18
PARTISAN REVIEW
tle for prestige or Parisian authority. By accident or out of perversity, I per–
sist in not sinking into silence. I rightly receive blows, since I give them from
time to time - as infrequently as possible because, for me, the time for
polemics is over. But - who can say why? - I sometimes feel the need to
unmask mystifications and to continue a battle that is much larger than
1.
I
will eagerly pass the torch to others.
What makes Raymond Aron run? asked Viansson-Ponte in an article in
Le
Monde
devoted to the
Main Currents of Sociological Thought.
What used
to make me run was the mission that my father's misfortune had left me as a
legacy. Not that that mission imposed on me the search for honors. It is true
that my father would have liked to have the
Legion d'honneur;
it would in a
sense have compensated him for all the rest, for the true object of his ambi–
tion, at which he had failed. I sought neither "honors" nor social success.
Pierre Bourdan urged me to sign an application; I remained a chevalier of
the
Legion d'honneur
for twenty-eight years, some kind of record; other
honors came without my seeking. The witticism attributed to Winston
Churchill suits me perfectly: never ask for them, never refuse them, never
wear them. As for the dozen honorary doctorates, I had no reason to refuse
them; refusal would have been evidence of misplaced pride. Sartre's revolu–
tionary motive for refusing the Nobel Prize has no meaning for me. I was
touched by the Goethe Prize of the city of Frankfurt, given to George
Lukacs three years earlier and to Ernst Ji.inger three years later.
Perhaps journalism, which did not help me with my university col–
leagues, brought me to the attention of foreign juries more than I deserved.
Without my articles, professors would probably appreciate my books more,
and foreign universities would think of me less often. It hardly matters. I
gave my parents everything they expected of me; I await my last years
with serenity, no longer thinking of their last years with pain.
Have I done the best with the means available to me? Having ap–
proached philosophers of the highest level, I knew that I would never be one
ofthem. Of course, if I had returned to the university in 1945, if I had been
elected to the Sorbonne in 1947, if I had given up journalism, 1 would have
written other books. To mention the least doubtful example, instead of the
three paperback volumes, I would have written a large book, which would
have had fewer readers, but would have better answered to my aspirations
toward rigor. I regret this volume, which would have been comparable to the
Introduction
or to
Penser
La
guerre.
My work as an analyst and a militant in
the service of freedom compensates for these losses.
What are the books I regret not having written? Some readers will
probably repl y: a book on Marx. I would agree with this widespread as–
sumption only with some hesitation. Marxism that has become Marxism-
