Controversies and Viewpoints Read online

  Goethe62 writes:

  If there was no solar aspect to the eye itself, how could it ever perceive the sun?

  The Gnostics explain:

  If I strike the table with my fist, a determinable event simultaneously occurs in Sirius or the Andromeda nebula.

  Descartes63 used to say: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For their part, the Gnostics declare: ‘I think, therefore there is thought in the universe’; just as the weather forecast says ‘it is raining on Paris’. And they specify that every thought, meaning every self-presence, is noticed at the time when it is expressed: it is a ‘here-and-now’.

  Next, they proceed to endow the universe with mental qualities that stem from the organisation that it displays. The world is intelligent; but here, ‘intelligent’ means ‘functional’. In this respect, everything that ‘functions’ is intelligent: ‘A dog is as intelligent as a human, an infusorian as intelligent as a dog, and a molecule as intelligent as an infusorian’.

  In some way, the universe’s ingenuity precedes our own: Biologists Crick and Watson would never have existed if our genetic code had not presided over the constitution of their genes in accordance with the scheme that they themselves afterwards established.

  Mr Ruyer writes:

  Molecules and atoms understand their own functioning better than physicists do. Who else could thus know what physicists are still ignorant about with regard to atoms if not atoms themselves?

  Another mistake made by the proponents of scientism consists in picturing individual life as a space of time between two voids: the void preceding life and the one that follows the latter. To the neo-Gnostics, this parallel is devoid of any and all meaning. Only death itself, and none other, is an unprecedented event. They explain: ‘We have been alive since the beginning of the world’. Indeed, the cells which we are made of derive from the division or fusion of other living cells, which in turn stem from pre-vital molecules. In other words, life is all that they have ever known. Death, on the other hand, is a radical novelty and absolute rupture. There is no survival beyond it; there is, however, a ‘pre-life’, one that is as old as life itself.

  Consequently, the past of every man reaches as far as the past of his own lineage, that of his species, and that of all the living cells whose ‘continuation’ he represents. Every man is the ‘twin’ of his own ancestors: not within space itself, but within time — ‘None of the currently living beings has ever died. Just like myself, they all date back to the beginning of the world’.

  In addition, all deaths are merely individual. Life, for its part, goes on: it is akin to an immensely long sentence, one that is punctuated with commas:

  There are billions of human hands and eyes that turn into dust in the cemeteries; but the hand, as a type of living organ, has subsisted and been evolving since the dawn of the primates.

  Man’s superiority over the rest of the living world stems precisely from the fact that he has inherited ‘the longest message of all’. Man is a ‘temporal giant’, Mr Ruyer writes.

  Whenever it describes anti-coincidence (necessity) through coincidence, order through disorder, and the message through background noise, materialistic science is, according to a further gnostic postulate, once again proceeding in reverse within the underside. By doing so, it comes up against the issue of ‘emergent properties’: how could what is more come out of what is less? The new gnosis reverses this perspective. It states that it is disorder that accompanies and marks the limits of order, not the other way around.

  ‘In order to get things back on their feet, it is every morphogenesis that must be interpreted as a psychogenesis’, Mr Ruyer notes.

  The ‘Observables’ and ‘Participables’

  In the beginning, there was absolute Blindness, materialists claim. To which the Gnostics respond by saying: in the beginning was anti-coincidence. They thus strive to establish a new sort of deism.

  In contrast with the current tendency, which rejects the Father in the name of the Son, the new gnosis resuscitates the notion of God and ‘abandons Jesus-Christ and his apostles in the hands of the hippies’.

  God is thus defined as the cosmos in its entirety, this cosmos which was perhaps one some ten to fifteen billion years ago, is incarnated in each and every one of us and whose becoming continues in every present moment. This cuts Saint Augustine’s64 question short when he asks: ‘What was the Lord doing before he created the heavens and the earth?’

  This universe-God does not, of course, correspond to the usual conception of the divine. Mr Ruyer writes:

  The God whose apparent body is constituted by the Tree of Life is neither infinitely powerful nor infinitely wise; neither infinitely good nor just. He errs, fails in many of his branches, which then wither away. He often contradicts himself and devours himself.

  He is thought yet lacks a brain; the latter is embodied by the trees that have been formed. He never utters a word but allows us all to speak. He does not represent an order that is given, yet he enables ordering. He is not a text to be read but a language to be spoken. Better yet: He does not demand nor ask for anything. One only serves him by living one’s life.

  ‘When the wheat grows, the demons are struck with terror’, Nietzsche65 once wrote.

  The Gnostics contrast what is participable (whatever gives time its meaning) with materialistic science, which only recognises the observable (meaning all objects upon which observations can be made). The new gnosis consists in granting the ‘participable’ access to the scientific domain.

  In the second part of his book, Mr Raymond Ruyer presents the praxis that stems from the scientific ‘theology’ espoused by the Gnostics. It is essentially a kind of wisdom, one that is completely at odds with the ‘ideological nuisances’ that he himself described so well in a previous book.

  This praxis might surprise some people with its ‘isolationism’. Indeed, the Gnostics do not struggle for any cause and reject any and all doctrine. Displaying cynicism with regard to both Church and state, they dismiss all crusades, proselytism, rites and conversions. Never secretive, they still remain discrete. As the very heirs of those Puritans who once chose to emigrate across the Atlantic, they declare: ‘We now emigrate once again, heading towards a spiritual continent’.

  All ceremonials are banned in their eyes. Wisdom consists in ridding oneself of all ‘cerebral intoxications’, and the ‘game’ in discovering the game’s rules. According to Mr Ruyer, ‘the gnostic movement is an attempt to constitute a philosophical — and secondarily social — aristocracy by means of discrete and silent co-option’.

  This attempt manifests itself through a whole series of ‘assemblages’, a term popularised by Eric Berne66 in Des jeux et des hommes67 (Stock, 1966), meaning through a sequence of more or less systematised mental attitudes which, on the basis of a single event or more, enables one to redirect spirits in a direction deemed compatible with the set objectives. The new gnosis thus displays a tendency towards a type of ‘intimateness with the universe’, one that is as reminiscent of the vitalism of Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence68 as of Stoic ethics. It also — or above all, perhaps — brings to mind the views advocated by writer and philosopher Samuel Butler (1835–1902), whose ideal of good breeding is embodied rather successfully by Tom Jones.69

  Does this movement have a founder? Does it have any masters? Mr Ruyer chooses not to mention any names. The bibliography, however, suggests those of astronomers Fred Hoyle and Gustav Stromberg, biologists William S. Beck and Walter M. Elsasser, cosmologists Dennis W. Sciama and Gerald J. Whitrow, and physicists Walter A. Weisskopf, Edmund T. Whittaker and David Bohm. It also refers to the works of a certain group of scientists whose conclusions were popularised by Arthur Koestler, particularly in The Ghost in the Machine and Drinkers of Infinity.

  An Unconscious Memory in the Making

  What should one make of this Princeton gnosis, then? Its necessarily speculative character remains quite ambiguous. With regard to certain aspects, the Go
d that the neo-Gnostics define as the ‘place’ of the universe, this God that represents ‘the Thought whose brain is embodied by the created world’, is rather similar to the God of the Bible, the universal Logos. But whereas the latter is a static God whose creation has been provided once and for all, the Princetonian God is an immense becoming, one that undergoes ceaseless self-transformation, makes ‘mistakes’, is heading in a certain direction but does not, in principle, actually know where He is heading to.

  It is Samuel Butler, who authored Erewhon (1872) and Life and Habit (1877), that exerts particular influence on this level. A friend of both Charles and Francis Darwin, Butler developed the notion that evolution is not the result of natural selection but is triggered by a constantly growing ‘unconscious memory’ passed down from generation to generation. He thus believed himself to have reinstated finality into science (albeit a reverse one).

  The neo-Gnostics take a stand against ‘social’ anthropology, Zen Buddhism and vulgar psychoanalysis, yet their doctrine may well end up awakening a new sort of universalism, as remarked by Mr Ruyer himself, in fact:

  Given cosmology’s totalising aspect regarding both space and time, it must totalise both observers and the observed, the points of view and the points viewed, egos as a “here-and-now” and egos as an “elsewhere”, all pasts and all futures, all movements as a deforming factor and all movements of deformation.

  And then there is this statement:

  God is present in the cosmos, in every being, in the unity of all beings and in their biological progress; in no way could he be found in the history of peoples. (See also the article written by Abbé Jean Milet in Le Monde moderne,70 , issue number 11, winter 1975–76.)

  Last but not least, the main reproach with which one can target this school (provided that it is indeed a school that we are referring to) is that it falls prey to a kind of reverse reductionism. Reductionistic theoreticians generally reduce culture to nature, consciousness to life, and life to lifeless matter. As for the neo-Gnostics, they proceed to reduce the entire universe to a ‘consciousness’ they call ‘God’. (‘The universe is in its entirety culture, not nature’.) To be honest, such a formula could institute a great diversity of perspectives, depending on the actual manner in which it is conceived of. From the neo-Gnostic point of view, however, it does seem to be the case that it ends up eliminating the qualitative differences that do exist between the various levels of reality, thus simultaneously restricting the autonomy that is ever so specifically human. It would therefore be desirable to have the neo-Gnostics explain themselves in this regard.

  *

  La gnose de Princeton, an essay by Raymond Ruyer. Fayard, 303 pages.

  *

  In Les cent prochains siècles71 (Fayard, 1977), Mr Ruyer attempts to outline ‘man’s historical destiny according to the new American Gnosis’. Declaring himself convinced that the ‘God of long-term history’ is even less subject to dethronement than the ‘God of the cosmos’, he uses the following words to explicitly detail the ‘gnostic’ conception of the human phenomenon:

  ‘Men are only human because they last both biologically and historically. Just as an authentic organism is a reproduction-capable organism, “to be a people” is to last as a people, to reproduce as a people in cultural continuity. An “instantaneous people” would only be an amassment or a crowd. And it is because it is meant to last that a nation gradually creates all its institutions. This “creation” is instinctive in the sense that it reaches beyond rational technology and the geometrical analysis of current situations. Duration in a “meaningful” world is not synonymous with inertia but with continuous creation. […] Men are happiest in a “durable”, disciplined and conservative society. Even if their material lives are hard, their mental and psychological nourishment is superior. They remain without anguish and are endowed with greater genuine intelligence. A people’s victory over death is the one, true consolation in the face of individual perishing’.

  Mr Ruyer adds that in the eyes of the new Gnostics, ‘man’s great task is to render culture biologically healthy. They are convinced that this task is not insurmountable, but also believe that it grows so much more difficult when culture transforms into civilisation that it will require trials and errors lasting hundreds of centuries. It is their conviction that the archetypal error that prevents man from reaching a solution lies in simplifying the issue either through biologism or through cocksure educationism’.

  Figures

  Alfred Fabre-Luce

  In Les cent premiers jours de Giscard,72 Mr Alfred Fabre-Luce73 has chosen to sing the praise of an ‘enlightened and tolerant government’ and its ‘exceptionally intelligent and open’ leaders. Not only is Mr Giscard-d’Estaing his own master but also ‘the master of time’. With the following nuance: ‘He hopes to achieve grand political ambitions thanks to an ever-growing authority, an authority that events may not end up bestowing upon him’. As for Mr François Mitterrand, he ‘has already returned to the ease of opposition, to the delight of criticism, to the raging purity of all those who need not worry about responsibility’.

  The author is clearly under a spell and expresses the following reservation: ‘We are under threat of intelligence’. It is, however, a concern that is quickly warded off: ‘France has already experienced worse perils’. Such a tone is surprising; in the past, readers were accustomed to more acerbic ferocity.

  Some time ago, Mr Alfred Fabre-Luce proceeded to assess himself:

  At times, I turned towards the Right, at others towards the Left, so as to face what seemed the gravest danger to me.

  So as to publish his ‘Memoirs’ in J’ai vécu plusieurs siècles,74 he chose to give his work a dialogue-based form. He thus responded to the questions asked by a couple named Henriette and Philippe Levillain,75 both of whom held an ‘agrégé’.76 Additionally, he proceeded to answer a large number of questions that he himself had asked. But it is not necessarily the ‘interviewee’ that played the part of the accomplice.

  Mr Fabre-Luce lived through three centuries, meaning three eras whose very span seemed a hundred years long to him and during which he fought on two distinct fronts. The first century came to an end around the 1930s. The second, characterised by excessive syncopation (‘One witnessed a simultaneous acceleration in the pace of events and the accentuation of contrasts’), did not end in 1945, lasting instead until about 1960 (‘Seen from the 1960s, existentialism is an outdated notion’). The third one, which we are still experiencing, might last even less.

  Following a brief career as an embassy attaché, Alfred Fabre-Luce shifted his gaze towards journalism and literature and has not ceased to write since the onset of the 1920s.

  His memories of what came before that include a bourgeois family, a Piedmontese nanny, lessons at Jeanson-de-Sailly and then attending the Collège de France. With a simple formula, he justifies his own nostalgia:

  To be young is to be in love with oneself.

  His first bouts of admiration belonged to Léon Blum77 and Joseph Caillaux.78 Even at that time, however, his personal sentiments were at odds with the prevailing catchwords. In Le secret de la République79 (Grasset, 1938), he mentions his first campaigns: ‘Against Poincaré’s80 “Germany will pay” and against Herriot’s81 “universal peace”. Against the Ruhr war82 and the false conciliation of the jurists. Against the Ethiopian sanctions of 193583 and the Rhineland abstention of 1936,84 against the latent rise of Fascism on the 6th of February85 and against the mismanagement of the Front populaire’.86

  He specifies: ‘This position-taking of mine has classified me alternately as a leftist and a rightist, yet always as an opposer’. Throughout his existence, he has manifested the same repugnance for Manicheanism. As for systematic minds, they have reproached him for wanting to be a partisan of ideal truth instead of a plain partisan. No matter what subject he has approached, however, what he has stated has always been both new and sound. He writes: ‘A manifestation of mental independence ar
ouses the hostility of all fanaticisms’; which is precisely what oafish hearts cannot bear.

  Already in Le secret de la République, he deplored the fact that ‘the French showed no interest in what was causing their demise’.

  In 1924, he releases La Victoire.87 Raymond Poincaré proceeds to ask newspapers not to mention this book. In 1936, he is hounded for an article on the devaluation of the French franc. Under the Occupation, his Journal de la France88 results in great success for him, as well as in two arrests: first at the hands of German services in July 1943, then in September 1944 at the hands of those who conducted the purge. ‘The Lorraine cross cannot serve as an emblem for our entire country’, he would write.

  In 1942, in his Anthologie de la nouvelle Europe89 (Plon), he presents a list of thinkers for whom ‘man is an heir’, to use the expression coined by Maurras90 and then adopted by Moeller van den Bruck;91 a list that associated the names of Pascal, Proudhon, Valéry, Stefan George, Drieu la Rochelle, Paul Nizan, Kolbenheyer, Hans Grimm, Renan, Machiavelli, H. S. Chamberlain, Péguy, Friedrich Sieburg, Nietzsche, Michelet, Wagner and Napoleon. In it, he declares: ‘Realism: such is the foremost virtue of those who shall reconstruct the national, aristocratic and revolutionary Europe’. The book arouses indignation within the extreme Left but is also banned in Germany: it highlights ‘the existing contradiction between the national aspect of the German revolution and its pretension to exporting it’.

  Shortly after the Liberation, Au nom des silencieux92 is published, a book that denounces the excesses committed by the Resistance. The book is seized, as is another one bearing the title Double prison:93 what memories! Next in line is Haute Cour94 (1962), a pamphlet targeting General de Gaulle that would have to be printed in Switzerland.

  It is thus very knowingly that Mr Fabre-Luce criticises all ‘censorships’, whether conducted by the Resistance, ‘historical’ Gaullism or the extreme Left. Here is an example: