ChansonRolandV7, Istex, Corpus, bibRecord, 000E62

Philosophy and Experience: French intellectuals and the Second World War

Identifieur interne : 000E62 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000E61; suivant : 000E63

Philosophy and Experience: French intellectuals and the Second World War

Auteurs : Jonathan H. King

Source :

Journal of European Studies [ 0047-2441 ] ; 1971-03.

RBID : ISTEX:C281A602BC898365B91071F2B700B3CB800671A5

English descriptors

Entity :
- org : Communist Party, Communist party, Germany and Italy.
- pers : Camus, Claude Bourdet, Communists, Emmanuel Mounter, Emmanuel Mourner, Gabriel Peri, H. Bidault, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Condition, La Diane, La Resistance, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Nizan, Roy Pierce, Simone de Beauvoir.
- place : Algeria, Europe, France, Germany, Vichy, York.
Teeft :
- Avon appris, Camus, Cartesian heritage, Catholic philosopher, Cette, Clandestine newspaper, Collaborationist right, Combat movement, Common ground, Dialectical relationship, Economic democracy, French intellectual, German occupation, Guerre, Ibid, Maritain, Marxism, Marxist, Official marxism, Paris sou, Philosophical tradition, Possible consequence, Resistance activity, Resistance cause, Resistance experience, Sartre, Second world, Social catholicism, Temp modernes, Third republic, Totalitarian ideology, Traditional humanism, Traditional value, Vichy, Wartime experience.

Url:

https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-L508CMDH-2/fulltext.pdf

DOI: 10.1177/004724417100100150

Links to Exploration step

ISTEX:C281A602BC898365B91071F2B700B3CB800671A5

Le document en format XML

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<meta-value>198 Philosophy and Experience: French intellectuals and the Second World War SAGE Publications, Inc.1971DOI: 10.1177/004724417100100150 Jonathan H.King Uniaersity of Aberdeen I When, in May and June rg4o, the French army was defeated within six weeks, anyone and anything was blamed: the bourgeoisie, suspected of sneaking admiration for Hitler; the Communist Party, with its campaign against an 'imperialist' war; the squabbling party system of the Third Republic; the British; out of date weapons and military strategy. But, with a possibly exaggerated notion of the importance of their own kind, many French intellectuals, representing a wide range of opinion and prejudice, agreed amongst themselves that the real scapegoat should be Descartes. The so-called cartesian heritage was angrily held to account by the hysterical Right, orchestrated by Drieu la Rochelle; knowingly reproved by Catholic philosophers like Jacques Maritain; coolly rejected by men of the Left like Merleau-Ponty. Drieu la Rochelle fairly dances on rationalism's grave: La France a ete d6truite par le rationalisme a quoi avait ete r6duit son genie. Aujourd'hui, le rationalisme est abattu. On ne peut que se r6jouir de cette d6confiture du rationalisme. Si quelque chose peut revivre en France, il ne fallait rien moins que cette distruction du monstre qui la rongeait. Les Franqais ctaient trop malades pour se guerir de cette maladie.1 Whatever validity these remarks may have is largely obscured by Drieu's habitual hyperbole. His argument becomes positively fanciful when he goes on to claim that France was betrayed by a sinister band of 'assis, pecheurs a la ligne, buveurs de Pernod'2, implying that these undesirables are in some mysterious way incarnations of the cartesian philosophy. Maritain, reflecting on the defeat, speaks of a 'Descartes Line' inducing as much foolish optimism as the Maginot Line, and endorses the remark of a French minister to the effect that France had waged 'tme guerre cartésienne',3 a verdict which would have surprised many a French private. Maritain argues that French democracy was too weak to resist the Germans because it was founded on the reasonableness of Descartes and on 'les erreurs et les illusions issues de Jean-Jacques Rousseau'.4 The French had divorced their political system from Christian morality and were paying for it: 'I'id6e de 1'homme et de sa destin6e que l'Evangile a d6pos6c au sien de 1'histoire humaine ... est le 1 Notes pour comprendre le siècle, Gallimard, Paris, 1941, p. 171. 2 Ibid., p. 172. 3 A travers le désastre, Editions de la Maison Française, New York, 1941 , p. 54. 4 Ibid., p. 119. 203199 seul principe authentique dont 1'ideal democratique puisse vivre r6elle- ment'.5 5 Merleau-Ponty's critique of cartesianism is more penetrating and more credible. His approach is different. Instead of trying to extract from the defeat a confirmation of the rightness of previoulsy held views, he, like Marc Bloch in L'Etrange défaite, undertakes an intensely self-critical examen de conscience. He analyses the cartesian outlook as an important element contributing to the failure of French intellectuals to understand what was happening in Europe in the pre-war era. A consideration of the intellectual reaction in France to the events of 1940 and beyond can usefully begin with an examination of what Merleau-Ponty has to say. 'Nous etions des consciences nues en face du monde. Comment aurions-nous su que cet individualisme et cet universalisme avaient leur place sur la carte ?'6 Thus Merleau-Ponty confesses the shortcomings of his generation of intellectuals. They were `cartesiens solitaires', seduced by the cogito into believing in the absolute freedom of the all-powerful mind functioning in an absolute vacuum. The dialectical relationship between the self and others is ignored in favour of a one-way relationship. I have no reality outside the reality I myself conceive. I think of myself as a 'man'; the fact that others ascribe to me a nationality and a race and a class points to a mere superstition on their part. Appearances, the surface of existence, are transparencies which the trained cartesian eye easily penetrates. Anything which threatens the belief in universalism is relegated to the level of myth or delusion. Because German racial theory is intellectually suspect, it can therefore be safely ignored. Because national frontiers are absurd attempts to deny universalism, no account need be taken of them in framing one's attitude to political events; 'les passions de la guerre n'existent pas... il n'y a donc pas un monde en guerre ... il n'y a pas d'empires, pas de nations, pas de classes'.7 But, early on in this non-existent war, France was beaten and occupied: perhaps it exists after all: 'C'est apr6s juin 4o que nous sommes vraiment entres dans la guerre. Car desormais les Allemands que nous rencontrions ... il ne nous etait plus permis de les traiter humainement'.8 Not only did it become inevitable to distinguish, among all those anonymous faces, the Germans from the French; but the Germans themselves were perversely interested in distinguishing Jews from Aryans, resisters from collaborators. On both sides it frequently became a matter of life and death to make these distinctions. In a peculiarly menacing way, the dialectical relationship between the self and outside reality finally asserted itself. vVe are not just subjects, but also, to use Sartrean terminology, objects under the gaze of others. We do not exist outside the confines of time and space, we are living in France in i g4o. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, neatly paraphrasing Plato ('as close to us as Heidegger') : 'ce cartesien solitaire ... ne voit pas derriere lui son ombre portee sur 1'lustoire comme sur un mur, ce sens, cette figure que prennent ses actions au dehors, cet Esprit Objectif qui est lui-meme'9-an image which recalls Katow in La 5 Ibid., pp. 31-32. 6 'La guerre a eu lieu', Les Temps Modernes, t. 1, no. 1, Oct. 1945, p. 49. 7 Ibid., pp. 56-57. 8 Ibid., p. 51. 9 Ibid., p. 57. 204200 Condition Humaine, whose shadow on the wall as he walks out to his execution is seen by his fellow revolutionaries as a ghostly emblem of man's involvement in history. The events of 194° and the consequent experience of occupation made French intellectuals conscious of the shadows they cast. 'En somme, nous avons appris 1'histoire et nous pr6tendons qu'il ne faut pas 1'oublier.'lo Merleau-Ponty's analysis leaves one or two questions unanswered. It is difficult to know who exactly is included in the 'we' he uses throughout. The picture he draws fits very well the vaguely left-wing but largely apolitical products of the Ecole Normale Supirieure, of which he, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were, in the nineteen-thirties, prominent examples. It confirms the account contained in La Force de ['âge. But it is in no sense applicable to contemporaries such as Paul Nizan, who, in Les Chiens de garde, written in 1932, had already made a vigorous and scornful attack on the semi-official idealist philosophy taught in France. The earliest group of French Marxists-the Philosophies group-dates from the mid nineteen-twenties. Its leaders-Lefebvre, Politzer, Friedmann and Nizan himself-were certainly not guilty of the philosophical illusions Merleau-Ponty deplores. He, like Sartre, dates his discovery of 'history' from 1940. But to imply that theirs was a representative development offends both against numerous contemporaries who had arrived much earlier at a rejection of the French philosophical tradition and against those who had been somewhat more precocious in their espousal of 'commitment'. Whatever its validity, one could argue that there is something faintly perverse and possibly dangerous in what Merleau-Ponty says. Such criticisms of rationalism and disinterested thought sound inappropriate in a France recently liberated from Nazism. Merleau-Ponty is a long way from saying that when he hears the word intellectual he reaches for his revolver; but his criticisms follow uncomfortably close on the exploits of the man who did say this. For four years the Vichy r6gime had been castigating 'intelligence'. !vlerleau-Ponty-and in this he was not alone-had some difficulty in reconciling suspicion of traditional humanism with resistance to its most obvious enemies. In attacking the intellectual and cultural values of a defeated country, was one not tempted to look for guidance to the philosophy of the victors? Merleau-Ponty admits that, even if it is now past, during the war the temptation was present: 'Il ne s'agit pas d'imiter les tyrans; et, dans la mesure ou il a fallu le faire, nous leur en voulons justement de nous y avoir obliges'.11 But was it really a question of being forced? That there was an element of willingness is suggested by something Merleau-Ponty wrote during the occupation, in 10~1. This document, recently come to light, was first ascribed to Sar trel2. Only later was it discovered that it was the work of Merleau-Ponty, although inspired by conversations with Sartre and Desanti. It is a five-page paper called 'La Resistance : la France et le monde de demain'. It reached the French provisional government in Algeria in ig¢q., some three years after it was written. It begins 10 Les Temps Modernes, t. i, no. 1, Oct. 1945, p. 63. 11 Ibid., p. 65. 12 A summary of it appears in fact in the recent bibliographical study by M. Contet and M. Rybalka, Les écrits de Sartre, Gallimard, Paris, 1970, pp. 110-111. There is a footnote con firming that the author is Merleau-Ponty. 205201 with a highly pessimistic summary of the state of mind of occupied France: 'la majorite des patriotes a une id6ologie confuse, hesitante, purement negative, ou uniquement soucieuse de moralit6 individuelle'.13 There follows a historical analysis of this state of affairs, developed from a philosophical point of view. The usual criticisms are made of the sterility of the French intellectual tradition. To the analytical and individualistic habits of thought of his countrymen, Merleau-Ponty opposes the 'synthetic' philosophies which, elsewhere in Europe, have acted as the basis of totalitarian, notably Nazi, ideology. These represent an enormous advance, for they alone attempt to understand the world by considering the interaction of various elements: the individual is no longer analysed in isolation from his society, but treated as an organic part of a collectivity. Then comes the suprising recommendation: if totalitarianism is to be destroyed by the defeat of the Fascist powers, it must also, in a sense, be assimilated by the victors. The superiority of totalitarian over liberal ideology is that the former understands that to change man, one must change his society. From their recent traumatic experiences, the French have learned that they live in society. Those who are concerned with the creation of a new France must take advantage of this new awareness. Merleau-Ponty believes that elements of totalitarian ideology can be used not only to sustain tyranny, but also to provide the intellectual basis of a genuine social and economic democracy. The attack on so-called cartesianism had involved peculiar risks, not the least of which was that of acquiring unwelcome allies. Its corollary in the sphere of politics-an attack on liberal democracy-draws some of its inspiration from unpleasant sources. Camus' choice of a contagious disease to represent the German occupation seems, in this respect at least, highly appropriate. It can be argued that immunity to the plague is best guaranteed by absorbing a small amount of the bacillus; but unfortunately it is also true that those who fight the plague at close quarters are the most likely to become its carriers. II - His critique of the cartesian heritage, and of the type of society which was both its source and its consequence did not of course lead Merleau-Ponty to embrace a totalitarian ideology. The elements in this ideology which he obliquely approves-its emphasis on relationship and interaction, its insistence on man as a social unit-could be found equally well in a more acceptable ideology and realized through the creation of a different type of society to that which now lay in ruins in Germany and Italy. From within the perspective of Marxism, traditional humanism, idealistic philosophy and liberal capitalism could be attacked without appearing to lean in the direction of the barbarians. Merleau-- Ponty's conviction that values remain nominal until they are realized in a socio-economic structure, his belief that political democracy is a sham unless it rests upon an infrastructure of economic democracy are the necessary prelude to entering the broad stream of Marxist thought. But this decisive step, contemplated at a distance by himself, Sartre and many others during the nineteen- thirties, which the advent of the Second World War should have made inevi- 13 Ibid., p. 110 206202 table, had been unexpectedly delayed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August r g3g. It was not until June ig4i, with Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, that the step could be taken with any confidence. With the U.S.S.R. back on the right side, with the French Communist Party's bravery and sheer efficiency providing the backbone of the resistance, the historical foundations were laid for that merging of existentialist with Marxist thought-never complete but always the goal-which is the central intellectual feature of France in the nineteen- forties and nineteen-fifties. The rights and wrongs of the Pact, the tactics of the French Communist Party between rg3g and 1941, have been exhaustively analysed and the various arguments need not be repeated here. Intellectuals like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were not so much interested in finding a party as in finding a philosophy. It was not the tactical confusion of the party which gave them cause for concern, but the brand of Marxism which the party professed. In 1\1arxism, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre sought an antidote to the cartesianism which had fostered their own pre-war illusions. But, far from performing this function, the philosophy of history to emerge from the pronouncements of Communist leaders between 1939 and r g:~ r seemed itself deeply tainted: 'meme le marxisme 6tait a reprendre, car il risquait de nous confirmer dans nos pr6jug6s d'avant-guerre'.14 In two central respects, officials Marxism in France seemed to echo the philosophy which had proved so inadequate. It too turned the Second World War into a mere chimera. Little more than a 'capital- istic family quarrel', an 'interlude', it was of no direct interest to Marxists or proletarians. The humanist asserted that there were no Frenchmen, no Germans, only men; the Marxist claimed that class allegiance and class solidarity overrode the motive forces of nationality and patriotism. Hence the slogan 'no proletarian in uniform can feel anything but proletarian'. Just as the naive humanist failed to comprehend anti-semitism because there was no such thing as a Jew, the crude Marxist dismissed genocide as 'the socialism of imbeciles'. Furthermore, it seemed that Marxism, supposedly a materialist philosophy, was reviving the fallacies of idealism by implying that there were 'deux histoires, 1'histoire vraie et 1'histoire empirique'. It may appear that Fascism is fighting liberal democracy, in reality however, this internecine dispute is a further episode in the gradual suicide of the propertied class from which the proletariat will eventually and inevitably benefit. To which Merleau-Ponty retorts: 'La lutte des classes n'est pas plus vraie que les conflits ideologiques, ils ne s'y réduisent pas comme l'apparence à la réalité'.15 The nature of neo-Marxism in post-war France was to be decisively influenced by the hopeless inadequacy of the official Communist analysis of events. In the light of actual experience, modifications to the accepted Marxist canon were called for: the relative emphasis placed on different elements had to be adjusted. The choice of cornerstone for the new Marxism was dictated by four years of German occupation. The dictum that 'la libert6 n'est pas en de~a du monde mais au contact avec lui'16 can stand as a summary of the philosophy which emerged from the grafting of Marxism on to the existentialism associated with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. For an intellectual living under the occupation it 14 'La guerre a eu lieu', art. ctt., p. 60. 15 Ibid., p. 61. 16 Ibid., p. 60. 207203 had become a blindingly obvious truth. During these years, freedom of expresssion and thought was not and could not be achieved by retreat to the ivory tower. Freedom was no longer a state; it had become a value to be achieved, created afresh by the individual participating in the world, perhaps at the risk of torture and death. To withdraw from events-in the sense of refusing to contribute to either the collaborationist or the clandestine press-might, in one's own eyes, be evidence of freedom from constraint. From the outside, this withdrawal looked like escape, or even cowardice. Silence became as eloquent as words, for to be outside the world was merely a rather ignominious way of being inside it. Thus the Marxist view that freedom-like any other value-is relative to historical circumstance and concrete social reality is confirmed by the experi. ence of occupation, and emerges from that experience virtually synonymous with the existentialist concept of authentic and inauthentic freedom, a concept whose historical roots are eloquently suggested by Sartre's famous paradox: 'Jamais nous n'avons ete plus libres que sous l'occupation allemande'.17 But if experience dictated that certain elements in traditional Marxism be given a fresh prominence, it dictated also that others be radically downgraded. The importance attached by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty to the problem of understanding and redefining the nature of freedom, their stress on the unavoidable responsibility of each individual, shows that they were drawn to the voluntaristic elements of 1\1marxist philosophy. Malraux's Kyo anticipated their attitude when he said: 'il y a dans le marxisme le sens d'une fatalite et 1'exaltation d'une volonte. Chaque fois que la fatalite passe avant la volonte, je me M6fiel.18 The easy and dubious assumption that the war between Fascism and democracy was but a stage on the inexorable road to the classless society aroused the distrust of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. Issue had to be taken with historicism in all its forms. Now it is a peculiarity of historicism that it has been a component in the political philosophies of both the extreme left and the extreme right. Spengler can be used to justify the cruelties of Fascism, as Marx can be used to explain away the cruelties of Communism. It is logical then that Sartre does not limit his ascription of'cette maladie intellectuelle qu'on peut appeler 1'historicisme'19 to any single ideological group. He in fact locates its most extreme form on the collaborationist right. The most notable psychic trait of the collaborator- he cites Drieu and Brasillach as examples-is a willingness to submit to the fait accompli : the defeat and occupation of France. From acknowledging the necessary existence of a certain state of affairs, it is a short step to granting it moral sanction. Simply because something has changed, it must be an improvement. The new is by definition better than the old because strength can replace weakness, but not vice versa. This perverted evolutionary philosophy is one form which historicism could take during the occupation, but not the only one: 17 'La République du silence', Sititatiotis III, Gallimard, Paris, 1949, p. 11. 18 La Condition hiiinaitie, Romatis, Gallimard, Editions de la Pléiade, Paris, 1947, p. 281. 19 'Qu'est-ce qu'un collaborateur?', Situatioru III, p. 52. 208204 Cette fa~on de juger 1'6v6nement a la lumi6re de 1'avenir a ete, je crois, pour tous les Francais une des tentations de la d6faite: elle repr6sentait une forme subtile de 1'evasion. En sautant quelques si6cles et en se retournant sur le present pour le contempler de loin et le replacer dans 1'histoire, on le changeait en passe et on masquait son caractere insupportable. 20 The intellectual sleight of hand which Sartre is unmasking was adroitly practised, notably between 1939 and 194 1, by the Marxist spokesmen of the revolutionary left. For them the new was always better than the old because it is closer to the final dialectical synthesis. They, as well as the collaborationist right, are targets of Sartre's attack. At this stage, he did not yet need to be wary of making incisive, if covert criticisms of the Communists. His attacks on their excessively historicist brand of Marxism were made at a time when- due to their resistance record and electoral successes-they seemed strong enough to withstand them. This kind of selectivity, practised by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in their rapprochement with Marxism, which in 1945 could safely be indulged in, was all too soon to be treated as evidence of anti-Communism. Highly sensitive to this danger, Sartre was prepared, if not to retract his criticisms, at least to keep a number of them to himself, with the consequence that, some years later, his attacks were turned against him by Camus. Was he himself not now guilty of that obeisance to history which leads to the justification of the unjustifiable? III At a number of points, the famous quarrel between Camus and Sartre refers back, explicitly or implicitly, to their common experience of the war. Camus is offended by what he considers a betrayal of values hard-won in the course of this experience. Sartre, remorselessly, but with the reluctance of a friend, is concerned to point out the inadequacies and dangers of such nostalgia. But in this respect their rupture was merely a culmination. The lessons drawn by Sartre, and by Merleau-Ponty, from defeat, occupation and resistance had all along differed significantly from those drawn by Camus. What common ground there was had been established in an untypically manichean world. The resistance was a notorious source of improbable and fragile alliances. In his attitude to the traditional values of French intellectuals, to their supposed blameworthiness in the nineteen-thirties, Camus strikes a rather solitary figure. For it was his conviction that the immediate alternative to these values was infinitely worse. He was unable to contemplate with equanimity the possible consequences of that assault on rationalism and humanism which had already conquered many parts of Europe. Experience seemed to show the dangers of civilized men becoming tired and ashamed of their intellect: `1'intelligence nous donne honte et nous imaginons parfois quelque heureuse barbarie ou la verite serait sans effort'.21 The French analytical mind, weary of itself, may be attracted to philosophies more dangerous than dialectical materialism. Such a temptation, acknowledged by Merleau-Ponty, is of overriding concern 20 Situations III, p. 54. 21 Lettres d un ami allemand, Gallimard, Paris, 1948, pp. 23-24. 209205 to Camus. Successful resistance to it was what separated him and his fellows from the German friend, who had succumbed. Camus' criticisms of his country and his country's intellectuals are milder than those of Sartre or Merleau-Ponty. 'Nous 6tions entres dans cette guerre les mains pures',22 he asserts. The defeat of France was due not so much to vices as to an excess of certain virtues. While the Germans were preparing for war, the French, in their self-questioning way, were asking themselves whether they were in the right, whether force was ever justified. The defeat teaches not that traditional values are to be rejected, but that these values need to be armed: 'Nous y avons appris que ... 1'esprit ne peut rien contre 1'6p6e, mais que 1'esprit uni a 1'6p6e est le vainqueur eternel de 1'6p6e tiree pour elle M6Me'.23 Camus defends the embattled category of 'mind' in terms which suggest that for him it had become a moral category. He had probed too deeply into the consequences of irrationality and its accompanying absolute moral relativism for him to be satisfied with the scientific, sociological and morally indifferent terminology of the Marxist alternative to the cartesian tradition. While Sartre had created Roquentin, he had created Caligula. The assertion that values are nominal until they are realized in a socio-economic structure evades, in Camus' eyes, the question of precisely Which values shall be thus realized. This view of the moral and intellectual temptations and possibilities open to intellectuals leads to a particular view of the resistance. For the resistance, in Camus' experience, was a moving instance of the alliance of morality and politics, the mind and the sword. Camus frequently implies that the resistance was not a means to an end, but a desirable end in itself, and here again he differs profoundly from Sartre. Sartre saw in the typical experiences of the resistance certain ontological truths made concrete, but he did not conceive of the resistance as either a moral or a political exemplar. The resister who is captured and interrogated by the Gestapo is the authentic Sartrean hero. To him is revealed the essence of freedom : 'cette responsabilité totale dans la solitude totale'.24 But politically, the resistance was a freak, not a model. In his writings on the resistance Sartre combines deep respect with an honest scepticism. He acknowledges that 'la Resistance n'6tait qu'une solution individuelle, et nous 1'avons toujours su'.25 1'here was something shadowy and unreal about resistance activity. It had, above all, a 'symbolic' value. The resister was free to act, but was never free to choose the meaning of his acts: this meaning was provided by a general context of which he was usually ignorant. He could blow up a train, but could not know what significance this act would assume beyond the actual explosion. Sartre's picture here of resistance activity is confirmed by others. Emmanuel d'Astier, one of the most prominent resistance leaders, liked to compare his own position to that of a ship's captain forced to navigate from the darkness of the engine room, groping his way, guided only by the roll of the ship.26 It was a 22 ibid., pp. 19-20. 23 Ibid., p. 28. 24 'La République du silence', p. 13. 25 'Paris sous l'occupation', Situaltoits III, p. 30. 26 D'Astier's book Septfois septjours, Union générale d'éditions (10/18), Paris, 1961 provides the fullest and profoundest account of the resistance experience. 210206 situation not only of darkness but of ambiguity. Sartre cites the not uncommon dilemma of the French peasant under the occupation. The more industriously he cultivates his land, the more of his produce will find its way, not only to the local maquis, but to Germany. To Camus' claim that 'la grandeur de cette epoque... c'est que le choix y est devenu pUr',27 Sartre replies: 'Chacun de nos actes etait ambigu.... Le mal etait partout, tout choix etait mauvais, et pourtant il fallait choisir'.28 For Camus, however, the resistance was valuable precisely because it reduced, or raised, politics to the level of personal relationships. Furthermore, the necessarily negative emphasis of resistance activity appealed strongly to the man whose hero-the rebel-is initially defined in terms of a refusal. Which of these views of the resistance had the greater validity ? Camus, as so often, is open to charges of unreality and utopianism. The specific conditions which gave rise to the resistance were probably unique. To many of the most active resisters, the movement's heterogeneous quality promised not a new politics infused with a new morality, but a rapid return to the fragmentation and impotence of the old politics. Nor were the members of the resistance all unambiguously on the same side of the ideological fence. From them emerged not only a revitalized left, but a nationalistic and crypto-Fascist right. Merleau- Ponty's cal'eat is certainly applicable to Camus: 1'experience de la resistance, en faisant croire que la politique est un rapport d'homme a homme, ou de conscience a conscience, favorise nos illusions de 1939 et masque les v6rit6s que l'occupation nous enseignait par ailleurs, c'est-a-dire, l'incroyable puissance de 1'histoire.29 But Camus is immune to a more serious charge. The great defect of Sartre's position is that it is morally neutral. The notion of 'authenticity', which is the closest Sartre gets to defining a positive value, is in a sense evasive. It is true that, under the occupation, freedom was real because without illusions. It is true that the consequence of this genuine freedom is the power to make a genuine choice. It is also true, in a literal sense, that in the resistance every choice one made, every use one made of one's freedom, certainly involved all one's fellow resisters and either compromised or reinforced their freedom. Key Sartrean concepts were as if proved day by day. But although Sartre thus provides a kind of ontological gloss on the heroism of the resistance, he doesn't really explain its motivation. Pushed to extremes, his theory that freedom, in its authentic form, lies in resistance to its negation leads to some dubious conclusions. Not only does oppression become a virtual precondition of freedom, but freedom itself is deprived of any moral or ethical direction. Would collaborators, awaiting execution by maquisards, or languishing in jail after the Liberation, be fulfilling the demands of Sartrean authenticity ? Despite Sartre's own unhesitating and admirable adherence to the resistance cause, there is, strictly speaking, nothing in his writings which asserts the innate preferability of one side over the other. 27 Actuelles 1944-1948, p. 58. 28 'Paris sous l'occupation', p. 37. 29 'La guerre a eu lieu', art. cit., p. 64. 211207 Sartre's existentialism, already deeply anti-Cartesian in its emphasis, drew closer to Marxism once the war had laid bare the inadequacies of the prevailing philosophical tradition. He, with Merleau-Ponty, was rejecting one essentially value-free system in favour of another. Intellectually coherent, his position remained morally ambiguous. Camus, on the other hand, was led by his wartime experience to add to the concept of the absurd the concept of revolt. From an exploration of the known and possible consequences of extreme moral relativism, he arrived at the assertion of certain moral imperatives. IV The resistance was made up of a number of politically diverse groups. Conduct and aims could differ substantially from one to the other. Although, at the level of the rank and file, adherence to a particular movement was seldom governed by anything more than chance and opportunity, the leadership of the various movements and the editorial boards of the clandestine newspapers they produced did represent fairly specific political allegiances. Sartre, after the abortive attempt to organize a movement of like-minded Left bank intellectuals called Socialisme et lzberté, worked closely with the Front National, which was largely dominated by the Communists. Camus involved himself in the Combat movement. Combat was perhaps the most Gaullist of the larger groupings. It was involved in periodic conflicts with the Communists, which became more acute as the Liberation drew near. Claude Bourdet, one of its leaders, has described how the Communists, in 1944, were manoeuvring themselves into the top positions of important organizations like the C.N.R. (Con.seil national de la risistance) and C.O.1'v1.A.C. (Comité d'actioll militaire), forcing out members of Combat and other non-Communist groups.30 It is quite possible that Camus' distrust of the Communists and Sartre's desire for a rapprochement with them were encouraged by the specific experience in which the two men were involved as a result of being connected with particular branches of the resistance. But perhaps more significant, both in respect of Camus' development and on its own account, is the fact that Combat, insofar as it was based on any coherent intellectual tendency, drew many of its leaders from the ranks of progressive Catholics: men like P-H. Teitgen, Francis de mention, Georges Bidault, later to become prominent as members of the 1\,I.R.P. Emmanuel Mourner was, rightly or wrongly, assumed by the Vichy authorities to be the intellectual inspiration behind the movement. It is likely that Camus acquired his respect for and interest in progressive Catholic thought (for example that of Mounter) in the course of working within the Combat organization. This respect, which went deep, was one of the more striking changes in Camus' intellectual outlook to be effected by his wartime experiences. Previously his atheism had been of the agressive kind-as perhaps reflected in the famous scene in L'Etranger between Meursault and the priest. 30 'La politique intéricure de la résistance', Les Temps Atodernes, t. 10, nos. 112—13, May-June 1955, pp. 1837-62. 31 For a summary of Mourner's wartime experience, see Roy Pierce, Contemporary French Political Thouglit, O.U.P., London, 1966, pp. 40-41. 212208 His atheism remained, but no longer precluded considerable admiration for certain Catholic intellectuals and for the behaviour of individual French Catholics. After recounting the story of a German priest who had aided and abetted the Gestapo in the recapture of a French boy, he quotes the reaction of a French priest: 'J'ai honte pour cet homme, et je suis content de penser que pas un pretrc fran~ais n'aurait accept6 de mettre son Dieu au service du meurtre', and concludes, unhesitatingly and possibly wrongly: 'Cela etait vrai'.32 There were to be other indications of a new open-mindedness. Having supported the death penalty for certain collaborators and thereby involved himself in a fierce polemic with Mauriac, Camus was to admit, in 1948, that he had been wrong and Mauriac right.33 In the post-war era, while Sartre was intent on a dialogue with the Communists, Camus showed interest in a dialogue with the Catholics. To provide a more comprehensive picture of the historical sources of post-war intellectual currents in France, certain points should be mentioned concerning the role of Catholics—laity and priesthood-in the opposing camps of resistance and collaboration and the impact of the war on Catholic thought. Catholicism, like Communism, is an orthodoxy liable to be embarrassed by events. The occupation put on the Catholic church and Catholic belief strains which were perhaps even more intolerable than those imposed on official Marxism by the Nazi-Soviet Pact. A clean split appeared between the state Catholicism and Petainist religiosity of Vichy, the Paneloux-like reduction of the defeat to a punishment inflicted by God, and the Catholicism of men like Mauriac and Bernanos who were vigorously committed to the resistance cause. True, the Spanish Civil War and the Papal ban on the Action Franfaise had already, in the nineteen-thirties, imposed severe strains. It took the occupation to bring these to breaking point. One is entitled to scepticism concerning Maritain's sweeping claim that: 'C'est chez les catholiques que 1'esprit de resistance est le plus decide et le plus efficace, la gestapo le sait bien'.34 But Catholic participation in the resistance was considerable, even though, like Communist participation in the early stages, it was brought about rather more by the dictates of individual conscience than by encouragement from above. This participation not only impressed non-Christians like Camus, but induced, in Catholics themselves, a reciprocal respect for the atheists and Communists with whom they found themselves working. Social catholicism was given a powerful boost: its most obvious product-the worker-priest movement- owed much to the links forged in the resistance between priests and Communist militants. The most striking aspect of Merleau-Ponty's reaction to the war was the ambiguity stemming from his rejection of an already defeated philosophical tradition. At the level of practical politics, this ambiguity extends to the resistance as a whole. The resistance was never able to make up its mind whether its political aims were restorative or revolutionary. To fight against totalitarianism implies, at the very least, a struggle on behalf of democracy. But democracy 32 Lettres à un ami allemand, p. 47. 33 Actuelles 1944-1948, pp. 212—13. 34 Op. cit., pp. 92-3. 213209 as represented by the Third Republic was thoroughly discredited. A survey of the clandestine press reveals that the anger of the French was directed not only, perhaps not even mainly, at the Nazi invader, but at their own political leaders. The remarkable fact about French history between 194o and 1944 is that virtually every party involved had in common one thing : contempt for the Third Republic. This was true of the non-Communist, Communist and nationalistic wings of the resistance, Petain and the Vichy regime, Laval, the Paris group of collaborators, de Gaulle and the Free French, and the Germans. It was also true of the Catholics, the more so in view of their lasting and traditional suspicion of the Third Republic. As his remarks quoted earlier suggest, Maritain was no friend of the 'lay Republic', and was bound to greet its demise with mixed feelings, the regret of the Frenchman vying with the satisfaction of the Catholic philosopher. When he says that the defeat brings with it 'une exigence de purification morale et de redressement'35 he could almost be echoing Petain. But he is careful to direct his criticisms at the inadequacies of French leaders rather than at the people as a whole. It was at the top that Descartes' influence had been most pernicious. Those who had signed the Armistice had proved themselves to be 'suprêmement raisonnables'.36 But while Maritain is highly critical of the Armistice and angry at Petain's hypocrisy in claiming that the terms were honourable, his attitude to the internal policies of the Vichy regime-the so-called Révolution nationale-is ambivalent: 'Dans le domaine de politique int6rieure, le gouvernement de Vichy s'est efforc6 sincèrement de relever par des mesures legislatives une moralite publique que ses propres decisions en matiere de politique generale etaient propres a deprimer et ruiner du dedans'.37 The superficially Christian and revivalist overtones of trafapa ( Trauail, Famille, Patrie) proved seductive : 'Les efforts pour venir en aide a la famille, restaurer le sens de la dignit6 du travail et du devouement a l'interet commun, repondent a une necessite premiere'.38 Maritain is of course writing in t g4o and early 1941, before Laval had come to dominate the policies of Vichy, at a time when it was possible, with an effort, to see Vichy as a means of warding off the worst effects of the occupation. Trafapa did not yet mean 'Travail force, famille brisee, patrie vendue'. Later, Maritain threw in his hopes with de Gaulle; initially he had been able to see Petain and de Gaulle as filling complementary roles in the struggle for France. The spectacle of the resistance induced reassessments on Maritain's part. Vichy had had its attractions because of the promise it held out of moral regeneration and religious revival. Writing on the eve of the Liberation, Maritain formulates his vision of an ideal society in rather different terms. Before the war, democracy had seemed doubly suspect: it had divorced itself from the teachings of the Gospel; and it incarnated the 'eudemonic' at the expense of the 'heroic' principle. But he now claims that democracy 'n'est pas autre chose que le nom profane de 1'ideal de chr6tient6'.39 Maritain had been pushed in the direction of social catholicism. Always appalled by the materialism and obsessive individualism of the French bour- 35 Ibid., p. 44. 36 Ibid., p. 74. 37 Ibid., pp. 87-88. 38 Ibid., p. 88. 39 A traters la victoire, Egloff, Paris, 1945, p. 67. 214210 geoisie, and, like Mauriac, confirmed in these feelings by their scarcely admirable war record,40 Maritain translates his beliefs into support for the type of economic and social democracy proposed by the famous programme of the C.N.R. Not just Christian, but socialist principles are needed to guarantee the viability of democracy: 'Cc qui est requis, ce sont des changements en profondeur dans la structure sociale des nations et dans la structure du monde, c'est 1'avenement d'un regime de democratie industrielle, decopropriete etd'economieorganique'.41 Maritain affords one of the more striking examples of a modification in Catholic attitudes induced by the war years, moving from grudging approval of certain policies of Vichy to the acceptance of a social philosophy evolved in the predominantly left-wing and working-class ranks of the resistance.42 The desire for dialogue is the most obvious feature of refurbished progressive Catholicism in the post-war era. For Maritain, as for Mounier, the very ambiguity and heterogeneity of the resistance had helped provide a unique opportunity for the resolution of ancient disputes: 'La resistance francaise a ete l'occasion d'un rapprochement d'une importance extraordinaire, ou les hommes de la Revolution Fran~aise et les hommes de la foi et de 1'esp6rance chretiennes se sont reconnus'.43 The writings of Maritain, the clandestine and post-war issues of Esprit, show, as do the early numbers of Les Temps Modernes and Combat, the one undeniably positive effect of the war years on French intellectual life: the widespread welcoming of dialogue with former adversaries, the desire to pursue, in the field of thought, the fruitful relationships of the resistance. But the intellectual alliances of the resistance found it difficult to survive its disintegration as a distinctive political force. Mounier, Maritain and other Catholics might investigate possible common ground with Marxism and socialism; Sartre might try to form a political grouping distinct from the Communists but friendly to them; Camus might attempt to preserve his paper's independence as an authentic voice of resistance eclecticism. But in the end the only tangible survivors were a monolithic Communist party and an l\1.R.P. which was in effect a monolithic anti-Communist party. As Emmanuel d'Astier said in 1946 of the hopes raised by the resistance experience: 'La montagne a accouch6 d'une souris'.44 , V The directions taken by the central intellectual currents of post-war France were largely determined under the extreme and shifting pressures of the German occupation. The rapprochement of existentialism with a refurbished Marxism, the parallel but divergent movement towards the notion of revolt, and the 40 See Mauriac's wartime pamphlet Le Cahier Noir, Les cahiers du silence, London, 1943. 41 A travers la victoire, p. 25. 42 A similar development can be noted in the case of Emmanuel Mounter. Before becoming involved with the Combat movement, Mounier, long a critic of the Third Republic, thought at first that the philosophy of the Esprit group could find some common ground with the ideology of the Rivolution nationale. After the war, Mounier went further than almost any Catholic intel- (ectual in the direction of a safiprochement with Marxism. 43 A travers la victoire, p. 59. 44 Op. cit., p. 177. 215211 emergence of a socially conscious and even niarcisant strand of Catholic thought were perhaps the most important of these currents. But the war, the occupation, and particularly the resistance encouraged in almost all intellectuals involved in them a number of attitudes which transcend their expresses differences. For four years, words had assumed an enormous and untypical importance. 'Il ne restait de ce pays que son langage',45 as Aragon puts it. In the beginning, the resistance was the word. Deprived of arms, leadership, or organizational coherence, the movement's initial function was the dissemination of the word. The first task was to counter Vichy propaganda and instil hope and revolt in the population. For four years, de Gaulle relied exclusively on the spoken word, on his disembodied voice, to establish himself among his countrymen. In France itself, the back room printing press, not the gun, was the aptest symbol of the resistance. For every man involved in direct action, literally hundreds were busy with the preparation of clandestine newspapers, pamphlets, and roneoed sheets. There can rarely have been a more moving tribute paid by politics to the power of the word than the instruction which appeared on the front page of so many clandestine sheets: 'Do not destroy. Read, copy and pass on'. Intellectuals, in such a situation, find their verbal proficiency in great demand. Not only in journalism, but in creative literature, their voice was more than listened to, it was listened for. Through the pages of Les Lettres frat/çaist's clandestines or of the publications of the Editions de Minllit, they found an audience and their countrymen found spokesmen. So great a sense of communion was fostered that, on occasion, the reader would himself participate in creation. Aragon's poems would arrive back at their source changed and heightened by popular usage. He writes of his poem 'Legende de Gabriel Peri' : mais d6ja la tradition orale avait porte jusqu' a l'auteur moins de deux ans apr~s la mort du martyr cette version deformee par qui nait une legende aujourd'hui comme au temps de la Chanson de Roland, des Troubadours, et des poemes transmis de bouche en boliche A travers une France alors comme aujourd' hui d6vast6e et livree aux soudards et aux chimeres.46 Literature, whether journalistic or imaginative, acquires special significance when it is smuggled, learnt by heart, or even, as was the case with Mauriac's Le Cahier ~Voir, dropped from the skies by parachute. The 'republic of letters' had become, in a real sense, the surrogate of the political republic. But, with the Liberation, this privileged and moving status was necessarily weakened. The editorial office, which, in conditions of clandestinity, was the nerve centre of the spirit of resistance, became, once restored to legality, oddly une.iciting, a relic of a sense of purpose and fraternity difficult to recreate. The practitioner of the word, unless he channelled this wider allegiance into a narrow political discipline or succumbed to that 'nationalization' of literature of which Sartre was to complain, became once more a mandarin. 45 'O mare sur la terre au soir de mon pays', preface to La Diane Française, Seghers, Paris, 1946, p. 7. 46 Note to 'Légende de Gabriel Péri', ibid., p. 55. 216212 The ideal of commitment, which received such currency in the immediate post-war era, should be seen not only as a new departure, but as a form of nostalgia. Lasting philosophical, moral, and political lessons could be drawn by intellectuals from their wartime experiences; but, these experiences at an end, the hardest lesson to swallow was that they had forfeited much of their privileged status.</meta-value>
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<back><notes> 
         <p>1 Notes pour <italic>comprendre</italic>
 le <italic>siècle,</italic>
 Gallimard, Paris, 1941, p. 171.</p>  
         <p>2 <italic>Ibid.,</italic>
 p. 172.</p>  
         <p>3 A <italic>travers</italic>
 le <italic> désastre,</italic>
 Editions de la Maison Française, New York, 1941 , p. 54.</p>  
         <p>4 Ibid., p. 119.</p>  
         <p>5 Ibid., pp. 31-32.</p>  
         <p>6 'La guerre a eu lieu', Les Temps <italic>Modernes,</italic>
 t. 1, no. 1, Oct. 1945, p. 49.</p>  
         <p><sup>7</sup>
 Ibid., pp. 56-57.</p>  
         <p><sup>8</sup>
 Ibid., p. 51.</p>  
         <p><sup>9</sup>
 Ibid., p. 57.</p>  
         <p>10 <italic>Les</italic>
 Temps Modernes, t. i, no. 1, Oct. 1945, p. 63.</p>  
         <p>11 Ibid., p. 65.</p>  
         <p>12 A summary of it appears in fact in the recent bibliographical study by M. Contet and M. Rybalka, Les <italic>écrits</italic>
 de Sartre, Gallimard, Paris, 1970, pp. 110-111. There is a footnote con firming that the author is Merleau-Ponty.</p>  
         <p>13 Ibid., p. 110</p>  
         <p>14 'La guerre a eu lieu', art. <italic>ctt.,</italic>
 p. 60.</p>  
         <p>15 Ibid., p. 61.</p>  
         <p>16 Ibid., p. 60.</p>  
         <p>17 'La République du silence', <italic> Sititatiotis</italic>
 III, Gallimard, Paris, 1949, p. 11.</p>  
         <p>18 La Condition <italic>hiiinaitie, Romatis,</italic>
 Gallimard, Editions de la Pléiade, Paris, 1947, p. 281.</p>  
         <p>19 'Qu'est-ce qu'un collaborateur?', <italic>Situatioru</italic>
 III, p. 52.</p>  
         <p>20 Situations III, p. 54.</p>  
         <p>21 Lettres d un ami allemand, Gallimard, Paris, 1948, pp. 23-24.</p>  
         <p>22 ibid., pp. 19-20.</p>  
         <p>23 <italic>Ibid.,</italic>
 p. 28.</p>  
         <p>24 'La République du silence', p. 13.</p>  
         <p>25 'Paris sous l'occupation', <italic>Situaltoits</italic>
 III, p. 30.</p>  
         <p>26 D'Astier's book <italic>Septfois septjours,</italic>
 Union générale d'éditions (10/18), Paris, 1961 provides the fullest and profoundest account of the resistance experience.</p>  
         <p>27 Actuelles 1944-1948, p. 58.</p>  
         <p>28 'Paris sous l'occupation', p. 37.</p>  
         <p>29 'La guerre a eu lieu', art. cit., p. 64.</p>  
         <p>30 'La politique intéricure de la résistance', <italic>Les</italic>
 Temps <italic>Atodernes,</italic>
 t. 10, nos. 112—13, May-June 1955, pp. 1837-62.</p>  
         <p>31 For a summary of Mourner's wartime experience, see Roy Pierce, <italic>Contemporary French</italic>
 Political <italic> Thouglit,</italic>
 O.U.P., London, 1966, pp. 40-41.</p>  
         <p>32 Lettres <italic>à</italic>
 un ami allemand, p. 47.</p>  
         <p>33 <bold>Actuelles</bold> 
            <italic>1944-1948,</italic>
 pp. 212—13.</p>  
         <p><sup>34</sup> 
            <italic>Op. cit.,</italic>
 pp. 92-3.</p>  
         <p>35 <italic>Ibid.,</italic>
 p. 44.</p>  
         <p>36 <italic>Ibid.,</italic>
 p. 74.</p>  
         <p>37 Ibid., pp. 87-88.</p>  
         <p>38 <italic>Ibid.,</italic>
 p. 88.</p>  
         <p>39 <italic>A traters la victoire,</italic>
 Egloff, Paris, 1945, p. 67.</p>  
         <p>40 See Mauriac's wartime pamphlet Le Cahier Noir, Les cahiers du silence, London, 1943.</p>  
         <p>41 A travers la <italic>victoire,</italic>
 p. 25.</p>  
         <p>42 A similar development can be noted in the case of Emmanuel Mounter. Before becoming involved with the Combat movement, Mounier, long a critic of the Third Republic, thought at first that the philosophy of the Esprit group could find some common ground with the ideology of the <italic>Rivolution nationale.</italic>
 After the war, Mounier went further than almost any Catholic intel- (ectual in the direction of a <italic>safiprochement</italic>
 with Marxism.</p>  
         <p>43 A <italic>travers</italic>
 la <italic> victoire,</italic>
 p. 59.</p>  
         <p>44 Op. <italic>cit.,</italic>
 p. 177.</p>  
         <p><sup>45</sup>
 'O mare sur la terre au soir de mon pays', preface to La Diane <italic>Française,</italic>
 Seghers, Paris, 1946, p. 7.</p>  
         <p>46 Note to 'Légende de Gabriel Péri', ibid., p. 55.</p>  
      </notes>
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