LETTERS FROM PARIS
am actually ready to do in practice, and, conversely, of never doing in
practice something which I cannot explain in my own terms, that is,
those of whose meaning I am personally sure.
"This, of course," my friend continued, "limits my sphere of in–
fluence considerably. For all practical purposes, to my wife, children,
and neighbors. What is likely to be good or bad for them, I take as a
measure of what I should do or avoid doing. Beyond that, there is
doubt. Doubt, I insist, not negation. I am well aware that I cannot
dissociate myself, my wife, my children, and my neighbors, from the
fate of the community, of the classes that compose it, and also of other
nations, the world, and mankind itself. Only, as things are today, no
sooner have I entered such ground, than I feel I am in a sphere where
compulsion, rather than persuasion, is the rule.
"Let me explain. In politics, I am still what used to be called in
France
'un homme de gauche,'
that is a man who thinks that politics
makes sense only insofar as the citizen has the means of opposing
raison
d'Etat,
that is of making the State sensitive to his claims. At present,
however,
raison d'Etat
is everywhere, even in such trifling matters as
the price of the
metro.
All political parties justify what they do, or
don't do, by pointing to
raison d'Etat.
There are differences, of course.
There is the principle so neatly formulated by the Hegelian sophist
quoted in Roger Caillois'
Description du Marxisme :
'Truth, in Russia,
is not an opinion. It is a Statc.' That is Terror. Against Terror, I hope
I will always have the courage to revolt. On the other hand, there is the
argument of emergency, that is of a
force majeure
suspending, for the
time being, the realization of the desirable without, however, abolishing
political freedom. To
forc e majeure,
I cannot but yield. But neither
can I help noticing that, for us Frenchmen, the realization of the
desirable disappeared from the political horizon around 1938, never
to reappear except in the form of a passionate and short-lived illusion
after the Liberation. That ideas and individual opinions have no
relevance to politics seems to have become a political fact today. I
don't question it. Nevertheless, I am, in all honesty, obliged to recog–
nize that since this fact makes it silly to oppose
raison d'Etat
as a matter
of principle, it also puts my political faith iIi abeyance.
If
I have not
become indifferent, like many of my neighbors (except those who have
submitted to the surgical operation of Communist orthodoxy), it is be–
cause I just can't do it. I am too worried, and, at the same time, too
doubtful to be indifferent. Hence, all I am left with is ups and downs:
moods, rather than opinions."
Such an attitude as
this
might not be very strong intellectually,
