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PARTISAN REVIEW
not altogether acceptable. Because there
is
a fundamental difference
between our culture and
all
the cultures which have preceded it:
namely, that for us these cultures exist, whereas for them each one
was the negation of the one preceding it.
It is possible that, in claiming for ourselves the heritage of the
world, we are not claiming anything but the heritage of a succession
of metamorphoses; but what
is
certain
is
that we are the first to
make this claim.
As
to knowing whether there is a civilization, I have
been putting
this
question to myself for a number of years.
As
it
is not solved, obviously, by a simple belief in progress, the question
becomes one of knowing what this civilization is which transcends
cultures; it is a matter of establishing the notion of man. A mere
detail! Beyond a doubt, the most important task confronting con–
temporary thought. . . .
We have used the term "America" asa synonym of the United
States. But what about Latin America (which is becoming less Latin
and more ((Indio"): does she not take a part in the new Occidental
civilization?
You are right when you speak about the powerful Indian
appeal.
If
you see a statue of Guatemozin in Mexico but none of
Cortes, and if Mexico is using her Indian blood to reinvigorate
herself, it is because the Aztecs are a past for the Mexicans even
more than antiquity was for the Italian Renaissance. Mexico exalts
its martyrs in order that it may exalt its heroes. But her contemp–
orary fresco painters owe more to Gauguin and Picasso than to the
Aztec sculptors, whatever they may say. And throughout the whole
of Latin America, just as in the Near East, nationalisms notwith–
standing, in the cultural domain France once again exists.
She is not sufficiently aware of this, because for so long a time
she remained the theoretician. And, to be sure, the France of 1954
is not the France which restored its meaning to the word liberty!
But the cultural domain is not the ideological domain. And if many
people think that France is dead in the former, it is because they
forget that in the cultural domain works count more than theories.
Among our philosophers none has as much influence as Heidegger,
but Freiburg-in-Breisgau has far fewer philosophers than Paris. For
Paris still signifies for the world what Florence signified for Eu-
