17340" Galloway: Toussaint in French Philosophy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Bob Galloway <bobgalloway@mchsi.com>

Bob:

On the way to SPEP in Boston last week, I found the following while
digging through my books on the plane, and thought that the Haiti list,
including yourself, heeh, may be interested.

Bob

Corbettland:

I am a recovering student of Bob Corbett's (this means I have continued
to study philosophy since having his classes), and in my studies I have
found the following mention of Toussaint L'Ouverture.  I offer this
merely to get it on record and for the interest that even a recent
French philosopher had and offers a valuable  perspective; not
necessarily because it has bearing upon recent discussion (although I
suspect it may).  I include some context foregoing the mention as well
as following, without which it would be a mere mention and not very
valuable.  Thank you.

Bob Galloway


>From Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 1960 article, "A Note on Machiavelli", from
the collection of essays, "Signs", edited by John Wild for Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, translated by Richard
McCleary, Northwestern University Press, 1964 (pp. 219-221):

     [Machiavelli defines a virtue in our relationships with fortune
which (like the virtue in our relationships with others) is equally
remote from solitude and docility.  He points out as our sole recourse
that presence to others and our times which makes us find others at the
moment we give up oppressing them - that is, find success at the moment
we give up chance, escape destiny at the moment we understand our
times.  Even adversity takes on a human form for us:  fortune is a
woman.  (quoting Machiavelli, chap XXV of "The Prince") "I think it is
better to be too bold than too circumspect, because fortune is a woman;
she gives in only to violence and boldness; experience shows she gives
herself to fierce men rather than to cold ones." For a man it matters
absolutely not who is wholly against humanity, for humanity is alone in
its order.  The idea of a fortuitous humanity which has not cause
already won is what gives absolute value to our 'virtue'.  When we have
understood what is humanly valuable within the possibilities of the
moment, signs and portents never lack.  "Must heaven speak? (again,
Machiavelli)  It has already manifested its will by striking signs.  Men
have seen the sea half open up its depths, a cloud mark out the path to
follow, water spring forth from the rock, and manna fall from heaven.
It is up to us to do the rest; since God, by doing everything without
us, would strip us of the action of our free will, and at the same time
of that portion of choice reserved for us."
     What humanism is more radical than this one?  Machiavelli was not
unaware of values.  He saw them living, humming like a shipyard bound to
certain historical actions -- barbarians to be booted out, an Italy to
create.  For the man who carries out such undertakings, his terrestrial
religion finds the words of that other religion: "Esurientes implevit
bonis, et divites dimisit inanes."  As Renaudet puts it: "This student
of Rome's prudent boldness never intended to deny the role played in
universal history by inspiration, genius, and that action of some
unknown daemon which Plato and Goethe discerned . . . .But in order for
passion, aided by force, to have the property of renewing a world, it
must be nourished just as much by dialectical certainty as by feeling.
If Machiavelli does not set poetry and intuition apart from the
practical realm, it is because this poetry is truth, this intuition is
made of theory and calculation."

     What he is reproached for is the idea that history is a struggle
and politics a relationship to men rather than principles.  Yet is
anything more certain?  Has not history shown even more clearly after
Machiavelli than before him that principles commit us to nothing, and
that they may be adapted to any end?  Let us leave contemporary history
aside.  The progressive abolition of slavery had been proposed by Abbe
Gregory in 1789.  It is passed by the Convention in 1794, at the moment
when, in the words of a colonist, "domestic servants, peasants, workers,
and day-laborers are manifesting against the appointive aristocracy"
(James, "Les Jacobins noirs", p. 127), and the provincial bourgeoisie,
which drew its revenues from San Domingo, is no longer in power.
Liberals know the art of holding up principles on the slope of
inopportune consequences.
     Furthermore, principles applied in a suitable situation are
instruments of oppression.  Pitt discovers that fifty per cent of the
slaves brought into the british Islands are being resold to French
colonies.  English Negroes are creating San Domingo's prosperity and
giving France the European market.  So he takes a stand against slavery,
"He represented the influential Yorkshire region.  He was a man of great
reputation.  Expressions such as humanity, justice, national shame, etc.
pealed from his mouth . . . .  Clarkson came to Paris to stir the torpid
energies [of the Societe des Amis des Noirs], to subsidize them, and to
inundate France with British propaganda" (Les Jacobins noirs, 49).
There can be no illusions about the fate this propaganda had in store
for the slaves of San Domingo.  At war with France a few years later,
Pitt signs an agreement with four French colonists which places the
colony under English protection until peacetime, and re-establishes
slavery and discrimination against mulattoes.  Clearly, it is important
to know not only WHAT PRINCIPLES we are choosing but also what forces,
which men, are going to apply them.
     There is something still more clear:  The same principles can be
used by two adversaries.  When Bonaparte sent troops against San Domingo
who were to perish there, "many officers and all the men believed they
were fighting for the Revolution; they saw in Toussaint a traitor sold
to the priests, the émigrés, and the English . . . the men still thought
they belonged to a revolutionary army.  Yet certain nights they heard
the Blacks within the fortress sing 'La Marseillaise', the 'Ca ira', and
other revolutionary songs.  Lacroix tells how the deluded soldiers,
hearing these songs, raised up and looked at their officers as if to
say: 'Could justice be on the side of our barbaric enemies?  Are we no
longer soldiers of republican France?  Could it be that we have become
vulgar political tools?'" (Les Jacobins noirs, 295).  But how could this
be?  France was the fatherland of the Revolution; Bonaparte, who had
consecrated a few of its acquisitions, was marching against
Toussaint-L'Ouverture.  So it was evident that Toussaint was a
counter-revolutionary in the service of the enemy.
     Here, as is often the case, everyone is fighting in the name of the
same values -- freedom and justice.  What distinguishes them is the kind
of men for whom liberty or justice is demanded, and with whom society is
to be made -- slaves or masters.  Machiavelli was right:  values are
necessary but not sufficient; and it is even dangerous to stop with
values, for as long as we have not chosen those whose mission it is to
uphold these values in the historical struggle, we have done nothing.
Now it is not just in the past we see republics refuse citizenship to
their colonies, kill in the name of freedom, and take the offensive in
the name of law.  Of course Machiavelli's toughminded wisdom will not
reproach them for it.  History is a struggle, and if republics did not
struggle they would disappear.  We should at least realize that the
means remain bloody, merciless, and sordid.  The supreme deception of
the Crusades is not to admit it.  The circle should be broken....]