Among the Arabs, wijdân means a particularly rich and moving relationship between essence and existence (and vice versa). In recent periods of their history it has been interpreted as mass movements, emotional violence, and the impulse to change life. Is this but one aspect, one of several effects, or is it the substance of revolutions? Does the concept “to change life” have a value by itself, or is it only a symptom or corollary of more hidden movements which justify such an abstraction?

Etymologically thawra in arabic means “effervescence.” Moreover, it does not just partially include, but surpasses our understanding of revolutions. We have become accustomed to defining them as changes in class relationships. The exercise of a secret logic can be seen which would determine, in the end, the fortunes of production relationships. This is, at any rate, what Marxist doctrine maintained, until recent studies revealed more shades of meaning and completed it. This is not the place to take up in our turn the debate about genesis/structure, structure/superstructure, the predominant factor and its consequences or effects, or “superdetermination,” which is the contingency to use ruses.

I have given this essay the title: “The Genealogy of Avenging Spirits” after Nietzsche's treatise: “The Genealogy of Morals” (Zur Genealogie der Moral). In this book Nietzsche clarifies the origins and essence of Christian morality which constitutes the basis of European civilization. In a similar fashion I shall endeavor to point out the origins and essence of the concept of avenging spirits which seems to me to form the basis of Japanese civilization.

It may seem strange to talk about a concept of avenging spirits. Nevertheless Norinaga Motoori considered mono-noawaré (the melancholy quality of things) the essence of Japanese culture; Daisetsu Suzuki, who was influenced by Zen, related its essence to a conception of Nothingness; and Ruth Benedict related it to the concept of shame as opposed to that of crime. I do not feel that these different opinions which have preceded mine are erroneous, for they undoubtedly capture certain aspects of our culture; however I would venture to say that it is more profoundly influenced by the concept of avenging spirits.

The Fang, a conquering people, overran the southern Cameroons and northern Gabon during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their conquest followed a rather curious pattern: without a deliberated tribal organization, one family after another picked up and descended to the sea. Their conquering past has deeply influenced the Fang; they do not hesitate to appropriate new techniques and ideas, confident that they are strong enough to assimilate almost anything into their culture. Eager for innovations and change, the Fang are convinced that progress never rests, and they are not hindered by nostalgia which they feel is sterile and unjustified. It was natural for them to seek out Western civilization and try to assimilate it. As a result there was a massive conversion to Christianity among the Fang.

The title of this essay may look surprising, if not provocative. What connection is to be found between education and slogans? The latter, first and foremost, are part of the world of publicity and propaganda; they obey a concise, punch-packing formula which aims not to instruct, but to provoke action. The word slogan is furthermore distinctly pejorative. Well…?

Well, I shall raise two questions. First: does not education in effect make use of slogans, unintentionally? After all, the slogan is not confined to the area of publicity and propaganda; slogans existed before them, and they exist apart from them; they are a function of language. It is therefore justifiable to look for slogans where one least expects to find them, and where it is hardest to recognize them for what they are.

In seventeenth-century Germany art and reality stood in a contradictory relationship to one another, and this contradiction was a fruitful one: it contained, in an undeveloped and indistinct form, the paths that art was to take in the centuries that followed. From the point of view of the history of culture, it is important to feel the basic contradiction of this period, the pledge of the developments of the future, even though the period itself perhaps suffered from this contradiction. We ourselves will be helped in this direction—that is, towards the elucidation of the central contradiction of seventeenth-century art—by a few isolated comments and observations on the literary texts of the time.

All the way back to the cave paintings and the invention of the first stone tools, what moved men to create was an everyday impulse. But it was an impulse in the everyday of men, not of animals. Whether we search for the beginnings of creativity either in art or in science, we have to go to those faculties which are human and not animal faculties. Something happens on the tree of evolution between the big apes and ourselves which is bound up with the development of personality; and once our branch has sprung out, a painter like Santi Raphael and a chemist like Humphry Davy both lie furled in the human beginning like the leaves in the bud. What the painter and the inventor were doing, right back in the cave, was unfolding the gift of intelligent action.

Since the word “History” has its origins in the domain of inquiry, I call myself an historian to the extent to which I have tried to study voyages of discovery in a manner as personal as possible, and I have presented the results of my work in a number of books and articles. The short study which follows is not an attempt to recapitulate what has already been published. Rather, I have tried here to present a brief synthesis of my reflections on one of the themes which I have undertaken to outline.

In a sense, man gradually fashions his world out of the whole cloth of infinity, and creates his universe by discovering it. Now to discover is not just to bump into something and perhaps forget it. To discover is to rend the veil, to give form to what is discovered, to communicate it and to pass it on. Consequently, discovery requires navigation; some form of cartography; and, perhaps most important, poetry, in order to pass on its heritage in an unforgettable way. And discovery, since the time of Homer, has three dimensions: the earth, the known sea, and, surrounding this little island of land and sea, the infinite ocean, origin and tomb of the Gods.

Respect for language, as everyone acknowledges, is a constant of French culture. It is no less clear, however, that the appraisal of language and of its powers and the notion formed of its essential nature vary from epoch to epoch. Intense philosophical, scientific and literary preoccupation with language and the age-old problems it raises is undoubtedly one of the most significant characteristics of pre-romanticism. The traditional respect for language, manifest İn discussions of inversion and of the importance of signs in the formation of ideas, is gradually transformed, when these discussions have run their course, into a cult of language in general and of the word in particular. Indeed, by much insistence on the primordial importance of language in the act of knowledge, thinkers such as Locke and Condillac, and after them Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Rousseau, Garat, and many others, eventually endow the instrument of thought with an autonomy that thought itself, subjugated by matter, was in danger of losing. “ Ah! Monsieur “, exclaims Diderot, combien notre entendement est modifi・ par les signes.” Minds seem to pass, at this critical moment of European reflection, from a purely intellectual conception of language—which, moreover, the Grammaire de Port-Royal barely distinguished from logic—to a mythological conception of its principal functions.