That is not a sneering question, it is a statement, from a devoted admirer. I love France. I love its beauty. I love its ability to do beauty. And one of my most favourite intellectuals now alive, anywhere on the planet, is an extremely French Frenchman by the name of Emmanuel Todd of whom much more, in other postings between now and my death, but probably not in this posting.
Today I met up with another Cecile, French Cecile, Cecile Philippe of the Institut Molinari (link will follow), and we got to talking about France, as you do when you talk with French people. Cecile is a libertarian activist, or trying to be, but is still finding her feet, as it were. She is in the slightly arkward position of needing to press ahead with her efforts, while nevertheless not being fully in command of her strategic aims. Like building a house where you aren't sure of the foundations, that kind of thing? Yes, she said. Like that.
I began to orate not about libertarianism, but about France, the object of her attentions, and she seemed sufficiently impressed with what I was orating to encourage me to write some of it down, which, in a very slap dash way, I will now attempt. Since a lot of it – France being France – is "cultural", and since I don't yet feel good about exposing all this to the glaring light of the Samizdata commentariat, I will make use of Brian's Culture Blog to do my thinking aloud. As so often, my most important reader here is me. You can skip this if thinking aloud – very nicely and politely by the way – about France is not to your taste.
What follows is overwrought (partly due to lack of sleep last night – I had to be up early) and partly due to excitement and unchecked hypothesising. Several contentions that follow are bound to be rubbish. Severe first-draft-itis from now on, in other words. You have been warned.
Still with me. Then I'll begin.
If you want to persuade someone of something you have to show that you are on their side, and a libertarian trying to turn France libertarian is very easy to see (if you are French) as a traitor. Libertarianism means turning beautiful, beautiful France into an Anglo-Saxon dump of mindless commerce and disgusting fast food factories, and ultimately conquering the ruins on behalf of the USA. N'est ce pas? Well, that is a typically French assumption, I'm guessing. I don't think I need elaborate on that.
Ergo, a libertarian French person should ask herself the question: What Is Great About France? To prove that you love France, Mademoiselle Cecile, say what you love about the place. That way you avoid coming across as a nag (stop doing this - do that instead – do like Thatcher – stop being so French - how many times do I have to tell you? - blah blah) and prove that you are not a traitor.
Say, in particular, what kind of Great Future you think France has. I surmise that an awful lot of French people now fear that France has no Great Future at all, just a Great Past. France is now beautiful, and the future is nothing but slowly spreading ugliness, and nothing else. Again, I need not elaborate, and more to the point I don't want to. My aim here is to get stuck into the positives?
So: what are the enduringly great things about French culture? What do French people do best, and what can we confidently expect that they will continue to do?
The French do Intellectual abstractions very well. Thinking of them, analysing them, and perhaps above all, persuading others of the truth and importance of whatever intellectual abstractions France has come up with lately. At these things they are world class, and will always remain so, I believe.
Maths. I'm guessing that France has always been great at this. Descartes. Poincaré. Can't think of others, but I am certain there are many more and that it hasn't stopped.
Science. France punches way above its weight in Nobel Prizes, I'm guessing. Cecile said yes, especially now in biology and biochemistry, genetics, etc. The current French lament, she adds, is that all those wonderful French scientists have to go to America to find decent financial support and decent working conditions. But the positive side of it is that France cranks out these great scientists in the first place. America can't produce all the scientists it needs. So: a French export triumph.
As I said, not all French social scientists are to be despised. See Todd above, a genius whose particular genius is in teasing out how Intellectual Abstractions impinge upon every day life in the form of the varying rules of family life in different parts of the world.
And as for the French social scientists – and especially literary theorists of the post-Modernistical persuasion - who are bullshit artists of the top rank, well, my point is exactly that. French has the best bullshitters in the world. They have utterly conquered American academia, and the achievement is all the more impressive given that it is all such complete bullshit. Persuading someone of the truth can be hard, but it is basically an unimpressive achievement, for in the end the truth speaks for itself. But to foist a pack of lies on a generation of American intellectuals, well, that takes some doing. Lies do not speak for themselves. French lies, on the other hand, have a habit of being believed. French intellectuals, perhaps because they always obey persuasion rule number one (first convince yourself), are hugely persuasive and have immense intellectual self-confidence. Their entire demeanour, when they are foisting one of their Great Intellectual Abstractions on you, says: we are French, so it is impossible that we could possibly be mistaken. It is true. If you do not accept it, this is your loss. Take it or leave it.
This works, again and again.
What French intellectuals think, right or wrong, is a fact in the world of collosal importance. When French intellectuals thought Soviet Communism was good, Soviet Communism was untouchable. As soon as the French intellectuals decided, in the late 1970s, that Soviet Communism was foolishness, it was doomed. That is a simplification, but not nearly as much of one as you might suppose. The French are simply the world champions in this kind of thing, i.e. anything ending in "-isation" or "-ism".
Which by the way means that no matter how hard it might be to ever convert the French intellectuals into libertarians, it is still worth the effort, because the rewards will be literally world historical if we can pull it off.
From truth (and lies) to the other great French genius which is for Beauty.
But now I'm thinking I have to stop, because I'm off to hear Cecile give a talk about Intellectual Property. I'm expecting it to be excellent, Intellectual Property being a classic Intellectual Abstraction of the sort that a French person is liable to be very profound about, far more so than your average English speaker in such circumstances. So I have to stop now. So I will. I'll try to do Beauty tomorrow. Failing that, I'll do it Real Soon Now.
Apologies for whatever ill-thought-out not-thought-through rubbish there may be in any of the above. Comments, no matter how dismissive of what I've put will be very welcome. BUT, negative Frog-bashing is extremely unwelcome. If you think France is crap and doomed, etc., fine, and I can't stop you putting that if you really want to, but although I almost certainly won't delete things like that I really don't want to hear about such things now, thank you. That is not my question. I'm asking: What Is Great About France? And: What will go on being great about France? If you have answers and additional suggestions in tune with that optimistic and positive agenda, I'd love to hear them. (This is actually the big reason why I haven't put this on Samizdata. The Samizdata commentariat is just too mindlessly and ignorantly anti-French, and I just don't want to hear all that crap just now, thank you.)
If, having nothing nice to say about the future of France, no one here comments about this at all, I intend to bash on with this line of thinking regardless, in case you were wondering.
Sorry I had no time to include any links. I may correct this later.
