¹ On the use of paradigms in political analysis, see Wolin, Sheldon S., “Paradigms and Political Theories,” in Paradigms and Revolutions: Appraisals and Applications of Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science, ed. Gutting, Gary (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1980), pp. 160–91Google Scholar. The term paradigm is used here in the sense given by Sheldon Wolin, namely, the beliefs of a society concerning its identity and duties.

² “Dans la définition wébérienne du capitalisme, l'appropriation des moyens de production est un trait secondaire: la caractéristique essentielle du capitalisme moderne, l'organisation rationnelle et bureaucratique, subsisterait quel que soit le régime de propriété des moyens de production et serait même renforce par une socialisation de l'economie” [emphasis added] Besnard, Philippe, Protestantisme et capitalisme: la controverse post-wébérienne (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970), p. 56.Google Scholar

³ President Ronald Reagan's remark that the USSR is a “focus of evil” is the exception that confirms the rule. As Jean-François Revel has shown in his book, Comment les démocraties finissent (Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle, 1983)Google Scholar, the absence of a moral dimension toward the USSR in Western diplomacy since the end of World War II is conspicuous. While in 1949 G.T. Robinson in Foreign Affairs still argued that piecemeal answers would not inspire men and women to sacrifice on behalf of their nation and pointed out that only a total conception of the good life could mobilize Americans to meet the communist challenge, President John F. Kennedy inaugurated an era in which “ideology was downgraded as an operative factor in foreign policy, to be replaced by efforts at functional cooperation” [emphasis added] (Carlson, Allan C., “Foreign Policy and the American Way,” This World, 5 [1983], 18–65).Google Scholar

If Hedley Bull is right to assert that “world order entails … something more fundamental and primordial … something morally prior to a [given] international order,” the conclusion is that we have drifted away from world order. See Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 21–22, 77, 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

That the emphasis on human rights might not be a remedy to the functional and, hence, amoral approach to foreign affairs has been shown by Gau-chet, Marcel in “Les Droits de l'homme ne sont pas une politique,” LeDébat 3(1980), 321.Google Scholar

⁴ What McDonnell, Kilian calls a “flight from secondary causality” in his John Calvin, the Church and the Eucharist (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar implies that no living or inert being carries sacredness within itself: “God acts directly, without agency” (p. 25)Google Scholar. In such a context the slightest lapse of faith leads directly to disenchantment, for the cosmos cannot possibly retain any measure of spirituality as soon as it appears severed from its “soul” to the unbelieving eye. In the void created by the absence of reverence for any object or being, management sets in. As Michael Walzer put it, “Calvinism was an attempt to turn the valiant knight into a conscientious officeholder” (The Revolution of the Saints [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965], p. 73Google Scholar). To be sure, the “conscientious officeholder” was not a manager; but the stage was ready for the transmogrification of the former into the latter when the efficacy of divine grace ceased to be felt. Obviously, the link between Protestant theology and management is fascinating. If human endeavors cannot promote the good by themselves (God being the sole source of the good), management becomes the only way to deal with nature and societies. Any other kind of involvement would open the door to all the evils contained within the human mind and the human will. Theories should also be devoid of values and expectations as management is. In the words of Max Weber, they should be axiologically neutral. Thus, to management at the practical level corresponds objectivity at the theoretical level. It is of no concern to the true political “scientist” whether societies are perverse or healthy and whether nations are friends or enemies. As observed by Eugene Miller, this quest for objectivity reached its apex in political science at the very moment when the natural sciences began to reject the possibility of objectivity in the description and analysis of nature (see “Positivism, Historicism and Political Inquiry,” American Political Science Review, 09 1972).Google Scholar

⁵ See Popper, Karl, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge, 1957).Google Scholar

⁶ Although in the form of a novel, Yourcenar, Marguerite's L'Oeuvre au noir (Paris: Gallimard, 1968)Google Scholar is perhaps the best introduction to this episode. The oscillation of the Protestant mind between a pessimistic “reform” which views human nature as corrupt (Calvin) and an optimistic “reform” which sees this same human nature as good (Rousseau) has been first analyzed by Seillére, Ernest in LePéril mystique dans l'inspiration des démocraties contemporaines: Rousseau, vi-sionnaire et révélateur (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1918)Google Scholar. Maritain, Jacques has amplified this analysis in This Réformateurs (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1925)Google Scholar. I have largely followed this analysis in my Rousseau et la dérive totalitaire (Lausanne: L'Age d'homme, 1984).Google Scholar

⁷ According to Karl Löwith, Max Weber was haunted all his life by the following question: “Wie lassen sich innerhalb dieser allmächtigen ‘Verapparatisierung’ überhaupt noch irgendwelche Reste einer in irgendeinem Sinn, individualistichen Bewegungsfreiheit retten?” (“Max Weber und seine Nachfolger,” Mass und Wert, 3 [1940] 2, 166–67Google Scholar. On the fascination exerted on Weber by the 1905 aborted Russian revolution, see Pipes, Richard's “Max Weber and Russia,” World Politics, 7 (1955/1956), 371–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ But charisma was not really a solution, for, according to Weber himself, prophetic claims today could “only create fanatical sects, never a real community,” Economy and Society, eds. Rother, Guenther and Wittich, Clauss (New York: 1968), p. 516Google Scholar. Still, Weber could not reconcile himself to the idea of a life without prophets … “in einer gottfernen prophetenlosen Zeit zu leben” (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 2 Auflage [Tübingen: Mohr, 1951], p. 594.Google Scholar

⁹ One of the most thorough attempts to define a new international order within a disenchanted context is Hoffman, Stanley's Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1981)Google Scholar. This attempt is not convincing for reasons I have analyzed in “Morale et politique étrangère,” Commentaire 25 (1984), 178–84.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The link between disenchantment and the autonomy of the will has been analyzed by Giinther Abramovski: “a radical disenchantment of the world and of history corresponds to a radical increase in gravity of the conception of autonomy.… Autonomy of action consists not in voluntary integration into a rationally sensible cosmos” (“Meaningful Life in a Disenchanted World: Rational Science and Ethical Responsibility,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 10 [1983], 121–34Google Scholar). In a broader perspective William Barrett has observed that to locate the meaning of the world outside the world (disenchantment) is to be forced to conclude with Ludwig Wittgenstein that “the will points beyond the world” (The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization [Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978], p. 59Google Scholar. The origin of this dissociation between the will and the world is to be found in William of Occam's writing. See de Muralt, Andre “La structure de la philosophie politique moderne,” Cahiers de la Revue de theologie et de philosophic, 2(1978), 3–58.Google Scholar

¹¹ This is one of the definitions of a paradigm given by Kuhn, Thomas in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 11.Google Scholar

¹² See L'Ancien Régime et la Revolution (1856; new ed. Paris: Gallimard, 1982), bk. 2, chap. 2.Google Scholar

¹³ This episode is related by Kurth, Godefroid in L'Eglise aux tournants de l'histoire, 5th ed. (Paris: Tequi, n.d.) pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

¹⁴ True, Max Weber advocated a kind of political behavior that would seem to inspire limited solutions. His idea of an “ethic of responsibility” (Verantwortungsethik) as distinct from the lack of ethic in the bureaucrat and also distinct from the excess of ethic in the revolutionary (or moral) zealot (Gesinnungsethik) calls for a consideration of facts and values. But the “ethic of responsibility” is different from limited solutions for two reasons:

(1) An individual can be “ethically responsible” in the promotion of evil values. To Max Weber responsibility lies in the simultaneous consideration of facts and values; the worth of these values is not taken into consideration. A Machiavellian ruler may very well be “ethically responsible” while ruthlessly struggling for power. If limited solutions promote justice, peace and freedom, they have nothing in common with “Verantwortungsethik.”

(2) Not only are values indifferently good or bad to Max Weber; they are also chosen in the solitude of one's heart, from within a vacuum, so to speak. Nothing and no one can tell us what to do. The “ethic of responsibility” implies a choice that is highly individualistic. In the last analysis this ethic is the ethic of the charismatic ruler. By contrast, limited solutions call for a large consensus on the worth of fundamental values.

¹⁵ Since the end of the nineteenth century modern physics has been constantly evolving beyond the Newtonian model of the universe: material reality no longer consists of solid atoms in infinite space. Nothing seems to exist by and in itself as atoms did in a mechanical world picture: “the traditional questions of cosmology about the overall interrelatedness of things can once again be opened up for effective discussion” (Toulmin, Stephen, The Return to Cosmology: Post-modern Science and the Theology of Nature [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982], p. 240Google Scholar). Similarly, Merleau-Ponty, Jacques has analyzed the reasons behind the decline of classical physics and the concomitant return to cosmology in The Rebirth of Cosmology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976)Google Scholar. To my knowledge, the first major attack against the myth of objects (atoms) existing in and by themselves is Alfred N. Whitehead's when he spoke of the fallacy of simple location. See for instance Science and the Modern World (London: The Macmillan Company, 1925)Google Scholar where Whitehead asserts that “everything is everywhere at all times” (p. 91). An excellent article on this subject is Kiesel, Theodore J.'s “The Reality of the Electron,” Philosophy Today, 8 (1964), 56–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ “Omnia naturalia … habent in seipsis aliquod inclinationis principium et non solum ducantur in fines debitos” (Aquinas, Saint Thomas, De Veritate, Quaestio XII, art. 1. Emphasis addedGoogle Scholar). Similarly, Aristotle thought that objects had within themselves a tendency to move toward their proper place in the cosmos (αςκήγ κινήσεος καί στάσεος), Physics 2.1. 192b. On the Aristotelian view of nature, see Solmsen, Friedrich, Aristotle's System of the Physical World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

¹⁷ One of the best introductions to the transition from a qualitative (Cartesian) physics can be found in de Santillana, Georgio's The Crime of Galileo (London: Heineman, 1958), pp. 60–65Google Scholar. Also important, Lenoble, Robert, Mersenne ou la naissance du mécanisme (Paris: Vrin, 1943)Google Scholar and Dijksterhuis, E. J., Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1956).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ An impressive metaphor expressing the organic character of the body politic is Schiller's: “when a watchmaker repairs a clock, he simply stops the wheels; but the living clockwork of the state has to be repaired while it strikes and the problem is to seize the turning wheel in its very revolution” [emphasis added], quote by Lobkowicz, N., Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), p. 164Google Scholar. Joseph de Maistre hated the French Constitution which, to his mind, was the symbol and result of abstract and mechanical thinking in politics: “Les deux productions les plus informes de l'esprit humain sont l'Encyclopédie et la Constitution française” (“Fragments sur la France” in Joseph de Maistre, ed. Cioran, E. M. [Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1957], p. 186Google Scholar). See also de Bonald, Vicomte Louis, Melanges litteraires et philosophiques (Paris: 1858), tome I, p. 68Google Scholar, where a parallel is drawn between the mechanistic universe of the nineteenth century and modern democracy. The same parallel is also drawn by Amiel, H. F. in Fragments d'un journal intime (Geneve: 1887), tome I, p. 207Google Scholar (ed. or. 1882–84). On metaphors expressing political structures, see Saccaro-Battisti, G., “Changing Metaphors of Political Structures,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 44(1983), 31–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also of interest: Schlanger, Judith E., Les métaphores de l'organisme (Paris: Vrin, 1971)Google Scholar, and Deutsch, Karl S., “Mechanism, Organism, and Society; Some Models in Natural and Social Science,” Philosophy of Science, 18(1951), 230–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ The confusion between machines and organisms reached its apex in the work of Wiener, Norbert, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1954)Google Scholar. This author does not see “any fundamental difference” (chapter I) between a command given to a machine and a command given to a man. Lilienfeld, Robert has pertinently criticized this stand in The Rise of Systems Theory: An Ideological Analysis (New York: A Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1978)Google Scholar: “The man who offers an image of society as a closed system (i.e., able to be encompassed and manipulated by logically closed theoretical models) … is clearly offering to assume benevolent control of society as a closed system, which he will manipulate from a position outside of and superior to that system” (p.3) [emphasis added].

²⁰ Apart from Koyre, Alexandre's famous Etudes galiléennes (1939; reprint ed., Paris: Hermann & Cie, 1966)Google Scholar, a good introduction to the history and problems of violent motion is Franklin, Allen's The Principle of Inertia in the Middle Ages (Colorado: Colorado Associated University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

²¹ Next to the classical analysis of Cartesian physics by Mouy, Paul, Le développement de la physique cartésienne, 1646–1712 (Paris: Vrin, 1934)Google Scholar, one should consider the too little known “Etudes sur Descartes” by Laberthonnière, Lucien in Oeuvres de Laberthonnière, ed. Canet, Louis (Paris: Vrin, 1935), vol. 2Google Scholar. Also important (but inexplicably unpublished) to appraise the impact of Cartesian physics on traditional modes of thought: Healy, George Robert, Mechanistic Science and the French Jesuits: A Study of the Responses of the Journal de Trévoux (1701–1762) to Descartes and Newton (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1956).Google Scholar

²² Descartes, René, Principia Philosophiae, part 2, art. 4.Google Scholar

²³ Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954), p. 10.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., p. 3.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Weaver, Richard, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1948), p. 82.Google Scholar

²⁷ See the last chapter “Ideology and Terror” in Arendt, Hannah's Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951)Google Scholar, where the author shows that terror is not provoked by the enforcement of an ideology. Terror is rather the result of an atomization of the body politic concomitant with a disintegration of the common world (disappearance of meanings and symbols). Far from being a product of ideologies, terror is in a way “cured” by the emergence of ideologies which then appear as “emergency worldviews” when all coherence is gone. Birnbaum, Pierre interprets ideologies in much the same way in his La Fin du politique (Paris: Seuil, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁸ Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 212.Google Scholar

²⁹ Scheffler, I., Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 1.Google Scholar

³⁰ Arendt, Hannah, Totalitarianism, pp. 168–69.Google Scholar

³¹ Lasswell, Harold D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), p. 237.Google Scholar

³² Ibid.

³³ I have examined the scientific underpinnings of this worldview in my “The Philosophical Consequences of the Formulation of the Principle of Inertia,” Diogenes, 123:1–29.Google Scholar

³⁴ One of the best accounts of this is Palmer, R. R.'s Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth Century France (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1969).Google Scholar

³⁵ Frank E. Manuel has carefully examined how the dream of “spontaneous language” takes shape in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought. To the Genevan philosophers, language had to be close to the “emotive cry [because this cry] … was not dissociated from its object [whereas] … in the miserable intermediary present state, the disjuncture between speech and object is total; in the future, language will again be related to its object.” (emphasis added) “A Dream of Eupsychia,” Daedalus, (Summer 1978), 1–12.Google Scholar