Public Enemies (17 page)

This is something few people know, almost no one in our circle, probably with the exception of Fabrice Hadjadj,
^†
who works for
Art Press
these days, who must still remember his surprise when he came to the apartment I was living in at the time on the rue de la Convention and found bookshelves full of the Christian magazine
Magnificat
.

And then I chucked it in. I eventually chucked it in after one last derisory attempt to follow the preparation for adult baptism (this time in a parish in Montparnasse). You see, dear Bernard-Henri, what led me to tell you all this, what probably led me, as soon as I got your letter, to retrace my steps, to immerse myself in Pascal again, was probably your use of the word
advantage
.

Because it’s true that a world with no God, with no spirituality, with nothing, is enough to make anyone
freak out completely
. Because to believe in God, quite simply, as our ancestors did, to be embraced in the bosom of the Holy Mother Church affords certain advantages, though it does not afford
only
advantages. I know you don’t really like Péguy, but, even so: “May they come and fall asleep in your outstretched arms.” Or what about the man everyone always approves of (and rightly so), Baudelaire:

The only thing is, the only problem is, I still don’t believe in God.

You, apparently, do. And I should have known, because you’ve already said as much, though less explicitly in books, but I just pretended I hadn’t read them, which is nothing new for me when I have to deal with a believer: for as long as I can,
I turn a deaf ear
, because I have difficulty confronting the subject head-on; I feel somehow dazed (skeptical not only of God but of belief itself). This explains why, the next time we meet, I will probably look at you a little strangely. It is the look I use on such occasions; it’s not malicious, though it has seemed so sometimes. Nor is it envious (for one can only really envy in others something one believes one might have someday). It is a look of unease, of surprise. Because even if we are both rather contemptible individuals, as I said when we began writing to each other, this is something that separates us. You have, in some undeserved way, received some sort of
grace
; right now I can’t think of any other word. Something
that allows you to take seriously these stories of
ruah
, of God’s breath, whereas all I can do in such circumstances is nod my head.

So, the philosophical questions you raise? If I am fundamentally atheist, that does not mean I am
materialist
, and here, too, it was Pascal who brought me down to earth, fragment 70, which is explicitly directed against Descartes (but which also reduces the ideas of Democritus or Epicurus to nothing):

“In general terms one must say ‘That is the result of figure and motion,’ because it is true, but to name them and assemble the machine is quite ridiculous. It is pointless, uncertain, and arduous. Even if it were true we do not think that the whole of philosophy would be worth an hour’s effort.”

Once this idea is firmly fixed in your mind, once you truly accept its radical premise, you realize that to explain the world is simply to describe it. To give the most precise, the most broad description. Define its entities without ever losing sight of the brilliant principle set out several centuries earlier by William of Ockham: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Define the relationships between these entities—usually, but not always, mathematical. Combine these mathematical relationships to create new relationships by direct proof. Test each of them, unfailingly, through experiment. Where experiment contradicts theory, one must resign oneself to changing the paradigm, to constructing new entities.

But never does one try to “assemble the machine”; one never questions what is
behind
the physical entities one has defined, that one can measure; whether it is matter or spirit or some other mental mishmash that man, on a whim, might
dream up. In short, we dismiss, permanently, all
metaphysical questions
.

Positivist from henceforth, we contemplate with a smile (a slightly disdainful smile, I grant) the various metaphysicists, materialists, and spiritualists who make up the belief market.

This attitude of disdain is, at heart, a modest position, a position of submission to the only, not exactly brilliant, principles that have never failed man in his search for truth: experiment and proof. Dull principles, which will never incite a revolution or an emotional attachment. For my sins, they are mine. “The truth is, perhaps, sad”; I think Monod is quoting Renan
^*
in his most famous, equally sad, book,
Chance and Necessity
.

So, playing Jerusalem against Athens? Not at all, I can’t, and I confess you worry me a little when you exclaim “any
truer
? (as if that were the question!).” Because, yes, that seems to me to be precisely the question, and the particular merit of Western philosophy is to have placed the question of truth center stage, sacrificed everything for it, going so far as to eventually consent to a form of suicide, reducing its own scope to that of an epistemological complement. It is Nietzsche, I think, that big subtle cat, who first recognized the dangers the sciences—having more or less killed off revealed truths—would have on philosophy itself. But it was he, consequently, who tried to taint the search for truth with suspicion. He thereby opened up in philosophy what might be called
the era of disloyalty
. Because what is philosophy if it relegates the search for truth to the background? We’re pretty much back to the sophists.

•    •    •

In animal societies, in the most evolved of animal societies (land and marine mammals, certain bird societies), a language appears, which makes it possible for members of the group to exchange information; in parallel an individual consciousness develops. The phenomenon is further developed in the primates, and in man. It is not abrupt, there is no difference in nature; it happens slowly, by degrees.

Or rather (because
ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
, it’s an approximate, classic expression, a
gimmick
): in the brain of the fetus, a number of nerve cells, once reached, form connections, create networks, begin to process the stimuli in its environment, limited at first to the womb. Very early on, images appear,
memories
are created.

And—classic defense mechanism—“we are only beginning to understand these phenomena.” It is true that they are among the most complex phenomena we are aware of, but that is not a license to abandon the general framework of the scientific method.

And consciousness will also appear, once they reach a certain stage of development, in machines, those entities made up of circuits, created by man; we need to prepare ourselves for that.

Consciousness, “the ghost in the machine,” as certain theoreticians of neurophysiology call it.

An evolutionary consciousness, obviously (new connections are formed every minute; new concepts, new memories; and the neurons themselves, contrary to what was long believed, can regenerate).

Of course this despiritualized conception is not without its consequences. In the first place, I absolutely reject the radical difference you establish between animal and man.
Between animal and man, to state it bluntly, it is the essential that is identical; the difference is of degree but in no case of nature.

In the second place, in some more obscure and more disagreeable sense, this is not unconnected with your (
political
)
commitment
and my own reservations. It’s painful for me to admit, when I think of my atheist, politically
committed
friends, but I’ve never really understood the root of their
commitment
, it has always seemed to me to have more to do with a Christian tradition than they themselves suspected. I am speaking from pure intuition here, but in all the Christian groups I tried in vain to belong to, one of the things I completely understood was their
commitment
. It was very clear: they had accepted the idea that, being sons of God, all men are brothers, and behaved accordingly. To me it did not (nor does it now) seem obvious. I have a certain compassion for the needy, but it is not really very different from my attitude to an animal caught in a trap; I simply try to open the jaws of the trap because I imagine the pain. And as for the notion of
human dignity
, I have to say I find it completely baffling.

For my part, I don’t feel any particular dignity in myself: people could hurt me or mistreat me; they could certainly break me; they could cause me permanent physical or psychological damage. I would complain about the suffering, the mistreatment; I would complain the same way an animal complains, not specifically as a man.

A
dyed-in-the-wool positivist
is a tiresome adversary; as tiresome as and perhaps more disagreeable than a
dyed-in-the-wool materialist
, because unlike the latter he will never oppose something head-on. The Viennese are subtle. A divine breath,
ruah
, a logical positivist will say, of course, of course, let’s agree to denote it “R,” could you set up a practical demonstration? How would you set about showing it? The
entity, the equation, the proof. And psychoanalysis (Popper versus Freud?) cannot be refuted and therefore does not belong to scientific knowledge.
Ite missa est
, to the positivist.

You may, if you like, the positivist would say, deal in metaphorical reconstructions. Man, at a certain stage, needs metaphors and legends. Matter itself was a necessary myth to put an end to God.

We work, the positivist would say, in a nonlegendary circle; a circle of claims that can be attested and refuted.

However many things—and however much of what matters—lie outside this circle. This circle, which will expand and consolidate its empire (there are many discoveries yet to be made about hormones, about neurotransmitters). But one thing remains inviolate in the expanding sphere of the natural sciences, which has to do with the kingdom of the intersubjective. Friendship, affection, love (this was your last objection and it is the only one that I accept). Love definitively articulated by Plato in unforgettable phrases. Love that one can generalize as
liking
, which would allow one to include the sincere astonishment that seized Schopenhauer, that honest philosopher, when he found himself in the presence of phenomena that contradicted his theories, an astonishment he sets down in his book: “It is surprising to see these people run to greet each other, though they have never met, just as though they were old friends.”
^*

This will probably not lead to a theory of the rights of man but may shed some light on the strange phenomenon of which I have an experimental knowledge, as a novelist, which is that people who are complete atheists and who are therefore convinced of their complete ontological solitude, of their absolute, irremediable mortality, still go on believing in love, or at least behave as though they believe.

And go on believing in moral law and go on behaving according to its tenets.

Dostoyevsky’s “If God does not exist, then everything is permitted,” though a priori convincing, proves experimentally to be false.

All in all, modern phenomena (since God is not long dead) but unquestionably interesting—and maybe it means revisiting Kant. Or studying a little sociology. At this point, I confess, I don’t know any more.

That’s the good thing about letters, when you don’t know any more, you pass the hot potato. It’s a sort of three-card monte for two.

That’s rich.

Apparently, you actually understood that I have what you call “faith.”

Dear Michel, not at all.

Of course, that’s not what it’s about.

It clearly can’t come down to that
for me either
.

In order to clear up the misunderstanding, I will also have to go back to my early years, first readings, first turmoils, primal family and school scenes, A to Z, all of which, like you, I’ve never spoken about before. But beyond “passing the hot potato” and the “three-card monte,” that’s the virtue of correspondence …

I come, as I think I’ve told you, from an atheist family, which had lost its Judaism.

It wasn’t the “French-Jewish” background of the bourgeois Jews from before the war.

Nor was it the “low-profile” approach of those great republicans who in the previous generations, at a time of peace, had believed that in order to survive you had not exactly to give up but pretend to give up your origins.

In other words, it had nothing to do with the famous “Marranism,” born at the time of the Inquisition, which consisted of giving off all the possible signs of “normality” to the exterior world when necessary, while remaining internally faithful to the lessons of the fathers.