These past few years, various sociologists have considered the condition of our society and they all agree that it has shattered. The title of a book by Jérôme Fourquet, a political analyst and director of the Opinion department for the IFOP,1 is eloquent: The French Archipelago, The Birth of a Multiple and Divided Nation.2 France has become an archipelago, that is to say, a series of islands, a collection of juxtaposed communities that no longer have much of anything in common with each, or even much of anything to say to each other because they do not have any idea of a common good.
Dominique Schnapper gave the same analysis in Providential Democracy, An Essay on Contemporary Equality,3 pointing out that the Providence State had fabricated a society that no longer has anything social about it. In other words, sovereign individualism and communitarianism place each man on his own island or in his own bubble, but there is no longer a common good that transcends particular interests and can create a bond—other than an economic bond—between individuals. And yet we are political animals, made to live in society, to have social bonds—and not only commercial bonds; we need to share common values, a common good, and that is precisely what it disappearing.
Dominique Schnapper’s writings follow in the footsteps of another sociologist, Marcel Gauchet, who analyzed in depth what he called the “departure from the religious.” In fact, this departure from the religious is more of a secularization, a de-Christianization and sometimes even a return to a form of paganism. Dominique Schnapper said that in the face of this secularization, there had been attempts to replace the common good; they no longer used religion, but they tried to deify the republican idea, to erect a revolutionary idol. . . . It is interesting to see that these substitute transcendencies are anything but transcendent, and in the end these idols were broken. D. Schnapper, who can hardly be taxed with traditionalism, herself admitted that these attempted substitutions no longer work. It is no longer possible to build a society with the idols venerated by the “black hussars” of the Republic, Jules Ferry’s lay schoolteachers whose purpose was to weaken the authority of the parish priests over credulous minds.
Jérôme Fourquet’s book is not without interest; it is not a defense, but rather a sociological study intended to be neutral. The author does not choose sides, he simply comments, describes, presents the facts. His only question is when France became an “archipelago,” a “multiple and divided nation.” And he observes that it was when the “Catholic matrix” disappeared; from then on, everything started to fall apart. That was when the Muslim community, the Jewish community, the Catholic community, the homosexual community, the organic community, the vegan community all appeared. . . . But they ignore each other.
Jérôme Fourquet bases his reflections on those of another author who considers more specifically the religious phenomenon, Guillaume Cuchet, in his book How Our World Ceased to Be Christian,4 published by Seuil editions in 2018. His question is precisely at what moment there was a vertiginous drop in religious practice, a sharp decrease in vocations, and a decadence in religious instruction. Guillaume Cuchet observes that this all came about around 1962-1965, during the Council. He does not conclude there is a causal link, but he does admit that the two facts seem quite close.
This sheds an interesting light on Jérôme Fourquet’s question about France becoming an archipelago, for Guillaume Cuchet writes that with the Council, people saw “a sort of given freedom.” And it is true that ever since the sixties, there is no longer any talk of the Last Ends or Confession, and no one says that attending Sunday Mass is mandatory under pain of sin. And if we wish to establish a connection—if not a causal link—between the Council and the present state of de-Christianization, Conciliar religious freedom is an element that cannot be overlooked.
In theory, this religious freedom sought to redefine the relations between Church and State along the lines of a lay model, with the State no longer obliged to confess any faith; but Guillaume Cuchet suggests that Catholics applied this religious freedom first of all to themselves. And the consequences they drew from it were the freedom to believe whatever they want and to practice whenever they want.
In parallel with these studies on the de-Christianization and destruction of the social bond, Yann Raison du Cleuziou’s book A Catholic Counter-Revolution: The Origins of the Protest for All5 seeks to highlight a reaction. The author sees this reaction in those he calls “observing Christians,” conservative conciliar Christians in the broad sense. They can be recognized by a certain distrust for the catechism taught in parishes which leads them to review their catechism at home, and by a distrustful attitude towards schools, even subsidized schools, leading them to prefer non-subsidized schools.
These sociological analyses offer no explanation. They simply describe what has happened. But let us now consider whether philosophy can offer an answer not to the question “how” but to the question “why?”
Inspired by Paul Valéry who spoke crudely of a “termite mound,” the realist philosopher Marcel de Corte speaks of a “dis-society” rather than of an “archipelago.” The term is stronger and more precise than the sociologistic paraphrase, “no longer a society.”
In his work entitled On Dis-Society,6 Marcel de Corte says that man is not, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed, a perfect and solitary being, singular and sovereign; man is not an autonomous being. We live as we are born, and we are born dependent on our parents, dependent on our neighbor; we cannot live alone. We are social beings by nature, political animals, which means that the political institution is not a social contract and that we do not forego our freedom in order to live together: we are bound by nature to live together.
When it comes down to it, this means that life in society is not an insult to our dignity, it is in keeping with our nature. It is not something that goes against our freedom. It may go against our whims, absolutely! It may go against our freedom disordered by original sin, indeed! But life in society is in itself in keeping with our nature.
This may seem like a truism, but it is a reality that is denied today. Our broken society is based on an individualism in which each person refuses a common good that would oblige him to sacrifice his particular interests. When there is no more transcendency, when no one preaches about the afterlife anymore because Heaven is more or less on earth, men are no longer able to consent to a sacrifice in view of a superior good. When the Catholic matrix disappears, every man is left to himself.
Marcel de Corte says we need to return to what is real—to this social reality—and put things back in their proper place. The present disorder is that the economy has taken over; we even speak of political economy. How do we judge a politician? Based on his capacity to increase our spending power. What is the indicator that the French are in good spirits? Their ability to consume.
This does not mean the economy should be disregarded, but that politics and politicians need to be put back in their proper place. Politicians are there to watch over the common good and the common good is not a juxtaposition of all these essentially economic particular goods. The economy does have a role, but it is a secondary role and belongs more to the private domain. It is there to ensure material well-being. Today, according to Marcel de Corte, economy and politics are completely upside-down.
Solzhenitsyn made exactly the same remark when he discovered the United States where he gave his famous Harvard Address in 1978. He denounced this freedom he did not want, liberal freedom: “I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”
He went on to show the close connection between autonomy and economism: “This humanistic way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man (a consequence of original sin) nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense.”
“Everything beyond,” which the Catholic matrix kept in mind: the life of grace and eternal life that are the heart of Christianity and for which Solzhenitsyn’s nostalgia is palpable.
The illustrious Russian dissident also speaks of “a total liberation from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse.” The connection is very interesting: a political impasse and a spiritual crisis. It is not just any connection; one is the cause and the other the effect. There is no way out of the political dead end—archipelago or dis-society—if we do not work to resolve the spiritual crisis.
How to proceed practically speaking? Marcel de Corte says we need to put the economy back in its proper place, reaffirm our profoundly social nature and stop considering the constraints life in society imposes upon us as unjust. If we wish to go further and truly strive to resolve the spiritual crisis, Thomistic philosophy teaches that the very first thing to be done is to put the spiritual realm back in its proper place, and therefore keep one very important thing in mind: stat crux. This remark will doubtless surprise those who think politics only play out in ballot boxes and grocery carts.
Marcel de Corte regrets that we do not have this profoundly Christian idea of the Cross that stands still “while the whole world revolves.” It is a transcendent, immobile spiritual reality that does not change or evolve. By its very nature, a lighthouse is anything but mobile. Because we have an evolutionistic idea according to which everything changes and disappears in the end, we are no longer capable today of conceiving an inalterable sovereign good or a common good above strictly particular interests. We are fascinated by the changes on the surface of things, in the froth of everyday life. We no longer see the profound substance. We urgently need to return to what is real, both on the natural and on the supernatural level.
This return is a conversion, a metanoia. Marcel de Corte quotes the Carthusian motto. We will let one of them explain how to accomplish this return to “the only necessary thing” that would make it possible to put the many secondary things in their proper place (cf. Lk. 10:42) and the search for the Kingdom of God and His justice that will allow us to receive “everything else over and above” (cf. Mt. 6:33)—everything else: political, economic, cultural. . . .
This Carthusian addresses the one and triune God as follows, “You did not wish to keep for yourself that communication that unites all Three of You in the one and infinite bosom: You pour it out upon us. It is ‘the water that springs up into life everlasting’ (Jn. 4:14). It forms ‘the rivers that flow in the spiritual entrails of the souls who receive the Holy Spirit and resonate with the breath of Love’ (Jn. 7:38-39). It beats against the closed doors of the souls who refuse it, it sometimes breaks these doors with its movement that overcomes all resistance. Sometimes it waits a long time before flooding all the powers; it creeps in imperceptibly through the mountains, the hills, the hard rocks; it can scarcely be seen; the bushes cover its silent movement. And yet it moves forward if it can, it makes a bed for itself, narrow and contested at first, then larger and larger, full to the brim. What a strange mystery I seek to penetrate with these analogies! A reality more true, as close as myself, more intimate in me that the realities to which I compare it, but I am scarcely aware of it because I have slipped into the sensitive realm and it is a spiritual reality, and yet I perceive it more and more when I follow it with the eyes of my soul sharpened by a desire that is already love and that only the love infinitely present in me was able to arouse.”7
That is the lofty and profound reality that gives meaning to men’s lives and without which their actions are but disordered agitation, vain and sterile. In this kingdom of grace is accomplished in its proper place, that is to say, “over and above,” the political, economic and cultural work of civilization. If we are not yet convinced, we need only recall that civilization is not technical progress—or iPhones or fast trains, but rather, as Baudelaire put it, “the decrease in the traces of original sin.” Any abdication in this realm can only strengthen the dis-society or archipelago, but everything that is accomplished against the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. Jn. 2:16) contributes to building Catholic society—often modestly, but always effectively.
A. Delaroche
1 IFOP = The Institut français d’opinion publique is an international polling and market research firm
2 L’Archipel français, naissance d’une nation multiple et divisée, Seuil 2019.
3 La Démocratie providentielle. Essai sur l’égalité contemporaine, Gallimard, “NRF Essais,” 2002.
4 Comment notre monde a cessé d’être chrétien.
5 Une contre-révolution catholique. Aux origins de La manif pour tous, Seuil, 2019.,
6 De la dissociété, Rémi Perrin, 2002.
7 Dom Augustin Guillerand, Silence Cartusien, Regard d’âme.