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PARTISAN REVIEW
must rid ourselves ofTunis." Chateaubriand experiences his most acute dis–
appointment on the site ofancient Sparta, where he finds nothing but modern
buildings: "Not even one poor little ancient ruin with which to console one–
self." Depressed by the ascendancy of the present over the past, he flees: "I
quickly descended from the castle, despite the cries of the guides who wished
to show me modern ruins and tell me tales of agas, pashas, cadis, and
vayvodes." Modern ruins-how dare they put such vulgarity on display? And
ofwhat interest are living Turks compared with dead Greeks?
Chateaubriand's itinerary (the ideological rather than the geographic
one) can serve to illustrate the ambiguity of the terms "individual" and
"individualism." Chateubriand's universalism, such as it is expounded by
"Fenelon" or Chactas, does imply a recognition of the individual as distinct
from the group to which he belongs: we should value neither the Indians nor
the French but virtue, which can be found in
all
climates and is accessible to
every individual, be it through rejecting the customs of his country. In this
sense, individualism is the cornerstone of humanism, and Chateaubriand is a
faithful disciple of Rousseau. Rene, however, is individualistic in a different
sense of the term (a sense for which, in fact, the way was paved by other
writings by Rousseau, the autobiographical ones)-he is interested only in
himself, for, in the last analysis, he is the only subject that counts. Thus, as
individualism degenerates into self-centeredness, the subject takes another
step on the path towards autonomy: he is not only a necessary but a self–
sufficient entity; others are not only different from me, they are superfluous.
"A man need not travel for enrichment; he carries the universe within him–
self," declares Chateaubriand in the conclusion to his
Mbnoires d'outre-tombe.
Chateaubriand started out with a humanism he perceived as being
Christian rather than "philosophical" (but in this respect the tenets of the En–
lightenment were in keeping with the Christian spirit). He ended with an
attitude in which ignorance of others vied for first place with an a priori con–
tempt of them-and this rejection of others turned out to be well-adapted to
the imperial policies implemented at that time. At the beginning of the nine–
teenth century, Chateaubriand followed a pattern we now recognize as fa–
miliar: adopting a few principles from the preceding century, he perverted
them by applying them in the service of goals to which they were rigorously
opposed. Thus, to the first forms of this perversion-nationalism and scien–
tism-we may now add egocentrism.
Let us now return to the questions we formulated at the start, and see
whether we are better able to answer them after this brief excursion into
history. The first observation that can be made is that scientism, nationalism
and egocentrism are not the mere result of a Romantic negation of Enlight–
enment and Revolutionary values. There is no doubt but that, in certain re-
