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Bergson's Philosophy and French Political Doctrines: Sorel, Maurras, Péguy and de Gaulle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ellen Kennedy
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Extract

BEFORE THE FIRST WORLD WAR HENRI BERGSON HAD PUBlished three major works, but nothing exclusively or even primarily concerned with social and political issues. Nevertheless, Bergson's philosophy was thought to have a political meaning that could be deduced from its principles. Despite their different, even contradictory, conclusions about it, Bergson's philosophy influenced several leading figures in France – Georges Sorel, Charles Péguy, Charles Maurras and Charles de Gaulle – and through them the course of French history. Significantly, Bergson's philosophical arguments interested them more than his relatively minor, but concrete, statements about contemporary politics. Bergson's mature thought on moral and political life was shaped principally by the First world War: Les Deux sources de la moral et de la religion appeared after Sorel and Péguy were dead and when Maurras and the Action Franqaise no longer figured so prominently in French politics. Even de Gaulle, who came to prominence much later than the others and who really belongs more to the second half of the century than they do, appears to have taken no interest in Les Deux sources. Rather, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience and L'Évolution créatrice in which Bergson states his critique of ‘conceptual thinking’ and his theories of consciousness and biological evolution, comprise ‘Bergsonism’ in politics – not Bergson's own politics. These ironically find no consistent representation in the movements or political theories discussed below. The difference between what Bergson stood for and favoured in politics and what others thought his philosophy implied for politics is most striking and points to the difficulties inherent in taking practical advice from metaphysical arguments. There are, then, two problems surrounding Bergson's influence in France, one of which has already been alluded to and will be discussed at some length. The other is much more diffuse, but defines Bergson's political reputation today.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1980 , pp. 75 - 91
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1980

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References

1 These are: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Paris, 1889; Matière et Mémoire, Paris, 1896; L'Évolution créatrice, Paris, 1907; Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion, did not appear until 1932, in Paris. All quotations are from Henri Bergson, Oeuvres, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1963. Hereafter, O.

2 Bergson, Henri, ‘Lettre sur le Jury de Cour d’Assise’, Le Temps, 15 10 1913 , p. 4;Google Scholar ‘La Spécialité: discours de distribution des Prix à Angers’, Journal de Maine‐et‐Loire, no. 182, 4 August 1882, p. 264; ‘La Politesse’, prize giving of 30 July 1885, Lycée de Clermont‐Ferrand, Le Moniteur du Puy‐de‐Dôme, 5 August 1885, and a revised version read at the prize giving of 30 July 1892, Lycée Henri‐IV. The texts of each are reprinted in Henri Bergson, Mélanges, André Robinet (ed.), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1972. Hereafter, M.

3 Curtis, Michael, Three Against the Third Republic: Barrès, Maurras and Sorel, Princeton, 1959, p. 75.Google Scholar

4 Sabine, George, A History of Political Theory (3rd edition), New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961.Google Scholar

5 Benda, Julien, La Trahison des Clercs, Les Cahiers verts, ser. 2, no. 6, 1927. English translation, The Treason of the Intellectuals, New York, Norton, 1969.Google Scholar

6 Horowitz, Irving, Radicalism and The Revolt Against Reason: Social Theories of Georges Sorel, London, 1961; Pierre Andreu, Notre Maître, M. Sorel, Paris, Grasset, 1953, esp. ch. VI, ‘Sorel, Bergson et William James’. Cf., David Beetham, ‘Sorel and the Left’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer, 1969, pp. 308–23.Google Scholar James Jay Hamilton, ‘Georges Sorel and the Inconsistencies of a Bergsonian Marxism’, Political Theory, August 1973, pp. 329–40.

7 Georges Sorel, ‘Letter to Daniel Halévy’, in Reflections on Violence, translated by Hulme, T. E., New York, 1972.Google Scholar Sorel writes: ‘You will remember what Bergson has written about the impersonal, the socialized, the ready‐made, all of which contains a lesson for students who need knowledge for practical life. A student has more confidence in the formulas which he is taught, and consequently retains them more easily, when he believes they are accepted by the great majority; in this way all metaphysical preoccupations are removed from his mind and he is to feel no need for a personal conception of things; he often comes to look on the absence of any inventive spirit as a superiority.’Reflections, p. 28.

8 ‘Interview par Jacques Morland’, L'Opinion, Journal de la Semaine, 19 August 1911, reprinted in Mélanges, pp. 939–44. This quotation is on p. 940, M.

9 Quoted by Andreu, Notre Maître, M. Sorel, p. 239–40.

10 M, p. 940.

11 M, p. 971, ‘Bergson à G. Maire’, Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon, II, March–April, 1912.

12 Sorel, Reflections, p. 167.

13 See Edward Shils’s introduction to the Reflections on Violence, p. 17 and Sorel’s text, p. 167.

14 I am indebted to Swart's, K. W. brilliant study, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth Century France, The Hague, 1964,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for much of the following.

15 On Barrès, see Curtis, op. cit., and Thibaudet, A., La Vie de Maurice Barrès, Paris, Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Françhise, 1921.Google Scholar

16 See Weber, Eugen, Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in French Politics, Stanford, 1962.Google Scholar

17 Bordeaux, Henry, Charles Maurras et l'Action Françhise, Paris, 1955, quoted by Curtis, op, cit., p. 61.Google Scholar

18 Weber confirms the importance of Le Romantisme français in Action Française, pp. 78–79. Lasserre’s article appeared in Action Françhise, no. 6, 08 and 09 1910. Cf, Lasserre's attacks on Bergson in ‘Que nous vent Bergson?’, L'Action Française, Vol.6, no. 173, 22 06 1913 ; ‘Le Destin de Bergson’, Nouvelles Littéaires, no. 294, 2 06 1928 ; and, Faust en France et autres études, Paris, 1929.Google Scholar

19 Pierre Lasserre, Le Romantisme français: essai sur la révolution dans les sentiments et dans les idées au xixe siècle, 2nd edition, Paris, 1907. A discussion of the place of romanticism and classicism in the political doctrine of the Action Française would take us too far afield, and Lasserre's argument should not be taken as identical with Maurras's or the Action Française's politics. However, they are related. Le Romantisme Français asserts that, beginning with Rousseau, a fatal strand of romanticism was introduced into French literature and political life which has corrupted the true, classical spirit of France. In the 19th century, this romatic tendency was spread through the influence of German ideas in literature and philosophy. Since the French Revolution of 1789, Lasserre argues, ‘le messianisme romantique’ has waxed in strength and power through its doctrine of progress and reason. Romanticism, he writes, ‘appeler le desordre Liberté, la confusion Génie, l’instinct Raison, l'anarchie Énergie. II est la désorganisation enthousiaste de la nature humaine civilisée', pp. 17–18. Lasserre uses organic metaphors throughout Le Romantisme Français, comparing French society to a sick body infested with foreign ideas. See, for example, Lasserre's comparison of Rousseau's ‘morbid’ introspection in Emile with ‘une odeur de cadavre’, (p. 70). These attacks on Rousseau and the French Revolution are compatible with Maurras's and Barrés's views, and Lasserre's appelation of Rousseau's work as ‘le Romantisme intégral’ has a familiar parallel in the Action Française search for ‘un Nationalisme intégral’. Cf., Charles Maurras, Anthinéa, Paris, Champion, 1919.

20 Lasserre, ‘'La Philosophie de M. Bergson’, Action Française, 1910, p. 169. My translation.

21 Ibid, p. 170.

22 Maurras was himself a pagan. It is only one of the many paradoxes of the Action Française that it should have had monarchists and Catholics as its most fervent followers, while its leader wished to rule France himself and to replace ‘weak’ Christianity with a more heroic version. The Action Française rejected the ‘Religion of Progress’, but aligned it self with Social Darwinism and positivism. It claimed to be conservative, but called for the violent overthrow of the Republic. It called itself ‘Catholic Atheism’. It denounced Jews, not for their non‐Christian beliefs, but for their ‘German’ influence. It rejected the Sermon on the Mount and the whole of the Gospel as Semitic extravagances, but regarded the ‘Roman’ Church as the bearer of true classical values and its organizational model.

23 The condemnation of the Action Française is a fascinating case of ecclesiastical politics. Although the Holy Office decreed the movement, and Maurras's books, anathema on 29 January 1914, the order was not published until 29 December 1926. Pius X had ordered the Sacred Congregation of the Index to consider Maurras and the Action Française in full and to report to him; this was done in January 1914, but the Pope reserved the decision to publish the condemnation to himself. After the war there was fresh enthusiasm for the Action Française especially among young people in France and Belgium (Maurras headed a poll of ‘the most admired men of the times’ in Cahiers de la Jeunesse Catholique). On 25 August 1926, Cardinal Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux, replied in the Semaine Religieuse to a question from young men asking whether they could join the Action Française. He began by saying that they were free to hold whatever opinions in political matters they liked, but then denounced the Action Française without qualification. It teaches ‘atheism, agnosticism, anti‐Christianity, anti‐Catholicism and amoralism for the individual and society’., which will bring back paganism. ‘You must turn away from them.’ On 9 September, the Pope added his condemnation to that of Andrieu, and this was followed by other statements. The Action Française replied with its famous editorial ‘Non possumus’, and the Final Decree of the Index Acta apostolica Sedis was given on 5 January 1927. See, Leo Ward, The Condemnation of the Action Française, London, 1927 and Dennis Gwynn, The ‘Action Française’ Condemnation, London, 1928. Both are written from the Papal point of view. See also Pourquoi Rome a parlé, Paris, 1927, a collection of essays supporting the Church, with the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. Among the contributors is Jacques Maritain.

24 Swart, op. cit., pp. 183–84. Cf. Ranchetti, , The Catholic Modernists: A study of the Religious Reform Movement, Oxford, 1969, and Pilkington's, A. J. Michel, lucid discussion in Bergson and his Influence: A reassessment, Cambridge, 1976.Google Scholar

25 Quoted by Swart, op. cit., p. 206. From Péguy, Notre Jeunesse, (1910), in the Oeuvres en Prose, 1909–14, Paris, 1957, pp. 518–23.

26 Cf., Georges Bernanos, La Grande Peur des Bien‐Pensants, Paris, 1931; René Groos, Enquěte sur le Problème Juif, Paris, n. d. (sometime in the 1920s). For an example of pre‐war anti‐Semitism, see, Léon Daudet, L'Avant‐Guerre: Etudes et documents sur l'espionage juif‐allemand en France depuis l'Affaire Dreyfus, Paris, 1914. This literature is enormous, ranging in tone from anti‐Semitic handbooks such as the Indicateur des Juifs, avec leurs Noms, Adresses, Professions, Etats‐Civil et Actes d'Association, Lyon, 1898 (price 60 centimes) to Bernanos's sophisticated La Grande Peur. Anti‐Semitism in France is characteristically associated with anti‐Masonism and anti‐Revolutionary feeling. It is strongly religious and national in substance, unlike its German counterpart, which emphasizes racial distinctions. Cf. Theodor Fritsch, Antisemiten‐Katechismus, 1887, and F. Keiter, Rassenbiologie und Rassenhygiene, 1941. I am grateful to the Wisner Library, London, for permission to examine their large holdings on French anti‐Semitism.

27 Cf. Petit, Jacques, Bernanos, Bloy, Claudel, Péguy: Quatre écrivains catholiques face à Israel, Paris, Calman‐Levy, 1972.Google Scholar

28 Quoted in Swart, op. cit., p. 212.

29 Dorothy Pickles notes that ‘General de Gaulle certainly attached importance to the terms of the 1958 Constitution and recommended it as a cure for France’s political ills. But he was never under the illusion that the medicine would prove effective unless administered by him. His own interpretation (or mythology) was an essential ingredient'. The Government and Politics of France, London, Methuen, 1972.

30 Réne Rémond has argued that the major difference between Gaullisme and the Action Française is that Maurras rejected plebicitary democracy as a nationalist form of government, while de Gaulle accepted it. His form of conservatism thus returns to that prevalent in France before the Boulanger débâcle. Rémond, La Droit en France: de la première Restauration à la Vème Republique, Paris, Aubier, 1963. Theodore Zeldin accepts Rémond's view that ‘the new forms of conservatism, like corporatism and nationalism, movements like the MRP (Mouvement républicain populaire), Poujadism and Gaullism can be linked with earlier conservative doctrines such as legitimism, Orleanism and Bonapartism’. France, 1848–1945: Ambition, Love and Politics, Vol. I, pp. 384–85, Oxford University Press, 1973.

31 When de Gaulle repudiated Vichy in 1940 and called on Frenchmen to resist, Edmond Michelet recalls that ‘No legitimacy ever appeared more blinding than his to us at that moment. That legitimacy called up for us the idea of a law founded on justice, honour and equity; a law infinitely superior to that which all the Vichy lawyers could teach us as being legality’. Michelet, Le Gaullisme passionante aventure, Paris, Fayard, 1962, quoted by Anthony Hartly Gaullism: The Rise and Fall of a Political Movement. London, Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1972.

32 Gaulle, Charles de, Le Fil de l'épée, 1932, translated as The Edge of the Sword, London, Faber, 1960, p. 27.Google Scholar All quotations are from the English translation.

33 Ibid, p. 30.

34 Ibid, p. 16; see also, pp. 19–20. The passage above includes a lengthy quotation from the Introduction to L'Évolution créatice.

35 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, authorized English translation by Arthur Mitchell, London, Macmillan, 1960, p. 144; L'Évolution créatrice, in Bergson, Oeuvres, p. 611. I have quoted the Mitchell translation. Compare this passage from Bergson with de Gaulle, Le Fil de l'ěpée, p. 29.

36 Charles de Gaulle, op. cit., p. 61.

37 Henri Bergson, Les Deux sources, O, p. 1214; English translation, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, R. A. Audra and C. H. Brereton, New York, Doubleday, p. 281.

38 O, pp. 1214–15; The Two Sources, p. 281.

39 O, p. 1215; The Two Sources, p. 282.