While reading Jody Bottum’s reflections on Catholicism and modern France, I found myself disagreeing. I’m inclined to think that we have a great deal to learn from France.
There is, of course, a lesson about the dangers to faith when the Church becomes intertwined with political movements. It is an unfortunate fact that the Catholic hierarchy in turn of the century France was intertwined with the conservative political forces that were implicated in the injustice and subsequent cover-up of the false conviction and imprisonment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. This close connection discredited the Church, and rightly so, for her leaders simply could not or would not speak the truth about the Dreyfus Affair. Jesus spoke about this: He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
There are also positive lessons. As a civil society, France managed to fend off the two great ideological temptations of the twentieth century: fascism and communism. Ideological passions were very much present in French public life, but those passions never created death camps, gulags, or systematic political assassinations. Yes, the students famously ruled the streets briefly in May, 1968, but France produced no Baader-Meinhoff Gang, no IRA, no Red Brigade.
Perhaps the reason for the underlying sanity of French political life should be credited to the French intellectual tradition. Throughout the twentieth century, France produced a large body of literature charged with a passionate effort to discern a humane way to live in the disenchanted, ideologically frenzied modern world, providing our era some of the great and lasting moralists of the twentieth century. Albert Camus will be read for a long time, and for good reason.
On the whole, I think a sympathetic reflection on modern French history should play an important part of our efforts to think through a conservative public philosophy for our now postmodern age. France was the first revolutionary society. Whether slowly or suddenly, whether organically or with catastrophic shocks, the entire West has followed this revolution: democracy, the egalitarian ethos, and an increasingly powerful secular state. French society and culture struggled to make sense of life under these revolutionary conditions. It’s a struggle we share.
February 26th, 2010 | 2:25 pm
Prof. Reno makes a compelling point in explaining one good reason why we should be somewhat generous in judging the French, and that is that they were the first society to confront head-on the challenges of modernization. They helped to bring about these challenges with their Revolution, and so if they didn’t respond so coherantly or pleasantly, at least they have the excuse that there was no precedent or guide to lead them in the right direction.
Still, the ideological excesses of French society which came out of the Revolution do suggest something about their culture which isn’t so appealing. Afterall, the British faced the very same challenges of modernization, democratization, and industrialization, and did not end up with some of the less appealing French results (political instability, blood baths, strong support for nihilistic and violent political movements, etc). There were people in Britain, especially labor leaders and leftist intellectuals, who did support all of these things, but the inherent phlegmatism of the British and their devotion to orderly class relationships, helped steady the ship in turbulent waters.
Americans tend to view the British as a bit stuffy and repressed, while the French have a more romantic and seductive image. But, sometimes stuffiness and represssion is just what the doctor ordered to keep the pot from boiling over.
February 26th, 2010 | 3:05 pm
Rusty,
Isn’t part of the reason that France did not succumb to violent political movements is that it was on the winning side of both World Wars? Nazism was able to exploit the passions that came from Germany’s defeat in WWI — in fact, from the poisonous myth that they had not lost on the battlefield but had been betrayed by forces in their own country. The Bolsheviks in Russia also exploited military defeat. Note that after WWII terrorist movements arose in Germany, Italy, and Japan, precisely the losers in WWII, but not in France and Britain.
February 26th, 2010 | 3:32 pm
It is too easy to forget the horrors the French endured in WW I, and the WW II horrors were very real as well. The Franco-Prussian War was no walk in the park, either.
Any nation suffering enormous casualties and related traumas from three wars would very definitely have a different outlook on life, and a different culture, than the citizens of the U.S.
I do not think it is possible to judge France from the U.S. The histories are just so different. Intellectual tradition may account for some of the facts of France, but when weighed against the wars’ effects, I’d say not so much
February 26th, 2010 | 4:00 pm
JohnRDC,
It is certainly true that living through wars where one’s own territory is the battlefield, produces a mentality unknown to Americans who have not really ever worried about being caught in the middle of a war zone since the Civil War (with the minor exception of Pearl Harbor).
However, in the case of France and Germany, we shouldn’t confuse cause and effect. The Napoleonic wars which shaped the consciousness of 19th century France were started by the French. Germany’s major wars, likewise, were started by them. The fact that in neither case did the end result turn out according to the original plan certainly explains the bitterness and nihilism of many people in these societies, and in all of Europe after WWI, which didn’t turn out according to anyone’s plan, among the combatants.
But, if you don’t want to risk a sorry ending, the best advice is not to start an unnecessary war in the first place. England never launched a major war against the continent during the entire period of its ascendancy as a great power. Its wars were directed against desired colonial possessions, where winning and losing had less impact on British daily life than was the case for France and Germany. That may explain some of the difference between the level of upheaval in France and Germany vs the UK during the modern period.
February 26th, 2010 | 5:38 pm
While they may not have been as effective or bloody as Baader-Meinhof or the Red Brigade(insert French military prowess joke here), France did have Action Directe in the 70s and 80s.
February 26th, 2010 | 7:07 pm
[...] Religion and public life in France — con and pro. [...]
February 27th, 2010 | 12:25 am
In France, there is a Ministère de Religion. Signs of the cross, stars of David, and the hijab are forbidden in public schools. Scientologists, Mormons, and Jehovah Witnesses are regarded as cults and have been sued.
Municipalities own Catholic churches and are free to maintain or demolish them as they see fit. One even sponsored a strip-tease à deux on the altar of a church in Brittany to celebrate Bastille Day last year.
Parochial schools are subsidized but forget even teaching CCD – let alone a Religion class! Your children aren’t exposed to the Socialist or the Communist PTA and no one disses the Catholic Churchm, so that’s a blessing.
As for existentialism – Camus would recognize a form of La Peste among the bodies of the elderly – all 10,000+ – that died in the heat wave in 2006. Sartre’s description of Americans as racaille (scrapings) is not consistent with Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty.
French Jews, fleeing anti-Semitism, don’t think much of the political atmosphere in France. The French car-burning youth of North African descent burned 10 fewer cars this year on New Year’s Eve – something the cops are proud of. Sound sane to you?
French conservatives (libéraux) look to Americans for inspiration. Our separation of powers came from de Montesquieu, after all. Voltaire favored turning Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason, after all. Rousseau? Thomas Dewey’s progeniture – to the detriment of our public schools.
March 1st, 2010 | 2:07 am
[...] Bottum and R R Reno clash over whether other countries should learn from France’s approach to religious [...]
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