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Sofia while alternate routings were found. They made a terrible fuss,
and in the end Bulgarian Airlines whistled up a special jet to fly them
directly to Paris that night. I congratulated them on their success: it
was no doubt the first demonstration in Sofia in decades, and probably
the last for a long time.
Our own plane was a Lufthansa Boeing, with drinks and newspapers
available before we had crossed the border: an airborne fragment of
our own reality, but a perfectly representative one, crowded, hurried,
efficient in small things and tinny. Perhaps, I thought, society has begun
to resist even analysis and reflection, to say nothing of mastery. The
early sociologists were political philosophers and philosophers of history.
They looked to society for the fulfillment of human nature, for the
possibility of a better life. Our own generation has renounced these
aims; we regard empirical sociology as a gloss on a reality we do not
believe we can change. Max Weber, asked early in this century why
he studied society, said that he did it to see how much he could stand.
(CCWieval ich aushalten kann.")
We lack even this ironic acknowledge–
ment of individual moral purpose, and our search for a new public good
has been halting and ineffective when we have indulged it. The word
indulged
is frightening, but I shall let it stay. What was once the strong–
est force behind intellectual activity is now a mere psychological oddity,
a matter of personal whim, a moral idiosyncracy. The most desperate
and the least satisfactory aspect of our Congress was, however, perhaps
the most valuable one, insofar as we tried to go beyond the picture of
things as they are to find a moral and political vocabulary to describe
an irrational and oppressive world. But this did not get very far. For
the self-designated party of revolution in the state socialist societies has
become a party of the institutionalized revolution, an apologist for old
tyrannies in new form, whose most intelligent and rational subjects are
agonizingly aware of their servitude. For our part, we do not embrace
our injustices, but we do not seem to be transcending them. Our own
younger revolutionaries think that they can start from scratch, and so
fall easy victim to its old traps. A happier solution may await us
In
the future, but international conferences appear to be the last place to
work toward one.
