💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › georges-palanate-palante-reviews-palante.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:39:29. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Palante Reviews Palante
Author: Georges Palante
Date: Dec 1, 1912
Language: en
Topics: review, individualism
Source: Retrieved on 2016-10-28 from http://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/palante/1912/antinomies.htm
Notes: Source: Mercure de France, Dec 1, 1912 (Vol 100 no. 371); Translated: by Mitch Abidor for marxists.org; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2006.

Georges Palante

Palante Reviews Palante

The individualist is, by his very essence, immoralist and atheist. On

one hand social religiosity, on the other religious and social atheism:

this is how the dilemma is posed. As for me, I have made my choice. I

have opted for social atheism. I have expressed this atheism for the

past fifteen years in a series of works of which the latest, Les

Antinomies entre l’individu et la société (The Antinomies Between the

Individual and Society) is a doctoral dissertation that was refused by

the Sorbonne. I owe my readers an explanation on this subject.

Some among them could ask how it is that the individualist, the social

atheist that I am could blithely have submitted his ideas to the verdict

of an official jury. Some considered that I failed in my individualism

by supposing that my thesis could be accepted and my ideas assimilated

by the Sorbonnic directors of thought. Several have even, in a friendly

fashion, reproached me for this: “What were you doing with that crowd?”

As excuse I will first answer that in presenting my thesis I fully

intended to not sacrifice the measure of my ideas. And then, I proposed

to carry out a social experiment: to see how far the tolerance and

liberalism of thought of my judges went. The experiment has been

completed: it gave the predicted results. It even surpassed my

expectations. The limits of this tolerance are even narrower than I had

thought. Never was a dissertation refused with greater haste, more

offhandedly. From the very beginning my judges judged my thought

unassimilable. Ordinarily, when a doctoral candidate presents himself at

the Sorbonne he receives neither the assent nor the complete refusal of

the judges. He must submit his work to so many modifications that it is

impossible for the judges to not recognize themselves and then refuse a

work to which they have made such a large contribution. They admire

themselves in their work and in their student.

If my work was immediately refused it is without any doubt because I

completely lack the qualities of a student and that, however unimportant

my thought, it at least has the merit of being mine.

And it is this is what my readers ask of me. It is me that search for in

my work, and not an image of contemporary philosophy multiplied in a

hundred copies of the ideas of my judges, MM. Séailles and Bouglé. I

thus find myself amply justified and glorified in my attitude by this

striking certificate of intellectual independence granted me by the

Sorbonne.

Among my readers, only those with an interest in social order will be

disquieted by the casualness with which they cast aside a work which,

whatever the case, represents a serious and sincere effort at thought.

There are a certain number of good spirits who feel that we can

reconcile concern with one’s material situation with the taste for

philosophy. Contemporary science has its prebends, just as the church

once had its. Is it fair that these prebends be exclusively reserved to

members of Sorbonnic “teams"? Is it fair that in order to have the right

to aspire to this one must roll over and make a litter of one’s ideas?

For me this question doesn’t even exist. For quite a while I have, like

Horace, staked out my position on mediocrity. With no difficulty I

renounce the profit of a Sorbonnic discipleship and the honor of

professing in some cushy intellectual position the ideas of M. Séailles.

Of all the moral prejudices I combat I maintain only one: the preference

for the freedom of spirit over opulence.