TSVETAN TOOOROV
591
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polyvalent; to unify them is to mutilate them.
However, it is not enough to oppose authentic humanism to its cor–
rupted forms and declare the former superior to the latter-we must also de–
termine the reasons for which the latter arose. Things seem relatively clear
in the case of egocentrism; it is the hypertrophy of the notion of individual
autonomy. The egocentrist carries to an extreme the first steps in this
direction taken by humanist philosophy itself; and, not content with recogniz–
ing the individual as a necessary entity, declares him to be a totally self–
sufficient one. The cases of nationalism and
scientism~r
their close relatives,
racialism and exoticism-are less straightforward. The popularity of these
doctrines is due to the fact that they embody values that find no other means
ofexpression and are felt to be lacking in the modern world. Briefly recalled:
scientism treats science as a religion; nationalism emphasizes membership in a
sociocultural group; racialism states that human beings are of necessity
hierarchized; primitivist exoticism, again, deems the community superior to
the sum of its individuals and favors interpersonal relations over those
between people and
things.
An
examination of this list of values implied or affirmed by the
perversions of humanism enables us to draw two conclusions. The first is that
all of them derive from holistic ideology (if I may use this term to refer to the
governing principle of traditional communities, wherein the whole is seen as
more important than its component parts). Holistic societies (of which
France's
ancien regime
is an example) respect religious consensus, a hierar–
chy of persons and positions, the group more than the individual, and social
rather than economic relations. Apparently, the emergence of modern
democracy-made possible by the victory of individualistic ideology over its
predecessor-entailed the repression of holistic values. The latter, however,
did not simply vanish: they reappeared in those more or less monstrous
forms known as nationalism, racism, and totalitarian utopias.
The second conclusion follows logically from the first: both holistic and
individualistic ideology are, in some ways, incomplete representations of
reality. They declare certain characteristics of human life to be preeminent
and others subordinate. This also means that it is a mistake to see all the
good on one side and all the evil on the other. Our present attachment to
values derived from individualism (our humanism) cannot be abandoned, but
it would be in our own interest, as Louis Dumont has written, to moderate
these attitudes with principles and values gleaned elsewhere. This is possible
as long as there is no fundamental incompatibility among the former and the
latter (in which the the result would be pure eclecticism), but rather a
reshifting ofdominant and subordinate elements. Indeed, this is the only hope
we have of mastering the forces behind holistic values: if we do not seek to
