RAYMOND ARON
23
class-based organization has come to power, it becomes involved with a na–
tional or imperial messianism. It sanctifies conflicts or wars rather than pre–
serving, across frontiers, the fragile links of a common faith.
Intellectual or spiritual pluralism does not lay claim to a truth compara–
ble to those of mathematics or physics; nor does it fall back to the level of
ordinary opinion. It is rooted in the tradition of our culture; it is justified, and
to some degree verified, by the falseness of beliefs that attempt to deny it.
Iranian Shiites and Marxist-Leninists belong to the same family, since the
Shiite clergy wants to rule over civil society as the Soviet Communist Party
does. The Westerner is superior to the devotees of Khomeini or Lenin be–
cause he knows the difference between scientific truths, however provisional
they may be, and religious beliefs, because he challenges himself, aware that
our culture, in certain respects, is one among many. The refusal of doubt
may strengthen the order of fighters, but it excludes pacification. The imam
Khomeini, like the Marxist-Leninists, reminds us that "active faith" leads,
even now, to a crusade. Contemporary Westerners, aware of the legitimate
plurality of moral authorities, aware of the particularity of our culture, are the
only ones who show the way toward a history that would have some
meaning.
The secularization of politics leads logically to pluralism. Not that com–
petition among parties can be placed on the same level as spiritual pluralism.
What now seems to me implied by the exhaustion of inherited certainties is
the questioning of the social order and the political system.
It
would be
unreasonable to assert that it would be better to have a society subjected to
permanent challenge than a society held together by uniformly shared con–
victions (better for whom?). I would say that political challenges are a neces–
sary consequence of religious challenges. But political challenges are either
repressed, suppressed, or stifled by varied levels of violence and manipula–
tion; or else they are tolerated or organized with a view toward establishing
amode of government.
It is nevertheless true that the regimes I have called constitutional-plu–
ralist can always be called the best or the only good ones, destined to be
spread throughout the world. They correspond
to
the mental state of those
whom Auguste Comte would have called the avant-garde of humanity. The
right of everyone to participate in the political dialogue about the common
fate flows from the abandonment of absolute truths, but certain societies
cannot grant this right without dissolving.
Democracy, in classical philosophy, required citizens, virtuous citizens,
that is, to be respectful of the Laws. Democracy in industrial societies estab–
lishes conflicts between producers and consumers, interest groups and political
parties. The power that comes out of these inevitable rivalries, and which is
