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THE DIALOGUE IN HELL BETWEEN MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU -- COMMENTARY |
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Part III: The Saint-Simonian Elements in the New Modes and Orders Chapter Seven: THE SAINT-SIMONIAN HISTORICAL ELEMENT Saint-Simonianism and Louis Napoleon The influence of Saint-Simonianism on Napoleon III was more commonly noted among contemporaries of Louis than among later historians of the Second Empire. For example, Sainte-Beuve is widely reported to have hailed the arrival of Napoleon III on the French political scene as "Saint-Simon on horseback," the historic embodiment of that thinker's thought. [1] Such a view of the Emperor gets its fullest articulation in Joly's Dialogue. According to Octave Aubrey, the influence of Saint-Simon was a lot more than something Napoleon absorbed from the intellectual atmosphere of nineteenth century France. While a political prisoner for five and half years in the fortress of Ham, Louis Napoleon read deeply in the corpus of Saint-Simon and even annotated his works! Like other despotic ideologues of later times, Napoleon remarked upon the formative experience of his years of study in prison- "my university," he later dubbed it. Albert Guerard repeats the more common view of the Second Empire-a "gilded age" of pleasure seeking and profiteering that witnessed "the triumph of materialism in all its forms." However, he sees "another aspect to the period," more revealing of the Emperor himself and "his deeper views." Like observers contemporary to Napoleon, he links such levels of thought in the Emperor to Saint-Simonianism. According to Guerard, "without being formally associated with the Saint- Simonian school, he was animated by its spirit." In particular, he notes the religious character of such thought expressed in its "fundamental principle" that "the first duty of government is to promote the welfare, material and moral, of the most numerous and poorest class." Furthermore, "it is significant that a number of Saint-Simonians, Father Enfantin, and the Pereire brothers, without abjuring the messianic hopes of their youth, became prominent business leaders under the Second Empire." [3] Twentieth century historians of the Second Empire, who are aware of Saint- Simonianism, may see it as having some bearing on diverse social and economic projects of the Emperor, but they typically do not see it as having any coherent political influence. Saint-Simon and his intellectual progeny are best studied with other curious thinkers of the day, such as Fourier in France or Owen in Great Britain, who proposed radically flawed social experiments in the face of the dislocation brought on by industrialism. Most noteworthy in this regard is the thinking of George G. Iggers. He meticulously draws out the totalitarian implications of Saint-Simonian doctrine but denies any practical influence to its teaching beyond its contribution to the climate of ideas in the early nineteenth century. For Iggers, Saint-Simonianism is nothing but "a totalitarian fantasy." [4] For Joly, it gave form to the real world in which he lived. More recent scholarship sees the Iggers thesis as an overwrought distortion of the thrust of Saint-Simonian thinking. Emphasizing certain "softer" elements in the thought of the Saint-Simonians, the Manuels see the revolution they espoused more as a "tender failure" [5] than a "totalitarian fantasy." However, they seem to agree that the Saint-Simonians exerted no great influence on political practice and stand in a line of interpretations beginning with Marx who branded Saint-Simonianism as "utopian," engaged only in sterile speculation because it misperceived the material reality of the historic process. It is not surprising that current readers of Joly's work largely miss the Saint- Simonian connection to the Dialogue. It is indeed never made explicit there, though numerous references are made to "new theories" of which Machiavelli is the spokesman. In this regard, Joly seems to prefer to follow the real Napoleon who ever remained the enigmatic "Sphinx of the Tuileries." He disguised his motives, never, as Guerard says, formally acknowledging his association with the Saint-Simonian school, which stood in a certain bad repute for its esoteric practices and cultist proclivities. [6] In establishing the link between Machiavelli in the Dialogue and Saint- Simonianism, we will reestablish the link between Napoleonism and Saint-Simonianism perceived early on by the more astute contemporaries of the Second Empire. Later, we will argue that the earlier view, most richly developed by Maurice Joly, can help resolve the historic controversy surrounding the Second Empire as well as the enigma of Louis Napoleon. The element of Saint-Simonian thought is the key to a full understanding of the Dialogue in Hell and the Emperor. When Joly wrote the Dialogue in Hell, Louis Napoleon was securely in the saddle. His despotic regime was well in place. The Dialogue in Hell is not merely the step-by-step recounting of the establishment of this regime, as fascinating and informative as this is. Joly was convinced that the actions of the Emperor were fundamentally motivated by a new way of thinking, an ideology that gave coherence to the revolutionary steps he took. The thinking that informed Napoleon's regime is what made it so unique and portentous. We now turn to a brief elaboration of that ideology and its pretensions to world-historic significance. The Saint-Simonian View of History The Saint-Simonian understanding of history attempts to synthesize both ancient and modern conceptions. To the ancient way of thinking, history is cyclical. The natural laws of growth and decay serve as the pattern for the understanding of human things. Political history "made sense" not in terms of some ultimate meaning but as belonging to certain cycles-rhythms of genesis, growth, disintegration, and death. This is the fated dispensation of all things ephemeral. It is manifested in the rise and fall of political regimes that, in turn, elicits the response of historical actors. Their conduct in these circumstances remains the most profitable study for understanding the human dilemmas and our common lot. [7] Different assumptions inform the modern concept of history .Political history is understood, not as part of a natural scheme of things and subject to fate, but as a progression in time of events largely determined by human causes and effects. As expressed by the Montesquieu of the Dialogue, who can be seen as spokesman for such a view, the sequence of events is also progressive. History came to be perceived as a process, with clear lines of development. It manifests the progress of reason whose advances are cumulative, irreversible, and potentially universal in its effect. The proper posture of man, therefore, is not one of manly equanimity and moderation in dealing with limitations that can not be changed. Rather, it is one of hopeful endeavor in the full realization that the scope of human events and nature itself is not subject to fate alone, but responsive to rational human effort. As in the modern view, the Saint-Simonians see history essentially as a process reflecting the universal advance of reason but whose political effects are variable, as in the ancient view, passing through progressive extremes of order and dissolution. The historic process is not then an open process of simple linear progress but a varied one, with a definitive and necessary conclusion in the coming to pass of a universal society .Unlike the ancients, this greater dispensation of things is not caused by blind fate beyond human control. It is the product of human effort in the fulfillment of a rationally determined end to which all history can be seen as tending. In the Paris Lectures of 1828, the Saint-Simonian historical view gets its most detailed elaboration. Like natural phenomena, history is shown to be subject to certain laws. And its future "behavior" can be confidently predicted when these laws stand fully revealed. "Organic" and "Critical" Moments "The law of history development" shows itself in two distinct and alternating states of society. [8] In the one state, which is called "organic," all human activity proceeds from a "general theory" or doctrine. "The goal of all social action is clearly defined." It is accepted and acted upon by all orders of society, according to their different capacities and functions. It engages the individual totally in his three-fold capacity as an "intellectual, sentient, and physical being." The other state, called "critical," is marked by the cessation of all communion of thought, fellow feeling, and collective action. "Society appears as a mere agglomeration of isolated individuals fighting each other." Each of these states has occupied two periods "in a long historical series." The first organic period occurred during the religious era of ancient Greece, marked by the ascendancy of the pagan gods. It was followed by a period, commonly called "philosophic" because of the presence of such luminaries as Plato and Aristotle, but which the Saint-Simonians would "term more exactly the critical period" because it opposes the religiously-based orthodoxy that integrated and defined life in the ancient polis. Later, a new doctrine was formulated that finally established dominance over the West. The Church administered a new organic epoch which, in turn, began to dissolve in the sixteenth century, (among other things, the moment of Machiavelli, whose critique of the former order had broadened in the centuries that followed). Critical epochs themselves can be further subdivided "into distinct periods." The first is marked by the arousal of "the most sensitive men," whose call for the end of the old established order finds a sympathetic response in the masses, loosened from all authority. This period erupts with "accumulated rancor" and issues into a burst of collective action that serves destructive purposes only. "Soon there remains of the former institutions nothing but ruins to testify that there once has been a harmonious society." The second period in critical epochs marks the interval that separates the destruction of the former order and the construction of the new. At this point, "anarchy has ceased to be violent" but it has grown wider and deeper with the conditions of society replicating themselves in the personality of the individual in a complete divergence of feeling, reasoning, and action. It is an age (most recently, the moment of Romanticism) marked by a sickness in the soul that longs for a return to a time that unites man to his fellows by sympathetic bonds. As the historical process evolves, it expands to cover wider and wider segments of mankind. The first organic period is identified in a precise geographic place-Greece. It is succeeded in a second such period by a system that includes "all of the Occident." It follows in Saint-Simonian doctrine that a third organic period will be universal, succeeding in turn the dissolution that affected the West in its recent revolutionary past. Indeed, the universal ground for the Saint-Simonian future is a factor that points to its definitive character. The new general state of mankind, which the Saint-Simonians proclaim as our future, will form the third and final organic link "in an uninterrupted chain" of history. A simple return to the happy moments in the past presents no practicable solution for modern men. The new era will not be identical with such former "organic" states but "will share striking similarities to them with respect to order and unity" which will advance to its most complete realization "in the full association of humanity." The epoch will evince an ascendancy of a new doctrine that embraces all the modes of human activity, once again reintegrating the individual to society that has been in the process of dissolution under the influence of a destructive critical doctrine. Organic epochs are characterized by a consensus of beliefs, which the "Doctrine of Saint-Simon" intends to serve in the future. This core set of shared principles finds full expression in society and is reflected in its institutional arrangements. A unity of purpose, effectively organized and looking toward a comprehensive view of things, marks such periods as "philosophic." Strictly speaking, there have been no more philosophic doctrines "worthy of the name" than there have been "general states of mankind," a situation having occurred only twice in the past, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, the precise character of which is crucial to understanding the lines of future developments. "Critical" periods, in turn, may be characterized as the time of the progressive erosion of the former philosophic unity that is the basis of the integrated social order. These critical periods reach their term .in egoism and social confusion, creating an objective "need" for a new order, which falls to the prophetic "genius" to articulate philosophically. The Saint-Simonians identify both critical periods with a presiding figure as they identify the genius of the future "organic" order with their spiritual mentor, Saint-Simon. It was the appearance of Socrates that marked the beginning of the end of the older order in antiquity. The defenders of this order correctly saw in his life a threat to the city's gods and its fundamental beliefs. But in ordering his death, they unwittingly had served to make his questionable life attractive and respectable, the immediate heirs and beneficiaries of which were Socrates's pupils, Plato and Xenophon. [9] In commanding this individual's death, they liberated the critical spirit and, ironically, guaranteed the "death" of the society they had in- tended to defend. The appearance of Socrates, which first marks a period of dissolution, also serves history in a progressive way by making possible the eventual emergence of a new and higher historical order. Indeed, Socratic science (Neo-Platonic and Aristotlean) conjoin with Biblical revelation in the great synthesizers of the Middle Ages (Augustine and Thomas) to form the constitutive elements of a new doctrine. This is given organizational expression by the Church in the society of the Middle Ages. Critical science, it should be well noted, passes into the philosophy of the new epoch and becomes part of the theoretical underpinning of a new faith that reaches its ascendancy under the institutionalized protection of the Church and its Pope. Such considerations mark critical epochs as inherently ambiguous- destructive from the point of view of political unity, but constructive and progressive in preparing and as a part of a "greater human association. " Thus, the progress of science and philosophy has had varied political effects and may be said to be the cause of history's cyclical turns, which the ancients more narrowly observed and construed as fate. According to the Saint-Simonians, the appearance of Bacon marks the second critical period and inaugurates .the dissolution of the Middle Ages. Since the sixteenth century, "scientists all follow the road opened by Bacon." [10] With the Enlightenment, we reach the furthest reaches of Baconian science and the beginning of the death throes of the Middle Ages, whose principles and institutions suffer from irremediable attack, preparing the way for an era of revolution and social dissolution that characterizes the present crisis. Saint-Simonianism and the Dialogue In the element of Saint-Simonian philosophy, just described, we may now profitably return to the dispute between Machiavelli and Montesquieu that serves as the dramatic focus of Joly's Dialogue. It is their understanding of universal history that is ultimately put to question in their "wager" and this determines the sufficiency of their respective political sciences, invoked in history's name. Montesquieu elaborates his view of history in Part One and Machiavelli in the concluding parts of the Dialogue, where an alternative view is progressively revealed. We thus come to the full historic implications of Machiavelli's teaching eventually. It is only at the end that we come to a full appreciation of what his "founding" portends and the sense that he has elaborated a totally "new" political science, explicitly opposed to the Montesquieuan understanding of things. The initial lines of their dispute would have us believe that Machiavelli is arguing the ancient or medieval conception of history with the most formidable spokesman of modernity, Montesquieu. The latter confidently expounds the progressive historical view that has superseded and discredited his opponent's position. Machiavelli's cyclical view of history seems to hearken back to a view that would have political life tied to an ineluctable fate which, like the natural order of things, exhibits a time of growth and decay, order and dissolution. Montesquieu, at least, thinks he is responding to such a view when he claims that the cumulative discoveries of reason have put politics on a progressive course. Through his own efforts, man can eliminate much of the control of fate and with it the ancient debilitating fear of the living agents, "despots" and "priests," who supposedly control it. Montesquieu points to what he thinks is certain historical evidence that vindicates his position. At the same time, he underscores his own contributions to political science in opening society to reason and establishing the stable conditions for self-rule. The material and moral advance of man is guaranteed in a regime that effectively guards against a lapse into despotism. The new "constitutional era" which Montesquieu celebrates holds no possibility for a return to an "era of revolution," anarchy, and despotic rule. The historic swings between autocracy and anarchy are overcome in a regime of "ordered liberty." This ends the turmoil that formerly marked political life and which was most acute perhaps at the moment of Machiavelli in the sixteenth century. Evidence from contemporary events alone would challenge Montesquieu's optimism. Cognizant of the recent anarchy that shook the West, Machiavelli launches his first serious attack on the theories of his interlocutor, who is found crucially ignorant of such events. Framed in Saint-Simonian terms, the present moment reveals the active revolutionary period as having ceased with the violence of 1848. The West has arrived at that pregnant moment when the old "critical" epoch has reached its term, as anarchy has grown wider and deeper within society. It is the interval that prepares the "birth" of a new order, the founding of which is the active goal of Napoleon III. Such considerations give the proper perspective from which to view the real scope of Machiavelli's historical understanding of things. Broader and more complex than that of the ancients, it begins to meld more fully and obviously with the Saint- Simonian understanding of history when we consider the character of the Machiavellian or Napoleonic revolution as aiming precisely at a new and final "organic" order. This leaves the "critical" science of Montesquieu open to the charge leveled by the Saint-Simonians and repeated by the Machiavelli of the Dialogue that it has failed to definitively solve the political problem and has, rather, issued into an "age of revolution" and instability. The cyclical view of history propounded by Machiavelli is not, as Montesquieu imagines, the ancient or Medieval conception. Machiavelli is not in fact so limited by the time in which he lived and the thought that dominated it. Rather, Machiavelli argues in the mode of the Saint-Simonians and would have those "cycles" of political and social life integrated into the full scope of world history as part of a long and "uninterrupted chain" and process. Machiavelli gives voice to the Saint-Simonian contention that links the historic crisis facing the West to the diminishing hold of religion and the final passing of the medieval order. Montesquieu initially perceives Machiavelli, who was "born on the borders of such an epoch," as its defender and its last effective spokesman. He sees Machiavelli's opposition to the modern understanding of politics he espouses as stemming from ignorance of more recent historical developments and a stubborn defense of the politics of an epoch-no matter how "modern" the idiom or how clever the arguments-that history has passed by. In such an epoch, Christian doctrine provided the organizational principles of society. Repeating the charges of the Saint- Simonians, Machiavelli claims that the thought of Montesquieu, among others even less prudent, has inevitably bred individualism and atheism, whose effects have been to loosen the bonds of society, setting it upon its anarchic drift. The progress to such a point marks a definitive period that coincides with the most recent "critical" moment in the Saint-Simonian "Law of Historical Development." Its beginning can be said to lie in the Renaissance of the sixteenth century and its tentative steps toward modernity. It ends with "the great Montesquieu" whose works, especially The Spirit of the Laws, represent the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment and the systematized application of modern principles of thought to the under- standing of politics and history. According to Machiavelli, the necessity for order in society requires unlimited personal rule, the legitimacy of which cannot be called into question. Montesquieu claims to have discovered in "popular sovereignty," rightly understood, a new principle of rule and an alternative to the notion of "divine right," defended by Machiavelli as providing the authoritative grounding for the Middle Ages. The modern constitutional regime, organized on a popular basis, better attains the political stability sought by Machiavelli, not by despotic repression of popular will and impulses, but in their liberation and through the guarantee of freedom of thought. The period roughly from Machiavelli and the Renaissance to Montesquieu, which coincides with the most recent "critical" moment in the Saint-Simonian "Law of Historic Development," also accords with their essential understanding of such epochs. The era over which the thought of Montesquieu presides is founded expressly on "critical" principles, opposed to the political arrangement of the Middle Ages. The success of the Enlightenment project dissolves the former order but fails to secure an enduring basis for politics, at least according to Machiavelli and his reading of contemporary history. This creates the need for a new founding to arrest the anarchy such principles have engendered. The overriding necessity for order requires a return to a political orthodoxy that once again sanctions personal rule in religious terms. The conditions that define "organic" orders as such are reestablished but in accord with certain historical principles, advanced by Montesquieu, which do no violence to critical elements of the "modern spirit." A Return to the "Organic" Conditions of Society In conformity with the conditions of an "organic" order, the Saint-Simonian ideologue wants to put an end to what it sees as the alienated modern soul-the disaccord that one feels between oneself and the "mind" and "heart" of one's fellows, and to put an end to a situation where satisfaction of one's "material interests" can be had only at the expense of others. In sum, to "cure" the sickness" in the soul, the individual once again must be fully integrated with his fellows in a greater community of shared "religious" purpose. It is not by coincidence that successive parts of the Dialogue endeavor to fulfill precisely the Saint-Simonian perspective in this regard and that the discussion as a whole ends with a description of the new "religious consciousness." More precisely, Part Two explains how in a literate nation the Machiavellian founder will use a "free press," the chief safeguard of the Montesquieuan system, to his own advantage. It contains in outline the essentials of a new orthodoxy and the means to ensure its propagation. The security of autocratic power in modern times is crucially premised on winning over the "minds" of the subject. The political revolution in Part Two is complemented in Part Three by an economic revolution. The prince promises a vast industrial expansion, led by the state and its use of credit, which ultimately looks toward a more complete scientific organization of the nation's productive forces. This has as its putative goal "the amelioration of the lot of the poor." They were perceived to be systematically excluded from sharing in material benefits as a result of the organization of liberal society and its failure, under uncoordinated conditions, to make good on what was promised by the advance of technological knowledge. The political and economic revolutions in Part Two and Part Three proceed apace and are integral to each other. On the basis of unencumbered political power, the prince may undertake the reformation of society. On the basis of economic expansion, in which the poor now share, the prince defuses the principal source of revolutionary discontent and begins to win popularity to his new despotic rule. In Part Three, the "material interests" of man are enlisted to the same regime that succeeded in Part Two to win over their "minds." Part Four represents the keystone in the structure of the Saint-Simonian regime that Machiavelli erects. It describes a revolution in "spiritual" realms that complements the revolution in political and economic realms, previously elaborated in respective parts of the Dialogue. The rule. of the all-powerful prince on behalf of the interests of the "poorest and most numerous classes" is endowed with the higher justifications of religion, the principles of which are advanced by a new kind of leader. The new prince claims the allegiance, not only of the mind, but speaks to deeper levels of truth associated with the "hearts" of his subjects, levels to which religion heretofore uniquely spoke. The "spirit of the age" is exalted in art and architecture that has the new prince and what he represents as its theme. Art ceases to be "critical"- individualistic" and "heroically negative"-as it manifested itself at the moment of Romanticism. As at the time of the Middle Ages, it once again finds inspiration in serving "positive" ends, giving aesthetic embellishment to the new under lying religious consensus of society. [11] Indeed, the revival of art would be the most telling element of the return to organic moments as such. In a revolution that touches religious consciousness and the nature of civilized life itself, Machiavelli reveals the full scope of the historic change he in- tends. It is as a god and in terms of a new understanding of religion that the new Machiavellian prince pursues his towering political ambitions and attempts to stamp his personality on the historic order to come. He has combined the role of Romulus and Numa in a new founding that has Rome in many of its particulars as its most relevant precedent. Put succinctly, he attempts a return to the "organic" conditions that formerly characterized politics, but in the context of modernity and looking toward universal influence. At the end of the Dialogue proper, Machiavelli asserts that the respective positions of the two antagonists, spelled out in Part One, have finally begun "to come together." The elements of Saint-Simonian thought which guide the Machiavellian founding reveal for us the real basis of this "rapprochement." Key principles of "critical" science that opposed the medieval order are reflected in the organization of a new "organic" society, which is offered as the third and final link in a long historical process, succeeding Montesquieu's "constitutional era." The new order presents itself as completing the democratic thrust of history with which Montesquieu thought he was aligned in establishing the constitutional regime. It replaces the regime of individual "rights," which supposedly remain "cruelly abstract" for the majority of peoples, with a regime of unlimited power, dedicated to the "amelioration of the lot of the poorest and most numerous classes." To the thinker who stands for "progress," the return to unlimited personal rule is associated with "barbarism." The Machiavellian prince, however, presents his rule as an historic advance that draws upon the deepest sources of authority in the West to justify itself in modem times. As Machiavelli argues, such rule gives concrete fulfillment to the material interests of its subjects as it also answers to deeper desires, ultimately of religious origin, which are satisfied in a this-worldly context. The return to the "organic" conditions of society in the context of modern times, the step that essentially defines the Saint- Simonian project, explains the ambiguity in the character of Machiavelli as well as his regime. Machiavelli is not so limited by the horizon of the Middle Ages as Montesquieu initially presumes. He defends a return to a new kind of personal rule, not as a reactionary, but in terms of historic "progress." At the same time and in dramatic fashion, a "new" Machiavelli emerges which shatters Montesquieu's stereotypic view of his interlocutor and mocks the condescending posture he had assumed toward him. The Saint-Simonian ideology that lies behind Machiavelli's thought remains unidentified in the Dialogue. This heightens the ambiguity of the character of Machiavelli and his regime while it gives Joly's work its dramatic power. It forces the reader for whom the Dialogue was intended, as it does Montesquieu, to further reflection on the character of Machiavelli and his politics. However, as that politics is associated with the infamous name of Machiavelli, the reader is led to contemplate his regime from the point of view of an unprecedented tyranny, potentially universal in scope. In this way, the literary mode of Joly's teaching opens to political lessons of great consequences to Joly's contemporaries, threatened by such a regime. Joly's way of proceeding in all this is motivated to serve didactic purposes in the most effective way. In the following chapter, we will discus in greater detail the character of the new regime from the point of view of the new religious foundations for politics. In the chapter after that, we will try to come to terms with the figure of Machiavelli as he has come to light in Joly's work. Notes 1. Sainte-Beuve was literary critic at Le Globe and himself frequented Saint-Simonian circles. He was an apologist for the Second Empire and Napoleon III. His statement about Napoleon and Saint-Simon can be found in Albert Guerard, France, new edition revised and enlarged by Paul. A. Gagnon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 312. 2. See Octave Aubrey, The Second Empire, trans. Arthur Livingston (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1940), 22. 3. Guerard, France, 312. 4. See Georg G. Iggers's Preface to the second edition of The Doctrine of Saint Simon. An Exposition (New York: Schoken Books, 1972),22. Iggers denies any appreciable and "direct relevance" of Saint-Simonianism to "later thought and practice." He stresses its large contribution to the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century. 5. See Frank M. and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1979), 63 1 and 635. 6. The Saint-Simonians for a time lived on the Rue Monsigny. The sect eventually split between the followers of Bazard and Enfantin. The latter wished to establish a fantastic sacerdotal commune with very lax notions about the relationship between the sexes. His group moved to Menilmontant, where, distinguished by an extravagant way of dressing, they lived in communistic fashion. The sect was broken up in l 832 after the public trial of Enfantin whose bizarre antics and behavior, influenced in part by his readings of Mesmer, intentionally provoked jurists and audience. He was condemned and imprisoned for outrages against the social order. 7. See Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 4. Lowith describes the ancient understanding of history thus: The ancients were more moderate [than Hebrew and Christian thinkers] in their speculations. They did not presume to make sense of the world or to discover its ultimate meaning. They were impressed by the visible order and beauty of the cosmos, and the cosmic law of growth and decay was also the pattern of their understanding of history. According to the Greek view of life and the world, everything moves in recurrences, like the eternal recurrence of sunrise and sunset, of summer and winter, of generation and corruption. This view was satisfactory to them because it is a rational and natural understanding of the universe combining recognition of temporal changes with periodic regularity, constancy, and immutability. The immutable, as visible in the fixed order of the heavenly bodies, had a higher interest and value to them than any progressive and radical change. 8. This summary of the "Law of Historic Development" is drawn mainly from Iggers (ed.), The Doctrine, "On the Necessity of a New Social Doctrine" (First Session) and "The Law of the Development of Mankind: Verification of this Law by History" (Second Session). 9. For a discussion of the "critical era" of antiquity, see Iggers, (ed.) The Doctrine, 17 and especially 216. 10. Iggers (ed.), The Doctrine, 7. II. Think of the epoch's (mankind's?) greatest artistic and architectural achievement-the medieval cathedral. It should be well noted that Louis Napoleon showed himself very sensitive to the concerns we are talking about here when he commissioned Charles Gautier to construct the opulent Paris Opera and to give it such prominence in the reconstructed city. The Communists and Nazis were equally sensitive. They, too, thought their respective world historic revolutions would occasion the regeneration of art. The artistic legacy of Louis Napoleon is decidedly more mixed. It is, at its worst, tinged with Romanticism, an imitative pastiche, tending to ostentation and excess. What are we to say of Mitterand's Opera, la Pryramide, la Defense, and his library (dubbed the T.G.B., the tres grand bibliotheque, in a play on the T.G.V.-Train de Grande Vitesse)? If contemporary debate is any indication, his legacy is much more douteux than that of Napoleon III. The adjectives most frequently heard in this regard are "sterile," "grandiose," "shocking," "inaccessible," "pharonical" "playful," "inefficient," "iconoclastic," and "expensive." Defenders would counter that most of these things were said of Mr. Eiffel's tower. Is all this just another example of the old time-lag phenomenon, when mass tastes will eventually catch up with the avante-garde's inspirations? Or is it the case of the advance of a "negative aesthetic," an assault (sometimes bold, sometimes whimsical) on the canons of taste itself? Mitterand's motivations, I believe, were very much like those of Louis. France would lead the way in giving artist expression to a new age, post-modern, for lack of a better term. He clearly was competing with Eiffel in giving landmarks to the landscape of the City of Light. In any case, Joly was on to something when he gave such emphasis to "building policy" in his book. Chapter Eight: THE SAINT-SIMONIAN RELIGIOUS ELEMENT Religion in Liberal Polities The religious theme, first introduced by Montesquieu in Part One, assumes in- creasing importance as the description of Machiavelli's regime progresses. Like a motif, it is heard periodically, as in the treatment of propaganda and papal policy. But in the dramatic conclusion of Joly's work, which completes the portrait of the prince in putting the finishing touches on his "royal countenance," it emerges as perhaps the fundamental issue of the Dialogue, as it is in Saint-Simonian thought per se. Approaching the deepest level of the historic change described by Machiavellian politics, it likewise helps define for us the real nature of the prince's political ambition in his quest for god-like status. Beyond the institutional obstacles to the consolidation of absolute power within the liberal system of government, the Montesquieu of the Dialogue lists religion as the key bulwark of the liberal regime. In the name of a common God and the ethical duties He enjoins, Montesquieu argues, we find legitimate appeal from worldly rulers who would order what is contrary to our paramount concerns and the clear canons of conscience. "Nations that avow Christianity will always escape despotism, for Christianity elevates man's dignity and places him beyond the reach of tyrants. It develops moral forces over which human power has no sway," he asserts. The check is not limited to Christian nations. As The Spirit of the Laws demonstrates with regard to oriental despotism, the scope of what the Sultan may command is effectively limited by overriding religious duties that he is bound to respect, if he is to attain any measure of security and not fall victim to public odium. [1] In distinction to the world's other great religions, the Montesquieu of the Dialogue reserves for Christianity a special status. It is the fountainhead of what has nurtured the West's common culture. As it has evolved in the course of history, its profound and pervasive influence has come to serve the social and political mores of the liberal regime, whose very possibility, initially at least, seems to be limited to the Christian West. When asked where his principles find current application, Montesquieu responds: "almost all the countries over which the Roman world formerly extended," listing Christian nations exclusively. [2] Among other things, he argues that the disposition to work and worldly betterment, as well as the attributes of character that help sustain the conditions for productive enterprise, are tied to deeper cultural attitudes, ultimately of religious and Christian origin. "Societies that live by means of work, exchange, and credit are essentially Christian, for all such powerful and varied forms of industry are basically applications of several great moral ideas derived from Christianity, the source of all strength and truth." [3] Through Christianity, the ferocity of man is softened and his energies redirected from war to more social means of livelihood, including wider and wider segments of society as participants and beneficiaries. Modem industrial society evolves out of the great moral truths of Christianity .It arrives at a stage where personal attachments and dependencies dissolve, where the modem social order itself becomes the "engine" where "power is generated." According to Christianity, man stands as an equal before God. He will eventually stand as an equal before all earthly powers. Such is the power of the Christian moral teaching- "source of all strength and truth"-that it has come from its primitive beginnings as an obscure Eastern sect to change the entire face of the world. Doctrinal changes introduced by Protestantism were key to transforming the Christian world of the Middle Ages. They had the practical effect of elevating the status of the city of man, which was originally clearly subordinated to the city of God in the earlier Christian teaching. [4] In the all-important matters it ministered, the Church and its Pope claimed supremacy over the Emperor. The Church held that salvation was possible only through its sacraments and the mediation of priests. To break the hold of its corrupting influence, Protestantism preached that man stood face to face with God in a personal relationship. Salvation was a matter between man and God without the interposition of Peter's institution to guide men, or, more likely, lead them astray. In Protestant doctrine, reform of this world became incumbent upon the religious man as his holy duty. The manifest works performed by the individual in this world were the key to salvation and visible rewards its chief sign. Such convictions changed the fundamental orientation of men and redirected their energies to this world. We are now at the point where the Montesquieu of the Dialogue can maintain that Christianity has effectively imbued the whole of the secular realm with its spirit. Machiavelli, who sees the modem world as having faded into "atheism" and mere "materialism," does not appreciate the subtle but profound transformation that Christianity has brought to it, Montesquieu argues. Protestantism's influence on the political realm has been formidable and pervasive. The claims of individual conscience it raised in opposition to Church and monarch-institutions that were formerly seen as divinely sanctioned-prepares the teaching of secular individualism that underlies liberal theory and gives rise to notions of popular rule and representative government. significantly, it is the same claim of conscience that lies at the origin of the move toward religious toleration, which is expressly guaranteed in the liberal regime. The Montesquieu of Joly's Dialogue points to a political arrangement "where the state has strictly segregated religious authority from worldly politics." Politial power is out of bounds when it infringes upon religious prerogatives belonging to its protected sphere. According to Montesquieu, "the peoples of the Christian era" may have "had more difficulty putting constitutions in harmony with the dynamics of political life" because of the original religious or papal dominance over the secular realm. But through religious tolerance, a politic balance has been struck. Modern men have "profited from the lessons of antiquity," where religion existed in harmony with civil laws, and "with infinitely more complex civilizations, they have arrived at more perfect results." Religious freedom can be said to expand the sphere of individual liberty while it also subtly works toward the progressive accommodation of the religious and the secular realm that informs Montesquieu's view of history. Socially, a multiplicity of sects is the product of such tolerance, which, in turn, acts to reinforce its guarantee. Each sect, prohibited by its size alone from attempting to dominate politics directly, attaches itself to the regime that preserves the conditions of its existence and effective propagation. This helps solve the problem of allegiance to the earthly city, potentially strained for such groups in the secular commonwealth, particularly in the face of certain actions necessary to the perpetuation of earthly powers that the religious conscience, strictly speaking, would proscribe. Prelates no longer dictate to politicians. "The words of preachers are limited to terms found in the Gospels," Montesquieu states. Nevertheless, they play an important role in molding the character of citizens in a private capacity. Their humane influence counters the principle of self-interest given scope in the liberal regime and keeps it in proper bounds. It helps restrain the appetites in ways that make civilized existence possible. The "humble and gentle" message of the Gospels proves "the stumbling bock to degenerate materialism." As a result of such a political arrangement, religion's voice on public policy is heard indirectly or only on matters that elicit the widest possible consensus among numerous sects. This encourages the emergence of a public teaching that imparts a higher tone to the realm of public life, the distilled elements of a basic Judeo-Christian moral teaching, yet devoid of dogmatic divisiveness. This helps forge national unity in bringing to the people a shared perspective of what is ethically appropriate. Indeed, a common religious idiom becomes the mode of national self-expression. The example of America is pertinent here. Its happy experience owes much to just such arrangements. [5] According to Joly's Montesquieu, toleration preserves politics from a doctrinaire religious spirit that threatens social harmony and which, as history attests, may lead to the most sanguinary civil wars. At the same time, it employs the Christian teaching to its most politic advantage, indirectly spreading and deepening its social influence. According to objections raised by the Machiavelli of the Dialogue, however, the multiplicity of sects that issue from the liberal arrangement is seen to further fractionalize social life whose unity and cohesive force, in the ancient polity, is traced to the dominance of a unique social and civil religion. Secular Religion and the New Order A close reading of the Dialogue finds in religious influence the most important current of historic change. Accordingly, the historic project of the Dialogue's Machiavelli can be shown to rest fundamentally on certain religious principles, effecting a revolution that advances upon Protestant Christianity and the liberal order that issues from it. Succinctly put, it is a revolution that tries to reestablish the strict unity of political and religious life in the ancient city, but sundered by Christianity and further fractionalized by Protestantism. It looks to a new and universal civil or secular religion that puts forth as its putative goal the practical fulfillment of the Christian ethical teaching, already acknowledged by Montesquieu as exerting a pervading influence on our worldly conduct. The character of this "religion" can be traced to the teaching of the "new Christianity," proclaimed by Saint-Simon shortly before his death. [6] His followers elaborated the doctrine and placed it in the context of a more rigorous and systematic historical account. According to the original teaching, morality has only one principle, best expressed by the Gospels in its essential form when it commands universal love. Unlike physical science, which shows a discernible progress, the moral truth does not vary with time but remains eternally valid. Only its historical applications and embodiment are relative. Originally, the Gospel's proclamation was a radical and revolutionary principle. As the Montesquieu of the Dialogue states, the pure teaching of the Gospels, "so humble and so gentle," was strong enough to destroy by itself "the Roman Empire, Caesarism, and its power." By the sixteenth century, the Christian principle, now embodied in a universal Church, had been perverted and stood itself in need of regeneration. It had come to serve only the interest of the Church as an institutional, not a moral, power. As Machiavelli points out, far from its primitive beginnings, Christianity was now aligned with the "absolute power" of monarchies in the service of reactionary causes that would protect its worldly influence. Saint-Simon arraigns the papacy before the bar of primitive Christianity to- ward a revolutionary end. The original teaching of Christianity, "so gentle and so humble," must again find positive application in the society of the future which is institutionally reorganized to embody the true Christian "spirit" once again. The present Christian world had to be recast to reflect the progress of history and science, which had advanced to the point where "the amelioration of the lot of the poorest and most numerous classes" could be effectively fulfilled, both materially and morally. The present Church stands as an obstacle to the future fulfillment of its own moral truths. Its pope, revealed in such a light, is properly seen as an "anti-Christ" and his followers heretical. According to Machiavelli in the Dialogue, the decline of the hold of the traditional Christian religion is the root cause of the crisis of the time and propels the final descent into the anarchy sapping Europe in the most recent events hidden from Montesquieu. The reestablishment of a religious foundation for politics marks a new "organic" moment and the only basis for an enduring social order. This makes the religious question the ultimate political question for Machiavelli as for the Saint-Simonians, who themselves herald the rejuvenation of religiosity against the background of Enlightenment skepticism and the opposition of the established Church. The New "Christianity" in the Dialogue In accord with the "new" Christianity , the Machiavellian prince of the nineteenth century declares the "welfare of the masses" to be "his constant preoccupation." In the context of the Dialogue, such a goal can be seen as an extension of the historic progress of Christianity. It justifies the authoritarian reordering of society while it endows its institutions with new moral meaning. In taking up the cause of the "poorest and most numerous classes," the new prince simultaneously finds not only the broadest base of political support but moral legitimacy as well. In the Dialogue in Hell, Machiavelli accuses Montesquieu of having a less than orthodox view of God's role in history. According to Montesquieu, God's presence is no longer marked by his active intervention in the affairs of the world, through miracles and punishments, to correct man's wayward course. Rather, divine presence is manifested in the "Eternal Wisdom" that inexorably guides man's destiny. Such wisdom is revealed in collective history to the foremost minds that participate in it through their individual reason. While there is apparently no providence of a personal Being, the design of things, manifested in the workings of reason, is beneficently disposed toward man, ordering things to a progressive course. Implicitly, Machiavelli's position is somewhat different and follows Saint-Simonian doctrine. It emerges in the Dialogue as an extension of Montesquieu's thinking, not in a reaction to it. According to the dogma of the "New Christianity," the duties to a personal Godhead recede. "Critical" thought and positive science rightly have purged religion of insubstantial anthropomorphic and metaphysical supports. As with Montesquieu, the presence of God is made known through history, understood according to the Scientific "Law of Human Development." Divine providence and the eschatological hopes of primitive Christianity find concrete fulfillment at the conclusion of history in a society effectively organized to fulfill the "essential truths" of Christian morality on a universal scale. In this historicized theodicy, the Christian Godhead, who formerly occupied a transcendent realm, makes way for the Saint- Simonian ruler, who presents himself as the living embodiment of "Eternal Wisdom," given "form" and structure in a final and determinative historic order. Like a medieval pope, he is the "anointed representative" of the Divine Presence but makes his claim to "infallibility" on scientific grounds-a new orthodoxy supported by absolute power, artfully reinforced through propaganda and ceremony, which a large portion of Part Four in the Dialogue is devoted to explaining. At the end of that section, we noted a certain "imitation of Christ" as the conscious policy of the new prince. Indeed, by his "martyred" death man stands "redeemed" and a "new world" arises. Such a powerful symbol strikes a deep chord in the traditional Christian, now conditioned to shift his allegiance from transcendent to secular realms. Using the metaphor favored by Montesquieu, the prince's death will give "birth" to a new world order that brings fulfillment to the secular hopes and ambitions of the so-called party of "progress" and of "new ideas." Such a synthesis promises to bring peace to the "cultural war" between traditionalists and secularists. As Machiavelli states at the conclusion of the Dialogue, the masses will want to construct "altars" to such a ruler's memory- more in the style of the mausoleum in the Red Square (or the Invalides) than the crypts of medieval Cathedrals, we can well imagine. The new "organic" order that inspires the Machiavellian founding is the best background to view the more specific policies and goals of the prince. The papal affairs of Napoleon Ill, for example, which have long vexed historians of the second Empire, come into new light as tied not to mere political maneuvering but a more fundamental historic change. Joly intimates the deeper intentions underlying a policy that was commonly understood as undertaken only to placate the conservative voices of the prince's political constituency.' The relation of papal authority to secular power sounds an important motif in Machiavelli's The Prince, whose teaching can be used to shed considerable light on the policy of Joly's nineteenth-century Machiavellian prince. More precisely, however, it can be fully appreciated only in terms of Saint-Simonian thought and a world historic order premised on finding institutionalized expression for a religious revolution on a scale even greater than that administered by the Christian Church of the Middle Ages. Paradoxically, the nineteenth-century prince seeks to undermine the papacy by coming to its defense. Initially, this wins the plaudits of the more conservative elements of the new regime. Actually, it intends to so compromise the political existence of the Vatican as to make it a dependent appendage of its defender who profits from the peculiar authority it lends to his new rule. As the new prince uses the institutions of liberalism to cover and disguise his political revolution, he can also be seen to use the authority of the papacy and extant Christianity to move beyond it. As with the prince's revolution in political and economic realms, his religious revolution moves in circumspect ways that hide its more radical agenda. The Spiritual Father's position will gradually be usurped by the representative of the new historic order, succeeding that over which the Church ruled at the apex of its power during the Middle Ages. The Church, with its retrograde political policies, is no more than an anachronistic reminder of a former order whose vitality has long since passed, sapped by a revolution of thought which culminates with the Enlightenment movement. The eclipse of its prestige is underscored by contemporary events that find the Vatican under military siege by the forces of modem nationalism. [8] Ultimately, the prince in the Dialogue (Napoleon III) would want to definitively terminate the role of the Church, the political influence of which was necessarily baneful, at least according to the original critique of Machiavelli in The Prince. Viewed as a worldly institution, its inevitable effect was to compromise the source of its own legitimacy, expressed in its moral teachings, in bowing to the inevitable exigencies of politics. Its worldly conduct mocked its other-worldly pretensions; yet, its authority, accepted by other powers on faith, guaranteed the perpetuation of its unhealthy influence. The essential spirit of The Prince's critique of the old Christianity finds expression in an amusing "bon mot" related by Joly's Machiavelli in the Dialogue. Machiavelli explains how he will act in such a regime. "I would be like Alexander VI and the Duke of Valentinois. There was a saying about Alexander VI at the court of Rome, 'that he never did what he said, , and about the Duke of Valentinois 'that he never said what he did'." Machiavelli's prince is to follow such political men who kept their ultimate aims "impenetrable." Yet, as a deeper reading of The Prince reveals, the necessity for such "dissimulation" was rooted perhaps as much in the character of the times as the character of these particular men. The worldly pope, Alexander VI, "never did what he said." What he said ever remained the essence of Christian charity, but what he did was motivated by political necessity. On the other hand, Borgia "never said what he did." His murderous acts had to remain shrouded. His plans could not be articulated without offending the Christian temper of the times and exposing himself to rightful retribution as an enemy of God. Borgia and Alexander complement each other in furthering their imperial ambitions in Italy. The one provided the moral authority to cover the crimes that such a goal dictated. On several occasions, the Machiavelli of the Dialogue, like the Machiavelli of The Prince, adjures the modem founder to follow the likes of Borgia. Yet, a good reader of The Prince knows, peculiarly enough, that Borgia failed. The real Machiavelli overstates the case when he says that a "great malignity of fortune" frustrated the Duke of Valentinois. He could have secured himself by a crime he apparently could not contemplate-removing Pope Julius-to guarantee an- other, like Alexander, complicit with his schemes. The Machiavellian prince of the nineteenth century would follow through on the "implicit" steps recommended by the real Machiavelli. His actions in Italy intend to render the pope subservient to his own imperial ambitions. But such acts ultimately look to a more radical solution-the effectual destruction of the power of the papacy, whose influence is already on the decline. Such a project is more audacious than the murder of a pope. It strikes not only at the temporal seat of the pope's power but his moral authority, in the summoning of the masses to a new moral order. It is backed by political power, unprecedented in scope, that would always elude the medieval papacy despite its unholy alliances. To escape the "great malignity of fortune" that plagued Borgia and Alexander, the division of secular and religious authority, shared by these two figures, would have to be terminated. This is precisely what the Machiavellian prince of the nineteenth century seeks to accomplish in succeeding to Caesarian power as the leader of a "civil religion." Accordingly, the Saint- Simonian prince will preside over institutions that are at once "political and religious," which, by giving unified expression to claims of both secular and moral progress, allows him to succeed to complete and uncompromised authority .The unification of spiritual and political powers effectively ends the fatal division of the world introduced by Christianity .It strikes at the source of strength of the liberal regime by ending the contradiction of authorities that the Montesquieu of the Dialogue labored so hard at keeping in "vital tension" and equilibrium. According to the Saint-Simonians, the religion of the future, as in all previous "organic" moments, is called upon to take its place in the political order, or, "to be exact," the political institutions of the future, "when considered in their totality are to be religious institutions."9 The potential for a new kind of despot- ism can be stated in terms of Montesquieu's argument in the Dialogue. Religious ethics lose their position of independence as a sanction and check upon the authority of rulers and a new political doctrine sanctifies worldly rule in higher religious terms. Such rule does not admit the legitimacy of appeals on the grounds either of natural rights or individual conscience. It is Montesquieu who argues that, contrary to appearances, the influence of Christianity has not waned and can be seen to have infused the secular realm with its spirit. Machiavelli would give an ironic twist to such a contention when it is drawn to its most radical conclusion in the Saint-Simonian thought he expresses. Historical development does not merely evince Christian influences but the actual congruence of the secular and the religious realms. This occurs in the final historical stage that is viewed by the Saint-Simonians as bringing this-worldly fulfillment of the deepest aspirations of the universal religious consciousness first given expression by Christianity but effectively and finally organized in the new revolutionary state. The Germs of Totalitarianism The unprecedented authority that this lends to the future ruler may be seen in terms of the universal scope of his rule. Unlike modem autocracies, traditional despotism, or the despotism of the Roman Empire, this ruler alone will deter. mine matters that were formerly perceived to be beyond the province of politics, indifferent to its concerns, or rightly belonging to individual conscience. Such universal and unbounded authority, sanctioned by the higher laws of history and effectively implemented through modem technology, clearly anticipates later totalitarianism. They share a recognition of the growing importance of the masses, as a result of the democratic thrust of the Enlightenment, in any calculus of future history, as well as an effort by a new kind of leader to enlist their passionate allegiance to a new world order. The attempt to endow secular politics with the higher justifications and devotions formerly associated with the psychology of religion may be viewed as a common ideological trait of totalitarianism and has long been a staple of scholarly efforts that have tried to come to terms with such phenomena. It was Raymond Aron who developed the idea of "secular religions" in France Libre in 1944. He explains himself thus: I proposed to baptize as 'religions seculaires' those doctrines which take the place of faith in the contemporary mind, and which locate man 's salvation here on earth, in a far-off future, in the form of a social order yet to be created. As religions of salvation, these doctrines lay down the supreme values, and these are embodied in an earthly goal and a missionary party. Thus the zealots of these religions can embrace an unconditioned Machiavellianism in all good faith. Such doctrines, he goes on to say, "offer an historical perspective," interpreting "past, present, and future in their own way." [10] In the essay in which Aron writes, he asks after so many years of Nazi scholarship, whether a "mystery" remains in coming to terms with the Nazi phenomenon. Among other things, he implies that his original description of modern despotism through the concept of "secular religion" may remain the most helpful and comprehensive. In the politics of Saint-Simon, we see not only one of the earliest examples of such ideology but the most explicit application of the notion of "political religion." The "new" Christianity provides the cultural matrix of a final world order, ministered by one who would have himself viewed as a god-like being, governing as if by a new version of divine right in the name of the higher truths of history and its all-inclusive process. In such a light, Joly's Saint-Simonian regime may be seen as the archetype of totalitarian phenomena. Machiavelli delineates its essential conditions in the same manner that Montesquieu in the Dialogue explicitly endeavors to delineate the essential "conditions of freedom." One brief concluding remark remains. I hope it goes without saying that the "new Christianity" maybe "new" but it is not really very Christian at all. Notes 1. While Montesquieu does say that religion in despotic regimes serves to compound the fear in the sovereign (see The Spirit of the Laws IV 14), he also indicates the constraints it puts on him. A belief in the afterlife and divine retribution, for example, mitigates the power he holds over his subjects in forcing them to transgress what religion proscribes. See The Spirit of the Laws XXIV 14. 2. This is, of course, Samuel P. Huntington's argument in his brilliant and provocative work The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Touchstone, 1997). However, Huntington argues that respect for individual rights and freedom, whose origin lies in the West, will largely remain confined to the West. There is very little grounding in hopes for liberal polities in other "civilizations" of the world, Christian Orthodox, Muslim, etc. In this, I think him closer to the real Montesquieu than the one who appears in the Dialogue. 3. While Christian countries "live" by "credit, " the failure of Muslim countries to adapt to the exigencies of modernity can be tied to religious prohibitions against it. See The Spirit of the Laws XX 19. 4. Cf. Acquinas, Summa Theologicala, Q. I, art. 8, ad, 2. Thomas also speaks of the Christian's duty to accommodate oneself to the earthly city while also endeavoring to perfect it. Of course, he does not contemplate this outside the ministering of the Church. 5. How a multiplicity of sects moderates religious zeal as it helps accommodate one sect to another is beautifully explained by Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edwin Cannan, ed., (New York: Modem Library, 1937), 745. It deserves full citation. The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can be dangerous and troublesome only where there is, either one sect tolerated in the society, or where the whole of a large society is divided into two or three great sects; the teachers of each acting by concert and under a great discipline and subordination. But that zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three hundred, or into as many thousand small sects, of which no one could be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquility. The teachers of each sect seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more adversaries than friends, would be obliged to learn that candor and moderation which is so seldom to be found among the teachers of those great sects whose tenets being supported by the civil magistrates are held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms and empires, and who therefore see nothing round them but followers, disciples, and humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those of almost every other sect, and the concessions which they would mutually find both convenient and agreeable to make to one another, might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, and fanaticism, such as wise men in all ages of the world wished to establish. 6. The text of the "New Christianity" can be found in Saint-Simon, Social Organization, 81-116. 7 .Such accounts typically indicate the extremes to which Napoleon must have been moved to placate his conservative constituency. He was forced to abandon his sympathy for nationalistic causes, particularly as it manifested itself in Italy, where as a youth, he fought in its behalf. 8. It goes without saying in all this that Machiavelli's despot was only the first modern tyrant to underestimate the strength of the Papacy and the peculiar "divisions" it has at its disposition. 9. Iggers makes the same point in his Introduction to The Doctrine of Saint-Simon, xlii-xliii: In order not to misunderstand the Saint-Simonian emphasis on religion as vague mysticism, one must realize that the Saint-Simonian conception of religion was essentially institutional, an extension and secularization of the Roman Catholic Church. ... The Saint- Simonians saw in the Catholic Church a pattern of autocracy applicable to the organization of society as a whole. 10. Raymond Aron, "Is There a Nazi Mystery?" Encounter ( 1980): 32. Aron thought that he had by and large resolved the historic problem of Nazism. This was before the phenomenon and indeed all history had been re-problematized by the postmoderns. The term "totalitarian," like "holocaust," is promiscuously used today. For example, we are told by the postmoderns that belief in any "truth" is "totalizing" and dangerous. This apparently makes even Jefferson and his truths- human equality and government in the service of basic human needs-totalitarian in spirit. It is patently clear, if not self-evident, that something is amiss in all this. Where I once studied, I would pass daily into an academic building that had "The Truth Shall Set You Free" chiseled in stone above its portal. It was a Jesuit school and the quote, from Acquinas, I think, was appropriate. In the Brave New World of the post-modern university, I propose we sandblast old Thomas. Or, better yet, we could hoist a banner and cover him. Something along the lines of cigarette labels could be written on it. "Warning: The 'Truth' Has Been Determined To Be Dangerous as Well as Toxic to Your Mental Health and Our General Well-Being." This banner could be easily taken down when the new movement in thought passes. Sydney Hook, citing the American philosopher Charles Pierce, once spoke of the importance of the .'ethics of words." See "How Democratic Is America" (A Response to Howard Zinn) in Points of View, Robert E. DiClerico and Alan S. Hammock, eds., (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), 14. From his wall, Humpty Dumpty observed those who "employ" words outside of their proper context. He might say that words like "totalitarian," as used today, should be "paid overtime." This chapter is written to recover the proper dimensions of the phenomenon of totalitarianism and to vindicate Joly and Aron in their efforts to come to terms with it. The last chapter would like the reader to consider the "holocaust" in its proper context. Like Sydney Hook, I submit that the promiscuous use of such terms is itself very, very dangerous and distorting. Abusive acts can all too often follow abused words. There may indeed be an ethical responsibility in using certain words correctly. Parenthetically, I used to think that Charlie Chaplin had also solved the "Nazi mystery" and got Hitler just about right. His was too conventional a view of the dictator and dictatorship, however. When his very unconventional crimes-"against humanity"- were revealed, Hitler disappeared as a subject for comedy. For those who had firsthand experience of the regime, nothing was funny about Nazism. A German philosopher once thought that even poetry, post-Hitler, was henceforth impossible. This does not hold true for later generations. Hollywood even made a sitcom of life in a German POW camp. What person of any sense or sensibility is not appalled by the depiction of the frat house atmosphere that reigns there? While all this zany fun supposedly takes place, real men, women, and children were being starved, gassed, shot, and otherwise exterminated in other such "camps." These things are dreadful, obtuse, vulgar, and popular. Recent movies show that the Mussolini era in Italy can be laughed at. (Of course, Fellini did that too, but with a dose of surrealism). Perhaps Mussolini's De Orco-like fate was purgative. Anyway, Mussolini's Italy did not burden later generations with the same crimes as Hitler. Twentieth-century history (as life in general) weighs lighter on Italians than on Germans. Maybe that's why Mussolini's party could be resurrected and even share in governing there? One wonders if the old Fascist dog still has much bite. Even Fascists, post Thatcher, see the marketplace and its peculiar disciplines as requisite to "getting the trains to run time." One only hopes that Marx was correct when he saw the tragic moments of History as repeating themselves only as farce.
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