valuations 9 and currents of psychological or even metaphysical preconditions.

Let us dwell for a moment on these over-allusive sentences. They contain an interesting elucidation of the conditions for explanation in sociology and of the difference in method between Simmel and Marx . Let us first consider the conditions. Explanation in sociology forced him to proceed in two direc­ tions. On the one hand, this was towards the facts of biology and even physics, which influence the make-up of human beings and form their environment. One can therefore touch upon objective needs and universal laws. Now, the sciences of society, in order to join with the sciences of nature, must have a basis for their objective character generally, and this must be through psycho­ logy. How can one avoid psychology when it is, so to speak, the ultimate link in the human sciences, the one closest to nature, and the first link in the natural sciences, the one closest to society, in the ideal chain that joins them together? Without it an unbridgeable gap would separate the two universes of reality. On the other hand, in sociology an explanation looks towards metaphysics and philosophy. Is it not there that the great problems posed in a culture are clustered? The gamut of solutions that it conjures up range between sublimated speculation and concrete propositions, which are of value here and now, in a particular political situation, relating on a precise date to a particular intellec­ tual crisis, in a particular state of economic and moral turmoil . When philo­ sophy penetrates into the widest possible public domain, it uncovers solutions affecting most human beings. In spite of a choice to remain positive, any attempt by science to account for the phenomena that beset a particular society risks running into the sand or becoming meaningless if it grows out of touch with such solutions. Philosophy invests them with a serious note and a dimen­ sion arising from a conception of the world. We should not tum a deaf ear to what Simmel here demanded, given his point of departure and the aim he had in mind. If thi s is forgotten, the task of sociology, which must seek so far as possible both a scientific explanation and a truth that is fully meaningful, disintegrates; it loses its bearings. As for method, Simmel asked that the interpretation of social facts in eco­ nomic terms be extended by an interpretation in psychological terms. This in tum must again be interpreted in accordance with an economic structure, and so on, ad infinitum. True, but this comes down to stating that one layer of

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reality which from a given viewpoint depends o n economic causes can, from another viewpoint, depend on psychological causes. What therefore was Sim­ mel 's special contribution on this point? In plain language, he asserted that there was no absolute difference between what Marx terms the structure and the infrastructure, the objective bases of society and culture. Thus he estab­ lished as a principle what others establish in practice, often with no principle at all. The sole recognizable thing is the succession of layers of reality to account for a particular phenomenon, without any kind of ultimate reality ever being attained. It is likely that what gives Simmel ' s theory its strength also gives it its fragility. By following the distortions wrought by money we move from a psychological explanation to an economic explanation, and back again to a psychological explanation, in a kind of progression that we cannot see how to stop. It is as if one were reading a novel whose author fails to choose between various possible endings. A similar uncertainty has engendered many misunder­ standings, and harmed the dissemination of his theory. Yet it lights up a whole area of our culture, and complements what Marx discovered. To illustrate this complementarity, I shall quote once more one of his German contemporaries, Goldscheid, whose terminology is very close to his own, but more precise: Marx might well have been able to state that no thread in his research sought to be psychological. And in fact, certain passages in The Philosophy of

Money read like a translation into psychological language of Marx ' s discus­

sion of economics. But it would be very unfair to S immel ' s book to treat it

as if it were such a mere translation . Just as

The Philosophy of Money could

certainly not have been written if Marx ' s Kapital had not preceded it, it is likewise important to emphasize that Simmel ' s book contains an addition to

the es sential work of Marx that did not previously exist in social science, not even in the attempts made to add to it.

10

These sentences, which echo in many a passage Simmel 's writings, do not boil down to making a declaration of any kind. They enunciate a principle: money is different from being a historical entity such as capital, or an economic instrument. It represents the Ariadne thread used to explore the gyrations of our society and, beyond this, human subjectivity in general. I could not explain in simpler terms the premises of this theory and the philosophical ambition that enhances it. The world of obj ects and the world of values

Money is our Socrates. Concerning his philosophical mentor, Plato used to say : 'What would Socrates have thought of such a question, and then of such and such another question?' In the same way, as soon as we see an object or hear it spoken of, we ask: 'How much does it cost? ' And sometimes - and this is not the same thing - 'How much is it worth?' The amount of money has no importance here. Something more elementary strikes us: to ask what is the price or the value of an object separates us from it and introduces a distance

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One of the Greatest Mysteries

between the person that is us and the world to which it belongs. We no longer think of the book we want to read, or the clothes we would like, but to this one as compared with other books or clothes. We are thinking of a sign that places them in a relationship and compares them. Thus, no matter what the answers are to the questions of price and value, they will represent an exact recording, registered in a seismographic currency, made up of countless comparisons, of purchases and sales, of the object that we obtain or dispose of. To record this there are two operations: immobility fixed upon one thing, and fluidity of movement of the sign that links it to a host of things. In the end it is the paradox between a discontinuity of choices and a continuity of acts, between the subjective preference of some person and the objective measure of some thing. From the former to the latter, money is possibly a material ideograph, representing in the external world the extremely varied fluctuations in our inner world. In all this, what does it mean to tum towards psychology and, if I may so express it, make room for it below economics? It is to follow the path through which these fluctuations that take place in the very heart of individuals, revealing their intellectual or affective power, are exteriorized. And, since our economic life depends for a large part on these powers, it draws from them a number of psychological characteri stics. I leave on one side the metaphysical implications of the question to which Simmel attributed such importance. This is not because it is uninteresting - to a certain extent it can even be said to be enthralling. But neither here nor elsewhere do I claim to be reproducing his exact words. His vocabulary is dated, and he was unable to restrain himself in the way he used it. The fact remains that for there to be value, and then money to objectify it, human be ings must have the ability to place a distance between themselves and things. Such an act of separation, of distancing our­ selves in relationship to what surrounds us, starts, as is apparent, from infancy. At the very moment when the baby learns how to di stinguish its own body from that of its mother, a movement begins that, in one sense, continues throughout its life. Before this action and the coming of awareness, everything appears as undifferentiated. Nothing makes it possible to distinguish between what comes from oneself, from one ' s own body and what belongs to things of the external world, which come near or recede. Individuals possess only a mental 'content' that relates to forms, colours and movements, and other qualities of things or persons. They observe that something is blue , that something moves, that this is large, that this is smiling - and nothing more. They can undoubtedly place them in a relationship and react to them, but are unable to decide whether they exist in reality or are illusory, whether they are really blue and large, or simply appear so. The fact remains that the capacity to form representations is primary, for it allows one to grasp whether this kind of content is independent of the act of thinking and perception. All kinds of content, whether of things or persons, whether or not they share in our inner life, whether real or imaginary , have a life of their own. However, one can only perceive this and take it into consideration when the ' self' of a subject becomes detached from the object. Simmel wrote:

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Subject and object are born in the same act: logically, by presenting the

conceptual ideal content first as a content of representation, and then as a content of objective reality; psychologically, when the still ego-less repres­ entation, in which person and object

are

undifferentiated, becomes divided

and gives rise to a distance between the self and its object, through which 11 each of them becomes a separate entity.

The above can be taken for granted. Let us now come to the consequence: we are able to represent to ourselves two orders of phenomena that are distinct and opposite. On the one hand, there is ' what i s ' , the order that prevails in the world. Thus we can describe the movement of the planets or of atoms, the behaviour of animals and the geography of a country, and any other element of reality. In the event, the facts are inert, and do not concern us. More precisely, since they are uniform and equal in relation to natural laws, they remain mute to our desires, our comings and goings, and our sacrifices and judgements. ' The importance of being ' which is theirs comes from somewhere more remote than the existence of a human being. Yet, on the other hand, we cannot avoid arranging the elements of reality in a different way, in order that they can respond to our desire or serve our aims. By so doing, we introduce into them a part of ourself, that part which Shakespeare calls, ' the thing I am ' . This distinguishes and sets us apart, whether as a person o r i n the shape o f an imaginary being, for instance, a deity. Because of this, equality and uniformity in objects are nullified. It is as if they were transported to a world where the yardstick is different; a hierarchy is revealed according to which one becomes superior to another, better than the other, from the viewpoint of the desire or the goal to which it serves as a means. For the monotonous sameness of nature is substituted a difference, and even an inequality, which defines the quality of each. Montaigne stated the contrast: 'Resemblance does not so much make one as difference makes other' (Essais, III. 1 3) . Then we see the object becoming split in two. At the same time it is this: the bread that I eat, the table at which I sit; and also this: the bread that I prefer to meat, the table that I cherish because it was bequeathed to me. Is this not a way of stating both that they exist, and that they have value? One can assert generally that value introduces an order between things that is not dependent upon the order they possess in reality, or on the way in which they are represented. It is plain that to place a tree or an animal at the top of our scale of values has no relation to their genetic mechanisms and their place in the evolution of the species. What does a palm tree or a horse count for in that evolution, as compared with the role that they play in the human imagination, or the sacrifices to which one submits in order to possess them? In short, the world of reality and the world of value have each their own mode of existence. The conjunction ' and' has here not the copulative meaning that grammar assigns to it. On the contrary, it divides and opposes the repres­ entation of one world from that of the other. The world of reality remains outside the individual, whereas that of value arises from within, from one ' s self. The world o f value tends progressively t o predominate a s this is realized. Simmel stated this as follows:

264

One of the Greatest Mysteries Valuation as a real psychological occurrence is part of the natural world; but

what we mean by v aluation, its conceptual meaning, is something inde­ pendent of this world; is not part of it, but is rather the whole world viewed

from a particular vantage-point. We are rarely aware of the fact that our whole life, from the point of view of consciousness, consists in experiencing and judging values, and that it acquires meaning and significance only from the fact that the mechanically unfolding elements of reality possess an infi­

nite variety of values beyond their objective substance. At any moment when our mind is not simply a passive mirror of reality - which perhaps never happens, since even objective perception can arise only from valuation - we live in a world of values which arranges the contents of reality in an auto­ 12 nomous order.

With a host of precautions, Simmel authorized us to think that reality itself may well be shaped by value. In what way? By recreating the order of things from a particular viewpoint, that of the subject who represents them to himself according to categories that are peculiarly his own. What is the cause of value, if we consider it in isolation? Contrary to many thinkers, Simmel answered that such a question can no more have an answer than the question: what is being? We create value, we use it constantly; by our choices, desires and judgements, we are continually extracting value from the most trifling things. It is impossible to go beyond this. But in the end this suffices in order to underline clearly what was proposed at the beginning, namely, that subjectiv­ ity is the prime reason of value. As Simmel pointed out: The characteristic feature of value , as it appears in contrast to reality, is usually called its subj ectiv ity. S ince one and the same object can have the

highest degree of value for one soul and the lowest for another, and v ice versa, and since on the other hand the most extensive and extreme differences between objects are compatible with equality of value, there appears to remain only the subject with his customary or exceptional permanent or 3 changing, moods and responses as the ground for valuation. 1

For Simmel subjectivity was something very different from the spontaneous reaction of individuals who give their opinion according to their moods, and, when faced with an object, say, 'I like it' or 'I dislike it' , according to the whims of their taste . Subjectivity is the outcome of an affective and mental process of maturation in the course of which the individuals separate them­ selves from, but confront, reality. We fashion for ourselves a ' self' capable of establishing a scale of preferences, showing what we appreciate and what we detest, and capable of expressing our autonomy in relation to environmental elements. Did not Simmel write that ' the value of an object does indeed depend upon the demand for it, but upon a demand that is no longer purely instinctive ' ? 14 True subjectivity is asserted in that social and historical condi­ tion when human beings become conscious of the fact that they live in two worlds, and acquire mastery over both of them, in the same way as they conquer, through work, the unfathomable absurdity of life. Note, however, that the idea of value is not easy to establish, or, moreover, to determine. In this respect it resembles the famous ' black hole ' of the

Money as passion and as representation

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astronomers, about which it is easier to say what it is not than what it is. In its literal meaning, it should designate a place where there is no matter. In fact the idea means the opposite. It derives from the vernacular. In English a ' black hole' is a prison, as in the expression ' the Black Hole of Calcutta ' . In this sense a black hole is a prison in which matter is shut away . Simmel seemed to say that the notion of value expresses the desire or need for something separated from its effective content. However, he was able to raise it a stage higher, recognizing in it the philosophical power of a subjectivity that judges, orders and measures. It encloses the world of realities in a world of evaluations made by a mass of individuals who compare their preferences and settle their differences. This fact, which we can observe in any market where buying and selling takes place, or where goods are produced and consumed, was not Simmel's discovery. The novelty lies in the fact that he extended it to the whole of society and, in a general way , transferred it from economics to sociology, without any moral and religious additions. This is much more important than the uncertain light that he cast on the notion of value, whose mysteries are far from being dispelled. The time has come to pose the main question: how does money appear in the world of . values? What a strange invention it is that human beings have discovered ! Undoubtedly involuntarily, for they have never forgiven them­ selves for it, and in scarcely indirect fashion have since avowed that they would like to get rid of it. When one reviews the history of humanity sum­ marily, it can be seen that in every stage of culture a promise has been made to abolish it in order to create a genuine relationship, free from its artifices. In Apocalypse, D. H. Lawrence expressed this ancient promise made by Christi­ anity and taken up by socialism by saying that what was needed was to abolish the false inorganic relationships, above all those that touch upon money, and to re-establish the living and organic relationships with the cosmos, the sun and the earth, with humanity and the nation, and the family. Now this imperative need to re-establish a unity between reality and value still appears to come up against money, which on the one hand, divides them, and on the other hand smooths the passage from reality to value. Thus we should begin by understanding this transition, which in any case is a salto mortale for any theory. Money is the clearest example of the transformation of a form into matter, of a mental image into a thing. It proves to be the means of representing an invisible relationship by a visible object, cash that can be handled, the bank­ note or cheque that passes from one person to another and causes goods to circulate from one place to another. Even more, particularly in the modern world, it ensures the preponderance of the system of representation, and therefore of convention and symbol, over the sum total of objects and effective relationships. Thus it imprints on a substance a figment of thought - letter of credit, decimal money, etc. - which distinguishes it from other substances and allows it to be recognized. This is self-evident. Through its physical character it substitutes itself for things, and serves in exchange; through its quality and

266

One of the Greatest Mysteries

weight, it lends itself to measurement and to being moved around. Through its intellectual character, it is a store of value, connecting signs and allowing calculations to be made . Both idea and thing, money fulfils its task of repres­ entation of a mass of wealth and human needs. But it is also a social repres­ entation, in the same way as are myths, religions and any other collective system of signs. It is essentially from thi s standpoint that we recognize the hold it exerts over us, as well as the reason for its existence . I shall therefore assume , in order to make the study of it less onerous, that its genesis conforms to the processes through which a society forms such representations, whose general character I have established elsewhere. On the one hand, there is objectification , in which individuals ' mental content, their judgements and ideas, are separated out and take on an external character. They appear as an autonomous force or substance that populates the world in which we live and act. Meyerson observed: ' Mental states do not remain states, they project themselves, take shape, tend to become consoli­ dated and become objects. ' 15 This comes down to endowing our abstractions and images with a material character, changing words into things, and giving substance to each thought. First conceived by the intelligence, a notion or abstract quality ends up by appearing as physical and visible. The word becomes flesh: at every moment we set this parable in action, believing that a word must correspond to a reality . Thus the notion of charisma, fluid and imprecise, seems to us to be embodied in the person of Gandhi, quelling a human tide with his frail form, or in the gesture of Pope John Paul II blessing the crowds. One says of them, or of others, that they have charisma, as if one were remarking on a physical quality such as size or the timbre of the voice. Or the end of the world, a widespread mythical image, acquires substance in our eyes in the form of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. It i s para­ doxical that a common reality is so often born from what is lacking in it, from a transformation of the mental into the physical. In spite of its frequency, this transformation is a very mysterious characteristic of thought and language, which impart to their imaginary creations the force of concrete substance. The other process, that of anchoring, is recognizable in the way in which one representation penetrates those that already exist in society, giving meaning and utility to it. Thus for each and every one of us it becomes a means of interpreting behaviour, of classifying things and persons according to a scale of values and - no mean feat - naming them. Everything that causes them to act, to fulfil a function and establishe s a relationship between them conforms to a dominant representation, which does not conceive them as they are seen by a detached and all-seeing mind, but through the filter of an individual consciousness or of a group in its environment. Inevitably our view must be that we cannot represent something to ourselves save as a repres­ entation made by someone. Let us consider the following example. If scientific medicine spreads among a group, we then see its categories used to describe healthy and sick people, to detect the symptoms of an illness and explain certain pathological condi­ tions of everyday life. The members of this group tend to judge most sick-

Money

as passion and as representation

267

nesses as having an organic cause and stipulate that on ly medicines have the power to cure them. They no longer pay any attention to physical causes, and even less to supernatural ones and spells that traditional medicine used to env isage. On the other hand, medicine becomes a source of authority and dictates rules relating to what one should or should not believe, what one should or should not do as regards sexuality, sleep or insomnia, what one ought to eat and what one should abstain from eating . which persons to avoid so as not to be infected, and so on . It lays down values according to which one should behave, associate with one another and work for general physical well being . If they are repeated a sufficient number of times, these precepts give rise to habits, and are obeyed as if moral duties were at stake. Are we to flout them? Can we do so, even supposing we wished? We would condemn ourselves to sickness and death. Only groups can do so that accept a different kind of medicine, submitting themselves to different conventions and sharing different ideas. Now, such an example is not unique. The economy works in the same way, when it bids us avoid inflation, accept salary reductions, acquiesce in unem­ ployment, and so on . Whatever the purport of a representation, it becomes social if by being ' anchored' firmly in some part of the environment it fulfi l s 16 the tasks society requires o f it, becoming its instrument, to such an extent that vital problems that are constantly threatening seem to find a new, shared solution. We should note in passing that the sl ightest fact, the most banal link. between people, by its very platitudinousness, has had stored away a concentrated amalgam of these processes, a hoard of representations, just as a coin presents us with an abbreviated version of history and the economy . Once money was represented in the form of a purse filled with gold pieces, then as ingots stored away in a strongroom, not to mention the woollen stocking so dear to the peasant as the paradigm of private savings. Now it has taken on the form of cheques, banknotes and magnetic bank cards. In every case a soc iety is rep­ resenting and epitomizing itself in the form it gives to the substance of money and in the way it uses it in order to ensure it spontaneously fulfils its functions. It is in no way exaggerated to state that with Simmel the theory of money rests upon the process of objectification. He wrote: 'Money belongs to this category of reified social functions. The function of exchange, as a direct interaction between indiv iduals, becomes crystallized in the form of money as an i n ­ dependent structure.' 1 7 Money i s a Gorgon whose gaze turns to stone anyone who looks it full in the face, but it is nevertheless an artistic Gorgon which removes what it kil ls from a living piece of property in order to immortalize it in its works. Yet we shall discover that anchorage is necessari ly and implicitly its other foundation , the one which stresses its originality in the modern economy. Why, you will ask, does objectification get close to the heart of value, and how does it help us to understand the eni gma? If we believe Simmel, a law of ' distancing ' is revealed in intellectual, personal and social life . Whether it is metaphysical or psychological , it comes down to the same thing: it removes

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the object away from the subject, multiplies the obstacles and intermediaries, delays their coming together, and creates a difference between them. Every­ thing encourages us to overcome this difference, either directly or in round­ about ways that increase for us the value of the object. The example that economic life provides tends to indicate to us that distance and value are two associated notions. Moreover, as we have discovered, from the beginning the undifferentiated unity among us, the environment and people , between the elementary need for nourishment and its satisfaction, is shattered. So long as unity lasts, the things that surround us, such as running water, the air we breathe, mother' s milk for the new-born baby, intermingle in our body and in those immediately around us. And these things, which are everything, have no value. This is what is wrongly called their 'free ' quality. However, we must give up this state of happy union, and cancel this indistinct, spontaneous unity. This action creates the gap between what is peculiar to us and what is not, between what accedes effortlessly to our desires and what resists them. Ana­ logous to weaning, which is a trial of strength between mother and child, it is a test we are constantly undergoing. We surpass ourselves, if one may say so, in the sense that our field of consciousness enlarges to the point that a gap is maintained between our own urges and what corresponds to them externally. From the double viewpoint of physics and psychology, value reveals the distance that lies between them. By establishing this distance the subjective events of impulse and enjoyment become objectified in value; that is to say , there develop from the objective conditions obstacles, depri­ vations, demands for some kind of 'price ' through which the cause or content of impulse and enjoyment is first separated from us and becomes, by this very act, an object and a value . 1 8

However, fo r this to be possible, the process o f objectification must unfold over time. Assuming that one succeeds in isolating it, it comprises four mo­ ments, in the course of which the ego breaks away from things. They can be summed up with extreme precision. Firstly, there is the desire, which stirs up a tension and mars the immediate enjoyment of an object in which we forget ourselves, just as we forget our­ selves in a love affair or in the admiration of a landscape. For it is clear we only desire what begins by withholding itself from us and which, for whatever reason, we forbid ourselves to possess. And our desire is heightened the more the object overwhelms us or, on the contrary , eludes us and slips away from us, whether it be a book, a picture, music or another human being. Distance only magnifies the intensity of the desire that we feel for it and induces us to seek out substitutes in order to postpone the time when the desire is satisfied. The result is that we may have a curious tendency to abandon it in favour of its imitations and possible ersatz copies. The desire of desire, which alone counts, feeds the fear of satisfying it - of finishing the book, of perceiving the same musical theme occurring once more - and distances us from its true object. It leads us to overvalue or undervalue it, as Proust portrayed very well when, having dreamt about Venice for years, he feared the reality of it: ' This

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is what I wanted, with that same desire that once, when I was a child, in the very enthusiasm of departure, destroyed within me the strength to set out: to find myself face to face with my Venetian imaginings. ' 19 This is a manoeuvre on the grand scale constantly practised by desire, turning us away from what is given, and what is the present, in order to attract us to what is refused us, what we enjoyed in the past or hope to enjoy in the future. We would then willingly barter the prize for the shadow, reality for the representation we have of it. But this only to a certain point, for a human being, as Moliere reminds us, ' lives on good broth and not fine language ' . In reality , the desire for an object makes i t an object unlike all others. It is endowed with a coefficient of difference that destines it in advance to be even more or even less than what we expect of it. If to our desire is offered a car or a holiday home, the satisfaction is not confined to the utility we anticipate from them, in travel or leisure. It carries with it a sort of surplus value, by the very fact that the particular desire, which has grown in the meantime, must be even more fulfilled, since it has increased during the period of deprivation. Simmel wrote: This tension, which disrupts the native-practical unity of subject and object and makes us conscious of each in relation to the other, is brought about originally through the mere fact of desire. In desiring what we do not yet own or enjoy, we place the content of our desire outside ourselves . In

empirical life, I admit, the finished object stands before us and is only then desired - if only because, in addition to our will, many other theoretical and emotional events contribute to the objectification of mental contents . . . The object thus formed, which is characterized by its separation from the subject, who at the same time establishes it and seeks to overcome it by his desire, is for us a value . The moment of enjoyment itself, when the opposition 0 between subject and object is effaced, consumes the value . 2

Now, we objectify what stands removed from our desirC', the opposite of what is given us in the full light of reality . We attribute a value to it that is all the greater because the pleasure anticipated eludes our grasp and runs the risk of disappointing us when we have the slightest contact with it. Simmel noted very pertinently: In the final analysis perhaps, reality does not press upon our consciousness

through the resistance that phenomena exert, but we register those repres­

entations which have feelings of resistance and inhibition associated with them, as being objectively real, independent and external to us. Objects are not difficult to acquire because they are valuable, but we call those objects valuable that resist our desire to possess them . 2 1

What does this brutally frank axiomatic statement mean? Simply that the value of a person or a thing is ascribable to the satisfaction and utility that one gives up, and not to those which one obtains. Secondly, it signifies evaluation, which allocates the position of objects on a scale of desirability or aversion. The same nutriment, depending on whether it is prepared from frogs, tortoises or lizards, is very much appreciated by some

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but summons up repugnance in others, and leaves many indifferent. To evalu­ ate signifies interpreting a privileged experience that our desire has acquired from an object, and results from a comparison with others. To what extent can one give up the object, replacing it by a substitute that appears related to it, or may seem too remote, or even foreign? Above all, it concerns knowledge of the desire, of the values that desire attributes to what satisfies it, comparable to knowledge in relation to our emotions, independent of the fact that we feel them at a given moment. This is why we are capable of simulating anger, joy, disappointment etc . , and of recognizing these in other people. Now, this knowledge enables us to keep desire at a distance, to observe and judge it, like the scholar who is studying a culture or the novelist who is investigating a character - and investigating herself or himself. Separated by this means from the subject, values are contemplated with detachment, as if they belonged to a formal domain, and were appreciated as such. In the same way we may happen to appreciate the lines of a car, or the cut of an item of clothing, without any personal desire to own them. All in all, we impute to them the same ideal character and the same intellectual objectivity as those recogniz­ ahle in a square or a triangle. This means that values possess the permanence of a geometrical figure , which remains what it is, even if nobody is looking at it or gives it visible shape on paper or in wood. Then. to label an object beautiful or ugly, a person honest or dishonest, is a judgement whose validity does not depend upon its author. The value, whether positive or negative, henceforth appears as a property of that object or a characteri stic of the person in question. In short, we believe that the judgement i s determined by them, and not by us, and everybody would judge them in the same way, would desire that thing, that man or that woman in the same way . Simmel stated: This extends all the way down to the economic value that we assign to any object of exchange , even though nobody is willing to pay the price, and even though the object is not in demand at a l l and remains unsaleable. Here too a basic capacity of the mind becomes apparent: that of separating itself from the ideas that it conceives and representing these ideas as if they were

independent of its own representation . It is true that every value we experi­ ence is a sentiment; but what we mean by this sentiment is a significant

content which is real ized psychologically through the sentiment yet is neither identical with it nor exhausted by it.

22

It is exhausted even less because after it has undergone this elaboration , each person accepts it by a simple impersonal statement, one that is neither mine nor yours, since in principle it is that of all of us, and is summed up in the phrase : ' that ' s worth so much ' . In other words the value becomes a judge­ mental norm applied to persons and things, which nobody di sputes because nobody needs to do so. Th i rdly there is demand. In one sense it is a choice between several needs and des i res as e xpressed at a given time. In another sense it is the relationship between the value the object possesses in regard to our desire and what results from its evaluation. which has become a quality possessed by that object. We .

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desire to obtain it both because it is attractive to us, because we expect to gain satisfaction from it, and because it stands at a certain point on the scale of comparisons with other objects. Purchasers of a house or a car do not only hope thereby to enjoy the pleasures of the home or the thrill of speed. They want, in addition, a residence in a certain style, a vehicle of a particular make, both enjoying prestige. In this way they are assured that their choice will be approved, and that their acquisition, judged to be useful and fine-looking, will confer a certain social status. Even more than the value, it is the norm of evaluation that, in the event, is interiorized, and we derive as much satisfaction from the fact of acquiring what we are looking for as from the fact that what we are looking for corres­ ponds to criteria conferring well-defined properties upon it, for instance, expensiveness, rarity or originality. You will have noted that demand as a third element is located between subject and object, depending entirely neither upon the one nor the other. In this way it can possess an obligatory, and we may say, moral character. When you are exhorted to ' buy French ', you are asked to drink claret or champagne, to acquire certain clothes or gadgets with refer­ ence to a need and to a higher evaluation of their quality. But the demand for French products becomes a necessity, and to utilize them a duty. Your enjoy­ ment then derives as much from the thing itself as from the surplus value that patriotism adds to it. If it is important for society, demand is also important for the individual. It has to become a specific part of our consciousness so that it can be expressed as a requirement when faced with reality. Consequently, Simmel asserted, it exists only within ourselves as subjects; but in accepting it we sense that we are not merely satisfying a claim imposed by ourselves upon ourselves, or merely acknowledging a quality of the object . . I have observed that the value of things belongs among those mental contents that, while we conceive them, we experience at the same time as something independent within our repre­ sentation, and as detached from the function by which it exists in us. This representation, when its content is a value, appears upon closer scrutiny as a sense that a claim is being made. The 'function ' is a demand which does not exist as such outside ourselves, but which originates in an ideal realm which 23 does not lie within us. .

These arguments are somewhat cryptic. In economics two sorts of theory exist: those which determine value by the quantity of goods supplied, and those that emphasize the quantity of goods demanded. On the one hand, the value depends upon labour time and the resources invested in production and, on the other, on the possibilities and preferences of consumers. These argu­ ments, for Simmel - as opposed to Marx - meant that value is a function less of supply than of demand. This comes down to maintaining that from every viewpoint and in every respect, subjective phenomena are necessarily de­ cisive, and that they are responsible for a factor that is as objective as the price attached to a thing. One has constantly to return to this and take it into consideration. In a certain way advertising consists in turning reality upside down and making people take supply itself for demand. The result of

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the technical possibility of producing something - compact discs, personal computers, portable TV sets etc. - is presented as the response to a need expressed by the public at a given time and in sufficient quantity. In short, one has succeeded in changing the need to sell into the need to buy, and this resolves many problems in the economy. I am here reducing these propositions to their most familiar expression. However this may be, any value of a good increases as the gap is enlarged between the demand to be satisfied and the possibility afforded individuals to achieve satisfaction. This is again a way of objectifying enjoyment i tself. Thus Simmel concluded, The differences in v aluation which have to be distinguished as subjective and objective originate from such v ariations in distance, measured not in terms of enjoyment, in which the distance disappears, but in terms of desire, which is engendered by the distance and seeks to overcome it. At least in the case of those objects whose v aluation forms the basis of the economy, value is the correlate of demand. Just as the world of being is my representation, so 4 the world of v alue is my demand. 2

Yet it is also a certain way of existing that is energized by demand. Demand prevents the need or desire from dying from indifference or satiety. We recall the cheeky reflection of Bernard Shaw : 'There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart ' s desire. The other is to get it. And the latter is the true tragedy. ' We are torn by a dilemma. Demand is a state of uncertainty and tension that we strive to overcome. Yet to satisfy it is to discourage the individual from being constantly alert to his most intimate needs and from constantly seeking out new objects. This lets it fall into the hands of routine. Hence therefore one of the meanings of the utterance : 'The world of value is my demand. ' So long as demand continues to exist and manifest itself, the world of values will retain its vitality and remain distinct. It will not run the risk of falling back into the undivided unity of nature. The expression has another meaning that we have already noted. Briefly, it is the antonym to that expressed by Marx, in Das Kapital, according to which ' the world of value is my supply ' , in terms of goods or the labour force. With Simmel, in substance the economy as a whole was seen from the viewpoint of the subject, and the stress was on consumption. The fourth moment in the process of objectification is exchange, whereby the objects that I demand appear to be equally demanded by others. Willy­ nilly, we become detached from the objects and for each one of us they are placed at a distance by the very fact that they exist also for others and thus circulate. It is as if each individual as subject withdrew in order to let the object live its own life, comparing itself with the various objects available in order to establish its value. It is this change in practice and in relationships, this conversion in the exact meaning of the word, which constitutes the main­ spring of exchange. Hence the most important consequence and expression of the distance established between the objects and the subject. So long as objects are close to the

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subjects, so long as the differentiation of demand, scarcity , difficulties and resistance to acquisition have not yet removed the objects to a distance from the subject, they are, so to speak, des ire and enjoyment, but not yet objects 25 of desire and enj oyment.

The difference that separates them, which is moreover largely fictitious, exists because we create objects and values, whereas desire and enjoyment can only be re-created. Whatever may be the circumstances, they become supra­ individual, supra-objective , and, in a nutshell, collective. A relationship is established in which, in order to obtain an object, we are obliged to obtain it through another object. It is not only because the value of the first object, whether it be a car, a house or a book, is fixed in relation to the second object. But it is because the very idea of value in isolation, having regard to individual need, no longer has any sense. Its objectivization through exchange is mani­ fested through the substitution of the goods exchanged. It is however under­ stood that the quantity of the good corresponds to the quantity of another good, 26 and that this proportion is determined by a rule. Thus there is an objective relationship between the two. Simmel noted: The form taken by v alue in exchange places value in a category beyond the strict meaning of subjectivity and objectivity . In exchange, value becomes supra-subjective, supra-individual, yet without becoming an objective quality and reality of the things themselves. Value appears as the demand of the object, transcending its immanent reality , to be exchanged and acquired only 2 for another corresponding v alue. 7

Initially destined to satisfy desires, the object henceforth belongs exclus­ ively to the world of values, for which it has been conceived and produced. In that world it leads an independent existence and is compared with things that are like it. What it is worth turns out to be identical for every individual - so many sacks of com for so many cubic metres of logs, so much food for so many hours of work - in a quantitative comparison, and thus a measurement. Now, over time these equivalences are transformed into conventions that we accept without thinking any more about them, and without remembering that they have something to do with our sentiments and desires. If their correctness is often verified through observation and experience, we end up by attributing to them the force of a concrete law. Hence the balance sheet in which each economic object transcribes its value into that of another object, projects it into the external world, causing it to exist entirely outside ourselves. Simmel 28 concluded: ' The relativity of valuation signifies its objectification. ' All these conventions and transactions are common, as you can see, to the environment in which we live at present. They have certainly been speeded up, but above all they have been generalized, from a category of things called merchandise, to all things, and from these to persons, and from persons to ideas. With exchange a new factor comes into play. Henceforth everybody without exception participates in it, transforming society into a multitude of markets. It may seem peculiar to take such a long, roundabout route in order to arrive at what is normally taken to be the point of departure, namely, exchange

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between individuals aware of their needs and interests in relation to what they give and wish to receive. This is undoubtedly an axiom in both economics and sociology. But, as everyone knows, it is not easy to comport oneself according to one ' s needs or to know what one ' s interests are. One arrives at it only at the end of a long process of evolution which works an inner change, and which may be that which I have just described. Naturally I believe it legitimate to view these periods - from desire to exchange - as occurring in the way that I have briefly traced out. In fact the content of each one as depicted is less significant than the sequence itself, which ends up in a common objectiviza­ tion of values. Yet Simmel hesitated and took great pains to confuse matters, as if he suffered at the thought that all thi s obeyed a simple logic. It is a logic according to which what begins as a spontaneous desire is turned inside out like a glove into a relation between objects, which are evaluated and measured against one another. This assumes that one works to limit one ' s desires, to put evaluatory judgements and beliefs on one side, to master one ' s own personal feelings and to become conscious of the sole value of things, which is their value for other people. There is nothing objective about it, except for this process effected by individuals in order to make the val ue as independent as possible of themselves. It is another question whether this movement, which begins by creating a distance between subjects and objects, and by reversing the order, causing objects to appear as subjects, is a true one or not. It constitutes a play with four characters, which unfolds behind closed doors, even if its stage is the vastness of society: the individual or the desire; the thing, the object of the desire, whether it be a piece of fruit, a picture or a person; value, which has no reality but represents them to one another; finally money, the mediator or means that links them together and dominates all the rest. In thi s way we are constantly steering a course between them, manoeuvring so that their antagon­ isms rise to consciousness and are pushed to the extreme. In fact we are thrown into disarra y by the comings and goings in this drama behind closed doors, which never lights upon any fixed point. At times we feel the agonies of those unfortunates who in a German fairy tale were con­ demned to live tied to the clapper of a bell. I try to slow down the pace and clear a path through ideas that twist and tum, now gaining ground, now losing it and gaining it once more, with no certainty of the outcome. Yet the atmos­ phere in The Philosophy ofMoney is indeed that of a contemporary of Simmel who finished his review of it as follows: The man who wrote this book had to be more than a small prince over a narrow province of science; he had to be absolute master over the wide realm of human thought. And yet a tragic strain goes through the book. It means burdening every thought with the fate of the eternal Jew, if the author treats every last thought as if it was the one before the last. The eternal restlessness, the longing after ever deeper knowledge and insight, is a tragic fate for him who is seeking after truth. This truth which reveals itself by the most individual language of the book, leaves a feeling of restlessness 29 behind.

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I would add that one is not free from thi s disquiet for a moment, not even at the last page which, after a long detour, comes back to the first page. Thi s i s what explains the silences and misunderstandings that have surrounded the author of this work, before it was rediscovered and definitively i ncorpo rated into a part of the sociological tradition. Certain artists and thinkers pass in this way from being not understood to becoming classics, without having known either the uncertainties attached to glory or the beneficent corruption of success. Sacrifice as being at the origin of exchan ge and money

Firstly, there is exchange and exchange. Simmel ' s exchange differed from the purely 'descriptive ' exchange of which philosophers. anthropologists and economi sts generally speak. Economists consider it as only one relationship among others that consist in giv ing and receiving, and buying and selling goods. The word defines it exactly : a contact established between us by the thing that we offer, in return for what we have demanded. To renew the contact we have to preserve an equilibrium between the two operations, and thus reciprocity. One returns to th is constantly, as if to an unquenchable source of well-being and social life. Simmel went to the extreme, and this changed everything, making exchange the relationship of relationships that brings closer what is distant, and maintains an association with what might threaten to dissociate. It is not purely and simply an arithmetical calculation consisting of giving and receiving, but a new process in which each of these two opera­ tions is at the same time cause and effect. In other words, it is what creates a bond between individuals, ensnaring them and causing them to belong to a group, to some manifestation of sociability, or to an institution. It therefore almost invariably ends up by giving something more than what it receives and receiving something more than what it gives. In this sense exchange constitutes the elemental form of life in society, whose biological and psychological content it shapes. Thus it succeeds in creating 'an inner bond between men - a society, in place of a mere collection 30 of individuals ' . Paradoxically, this is even the case if nothing is exchanged, a view corroborated by the British anthropologist Malinowski, from the ob­ servations he made : In the category of transactions, which supposes a counter-gift equivalent economically to the gift, we meet another disconcerting fact. It concerns the category that, in our conception, should in practice merge into trade. This is not so at all. Occasionally exchange is translated into the passing to and fro of an object that is strictly identical between partners, which removes from the transaction any goal or any kind of imaginable economic significance ! From the simple fact that the pig returns to its owner, even by an indirect route, the exchange of equivalents, instead of tending towards economic rationality, turns out to be a guarantee against the intrusion of utilitarian considerations. The sole aim of exchange is to tighten the network of rela­ 31 tionships by reinforcing links of reciprocity.

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If the exchange is interrupted, society simultaneously ceases to exist, just as much in remote country districts as in modem cities, in autarkic cultures as well as in our own. No favoured origin can therefore be discovered for it, as has been attempted, in trade, marriage or religion, for it makes its appearance as soon as a relationship between persons exists. Consequently this means that 32 ' every interaction has to be regarded as an exchange ' . This was the principle that Simmel installed as the basis of science and social life. He included under this heading intellectual relationships, such as those between an orator and his audience, as well as the psychological relationship between a hypnotizer and the person hypnotized. Whether it is a drawing-room conversation, love be­ tween a man and a woman, or even a mere gaze, we are dealing with reciprocal relationships and consequently w ith varieties of exchange. In many cases more is given than is received, but this is done as Simmel states, for the mirror-image 33 that the soul of the other did not previously possess, an acknowledgement of its surplus value. What does this signify, unless it is that exchange does not consist in giving in order to receive, or to sell in order to buy, or vice versa, as with Mauss and Marx? Rather it is the condition for it. It is as if one did not exchange in order to give or receive, to sell in order to buy . On the contrary, one gives and receives, sells and buys in order to exchange, and thus to communicate and establish a contact that is reciprocal. Without this the very form of life in common would become mechanical, either because it would become reified, or because it would regress to a state of merely adding to the number of individuals located together. In short, we exchange, and thus we are a society. One cannot emphasize too strongly the hypothesis that 'exchange is a socio­ logical phenomenon sui generis ' , 34 one that originates in social life. Yet if it is so general, what distinguishes it and constitutes its particular character in economics? What is there in it that creates value and determines that of an object that is passed on from one person to another? In other words, what is one really exchanging in it, without which there is no exchange in the eco­ nomic sense? Elementary experience, as revealed in many cultures, with which our childhood begins, and which we pursue up to adulthood, provides the answer: we are exchanging sacrifices. To agree to a multitude of hardships, to divest oneself of a part of one ' s property, to renounce life itself, is a way of imposing an obligation by creating a debt and demanding compensation. Renunciation and demanding have together the power of conferring value upon something that would have none if we did not renounce it and did not demand it, j ust as martyrdom imparts supreme value to a belief, or the suffer­ ings that parents endure validate their love for their children. It is true that ' from the lowest level of satisfaction of wants to the attainment of the highest intellectual and religious goods, every value has to be acquired by the sacrifice of some other value ' . 35 However, in the case that concerns us, there is another way of creating a distance, by the act of detaching oneself from something, abdicating one 's right to enjoy its use and placing that thing at the disposal of one ' s fellows.

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The true function of sacrifice is metamorphosis. Thus one can restrict the satisfaction of one 's own desire, transfonning it from an end to a means in order to exchange, linking oneself to others and thereby keeping the desire alive. This assumes from the outset at least two protagonists who are distinct and who play opposite roles. The one who accomplishes the sacrifice accepts in a positive way hardship, suffering and what is displeasing; the other, who demands this, is the one in whose favour it is carried out. Our whole way of looking upon the economy is based on the simple idea that an exchange that lacks sacrifice is no exchange at all, because it creates no value, and thus lacks an object. Simmel again made this clear: ' If we regard the economy as a special case of the general fonn of exchange - a surrender of something in order to gain something - then we shall at once suspect that the value of what is acquired is not ready made, but rather accrues to the desired object wholly 36 or in part from the extent of the sacrifice required. ' Whatever may be its justification, whether economic or religious, a univer­ sal conviction holds sway: the effectiveness of the sacrifice is in proportion to the value attached to what one is sacrificing. In many sects, it has the value of a propitiatory offering, and this is all the more welcomed, it is believed, because privation has been undergone in order to perfonn it and because the victim is all the more precious. If Christ died on the cross to teach the idea of sacrifice, it was in order to give meaning to this conviction, not because his example should be followed. This is also true for Abraham, ready to sacrifice his son to attest to his devotion to his God, in recognition of a promise by the latter to cause the patriarch's descendants to multiply. Do not matters proceed in the same way in all exchanges? We give up property, leisure time, and rest, we risk our existence to attest to the value we attach to an occupation, a friendship or a group, and we expect a corresponding recognition. Doubtless, and this above all, we sacrifice our pleasure in a thousand different ways. Now, this could not continue and be significant in the absence of a reciprocal sacrifice on the part of the one who is its real or imaginary beneficiary. We note that if this relationship is at the origin of common values, the suffering attached to it leads us to desire to eliminate it. What does it signify to attain a lifestyle unless one has followed this round­ about way in order to arrive at a bond of exchange, of giving and taking, and sharing goods etc.? It is the ideal and the religious way of looking at life that Simmel judged contrary to reality : But here we overlook that sacrifice is by no means always an external obstacle, but is the inner condition of the goal itself and the road by which it may be reached. We div ide the enigmatic unity of our practical relation to things into sacrifice and gain, obstruction and attainment, and since the different s tages are often separated in time we forget that the goal would not be the same without impediments to overcome. The resistance that we have to overcome enables us to prove our strength; only the conquest of sin secures 3 for the soul the 'joy of heaven ' that the righteous man cannot enjoy . 7

Sacrifice does one good; to impose a sacrifice upon oneself does even more good: this is a powerful truth. In spite of its irrational character, it is during

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such a test that possessions are made available to a wider circle of individuals and caused to move around. Since no one hugs them to herself or himself, like a miser, in an exclusive fashion , the possibilities of enjoyment and the sub­ jective utility to everybody are enhanced. Whether we admit it or not, the exchange economy is substantially one of sacrifice. But this plays a dual role. The first role is of an external order, insofar as it sets objects at a distance, and indeed creates them with the aim of making them remote and of handing them over to whoever asks for them. One must be rid of them, in order to prevent their being the possession of one person, and so to speak, a physical possession. For, as long as they remain close at hand, attached to the individual, the obstacles and resistances to their appropriation do not shift them far enough away from that individual for them to be transferred and possessed by other individuals in exchange for a counter­ vailing equivalent. According to Simmel, the process is realized ' when the object, which is at the same time remote and yet overcomes the distance, is 38 produced specifically for this purpose ' . The second role is of a purely internal order: through the way in which it is carried out, sacrifice draws individuals closer and sets up a relationship be­ tween them or what represents them. Thi s is well known to peoples who make a sacrificial offering to appease and bend the will of the gods. It serves to conc lude a covenant that imposes a mutual obligation on the two parties concerned. This was the conception of the Hebrews. Yet whether it is a tribute paid or an expiatory puni shment, sacrifice al ways serves as an act of commu­ nion and fraternization between the sacrificers. In each case, whether in the course of a ritual or a market transaction, it is a public gesture , sometimes, as in antiquity, having dramatic intensity, before audiences that represent author­ ity in society . By their presence they guarantee equivalence between the sacrifices that have been agreed. On this condition the partners give up what they cheri sh, assured they will receive a fair equivalent in return and be able to continue their transactions. Whoever accepts such a gift without proportion­ al ly reciprocating destroys this bond, removes from it its character of exchange which assumes giving and taking , the two most elementary gestures that can exist. Moralists are unwise to recommend free giving, because it abolishes a bond in which one feels both constraint and freedom, in re lation to others and in re lation to onese lf. In this lies the nub of sacrifice. This comes out well in the anecdote related by the psychoanalyst Charles Odier. Moved to pity by the extreme povery of a sick person . and interested by his case, he proposes to treat him from now on for nothing. Immediately the patient interrupts his treatment and onl y agrees to restart it when the analyst obliges him to pay over each week the fees that are due . Indeed sacrifice create s a relationship that maintains a difference between two per­ sons, guarantees that there are indeed two of them and not one alone , and ensures that each will receive something in exchange for what he gives. The gesture of paying both defines and represents the relationship. certifying that it indeed exists. As soon as it no longer takes place, the relationship loses its stabi lity. Ceasing to be a sacrificer, the patient becomes the one sacrificed

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to the desire of the psychoanalyst to cure him and to go more deeply into his case. Thus on the one hand sacrifice makes the object more distant; on the other hand, it draws closer those who agree to it. That is to say, it is essentially a synonym for exchange in society : from this springs its universality. At the end of the day, we have here an echo of life itself. Such a conception automatically brings with it an answer to the question: what is at the basis of value? Is it the hardship or the work that the object has cost? The utility, or the use that is made of it? Or the fact that there are many desiring such an object? It is most certainly what one gives up and the obstacles that one overcomes to obtain it. But, as we have said, one never deprives oneself, one never gives up anything without expecting the other person to do the same, in the same proportion. Sacrifice must summon up sacrifice, if it is to represent a lofty and just measure for each individual. Thus, when Simmel deduced from this that the relationships of exchange determine a society and not the relationships of production, he took the opposite viewpoint from Marx . This was not the least part of his originality, not so much in the very attempt to do so, but because he arrived in the end at a view that was coherent. Value is the charisma of exchange. It manifests the power of the things that individuals give and receive, caught up in a process of development in which nothing remains stable and isolated. For everything is dragged into a move­ ment of comparison in which all with which we are confronted - in the shape of an object of desire - is turned upside down into its opposite, the renunci­ ation of desire for the object. Thus, for example, the piece of bread for which I hunger is turned into a piece of bread that I give away and share out, so that I remain hungry. You will say this is a commonplace, and everyone knows it. Do we really know it, do we understand it in the exact meaning in which value is a distancing from things and persons in order to stress their relative nature? Simmel wrote : ' I have shown earlier that relativity creates the value of objects in an objective sense, because only through relativity are things placed at a 39 distance from the subject. ' On the one hand these objects cannot be enjoyed immediately; on the other, in order to be obtained, they demand sacrifices defined in a uniform, social manner. But we must not stop there . In order to manifest itself and to preside over the process of exchange, value must, in its turn, be objectified in the shape of symbols and allegories that give it concrete form and, for anyone who recog­ nizes it, make it the more to be feared. For the law of distances peculiar to it could only apply through a representation of the senses, one of the same nature as what value itself represents, personifying the outcome of thousands of abstract operations. Of all the representations created by people to make their world bearable that is, tangible and intelligible - money is the most hazardous, but equally inevitable. For it is with the enigma of money that the human being rubs shoulders most closely with the fullness of desire, the desire for money being the desire for a link with others, if not desire in general. This explains why it

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was held for a long while to be obscene and taboo. Janus has two faces: the symbol of separation and sacrifice, it is at the same time the substance of a richness and collective unity that brooks no dissolution. Simmel stated: As a vis ible object, money is the substance that embodies abstract economic

value, in a similar fashion to the sound of words which is an acoustic-physio­ logical occurrence but has significance for us only through the representation that it bears or symbolizes. If the economic value of objects is constituted by their mutual relationship of exchangeability, then money is the autonomous expression of this relationship . . . and the general misery of human life is most fully reflected by this symbol, namely by the constant shortage of 40 money under which most people suffer.

Undoubtedly money is an object like any other - rice , pepper, wood, paper or gold. It is worked in the process of coining; it is weighed - this is stand­ ardizing it; an image is stamped upon it, and this gives it recognition. In trade it is bartered, a certain weight of rice against a certain quantity of cattle, a certain weight of metal against an agreed number of days of work, or against another commodity . It thus makes manifest its value: gold against com or rye, so that there is a money market, a 'rent ' paid for money , and indices of measurement that are checked daily. Yet, as opposed to other objects, it sets up rules peculiar to itself, tyrannic­ ally expressed as figures and calculations to which it submits . As Simmel noted, ' Money is therefore one of those normative ideas that obey the norms 41 that they themselves represent. ' However, more than the other norms, these admit n o exception, and this clearly shows their anonymous, even invisible origins. Detached from things and individuals, money in this way objectivizes their relationships. It is also the mediator between personal relationships as such, an accountant for the host of relationships that are formed at every moment. It is evident that it has the power to put me in contact with another person, the shopkeeper from whom I buy a box of cigars, the stranger I treat to a drink, a man or woman that I lead astray through it. The drama of modem times arises precisely because human beings can have no ties with others from which it is missing or that it does not embody in one form or another. Neither an object among objects, nor the object of every­ thing, money tends to become a measuring yardstick and symbol of the relation­ ships of exchange and the sacrifices to which we, through its mediation, agree. Its action is a kind of giant metaphor, explaining through images and signs that the projection of mere relations into particular objects is one of the great accomplishments of the mind; when the mind is embodied in objects , these become a vehicle for the mind and endow it w ith a livelier and more com­ prehensive activity. The ability to construct such symbolic objects attains its greatest triumph in money. For money represents pure interaction in its purest form; it makes comprehensible the most abstract concept; it is an individual thing whose essential sign ificance is to reach beyond indi­ v idualities. Thus money is the adequate expression of the relationship of man to the world, which can only be grasped in s ingle and concrete instances, yet only really conceived when the singular becomes the embodiment of the

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living mental process which interweaves all singularities and, i n this fashion, 42 creates reality .

Should we give way to admiration, or tell ourselves that the highest form of interaction is to be found in love, art, religious morality or science? How could Simmel speak in these terms of what, as we are all convinced, has degrading and inhuman consequences? B ut here money is a social representation, and we are struck by the meticulous detail with which it is defined. At one and the same time the representation constitutes the cognitive form in which are registered the relationships between individuals, and the substance in which 43 their reciprocal actions are objectivized. Because of its creative nature, ideas and values take on the character of reality, becoming a world as autonomous and objective as the physical world. It is vital to demonstrate this collective and psychological aspect, for it explains why money is omnipresent, at the very heart of every action and every cultural artefact. If our sensibility were sharp enough, we would find it embedded in the texture of all representations and in all things, as one of them, and in everything that links us to modem times. It is the odour of the times, the thing which is said to have no odour. Who could doubt this? All of us, directly or indirectly, vote daily in this Parliament of money represented by the purse, whereas for Parliament proper we cast our vote only once every four or five years. Throughout one ' s life one learns that the division of labour and production are recorded by it, like a thermometer that indicates the upward or downward value assigned to an occupation or a branch of industry. One learns how to manage it, to add it up and make provision, but also to desire it, to acquire a taste for things depending on their price, to evaluate what is fair or unfair in proportion to the degree of sacrifice asked for, etc. One goes so far as to make it the condition for the progress of science and to place it on a par with genius, as Renan did: In the present state of humanity , money is an intellectual power and accord­ ingly merits some cons ideration. A million francs is worth one or two

geniuses, in the sense that with a million francs usefully employed one c an do a s much for the advancement of the human m i n d as could d o one or two 44 human beings relying on the powers of their mind alone.

This risky calculation may leave one bemused. However, it gives one an idea of the hold that our money-based lifestyle - or, as it is called, the ' American way of life ' - exerts upon us. This was precisely the discovery made by Simmel, the advent of which he seeks to understand: ' All the impli­ cations of money for other parts of the cultural process result from its essential function of providing the most concise possible expression and the most intense representation of the economic value of things. ' 45 Much more than we think, much more than we wish, it sets in motion at the same time forces intellectual, social and artistic - hitherto unknown. I recall having read somewhere that all language is born as poetry and ripens into algebra. The same is a little true for money, which undergoes many a metempsychosis. In a famous passage Empedocles of Agrigentum recalls his

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previous lives : 'I have been a girl, I have been a shrub, I have been a fish leaping out of the sea. ' In the same way money can say: ' I have been a piece of wood, I have been a bone, I have been a scrap of paper, and I have been a shell picked up on the sand. ' Its ambulatory, invisible reality participates in a transmigration of its value, which is the very soul of such things. Let us recapitulate. Up to now, I have followed the process of objectification the end of which is money - firstly, through the progression that goes from desire to exchange and shows us how subjective value becomes objective. Next, within exchange, we have seen that it takes on an economic character. The latter expresses the sacrifice in which individuals acquiesce in order to receive the equivalent of what they are giving up. This process distances itself from the object and allows it to be conceived, and even to be produced, with the intention of parting with it so as to respond to the desire of another person. What gives concrete and objective form to its value in exchange is naturally money. Since it has created itself, it can remove itself from the flow of things and display an autonomy, obeying its own rules. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that, far from being a local, repetitive process, objectification evolves and becomes generalized. Thus we are witnessing, over the course of history, a refining of the ways of representing values by money, with the result that exchange is made easier. This refinement has allowed it to create its own world, partly fictitious, to be sure, but one which constitutes a pole of attraction and a source of energy and invention for an increasing number of the elements of social life. Involuntarily a palimpsest of this world and our mental and sensorial faculties, which have created it, money reveals this history to us, almost following a law. That this law exists is of great importance, for it justifies money being dealt with separately, like a cause independent of what succeeds it, or even of progress and the forms of exchange. I shall describe it briefly. As a point of departure let us take the current duality of money, the two poles of its intrinsic tension. On the one hand, it is a substance like any other, which is worked upon, shaped and decorated. We may cite as examples necklaces or bracelets made of shells, animals - hence the word pecunia - or 46 pieces of copper, silver or gold. It is valued, weighed and marked with a standard, according to criteria that are generally accepted. Certain materials were suited to serve as money because of their utility, but the majority of standard forms of money have been chosen because of their lack of utility and even their nullity. Money, said Aristotle, is only a fiction, and all its value lies in what the law ascribes to it. To perfect the qualities of the substance used generations of artists have worked upon it, and generations of philosophers, theologians, economists, and scholars to perfect the legal criteria relating to it. Among these may be mentioned Copernicus and Newton, who were con­ cerned with defining its value. On the other hand this value is expressed through the functions it fulfils, such as buying offices in Church and State, corrupting others, acquiring or selling off goods, accumulating wealth or putting it into circulation, or obtain­ ing divine grace. As Marc Bloch aptly remarked, the currency has not a ' once 47 and for all ' function. In the early Middle Ages was it not in the ranks of the

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clergy that there spread an avidity for gain and a thirst for gold and silver, even usury, when it came to buying offices and elevating oneself in the Church hierarchy? About Pope John XXII it could be written that 'he loved money above all else, to the point that he was ready to sell anything that came to hand' . Afterwards purely religious functions were assigned to money, in particular, salvation itself. Indulgences money served to buy remission of punishment. Tetzel, the notorious preacher, asserted: ' Hardly has a groat fallen into this chest than from purgatory to paradise a soul doth fly . ' This is a powerful image, strongly denounced by Luther in the Theses from which sprang the Reformation. In any case, the trading function, peculiarly economic through the level of energy that it injects into exchanges, is somewhat late in appearing, yet no one would dream of calling it a secondary one. On the contrary, it is always to be found, but subsumed and concealed in many other functions. A crucial question is posed: which is essential for the value of money over time, its substance or its function? Simmel 's answer was that it is the latter. In reality his reply was dictated by history, and this is why. Originally a substance, money tends continually to be confused with the function it per­ forms . It may be useful, since we are examining it from the viewpoint of a law of evolution, to recall the facts. At the start, above all through gift and barter, human beings indulged in direct transactions: one good against another, an animal against wood, wood against metal, etc. Exchange, which I would characterize as a sensitive matter, facilitates this by an operation carri ed out through a third good which serves as a measure of comparison. But what is distinctive about it, situating it outside and above all other powers, is its 48 magical powers, and even its sacred character. As currency it may be en­ dowed with mana in Melanesia, or bear the appellation of tambou or taboo in several other societies. Elsewhere it fulfils the role of being a talisman, con­ 49 ferring prestige upon the one who carries it around. This belief in its magical powers was maintained in Europe until recently, since coins were still being placed under the foundation stone of a house or a palace, such as the Pi tti Palace in Florence, or the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris. In addition, this money has a subjective, personal value, either because it is feared, or because one is attached to it as one is to an animal, a necklace or a bracelet. These powers may well be fascinating, but they are not at all special and do not constitute the most instructive aspect of money. Rather the contrary is true: from its very beginnings money revealed what today it conceals, namely that in exchange it represents a social bond and arms itself with social powers. The person who controls money controls this link, and also exchange. We percei ve this from the fact that it serves less to acquire needed goods than to acquire luxury articles and marks of authority . Not only does money distinguish those dominating from those being dominated, it also distinguishes men from women. Mauss noted that occasionally the money i s kept only in the men ' s dwelling-house. The tradition has been perpetuated, and has left its mark upon education. In an American study of the 1 940s one reads that a significant proportion of parents taught boys more than girls how to handle money, with

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the result that boys were more capable than girls of playing an important role 50 in the financial world. To return to money as a substance: above all one is attracted by its sensorial qualities, which are pleasing to the eye or to the touch. Coins or metal bars of various kinds have also in their favour their lightness or their resistance, not to mention their different applications, for they are capable of being used to make tools or gems, in the same way as com can be either food or money. However, in the course of time, round the Mediterranean basin and in the rest of Europe, a particular substance, conventionally being minted as money, came to be associated with fulfilling the function of being a measure of value and exchange. In silver, copper or paper form, money became a surrogate for other goods, without being one of these itself, and this allowed it to be substituted for them. Its possession gave gratification or annoyance, quite independent of sensorial qualities arising from its texture or brilliance, which no longer counted. According to Herodotus, the minting of coins may have begun with the Lydians. About 700 BC the Greeks imitated them, stamping on pieces of gold and silver the arms of their cities. They made them into a 51 reliable standard, a common yardstick between different objects, which removed exchange from the sum of social relationships that were charged with affective or magical power. They were therefore a sign of acknowledgement, struck with the seal of the town, of the prince or functionary that issued them. For a long while we find that money is associated with a sacred building, temples being also mints and banks. The visible and tangible properties of money are scarcely any longer of importance, in themselves neither having value nor giving enjoyment. These attributes are reserved only for money as representing other substances - so much money is worth so much corn or so many hours of labour - and as moving these commodities around at increasing speed. Already in the seven­ teenth century, the pamphleteer Misselden could write : whereas, before money was invented, there was only transfer of moveable and changeable things such as corn, wine, oil and other similar things, this

transfer later occurred with immoveable and unchanging goods such as houses, lands and other similar things; it became a necessity for money to evaluate in monetary terms things that could not be exchanged. Thus increas­

ingly everything came to be ev aluated in money, and money became the value of all things.

If, in each economic operation, a separation of money and goods is first effected, and then their substitution during exchange according to the level of value, inequality ensues. A whole hierarchy of means of payment appears, of which gold is at the pinnacle, metal money coming immediately after, and paper money being placed at the bottom of the scale. Gold is the guardian and standard of the system. Marx called it ' the god of merchandise ' , and B alzac, through Gobseck, stated it to be the source of all reality. Money is an absent God, hidden away in bank coffers to serve as a reserve, all in all an imaginary money , which changes into a symbol for everything that is exchanged, repres-

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enting what is universal. ' Gold, gold. Gold is everything and all the rest without gold is nothing,' Diderot exclaimed in Le Neveu de Rameau. In the chain of substitutions that runs from paper money to copper and from this to silver, gold money is the sovereign enthroned at the summit. Braudel observed that it is also a hierarchy of profits. Capitalists buy their work-force with copper coin, but sell what they produce against gold or silver, which ensures 52 a considerable gain in surplus value. Thus money impartially symbolizes all things and all values. It imposes its own rules upon them and substitutes itself for them on any and every occa­ 53 sion. This symbolic quality has been acknowledged in a thousand ways since money was first minted. Is it by chance that it is given the name of a ruler, the gold louis, the napoleon, the Maria-Theresa thaler of Austria? Occasion­ ally it is a name that is reviled, that one seeks to wipe out. This was done in the case of Caligula, when after his death all the coins with his image upon them were melted down in order to efface the name and features of the tyrant. In the same way each nation asserts its independence not only by assigning to itself a language, and by choosing the colours for its flag, but also by giving individuality to its economy through a currency that is christened the franc, the mark, the pound, the lira, the guilder or the rouble, to name only a few. This means that by making the exchange symbolic, ' Money passes from the form of directness and substantiality in which it first carried out these functions to the ideal form; that is, it exercises its effects merely as an idea which is 54 embodied in a representative symbol. ' When we consider the function of this idea, we note that it changes the materials that it represents and, so to speak, renders them of little consequence . The philosopher Berkeley, noted three centuries ago that it makes gold, silver or paper mere tokens that allow calcula­ tions to be made, serving as a reminder of value and allowing it to be transferred. Emphasizing this arbitrary side, we arrive at the final metempsychosis: money becomes an arbitrary sign that is conceived and substituted for other signs in the most varied forms. The relationships between them are governed by no hierarchy and, depending upon the occasion, we use paper money, a bill of exchange, a cheque, a credit card, or magnetic tape. Whether called fidu­ ciary money or money of account, the name is of no importance, nor is the substance of which it is made subject to any kind of preference; only the figure is meaningful. Money has become a synonym for anonymity. 'But it is true ' , Canetti has written o f that recent development, ' that a new relation to money has developed alongside the old one. In every country the monetary unit has acquired a more abstract value . . . If coins of earlier days had something of the strict hierarchical organization of a c losed society, modern paper money 55 is akin to the inhabitants of a great city ' , in that they are hurried, countless in number, interchangeable and a prey to chance . To arrive at this degree of abstraction, money loses its symbolical trappings, the prestige that came to it from being a precious, noble substance, which stirred up every kind of cupidity and passion. Just imagine Volpone declaim­ ing to a credit card the words which he addressed to a gold coin: ' Let me embrace you, you that are all that is best, surpassing all forms of joy: such is

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your beauty and our love . ' These images and sentiments have vanished in the remote spaces of lost worlds. We can no longer finger money, store it up as a treasure, admire it as a work of art. Even stock exchange share certificates are no longer those il luminated scrolls, embellished with horns of plenty and adornments, which gave their holders the impression that they owned a busi­ ness, and afforded them pleasure when tearing off the annual coupon, the symbol of their ownership: they come down to figures recorded in an account. They are figures among many others, on a bank statement or a computer screen. Of the well of feelings of hatred and covetous love, and all the demoniacal passions, there remains only the statistical enjoyment of a welter of precise figures calculated as objectively as possible. The result is that Money objectifies the external activities of the subject which are represented in general by economic tran sactions, and money has therefore developed as i ts content the most objective practices. The most logical, purely mathemati­ cal norms, the absolute freedom from everything personal. Because money

is simply the means to acquire objects , it stands by its very nature at an insurmountable distance from the Ego which craves and enjoys; and in so far as it is the indispensable means between the Ego and the objects , it places 56 the objects, too, at a distance.

The ideal that it expresses, so mean, banal and commercial, nevertheless remains an ideal that stirs up profound upheavals in the economy and in culture. Moreover, we see it gaining ground every day, acquiring new forms. Ten years ago a meal, a suit, a journey were paid in notes and coin; today, a credit card and a signature is sufficient. I have a little the impression of stating a truism when I say that the peculiarity of money is to keep constantly, and forever, divorcing itself from any physical substance. Its expansion follows a law of externalization that confers an abstract character upon it and allows it to formulate its own rules and directives in a completely objective way . This is because they are its exclusive property. By following their prescripts, it can protect itself from any other means, and arrive at an increasingly effective representation of the value of the economy. An economist has written, ' This [the value] no longer resides in precious metals, as the Mercantilists wished, or in the land, as the Physiocrats wished. It does not even reside in labour, as Adam Smith and Ricardo, by pure error, invoked. In the perfected liberal model, it is exchange alone that is the measure of values. '57 But exchange, for its part, is crystallized in the form of money into an entity sui generis, a transformation that was the goal from the very beginning and to which we apply ourselves more vigorously than ever. Readers familiar with Simmel will forgive me for the liberties I am taking in order to formulate this law of ' externalization ' that runs throughout history. Even those who know his work well have perhaps forgotten his extravagant use of words and a coherence that leaves something to be desired. It has therefore seemed right to me, insofar as we are seeking to pick out those points that are the most important and rewarding, to go ahead and fathom the meaning behind his theory, which is diluted and drained away through too many philosophical reminiscences. In any case, if any law at all exists it points

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to the transition from a sensorial form of money to one of symbols, and from this to the semiotic money we now possess. 58 Indeed we know that it confers upon exchange a complete autonomy and a logical representation, if not an almost mathematical one. One might say that money dissolves into the world of values, whether these are economic or not, a world that has become one of 59 quantified, measurable signs. Under its influence the modes of discourse of different person-to-person relationships become variants of a language as universal as that of music or mathematics. All in all, the fact of rendering money 'externalized ' , a psychological mutation if ever there was one , so­ cializes more completely the various aspects of communal life. Whether it is in the field of private, day-to-day relationships or of large-scale communica­ tions, to ' dematerialize ' money has as its corollary to ' monetarize ' the sub­ stance of the collectivity. The rest follows; side by side with the two great languages that know no frontiers, music and mathematics, money is estab­ lished and enthroned as the third one of our age. From music it borrows its rhythm and from mathematics the precision of its ramifications. This is what defines its singular character. The new miracle

The story is told of a rabbi who was returning home on the eve of the Sabbath and found himself far from his house at nightfall. Religious law forbade him continuing his journey, and so he had to resort to a miracle: to the left of the road, it was the Sabbath; to the right of the road, it was the Sabbath; but on the road along which he was walking, the Sabbath had not yet begun. What does this story mean? Provided only that one has freedom to lay down one' s own rules, to accomplish miracles i s not s o difficult. Money can do this, because it has drawn up its own rules. Once these are enunciated, it respects them and enforces respect for them, making no conces­ sions. Up to now we have envisaged money as representing values. We shall now change perspective, so as to place ourselves in the universe created by money, in which it is above all an instrument of the action by one man upon another, so that together they form a reality that includes them and also goes beyond them. In short, this is the reality of culture, of which the economy is only a part and a reflection. B ut it is the most surprising of instruments. Most of our tools and machines are in fact extensions of our body or our intel­ ligence . The hammer or typewriter are extensions of the hand, the telephone amplifies our hearing. Money is the extension of a bond, and thus of the actions and reactions between most individuals in a society, and, I should add, this occurs at every moment. It can convert desires and feelings, changing what is morally good into what is morally bad, the ugly into the beautiful, peace into violence. Or it can renew our reasons for being together, each time that we separate from one another, as if it possessed some alchemic formula. The last word in its enigma appears, however, when we envisage money as the instrument or the means of all these operations, including exchange. We

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are then no longer dealing with the process of its objectification, but with the process of it becoming ' anchored' . The first process showed us it in its role as a representation that creates an autonomous reality of values. The second process leads us to explore the way in which this representation penetrates into existing relationships and, in relation to money, gives them meaning. This may be so, but what is this enigma? It is not that money, which as with every means has been developed to perfection in the course of history, but on the contrary the fact that instead of following the trend, it changes itself into an end, into its own end. Now this evolution is contrary to reason and almost smacks of a modem miracle. In fact, how is it possible that a means has been elevated to the dignity of becoming an ultimate goal? In this resides the magic of money and its authority over all the rest. In broad outline, Simmel ' s answer was simple. But it would appear too abstract unless one spells it out in detail. We have observed that the objecti­ fication of the value of money corresponds to a distancing of the individual from the object desired, which is governed by a law . This value becomes all the greater as the distance increases, as do the obstacles that have to be overcome. Its ' anchoring ' , on the contrary , figures among the instruments and means of another law, that of a psychological principle of economy of effort. Simmel, as his contemporaries noted, attributed general importance to this. They recorded that in his works he applied this 'principle of economy of energy in the psychological sphere: he analyses psychologically the process of social differentiation and deals with the psychological aspect of social facts such as competition or money ' .60 In fact, as soon as money represents the means of attaining an end it must be envisaged from the point of view of its effectiveness. B y their very nature, a tool or a machine are the best means of carrying out a plan. The plan must be thought out in advance and always assumes, in order to be fulfilled, a certain number of intermediate links in the chain. Observing matters closely, we note that money is firstly and above all a tool serving a large number of uses, whether it be buying and selling, paying a ransom in order to free a hostage, corrupting an official, encouraging the arts, and so on. We might well assert that these uses are unforeseeable, just as are the methods to be applied. Yet there is one means that is in some way absolute, because its true purpose is exchange. Contrary to the State or religion, which can have very many varied aims - order, domination, the saving of souls etc. - the exclusive activity of money is to facilitate the circulation of goods and to measure their value. This, on the other hand, reduces it purely to the role of a tool and a means in relation to a set goal in no way dependent upon it. And there can be no economy that is in any way rational, if this relationship is not constantly and most strictly observed. It requires no confusion about it to arise, for this would be to take the signs of wealth for wealth itself. How then is effected the psychological ascent from being a means to the dignity of being an end, of which money is precisely the most remarkable example? People who wish to build a house for themselves must first devote them­ selves to saving all or part of the amount necessary for buying materials,

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engage journeymen, and then make a start. The number of links to be forged could be multiplied by mentioning the acquisition of a plot of land, the drawing up of plans, preparation of the tools, leaving out the permits that are needed, and the many other matters that may crop up. Between the immediate action occurring at every particular moment and the distant - sometimes too distant - end, numerous links therefore intervene, and even inevitable detours if the end is to be reached. The same is true for every sphere of life and technology, including collective institutions. The State protects the individual, whilst the law guarantees possession of property and the possibility of passing it on to descendants, looking towards the future. The Church, for its part, through its rituals sustains the fervour of religious emotion and guides the human soul : ' They are, no doubt, a digression from the ultimate end of religious sentiment, but a digression by means of a tool which, in contrast to all material tools, serves exclusively those ends that the individual is otherwise 61 unable to obtain. ' In short, the teleological chain can vary according to the instruments re­ quired and can become as complicated as desired from one case to another. Yet the energy needed to proceed along this chain increases progressively and can paralyse any use of it. Now , the principle of economy of effort weighs with the mental organisms that we are as much as it does with material organisms. It can be summed up in one proposition: instead of concentrating on the aims, one must apply oneself to the means. This was Simmel ' s hypo­ thesis, the most elegant one to be found in his theory. It asserts that a con­ sciousness that would wish to cater for all the links in such a chain would only be distracted and become weaker, being incapable of remaining equally atten­ tive to all . The requirement to act positively and to complete the task one has begun leads one to avoid such a waste of effort by directing it back to an intermediate stage, here and now, in this progression. Immediately the inven­ tiveness and energy required concentrate on the means needed in order best to succeed, even at the risk of being diverted from the final, distant goal. Simmel stated: The distribution of psychological stress that is required when the available forces are limited does not coincide with the logical organization ; whereas for the latter the means is completely indifferent and the whole emphasis is

on the end , practical expediency requires the direct psychological reverse of this relationship. This apparently irrational fact is of immeasurable value to mankind. In all probability , we would never have advanced beyond the setting of the most primitive tasks if our consc iousness had been preoccupied

with them and we would never have been free to develop a greater variety of means; or we would have experienced an unbearable and crippling frag­

mentation if we had had to be constantly aware of the whole sequence of 62 means for the ultimate purpose while working on each subordinate means.

An inversion occurs, and you can perceive of what kind. Anxious to carry out their work with the greatest economy of effort, human beings shift their attention to the means. Since these become physically and intellectually pre­ dominant, occasionally the end they serve is forgotten, just as scientists can

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let themselves be caught up in the intricacies of a refined technology to the point that they forget the problem it has to solve. This means that because there is so much concentration on the means, one finishes by treating these as ends. This is what, in a certain manner, is meant by expressions such as 'art for art's sake ' , 'production for the sake of production' . In short, along the teleological chain, rendered disconnected, what was a link has become an end. Once engines were built in order to make aircraft fly. Nowadays aircraft are constructed to allow the engines to fly, and such a reversal of roles has become common. It was money that led the way and has succeeded best in it, for money 's ' entire significance does not lie in itself but rather in its trans­ 63 formation into other values'. In a society such as our own, this phenomenon has been speeded up. The instrument must constantly be brought closer to its purpose; thus money must unceasingly be converted into things and things into money. Does this con­ stitute success for it? Then it continues to reduce all other material and intellectual purposes to its own, and all scales of value to the scale of financial values. Preoccupied with its own power, knowing only its own rules, arranging relationships and social functions as it deems fit - in short, as their real cause - it appears in all logic to be their essence. It towers above them all, and guarantees them a role once fulfilled by authority or religion. Moreover, as money has no special connection with any specific action, such as picking fruit, undertaking a journey or granting a pardon, it can be pressed into service for any purpose. This implies that the range of objects linked to it and evaluated in monetary terms is continually growing, tha� money itself is progressively losing any specific character, becoming an all­ purpose tool. Its specificity lies in its very lack of it. It can be combined with anything, and turned to any ends. ' Money' s value as a means increases with its value as a means right up to the point at which it is valid as an absolute value, and the consciousness of purpose in it comes to an end. ' 64 In more 65 precise terms, it becomes 'psychologically the absolute purpose ' , directing our creative ability, which seeks in it both sustenance and security. Since it is always romantic to elevate what is banal to the dignity of an absolute, the austere, real romanticism of our age seeks to subordinate the absolute to the banal. Having converted the means into ends, money - and this is the meaning of what has been written above - effects the reverse metamorph­ osis. In a final access of desire, all other ends become means. Everything had conspired against money and attempted to rein in its appetites. Now money no longer restricts itself to being one goal in life among others , side by side with science or art, power or love . Through an unceasing pressure it wears 66 them away and al so transforms itself into their own purpose. Now Si mmel deduced all this from a simple principle, which applies to human actions in general , which money illustrates to perfection . This is what he concluded about it: The inner polarity of the essence of money l ies in its being the absolute means and thereby becoming psychologically the absolute purpose for most people, which makes it, in a strange way, a symbol in which the major

Money as passion and as representation

29 1

regulators of practical life are frozen. We are supposed to treat life as if each of its moments were a final purpose ; every moment is supposed to be taken to be so important as if life existed for its sake. At the same time, we are supposed to live as if none of its moments were final, as if our sense of value did not stop with any moment and each should be a transitional point and a 67 means to higher and higher s tages.

It is in this tension that is anchored the representation that Simmel advanced regarding the process of exchanges in our society and the imperatives which that process obeys. As the extent of its hold grows increasingly greater, so money becomes more and more firmly rooted in people 's lives. If I can put it in this way, it surpasses itself, in the sense that the field of its equivalents has been enlarged so as to include and bring into contact the most outlandish things, things that have absolutely nothing in common, like those satellites whose pictures embrace the whole world. Everything under the sun, persons and property, is unified into one single pattern, however great the divergences and antinomies between them. For a while money becomes the crucible in which their reality undergoes a transmutation. Its omnipotence relates it to the representation of God - an affinity that, as Simmel neatly expressed it, ' only psychology, which has the privilege of not being capable of committing blas­ phemy ' , can unveil to us. There is nothing unusual in the discovery of this 'psychological similarity ' 68 between the social representation of money and that of God, save that it is anathema. It is true that for thousands of years, everything relating to com­ merce and money had a whiff of the sulphurous about it and was held to be the work of the devil. 69 The hellish, satanic nature of business matters was proclaimed, money was despised and said to be the devil ' s work. Now, our social machinery, faithful to the way in which it was set up, has metamorph­ osed it into a new god, replacing those it has overturned. An encyclopedia would be required to assemble proofs and documentation for this. The strange thing is that we have heard the cry , ' God is dead! ' and have not perceived that the bourgeoisie, held to be humdrum and mediocre, gave birth in the last century to another god, the source of our l ife on earth . Then, writes one historian, 'The mechanism that the motive of gai n sets in motion can only be compared in its effects to the most violent explosions of religious fervour that history has ever known . In the space of a generation , the whole inhabited 70 world was subjected to its corroding infl uence. ' It would be simplistic to assume that this exhausts all its reality, and even more simplistic to believe that this does not form part of that reality and that we are exempt from it. In this lies the weakness of the numerous theories which see in it only myths and allegories. Indeed, accompanying the receding and decay of ancient religious monotheism goes an increase in the new mon­ etary monotheism. Through its unlimited power it undertakes the conversion of the world and answers the human quest for salvation . In the struggle between Jehovah and the Golden Calf, God won all the battles, but in the end he has lost the war. The German poet Heinrich Heine suggested this in his book On Germany, on the prete xt of asking the question, 'Does money create

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God or does God create money? It is of no consequence: money is the only religion today . It is only to minted money, to communion hosts of gold and silver, that today the people attributes miraculous power. ' Money is the homeland of the stateless

Let us take a slightly loftier standpoint. If the mind tends to transform money into an end in itself and ' anchor' it firmly in society, we must assume that a 71 particular social grouping is more fitted than the rest to accomplish this. Under what conditions? First, it must maintain a certain distance from the values and possessions of the collectivity, and even indifference as to its fate. Next, living under the permanent threat of an ultimatum, its time will be limited. Only human beings falling into such a category are obliged to shorten the teleological chain, to cling to the present. The idea of danger implies an emergency and emphasizes the need to treat each means as an end, since this chain can at any moment be broken by an external disaster, such as war or persecution. If they seek to exert the minimum of effort, it is not from idleness or a concern for economy, but because the time spans for action are limited and unsure. For them, more than for any other category, money represents time lost or gained. Simmel, who was aware of this, put forward a curious but logical hypo­ thesis. The first point is self-evident: neither capitalists nor merchants as such are the originators of great innovations in these matters. But everywhere there exists a group of human beings, foreigners, heretics, categories that are disad­ vantaged and persecuted, excluded from society because they might place it, or even the human race itself, in jeopardy . Prevented from participating in public life and from owning property, land and houses, their only way out is to devote themselves to anything that resembles, however faintly, business transactions. No other role allows them to subsist and even acquire a certain power. Only money can do so, and this they cling to as a lifeline. In other words, as Albert Cohen says in Sola/, 'Money is our fortress, for us the outlawed, nomadic poor. ' It is therefore natural for such categories of individuals to ascribe to the pursuit of profit a value higher than do all other people. By virtue of the very difficulties they encounter, we see them obliged to cultivate their ability to do business or handle money with special care, just as artisans maintain their tools. They are more scrupulous, and more prudent also, than the 'respectable ' people that can drive them out. If contempt or custom forbid others to maintain friendly relations with them, or professional or sexual ones , the need for money forces them to ignore this and to frequent those who have money available or the ability to lay hands on it. This is the way employed by kings and princes, and Church leaders, who frequented their bankers. As Simmel wrote: ' In addition, people who require money are usually in desperate need and are willing both to contact people who would normally be despised and 72 to go to normally shunned hiding places. '

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We might add that those excluded, persecuted or disadvantaged are con­ demned to permanent migration, ready to up sticks at any moment, and move on. This mobility, which is forced upon them, establishes a similarity between them and the mobility of money. One drives out the other, carried along by a flow of exchanges that more easily escape any interference or control. How then can one escape the impression that any pretext serves the various migrant groups for eluding any local obligations and allying with one another against the rest of the world? One point has at least been proved throughout history : the freed Roman slaves, the Huguenots in France , the Armenians in Turkey, the Quakers in England, the Parsecs in India, those of the Reformed persuasion in The Netherlands - not taking into account numerous immi­ grants to the United States - have deployed their ingenuity in the financial field, and also made finance ingenious . From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century foreigners and heretics predominated among the bankers, the great merchants and the industrialists. Capitalist business was initially their prerogative. 73 Reciprocally, one may suppose that money keeps such minorities on the fringe of society and causes them to grow in number. They are impelled to use techniques and relationships that cause them to prosper, on condition they remain outsiders. In its tum effect becomes cause - hence the mistrust and fear felt for them by the indigenous people. Fear of their presence, which is undesirable; fear also of their absence, since they cannot become integrated. There is a fear of losing these foreigners, who fulfil functions that the majority despise , or may be forbidden to exercise, as usury was for Christians. It was also because a collectivity needed them in order to remain a closed, and yet at the same time an open society. Closed, because human beings only unite against other human beings; open because, through the mediation of such foreigners, people can experiment with products or unusual techniques. Have the foreigners been successful? If so, then a solid hatred is reserved for them, one which, under a cloak of arrogance , reveals feelings of inferiority. It is no matter whether this be shown towards the main financial houses from the sixteenth century onwards , run by heretics, or towards the plutocracy or multi­ nationals of the present day. It is enough for the imagination to conjure up the mere thought of money, or of their turnover, to see antagonism open up between the stateless and the nationals of a country , the financial gnomes and industrial producers, both large and small. This can be viewed in the light of a social representation: ' The big fish have at their disposal all the money and 74 are often bankers, and are always fat. ' This is then the fanciful aspect, which, according to Pierre Birnbaum, in our society goes with a lack of interest in the practices of finance and yet revulsion at seeing bankers performing, for example, the functions of a Member of Parliament. It is as if finance were a profession less commendable than that of doctor or journalist. Because financiers, in the collective image of them, are the heirs of the usurers, and inherit the latter' s negative traits. The credit they grant is paid for dearly, the capital they manipulate is of suspect origin. The banks are in league with one another, enmeshed in the heart of a foreign

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network; hence the underlying view that a huge conspiracy causes wealth to circulate beyond all frontiers. Money has no country, and is not associated with a particular kind of work, since it does no work. Only time works for money. and that with diabolical effect in the hands of bankers. Among those excluded from society I have not mentioned the Jews. Admit­ tedly others have endowed them with every possible kind of negative feeling 75 and image in this domain. They have paid dearly for the privilege of not being part of this world, which is, for the foreigner, the crucial injury. Marx said what was needed to keep the wound open: 'What is the worldly cul t of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly goal? Money. Very well : then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and 76 practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself. ' Simmel did not fail to speak of them, in order to reinforce his hypothesis. B ut he did so in subdued tones, with the reserve and modesty of a person who does not wish to appear to talk about himself and something that concerns him closely. It is as if he were able to cauterize the wound. Both traits testify that the philosopher Wittgenstein was right: we have difficulty in thinking of them ' in the history of the peoples of Europe with all the scrupulousness that in reality their intervention in European affairs would deserve, because they are felt to be a kind of illness and anomaly in its history; and no one deliberately places il lness and normal life on an equal footing, and no one willingly speaks of a sickness as having the same rights as the healthy (even though painful) pro­ 77 cesses of the body ' . History is indeed that of healthy, and not sick, human beings. From the viewpoint that interests us here, aversion to Jews is, however, one aspect of aversion to foreigners, the pay-off for the fact they are indispensable in mon­ etary relationships. One can have impersonal relationships with them, some­ thing desirable in financial operations , where one should avoid doing business with either friends or enemies. Simmel wrote: In the first case, the indifferent objectivity of money transactions is in insur­ mountable conflict with the personal character of the relationship; in the other, the same condition provides a wide scope for hostile intentions which corres­ ponds to the fact that our forms of law in a money economy are never precise enough to rule out wilful malice with certainty. The desirable party for fman­ cial transactions - in which, as it has been said quite correctly, business is business - is the person completely indifferent to us, engaged neither for us 78 nor against us.

Is this the biblical maxim of the monetary religion: ' Be indifferent one to another as towards yourself' ? It is most assuredly the only maxim compatible with the calculation and strategy required in business. La Bruyere stated this very drily in his Caracteres: ' such people are neither relations, nor friends, citizens or Christians, nor even perhaps human beings: they have money. ' To the characteristic of being foreign S immel added generosity, a blase cynicism, poverty considered as a virtue - in short, asceticism. Together these attitudes have engendered the money culture, which requires a more complete sketch to be sure of its value. One point, at least, may be conceded: in Europe these

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various minorities have been the vehicle for a permanent revolution in the foundations of the economy. Such a hypothesis leads me to state another, which is its 'echo ' . You may know that Freud linked money with anal eroticism. In the same way as the child holds back its faeces in order to feel a more substantial anal stimulation when emptying its bowels, in the same way the adult holds back money in order to obtain greater psychological stimulation . 79 From this springs the economical, ordered and rigorous behaviour of those who accumulate property and look after it. In support of this explanation is the fact that in antiquity, during the Babylonian era, gold was labelled the 'excrement of hell ' , and among the Aztecs was considered the 'dung of the gods ' . According to Fer­ enczi, for the young child money becomes a synonym for what is deodorized, desiccated, and given a sheen . It is said that money has no odour. Such associations, among others that derive from them, 80 remain vague. What i s most significant i n Freud ' s hypothesis is that he has chosen hoarding and parsimony in money matters as being typical . Now, money does not exist in the same way as do a vehicle or a house. It is not a thing, but the representation of a total number of debit and credit operations. It can be acquired, but one can hardly ' store it up ' for a long while. A kind of confusion is maintained 8 between money and property, 1 between a substance and the functions needed in the money economy. This is the point at which I wished to arrive: by its mass and the great number of people that it affects, it seems to me preferable to tackle the question of money from the angle of collective rather than individual psycho­ logy. According to Freud, the former is shaped by the memory traces left in the culture by the murder of the father. By depriving his sons of all normal satisfactions and of access to women, he forces them to band together, and then to kill him. Afterwards the guilt is assuaged in banquets and ceremonies from which the group emerges purified and strengthened. In this scenario money appears as the vehicle that allows the brothers to recognize one another by its use as a badge, and to conceal their purpose. It imposes rules of association and prevents them from revealing the plot being hatched. One can compare the situation of the sons oppressed by the father with that of those excluded from society depicted by Simmel, who are forbidden to participate in the activities and satisfactions of the environment in which they live. Not only are they refused access to positions of power and to the professions, but also contact w ith indigenous women. The assumption is that they conspire together in business and financial deals that are more or less honourable. The suspicion of conspiracy is awakened every time that money is implicated, and secured in an unusual manner by people ' who are not like others ' . Any reaction that accuses and persecutes them is convenient, satisfying and even convincing. It is a sentiment as old as the world, and is roughly the way one behaves when confronted with magical powers. I take as illustration a passage from Freud' s Interpretation of Dreams, in which he reports a dream in which a young female patient was allegedly forbidden to come to see him again. She invokes the promise that had been made to her to treat her for nothing, and

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the psychoanalyst answers her in the dream: ' I can stand no trifling in money matters. ' This reminds one in fact of one of the maxims previously mentioned concerning money transactions. But, in reality, the patient' s brother had ac­ cused Freud of meanness. Without wishing to put any gloss upon it, I link these attitudes of accusation and persecution about money to a profession that was then brand-new and despised. Insofar as it constitutes the common characteristic sustaining such a com­ bined front against the brothers, money allows them to identify with one another. This accounts for the confidence shown in it, and in its successful effect. But this mutual identification, as in every close-knit group, excludes love, and in particular homosexual love. The indifference felt towards those with whom one has monetary dealings is another facet of the inhibition of the erotic urge. When love cannot be shared or directed towards one 's peers, it turns in on itself and intensifies narcissistic love of self. For each to love himself in this way reinforces the sons ' ego to the point where they feel their all-powerfulness. A doubt strikes me at this stage. Is this excessive self-love not at the same time hatred directed against the father-figure, and is this too also carried to excess? They are two pathways towards accomplishing a revenge harboured for a long time. I cite them in order to explain the attitude of the marginal categories of which I spoke . With them also, to have money, and to make it, is a manifestation of hostility towards those who exclude and humiliate them. That the suffering of others should be a source of pleasure is clearly a peculiar feeling, and one to be condemned. But at the very least it is a plain, definite sentiment that can be gratified. Now, it is gratified by inflict­ ing suffering upon one ' s persecutors, by depriving them of their wealth, without displaying one 's own wealth, since no one is satisfied with winning unless it is to the extent that another person is losing. The famous character of Shylock shows how greatly hatred sharpens love and the thirst for money. It also shows how much pleasure one takes in challenging persons one detests and causes to suffer, in order to allay one ' s own injury - the Germans call this Schadenfreude. It feeds on love to sustain its own hatred and is felt in this way by those who are its target. 82 Fear, like violence, towards everything relating to the power of money, even without any objective reason, expresses a definite psychological reality. To sum up, it is indispensable to demonstrate this collective aspect in order to explain the types of behaviour that money evokes. In it can be seen a mother-substitute that is favourable to the association of sons against the father, seen as their tyrant as well as that of the substitute. Hence the fascina­ tion for the mystery behind it: the sublimity that underlies its infamy and the subversive character of its rules, which are constantly changing. It is as if the murder that had been projected had not yet been committed or completed. This would account for the conspiracy mentality that is abroad in our mass, money­ 83 based societies. One can likewise understand the paranoid reactions aroused by all these disquieting signs, as if they had a relationship to money. It may appear inappropriate to stigmatize the way in which collectivities act by using a

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psycho-pathological term. The fact remains that an analogy exists with abnor­ mal modes of behaviour. It is naturally difficult to go beyond these signs. The possibility of effecting a convergence at various points of the two hypotheses, the one sociological and the other psychoanalytical, appears bizarre. Or rather, it is not bizarre at all, and the psychoanalytical movement itself confirms the sociological process. Let us recognize in the movement one of those minorities to which normal resources and an opportunity to share in institutions are denied. One might then explain why money has been justified in a therapeutic sphere in which it was execrated, to the point that money has become its badge. You know how much it is spoken about, and in terms that are rarely flattering. I cannot contemplate giving an exhaustive interpretation of it, and so will stop my outline at thi s point. Simmel was a man of his time. His grand idea - why and for whom did money become its own purpose? - has inspired many others. It is astounding to see how few of his contemporaries, including Weber, have acknowledged it. However, it is true, as Johnson profoundly observed, that no one likes to owe anything to contemporaries. Let us therefore accept these - sadly common - customs of the tribe, and let us move on, so as to broaden the perspectives this idea opens up.

9

The world that has vanished

The prime quality o f money i s its quantity

At Vienna and Prague in 1 935, three years before his death, the philosopher Edmund Husserl, gave three lectures that have remained famous. Their subject was the crisis of humanity in Europe that arose with the philosophy of ancient Greece. In his view, the latter had for the first time in history understood the world in its entirety as a problem to be resolved. The question carries with it no practical answer. If it is nevertheless posed, it is because the 'passion to know' had taken hold of human beings. The crisis that has struck our continent had its origin in the founding of the experimental sciences and mathematics about the seventeenth century. They devalued sensibility, individuality and life. All value was removed from the data provided by immediate perception and from certain intuitions that form ' the world of life ' , die Lebenswelt, as Husserl called it, using a beautiful and almost magical expression. He went on to explain that Descartes had already confirmed man in his mission of being the 'master and possessor of nature ' . But it had been to his cost: he had become a very ordinary object, chained to the forces of techno­ logy and history that enslaved him. For these forces neither his material being nor the experience he had lived through offered the slightest interest, since they were artificial and erroneous. Thus the triumph of European humanity through abstract science had led to its opposite, the explosion, almost any­ where, of archaic and irrational energies. Indeed this might well be supposed correct, for the lectures were given by the ageing philosopher two years after the coming to power of the Nazis in the country where modem philosophy had experienced its greatest moments. It could be said that the German people, which had raised itself to the very pinnacle of culture, not being able to bear these heights, had prepared for its own suicide, a rare event in a people . Husserl ' s diagnosis of the contemporary era was, however, already to be found in Simmel. And, I dare to assert, from the same perspective. But the German sociologist went down one stage deeper, and uncovered the origins of the crisis as lying in the force that has made possible and shaped the

The world that has vanished 299 abstract, quantitati ve world: I refer to money. The ' passion for money ' had taken hold of human beings and involved them in a struggle to master and possess society. He wrote : The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual

to preserve the autonomy and indiv idual ity of his existence in the face of

overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of ex ternal culture, and of the technique of life. The fight w ith nature wh ich primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in modem form its latest transformation. 1

Indeed throughout this long drawn-out civilizing process of the species, which lies not so much in the repression of instincts and the dom ination of technology as in the objectification of the human faculties, a reversal takes place. Money detaches individuals from their subjective, personal allegiances, in order to place a distance between them and others. as well as their objects, in accordance with the logic that presides over the world of values. Removed in this way from any contact, human beings and their possessions are repres­ ented in an abstract form, as is a distant land or an unknown planet. In its tum this representation is transformed into a reality that is itse lf abstract, uniform in content and, if one may so express it, demateriali zed . Again, it is money that undertakes this crucial operation, thanks to the almost divine powers wi th which it is invested. More than any other means invented by human beings, it changes th ings into signs, speeds up the quantification of relationships, and causes tastes and objects, placed on the same level, to evaporate. It is continually changing the balance between the mental and affective universe , by causing everything to circulate and to be exchanged with everything else. Individual s no longer succeed in recognizing themselves in what they are doing, nor the society in which they are living, save from a distance and in a negative way. As Simmel observed, The increas ing objectification of our culture, whose phenomena consist more and more of impersonal elements and less and less absorb the subjective

totality of the indiv idual (most simply shown by the contrast between handi­ craft and factory work), also involves sociolog ical structures. 2

This means that money fragments and sterilizes, like so many obstacles, the kind of linkages whose origins lie in a mixture of sentiments and interests, and converts personal into impersonal relationships in which a human being is, as it were, a thing for another human being. However, Simmel did not l imit himself to a relentless denunciation of these features of modern culture. For him alienation and anomie were airy notions devoid of meaning. We attack their alleged causes. But one should first perceive the perspectives opened up by the contrast between the ' externalization ' of possessions and activ ities, of which money is the symbol, and the withdrawal of subjective personality, in which it is the mainspring. From this gulf between the objective and the subjective mind, to adopt his terms, looms up the profile of modernity. Money is that which before our very eyes continually eludes us and yet remains closest to us: the supremely anonymous object. We would have great

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difficulty in saying who were its inventors - the plural is inevitable, since to assume it had one single inventor may be ruled out. Like a number of dis­ coveries, we cannot assign to it a date of birth or a parentage. No land exclu­ sively saw its birth. Its creators have always remained in the shadows of anonymity. It seems to have mixed up the scents and wiped out the vestiges of the tracks that linked the peoples and countries that saw its emergence. It is very true that any definitive inventions (language, music , the dance, agri­ culture, the market) that revolutionize the lives of human beings have been carried out so slowly that one has difficulty in discerning their beginnings all the more so if they have taken root at the same time in very di verse cultures. The contribution of each individual to them is infinitesimal ; such collective achievements seem to be born by spontaneous generation . Thi s does not prevent this anonymous invention of the means of exchange - money - from having an effect that goes against its nature . It aims at individualizing human beings, scattering them apart, and making them in the long run indifferent to one another. We shall return to this. Money appears also to be its own cause, causa sua. Not that it excludes an external cause, but because it shows itself as an unceasing production of itself by itself. One might say that, in the words of the German poet Schiller, from its origins 'it creates itself in an unceasing work of creation ' . It increasingly dominates relationships between values and things, representing these rela­ tionships and their material substratum by exact symbols. Like a price marked on the back of a picture or a garment, it is discovered behind individual objects, objects that are associated in the economy according to money 's own rules of exchange and measurement. At every moment it solves the same problem - how to associate a value with a relationship between objects - just as language resolves that of associating sounds with meaning. But the sym­ bolism of language tends to link the word with the thing, since, as Aristotle said, 'not to mean one single thing alone is to mean nothing at all ' . In contrast, the symbolism of money attaches the same sign to things that are more and more different, but in some way made synonymous. In this sense the symbol­ ism is more primitive, for it tends above all to represent, an operation of which almost every animal is capable. Yet it is also more general, since its rules have a very extensive field of application and are, like those of science, nearly independent of all cultures. This characteristic of being both primitive and general makes money a means to record, like an invisible tape, a host of desires and individual actions, and also the widest fluctuations in commerce and industry, as well as of power and knowledge. Where can one see more clearly the conjunction between the individual and the collective? And what else penetrates into the most infin­ itesimal cells of the economy and culture to become their common denomina­ tor? Indefatigable and intangible, money pursues, according to laws that are calculable and thus strange, a tendency to give identity to what is diverse, to change the thousand existing qualities into one single one - quantity . Simmel wrote: 'Thus one of the major tendencies of life - the reduction of quality to quantity - achieves its highest and uniquely perfect representation in money.

The world that has vanished 3 0 1 Here too, money i s the pinnacle of a cultural historical series o f developments 3 which unambiguously determines its direction. ' The series proceeds in one direction, and always the same one: so as to concentrate in money the essence of things that are brought together, with the value of each expressed less through desires and preferences than through the uniformity of number. What we are allowed to see or feel in objects and actions counts for less than what eludes our gaze and touch, and is the property of everybody, and nobody: a measure. We need to think about this, because it is no theory, but a psychological series in the course of which our world of qualities is transformed into its opposite. Simmel noted: Our desire is concentrated on the qualitative character of the object and the

interest in quantity usually asserts itself only after the quality has been realized and experienced to a certain extent . . . Since money is nothing but the indifferent means for concrete and infinitely varied purposes, its quantity is the only important determination as far as we are concerned. 4

At first the object of the desire, because of some felt need, it becomes, through excess, the desire of the object. This is the originality of its character. The only thing of interest to it is what they have in common and what determines them, a value expressed in figures. It is of little consequence that the satisfaction sought or the use may differ, depending on whether a piece of fruit or a car is at stake. Each object must be able to rank itself on a scale, and be distinguished in its ranking on it by the sum to which it corresponds. Does this mean that we no longer distinguish between things, or between the motives that spur us on to possess them? Doubtless not. But the question we put to ourselves about them, when we desire them, receive them or give them, changes utterly . We no longer ask what, or how, but only: how much? This is because the object we hold in our hands and use depends no longer on sight or touch, but on an over-abstraction, making its quality reside solely in its quantity. Simmel stated. 'Since money is nothing but the indifferent means for concrete and infinitely varied purposes, its quantity is the only important determination as far as we are concerned. With reference to money , we do not ask what and how, but how much . ' 5 It is not only distinct but the prime question in our culture, where what at first seems strange quickly becomes habitual. Oscar Wilde 's aphorism may be paraphrased: nowadays people ' know the price of everything and the value of nothing ' . Let us not lose sight of this sociological law. Yet in the end, is money really bereft of qualities? Most assuredly not. How­ ever ' externalized ' it may be, there remains at least one: quantity . How does this reversal of things, which makes quantity a quality , come about? Yet nothing is plainer, from the psychological and social viewpoint. We all, in fact, have a special perception of number, according to whether it is large or small, when we ask: 'How much? ' Ten thousand persons killed in a year, in the course of a spate of road accidents, do not shock the public as much as do one hundred dead in the sinking of a single ship. In the same way, l 00 million

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francs distributed among fifty people produces a completely different effect than if the same sum was given to 1 0,000 individuals. This is not only because of the possibilities of credit and action that the sum procures, but above all through the amount of prestige that each individual acquires. What, on the one hand, is dimini shed and diluted in the mass is, on the other hand, found to be increased when concentrated in individuals. Quantity has therefore special effects, because it adds surplus value that does not flow from the value in exchange and the interest that money brings with it. It is due to the fact of possessing it and increases in proportion to the amount. Without paying out anything, the rich enjoy certain advantages that are difficult to evaluate. They are better informed of the possibilities for doing business, more highly considered by shopkeepers, who give them better service, because they buy more products of better quality . In stations and airports a lounge is reserved for travelling VIPs, and flight attendants hasten to look after them. Moreover, the banks grant the rich overdrafts that are more substantial. Men and women seek out their company, and everybody heaps upon them marks of re spec t . Thus the q uan ti ty of money procures advantages denied to others who a re poorer. Simmel asserted : ' These privileges are a g ratui to u s s uppl e ­ ment, and their most painful feature is perhaps that the consumer of cheaper 6 goods, who is denied them, cann o t co mplain that he is being cheated. ' Such an attitude is inevitable, al tho ugh it ends up in the most insidious of all i neq ual i tie s, since i t sp iri ts away from indi viduals, cell by cell, if one may say so, the re spec t they deserve, the attention to which they have a right, the psychological benefits the y are co unt in g upon, in order to transfer all these to other individuals, in proportio n to the ir financial resources . Thus quantity conti nually becomes the prime quality of money, if not the on ly one. It adds to it its own addi tional value, dete rmin ed by the quantum that each person possesses. The questions posed every da y in social life are countless, whereas our economic life is essentially summed up in one s i n g le questi on : Who has more, who has less? Money has given it this e x trao rd in ary prominence in our cul ture and has, by so doing, imprinted two faces upon it, as it possesses itself. On the one hand, we understand that it does not represent the diversity of the objects that occupy our world, and their pe rcep ti ble, sensorial nature. By steamrolling over them, and effacing them, money reduces them to one dimen­ sion. identifiable by quantity. All that remains of them are pure symbols that link them to a form : exchange and communication . On the other hand, quantity itself, expressed as money , differentiates them according to a value that may go up or down, in obed ience to rigorous and indisputable cri teria. Hence the choice which we can make among th ings , and the effort expended in order to make their propertie s equal to thei r cost. seeing that the 'What?' is in agree­ ment with the ' How much? ' In this world, which may be judged to be upside down, the wealth-acquiring code that combines and numbers the properties is substituted for the other codes . and becomes their quintessence. It introduces an order and unity that encompass all the s phere s of rea lit y and ways of th inking or feel ing about them. Simmel insi sted that ,

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There is no doubt that, in their realm, the feelings that money excites possess a psychological similarity with this. In so far as money becomes the abso­ lutely commensurate expression and equivalent of all values, it rises to abstract heights way above the whole broad diversity of objects; it becomes the centre in which the most opposed, the most estranged and the most distant things find their common denominator and come into contact with one 7 another.

These things react on and recreate one another, depending on the quantity of them that is reproduced and periodically exchanged. Now, this synthesizing power of money is in fact the only one that concerns us. In the modem world all the rest may be tributary to it. Let us begin with exchange among human beings. If, in the course of its evolution, money has lost its concrete substance, what remains of it? Nothing more than an impalpable form that spreads like a ' fluence ' of magnetism, and which does so all the more easily. It therefore tends to be increasingly better adapted to its function as a mediator between things and individuals, and as a standard that makes them comparable. At the same time as being a means of exchange and a symbol of value, it increases the gulf that separates persons from the things they desire, creating additional obstacles, because one must obtain money before being able to acquire them. What is happening at the same time? Since it is their means and a common sign, it brings people themselves together, increases their dependence on their desires and their reciprocal measures of utility, and their relationship in general. Simmel wrote: Only through the growth of the economy to its full capacity, complexity and internal interaction does the mutual dependence of people emerge. The elimi­ nation of the personal element directs the individual towards his own resour­ ces and makes him more positively aware of his liberty than would be 8 possible with the total lack of relationship.

Consequently , both on the objective and the subjective plane, value for the two parties, the enjoyment of goods, increases in parallel , and in an equitable way . Nor is this all: a kind of inversion is at work, as I have had occasion to recall. For a long, confused period of time money was one instrument of exchange among others. All operations took place using a substance such as wood or gold, or a special item of goods such as animals, houses, bread and so on. They are of value to human beings as well because of their specific qualities. But, as it spreads and imposes its rules upon exchange , on the one hand money intensifies this value and on the other it confers upon it an independence in relation to those involved in exchange. From being a huge mass of personal contents in circulation, it becomes an autonomous social form. It is true also that, far from changing them, the signs and norms of money are strongly concentrated, giving it a regularity and foreseeability that i s almost mathematical. Thus the way i n which they become associated i s the sole revolutionary occurrence in the economy. One could go even further, as Simmel stated:

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One of the Greatest Mysteries Money seems to participate in this trend when valuation becomes inde­

pendent of the material of money and is transferred to its function, which is universal and yet not abstract. The v aluation, which at first concerned a

particular functioning substance, becomes differentiated, and while the precious metal continues to be valued, its function, which goes beyond the particular substance with which it is associated , attains a specific value of its own . . . The decisive point, however, is that its v alue no longer arises from what represents it; on the contrary the latter is quite secondary , and its nature has no importance except on technical grounds which have nothing to do with the sense of value . 9

Money had been only an empirical entity in relationships between certain individuals. Now here it coincides with the representation of the main form of the actions and movements within a society . It devotes itself fully to its function as a measure and means of communication in order to clarify and perfect its laws. And also, it might be added, in order to give them an increas­ ingly public character. Instead of a series of direct transactions, from one human being to another, as one might say, which have a semi-secret, semi­ private aspect, monetary transactions suppose at least the intervention of a third party. What is more, inasmuch as they relate to quantities and are expressed in an abstract way by a cheque, or a credit card, requiring standards of measurement, written records and verification, we see them visibly demon­ strated, and taking place, if not within sight and knowledge of everybody, at least of many people. The age-old synchronism between Pluto, who rules over the underground kingdom of the dead, and Plutus, the god of wealth, is not thereby affected; only the number of their devotees is increased. Thus rela­ tionships of exchange themselves lose their private, exclusive character, and have a public, anonymous life. In this way the money economy tends to reveal its mechanisms openly and extends its influence over the various parts of society that depend upon it. It is as if it was clearly necessary to make them visible through the mediation of money which, like light and its various electromagnetic pulsations, becomes less and less visible itself. Furthermore, the exchange with nature, and knowledge of it, likewise falls into its grasp, obeying the general tendency. In fact, the rise of money entails a rise in techniques. Each of its uses requires precise measures and calculations. A complex of arithmetical operations is needed to link all values with their common denominator. With money, weighing, counting, and quantifying with a high degree of accuracy are not any kind of acts . They are the very substance of thought and reality. This is true also for science, where the importance of a research project increases in relation to what it costs. The verification of a proposition in physics, if it requires a cyclotron, or a hypothesis in astronomy, if it depends upon a satellite, can be expressed in figures. Here too, 'How much? ' is clearly distinguished from ' What? ' As researchers spend more and more of their time in drawing up documents for those who dole out the neces­ sary funds, the reasoning behind them cannot fail to be affected. Nowadays, in order to rank the sciences in order of importance, one could think of criteria completely different from those of generality and simplicity , which were those

The world that has vanished 305 of Auguste Comte; for example, the correlation between the number of re­ searchers and the budget allocated to each one. Nor is this all. Is not every success judged in terms of quantitative performance? Each country tots up its Nobel prizewinners and, depending on their number, evaluates its contribution to science, just as its adds up the medals won at the Olympic Games by its sportsmen and women in the various kinds of sports. We can see in this, and perhaps not without reason, indices of the state of health of a society and of the progress of science in general. For each one of us, schooled by money, embraces the passion of 'How much? ' - the love of quantity and achievement. However, one should emphasize that there is a more profound and direct inner bond. Side by side with the legacy of ancient philosophy, mathematical measurement and abstraction occupy the key position in the birth of modem science. They form the basis for the care taken to eliminate any lack of accuracy, and any illusions arising from the senses of sight and touch. Each advance in penetrating to the heart of phenomena takes place through identi­ fying quantities by the use of precision instruments, and linkages between them are made through equations. This is the the proper raison d' etre of knowledge, its philosophical justification and its vision of nature. Thus money serves as a model and a stimulant for this knowledge, which, in its perfected form, tends to reduce qualities to a quantity. In return, what is left on one side is classed with the irrationaI . 10 Hence, there are very good reasons for main­ taining, as did Simmel, that the exact sciences have emerged from the same tendency. He wrote: ' Within the historical-psychological sphere, money by its very nature becomes the most perfect representative of a cognitive tendency in modern science as a whole: the reduction of qualitative determinations to quantitative ones. ' 1 1 In this is to be found the secret of its workings and its hold on the intelligence, which otherwise would remain incomprehensible. Once uniform, like a tool in process of development, money has become multiform to the point where it dominates exchanges between human beings and the external world. So placed between the visible and the invisible, it is favourable to the emergence of abstraction in the economy , and then in the sciences. Simmel declared: This form of life not only presupposes a remarkable expansion of mental

processes (consider, for instance, the complicated psychological pre­ conditions required to cover bank notes by cash reserves) but also their intensification , a fundamental re-orientation of culture towards intellectuality . The idea that life is essentially based on our mental energies, goes hand in 12 hand with the growth of a money economy.

That this instrument of base works and vile instincts should change into the emblem for the growth of our intellectual faculties and rational thought might well change scorn into admiration: only our civilization has known such an abrupt change of perspective . With it the economy of earthly bodies becomes an economy of heavenly bodies . If, in Valery ' s phrase, 'the mind is the refusal to be anything at all ' , then money is the mind, or in any case, what liberates it and causes it to extend its action.

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One of the Greatest Mysteries

From the ' ap proximate society ' to the economy of precision

Simmel recognized that money has an immense power that surpasses all those that economists describe . He showed this from an inexhaustible variety of perspectives. At every page one is dazzled - sometimes in the sense in which one is dazzled on the road by too brilliant headlights. More than once, to my surprise, I have thought that Durkheim was right, a propos of The Philosophy of Money, to write that the links between the questions dealt with are tenuous, 13 and are not woven into a relationship by any coherent theory . Yet in the end it is no mere froth of ideas either. In summary form, the following propositions might be drawn from it:

2 3 4

5 6

7

8

9 lO

Exchange is a form sui generis of society , in which values take on an objective existence. Exchange becomes economic from the outset by virtue of the sacrifice to which individuals assent. Money represents values and reifies them, and this allows us to arrange them in a relationship and compare them. The passage from a c losed economy to an open one is accomplished by an ' externalization ' of money, in which its substance disappears to give way to its function. By becoming 'externalized' money increases its power to objectivize, i.e. to place people ' s property at a distance. During a process of evolution dominated by the principle of least effort, money ensures the superiority of the means of exchange, and of communica­ tion of values over ends. In this way, it transforms itself from a means into an end, and thus is its own end. Money realizes the tendency of life to unify what is diverse by reducing quality through quantity, a tendency that has become the principle behind our dominion over society and nature. As this reduction proceeds, money is transformed into a pure symbol and a chrematistic code for exchanges in general. The spread of the money economy leads to the autonomy of the world of exchange, conferring upon it an abstract, universal form. The domination of money directs our culture towards the pre-eminence of the intellectual over the affective, and of rational operations over mere empirical tinkering .

This then is the Decalogue that surrounds the monetary phenomenon. From it may be drawn an array of hypotheses and intuitions, but also many predictions, a large number of which are destined never to be verified. Now, one of them, the main one that serves as the backbone of Simmel's theory, proclaims a general rationalization of society. One can conceive this is so. Since money, without exception, tends to rid society of a hotchpotch of customs, as well as of the charm attached to symbols, at the same time it causes person-to-person

The world that has vanished 3 07 relationships to disappear. It is as if by introducing a degree of objectivity into social life it emancipated individuals and encouraged autonomous action and thought. As Simmel stressed on several occasions, 'Money objectifies the external activities of the subject which are represented in general by economic transactions, and money has therefore developed as its content the most ob­ jective practices, the most logical , gurely mathematical norms, the absolute 1 freedom from everything personal . ' In thi s respect, how far is thi s borne out by the facts? Consider the peasant in the Middle Ages. He began to free himself from his serfdom to the feudal lord from the moment when he had the choice of paying money dues to him instead of providing him with cattle and the produce of the land, such as com and rye, etc., or so many days ' labour. From then on it was possible for him to use more of his time to his own advantage , to devote himself to one si ngle crop or to concentrate exclusively on cattle-breeding, for example, if he thought it more profitable. One can imagine that this inner act of liberation, which was both psychological and social , did not proceed with­ out difficulty, since the lord in many cases refused to relax his direct hold and domination over his serfs. In the long term, however, he had to admit defeat. Another advance consisted in a single one-off payment of dues, replacing payments at regular intervals fixed by tradition. The whole status of property emerged from this in utter disorder, since it modified from top to bottom the dependency relationship. Moreover, when money is substituted for labour and requisitions in kind, what one owes ceases to be sacred and arbitrary, wrapped in sentiment. Serfdom staged in this caricatural way , dressed up in mythical and religious lies, throws off these false representations and is perceived for what it is. Being the most striking revelation and the most measured in nature, it dissolves like acid any person-to-person attachments, making them both anonymous and distant. From this arises a factor of objectivity that intervenes, making the services required in the name of that attachment both unthinkable and unbearable . Simmel notes that 'This development was, as it were, one that lacked any specific form and is, therefore, the correlate of personal freedom 15 of modem times. ' Everywhere the same causes produce the same effects. A s i t spread, pay­ ment in money allowed modem workers likewise to free themselves from their employer and immediate boss. They no longer felt themselves personally subordinated. As the owners of their labour, they sell it in exchange for a fixed amount of money. This is indeed what causes their confidence in themselves to grow, and allows them to act. Because it is anonymous and precisely calculated, monetary remuneration - and this is the opposite of what Marx thought - breaks the chains, the memory of which runs deep. In general the worker' s person is made 'all the more free, the more objective, impersonal 16 and technical work and its regulation becomes ' . In every sector of society, no matter what the position occupied, the money economy eliminates arbitrari­ ness, feelings of honour and gratitude, potential and limitations, in favour of abstract, regulated relationships. Solicitude and dependence upon an indi­ vidual disappear with the allegiances that bind one to a corporation or an

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One of the Greatest Mysteries

occupation. Even if it appears harsher for individuals from the subjective viewpoint, the development nevertheless introduces an element of freedom, insofar as a greater part of life and any initiatives are their own. What is required of the individual must, moreover, be clearly defined and rationally justified. Simmel asserted: The elimination of the personal element directs the indiv idual towards his

own resources and makes him more positively aware of his liberty than would be poss ible with the total lack of relationships. Money is the ideal representative of such a condition since it makes possible relationships be­ tween people but leaves them personally undisturbed; it is the exact measure of material achievements, but is very inadequate for the particular and the personal . 1 7

Thus money creates a gulf between what is common to all and what is particular to the individual. It separates the external world of relationships with others from the inner world of relationships with oneself. It opposes them to each other as reason is opposed to passion. I must, I think, admit that I was very astonished by the idea that, among all the roads to freedom, money has historically played a part by eliminating personal relationships that have been forged over thousands of years. Fig­ uratively this could be expressed by the image of human beings who no longer see in other human beings people like themselves, but automata or passing strangers, whose reactions are hardly important. To those who might object that such an impersonal relationship cannot be described in any significant way I might have difficulty in giving an answer. This is because it is very true that money does not succeed in diminishing the impulses of the heart or personal bonds. For me there is no doubt that in important matters it creates ambiguous relationships, reconciling tendencies that are as opposed as they are incompatible: indifference and attachment. If in the interplay of substitu­ tions and exchanges, money objectifies what in order to satisfy us should remain subjective, it is itself obliged to maintain some kind of underpinning in the subjectivity of persons. Let us reflect for a moment on the conditions under which money circulates and expresses values. We can then see that every operation requires a great deal of confidence, since we are parting with a possession or sacrificing our time in order in return to receive a promise, a piece of paper or a metal token that is deemed to represent these items, but without anything that demonstrates this to be so. This 'reliability ' , Canetti 8 observes, ' is perhaps the most important attribute of coins ' . 1 Thus yet again, underpinning the powerful rationality behind the money economy, is to be found a belief. It allows us to enjoy credit and offers the possibility of creating a money that is very accurately termed fiduciary. Its value is based not on the value of the substance of which it is made - paper, bronze or silver - but on the confidence placed in the person who issues it. 19 The same holds good for gold. ' And the true faith ' , wrote Mauss, ' that we cherish in gold, and all the values that flow from our estimate of its worth, is

The world that has vanished 309 surely for the most part the trust we have in its power. ' 20 Without it society would split apart, for few relationships are based on what we know about another person, and there would be even fewer lasting ones if the trust were 21 not stronger than 'rational proof or personal observation ' . At the same time money induces u s to behave towards others with a certain indifference. This, as we have seen, is a way of protecting ourselves against feelings or fleeting impressions that might adversely affect our interests and reduce the gains upon which we are counting. Whenever one is led to treat a particular person impersonally, there enters in an element of violence. How can one forget the bonds of sympathy and affection with people close to one, and transform them into strangers, in order to keep solely in mind the profit from a transaction, without there being a degree of aggressiveness towards the relative or friend? ' Business is business ' is the response to any protest and explains the lack of generosity towards another person. Because of this, those whose sole interest is money cannot even understand how they can be re­ proached for their harshness. They see only logical consistency and impar­ 22 tiality in their behaviour, without any ill feeling on their part. Even in love, it is the cost that is noted first. The fact remains that this element of violence is enshrined in most of the relationships that our culture wishes to reduce to a common denominator, and in everything that presupposes a feeling or desire. Following Simmel ' s example, let u s consider marriage, prostitution, friendship etc. Many pages of The Philosophy of Money show in minute detail how, if money has fostered certain freedoms, it has undermined our closest bonds . What then vanishes irrevocably is the very possibility of personal enjoyment, which takes refuge in a few gestures, some veiled signs that are almost clandestine. Take, for example, prostitution. A recognized quasi-religious institution, it rids itself of everything else in order to become completely venal. The circulation of pleasure and the circulation of money mingle together in the circulation of sexual desires. The woman contributes value to it through the capital that her body represents, which has become an object as interchangeable as the money that is the remuneration for services rendered. This is even more true for the man, who tries, in spite of everything, to obtain a personal ' surplus value ' through the feeling and the orgasm expected of a woman who is being paid not to expetjence any. And the man resents, as cold and shocking, the fact that he cannot obtain them. Remuneration for personal relationships outside marriage thus teaches us something about the nature of money. It can serve absolutely any purpose. Through it no individual can sustain any privileged ties, since its relationship is the same for everybody. Its intrinsic quality is indifference, given the fact that, as a mere means, it can convey no affective relationship. For once it has transformed a personal contact into an impersonal link, the converse becomes just as difficult as it does making energy flow from a cold source to a hot source. One only succeeds in doing so by fancies and fantasies, and never in reality. Nevertheless today the extremely prosperous erotic industry does accom­ plish this feat. It calls in aid the pornography of ' seeing all ' and not only that

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One of the Greatest Mysteries

of ' saying all ' , putting on paper the most daring and impossible, if not per­ verted, sexual acts. Agencies exist that customers can call to recount their orgasmic fantasies without their even knowing who they are calling, and they pay to be listened to. The most sophisticated electronic technology, such as that provided for 'chat-lines ' is available to those who buy and sell invisible prostitutes wi th a view to enjoying unfulfilled and abstract sexual relation­ ships . Erotic obscurity and the secrecy, somewhat bereft of imagination , of the cash register, combine to make a public service profitable. All these characteristics, as Simmel stressed, illustrate the striking analogy between money and prostitution. The very same characteristics are undoubtedly to be found also in marriage, when it is concluded by a money transaction. They emerge even more strik­ ingly in corruption which, under tqe cover of respecting the laws of society, leads to what is supremely their viol'ation: fraudulent practice, exercised some­ what unscrupulously for the benefit of some other indiv idual . If this venerable institutional practice is less apparent in the West than elsewhere, where its face is shown in all its nakedness, it is precisely because money serves it as a mask. As if one insisted on preserving a facade of public morality and strictness, the act itself is made undetectable, and even disguised from the gaze of the person committing it. Since corruption was relatively difficult, it apper­ tained to an art so long as the bribe was in the form of a tangible possession. In order to obtain a favour a parcel of land was offered a prince, a house to a magistrate, not forgetting gifts in kind, food and drink, precious objects, cloth and jewels - or even a gold coin slipped skilfully into a scarcely opened hand. The semblance of resistance was more acute, the affair took place in public, and could hardly escape the gaze of watchful and jealous eyes. The individuaJ s concerned had to close their eyes to signify consent. Thus money enhances the possibilities of corruption and the maintenance of a facade of morality for both parties. The secret is better kept and is almost inviolable. To obtain some illicit favour, an anonymous banknote, a cheque, or a figure pointed to among so many others, was all that was needed. And the wealth of an individual grew without it being revealed through the slightest materi al object. Recipients can feign ignorance to an unbelievable extent in a gift economy. They can even play out the farce on themselves, by hiding the origins of the sum from their own gaze, for they have neither received anything that is tangible nor enjoyed the possession of anything. The nullity of the act and the absence of material proof of bias and of violation of a common rule change corruption into any kind of banal transaction. This helps us to under­ stand how, in general, money allows acti ons and motives to be disgui sed. The meaning of actions eludes the conscience and prevents it from blaming itself, just as it does the conscience of others, who have seen nothing. There is no need to continue piling on examples. I am suggesting that the impersonal character that money imposes upon our personal relationships creates a special ambiguity and violence that permeates the whole of the social environment. Thi s is taken to the point where forms of behaviour that give the impression that impersonal relationships can be established in a personal way

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311

appear as irrational and inadequate. It is like the shopkeeper who might declare that he or she will reduce the price 'because you 're a friend' , or the bank manager who might make an interest-free loan to you out of sympathy . To show oneself generous, to call upon a sense of honour, when one should follow the laws of the market and calculate as precisely as possible, is to go against the very nature of the economy and to break its rules. It has no room for such ingenuousness, which, as is well known, would merely encompass its own ruin. The modem Don Quixote is no longer tilting against windmills. He breaks a lance against the syllogisms of indifference and the logic of profit and loss, which is the same for everybody . We must l ikewise also realize this : every human being will on many an occasion be a Don Quixote. You can imagine how very difficult it is to possess that infallible sense which allows you to discriminate in a relationship between the impersonal and the personal, between what is rational and irrational in an act. This is all the more the case because, in order to distinguish between them, we have only abstract and imperceptible signs, about which we can never be sure. How many times do we mistake the one for the other, such as taking an advertising circular for a letter addressed to us personally, and the reduction of a sales price for a free gift. In spite of these ambiguities, all this relates to the trend to reduce quality to a quantity, devaluing every personal relationship in order to favour a host of impersonal relationships. No area of social life escapes this. If one complains about the superficial nature of the relationships between people, their reluctance to take part in matters of common social concern, it is not, as one might think, because they wish to isolate themselves and defend themselves against the invasion of their private life. On the con­ trary, it is a matter of knowing how to participate in public life in our society. Until very recently membership of a corporation or religious collectivity such as a parish, or a neighbourhood group, a trade union or even a family, involved people utterly . They had to devote their time to it, adhere to its beliefs, abide by its common traditions, share in its symbols, whilst paying their dues, and for any other manifestations of solidarity. Simmel reminded us: ' In the Middle Ages affiliation with a group absorbed the whole man. It served not only a momentary purpose, which was defined objectively. It was rather an association of all who had combined for the sake of that purpose 23 while the association absorbed the whole life of each of them. ' It was imperative to limit oneself to a few associations that were involved with one another. But, as soon as exchanges multiply and money circulates, affiliation to the group becomes unstable and no longer demands from indi­ viduals more than a minute fraction occasionally of their personality. They can therefore increase their membership of groups. What is more, becoming a member is no longer marked by questions such as 'What do you think?' or ' What are your aims ? ' but quite simply: 'How much are you paying? ' The person who acquires membership by merely handing over a subscription is necessarily less involved. Moreover, the functions of secretary, treasurer or publicity manager are undertaken by salaried staff and professional activists. There is then no need at all to absorb oneself in anything, to sacrifice free time

3 12

One of the Greatest Mysteries

and oneself in order to devote oneself to it. For anyone who has become aware of such easy expedients, to belong to a large number of associations, depend­ ing upon one ' s resources and needs, is taken for granted. Each day new ones arise, without our paying any attention to them. Money has certainly freed the individual from dependence on a small number of people and institutional groups. On the other hand, having fragmented their life, and given them a certain mobility, money makes people dependent on a host of ' non-persons' and precarious groups. Poised in a subtle state of equilibrium, a very large number of impersonal relationships are counterbalanced by personal relation­ ships that may be few in number. The quantity of social life thus becomes its quality. Very often it is an abstract, indifferent, ' ready-made ' quality, which for the individual belonging to such groups comes down to signing a cheque, possessing a membership card and receiving periodically a new bulletin that is thrown away or stacked away unread. The lack of social harmony that arises from this like notes in contemporary music can be perceived through simultaneous and sporadic participation in several unconnected societies. No one person counts exclusively, no human being has importance for anyone else; one arrives at the point where one can exclaim, as Gide fervently does at the end of Les Nourritures Terrestres: 'Forget me as I forget you, and make yourself the most irreplaceable of creatures. ' Each person becomes unique amid the general interchangeability of people, and people associate together with uttermost indifference . The fact is that individuals are isolated, lacking any common yardstick, escaping any enduring framework, seeming only to insert themselves in the social galaxy in order better to be able to elude its various parts by melting into all of them. Simmel asserted: While at an earlier stage man paid for the smaller number of his dependencies with the narrowness of personal relations, often w ith their personal irreplace­ ability, we are compensated for the great quantity of our dependencies by the indifference towards the respective persons and by our liberty to change them 24 at will.

This is all the more true because the exigencies of money call for a certain haste and intensity in relationships, and overturn those relationships that jog along without any change of partners and interests. Thus on the one hand, money limits and impoverishes every social grouping; on the other hand, it increases prodigiously their number. Employee and employer, customer and businessman, tenant and landlord - all see their contacts diminish, reduced to the minimum number of transactions that an objective price justifies - salaries automatically deposited, having been negotiated by collective bodies or through political publicity, and rents fixed by decree. Individuals of modem times increasingly resemble in many respects the strangers in times past: enemies or passing guests. Not being integrated into the community, they were not bound by emotional or traditional allegiances. Such a type can be seen spreading especially in the towns, where the very density of the population intensifies its characteristics. Parts of each individual are devoted to activities

The world that has vanished 3 1 3 separated from one another: the job, friendships, leisure and political choices, become specialized. What is the result? Biased perceptions, fragmentary memories and one-sided processes of logic. It occasionally happens that the ' self' has to pay a high price to quell the discords that arise, and these may prove too heavy a burden for its psychological framework. The individual has to possess a very complex make-up, split many times into objective and subjective personae between which relationships are abstract. Simmel wrote: 'The psychological basis on which the type of individuality prevalent in big towns is built is an intensification of its nervous life, produced by the abrupt 25 and unceasing changes in external and internal impressions . ' Thus the town has brought about the spread of this type of human being and democratized individuals - quantitatively, I should add, since no heroic deed, no virtue, and no special quality are required of them. To adopt Musil ' s expression, they are from the outset ' human beings without qualities ' . This means that they are free from the permanent ties of a group, a family and a profession throughout life, and from the feelings of attachment that used to overwhelm them. But money, which has driven them into a c ircle of imper­ sonal relationships, also brings them in contact with other relationships in the great industrial conglomerates and pyramidal hierarchies of bureaucracy. Together, these relationships are seeking what each individual has lost: shared emotions and personal contacts within a collectivity. Whether through street demonstrations, gigantic musical concerts, patriotic or sporting ceremonies, maybe occasionally of a violent nature, this need is satisfied as best it can be. We have not sufficiently understood the character of modern urban crowds. They gather together rational individuals, in the economic and cultural sense, drawn from a society that isolates us from one another. For a moment they establish a continuity and intensity in all the social networks and disjointed relationships of countless human beings. They represent and exalt in him what is essential, namely the sense of quantity . But, in order to arrive at this point, the mass of people itself obliges individuals to change their psychology into its opposite, suppressing their critical faculties and selfish interests. Things did not happen like this in the past. In ancient Rome, in the Middle Ages, and up to recent times, urban crowds kept up the personal ties that existed with the family, their occupation and the Church. They arose out of other crowds and had no need to change the psychology of individuals or to reverse the tendency that today separates them and makes them indifferent to one another. In short, if all previous societies had masses, our society alone is a mass one. Whoever observes the individual or the mass in isolation has a blinkered vision of modern nature. According to Novalis, Paradise, at first unique, was afterwards spread out over the world ' s surface , hidden away in the interstices of matter and, so to speak, changed in its dream. The same might be said about money: a special sub­ stance, reserved for certain operations relating to gift and to exchange, it has penetrated into every cell of society and has become the reason for their existence . If society moves forward, leaving its mark upon culture, it can only

3 14

One of the Greatest Mysteries

be in one direction : towards measurement and precision. Money may have nothing to do with it, but how can we know this? As soon as we envisage its presence and conditions, we realize that these come down to the elimination of personal judgement, and the habit, after a hasty glance, of making an approximation, as one does subjectively and with­ out thinking. Tastes and colours are disputable, but not the value of a cheque or a franc. To weigh up goods in one ' s hand in order to evaluate their weight, to bite on a coin in order to assure oneself that it is made of gold and not copper, to look a shopkeeper straight in the eye in order to know whether she or he is honest - all these practices have fallen into disuse. Each person must consider individuals and things with the image of money in mind, in the light of calculation and accuracy. The rest does not count, constituting only error and the fluctuations of feeling. Logic requires every person and every thing to be brought down to a standard, with their virtues and vices set on one side, so as to establish solely their value in exchange, down to the decimal point, with something else. What a revolting thought ! Yet, if one takes into account the volume of transactions and the sums of money at stake, a single decimal point counts. Everything in art or technology , everything in science or social life, for anybody who can see and perceive it, may be measured from this viewpoint. It is a truism to state that a piece of research, an idea, a sporting feat, is measured as a function of performance - as with the number of gold medals or of Nobel prizewinners - and speed. I would not dream of being ironical : I am content to spell out the various aspects of this grow ing objectification of our means and ends. Simmel wrote: Rather, since the whole structure o f means is one o f a causal connection

viewed from the front, the practical world too increasingly becomes a prob­ lem for the intelligence. To put it more precisely, the conceivable elements of action become obj ectively and subjectively calculable rational relation­ ships and in so doing progressively eliminate the emotional reactions and

decisions which only attach themselves to the turning points of life, to the 26 final purposes.

We most certainly need all our intellectual and technological resources to solve such a problem. But the sociologist has enunciated it clearly and ex­ plained the presumption behind it: money has broken free from all ends by becoming the absolute means, that which links all ends together. Hav ing conquered the economy, industry, science and communications, it spreads everywhere an instrumental attitude and viewpoint. In the face of any diffi­ culty, a specialist and specialized knowledge are called upon. From these a solution is expected, without our asking what use it i s, and whether it is desirable or harmful. In everybody ' s eyes, such specialists and such know­ ledge, both of which are admired, represent the superiority of means over ends, the fact that one can discuss reasonably and in all objectivity ' how to ' instead 27 of quarrelling and becoming excited about ' why do? ' One will not be able to demolish overnight the facade of education, legality, and religious sentiment, or the crumbling stucco work of our morality. How-

The world that has vanished 3 1 5 ever, in debates about artificial insemination. nuclear energy, or the quality of life, it is most often instrumental arguments that carry the day. In any case, the great interest of Simmel ' s hypotheses lies in their coherence, in the way in which they are arranged around money, which shapes our modem world. This world appears, yet again, absolutely sure of finding in money a model capable of rationalizing everything, in no matter what field . Money is the first not to want to pass into history , it demands history be made according to principles scientifically conceived and verified. Thus it prescribes for itself a rule whereby it treats social phenomena in the same way as natural phenom­ ena. Simmel asserted: 'Just as every emotional accentuation has disappeared from the interpretation of natural processes and has been replaced by an objective intelligence, so the objects and relationships of our practical world, inasmuch as they form increasingly interconnected series, exclude the inter­ '28 ference of emotions. This is the perfect antithesis of the culture that prevailed up to now, which consisted of feelings, expressions of the will, intentions, goals and evil gen­ iuses. The three adjectives: impersonal, i nstrumental , objective, are on a par with one another and sum up our culture . Synonyms of rationality , their scope is constantly being enlarged, and their methods adopted in schools, in the administration, and in the State. This is their secret: operations carried out with money break free from it to dominate those used in our daily work. in science, and in public and private life. This goes as far as including the procedures of democracy, whereby the minority must fall in with the majority . This serves as a clear indication that the individuals have no qualitative value. The definition of the individual is entirely quantitative, and is expressed in the slogan ' one man, one vote ' . This arithmetical process allows for a corollary. Each group, whether a majority or a minority includes a certain unspecified number of units (persons), and a process of levelling down shapes the inner reality of each: 'everyone counts as one and no one counts for more than one ' . 29 What Simmel said about a democracy of votes, which is quantitative , can 30 be applied to the democracy of opinions, which is our democracy. Polls occurring almost daily put figures on these opinions and trace the graph of public moods, as if all the answers to a questionnaire had equal weight and were binding to the same degree. The mania for measuring, weighing and calculating that is all the rage in modern times is held to be the purest reflection of their intellectual character. This can be perceived even in the tendency of language to avoid metaphor and periphrasis, replacing symbolic thought by codes consisting of pure signs. Instead of employ ing abbreviations for common words - such as Metro for Metropolitain - as was done in the past, they are reduced to sigla. As abstract and anonymous signs, they banish any kind of concrete image that might open the way to feeling. The League of Nations of former days has become U.N.O. , i nstead of venereal diseases we speak of V.D., a military treaty between countries is called N.A.T.O. , and the French high-speed train the T.G . V . ( ' train a grande vitesse '). Everything that this language without words includes must not lend itself to display or feeling, but remain concealed through its very form. The capital letters, no

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longer separated even by dots, since the sigla have become an acronym pro­ nounced as one word (NATO, or Nato for example), combine together as in a mathematical formula. Language becomes trivialized and rationalized in this process, which, in Simmel ' s phrase, transforms it into 'a pure means of means ' , indifferent to its end, which is to impart meaning . In this world where symbols give way to signs and approximations to rules, one seeks to optimize the precision of the gesture and the accuracy of the thought. Everywhere the 'calculating ' faculties of the intelligence are much in demand, in order to come to terms with the world of social and individual relationships. The numerical propensity in living is an unmistakable sign, its highest ideal. Simmel wrote: 'Their cognitive ideal is to conceive of the world as a huge arithmetical problem, to conceive events and the qualitative distinc­ 31 tion of things as a system of numbers. ' Society turns the page. And on this new page there is nothing but numbers. After having covered the sciences, arithmetic bids fair to become in many respects the personal diary of our thoughts and behaviour. Its abstract language analyses the choices we make and the preferences that strike our fancy, and from these sketches out a portrait of what we are. Clarity and precision are the essential conditions. Society asks each one of us to judge, to behave towards others, and to carry out tasks according to a formula of mathematical perfection. I am quoting Simmel at length, because it was he who recognized this down to the most minute detail : This psychological feature o f our times . . . seems to m e t o stand i n a close causal relationship to the money economy . The money economy enforces the neces sity of continuous mathematical operations in our daily transactions. The lives of many people are absorbed by such evaluating , weighing, calcu­ lating and reducing of qualitative values to quantitative ones . Gauging values in terms of money has taught us to determine and specify values down to the last farthing and has thus enforced a much greater prec ision in the compari­ 32 son of various contents of life .

This is no more than another means of demonstrating its profound ration­ ality . But comparing physical bodies, as one does, as exactly as possible, how can one set in a relationship matter that remains profuse and fluctuating? How can one identify, evaluate and classify desires and actions that have always eluded measurement? These questions that have never ceased to be posed have led to the same answer, and along the same lines. The god of time who, according to Descartes and Galileo, created the regular movement of the planets in the universe has also imposed this upon society. At least, Simmel was persuaded this was so, and his comparison appears a suggestive one: 'Through the calculative nature of money a new precision, a certainty in the definition of identities and differences, an unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements has been brought about in the relations of life-elements just as externally this precision has been effected by the universal diffusion 33 of pocket watches. ' Between money and precision tools there is a striking comparison, and they have a common effect. Everything we learn we owe to mathematical instruments. It is through them, and through them alone, that we have gained the most important parts of our knowledge. Together they shape

The world that has vanished 3 1 7 those mechanical faculties that are indispensable to human beings, 34 if they are to think of themselves as ' the masters and possessors of nature ' and of themselves . Hence, more than ever what prevails in society is a know-how that is close to engineering, that excludes the tinkering that went on in the past, and that is executed by the machine, of which the robot is the ideal. Everything becomes clear and satisfactory : reason and society are merged together. The philosopher Lukacs believed that ' this rationalisation of the world appears to be complete , it seems to penetrate the very depths of man ' s physical and psychic nature. It is limited, however, b y its own formalism. ' 35 But for anyone who does not wish to feed on false hopes, this limit is an illusion. Simmel ' s former pupil would have been better advised to listen to the eternal wisdom that, on the contrary, respects and even fears the power of forms. They become for a while the marks of a culture and the moulds into which pours the consciousness of human beings. The corollary to the problem of rationalizing society is what I should most certainly call the devaluation of character. It signifies an erosion in individuals of their capacity to be individuals. Over the last few generations, success had already been achieved in making them finally abandon those instinctive char­ acteristics and inclinations that give them a unique character. And this has been no accident, for the numerous social groupings to which people belong, the exchanges in which they participate in such a transitory way, take them beyond themselves, if only on the economic plane. Simmel stated: ' Exchange as such is the primary and purest scheme for the quantitative enlargement of the economic spheres of life. Through exchange, the individual fundamentally extends himself beY.ond his solipsistic circle - much more so than by robbing or giving presents. '36 Put crudely, individuals are impelled by money to go beyond their own limits and to comply with ways of thought and action that are identical for everybody. Only neutral, objective traits survive, bereft of any background or appearance. A veritable Nessus ' hair-shirt, money weaves a second entity in society, mathematicized and homogeneous, in which privileged links that attach to anyone no longer exist. One might say that it is a Cartesian society, in which 'the elements a priori of relationships are no longer individuals, with their own characteristics, from which a social relationship arises, but rather these relationships themselves as objective forms, "position'', empty spaces of which the individual in some way must merely fill out the contours . ' 3 7 For someone suspended in a vacuum, whose function is purely one of filling space, qualities lose their value. The individual no longer cares about honour or prestige. Loyalty and steadfastness of conviction are hardly justified any longer. The interventions of family or patriotic feeling can falsify the judge­ ment concerning the value of means as well as precision in one ' s actions. Then a subjective gravitation will force us out of the trajectories we should follow, paths that do not intersect with one another. One no longer counts as naturally as one breathes, one can no longer join with others, as if taking up a 'position ' , i n a detached, unprej udiced way.

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Indiv iduals of character possess a demon, following their own path inas­ much as they stick to their ideas, acknowledge their desires, prefer one thing to another, and do not consider themselves disloyal. Their trueness to them­ selves is expressed in their idiosyncrasy, which is dominant and dictates compelling duties. They are people of their word, as the saying goes. But in a society where action prides itself on being reflective, where each human being must adapt to objective circumstances and a variety of interests, it is better to be completely lacking in character. What Balzac said about a politi­ cian in La Maison Nucingen becomes applicable to every individual : 'A great politician must be a rascal in the abstract sense; otherwise societies will be badly led. A politician who is an honourable man is a steam engine with feeling or a pilot who would make love whilst at the wheel . ' Why is this so? Quite simply because his relationships with things and people are governed by very personal conviction, by an unthinking attachment. The gigantic mechanism made up of sensations and intelligence that com­ prises an individual must be distanced from any ' content' or specific motives, so as to resemble money, which has likewise been removed to a distance, and individuals must be opportunists in order better to keep up with the flow of exchanges. Having a permeable, flexible self, seeking no support that is unique to themselves, they become the perfect inhabitants of this 'world of qualities without men, of experiences that have been undergone without anybody to undergo them ' , 38 which Musil was at pains to describe. If detachment as regards oneself and objects acquires such importance, it is because it allows human beings that have been completely swallowed up in this way - and who could escape from such a grip? - to acquire one essential quality, ' the concept of lack of character' . 39 It is that of the mobility and versatility of the indi­ viduals without any demon, who do not feel themselves bound by any a priori principle, any inner duty, or subject to any norm valid for all time. For they abandon themselves to a movement where nothing is left, even for a moment, in a state of rest, where there is ' no person and no order, because our know­ ledge can be modified every day ' , and they do not ' believe in any bond, and everything only retains its value until the next act of creation, like a face to 40 which one is speaking, but which changes with the words spoken ' . Such a character is only a series of compositions and improvisations, merely serving as a facade. Thus the law of a rational society runs : indiv iduals that have less character drive out those who have more , just as bad money drives out good. A calcu­ lated prudence demands that one should not commit oneself entirely, one should not listen to the voice of conscience, so as to remain attentive to the balance sheet of exchanges and the equilibrium of interests. Much discussion has gone on regarding the psychological meaning of the principle of optimal­ ization in the economy and in particular about the conditions that favour it. Well, this is now known: it is the negative selection of characters. It gives an edge to those who do not persist in their convictions and choices. The philo­ sopher Lukacs describes this devaluation of character as regards journalists. To tell the truth, it can be observed everywhere that

The world that has vanished 3 1 9 subjectivity itself, knowledge, temperament and powers of expression are reduced to an abstract mechan ism functioning autonomously and divorced both from the personality of the ir ' owner' and from the material and c oncrete nature of the subject matter in hand . The journalist's ' lack of conv ictions ' , the prostitution o f his experiences and beliefs i s comprehensible only as the 41 apogee of capitalist reification.

Such is the case of individuals who must conceal under a facade of severity the effacement of all that is peculiar to them, in order to create a space between themselves and others, as they are caught up in that strange game which transforms them into a substance for exchange. It is the ultimate state of those obliged to contrive for themselves a margin for manoeuvre and negotiation, avoiding involving themselves ' in person ' in fluid relationships capable of being turned against them. However this may be, such a devaluation breaks with the world of tradition in which individuals were known by their good faith, their perseverance and adherence to a code of values from which they could not opt out. Once the bond with the network of affective sentiments and obligations is broken, each person is capable of displaying greater flexibility, turning his or her opinions and beliefs inside out, and also capable of greater objectivity, by following the current of forces at work when it comes to taking decisions. In fact Simmel considered that the wearing away of character and the predominance of the intelligence over convictions, both stimulated by money, have the effect of blunting social conflicts. They lose their fanatical intensity when opposing parties abandon their querulous intransigence in fav­ our of a compromise . This is what he wrote about it: The trend towards conciliatoriness springing from indifference to the basic

problems of our inner life, which one can characterize at its highest level as the salvation of the soul and as not being soluble by reason - right up to the idea of world peace, which is especially favoured in liberal circles, the h istorical representatives of intellectualism and of money transactions : all

these are positive consequences of the negative trait or lack of character. This colourlessness becomes, as it were, the colour of work activity at the high 42 points of money transactions .

To sum up, the modem individual whose characteristic is the absence of character stands in contrast to the traditional individual who is defined by character, just as the B uddhist contrasts with the Christian or the Jew. The ' Buddhist ' may be Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Jew, Catholic or Mos­ lem. He or she can proselytize very freely on behalf of Islam or the Catholic religion. But it would not enter the mind of a Christian or a Jew that this person could at the same time be a good Buddhist. Moreover if we are Jews, we must believe in one God and that Moses was his last prophet. If we are Christians, we must believe that the only Son of the divine Lord was crucified and rose from the dead of Palestine. On the other hand, we can be Buddhists and deny the existence of B uddha. Put more precisely, we have the right to think that our belief in this matter is of little consequence. These therefore are the perspectives that money opens up. Having journeyed around the margins, it penetrates into all the nooks and crannies of human

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43 relationships and phenomena. Its task is to install everywhere an intelligence that is able to represent precisely the distance between individuals and things, the equivalence between things that are very heterogeneous indeed, reducing their qualities to a single quantity. Who can deny that it has been successful? If intelligence is presented to us under the threefold aspect of an impersonality that sets free the individual , an instrumentality that rationalizes society and a devaluation that objectivizes character in order to adapt individuals to society, by this very fact it breaks up the hierarchy that has prevailed for thousands of years. Indeed money, which dismantles the basi s of this hierarchy as regards person-to-person relationships, rebuilds it according to a different logic. It creates a hierarchy no longer supported by affection and gratitude , but on a science of means and ends. In this way the foundations of power in our modern society are in the process of renewal. Balzac, in his Traite de la vie elegante, has summed it up by saying that it has substituted ' the exploitation of man by the intelligence for the exploitation of man by man ' . This is a formulation stupefying in its accuracy, provided one does not endow the words with a meaning they do not possess. The drive towards a rational society - it can carry various names - begins with the money economy that is speeding up and becoming general everywhere. Yet something in it repels us and causes no one to feel entirely at home in it. It might be said that the majority of the events and substance of the industrial and intellectual world have wrought consequences that nobody wished for and require acts of abnegation that no one can bear. The result is that most social forms appear less to be orders of rationality than volcanoes that may have spat out fire for so long that their walls have developed fissures, leaving their extinguished pyres exposed. Such a vision would be appropriate for modern­ ity, in the backward gaze it casts over its own past and the sacrifices accepted in orqer to forge a future civilization. It might be maintained that most civilizations seek a harmony between the rules for living in society and human character. In the guise of the sacred and the profane, the divine and the demoniacal , they project that harmony out into the universe so that it may be etched into it, defying the ravages of time. In this way , each rule becomes embellished and is recognizable by its own unique style. All matters regarding security, duty and enthusiasm are cultivated, even if their reverse side is insecurity and apathy, in an environment too powerful to be controlled. This is a burdensome, unending task, but performed by those members of the collectivity who feel called upon to commit its destiny into their hands - in short, legislators, heroes or prophets. Our civilization - and this is what is called rationalizing - causes most of these efforts to be brought to bear upon the dissolution of the bonds between morality and character. In his diaries Dostoievsky noted : ' Henceforth the human being lacks a profile. ' Reciprocal moral obligations tend to take the shape of formal imperatives, and depend upon the consensus of each and every one of us. B ut this comes down to neutralizing them through philosophy and

The world that has vanished 3 2 1 trivializing them b y public discussion. Words diminished i n this way lose their meaning and magic . It is as if we, the people of the modem age, were the only ones able to do without these bonds and able to lead our collective existence together at a distance from and indifferent to one another. It is as if we had some gift or other making us able to endure this ' melancholia without hu­ mour' , sustained by an intelligence that has no need of carnal motives, or spiritual ones either, to carry out what is believed j ust and necessary. This has been our experience over the past half-century. During this time robust for­ mulations of morality and of the ethic of responsibility have proliferated. But on a human compost heap lacking all character, few such formulations have survived oppression, and even fewer in the face of criminal activity. Now, this character or demon, without which Socrates would have remained a common or garden sophist, has been lacking in entire peoples, and even in those who claimed to be their spiritual guides. They have fallen short of their own duties, through lack of support from any inner law. ' Philosophy teaches us to act, not to say,' Seneca affirmed in ancient times. Today philosophy no longer teaches this, and there are good reasons for this. Philosophy partakes of the culture in which we live, weighed down by a permanent competition between morals, fashions and ideas that lack time to crystallize into any shape, but rob us of our own. Do we not bow down before a superficial individualism of ' anything goes' that lacks any form? It was in fact Simmel who saw in the absence of style the particular style of our own culture, where anything goes and everything is of equal worth, and thus worth nothing. It is of no consequence whether we discover this through the disenchantment of the world or the devaluation of character. We carry on as if it were possible to eradicate subjectivity from the rules for living and to eliminate from the pattern for living everything that makes human beings what they are. We are looking for a society that does not depend on those qualities, elective affinities and know-how, through which we can mean something for and to one another; seeking a society in which we can simply be . In this context Paul Valery noted in his Carnets for 1 9 1 0: The civilized person of vast cities returns to the state of the savage, namely that of isolation, because the soc ial machinery allows him to forget the

necessity for community and to lose any feeling for the link between indi­ viduals, which were once constantly awakened by need . Every perfecting of the social mechanism renders useless actions, ways of feeling and aptitudes for living life in common.

This is the paradox of a society that is perfecting itself but lacks sociability. Such an uncoupling is not a symptom of alienation - Simmel did not entertain such a notion - or anomie, but acknowledgement of a fact. I will state it as follows: we are badly civilized, if the term is appropriate. I am not thinking of the acts of deviance and the excesses of cruelty and idolatry that we have inflicted upon ourselves in the name of reason . B ut we are powerless to bridge the gap between the external universe, which is doomed to remain incomplete, and the inner universe , which is always aspiring to a state of completeness, in

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one word, to perfection . Neither can money bridge the gap between desire and the object of desire by superimposing a sterile figure upon the juicy fecundity of a fruit. The things that people our universe, if they had a voice, would say to us, like Coriolanus: ' It is not we who are running, but you who are lagging behind. ' Simmel's sociology, which announced the advent of a civilization with which we cannot fully identify , envisaged it as being peopled with Faustian societies, no one of which was any longer great enough for anyone to feel at home in it. Human beings who create them and wish to live in them are not for an instant in harmony. They force themselves not to know that unique moment that gives absolute value to life, echoing Faust' s I f to the fleeting hour I say ' Remain, so fair thou art, remain ! ' Then bind me with your fatal chain, For I will perish in that day.

Doomed to disappointment by the action of reason and knowledge, which ends up in uncertainty and ignorance, they wear premature mourning for what is not yet born or discovered. Unable to recognize ourselves in this or that aspect of art, science or work, the badly-civilized persons that we are end up by believing we belong to an ephemeral community, to which we do not belong. Or, to express it once more in Simmel ' s words: If one compares our culture with that of a hundred years ago, then one may surely say - subject to many individual exceptions - that the things that determine and surround our lives, such as tools, means of transport, the products of sc ience, technology and art, are extremely refined . Yet indiv idual culture, at least in the higher strata, has not P.rogressed at all to the same 44 extent; indeed, it has even frequently declined.

This is the insoluble dilemma to which we are brought back so long as money remains the guide for our faculties of accuracy and reasoning, 'exter­ nalizing ' the division of labour and, through art, science and economics, stifling our subjective culture. 45 Yet, if you will, this anomaly sustains the highest creations of the modern era and turns history on its head. We can catch no inkling of any limit or remedy to this, because we should have to be capable of conceiving a world without money or exchange values. This undertaking is most certainly impossible . Great tensions arise because of this between our inner world, which would like to be free of such values, and the external world, which reveres them. Great tensions always seize people by the throat and force them to shattering di scoveries. In this sense their opposition to society has each time been of capital importance, and will remain so. But then, where has society gone?

Simmel did not ' discover' money. He was nevertheless the first to grasp all the implications of the philosophy of culture that has sprung from it, and the

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first to have devised a complete theory of its powers. The abundance and proliferation of the intuitions that shed light upon it make it of encyclopedic dimensions. Only the nineteenth century could have produced such an exten­ sive system of concepts, profound, of great substance and all-embracing. It is the worthy equivalent of those enormous architectural accomplishments in metal and glass that never cease to intrigue us. Yet in all things a longer view is required of us. Among all the sociologists I have had occasion to read, Simmel preached and moralized the least. He was not itching to make prophecies. With a steady hand he proffered us the mirror of the future in order to help us to become aware of our condition. By this I mean, that of individuals in a society that sees in money both something flawed and yet a necessity. It can only work towards a situation where the contradiction between the individual and society, which money exacerbates, will be ended, even if in reason it is foreseen by capitalism or socialism. What good is it to establish principles for a solution, if we refuse to see the perman­ ent tension that a constantly expanding system of exchange maintains? Sim­ mel meant to respect this fact, in order to explore the consequences arising from it. One may certainly reproach him with propounding a theory that, l ike the geometries of Riemann and Lobachevsky, may be too abstract, extending beyond reality . 46 He neverthe less stuck to his idea of a society of pure form and pure exchange that had to be explained. Ye t nowadays , as it exists, it is most certainly determined by the distance that rati onali ty inserts between the individual and the external world. But it also creates a distance between one individual and another, throug h the spread i n g out of their contacts and the removal of all feelings from our common li fe . We are g rappl i ng with differen­ ces th at set against one another c l asses, ethnic grou ps, the sexes, the gener­ at i ons t hro ugh which individual s withdraw from the collectivity, isolating themselves. P re se n t da y l arge conurbations indi sputab l y manifest that condi ­ tion to greater effect th an di d cities in the past. New York is the perfect example of my thesis. ,

-

How the objects of the external world become more remote can be seen i n our dai l y

work. Obj e ct s

are divided into parts a n d worked u p o n by

innumer­

able tool s , i nstruments and machines, so that no one any l onger has these

re c ogn i ze s them as whole objects. Indiv iduals act without seeing, and without knowing on what they are work­ i n g . This is carried so far that we become used to deal ing with someth ing that will al wa y s remain foreign, i nac cessible and s t range to u s . It is like the protectively hooded workers in an atomic p l an t who w i l l never know in c los e -up the ore from which emerges an e nergy that trav e l s thousands of kilometres, far beyond their reach. Doe s this mean that we no l onger enjoy any rel ationship with things or nature? We do, but according to abstract forms, and w ith real ities th at we do n o t pe rce ive . It is a disturbing sight to see the same tendencies be i ng reprod uced in the re l atio ns h ips we sustai n with one another. If the town is c h arac te ris t ic of the mo de m world, it s ummons up , as I have just re cal led, the i mage of a p l ace

objec ts within his or her grasp, or even

3 24

One of the Greatest Mysteries

where in certain respects individuals are strangers who keep themselves apart from their fellows. Like a huge tapestry into which the most varied figures are 47 interwoven, the town imposes a 'psychological distance ' , without which life would be unbearable. We find ourselves caught up in contacts and an intensity of exchanges and involuntary interactions that squash us closely together, like those underground subways that channel the flow of passengers. In order not to collapse in despair and insignificance, not to let themselves be submerged, individuals try to avoid those near to them, such as a neighbour on the same landing, or a fellow worker. On the other hand, they seek to establish contact with distant, unknown people, thus sparing themselves the risk of mingling promiscuously with others but holding open the possibility of breaking off the relationship at any moment. They want both to know the person who is at a distance, and yet keep themselves at a distance . In the same way telephone chat-line users go to extreme lengths of ingenuity (and of spending money) in order to converse with and take an interest in people they will never meet, even if they could, but at the same time do not know the residents of the block in which they live, where a mere partition wall separates them, nor what is happening in their neighbourhood. About this great hunger for relationships that are widely scattered, superficial and lacking familiarity, Simmel pronounced as follows: Modem man ' s relationship t o his environment usually develops i n such a way that he becomes more removed from the groups closest to him in ,order

to come closer to those more remote from him. The growing dissolution of family ties ; the feeling of unbearable closeness when confined to the most intimate group , in which loyalty is often just as tragic as liberation; the increasing emphasis upon indiv iduality which cuts itself off most sharply

from the immediate environment - this whole process of distancing goes hand in hand with the formation of relationships with what is most remote,

with being interested in what lies far away, with intellectual affinity with groups whose relationships replace all spatial proximity . The overall picture that this presents surely signifies a growing distance in genuine inner rela­ tionships and a declining distance in more external ones. 48

One can only marvel at the discriminatory nature of this ingenious trick on the part of individuals who, whilst living in society with some, seek to become a part of the society of others. Like planets subject to gravity, which functions at a distance, they function at the place where they are not, and do not function where they are. So it is no longer in face-to-face or person-to-person relation­ ships that the gulf that separates the near from the distant is filled, but instead, in a representation. We come to believe that modem loneliness, instead of being a state of isolation, an absence of relationships, finally expresses a distance in relationship to oneself, a community with those who are elsewhere. Moreover, under the guise of pure exchange, society is time. We are con­ scious of evolving and revolving, of vacillating unceasingly between the past and the future, before, as age comes upon us, returning to present recollec­ tions, even if only because we have something to say about them. Faust may have envisaged clinging to some such moment by crying: 'Remain, so fair

The world that has vanished 325 thou art, remain ' , if only one were not caught in the tangle of unsatisfied desires, and transactions that have to be fulfilled. As soon as money intrudes into exchanges, it forbids us such daydreams, which hold up those exchanges, and introduces a length of time. Time being an essential of money, to waste it would exile us from the routine of the economy. Its course brooks no interruption, no slowing-down: the tide that flows towards the future, whether expressed in terms of savings or insurance, crosses with that which ebbs towards the past, in terms of debt or interest. In his book La Crise de I' avenir, K. Pomian writes: 'The future is quite literally injected into the very tissue of the present in the form of paper money . . . The history, of the monetization of the economy, which has lasted more than two thousand years, is also the history of a growing dependence on the future on the part of the present. ' Thus the intermeshing of a network of credits, promises, gifts, sales and purchases, that cuts across latitudes, axes, climates and conditions, becomes ever more closely knit. True money is merely an uninterrupted circulation of values with no tangible objects. Like time, it possesses the dual character of being both fictitious, that is, impossible to immobilize by obtaining any grip on it, and fiduciary, having trust as its sole prop, and is thus inseparable from the passage of time . Many people spend their lives in making money circulate as quickly as possible, transferring it unrelentingly from one spot to another. Nowhere can any preordained or preferred use be found for it. It is used anywhere and on anything. The money that serves to build ships, houses or factories, serves also to people them, or to expel their occupants and replace them with others, with a complete indifference to beauty or ugliness, utility or disutility. And all such things, which are perfectly real, are for money unreal . Being, however, the enemy of monotony, money adds additional desires that time prolongs, and militates against their fading away. Is this because the enjoyment that money procures appears to be more simulated than fulfilled? The fact remains that in Simmel ' s eyes 'The rapid circulation of money induces habits of spending and acquisition, making a specific amount of money psychologically less significant and precious, whereas money in general grows in importance because money matters affect the individual in a more vital way than they do with a less hectic life style . ' Are we not always trying to circumscribe money, to erect barriers i n its path, to set up taboos in order to free ourselves from it? Are we not constantly a prey to a fear of being without it, and of not being able to pursue it? It is said there are limits to everything. Money seems to have none, knowing neither night nor day, indefatigably watering the earthy ground of our desires, which it exploits and stimulates. Moreover, as a universal means of communication, it is also the most rapid communication of means, knowing no limit save the speed of light at which electronic messages are transmitted. It is in fact, that of computers, which use the two signs zero and one to represent and calculate unwearyingly all the amounts of money that are dispatched in this way from one point on the globe to another. Through an increasing abstraction, the

326

One of the Greatest Mysteries

changing or, more exactly, fl uctuating value of things grows because of the continuous nature and rapidity of the transmi ssion. It is as if exchanges never go quickly enough, whatever we may do to speed them up. They keep us breathless, but no longer require sacrifices that are tangible, the giving up of an indispensable piece of property in order to obtain another from a person who is acting in the same way. Not only does the sacrifice, the mere signature put on to a cheque or a demand for credit, become painless. but it has ceased to constitute the preparation for an exchange , the period in which one had to go wi thout and save for something one wanted, such as a quantity of flour that one had not used up, or a sum in hard cash that one had refrained from spending - all that was meant by 'to save up ' . This, then, i s the tendency in a money economy: it destroys the obstacles to the satisfaction of a desire by a rapid succession of exchanges in which the object is constantly moved around. It is even considered abnormal to have to wait and to restrain onesel f, consequently interrupting this succession, in the same way as today we would deem it abnormal in France to have to wait till the summer in order to eat strawberries or ti l l the autumn to consume oysters, which we wish to fi nd available at any season. This is on ly one aspect of the impossibility of letting the circulation of goods and values mark time. Insomnia is characteristic of money, whose nocturnal movements, scorning natural laws, know no let-up or alternation. In the Middle Ages a preacher was already condemni ng 'unj ust, shameful, detestable money . . . It is an indefatig­ able worker. Do you know, my brethren, of any worker that does not stop on 49 Sundays and feast days, who does not stop working whilst he is sleeping? ' It is an insomnia not without ni ghtmares. The more feverishly money moves around, the less the possession of it is assured, for everyone, as in the game of ' pass the parcel ' , must get ri d of it in the shortest possible ti me. It is a permanent source of the unforeseeable , generating repeated crises which, through the economy , upset society, preventing it from finding any rest or equilibrium. Simmel wrote : There is no more striking symbol of the completely dynamic character of the

world than that of money . The meaning of money lies in the fact that it will be g iven away . When money stands sti l l , it is no l onger money according to

its specific value and significance . The effect that it occasionally exens in a state of repose ari ses out of an anti cipation of its funher motion. Money is nothing but the vehicle for a mov ement in which everyth ing e lse that is not in motion is c ompletely extinguished. 50

Time is space for money, and sets it in a world apart in which nothing enjoys the respite needed to consolidate and to become perfect. One might say that in it we hold the energy that physicists were looking for, one capabl e of making machines work without ever becoming exhausted. Thus, according to Simmel 's analogy, ' the world takes on the appearance of a pe1petuum mobile ' . The mathematical nature o f its movement confers upon individual .relation­ ships a precision and reliability that remove from them any possibility of concealment. It even clothes them with a semblance of equity, in the same way as a legal code often affords the possibility of flagrant injustices. This

The world that has vanished 327 mathematical and legal aspect, curiously enough, allows money to represent a constant in the composite, fluctuating environment of things. Was it not Marx who said that it was the sole motionless good among all the ephemeral goods? It is so through its power to reduce space to time - which is its true tendency subsuming all the rest - and to reject one after another all personal attachments in its quest for the Holy Grail of objectivity. Today all this forms part of the content of the science. Nevertheless it is strange to discover that, in the course of the route we have just fol lowed, as impossible to avoid as it is to halt along it, society becomes fragmented and disappears from the life of the individual. It spins away from us like a meteor, into an unknown area of the universe . In this respect money resembles the cuckoo which lays its egg in another bird ' s nest. Once it has hatched out, the young cuckoo throws out the rest of the brood and finally destroys the nest that has sheltered it. Yet we know that society continues to exist and remains, like authority and the law, a bridge or a tunnel between individuals. Like the vanished Albertine of Marcel Proust, cut off from the stormy relationship that he enjoyed with his companion, it is in reality difficult to say whether it has left us in order to seek refuge elsewhere, or whether it is dead for ever. Let us pause for a moment. In fact, as we are all aware, society appears to us as an assembly of individuals that both links them to one another and also creates a thing outside itself. It does not matter whether this thing is superior or inferior to it, human beings see in it a part of the universe on which they can rely, and which forces them to stay together. If society has been and continues to be a machine for the creation of gods, it is by fashioning these ideal beings which confront it and serve as its reference point. Whatever it may be - history , nature, a god, money, interest, the class struggle etc . - this reference point expresses the external reality and the goal for which human beings live and die. In reality, sociology may well be the science of this machine. Its purpose is to explain the anatomy of these absolute beings and to consecrate new ones. Through admirable theories Durkheim revealed to us the absolute, the place set apart for the collective consciousness and religion. Weber revealed to us charisma, at the same time as he consecrated Protestant­ ism, j ust as Marx had enthroned the proletariat. The two great sociologists had caught a glimpse of a finality of history, not always a felicitous one, that reveals the integrated society, the ruler of its age, in short, the ruler of time. This may be somewhat hastily written, but it is not incorrect. In a letter addressed to the philosopher Keyserling, Simmel sounded a different note : Every great era has as its central concept, whose position, as if becau se possessing identical coordinates, enjoys at the same time the highest reality and the highest value: for the Greeks, it was the human being, for Chris­

tianity , G od ; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was nature, for

the nineteenth, society, and now life seems to be taking over the baton.

Life most certainly is, and this comes down to saying a new way of nature is manifesting itself, which, dying, is reborn in history. 5 1

328

One of the Greatest Mysteries

The representation of the society in which we live is vanishing . From its viewpoint, the institutions, State structures, Churches and class divisions exist only within a flow of connections and comparisons that link them with one another. Everything consists of dependency, liaison, contact and metamor­ phosis. Nothing persists in any absolute fashion, and everything is composing and decomposing incessantly, just as the decomposition of water into hydro­ gen and oxygen is a continual preparation for a new synthesis of water. How can one explain this reversal, without stating that up to now, exchange had ruled over money. But from the moment when money dominated modern exchange, it introduced a chronically effervescent state of instability and decomposition into everything once held to be permanent and isolated. If anything ought to know and be conscious of an end, it is not history , but society , infected with the giddiness of the age. The German writer Gottfried Benn, described it in these terms: Decomposition of nature, dissolution of history. The ancient realities o f space and time: functions of formulas ; health and sickness : functions of conscious­ ness; even concrete authorities such as society and the State are no longer apprehended in any substantial way . In all cases one finds only functioning in itself, the process as such - the striking slogan of Ford, as brilliant a philosophy as it was commercial maxim: first cars in a country , and then will 5 come the roads too. 2

This is something that destroys the vision one had of life in common, a thing moulded by an external force and fixed permanently in one spot. One cannot find in it any essence of collective, material phenomena, beyond that of their reciprocal relationships . It is just the same as when exchange forbids our thinking about the value of a good isolated from the rest. There is no object in itself, nothing save the continual movement that measures it and exchanges it with other objects. Thus there cannot either be any absolute, independent framework, in relationship to which we can conceive of the movement of individuals and things. When we became aware of this, it can be seen that it is a matter of a pure, but doubtless necessary, illusion. ' We seek in the world substances, entities and forces whose being and significance rest exclusively within them. We distinguish them from all relative existences and occurrences - from all those that are what they are only through comparison, contact or 53 the reactions of others. It is these which, through their incompleteness, mobility and non-repetition, make the collectivity a permanent creation of the human beings of which it is composed, from moment to moment, in a concrete fashion. It can never be grasped as a global unit, but only through the multiplicity of actions and relationships between persons or individual collectivities. It is not a machine for the creation of gods, but merely a machine that is always creating itself. Better still - and Simmel underscored this during the course of his odyssey through the world of money, and in the continuation of his work - it is a process: So in fact society is therefore so to speak not a substance, or anything

concrete in itself: it is

something that happens (ein Geschehen), it is the way

The world that has vanished 329 in which each individual receives his destiny from another person, and is shaped by him, and in which each individual fulfils the destiny of the other 54 person by shaping it in his tum .

What else is it save a manifestation of life, just as are the mutations that modify the genetic code of the species? The sole concrete content is a series of events and interactions wrapped around by an invisible film in an order that we make or unmake depending on circumstances. It is for this reason that society is portrayed as a form that has no need to draw its energy and content from outside individuals themselves. Coincidences between Simmel ' s repre­ sentation and the vision of what we in the contemporary world call post­ modern are disturbing. Through the quality of his ideas and images he was a precursor of this trend, right up to and including the nihilism that decomposes the substance of the collectivity. It becomes an interpretation of money and, following money, purely a sequence of signs. Since the domination of signs has spread to everything in a swift, unobtrusive movement, we have no other binding substance that holds us together, if indeed such a cement still exists. I have previously employed the word 'rationality ' to define the modern char­ acter of society and the method f ollowed to promote that rationality. It is a word that comes to one 's lips on every occasion, the synonym for deliberate choice and for an ever-increasing control of the motivating forces in society, in order to predict the future. However, any agreement on our part about this word is very illusory. To assert that society is becoming increasingly rational does not mean very much, if one does not make clear how, and in what, that consists. Superficially, it is understood to mean that as society becomes mod­ ern, it sheds emotions and illusions so as to confront reality with its eyes wide open. To be able to reflect upon causes and calculate effects, to behave according to one 's own interests, which are made clear by science, are as many signs of this. In short, rationality is maximized in proportion to the minimizing of the passions, according to a formula that has proved its worth. It is plain that Simmel shared this view. But for anyone who has aspirations to greater rigour, this disenchantment of the world is a blinding commonplace. It is not enough to drive out the old in order to procure the new, and to know how the course of things is changed. Spurred on by money, society indeed becomes more rational. But above all , its representation changes, and thus its ration­ ality. It is on this condition alone that it becomes modern. Since certain people will see in this statement a further indication that I am taking liberties with Simmel 's thought, this is why I must be more explicit. Classical science, as we know it, started from a hypothesis: all that exists can be known in the same way by any observer. Science presupposes a certain number of absolutes, space, time, mass in matter, and laws independent of the position of those seeking to observe phenomena, whether they may be located here on earth or on a comet. These laws are valid for entities that move slowly, such as at the speed of a train, or more swiftly, at the speed of light. Everything that exists is identical for the person who knows how to see them and is in possession of the necessary concepts and categories. Whether this identity is

3 30

One of the Greatest Mysteries

a

priori or not, we succeed in explaining it; we can foresee the future from our knowledge of the present, and completely so. This is valid for an atom just as much as for a star, and for an indiv idual as much as for a collectivity. Fortified by this reasoning, we can enter the field of what can be calculated and weighed in daily life, or in hi story. But the exchange economy is founded on the relativity of values and of measuring instruments. It accepts no fixed point of reference, because its limits are constantly being modified and because the base on which its results are being compared changes its foundations. Simmel stated this: when, in the contemporary world, exchange passes from a restricted, marginal practice to become general and central, the transition also occurs from the reign of absolutes to that of relativities. Before the idea of 'death to absolutes' became a principle of physics, it was accepted in the form of the principle of relativity of knowledge of social phenomena. Any reflection about them must refrain from recourse to absolute dogmas and entities. We are therefore directed to­ wards a rationality that lacks any stable framework or independent dimension, with society proving no exception. Each time we set about an action, or a series of transactions, the equilibrium is shifted, and not always in the same domain. A summary description of this rationality highlights some things that are self-evident. First, in spite of all our efforts, it would be impossible for us to perceive things from several angles at once. Each thing bears in itself the mark of relativity , since, depending on the aspect from which one looks at it, the point of view from which one analyses it, different properties are discovered in it. One cannot substitute for these a privileged viewpoint that sums up or amalgamates together the rest. The peculiarity of reason resides in its power to relate them to one another and compare them. Let us remind ourselves that, according to Einstein, relativity signifies that the size and state of rest or movement of a body have no absolute value but are a function of the observer' s position. Thus for travellers seated in a train the speed and length of other trains varies according to whether they are going in the same or the opposite direction to their own. The same may be true of the social phenomena we observe. Caught up in these movements, it is im­ possible to assign to them a single frame of reference and to identify them with any unchanging category. We can then understand how a domination that appears brutal and repressive for someone who appeals to a legal position appears legitimate if it is conceived of from the viewpoint of the belief that it inspires in the masses. Let it not be thought that I am being complacent, using the pretext of stressing the contrast by relating it to the angle of vision. What I mean is that one can only succeed in recognizing the reference framework through a succession of focuses and perspectives observed from different distances. I was certainly taken aback when I read for the first time in Simmel ' s principal work: Cognition is thus a free-floating process, whose elements determine their position reciprocally, in the same way as masses of matter do by means of weight. Truth is then a relative concept like weight. It is then perfectly

The world that has vanished

331

acceptab le that our image o f the world ' floats i n the air ' , since the world 55 itsel f does so.

This proposition may seem paradoxical, becau se it removes from the world i ts own vantage points. As the American philosopher Nelson Goodman, who adopted this view, has stated, if there is one world, there are many, and if there are many, there are none at al l. This is the meaning of ' floating ' that may well shock us. The facts are there : that relativ i ty of wh ich Simmel doubtless found the very first idea in the work of the Austrian scient ist Mach , the same scientist who inspired Einstein, possesses its own logic. Th is logic does not mean a loosely framed 'to each person his own truth ' , but that the truth for each individual always arises from contact with and in relationship to the truth of others, taking into account the situation in which they are pl aced . This i s inevitable, given the divisions that ex ist i n a collectivity and the movements that carry isolated indi viduals along with them, making them radically disti nct from one another. No single one among them grasps reality in its total i ty. which is most certainly not the same when seen from the summit as from the base of the social pyramid. We cannot dismi ss observations and ideas that are opposed to our own by treating them as fallacious or illusory . From the perspective of relativity, to speak from one ' s position , the one occupied in society, is not a weakness or a distortion, as it pleases certain people repeatedly to say : it is in fact by observ ing this condition that each indi vidual can speak and think. It rules out the possibility that anyone, an individual or a class, can effect a universal and transcendent scrutiny of economic or historical phenom­ ena. If this condition were not respected, a science, however logical or empirical it were, would be a mere tissue of dogmas and quasi -religious absolutes. Next, the principle of relativ ity expresses a basic conviction: in the begin­ ning was the relationship. This is instilled into us by the nature of exchange and the money economy. One cannot conceive of the values that circulate within that economy as relating to a need , or the qualities and utility of an object, but only in relation to their mutual interdependence, in order to com­ pare them and to evaluate them, taking other val ues into account - just as the value of a book pri nted in France depends on that of a shirt made in Korea, and vice versa. In reality, objects are measured among themselves in a round of exchanges in which they combine and replace one another during a host of 56 operations. Now, this way of look ing at them. thinking in tenns of relationships is, i n Simme l ' s v i e w , a more advanced stage in our intellectual facu ltie s than look­ ing at them and thinking in absolute terms, as if they were isolated from one another. He wrote : When value concepts are highly developed and a reasonable se l f-control prev ails, a judgement as to the equ ality of values may precede e xchange , but th i s should not be allowed to obscure the probabil ity that the rational re lation - as is so often the case - has evolved from a psychologically opposite re lation, and that the exchange

of

possessions originating from purely sub­

jective impulses has only later taught us the re lative value of things.5 7

332

One of the Greatest Mysteries

It is precisely this violent contrast between classic rationality and modern rationality that should claim our attention. Classic rationality, conceived of in an era when the money economy existed only in embryo, suddenly resembles that of a petrified monument, enclosed in a globe of solid and hypostasized truths, within a closed society, to use an expression of Bergson 's. One becomes dimly aware of an intelligence that is unchanging, of an equilibrium between solitary forces determined once and for all, in a time that lies outside time. Naturally, modem rationality has money as its model, which renders all these forces fluid and establishes communication between them. Since money violently upsets the consistency of everything and every individual, and since it serves as a means for any kind of exchange, nothing in the economy, art, science and even religion can stand apart from it. It abolishes any direction laid down in advance for goods and social norms and redistributes them under the influence of an inflation or deflation of the values of occupations, social categories, or forms of moral behaviour, measured against the yardstick of economic values. Just as physical bodies no longer possess any fixed position and any preferred movement upwards or downwards, as Aristotle supposed, so individuals and ideas only have a place and enjoy movement in relation to others . This sketches out for us a universe that is both opaque and precarious, which only finds an equilibrium in rare periods of calm. Simmel declared: ' The more the life of society becomes dominated by monetary relationships, the more the relativistic character of existence finds its expression in con­ scious life, since money is nothing other than a special form of the embodied relativity of economic goods that signifies their value ' .58 This is doubtless rational. But the meaning of rational has been changed through a principle of relativity, its modem version. Simmel was constantly reformulating this, being convinced that its great virtue was that it forced us to forgo having the last word and adopting a final , definitive v iewpoint on anything. Consequently it frees us from the procession of hypostases, reason, humanity , class, and even society, with which the West can identify. He believed that he had deduced this principle from the simple phenomenon of money . Personally I cannot conceive that it is the necessary cause of so many developments, or is sufficient to transform our relationships and our mental faculties. It is true that the striking parallel between the development of the money economy and the other spheres of human activity gives an impression of being one of cause and effect. Comparable to an invariable phenomenon in physics such as light, money nevertheless succeeds in establishing links be­ tween dissimilar facts and in highlighting the logic behind them, as we have just seen . Let us go further. From Simmel onwards, the radical, even subversive significance of the sociology that studies such facts no longer lies, as is thought, in explaining them by a single, dominant cause. It has not to correct one dogmatic notion by another that is more true, or to substitute for an absolute entity another that is more real - charisma instead of the collective consciousness, the class struggle instead of the struggle for exi stence, etc. Nor is it to sanctify such things in any kind of way, as Marx did when he addressed

The world that has vanished 3 3 3 his contemporaries: ' Just a s democrats make the word people something sacred, so for you the word proletariat is sacred ' . 59 Sociology may therefore remain a prisoner of the old rationality , seeking after an ultimate cause and a system that is increasingly true , to which every­ thing is subject and from which we can infallibly predict the future. In such a case it would be enough to dig below the surface of science to discover a theology that had been humanized. On the contrary, it is high time for socio­ logy, like the other sciences, to bid farewell to these absolutes and to any kind of system. They end up one day by being no more than a mere embellishment of the facts. Sociology's power lies in undermining them and in spreading everywhere a consciousness of the relativity of social matters, becoming the virus that dissolves them and causes them constantly to become entirely different. Simmel declared: ' Relativism strives to dissolve into a relation every absolute that presents itself, and proceeds in the same way with the absolute that offers itself as the ground for thi s new relation. This is a never-ending process whose heuristic eliminates the alternative: either to deny or to accept 60 the absolute. ' Yet Simmel was aware that to eliminate that alternative can lead to either the break-up of science into a kind of ballet of words and pictures or to a hazardous rebirth. In The Philosophy of Money the framework for thi s rebirth is set out in the part that deals with the metaphysics of money and in that devoted to the relationship between time and money. And this fresco of our culture acquires a different dimension and achieves the breadth of a vision of the whole . By taking science as its model, reason conceives of a society that is increas­ ingly freed from specific qualities, one in which things are only expressed by objective relationships, in quantitative terms. This objectivity, of which money is the vehicle because of its constant circulation , its neutrality as regards beliefs and sentiments, its ability to calculate, abolishes the passions, without which there can be no life in common . It is as if money were obeying age-old mentors who, according to Nietzsche, ' are unanimous on this point . . . the passions must be killed. ' From a certain viewpoint, this may seem correct. Except for rare moments, the passions provoke disturbances and blind reactions. The fact remains that the most enlightened interests and doctrines are not sufficient to create a bond between human beings, and even less to inspire them to take the actions which are expected of them and are wholly justified. We know that when passion dies away , nothing that should be undertaken gets done. Instead, we can see strung out the sorry account of opportunities lost by human beings who have 1 not been equal to the human condition. There is no imagination to lead them to stray into the labyrinths of subjectivity , only the soothing of the nerves. Was it not Marx himself who understood the necessity for passion, when he wrote to the general council of the Workers ' International: ' The Engl ish have all that is required for social revolution, what they lack is revolutionary passion. ' In other words, they have objectively all the ingredients for creating a new society , but what is lacking is the passion for society.

334

One of the Greatest Mysteries

Passion is the packaging and parcelling for any collective structure , and one the best architects cannot dispense with. Money may well be a means of tying the knot between individuals, but it does not by itself constitute that bond. This is because it is a part of its nature to overturn, confuse and distort relationships, and only to obey incitements to exchange, and the imperative of values. It woul d destroy itself if it became something other than a means, and it permanently breaks up the basis of society by performing its function. In short, it only al lows the survival of individuals and their selfishness, which urges them to associate with others. In the life cycle, in which money acts as the regulator, it is the most simple urge, that closest to hand. The reason of economics or science does not succeed in justifying solidarity with others. Feelings of love or p ity tum out to be so many obstacles that have to be removed by anyone who seeks profit and possessions. These leave room for the self-interest that works upon each individual from within. Simmel observed: that

Th i s i s why the rationalistic interpretation of the world - which, as impartial as money. has also come cl ose to the social ist image of life - has become the

advocate of modem egoism and the ruthless assertion of indiv iduality . Ac­ to the usual and not exactly profound po int of view, the Ego is, in practice no less than i n theory , m an ' s obvious basis and unfail ing primary

cording

'

interest. Any selfless motives appear not to be natural and autochthonous, but secondary and, as it were , artificially implanted. As a result, on l y sel f61 in terested action is cons iderec.1 to be gen uinely and s i mply ' lo gi ca l ' .

In th i s l ies a reason for the d i sq u i e t of our age, for the melanc holy that

surrounds the i r re vo c ab l e

disappe aranc e of a form of life drained of its sub­ stance. We are in some way weari ng mourning for the society that has van­ as

childhood. Nor do we percei v e that it rises oppo s i t e which i s se lfi sh pa ssion. Indiv idual s are the re fore al so in themse l ve s their own so c i e t y This is what binds us, and is the bas i s for the passion that is c ompa t ibl e with the feverishl y unstable nature of mone y , and i n p rac t i ce charges it with meaning. S i mmel stated this c le a r l y : ished, j u st

the ad u l t does for h is

up agai n , but rooted in its

,

.

S i nce m oney intri nsically conta ins nei ther directives nor obstac les, it fo l lows the stronges t subject ive impu lse that within all money matters appears to be the egotistic i mpu l se. The inhi biting notion that certain amou nts of money

m ay be · s tained w ith b lood ' or be under a curse are sentimen talities that lose t h e i r significance c omp l e te ly w i th the g rowing indiffe rence of money - that 62 i s , a� money in cre as in g l y becomes nothing but mere money.

Eg ot i s ti c a l

p ass i on therefore is set free and subj ugates all othe r p ass i on s . It

re v e a s

l itse l f i n a

be y on d money matters, the sole tru ly winter so l s tice of the modern soul and the z e ni th of i ts rat i o n a l ity . The sc ien c e s a n d p hi l o s ophi e s that want none of them are de voted to m a i n ta i n i n g and r e fi n i ng it. They turn th i s selfish passion i nto a duty for h u man be i ngs one i n accord w ith the i r nature. What g rad u a l l y

c u l ture to be ,

soc i a l p a s s i o n I n i t c an be seen both the .

,

i s prescri bed for them i s to i nc rease their happiness and posse ssions in a l l

c i rc u m stances, no matte r what the consequences for their peers. In real i ty , th i s

The world that has vanished 3 35 is a harsh duty that requires savage competition and a lack of character and fairness in their opinions and personal relationships, and is thus the source of many problems. This is because to obey exclusively one 's own self-interest just, moreover, like loving oneself - requires an energy that is much more constraining than to sacrifice that interest when the occasion demands. 63 Here there is a fissure in the soul that no thought can heal. But, as between being selfish or not being selfish, human beings have no choice. In a universe never at rest and in a human world that is indifferent, this passion seems to them to be the sole anchor to which they can cling, riveted as it is within their very body. Whatever may happen, it is wise to look the situation in the face, and Simmel did so without making the slightest concession. His sociology pro­ vides a theory and a language, but above all a vivid image of social reality, which allows him to make sense of it. On the other hand, it does not dictate to him any way out; at the very most it only gives advice in the face of the ravages wrought by money and a culture that has become reified. It is the same advice as Euripides gives in the Bacchantes: Mortals, be modest. It is your condition that belies your ambition.

This is perhaps the reason that, after a few years that were extraordinarily fertile and audacious, caused Simmel to tum away from sociology. Science rules out prophecy. Yet the abysses of the present time and the solutions for the future that science touches upon demand a prophet whose speech and judgement are free. But to penetrate behind the scenes in order to examine his decision and discover the causes would require a very different kind of study, which was not my purpose .

Concluding remarks

I have often thought that one day I would like to write a book in which I would explain why the human sciences should free themselves from being divided up according to their origins. It is a division that does not correspond to their being effectively studied or to the way in which the phenomena of social life, all destined for future development, are split up. Each time I have hesitated, convinced that my time would be better employed in what is called positive research, on a precise problem yielding tangible results. Not that I judge my contributions to be indispensable, but quite simply because my nature inclined me in that direction, just as an architect is impelled to build houses. Each one of us is entirely caught up in the succession of days that are occupied with chewing over ideas, in listening to chatter about facts - interrupted by a rare Sunday when an idea seems to remain intact, and a new fact to emerge from the mass of non-facts. And this book was constantly being put off till later, until it became absolutely indispensable for me to write it, just as philosophers need to let their work 'breathe' so as to give shape to the inner dialogue that they are pursuing with other philosophers, and in order to push to the limit their own ideas. The need is even greater in the human sciences, where one must become involved personally in a permanent debate if one wishes, without any illusions, to answer the questions posed by them, and thus to gain a foothold in reality . Almost a century has gone by since one categorical rule was laid down, expressed in various ways: one must not explain social facts by psychological causes. The rule draws a distinction between human phenomena in just as radical a way as biology and physics distinguish between living phenomena and those of matter. Invested with authority , the rule establishes an autonomy for society, its right to refer only to itself, and to explain everything in relation to itself. This is what we often express when we say that a social problem has no other solution than a social one. Now, the analyses set out above demonstrate that this means laying down an arbitrary rule which cannot be respected, and which leads one continually to cheat in order to understand reality. This holds good for the classical era of sociology, and even more so for the contemporary period. An enquiry into

Concluding remarks

3 37

present-day social theories would demonstrate this experimentally. Only very few social facts are described and explained without one having to resort, if only implicitly, to a psychological notion of some kind or another. Most of the time we accept them fully formulated through the mediation of language, without even noticing it. Just imagine - it is well worth while to do so - what a strange world it would be where one had succeeded in eliminating experi­ ence, subjective preferences and symbols, the shudders produced by memory and even the representations that bring it alive. It would be a world devoid of interest, reduced to what is very conventional and able to be arranged in a social order. Often c ircumvented, it is true, the rule is gradually falling into disuse and is losing its incisiveness. But a rule , even outdated, does not relax its hold so long as it is not shown to be so a hundred times and more. No more than does an outdated law, so long as a formal vote has not repealed it. Where are these remarks leading? They demonstrate that, very logically, the result I have arrived at could not have been otherwise. Let us proceed directly to give a few simple proofs of this. The rule that establishes a basic cleavage between the two autarchies that govern our vision of the human being, psy­ chology and sociology, derives as much from culture as from science. From where does the rule acquire its authority? Let us look at past societies, as they have come down to us through books or testimonies. They do not seek to divide objective from subjective elements, to chip away at the inner life in order to retain only the external life, out of regard for a system. The orgies of ritual and nomenclature mingle the two together, preserving their joint soli­ darity in the real world, even if this appears to be the height of absurdity, and even if we are stubbornly bent on eliminating any images that conceal that world from our gaze. On the other hand, they divide the ordinary or profane from the sacred things, two old-fashioned terms nevertheless very necessary in order to explain how they hold sway over the universe. Throughout the vicissitudes of history our societies have been the first to discard that distinction, as well as the vast accumulation of collective forces, the expenditure of life that history represents. The prestige that tradition confers upon the sacred and the profane is transferred to a new dichotomy. This distributes relationships between human beings and nature into two cat­ egories far removed and even opposed to one another, as if it were a universal characteristic of thought, as plain and necessary as a characteristic of reality. On the one hand rationality defines effective action at a given moment and in a given place. Modes of behaviour, ideas and methods give rationality con­ crete form. Its obligatory nature condemns any individual to failure , as it does any group that neglects its rules in the field of economics or technology. Opposed to it is the sphere of the non-rational, which includes sensibility, belief in general and the effervescence of people or the masses - in short, everything that seems to occur under exceptional circumstances , far removed from the eye of consciousness. The habit of seeing in tradition itself the essence of what is irrational is deep-rooted, although this smacks of archaism. One might say that the one sketches out with visible, and the other with invisible ink, the anatomy of society, from top to bottom. There is no more

338

Concluding remarks

radical division than this. Having attained predominance, it penetrates all layers of our culture and our being, until it seems almost physiological. Why need we recall all this? It is because this antithesis is the problem of modernity. Modernity represents a frantic attempt, doomed to failure, to allow the rational pole to assume command, since it is capable of embracing within it the irrational pole , using and absorbing it. What is more, it would view with delight the prospect of most societies vanishing away, having been relegated to the position of being mere survivals and superstitions, so as to make room for one single society in which the rational pole would have asserted its supremacy. If we call as witness to this one who has had some responsibility for the triumph of this opposing force, we will recall what Marx once wrote: ' Reason has existed in all ages, but not always in rational form. ' This is to see it restored to its proper form and raised to the dignity of being the benchmark of our history. It is said to be a peculiarity of the West, which has not so much discovered continents, conquered markets and spread industries almost every­ where, as it has legitimated reason. This is its power, one hedged about with the same feelings of veneration and fear that the sacred inspires. It is the cause of everything that is beneficial , freeing human beings from the terrors of nature and the wondrous illusions of desire; it is no less powerful because of its inventions and impartiality. Weber and Simmel warned us of this; it alie­ nates our personality and turns the world in which we live to stone. Now, sociology, born in a secularized society, in France, Germany or Bri­ tain, is a science of the problem of modernity. How to live, how to move from custom to calculation, from a past littered with symbols and institutions to a future that has been cleared of them, made up of signs and organizations. This is what preoccupies it, and any means are good for the person who wishes to be rid of them. In this way sociology aspires less to become the knowledge of society and social questions - which are left to politicians and economists' than the knowledge of those means, which have ari sen in the wake of mod­ ernity. It is a knowledge that constantly calls into question communities, beliefs and inherited practices, in order to substitute for them an achievement mentality, which is something novel - in short, a continuous synthesis. If we go further, we can perceive social relationships whose arrangement and goal are indeed in conformity with reason. The certainty that a society based upon it is coming nearer is in the air, with history assigned the task, which it cannot refuse, of realizing it. No other science wrestles so single-mindedly with that equation of modem times, what is social equals what is rational, and applies itself so diligently to solving it. In making this choice, sociology clearly sets itself apart. It studies no specific object, such as the market, behaviour or language - and does not limit itself to being an intellectual field like any other study. It seeks to be the guarantor of the hegemony of reason over all aspects of our common life. Habermas writes: 'In the framework of the social sciences it is sociology that, in its basic concepts, may well be most linked to the 1 problem of rationality . ' It tends to provoke a consensus concerning ration­ ality, and to a certain extent a faith. This is why the august shadow of theology hovers over its language and concepts. These may well seek to be positive and

Concluding remarks

3 39

close to our own experience, yet in them is al ways to be heard the unaccus­ tomed resonant notes of the B i ble, at least as compared with the language and notions of its near neighbours, economics and anthropology . Thus no one disputes that rationality is the distinctive characteri stic of modem society. No one di sputes its outstanding value , in the sense that it possesses an effective power in the sc ientific and technological spheres, and enjoys a prestige that sets it apart and above all else. The Chi l ean poet Pablo Neruda decl ares that ' it i s reason , the basis of justice, that must govern the world. ' However, nothing is more instructive than to learn how soc iology defines and repre sents rational ity. To say first that it borrows its logic from the economy and that it makes the economy the principle of reality come s down to the same thing. In that case , relationships between human beings possess objecti ve v alue so long as they are concei ved of as a function of the importance and calculation of means and concrete ends . Beyond thi s one penetrates into the domain of psychological factors, desires and ideas, located 'in the head ' , which have been stripped not of value but of importance. The Marxist thinker Lukacs, at the dead centre of the Cyclopean eye of our time, went to the extreme when he spoke of the class struggle. What use is there in seeking in indiv idual and mass psychology the springs of action and choices made by a class? It counts for little in the face of the rational consc iousness of the workers, which i s based on a knowledge of their objecti ve i nterests and the economic relationships existing in capitalist society. He asserted :

the existence of this conflict enables us to perceive that class consciousness is identical with neither the psychological consciousness of indiv idual mem­ bers of the proletariat, nor with the (mass-psychological ) consciousness of the proletariat as a whole; but it is, on the contrary. the sense , bt•come 2 conscious, of the historical role of the class. How can this consciousness be accurately defined? It must both possess some reality and also be located beyond individuals and the masse s, as if class history were unfolding in parallel , independent of the classes which neverthe­ less make history. True, it is not consciousness that determines existence, it is history that determines consciousness. But to what belongs this objecti ve consc iousness, allegedly coming from outside in order to transform class mentalities and give them a sense of hi story? Most certainly to an institution - in the event, the party - which possesses a very complete, specialized knowledge of the l aws of economics and history . It is incumbent upon the institution to define the characteristics that would be possessed by a perfect working class. If these are lacking, the conclusi on is that the class does not yet exist, or that it is still held prisoner in the grip of the forces of subjectivity and custom. At least, this is what the theory claims . What conclusion may be drawn except that the rational consciousness is the consciousness of institu­ tions? This is the conclusion that pervades Marxism and accounts for its popularity. It is one widely shared. The American sociologist Parsons draws a distinction, for example, between humans, psychological beings that have a personality structure, and the objective structure of the institutions that bring

340

Concluding remarks

them together in the present-day world. This objective structure, as we have just seen, specifies interests, the mode of behav iour to be adopted and how thought should conform to reality . We may add that reality coincides with economics. Thus what is true for economics must be true for the other social science s. By a transition we are then led to assert that the growth in communications and computing technologies has brought a change . It is the revitalized world of language that today , instead of economics, represents the quintessence of rationality . We must invoke its power to express, to narrate and enchant. But by sign movements language establishes contacts, sets out the form of ex­ change and decides upon values. Since its rules are held inviolate within each culture, it is a system of indications weak enough to generate the most diverse relationships between human beings. Henceforth it is language that plays the part of the logos in our society, conceived to be the truth of the consciousness and of the consensus through which we understand one another. It is presumed to bring to life the most demanding kind of reason , precisely because it pursues something to the end. This ' something ' is the order carved as much on the visible or invisible monuments of culture as on the human mind. Yet it is not irre levant to state that the science of language has become the mirror of the other sciences, insofar as it divides these from the vestiges of lived experience, the ill-timed contradictions of feeling and the dissonant voice of the indi­ vidual. Lacan and Levi-Strauss have devoted some of their most brilliant prose to banish these from the human sciences. Fascinated by this rigour, what else can those sciences, including sociology, do save build themselves upon com­ munication and language? This they are trying to do, with varying degrees of success . At least we should acknowledge that these attempts contribute to making them rely, willy-nilly, on psychology. But it is on a psychology that is at the opposite pole to the social sciences, and outside them. This we light upon through an incidental proposition of Levi-Strauss, according to whom, as we have seen, the creation of meaning ' does not depend upon the social sciences, 3 but upon biology and psychology ' . Or is it the same science that everywhere detects what is universal and permanent in our ability to think and talk? Psychology is here allocated the role of representing the subjective tensions and instinctive tendencies of human beings, that is, the non-rational. Never­ theless, depending upon the school of thought and the generation, this is asserted more or less arbitrarily : we must not look for the soul of society in psychology , but for what is individual, even animal. True, but that magical term, the non-rational, remains extremely vague . Very imprecise in itself, it serves as a store-house for di sconcerting phenomena that are imperfectly connected to one another and that science cannot account for. You may say to me, as did Mephistopheles on Walpurgisnacht: 'I thought I would find only strangers here. Alas, those that I find here are of my family . ' Most certainly this i s the case , because increasingly this division has left its mark on the education and culture offered to the public, as well as on its image of ideas and values. To the extent that human beings recognize their destiny in society, it has become normal for the limits of a rational explanation to

Concluding remarks

34 1

mean the limits of a social explanation. In a word, where sociology ends, psychology begins. This is conceded, but for two opposing reasons, both because of excess and because of failure. On the one hand, every finding that a succession of studies has yielded, and that is universal and general as regards thought, language and rules, passes into the domain of psychological causes. These constitute the final link in the chain of properties peculiar to nature, whether these relate to the brain or our genetic code. How can this be avoided, given the close relationships that exist between them? In this sense Chomsky could assert: ' One cannot speak of a relationship between linguistics and psychology, for linguistics is a part of psychology. I cannot conceive of it in 4 any other way. ' In the same way the faculties of speech are connected to the faculties of thought. It is certainly in this direction that research is increasingly turning, with its success assured. On the other hand, sociology possesses interests and tools that incline it to study events that periodically repeat themselves, but never to study the single, isolated event. When a criminal kills a passer-by sociology cannot analyse this chance event, a mere fact. However, like all the human sciences, it is only concerned with unique happenings. From the outset it seeks out common causes proportional to their effects. Yet, once it has worked out class struc­ tures, the nature of values and the interests at stake - things that are economic and historical - it remains for it to explain why the phenomenon occurred here and not elsewhere, why capitalism developed in Europe rather than Asia, why Nazism erupted in Germany and not in France. Or, why people do not act according to reason, as they should, why they do not rise up in revolt more frequently, in the name of j ustice, logic or quite simply their personal interests. In short, sociology is in a situation analogous to that of medicine. Once one has given due weight to the statistics relating to heart disease or to longevity, one requires to know why illness struck down Paul and not Peter, or why women live longer than men. In order to fill the gap between the general nature of supposed causes that preside over the effect and the unique character of this fact, the social explanation is supplemented by a psychological one. One falls back on the affective and mental powers that may have provoked reactions that reason had not foreseen or did not require . ' Once my ladder has blown away , ' said the Irish poet Yeats with regret, 'I must lay me down in the place from where every ladder rises up, in the revolting recesses of my heart. ' Crimes or acts of violence , mass movements or religious fanaticism, mental disturbances or toxicomania call forth psychological causes of inferior quality, like residues. Reich has spelt out the formula and dosages for this: ' The more rational the behaviour of a human being, the narrower the area occupied by the psychology of the unconscious; the more it is irrational, the more sociology 5 demands the help of psychology. ' Up to now, the plus and the minus amounts have defied measurement, but this unsolved problem should not divert us from our path. I do not in any way mean that the differences between the social and the psychological domains are negligible, or that their specific views of human beings merge into one. Yet, if the division between the two has , as expected,

342

Concluding

remarks

had the consequence of ensuring the hegemony of rati onality, it has also had the une xpected consequence of leaving exposed, or even freeing, those non­ rational forces in society that it was desired to keep on the periphery. To discover a way of c uring or preventing an illness almost inev itably means discovering a way of causing it to spread. A better analogy still is the invention of a technique, such as photography, which has the effect of freeing an art form, in this case painting, from portraying reality and imitating it faithfully. Giving prominence to thi s appeal to consciousness and the intellectual method is necessary in order to experience how societies that seek to be rational unleash unconscious, emotional forces. In theory they are looking for what i n practice is held t o be exceptional , i f not impossible: the production b y reflex action of what is social. But can this be found? Is it enough merely to wish it? Napoleon ruled it out in one short sentence : 'There is nothing more rare than a plan. ' No matter how one approaches things, it is our societies, sustained by the human and natural sciences, devoted wholeheartedly to the task of rationaliz­ ing their structures and economy , that have at the same time stripped away but rendered autonomous what they thought they could eliminate or what would die away . First among these is the flood of profane religions - all are profane today in a culture that is ignorant of the distinction between the sacred and the profane - that are mixed up with ideologies and visions of the world. Holding to be true what elsewhere is deemed fal se and even absurd, they draw mil lions along in their wake. It would be very difficult to find in the past examples of enthusiasm and sacrifice comparable to those that are stirred up by the torrent of promises of salvation through history or some idoli zed leader. You would maintain that thi s is a matter of some archaic survival or a ruse i n order to rule? I f s o , you have not u nderstood their hold over o u r sensibilities 6 or the needs to which they correspond. l'jext, the groundswell of nations grows stronger, swamping soc iety as much as it does the State. Thus it is appropriate to note j ust how far its communities of rel igious belief, territory and language have given meaning to civil and mil itary wars. U nreal and irrational as these wars appear to the normal con­ sciousness. it is their ethos, and not that of the philosophers, that nevertheless prevails in modem times. Each war, in order to win purity and integrity, sacrifices to i t, according to the categorical imperative: ' What is condemned between brothers is allowed between enemies. ' It is under such conditions that a nation holds its own people together, providing that it excludes others. For a long time, and for various not v ery honourable reasons most theories have remained si lent on the subject of nations . They will scruti nize in detail the interests and contracts that bind civil societies to States, those cold-blooded monsters . B u t r .1t i ons. those hot-blooded monsters that set States on fire, are held to be som� t h i n g ephemeral, desti ned to melt into the ri ver of history, which swallows t h e m up just as long-standing v i l lages are engulfed by a dam reservoi r. In oth�r words, at the very moment when nations are becoming emanc ipated. it i s a11nounced that the world is emanc ipated from nations . We do not draw ur .1 r�1 uments against these theories because of this. They are

Concluding remarks

343

careful to stick to logic and acknowledge tacitly that here is a genuine reality, but one located below the threshold of reason. Consequently one cannot think of them, or understand them, save in the past and in the image of primitive societies. Marcel Mauss, one of the few to have studied the subject seriously, writes: Everything in the modem nation individualizes its members and standardizes them. It is homogeneous, like a primitive clan, and is allegedly made up of citizens that are equal. It is symbolized by its flag, just as the latter had its totem; it has its religion, 'my Country' , just as the latter had that of its ancestors, the animal-gods. Like a primitive tribe, it has its dialect elevated to the dignity of a language, and an internal system of law opposed to international law. 7 I do not know if the meaning of this passage has been understood. However discreetly one evokes the forces of modern history, one cannot fail to observe that the sole universal is the surprising power of these individualities of thought, the arts and feelings, which are above all collective and national. We will hardly have increased our knowledge of them so long as we have not succeeded in explaining the meaning of these deep-rooted, half-imaginary societies, which like shadows accompany flesh-and-blood societies. If we neglect the force with which they bear down upon reality, we have an impres­ sion of studying a human being who has indeed lost his own shadow. Finally, whether we criticize or praise power, we acknowledge it as the acme of impersonality and of the rational choice of means in order to attain an end. Over the past two centuries, however, its bases have changed. It would appear that we have an embarrassment of choice in j ustifying obedience objectively: constraint, or self-interest, or the general will, or the social contract, or the relationship between forces. Each one of these principles can serve as the ultimate reason. However, none suffices to explain the close and lasting ad­ herence to a hierarchy. We can see this clearly during a revolution: power goes to pieces, and yet most human beings remain attached to it, without daring to seize it, under pain of sacrilege. Certainly the only principle in whose name such an adherence c an occur, the one that has triumphed over all the others so as to become characteristic of modern States, is legitimacy. But this serves as a cloak, as we are aware, for the true cause: the reality of the belief that finally attains absolute power. Formerly it was the secular branch of religion. Henceforth it is the approbation of the large number, in whose name the few govern, and is the firmest foundation for domination. It is a power relationship that, through its very nature, does not rely upon 'reasons ' , nor does it spring from them. Those reasons one can call upon do not in any case suffice to account for legitimacy. This is what is normally expressed by invoking a state of grace, confidence and, naturally, charisma. 'Everything is possible to the believer' , says the Gospel : both to offer one ' s obedience and also to refuse it. It is plain that by making a division between the psychological and the social aspects of our common life, we have weakened society. The advantage has been to bri ng to light the main outlines of its rational geography, in both theory

344

Concluding remarks

and practice. The involuntary consequence has been to awaken its volcanic geology and to stoke up fires we would have liked to have seen extinguished a long time ago. In relation to this I use the term ' irrational ' , knowing full well that the phenomena to which I am alluding - religions, nations, powers - are not limited to these. What remains to be explained is how it comes about that these phenomena exercise an influence in the societies in which we live. They are the real invisible levers that cause us to unite and are the prime movers , through bonds of conviction, sentiment and action. Whether they speak the language of self-interest or that of force , whether money is at stake, or domination , it is always representations, beliefs and passions shared in common that make them possible and give them their vitality. We are once more led to understand why the explanation of social ties necessarily proceeds through psychology . Psychology grasps these ties at their moment of origin, before they can be numbered through the reason, and apparently before they can be manifested. At the heart of such theories is a seeking to know how all this develops towards a stable equilibrium and passes under the control of indispensable economic and historical factors. 8 Thus we approach an objective, quasi-physical limit to reality. If we wish to do justice to the intentions that lie behind the theories of many psychologists , it must be said that their purpose is to determine the social foundations of psychological existence. Have they attained it? It is difficult to decide. Nevertheless, since they respect the division that at present appertains, we see them explaining facts regarding judgement, language, perception etc. through social causes. This said, it is certain that to ignore the subleties peculiar to such an explanation, to seek to document it only casually, fosters a slackness that is often discernible. Such amateurism leads to results that should be passed over in pious silence. Because of this same division, sociological theories observe and methodi­ cally classify institutional facts that seem to be given official blessing by the common language. There can be no doubt that in this way they tend to rank in order of priority everything that assumes a rational and objective form. But, in regard to the unexpected consequences of this division, they are drawn towards phenomena we believed we had been able to marginalize but which in the end resist, and reveal themselves to be original. On what pretext, moreover, could we leave them on one side: because a rule requires us to do so, whereas we wish to encompass reality in its entirety? When we study Durkheim or Weber, we perceive the magnetic force attracting them towards these primal energies of power, these effervescent movements of religion or, even though concealed, of the nation. They are energies and movements from which have emerged so many of the properties of society. Although one is always watchful, one question increasingly recurs: what is the psychological contribution to it? 9 The search after truth takes precedence over all other considerations; thus sociological theories reveal the psychological foundations of social life. They lead to this result without seeking to do so, but not without necessity. Thus the contrast between the two methods of penetrating reality depends less on the fact that their object is different - the individual, or the collectivity - than

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345

to the fact that they run round the same track, but in opposite directions, in order to know the same object. This conclusion, which may seem grandiloquent, relies - and I stress this on arguments derived from observation, and is strengthened by the hi story of ideas. In many respects the myths of separate sciences and isolated research fields have had their day, even if they remain attractive. Yet beyond the arguments, it is circumstances that make the conclusion sound hollow. Time has begun to thin their ranks, yet for many society continues to scintillate in all its brilliance. The idea of it burst forth during the last century like a volcanic island after an eruption on the sea bed, and had not ceased to manifest its vitality in the mid-twentieth century. It doubtless corresponds to a reality, but it is as some all-powerful, transcendent being that it imposes itself upon everybody. Society comprises the solution to all the problems of existence and becomes a way to salvation for each of its members. Hence there is a revision of values and the certainty that society knows what is just and true, and how happiness may be built into our common life. The only modem religion is that of society, and the sacrifices carried out for it are the sole ones for which we expect a future reward. Sociological theories rightly mark off this religion and place it above all else, since it is both the invisible reason and the visible remedy for injustices, inequalities and any disorders. The theories are felt to have the capacity for determining the means of success. Some kind of method is required, and these theories propound two: on the one hand, integration; on the other, the trans­ formation of society. The first method recommends what is impossible in any given society: permanently to subordinate the parts to the whole, so that representations and practices are selected according to whether or not they strengthen cohesion between individuals and cause them to progress towards the goal of integra­ tion. Cohesion is seen as the best remedy for collective ills - apathy, crime, deviance, suicide etc . - and all the more beneficial because each individual communicates with others, shares the same beliefs and recognizes his or her own image in the symbols and gods held in common. Everything has been said regarding this sentiment of solidarity, assumed all the more ardently because it protects people against a hosr of desires and procures for them a well-being deriving from an acknowledged consensus. The second method recommends the creating of society anew. The aim is to set up a new kind of relationship, the sort one forms with an equal that one respects, since this is the sole form of freedom possible. Launched by history, this society corrects the errors of its predecessors and offers compensations to those who have been harmed by them. The only thing that counts is that, whether socialist or rational, everything in it is really done to immunize social life against the wounds inflicted by oppression, poverty and mental psychosis. One revolution after another should eventually lead to it. This is what has been dreamt of in countless bursts of enthusiasm, a myriad of stillborn attempts and fruitless combats, and which will finally emerge into a human reality.

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Yet who has ever managed to read the future? In practice we observe that, under the influence of half-baked theories, societies threatened in their cohe­ sion and harmony have sought to reinvigorate the collective consciousness and have fought dissent with extreme intolerance. They have become involved in a frenzied search for certainties, symbols and institutions, to dispel the dif­ ferences between individuals and classes, within a closed world. There are grounds for surprise. By integrating, by communing with one another, a more noble solution was to be expected, the consensus of everybody. Instead we observe unceasing repression, a pressure for conformity that allows not a breath of freedom. It is as if an anti-social society was in the making - one thinks, for example, of Nazi Germany, a case by no means unique - in order to subject the individual to one of the most violent forms of constraint, that of group unity. In this the inhumanity of humankind is revealed, the hatred we bear towards our peers when they happen no longer to resemble us. What is more, even societies that in principle should have emerged from their prehistory and visibly changed their politics and economy have distorted their destiny. Why? How? These are the questions posed before the edifices in which dwell the ideals of a better life, when life itself appears to contradict them. In vain does prudence restrain us from judging ideals, rationality or socialism, but at least we know that no science can ensure their realization, no consideration of justice cause them to become part of our existence. In the end, we remain as far away as ever from the vision of labour that is not alienated, and of an open society belonging to the classes whose lasting monument it is. In their stead arises, from the depths of history, a State of an absolutely different complexion, which at every level is mixed up in the collective system of production, the family, the people and culture . It is only if they conform to the law of the State that human beings are declared to be just and their thoughts and actions held to be true. One may go further: in the beginning individuals sacrificed their life for the State. Afterwards they sacrifice their judgement and passion to it, giving way to f�ar and isolation. In this respect one whole century has undoubtedly been totally lost for history. But this counts for little in compari son with the loss in human lives, in the confidence of human beings in their own power to continue to act in every respect as they are worthy to do. It is as if one believed that very diverse societies, in order to establish themselves, had available no means other than torture and the death sentence. Repression has been ordered with complete serenity by those who have themselves provided the reasons for it and constituted its records - among so many other revolutions, one may cite the cultural revolution in China. A strange convergence leads them to wish to sustain themselves, as Nietzsche says in The Will to Power, by inoculating their members with ' suffering, abandonment, sickness, ill-treatment and dis­ honour, deep scorn of the self and the martyrdom of self-deception ' . This truth, too hard to bear, eludes both speech and our passing judgement. Even the person who has half-perceived this truth cannot pronounce it. The fact remains that the pathos of society has massively dissolved. It is as if we had been mistaken about using one method or another in order to solve

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our difficulties, and also about our chances of success in this respect. It is as if we had suddenly discovered, in its totalitarian, Statist extremes, the mon­ strous face of the Gorgon which appears when the human being loses reason and self-control. All in all, it is the misadventure of a divinity that does not keep its promises and is toppled from the pedestal erected in the hearts of the faithful. Having secularized everything, society in its turn is secularized, but at what price ! I may be giving my own personal impression, one which I feel every time I think of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of our age, taken as a whole - I cannot conceive of them except in this way. Yet increasingly one seeks to explain this loss of transcendency and confidence by invoking ' an end of history ' . What is meant is the fact that society is no longer the locus that bestows a direction upon our lives, and we no longer expect from it a fresh answer to the questions that are continually posed. How can we refute the evidence that it is moving towards the periphery of consciousness, and even of science? And that of it only the framework of routine remains, one from which all passion has flown, like bees from a dead hive? However, the pendulum is not swinging back, as one might have expected, to individuals. Moreover, the latter do not lack reasons - reasons difficult indeed to explain here - for seeking to withdraw as much as possible from society, whose laws go so much against human nature. Individuals tend to set themselves apart from it, to flee the somewhat upsetting pleasure that the intensity of a common life with others provides. Their isolation, their very aversion to any uniformity, signals that they are once more assuming charge of their own private existence. This leads them to prefer the company of a few, to claim for themselves a democracy of everyday life, and to individualize solutions to moral and political problems. I do not seek to revive a criticism of society on which contemporary sociology and philosophy have lavished to exhaustion the most virulent means, so much so that they have debased the criticism entirely and sawn away the branch on which they themselves were comfortably perched. What concerns me here is something different and much more limited in its application. The pendulum has not caused society to swing back towards the individual: it has gone further away, towards the problems of the species itself. The link with the future takes this route, that future a glimmer of which slips into everything we do, through, I would say, care for the human condition. Indeed, when we become aware of the fact that the preservation of the sole inhabitable planet that we know is a basic requirement for the contemporary world, what are we talking about? Are we talking of animal species living under a kind of superv ised freedom, or of those threat­ ened with extinction in what may risk becoming the locus demens of the universe? We speak of our species, which has conducted wars against itself under extremely different kinds of regimes, yet is under an obligation to preserve itself everywhere and to protect itself from what is not human. This appertains to both biology and morality . This growing awareness of the problem of the species becomes evident through a fresh affirmation of the inalienable rights of human beings. Such

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words have today once more become alive, awakening respect and dedication, the sign of a communality with nature once more acknowledged. We may hazard that this is due to a large extent to a startled reaction against great outbursts of rage and the unending accumulation of energy to carry out but­ chery. Yet these rights would not have such a resonance if they did not answer a need not limited by State boundaries or attachment to a nation - in short, if they were not already working at an elemental level . You will say that eco­ nomic conditions and the expansion of democracy explain this abrupt change. This may well be so. However, a decade or two ago, in roughly similar conditions, nobody wished to hear discussion of the rights of man. Even less did anybody think they were natural. Whether achievable or not, they are a factor in the light of the struggle against the extermination of individuals and groups, which has become a commonplace happening. This was not the role that the French Revolution had assigned to them, but it is one that cannot be avoided, in the disastrous state of a humanity forgetful of the living creation of which it is a part. We find this problem recurring, from an angle different from that of human rights, when we look at the problem of our environment. At the pace at which the sciences and technology are moving, these are sufficiently entitled to claim power to ensure that a number of our undertakings that are neither appropriate nor firmly based do not survive. Whether we like it or not, they are driven by a will to dominate what no one can dominate, from the universe to the cell. So they advance, as if we could control the effects of a development whose pace no one is responsible for, and the real purpose no one knows. This even seems a secondary consideration. Meanwhile nuclear reactions give off the same radioactive elements as atomic bombs. Continuing, as these do, to accu­ mulate in various forms, they are only one link in the chain of everyday pollution in clogged-up, massively populated cities such as Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Mexico, Athens etc . , which are stifling under thick layers of gas and smoke that, in the proper meaning of the word, obscure the perception of the world. Other sciences and technologies change our ways of working and our mental environment. Theirs is a fascinating magic. Computers, pictorial and sound media, the marvels of information technology: these are paving the way for a different kind of intelligence - and who would wish to forgo this? At the same time everything conspires to make us forget, in a monumental act of forget­ fulness, that these inventions are part of the search for a means to confer on technical and scientific power the possibility of dominating all the rest. Hence the dilemma: whether to abandon ourselves at the outset to this power in as graceful a way as possible, or to learn how to convert its possibilities into something worthwhile, and impose direction upon them. Whoever denies this and turns aside from this task must be unaware that once the most delicate threads of our society have been eaten through, nothing can prevent the collapse of the institutions of our natural existence. Furthermore, speaking objectively, the increase in life expectancy gives a deeper dimension to this problem. As far as the body is concerned, we are

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experiencing a reversal. Fonner generations of people passed away after a short lapse of time, but societies lasted so long as external forces, wars or famine, did not undermine them. Everything was regulated according to a process whereby the individual was mortal and the group - family, village etc. - was immortal. Nowaday societies pass away in the space of a generation. This is the case with our own, which over a decade has experienced as many transformations in relationships, as varied a kaleidoscope of events, as did previous societies in a century. In the proper sense of the word, we have become a historical species. Nor is this all . We also have a different experience of the body, which is tending to reach its limits. The attention we give it, the enjoyment we owe to it, are characteristic of modem times, and the resources we devote to it are a sign of this. Does this right to its enjoyment make i llness, suffering, famine and epidemics even more unbearable? We feel attacked in our own body, and in our instinct for self-preservation, when others fall victim to them. This is yet another reason that makes us more keenly aware of our human condition. But how is this prolongation of human life brought about? At one extreme procreation is made more certain by greatly improved, extremely artificial methods. At the other extreme life is prolonged by constant treatment. It seems an established fact that we are increasingly able to manipulate our existence within the limits laid down in the genetic code. It is true that many other conditions must be fulfilled in order to arrive at this, but all means, even the most extreme, are applied so as to achieve this effect. However, just as life, from the moment of birth, can be voluntarily enhanced, we are beginning to see death being sought after, likewise voluntarily, as the remedy for this extended life. Euthanasia, now widely approved, changes a duty into a right. This is a momentous happening. Human beings, on whom most religions imposed the obligation to die in order to face the supreme test, now claim the privilege of dying in order to annul that supreme test, abandoning the tacit hope of resurrection. However potential this occurrence may be for the mo­ ment, it opens up another window on the meaning of the finiteness of human beings. Can we, employing sober language, imagine it with detachment as one fact among many that are dealt with in the economy and in medicine? If we go a step further, we find that any redefinition of the two extremes of exist­ ence, life and death, is indeed equivalent to a kind of mutation of the species. In any case societies and cultures will in future find this to be so from their very beginnings. It is one of those small causes that produce great effects, provided they operate long enough. If this is · so, through the rights of man, the hold that sciences and techno­ logies have upon the environment, and the redefinition of the terms of our existence, the question becomes one that concerns the conditions that bind human beings to nature. Whatever the course things may take, a history that up to now has been limited to a collectivity or a particular culture will extend its range and henceforth extend to the development of the species. Since all that exists comes from the labour that we carry out on various animate and inanimate forces, of which we are one element, the most recent, this is

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possible. In labour also we act regularly in order to attract into our ambit the various parts of the external world, just as the sun attracts the planets into its orbit, in order to make and unmake other worlds. Through this effort, renewed day by day, in art, production, research, each one of these takes on a consist­ ency and appears as a complete whole . From time to time, human strength is drastically altered : the relationships between the natural forces that it is up against burst asunder, giving the real impression that a change has occurred in nature. In this sense, its history, with all that this implies regarding the transmission of forms of knowledge, mem­ ory banks, perceptions and modes of behaviour, is also ours. Thus if there is a natural history on the scale of the species, it is more closely interwoven with social history, and this is something that happens within modernity. The two are united together, in conditions the reasons for which I have set out else­ 10 where, in a human history of nature. Thus everything relating to the sciences, art, urbanization , democracy and our life span , even our relationships with authority, follows on from this, finding collective expression. Depending on the ebb and flow of events, this is the new and fertile soil on which the human sciences have to pursue their task. In reality, this history and our consciousness of it highlights the distance that separates the two types of society into which it divides: societies that have been 'experienced ' , and societies that have been ' conceived of' . Both can be understood from the simple data of our existence: on the one hand, the fact that we are directly in line with nature; on the other hand, the fact that, without being able to sever this link with nature, we stretch it to the utmost. Societies of the first type, undoubtedly the most ancient, are those we normally think of, which have taken the forms and tools of social life from animals. Living as they do, they are nevertheless opposed to nature and seek to constitute a 11 world apart, like a species that isolates itself from other species. Turning inward on themselves, these societies create elegant kinds of relationships and physical disciplines - contact, food, sex etc. - as well as rituals designed to keep separate a collectivity ' built upon human beings' . As complex as they are perfected, each society asserts its discontinuity with nature through its discontinuity with other societies, and maps out the boundaries between the human and the animal domain, as well as its own boundaries. Like art, it imitates nature, drawing its instincts and materials from it and, like art, so as to counterfeit it and distinguish itself from it. Such a society of experience gives an impression of being a peculiar reality, made up of substances and forces special to itself. The subjective visions that its members share in and believe to be true have then a cosmic sense, being divine and determined by the society . Less numerous and very recent, 'conceived ' societies appear effectively to be in a state of discontinuity with nature. In them the forces of science and technology keep its physical and biological data at arm ' s length. Plainly the ties that link instinctual energies to relationships between human beings are disconnected. Whilst continuing to depend on these energies, relationships cannot be subsumed in them. Yet how then can one anchor individuals firmly

Concluding

remarks

35 1

in an environment, and one collectivity to another, without any countervailing force and without communication? Thus such societies are conceived of in an attempt to re-establish a continuity with nature and once more become one of its autonomous components. In order to do this they strive to be part of an 'information circuit' , to model themselves on the laws that govern phenomena, to be simpler, and even more monotonous than the other type of societies, just as the gestures performed by a factory worker are simpler than those of an artisan, or a skyscraper simpler than a Gothic cathedral. They are constituted on the basis of a potential of knowledge that allows several possible versions and several alternative solutions to a problem to be discovered. 1 2 Thus, if society exists, various societies can be conceived of and, depending upon the circumstances, are even realizable. It is not that they are more rational , but they persist in envisaging the most varied cases, in order to deal with some­ thing of which there is no direct, visible experience. Reason is thus harnessed to the attempt to fashion society, not in nature, but in its capacity as nature. This is why, being constantly refashioned, it resembles a workshop where nothing is ever finished, since everything is permanently being re-conceived, using materials that change, and relationships are always in the process of being forged. From societies experienced to societies conceived of, there is all the distance that separates the continuous from the discontinuous, the complex from the simple, the finished from the unfinished. ' Experienced' societies, assured of their place on the earth, put their ideas into concrete form in order to make a world - their world - sacred, and in order to add extra reality to it. 'Conceived' societies 'dematerialize ' things in their search for a real exchange and a language in harmony with their physical and biological powers. B ut the deep­ est contrast lies elsewhere . ' Experienced' societies, like all living creatures putting down deep roots, do not know they have an end and only know their beginning, to which they pay honour. Time is for them an external dimension, independent of the space in which they are located - whether this be of territory, language or works - with a feeling of the uniform passage of time that nothing can destroy. 'Conceived ' societies bear from birth the marks of their end, which they foresee, and time for them is an inner dimension. It is the measurement of all things, from the value of an object to the life expec­ tancy of an idea, not excluding the creation of a town or a work of art. Each is all the more perfect the more improbable and more ephemeral it is. From the one kind to the other kind, we pass from a three-dimensional to a four­ dimensional society. This fourth dimension is time, in other words, the possible and transitory. This is what make the two types incompatible and it is difficult for each to exist side by side. Also, in this perspective we arriv e at the end of history, a sentiment that is often expressed. But it is the end of a history that yields to events in an economy, a nation or a State, and the beginning of another that articulates these with the significant happenings in our own nature that occur when it is thrown into society . It includes everything hitherto kept apart, our 13 relationships with all those worlds being made and unmade in the universe.

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However, is this possible? One single humanity is after all a very solitary humanity . No longer feeling linked exclusively to the earth and no longer finding among other animal species that intimacy and support which have fortified it for thousands of years, what does it do? It launches radio signals in the direction of other unknown beings, the presumed inhabitants of other planets, in order to forge a tie that is lacking in nature. In this way alone can the image of another kind of history be born. Certain people, indifferent for the most part, dispute this view. In their eyes the problem of being human - of Menschlichkeit - is in any case a secondary one. It emerges from the pattern of the economy and society, which experience inequalities and more substantial acts of violence . Although human beings resemble one another in their insoluble problems, they differ in the solutions they propose for them at any given moment. They are certain they have found an answer, when they have only reformulated the question. Moreover, what other kind of problem could be of interest to the sciences, unless they wish to yield to the illusion that they are comfortably resolving the puzzles they are set? At the risk of appearing boring - but how can one avoid it when one has only one thing to say? - I must insist on that moment when the human sciences branch off in two directions. Either they launch off towards a kind of social philosophy, artistically composed, less burdened with facts and more with dry-as-dust prophecies, and whose authors, jacks of all trades, resemble Proud­ hon (of whom I believe Marx used to say that he passed for a sociologist in the eyes of philosophers and for a philosopher in the eyes of sociologists). If by good fortune their message comes across on the media, then they pass for scientists in the eyes of the public and for the public in the eyes of scientists. This is one of the most endearing aspects of our intellectual life: the extra­ ordinary variety of styles, where to contribute to the language becomes a way of contributing to knowledge. Or �ndeed - and this is the other possibility - the direction taken is changed by the problem I have been raising in the human sciences themselves. How then can one justify the tendency to constitute societies as totalities or invari­ ate wholes? 14 How far can we define their properties as being those of a permanent system, when every object in our universe - from the individual to the masses, from the particle to the galaxy - is defined by its life span? This expresses its transitory nature and sums up its properties. In one way or another every phenomenon is an evolutionary event and has its structural peculiarity. Here I reach the point I wished to come to: recently each of the human sciences has started to want to think out its own system and to uncover a structure common to modes of behaviour, communications etc. It is of little consequence that this system possesses rules independent of each one of its parts - for example, a society in relation to individuals - or whether it is the result of a convergence of the parts, such as those of a market or a club. The main point is that the system should exist and seive as a reference point. Not to look for it and bring out its structure would be going against science .

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Under the spell of research the artist in us forgets that economics, sociology and even linguistics cannot turn any kind of system at all into an object to be observed, and even less yield up the laws that link together its various dimen­ sions. There is one simple reason for this: the system is normally so vast and abstract that one rarely has concrete experience of it, and even less does one possess any instrument allowing one to measure and predict. In practice all that one can do is to simulate and reify it. The operation has doubtless some instructional value . To look for an invariate order in the welter of ideas and facts teaches one to reason in depth about collective relationships, to discard results easily obtained, and to think with greater rigour, using mathematics. So be it. Yet in the human sciences, as in the natural sciences, and for the same reasons, one passes from the world of structures to the world of creation. Without wishing to take short cuts, we must recognize that conceived soci­ eties, which are always in the making, in process of becoming, upset our inclination to deal with social life as a balanced, repetitive system. For nothing is to be found in them that is not re-created in the psychological environment and does not at every moment go beyond the possibilities this environment offers. One thinks of a puddle of water, apparently motionless, but stirred by some invisible movement, whether it is evaporating or seeping away into the ground. Or should one remind oneself how much the objects of the sciences themselves fluctuate and are impermanent? Who could define precisely what is the main preoccupation of his or her own science at the present time? The more words seek to be accurate, the less they are. But we have come too far too quickly, to the point where the very contours of what societies are have become blurred. Those societies dubbed primitive are changing before our very eyes. Under the ebb and flow of technologies and national movements these distant worlds, which lack States or frontiers or archives, are drawing closer to our own, borne along by the same currents of history. In this way anthropology sees its field melting away - one that would not have existed save for the barriers and prejudices of colonial expedi­ tions. On the other hand, modem societies, the children of the trend to innova­ tion and uninterrupted progress, are modified by the very fact that change in them becomes a matter of routine, and bold actions are copied from one another. I can assert without hesitation that all the past uniformities, and a tradition that has been rediscovered in order to give them 'ballast ' , once more weigh heavily in the balance. A simple fault line is no longer recognizable. We no longer know what to exclude, as we did in that blissful age when society, in the proper meaning of the word, occupied a spur of land in Europe and North America, and nowhere else. Nor do we know what should be included: a society with one single occupier that would extend over the whole planet? Would this still be a society? In any case the barriers have shifted, the hierarchies enlarged - ancf so we may speak of the First, the Second or the Third World, etc. - thereby subsuming all that is contemporary under what is modem. On the strength of this example one can see how the fields of science have been transformed, and the pace at which this has occurred. We come

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down to conceiving a sociology of fonner collectivities that have become those of today, and an anthropology of proximate cultures - our own - in which many an Atlantis of history survives. All this remains mere metaphor so long as one fails to acknowledge the preponderance of creation over system, of genesis over structure. Thus we gain the impression that fonner collectivities will give us the key to our own cultures. It is as if by turning back the hands of a clock one finished up at the beginning instead of beginning at the end. This gives some hint of method, one that in this respect is exemplary, and which the French linguist Emile Benveniste gives us when he writes: 'There is nothing in the written language that is not in the spoken language. ' Briefly, this means that the genetic process is the rule and the structural process the exception. Every day the struggle is renewed ever more fiercely, in society as in nature, to discover and reproduce the most diverse connections and combinations. In the same way in the thou­ sands of conversations being carried on simultaneously, some new expression, or even some rough outline of a rule, will emerge. A small part of these innovations will be poured into a mould that will take on a structural form or become part of a system, retrospectively, without this having been foreseen. To understand a phenomenon genetically implies establishing a correlation between the conditions appertaining at the time of one's observation with those when it has been traced back to its origin, in order to shed light on the form that it takes on at any given moment. To what interests is it alleged to corres­ pond? What governs its duration and its hold over individuals and groups? We thought that rituals were dead and buried, but they most certainly continue to exist in political parties and national movements, and in the life of numerous sects. They were deemed to be a constraint and a matter of compulsion, and here they are, reborn, voluntary and the result of a deliberate choice, as we see when thousands of youngsters devote themselves assiduously to prayer, or women veil their faces. In order to understand these trans­ formations, let us go back to the source : once rituals were celebrated in order to ease the passage from private to public life, from a time and space that were ordinary to ones that were extraordinary. By boasting of its members' devotion during ceremonials, society, through its myths, added to faith in them. In appearance rituals continue to bind together and reinvigorate human beings, but a displacement has occurred. Dissociated from those myths, which have vani shed, rituals have become a practice allowing individuals regularly to be brought together, assembled under emblems and slogans, so as to strengthen the identity of a commercial undertaking or a city, just like a Church. Deprived of the distinction between the sacred and the profane, they narrowly risk confusing the two, and by being mixed up in every repetitive action, becoming a mere habit. Nowadays they nevertheless mark a separation between public and private life, a contrast between formal relationships and valued informal relationships. Thi s is why they arouse hostility, if not scorn, as does everything that passes for being mechanical and lacking justification. As we have just said, ritual without myth is partial, truncated, does not reach down to the whole being, and is like a human being without a shadow, or a

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language that has lost all meaning. The distinction between the two, which was almost entirely blotted out in the ceremonies of community life from which total ritual sprang, now exists in the life of the individual, on condition that it remains hidden away, and beyond reality . It takes the form of an obsession for order, for purity, for a coherence in gestures and ideas that are continually being reassessed. Thus rituals are woven into a personal myth in the close, rediscovered unity of an obsessional neurosis, condemned by its very nature to remain secret. It is a neurosis that seemingly rediscovers a part of its collective substantiality in religious sects and other analogous manifestations, in which one selects what was already determined for one and, after reflection, creates a social aspect already created unconsciously. It is not so very surprising that Freud found in this an analogy with religion, despite the fact that he underestimated practices in favour of beliefs. This is because the neurosis reproduces in a private scenario what was invented in the public gaze, and is inclined to degrade this into caricature. It is certain that a genealogy of ritual would allow us to understand how it is transformed in every historical situation, and the role it plays in perpetuating itself. Why do things survive the causes that have produced them and those that should have caused them to disappear? This is the trite enigma behind everything we observe . It is evident that the search for dynamic causes shifts the genetic sciences from the periphery to the centre of the human sciences. Henceforth they pose for themselves - with a view to explaining them - the questions once posed by myths. In this way they link a creation whose origins go back to the recesses of time, to a rare, incredible event. In this is to be found the ultimate reason for everything that has occ urred and remained active ever since . Those who recognize this and follow its winding course experience every time the same enchantment, for they understand everything save its origin, which retains its mystery. In the process the genetic sciences raise questions that for several decades have become those of the natural sciences and have led to striking discoveries. They certainly describe facts and relationships that constitute a system. But, instead of stopping there, they use this as a point of departure in order to explore its genesis and the causes that explain it. In short, from the phenom­ enon that is known one goes back to the source and attempts to fathom the beginnings. Thus present-day cosmology studies the expanding universe: stars are born, explode and vanish. It goes back to the commencement of this evolution, in order to examine the l ife cycle and death of each star, and the properties of matter that made the 'big bang ' possible. It can date the big bang from its dispersal . On the other hand, we only know one thing for certain about the physics of elementary particles, according to Oppenheimer; that none is elementary; but it has moved towards the same conception. It is abundantly clear that particles are created and annihilated permanently , giving rise to the various electromagnetic and nuclear fields. This is the point of departure for a genealogy of the atom, and of a theory explaining how chemi­ cal entities, once held to be irreducible, are born one after another from

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hydrogen, the first of them. In the same spirit, once the double helix of the genetic code was discovered, scientists immediately began to study where the information that it passes on originates and how it is produced, and to seek the meaning of evolution. Such questions are constantly recurring. Since the code of each species has stored up millions of years of mutations, it is both a historical and a physical-chemical effect. These brief remarks demonstrate that knowledge of origins - the origin of the universe, of matter, and of life - has once more become a part of science and is essential to it. By adopting a similar perspective the human sciences can free themselves from certain constraints, if not from certain defects. By concerning themselves less with seeking a foundation and more with moving forward, they can multiply opportunities for contact. This is necessary be­ cause, in order to explain any genesis, one must concentrate on a point in 15 science on which various orders of knowledge converge. Since these orders have interchangeable ideas and observe comparable facts, one can follow the phases of emergence of a phenomenon. Think, for example, of the phases in the formation of a mass movement. It is appropriate first to chart the physical and economic conditions. Then psychological and anthropological factors take over. Thus these can account for that mental unity and those unconscious pressures arising from traditions and symbols which exercise a lasting sugges­ tive power over individuals. Then political science intervenes concerning the various motives - religious or ideological - behind the legitimacy of the mass movement and what directs it. In short, if our sole datum is that of genesis, a coalition of the sciences is a practical requirement. Its fruitfulness arises from the fact that no science has any reason to hold its explanation to be exclusive, since the phenomena to be explained are roughly the same, although observed according to different yardsticks. Thus in the task of discovery the following holds good: we shall find that psychology has a determinate role, since every communication is through words , every action through representations and, finally, every rela­ tionship presumes a rule. Psychology therefore demarcates the cognitive and affective capacities that are a precondition for everything an individual is capable of initiating or a culture capable of creating. This is by no means to say that everything is a matter of neural and cerebral data. But when material circumstances exert pressure upon us, the significance of this pressure and what emerges from it depend on psychological operations through which we are able to select and interiorize the results. These operations possess their own logic, and exercise constraint over the symbols in which our interests and our powers are expressed. Even if our cognitive and psychological faculties are not acquired once and for all, we must esteem that they are prepared for certain tasks, and not for others . In any case psychology has an obligation to define their use as an initial framework for the most intense and most elemen­ tary phenomena, in statu nascenti, of society. History and economics stipulate, each in its own way, the parameters within which the phenomena have an opportunity to develop. Sociology follows the genesis of institutions and their objectification. I am more than ever convinced that anthropology plays a major

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role, insofar as it retraces the relative origins of social phenomena and serves us as a cosmology, so to speak. I can guess the objection: there is no advantage to be gained from choosing the genetic sciences, which revive the historicist and evolutionist mentality, one naive and lacking intellectual rigour. It is a mentality that we got rid of only recently , and not without difficulty. Who would deny this? However, criticism has warned us of the danger and, learning from systematic methods, we can take up questions of origin again at a higher level, and in accordance with the creative and destructive nature of our society. These questions leap to our eyes and mind, for they are the first that we pose in life and we think about them all the rest of the time . Our human sciences, not even history, no longer have their gaze fixed upon the time spindle of Chronos; the natural sciences, by contrast, have found it once more. 16 They rekindle a curiosity that we can never lose. Yet clearly these sciences influence our views and actions unwittingly , as can ideas and, more frequently, the arts. Pursuing this to the extreme, we can discern its significance, summed up with admirable precision by the philo­ sopher Jankelevitch: 'Psychology suspects, sociology denounces . ' One might well have thought that they would enunciate their truths impartially, in a neutral spirit. Not at all. Their basis, and the first step they take, is to naturalize original sin in the modem world, making plain that nothing in it is done innocently and without intention - an intention often to harm. It is a procedure that prophets and wise men of less pretentious eras would not have disavowed. The question always remains as to what is not yet entirely human in the human person. This century forces us to pose it in a more acute form, since society has lost that aura of transcendence and any ready-made solution for our lives. And it is posed more acutely still, since we are living in the aftermath of one of the greatest disasters in human history, whose twin badges are the concen­ tration camp and the atomic bomb. This is a disaster that does not enter into any of the scenarios that were mapped out, one which we cannot describe as an accident of history such as a natural catastrophe or a stock market crash. Even less can we talk of it as an error of trajectory, such as that of a satellite, which can be corrected by calculation or a better guidance system. For the first time in the history of the civilized world theories based on economics or biology have asserted that a part of the human race is not human, changing an objective state of affairs into a collective crime. Thus they ren­ dered it obligatory to denounce one ' s parents, accuse one 's neighbours, and kill as if to wish to rid the earth of its inhabitants. They justified laws punish­ ing what laws allow - freedom of thought, the right to association etc. - and rewarded what they forbid: deportation without trial, burying people alive, secret torture, degrading humiliation, the burning alive of millions of men, women and children. Meanwhile the scope of this question, which we may term an ethical one, is enlarged, and this catches us unawares. In our 'conceived ' societies it touches upon our relations with nature and the safeguarding of the human

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species, between which we have to decide. Side by side with very clear rules laying down, vis-a-vis our peers and our group, what is good and what is evil, there are others, still very fluid, concerning life and death. To be conscious of this, we need only remind ourselves of the arguments raised concern ing abor­ tion, artificial insemination, the choice of a child ' s sex, or surrogate mother­ hood; or, by manipulation of the genes, the decision that makes it possible to eliminate carriers of certain hereditary diseases, to perform organ transplants, and all the rest . We should add that, once such things have got under way, the public desires to eval uate more exactly the implications of the methods used, and scientists seek to clear their conscience. Behind these anxieties, we can discern how great is the effort to resist what propels biology and medicine on to an almost 'normal ' downhill slope towards eugenics. B acked by the author­ ity of the most eminent people in various countries, this branch of science can be used to elimi nate whole sections of humanity , either because of their illness or because of their race. In order to avoid any backsliding, ethical committees are elected, rules for a medical code are prescribed, and control exercised over research procedures. Physics and chemistry preceded biology . Being the sciences of mass and energy, they affect our immediate environment and that of the planet. The atomic and hydrogen bombs, of which tens of thousands exist, give some idea of the size of the problem. The choice is made daily between the various methods that can continue to keep the planet habitable and match the enorm­ ous concentrations of population . Suffice it only to say that a number of scientists have been preoccupied with this, ever since it was no longer suffi­ cient to invoke progress in order to j ustify an invention, or our duty as the rulers and owners of nature to have the right to destroy it. The figure of Einstein is always present as an example, the cruel dilemma of the researcher who has to promote what in his heart of hearts he struggles against. Even if we do not invoke some sc ience or another, we know that in the laboratories and arms factories, and in scientific circles, this dilemma is con­ tinually cropping up, like a hydra-headed monster. Never has there been such a superabundance of creators and creations capable of being changed over­ night into destroyers and destructive powers . Often one hears it said, with a blend of excuse and condescension : ' These are mean s ' , in order to avoid passing j udgement or undergoing any crisis of conscience. It is true that this can sound j ust in a society where val ues are permanent and laid down before­ hand, with some serving as the basic theme around which the harmony of the rest can be organized. A single image associates means with ends and, just as with two i ndependent n umerical series, certain combinations are allowed and others forbidden. However, this sounds a hollow note in conceived societies, for the simple reason that such soc ieties are continually changing ends into means, as one of the possibilities which, with the passage of time, becomes reality. Money for money ' s sake led the way; production for production ' s sake followed; and then art for art' s sake, action for the sake of action, research for the sake of research, etc. Here again the method is that of the natural sciences:

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as soon as a phenomenon becomes possible , one must concentrate upon it and push it to its incredible consequences. It is as if nothing can stop this. It was the case with nuclear energy half a century ago, and is the same with genetic 'genii ' today. Each of these means has been treated as an exclusive end, pregnant with promise of other ends that can be exploited. Thus the acme of the Westernization of life is made manifest, summed up in the slogan : 'All you can produce you must produce. ' In whatever way this is understood, it abolishes the gap between means and ends. Its corollary is that no intelligent mind can any longer perceive when we are justifying the means or are choos­ ing the ends. This is because means in action are continually creating their own ends, just as a medicine, once it has been discovered to cure one illness, seeks, so to speak, normal uses and gives relief to other unsuspected illnesses, revealing new secondary effects. Let us repeat that the great disasters of the past that have shaken society and weakened our links with nature, the obligations imposed in this respect, have marked out a new ethical domain. A challenge is addressed to all the sciences, since neither religion nor philosophy any longer have the authoritative quality required to deal with such obligations. Yet the challenge falls particularly on the human sciences . In fact to ask ' How should we live? ' and especially ' How should we live with other people? ' does not signify at all that we are deploring that our age lacks values or its culture has gone astray. This would come down to regretting ' the good old days ' , and reviving them at least cost. This is particularly true today, when no one any longer knows what should be the morality and culture that would include massive means of communication, research laboratories , and our journeyings into space. On the contrary, of those sciences which claim to deal with these, we simply ask: ' What should I do? On what basis should I be doing what I am doing'! ' Thereby our modes of conduct, and those with whom we live, make sense to us. It would be para­ doxical to get the reply: 'We don' t know ' or ' It would be against our vocation to choose between values and take sides. ' If so, why then the human sciences? Are they mere intellectual entertainments, or ways of collecting phenomena, as one does plants? This is most certainly not the case . To reject them would be even more paradoxical because, so far as I know, scientific practice changes nothing, whether or no society is studied in a neutral, detached manner, as an ant or a star might do as they mingled freely with other ants and other stars. We assume that the study of nature possesses a certain advantage in this. And we particularly psychologists - are reproached with giving way to prejudice, with looking at the facts from the viewpoint of our own values and interests. This is probably true. But why should one assume that this is a handicap and why believe that we cannot separate knowledge of what is from knowledge of what should be, what we observe from what we would prefer to see? Taking us for what we are, one animal among many others, this distinction is self-evident. If it were impossible, in any field, to separate the real from the ideal, reason from the passion that lies beneath it, judgement concerning what is true and false and what is good and evil, one could not pursue any occupation, live

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with other people, or think sanely . Even a person in a state of possession distinguishes between hallucinations and real perceptions. Even fanatics, gripped by some categorical belief and having taken sides, can evaluate the balance between forces and learn to know their opponent. Far from shutting themselves off in some fastness of preconceived ideas, on the contrary they are endowed with an extra clarity of vision and critical spirit. Aware of the strength of their own desires, they fortify themselves, I presume, against any inclination to take them for reality. If one confronts researchers with facts, they are found to possess strong values, and espouse the interests of their nation and age. Yet more than anyone else they are not prevented from knowing what is real or from arriving at novel and surprising results. However, this cannot be known until after the event, when this delicate process of alchemy has succeeded with some and failed with others. From the celebrated premise of objective knowledge that urges us to separ­ ate factual from value j udgements, we draw , on the other hand, an impossible and even despairing conclusion. Namely, that a simple mental operation con­ sisting of deducing a practice based on knowledge of what is can prevent us from laying down what should be. Such an operation may be banned and placed beyond the pale of reason, but one cannot see it faulted by reason itself. Is this so even in the natural sciences? I was coming to that. Our mind and our research methods have the effect of transforming laws of cause and effect into obligations, once we have discovered them. Contrary to what is often asserted, a necessity that has been acknowledged does not lead to freedom but to duty. Consider the host of research studies that have established the rela­ tionship between the nature of bacteria and contagious diseases, or between radioactivity and certain types of cancer. How could one not come to propose a number of legal and medical remedies, and from this, to label as inad­ missible, physically harmful and morally perverted anything that opposes these? It comes down to constantly appealing for conformity to biological and social laws, knowledge of which more often leads to blind coercion than deliberate acceptance. Leibniz said: 'All that is needful is a duty. ' Just as we cannot interpret the spoken word as being mere noise, we cannot know without judging and judging ourselves. Because of this tendency, biologists and doc­ tors have become the priests of our daily lives. Here we arrive at the central argument in our discussion. The human sci­ ences have as their special task to carry out this operation in reverse. They follow an incline that goes against nature, seeking from the imperatives and desires of an age an embryonic reality waiting in the wings. Merely consider the simple fact of prediction, of projecting the future from the present. Does this not take on the form of being an imperative, a task that has to be fulfilled? This is not only because the future is the tense of ethical duty (' Thou shalt not kill '), but also because our actions occur within a framework for realizing what has been predicted. Now, what has been predicted is only one possibility among others, and only the knowledge of what must be, of what one would like it to be, transforms it into actuality, and is changed to knowledge of what is, what one can observe and measure.

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Thus a research study , however modest i t may be, begins with a gestu re of indignation. We have the impression that something in human existence is not as it ought to be . Or we start from a desire whose object is plain and which we wish to satisfy . The desire or the purpose impels us to undertake syste­ matically and logically the task of discovering what corresponds to them in the reality of things. If a transformation of the indignation or desire occurs, our knowledge will be more certain, more rooted in the facts - and not only at the beginning, as is claimed, in relation to the choice of problems, but to the very end, through all the stages of a theory. Whatever the causes, a research project - and this is an absolute truism - is inspired by the question of ' what should be ' , for example, a reasonable consensus, a better economy or a normal mode of behaviour. And our research continues to progress so long as we keep our eyes open to ' what can be known about what i s ' , and so long as one of the possibilities envisaged seems to be increasingly effective, as was the case at one time for Marxism. In this way initial prejudice maintains a constant pressure at all levels, until a truth is recognized and accepted by science. Our knowledge of human beings is not diminished by this series of operations arising from a premise that includes a value . The conclusion we draw from it should also reveal a value. Certain premises distort both theory and observation - such as ' All men are born equal ' , ' The end justifies. the means ' , ' Incest is universal ' . They do not rank as facts or values. In this they are comparable to certain premises of the natural sciences: ' Nature does not advance by leaps and bounds ' , ' Light follows the shortest path ' , which are both facts and values. Yet how could one proceed otherwise and remain objective , without imagining and explaining a universe without values, uniform and, in a word, neutral? Whatever advances in method may be made, these conditions relating to practice and knowledge will not be abolished. They demonstrate that the human sciences, more than the others, are moral sciences in origin, and remain so. Their lustre would be tarnished if they succeeded in making us better informed without teaching us how to live better. We can go further. It is a fact that, far from diminishing, this moral character has grown in importance. To our obligations towards one another in society are added those concerning the entire human species. Today this maxim is no longer a maxim, but an image, and even a reality that could materialize in the twinkling of an eye. Apparently the times are peaceful. It is as if we were in a greenhouse, but motionless, because the slightest jolt could shatter the whole structure. The basis of ethics may well be a certain dread of life, everywhere only just below the surface. It is only in a situation of extreme danger, when we lack a morality , that we bother one another with the question, ' How can a morality be found?' - as if it were a matter of minutes or even seconds. But it is our very societies that are at stake . It is these which, emptied of religious content and warned against any feeling of permanence, dispel any slight vestige of certainty. 'If the sun and moon began to doubt, ' wrote William Blake, ' they would be immediately extinguished. ' Here we can see one of the repres­ entations of our fate. And we would not be entirely wrong to do so, seeing

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how remorselessly , one after another, science explodes the privileges that human beings have granted themselves in the universe. There remains no preordained direction to follow, one in which humans can trust. Nor is there any distinction in scale between higher and lower goals, in whose power they wish to believe. Thus we can only let the laws of chance operate, since this accords with the profound disorder of all things. Yet some direction must be given . The human sciences, like society as a whole, have rallied round an ethic of meaning. By ascribing a value to each of the possibi lities perceived, the human sciences have created a reference framework - rationality or soc ialism, for example - by which all e lse is judged. It is to this value we must relate in order to exist in this universe, which remains indifferent to our desires and supplication s, but susceptible to our choices as men and women. Moreover, most of these options represent a quest for emancipation as arduous and assiduous as was the quest for salvation in the world of religion . Its philosophical origins are to be discovered in the French Revolution, its pathos in Rousseau and Marx, its political basis in democracy, where everyone has a duty to resist oppression. Yet such a quest does not lead to an ethic save at the price of a series of renunciations. The first renunciation is that of the privileges of education and culture, signs of a moral capacity and guarantees of a mode of conduct enlightened by reason. It seems to us to go without saying that, at the appropriate moment, those who have acquired such gifts will be able to rise up in society in order to safeguard universal values and transcend the special interests of a State or nation. Whether a matter for an avant-garde or an opposition , it would mean that a fraction of humanity had torn itself free from the cowardice of submission and the obscure depths of instinct. Alas, this is not so. Current experience and war have chipped away the il lusion of any difference that education and culture sustain between the intellectuals and the masses in moments of decision. They not only make a virtue out of sacrificing one or the other, as the French writer Paul Nizan did when he wrote: 'Let us have the courage to be vulgar, let us sacrifice the spirit of refinement. ' What is more, the same fears, the same extreme excitement, have the effect of causing them to dissolve into the crowd, in that crucible where murder and pillage, and a justification for lies, become permissible and even meritorious. Let no one tell us of the superiority of high culture, when on several occasions the excellent remark of Freud has been confirmed. He wrote: ' This war has stirred up our disillusionment for two reasons: the poor morality, in their external relations, of States which behave as the guardians of moral norms, and, with individuals, a brutality of behaviour of which we would not have believed them capable , sharing as they do in the highest level 7 of human civilization. '1 It is from this brutali ty that precisely these , the most informed and most aware, have derived an undoubted satisfaction, and even, 8 at the particular moment, pride. 1 Next comes the abandonment of the conviction that the meaning of our life in common is already written into the order of things, like an invisible hand determining events as if they had to come about, as if the world were inevit-

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ably moving towards light, j ustice, equality and peace. This is what would denote the superiority of a particular state of knowledge or of society . From this viewpoint, human beings, actions appear secondary , and their ethics as being in tow to destiny. They justify what must be without, however, charting any course towards it. What is more, for those human beings tightly enmeshed in their convictions, attention to real ity would be a descent into Hell. This is because all efforts risk sullying the purity of the goal and di storting the rigour of the beliefs on which it is based. To seek the end without making the means available assumes as a certainty that the. end will infallibly come about, with the inflexibility of a law of nature. It should suffice to c l i ng to it as mil itant supporters do to their party, believers to their faith, pacifists to their idea of universal peace, paying no heed to the grievous incidence of events and the cruelty of human practices. This is what gives a sombre grandeur to so many inspired movements, demonstrating that a way is always available - but noth­ ing else. One way or another we abandon our inclination to believe we are sure to benefit from some special understanding of what is really worth doing and for what reason. This is what we find among thinkers, parties, nations and schools of thought that assert they possess the sole just and infal l ible vision . This monopoly of the truth reduces to little consequence the sentiment of duty and our ties with others, for each indiv idual ' s task is mapped out i n advance. We need only recall the tone and accent of political or philosophical discourse over the last thirty years. These champions of justice protested in everybody ' s name, but they addressed themselves to nobody i n particular and n o response was expected. Solipsism used as a method is indeed the hallmark of this abuse of communication: each individual or group speaks in a private language and would like it to be understood as a public language, which presumes exchanges and discussion . But these are ruled out from the search for any common solution to the question: ' How shall we live? ' They are excluded becau se each has his or her own answer, even before the question has been put. Whatever one does, asceticism will always be needed in order to arrive at an ethical system. The first obligation is that of responsibil ity, which requires there to be no contradiction in or through our actions. Human beings who have made their choice, for whatever reason, find themselves committed and im­ pelled to achieve the goal in question. Whatever their convictions and repug­ nance, they can no longer consider what they have to achieve as inspiration or some scholarly hypothesis, form deprived of matter. Like the politician or military leader, their duty on the contrary is to determine the circumstances and possibil ities for making the goal concrete. This is the way one succeeds in negotiating the passage from the ideal to the real. Practices that transform society, like those that transform matter, carry with them an asceticism in­ evitably composed of compromises and approximations. In this dilemma of ' faith versus works' , as old as the world, one term cannot be di vorced from the other. To accept both, whil st being mindful of the meaning of the trans­ formation one is effecting, requires that moral fibre cal led responsibility. Everyone will agree that the prophet, the statesman, the professional, and even

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the scholar, if they keep in mind the direction in which their quest is leading, conduct themselves in this way. Each one of us, in an hour of uncertainty, has wondered whether individual responsibility was enough . A choice, and confidence in one ' s own powers, are necessary. B ut these are not sufficient to change one ' s action into a value , nor to ensure it has any effective reality, whereas relationships in the group can be such that individuals feel they are participating in the discussions of a single entity and are sustained by a common agreement. This is why the other obligation of this ethical system is discussion. Dialogue is made the privileged pathway that leads to the norms of social life, and to the emancipation that may give meaning to that life. From where does that life draw its strength, and what is the principle that turns it into a moral obligation? In the Greek city-states this pooling of ideas, this sharing in the arguments, was already being cultivated, and rules were laid down for achieving a political and moral consensus. As Habermas main­ tains , for modern times discussion has this power, because we are propelled along by the spoken word and bound to follow its requirements. If one reflects also upon language, one can see that it allows us to come to an agreement without violence and assumes equality and reciprocity between those engaged in dialogue . Discussion is all the more effective because it takes place between independent individuals attempting to use rational arguments, having agreed that no argument is absolute or definitive, and thus it tends towards a freely achieved consensus. The right to speak and the duty to listen are the same; thus to know whether a proposal is acceptable, or even equitable for those concerned, is a question that can be decided during the course of the argument, which is carried on without constraint to the end. Such a task ends up by formulating rules and adumbrating a goal : to follow these rules of public debate will be to live morally. Such an ethic, it seems to me, arose among the Germans, and we know why. In a society drained by war and refilled by revolutions, Weber saw the rising tide of the masses, and the proliferation of their fantasies. He hoped that the responsibility laid upon individuals to act having due regard to reality would form a bulwark against the splinter movements occurring in Europe. B ut the bulwark gave way in the face of the ease with which the question 'Am I responsible ? ' was transferred from the individual conscience to the authorities, from a multitude of people to a single leader. Once more a high morality succumbed to the least pressure, brought on by indifference and an orgy of confidence in an elite that was carried along the direction laid out by nature or history. Another way can indeed be opened up through the ethics of a discussion sustained by free communication between human beings, and by the exigen­ cies of language. In a world where in fact noise passes for exchange and solipsistic speech for our common life together, a v igorous dialogue would create solidarities and consensuses to be reckoned with. So long as we are not in a situation where choices and perils are extreme, we can rely on this to happen. B ut whether these gifts of communication are sufficient, human ex-

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perience gives reason to doubt. This can be perceived in the intractable gesture - I mean silence - which shuts out every kind of ethic, just as the prison door closes behind the prisoner. If this is to be so greatly feared, it is doubtless because it nullifies the power of language when the occasion demands we tell the truth, paralyses the sense of responsibility and, by a kind of violent action, forces others to remain mute and speechless. What then would a silence broken by an opposing violence be worth? How can we suffer an admission that is rejected, a pardon to which one has a right not being asked for - in short, communication without dialogue? Whoever retreats into silence causes the vitality of moral life to dry up and reduces it even to below those origins where innocent and guilty are mixed up together. What would we do if we learnt that, in order to save a people, for the sake of the very existence of humanity, an innocent human being was condemned to suffer eternal torture? To this celebrated question Bergson replied that we would perhaps agree to it if we were certain to be able to forget it. And even then, he writes in Deux sources de la morale et de la religion: ' No ! Rather accept that nothing any longer exists, rather let the planet be shattered to bits ! ' These are words that break the silence, like those of Socrates as he applied himself to his task as a philosopher and a citizen: to teach truth to Athens through his death, instead of taking refuge in private life or fleeing into exile, since such an existence could in no way be that of a philosopher or a citizen. For his part Bergson did not believe that one could remain silent when faced with this parable of the human condition. Yet, a few years later, this became the rule. We were reminded of it when, questioned about his criminal deeds and actions, Klaus Barbie replied to his judges: 'There is nothing to say . ' And, at the same time, he leaves them literally speechless. He denies them the right to pronounce with serenity a judgement on a man such as him, who has done his soldierly duty in the serv ice of an idea. This silence reminds us of others, such as that of the Pope, who had nothing to say either about the millions of people found guilty of crimes they had not committed, and could not find the words of anger and fire that would have unleashed an eruption of truth that might doubtless have been dangerous, but less pernicious than the all iance of silences to which he subscribed. The most hurtful of these allies was Heidegger, the greatest philosopher in Germany at the time. Having corrupted the young, insulted science and the gods, he invoked the safe-conduct afforded by language so as not to let the truth pass his lips. On that day was announced news that is worse than knowing that God is dead and that we have killed Him. It was as if Socrates had backed down, and that we had always known he would. The thinker, if · the word is still appropriate, no longer had need of a demon; he merely contented himself with simulating him when hi s word was not worth a draught of hemlock. His word was no longer a crucible of values that commit a life, but an embellishment that gives it colour and justifies it in an extreme situ­ ation. This suspension of language is the Achilles ' heel of an ethic of meaning. Responsibility melts away in the face of danger, dialogue vanishes into the secret of the inner life of individuals, so harsh to hear and so arbitrary to

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interpret. What is it still worth, when no one any longer ri sks those question­ ings that chime in with the Sermon on the Mount: ' Ye have heard that it hath been said . . . But I say unto you . . . ' and through which human beings simply perform their duty of awakening their fellows. Always the obstacle to this awakening is not that human beings lack prin­ ciples, or are ignorant of good and evil, and weak and without pity in the face of suffering. They abdicate when confronted by a commandment, less from fear than because of a will to consensus with those who would destroy them, persuaded that, outside their group, no salvation is possible. This, during the resounding Inquisition-l ike tri als that our era has staged, has required great sacrifices and denials. But what good is it to look for reasons? Whatever the circumstances may be, there comes at least once in the life of human beings that moment of extreme danger when they must stand firm and show the mettle they are made of. It is a day when their life is held to be accountable for what they have taught and believed, in which they themselves, in brief, are the proof of their value . The human being who provides that proof possesses character. The prin­ ciples and the sense of what one should or should not do are embedded in one ' s person a s i f i t were second nature. One n o longer needs to know them i n order to apply them, nor to discuss them in order to agree with them. Yet, thinking about the various si tuations in which a decision has had to be made, in my recollection I real ize that, with me as with all those with whom I have come into close contact, everything depends on that second nature that had hitherto passed unnoticed. Thus it depends on an ethic of character, more completely than on one of meaning, which begins with a maxim and ends, by a process of deduction. with another. This satisfies reason but says nothing about that inner pressure on a human bei ng which has given proof of its being true . Do you recall that fragment of Heraclitus: ' The ethos of a human being is his character' ? There the human sciences undoubtedly have firm backing. This has been acknowledged for a long whi le. and some have prepared for it. Before the revolutionaries of a more recent era, it was the Protestant and heretical sects; before them, the saints and, still earlier, the prophets, the legislators and the wise, upon whom the community fixed its gaze. And parallel to these, there were the mystics, the ascetics, or the world-renouncers of India, and success­ ively many other groups. Through them values and ends became substance in a gesture or example that demonstrate a moral stance to be possible. And they even act as a call to one because , in a certai n way, the potential seeds already exist in oneself. Thus human beings are provided with a model, in ethical matters more enlightening and more necessary than a rule . If it is so simple, and conceals no miracle, it is because of one thing: virtue teaches itself. B ut wby speak of persons, unless it be to observe that character always combines two tendencies. On the one hand, the experience that, as if by radar, al lows one to detect oppression and injustice, an attack on human rights, and an intolerance that may put at risk solely one single life. S uch experience re fuses all calculation of the chances of success (although one must gather the most chances on one ' s own side ), and all hesitation about one ' s duty, by

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making its own the words of Epictetus: ' For my part, I don ' t even pose such a question [of refusal] . ' On the other hand, values are spelt out, about which one has no i llusion or any need to talk, but which are a condition of life. Distorting their meaning, one might use financial expressions, saying that for individuals of character, ethics is like the gold reserve that backs the cash in circulation. They know that one day they will be called upon to honour their obligations - or they must confess that these are based on hot air. Thus one cannot detect any heroic or philanthropic trait in character, but rather the opposite, a kind of hygiene of the mind and of existence in general. We recognize it by the quality of a life, and by one imperative : never allow what is unallowable. Whoever consistently puts into practice such an ethic acts simply and generously. Steadfastness, loyalty and devotion are the words that come to us when we call such a person to mind. Doubtless, for the majority these are nothing but words. Yet we know that a different kind of life inspires these words when character joins what is normally separated, words and action, and thus expresses enjoyment of them. It is therefore a form of self-love that asks for nothing in exchange, since it is sufficient in itself, just as lovers have no need to declare their love to each other to be sure of their feelings. Nietzsche was therefore correct when he wrote : 'If someone has character, he lives an experience that always recurs . ' It is because the whole person and all persons are included in his own self-love. It is what for some borders on innocence and provokes ridicule, until the example impresses a greater number of people and becomes contagious. If we take this ethic of character for granted, it can be noted that at the present time it is flourishing. As a reaction to the failings we have experienced, and the alliance of silence, it has induced human beings to reopen the files of a history that has remained closed, relating to acts of torture, the murder of innocent people, the death camps , and the revolutions paid at a price. The forerunner is undoubtedly Gandhi, who affirmed that the principle of just action and civil disobedience resides in character. It is as if, in the face of violence, one had only to let it pass over one, showing oneself to be passive. A similar procedure has been adopted by movements whose aim has been the safeguarding of the species, the defence of prisoners of conscience , respect for the Helsinki Agreement, racial equality, and many others. Each one was created to respond to a concrete emergency, to hold fast come what may. Once launched upon this course, it relies utterly upon its moral energy, which steels itself, takes stock, and becomes more systematic. It opens the door to new acts of creation, insofar as it results in appeals to stand firm. Einstein said: ' Scientific greatness is essentially a matter of character. The main thing is to refuse to make concessions. ' Moral greatness is certainly this too. If one wins through w ith nothing more than this, it is because choices and judgements relate to oneself, to the person we are and to nothing else. It is a morality of self-reference, to use an abstract term, whose dilemmas arise from the fact that one must not listen to friend or foe when conscience dictates, ' Do this. ' How does one justify oneself in the decisive moment when sacrifices have to be accomplished? Let us note that in every case, to reply to the famous

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Concluding remarks

question ' what is to be done? ' is of little consequence, if one does not already know who is to do it, for character is indeed the imprint of what one must do on what one is. Now, this presumes some intention in the culture, as relayed through the human sciences, but is an intention that is always an object of mistrust on our part. Since we seek to emancipate individuals, letting them proceed through the networks of language, to formulate such an intention would be to interfere with their own quest for it. These suggestions owe very little to science and, I fear, add even less to it. A personal experience of war and exile, a long-standing, infinite respect for the written word presides over them. This is what has led me to seek to analyse the conceptions of sociologists and to go beyond them, in order to seek a meaning that will make our situation clearer. It must be said that in sociology there seems to me to be posed a writing problem. When you embark upon a book by a historian - Michelet, Taine or Duby - or the work of an anthropo­ logist - Malinowski, Mead or Levi-Strauss - you feel from the beginning the pleasurable welcome you are given. These authors, you feel, are in the direct line of the chroniclers and travellers of past centuries. Like them, they seek to captivate as well as instruct their public . And the best among them succeed in making you see and making you think, equally happily. Whereas the works written by the founders of sociology - and the tradition has been maintained - appear either unfinished or monumental. They seem to wish to impose an initiation te st on readers before letting them get to grips with their words. Whatever the liveliness of the arguments, one must go over them several times before one grasps them intuitively. The very matters with which they deal soc ieties, to begin with - are made abstract, colourless and without contours. They illustrate wonderfully Goethe ' s aphorism: ' Grey, dear friend, is all the­ ory, and green the golden tree of life. ' Whatever may be the reasons for this, on this point anthropologists and historians are in contrast to the sociologists. The former follow Joubert ' s view: ' One must think when one writes that the scholars are there , but it is not to them that one is addressing oneself. ' The latter do not perhaps forget the public but clearly address themselves to the scholars. Marx himself (if one ranks him with the sociologists), who wished to be read by the proletariat, writes for the scientists and the philosophers . And the style of writing changes completely. In spite of such doubts about the interpretations I have made, I remain per­ suaded that the tasks of sociology and psychology in our culture are equal to their responsibilities. Between what they have announced they intended to do and what they have done, there is a gap that leaves much room for linkages and exchanges. Preferably then, let this be done with all clarity. If I may return one last time to my personal experience, it is certain that the first outlines of what moved me to wish to reconstruct theoretically the psy­ chology of the masses date from the terrible war years. At the risk of appearing grandiloquent, it was then that I understood that inhumanity exists and that it can be stirred up, and even renewed, as if by a kind of black magic. This book is rather due to the experience of exile, which was a long, surgical initiation. The benevolence or malevolence of people does not count in it for

Concluding remarks

369

much. The test undergone itself touches upon all aspects of the individual, from body posture to mental reflex, from amnesia as regards a language and from a biography to the recreation of a different language - for a language cannot be learnt - and another biography, in which one becomes that disturb­ ing attendant sprite, the foreigner. In the foreigner' s position there is a bitter pleasure, in which mingle the fragrance of a childhood that is still there and those of a premature old age, distant, and one that is lost, alas, with the passage of time. However this may be, this initiation has consisted for me in the transition from an inherited tradition for which I was educated, that of a human being that has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to an inheritance of modernity, in which I work, having adapted myself to it, that of the man who eats of the fruit of the tree of life. This is the tree of happiness, but also of the perilous knowledge of creation and destruction, a tree of which no one has forbidden us the fruit, because no one dreamt that one day we would touch it. Hence the displacement of human and moral problems, the duty to fill in such a short space of time the gap left by thousands of years of prescription. The leap has occurred during our generation. Perhaps this is the reason that has caused me to overcome the timidity felt in broaching the problem of ethical evil in the human sciences, and made me assert that they must seek a solution in the domain of character. At crucial moments, whatever may be the value that is threatened, whether religious or not, it is indeed character that decides, that states whether the value must remain a word or become flesh. No one has need to prescribe from outside, nor from above, what human sense orders us to refuse here or to accept there. This sense grows more refined simply to the extent that people rely on it and where culture lays emphasis upon it in its practices and most commonplace representations. Through it a society is conceived, a veritable machine for the making of human beings. What other name can one give to the ideal that is revived whenever a favourable wind blows up? We must try to live, said the poet.

Note s

Notes to Introduction

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

P. A. Schilpp, Albert Einstein, Philosopher Scientist (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1 949), p. 684. E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, tr. W. D. Halls (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1 982), p. 1 29. Ibid. K. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (Routledge, London, 2nd rev. edn, 1 952), vol. 2, p. 93. R. Castel, L e psychanalysme (Maspero, Paris, 1 973), p. 1 . Ibid. p . 2 1 0. P. Legendre, L' inestimable objet de la transmission (Fayard, Paris, 1 985), p. 148. Castel, Psychanalysme , p. 1 07. F Ferraroti, Une theologie pour athees (Librairie des Meridiens, Paris, 1 984), p. 1 54. J. Baudrillard, L' echange symbolique et la mort (Gallimard, Paris, 1 976), p. 2 1 9. C. Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1 889-1963 (Chatto & Windus, Lon­ don, 1 965), p. xvi. D. Bloor, Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (Macmillan, London, 1 983), p. 6 . J. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2: Lifeworld and System : A Critique of Functionalist Reason, tr. T. McCarthy (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1 98 8), p. 1 40. R. Boudon, La logique du social (Hachette, Paris, 1 979), p. 1 5 . D . Sperber, O n Anthropological Knowledge (CUP, Cambridge, 1 985), p. 3 . J . Starobinski, Preface to E. Cassirer, Le probleme Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Hach­ ette, Paris, 1 987), pp. xvi-xvii. P. Veyne, Introduction to P. Brown, Genese de I' antiquite tardive (Gallimard, Paris, 1 983), p. xvi. [P. Brown, The Making ofLate Antiquity (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1 978).] R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, tr. P. Gregory (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1 977), p. 9. .

Notes

37 1

1 9 T. Mann, Doctor Faustus, tr. H. T. Lowe-Parker (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1 968), p. 242 . 20 E. Morin, Sociologie (Fayard, Paris, 1 984), p. 63. 21 P. Veyne, Les Grecs , ont-ils cru a leurs mythes? ( Seui l , Paris, 1 983), p. 30. 22 W. Doise, L ' explication en psychologie sociale ( PUF, Paris, 1 982). 23 C. Levi-Strauss, Introduction to M. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (PUF. Paris, 1 960), p. xxvi. 24 A. Gram sci, II materialismo storico e la ftlosofia di Benedetto Croce (Einaudi, Turin, 1 952), p. 1 2 5 . 2 5 R . Aron, Les etapes de l a pensee sociologique (Gallimard, Paris, 1 967), p. 558. 26 G. Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, tr. R. Livingstone (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1 990), p. 74. 27 Quoted in D. Clausen, List der Gewalt (Campus, Frankfurt/Main, 1 982), p. 50. 28 E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1 965), pp. 67--8. 29 Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, p. 305 . 30 T. Parsons, The Social System (Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1 952), p. 552. 31 N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, La cite antique (Champs-Flammarion, Paris, 1 984), p. 149. 32 R . Aron, 'L'etre social est un etre religieux ' , in Les Etapes, p. 597 33 Lukacs, History, p. 262. 34 E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, tr. J. W. Swain (Allen & Unwin, London; 1 9 1 5; 5th impression, 1 964), p. 228. 35 K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1 844, tr. M. Milligan (Law­ rence & Wishart, London, 1 970), p. 1 82. 36 E. Durkheim, Textes (Minuit, Paris, 1 975), vol. l , p. 1 85. 37 R . N isbet , Emile Durkheim: Selected Essays (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1 963), p. 3. .

Notes to Chapter 1 1 S. Moscovici, The Age of the Crowd (CUP, Cambridge, 1 95 5). 2 E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, tr. J. W. Swain (Allen & Unwin, London, 1 9 1 5; 5th impression, 1 964), p. 427. 3 P. Bourdieu, 'Genese et structure du champ religieux ' , Rel'ue franraise de socio/ogie, 1 2 ( 1 97 1 ). pp. 295-334. 4 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p. 302. 5 Ibid., p. 229. 6 Ibid., p. 40. 7 Ibid., p. 47. 8 E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1 965), p. 57. 9 E. Evans-Pritchard, A History ofAnthropological Background (Basic Books, New York, 1 98 1 ), p. 1 60. 10 E. Durkheim, Textes (Minuit, Paris, 1 975), vol. 2, p. 27. 1 1 M. Auge, Genie du paganisme (Gallimard, Paris, 1 982). 12 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, pp. 1-2. 1 3 Ibid., p. 3.

372 Notes 1 4 For a discussion of the sacred nature of the churinga, see C. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1 968), pp. 238-42. 1 5 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p . 1 1 9. 16 Ibid., p. 1 34. 17 C. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, vol. 2 (Allen Lane, London, 1 973), p. 48. 1 8 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p . 206. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 207. 21 Durkheim, Textes (Minuit, Paris, 1 975), vol. 2, p. 27. 22 R. Aron, Les etapes de la pensee socio/ogique (Gallimard, Paris, 1 967), p. 36 1 . 23 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p. 347. 24 Durkheim, Textes, vol. 2, p. 30. 25 S. Lukes, Emile Durkheim (Allen Lane, London, 1 973), p. 462. 26 Quoted in Evans-Pritchard, History, p. 167. 27 Evans-Pritchard, Theories, p. 68 . 28 Moscovici, Crowd. 29 Lukes, Durkheim, p. 462. 30 D. Essertier, Psychologie et sociologie ( 1 927; repr. 8 . Franklin, New York, 1 968), p. 1 7 . 3 1 Evans-Pritchard, Theories, p. 68. 32 Aron, Les etapes, p. 355. 33 It would be interesting to undertake research on the horror that is inspired in sociologists and anthropologists by the psychology of crowds and by psychology in general. One might perhaps discover the reasons for the attraction that it has exerted, and the role it has played, and continues to do, in their disciplines. In any case, to seek to tackle Durkheim ' s work without referring to them and without seeking to extract their s ignificance is to make that work unintelligible, or sadly schematic and devoid of substance. 34 Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p. 422. 35 Ibid., p. 407. 36 G. Bataille,