32
PARTI SAN REVIEW
"Cloutard" in the 1930s could legitimately ask: "What can I hold on to?"
Michel Contat does not have the right to pose the same question in 1982.
Since the last war, the Western democracies have accomplished progress that
those who hold them in contempt considered impossible: economic growth,
personal freedom, the improvement of social relations. Who propagated
"deadly" teaching, those who sought Mecca in turn in Moscow, Belgrade,
Peking, and Havana, or those who, freed from soteriological beliefs, worked
as hard as they could for prosperity and for the reform ofliberal regimes, the
least bad of our civilization, perhaps the least bad in history?
The critique of secular religions contained in itself certain affirmations, a
broad position that some would attack as conformist. I accept the basic char–
acteristics of established democratic and liberal regimes. In the
Essay on
Freedom,
for which 1 have a certain affection, 1 attempted to set forth the
necessary synthesis of two forms of freedom: the realm of autonomy left
to
individuals and the means that the state offers to the most deprived so that
they might exercise their acknowledged rights. Modern democracies ignore
neither freedom of choice nor freedom as capacity, the former assured by
limitations on the state, the latter by social legislation. At their best moments,
Western societies seem to me to have accomplished an exemplary compro–
mise.
Nowadays, the dominant thinkers would not dream of calling me
"Satanic or desperate." They would be more likely
to
denounce me as a
conservative, indifferent to inequalities among individuals and nations, re–
signed to regimes of which no one, unless he is blind, can ignore the
imperfections, if not the basic flaws. The rich and the poor still exist, along
with the powerful and the humble. No "sociodicy" could justify our regimes
any more than theodicies ever justified the Creator. Those who place equal–
ity above all, above freedom, criticize me for the small space 1 have devoted ,
in my books and articles, to the "scandals" of inequality.
I often discussed inequality in my Sorbonne lectures. One year, 1 de–
voted two hours a week to the theme. I never produced material for
publication because my attempts left me so unsatisfied.
I am with all my heart egalitarian in the moral sense of the term: I
loathe the too frequent social relations in which status hierarchy stifles the
sense of fraternity. It is a legacy of salvationist religions, of the equality of
everyone before God? The arrogance or authoritarianism toward their stu–
dents of a number of my colleagues, often on the left, shocks me. But, beyond
these feelings, I confess that I do not know what is implied by social justice,
nor what distribution of income, wealth , prestige, or power would meet the
requirements of equity. Legal philosophers in the United States have been
discussing the theme for several years. They are inclined to recommend the
