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PARTISAN REVIEW
it, the domination of the ruling class? Or else, should we marvel at the free–
dom of choice that the West, unbelieving and perhaps decadent, leaves to
everyone? Scientific culture, universalist by nature, now holds the principal
place in the education of the young. And the values propagated by the
educational system tend
to
invite criticism of, rather than respect for, the es–
tablished order.
Marxism no longer plays the role of crushing democratic-liberal regimes
under the utopia of the classless society or the example of Soviet reality. It
may help to foster a kind of nihilism. By insisting on the arbitrary nature of
values and the inequality of interpersonal relations in communities that are,
in
relative terms, the least tyrannical, one ends up by not recognizing the most
obvious facts: although modern society reproduces itself - it would not be a
society if it did not reproduce itself- it is changing more rapidly than all past
societies. And the liberal order remains different from the tyrannical order
offered to us by the Soviet Union . Whoever sees only a difference in degree
between the ideology of the state in Moscow and "symbolic violence" in
Paris, blinded by "sociologism," finally obscures the fundamental questions of
the century.
The philosophers of history who have adopted Toynbee's perspective
assert that Europe will recover its strength only through faith, Christianity or
even, specifically, Catholicism. I declare myself incompetent on the question.
If I were a believer, Jewish or Christian, I would attempt to propagate my
faith or my truth. Since I am not a believer of any church, I leave the space
of transcendental faith empty, and I personally adhere
to
the faith of the
philosopher, doubt rather than negation. The many attempts to establish
harmony between Christian dogma and contemporary cosmologies may,
without corresponding, coexist without contradicting one another. Science will
never produce anything comparable to the Covenant of the Jewish people or
the Revelation ofCh rist.
The sociology of religion methodologically abstracts from the
supernatural dimension. Can it answer the question of whether the twenty–
first century will be religious? Is a revival of the Catholic Church probable,
and what form will it take? Will it move in the direction of the traditionalists
or of the liberation theologians? I do not feel capable of deciding. I believe
more in a Catholicism that preaches the salvation of each individual soul than
in a Church as auxiliary of revolutionary movements (although in Latin
America, the second possibility seems
to
me in some cases to be almost in–
evitable).
By leaving out of account traditional churches and concentrating my
