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New Literary History, Volume 46, Number 1, Winter 2015, pp. 41-62
(Article)
3XEOLVKHGE\-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/nlh.2015.0006

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Charles Pguy:
Time, Space, and le Monde Moderne
Bruno Latour
Foreword by Tim Howles
The soul of the present day is constructed from
the soul of the past. And so, if we have no past,
what hope do we have of constructing a future?
Charles Pguy, Clio

t first glance, the french poet, essayist, and editor Charles

Pguy (18731914) would seem to be an unlikely literary inspiration for a thinker of modernity like Bruno Latour. After all, was
Pguy anything more than a bristling pamphleteer who, from the midst
of his small boutique facing the Sorbonne, spewed forth a series of Cahiers endlessly railing against le monde moderne and all its accoutrements?
Perhaps, however, we should not be surprised by such a connection.
For in recent years, and in particular on the occasion of the centenary
of his death, which took place in the initial phase of the First World
War under a hail of machine-gun fire in the fields of Villeroy, a number of works have appeared in French seeking to reclaim Pguy as our
contemporary.1 Interest in Pguy among Anglophone critical scholarship has proved somewhat more occasional, but here too the gaze is
beginning to shift. Indeed, an important forthcoming study in English
provides a comprehensive reevaluation of Pguy in his role as a kind
of fin-de-sicle bulwark against the historicist reform of literary studies
taking place at the time, thus rendering him the true progenitor of the
nouvelle critique of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Poulet,
Jean Starobinski, and Roland Barthes, and, more generally, as a thinker
who has contributed inestimably to contemporary debates in literary
studies and intellectual history.2
Into these debates now steps Latour. Or, rather, could it be the case
that he has been in the room all along? For the literary and philosophical
influence of Pguy is a little-known detail of Latours academic biography (although he has offered numerous hints to this end, implicit and

New Literary History, 2015, 46: 4162

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explicit, along the way).3 In fact, attention to Pguy has quite literally
bookended Latours writing career (to date). Thus, in the early 1970s,
a detailed study of Clio: dialogue de lhistoire et de lme paenne was the
subject of Latours thse de troisime cycle and the topic of his first-ever
public lecture in 1973.4 And last year, in 2014, he returned to the same
topic in the form of an essay contributed to an edited volume on the
legacy of Pguy to French intellectual life. This contribution, entitled
Nous sommes des vaincus, is translated in full below, and is offered as
an important statement of Latours contemporary thought.5
Latour celebrates Pguy as a reader of le monde moderne. He describes
how, for Pguy, reading must always entail a collaboration between reader
and text, a form of travailler avec,6 in which each must act reciprocally
upon the other in order to synthesize a new reality out of what was
present before. In this arrangement the reader is calledor deployed,
as Pguy might sayto read in such a way as to create, literally, a new
space-time, participating in the glorious reality of the Bergsonian lan
vital. The reader who succeeds in this task will be lauded by Pguy as a
revolutionary, as a hero or as a saint. The reader who fails in this task,
however, will find himself castigated for succumbing to the spirit of the
age, for passively rehashing ready-made concepts and ideas, for mutating and deforming a living tradition, and for applying a hermeneutic
to the text that is valid for the natural sciences alone (hence, Pguys
disdain for the old Sorbonnards such as Gustave Lanson). A true reading
experience, then, is one that is constantly renewed by each successive
generation. The reading experience we find in modernity, by contrast,
is calcified and habituated: Homer is new this morning, Pguy tells
us, and there is nothing perhaps so old as todays newspaper.7 What
results for those inhabiting le monde moderne, then, is nothing less than
a deflation of space-time.
Latours own project, from day one, has been likewise concerned with
tracing the mediations and translations that determine the reality we
inhabit, a reality that is all-too-frequently obscured for us by a worldviewby a form of reading, we might saythat has been imposed upon
us by le monde moderne.8 Moreover, in his most recent project, Latour
invites us to join him in investigating how the space-time of modernity
can be recaptured or thought anew by means of a plurality of modes
of existence.9
The translation offered below therefore claims relevance on at least
two counts. First, it provides the English-speaking world with access to
a representative example of the attempted reclamation of Pguy contra
le monde moderne that is currently at play within French literary studies.
Second, it provides access to an important statement of Latours own

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intellectual project, in the form of a crucial, if underappreciated, literary

influence on his philosophy.10
University of Oxford

Introduction
All that can be said is that a great philosophy is
not one that settles our questions once and for
all, but one that asks them; a great philosophy
is not one that delivers a verdict, but one that
advances the case.11

Its certainly true to say that Pguy has never been accepted onto the
syllabus of the agrgation in philosophy. Thats because he hardly warrants
the title philosopher, do I hear someone say? And yet, philosopher
is the one and only title Pguy ever claimed for himself. You find that
he writes in a strange way, indeed, in a way that is hardly recognizable as
philosophical at all? But consider the example of Nietzsche: did his style
ever prevent him from being accepted as a great philosopher, or indeed
from being included time after time on the syllabus of the agrgation?
And dont talk to me about Pguys somewhat eccentric politics. Do you
really find noble Friedrichs more palatable, with his magnificent blond
beasts and his bermensch? For my part, Id rather go with young Joan
of Arc and her rousing campaign for the liberation of the territory of
Alsace-Lorraine. Pguys arguments are just not consecutive enough to
follow? Well, Im not really sure how to answer that objection: after all,
Nietzsche is happy to lead us on with the most cryptic of aphorisms, and
yet our man, when he gets into the flow of his argument, wont stop until
his interlocutor is rendered speechless. If it takes two hundred pages to
make his point, well, two hundred pages of the Cahiers de la Quinzaine is
what will go to press. And if it takes three hundred . . .
Perhaps, then, this is what frustrates you: Pguy talks too much about
himself, he rants and raves, he is too polemical, he launches into too
many futile skirmishes? If so, I can only assume you havent opened
your copy of The Gay Science in a while: does the author of that book
speak of anything other than his moods? If Charles had his Jean Jaurs,
then Friedrich had his Richard Wagner, dragged kicking and screaming
through the mud in the same way.12 Both had Quixote-like character-

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istics. Perhaps, then, the problem is that with Pguy theres no single
masterpiece, no consummate watershed text, no Zarathustra representing
the summit of his work. Well then, it must be that you havent yet read
Clio. Or perhaps the style of Le Porche du mystre de la deuxime vertu has
prevented you from appreciating it as a work of theology, in fact, the
most important work of theology that has been written since . . . well,
since when?13 Lets just say since the Penses (Blaise Pascal being another
philosopher who hardly fits the mold). And if I hadnt suggested Pascal,
I could even have gone back to one of the Patristic Fathers.
Theres no doubt about it, if Pguy isnt appreciated as a philosopher,
it can only be because his particular insights havent been digested,
metabolized, or rendered into a conventional philosophical style. But
here again a comparison with Zarathustra is instructive. Which undergraduate, upon opening it at random and without prior knowledge of
its content, would think that this book amounts to anything more than
a dark parody of some Nordic religion, like a pale imitation of Ossian?
The only reason this doesnt happen is that the student who opens it
has previously read his Deleuze, or rather, his Deleuzes.14 Equipped in
this way, hes able to do the necessary alchemy to get from Nietzsches
extravagant style to the lucid arguments presented by Deleuze, that professor of philosophy (even if he doesnt realize at the time thats what
hes doing). The student encounters the incantations of a poem, but
theres no panic, for hes able to digest it as philosophy thanks to the
metabolic system bequeathed to him by his university education. This
is how he will swot up to pass his agrgation.
But Pguy didnt have his Deleuzes (whos only been decisive in regard
to one matter, anyway).15
Everybody must open Pguy alone.
Alas, the naysayers have put many off the attempt. Pguy has been
ill-served by his various political, religious, and poetic (although never
philosophical) commentators. Just to start reading him, then, theres
quite a hill to climb. We all know of fine spirits who have hesitated to
peruse even a single page of Clio on account of what theyve heard about
its author beforehand. So perhaps someone has indicated interest in picking up a text by Pguy?well, youll have your work cut out persuading
that person not to put it down almost as soon as they have taken it up.
With Pguy, its as it used to be for Nietzsche: he finds himself under
the control of a defamatory sister and an assortment of Nazi appropriators. The painstaking work of clarification, elucidation, interpretation,
absorption, and commentarythe whole work of glossinghas not yet
been carried out for his work. (The other day I found myself standing
next to two well-educated and knowledgeable young students on the Rue

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45

de la Sorbonne, right in front of the Boutique des Cahiers:16 it soon became

clear that neither of them realized the significance of that little green
shop-front, which has a significance in the history of thought greater
even than the lake at Sils Maria, as dazzling as that location is!)
But with this observation weve arrived, perhaps, at the nub of the
problem. For if its true that Pguy has not benefited from all that editorial attention, at the same time it has to be admitted that it was precisely
for the exegetes, for those who glossed and for the commentators that he
reserved the greatest disdain. If there was one task Pguy insisted upon
taking upon his own shoulders, it was the task of instructing readers of
his work how to read.17
Pguy always stipulated that one had to stick close to the text, without
any prior knowledge of it, without the support of commentaries, without
the benefit of any scholarship, using the most pared-down edition that
was available, without the aid of footnotes. Only then would the reader
experience the full impact of the text. Homer, Corneille, Hugo, Pascal,
Bergson: each must be appreciated according to his own unique genius,
without explaining him away by following the thread of endless antecedent causes. Choosing the right thread: that was Pguys big idea. For
example, consider his delicious account of Lansons series of lectures
on the history of French theatre:18
At last here was perfection. The history of the thtre Franais had been made
known, drilled, tapped. It was a history that unraveled like a single thread. But
one that had its arms and legs chained to its body, its wrists tied together and
its ankles bound.
Then, a catastrophe occurred. It was Corneille. . . .
Why was it that at the mere mention of the name of Corneille everything
that came before seemed null and void. . . . Of course, we still engaged in the
Querrelle du Cid, comparing his play unfavorably to Guilln de Castros original.19
But everybody could see that the one who best understood le Cid was the one
who took it at the level of the text, in the levelling of the text itself, at the very
level of the soilabove all it was the one who knew nothing about the history
of the thtre Franais!20

In this way, Pguy is contrasting a regulated way of reading (la lecture

habitue), the one that is advocated by all the critics, with the shock of a
reading that he calls non-regulated (dshabitue).21 Pguys philosophy
circulates around the idea that a text should be grasped naked, exposed
to full view, with all its power to renew.
But how he has been punished! The fate of his work is the clearest
indication possible of how he has been misunderstood: to use one of his
preferred phrases, not since the world began has there been such a

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spectacular failure! How right Pguy was when he penned the words we,
the defeated ones (nous sommes des vaincus).22 For by expelling those who
glossed, it became his own fate to be cast out into the outer darkness.
Nietzsche did just the same, expelling the whole critical apparatus,
all those in the scholarly profession, the various footnote-makers (even
though he himself was a philologist). But in the century that followed,
they all returnedthe whole critical apparatus, the scholarly readers,
and the footnote-makers, not to mention the philologists, the translators, and the retranslatorsand thus he become a philosopher. But
when Pguy expelled them, it seems they never bothered to come back.
In Nietzsches case, they were ready to forgive. But they are conspicuous by their absence when it came to transforming Pguys genius into
something resembling philosophy. Pguys work has no commentators,
even while that work (as he himself makes clear) depends entirely on
its readers: What a marvelous, what an astonishing, fate: it is through
us, my dear friend, and through our way of reading, that so many of
the great works, works of great men and of very great men, find their
fulfillment, their completion, their crowning glory. What an astonishing
responsibility lies upon us.23 This is the paradox Pguy sets up right
at the heart of his work. On the one hand, the reader must make do
without any mediation whatsoever: the meaning of a text can only be
grasped directly when it has been liberated from all glossing. On the
other hand, all his deployments (Pguy doesnt really write books;
rather, he conducts campaigns in the manner of military incursions) are
nothing but long apprenticeships into how to read properly. Never have
so many pages of critical apparatus been produced to explain what the
critical apparatus could never explain! Never has an author so despised
all critical apparatus and yet, at the same time, prescribed what everybody
should and shouldnt do if they want to be obedient readers! Peguy
always wants to differentiate between intuition and institution, between
an intuitive and an institutional way of reading. He insisted on this distinction, even at the risk of losing both types of readers in the process!
How can we explain this contradiction, this reversal, this overthrow?
How is it possible to aver all at once that everything, absolutely everything (our biological lives, our material lives, our intellectual lives, our
political lives, our religious lives) needs to be subject to a continual
reprise, and yet also, at the same time, in the same moment, require that
the assistance offered by those who might be best equipped to bring
this about must be spurned, even if that assistance is rather limited and
provisional? The cross Pguy bore (this was a philosophical cross before
it was a theological cross) was to continually expose that question, but
never to settle it. Between intuition and institution the chasm was total
and unsurpassable. No dialectic between the two was possible.

charles pguy

47

Of course, Pguy knew well enough that there was bound to be linkage (not reconciliation), or at least articulation, between the two. But
he always sought to expose the contrast. The contrast between Joan of
Arc and Pierre Cauchon; the contrast between Antigone and Creon;
the contrast between the Dreyfus Affair whilst it was in process and the
Dreyfus Affair when it had finished; the contrast between Polyeucte martyr
and the reading of it given by Lanson;24 the contrast between radical
socialism and the kind of socialism presented in his own Marcel, premier
dialogue de la cit harmonieuse;25 the contrast between Bergsonism and le
parti intellectuel:26 all these contrasts were not to be smoothed out in any
way at all. Its as if he was calling down lightning-bolts to strike through
the middle of each, decoupling them totally, rupturing them absolutely.
And if someone, even if it should be a friend or a disciple, dared to
question this by proposing even the slightest reconciliation between the
two, if someone tried to erase or to fill up27 the discontinuities between
them, Pguys wrath would descend upon that person. Just make a list
of those who became his enemies (a very long list indeed!): they had
all tried by means of a little sleight of hand28 to introduce continuity where discontinuity should have remained, by claiming to trace a
thread between things that should at all times be kept separated (or
brought together only by means of a reprise). If only such people might
be turned into ash!
And yet, for all his insistence on that point, Pguy wouldnt be the
great philosopher he is if all he had done was to expose these contrasts.
If that was all he had done, he might have cut a tragic figure, but not
one found in such a predicament. If he had concluded his work with
this first type of contrast, he might have qualified as a mystical thinker,
but certainly not as a philosopher. For Pguy knew that a contrary movement was also possible: having argued for immediate apprehension, he
now concedes that everything, absolutely everything, will also depend on
small mediations. This second movement, then, is not concerned with
the contrast between intuition and institution: rather, it is concerned
with the contrast between an institution that is void of content and an
institution that has seized it anew, that has been seized by intuition.
What is in view is an institution that has once again taken up the work
of reprise, this time in the correct sense of the word. Peguy saw himself
as the avant-garde, almost the prophet, and certainly the herald, of such
an enterprise. Here we would have an institution that could inherit a
tradition, or follow a thread, without that thread being so continuous
that it should asphyxiate the event with its wrists tied together and its
ankles bound.29

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The drama consists in the fact that although he envisages these institutions, although he yearns for them, they dont yet exist. As many of
them as there are, and there are many, all he can do is dream. Theres
French society, the Socialist party, France herself, the Church, the little
community of readers of les Cahiers, even (as strange as this might sound)
the army, and finally Science (whose true worth he comes to appreciate
via his careful reading of Pierre Duhem and via his friendship with Jean
Baptiste Perrin), to which he devotes his thesis to safeguarding from the
encroachment of scientism and from the distortion of its discoveries by
the social sciences.30
The question we should be asking is therefore the following: between
the years of 1873 and 1914, why were none of these candidate-institutions
able to renew themselves in such a way that Pguy could find in them
evidence of the progress he so longed to discover? For Pguy was above
all a man committed to progress, albeit made nervous by waiting for
these wonderful institutions to arrive. To condemn him as anti-modern,
then, is nothing more than a confession that you havent really read
him. Its to dismiss him as a man forever inclined to dwell in the past
when, in reality, Pguy is par excellence a man of the present. From the
early text entitled Marcel, premier dialogue de la cit harmonieuse, right up
to his joyful departure for the front line in August 1914 (his troops later
recalled the childlike enthusiasm with which their lieutenant enjoined
them to rush the bayonets: it was they who would end up enduring the
trenches!), he never waivered in his belief that what his work declared
impossible would nevertheless come to pass.
To further expose the situation in which Pguy places himself, we
should note the way in which he sets up another, equally intractable
contrast between power and institution. As a result, we watch him eagerly
awaiting the arrival of institutions for which he has simultaneously foreclosed the practical means by which they might ever come into existence!
How did he envisage socialism coming to pass if not through the infrastructure of an election? How did he envisage the Church recovering
its faith without the means of requiring obedience from its adherents?
How could the mystical experience supervene without political representation? In this way, we find the man whose supreme ambition was to
link the eternal and the temporal foreclosing any link between mysticism and politics. We find the man who advocated mediation dreaming
only of immediacy. This is Pguys mission. It is hardly surprising he was
unable to conceal his underlying suspicion that no one is at peace.31
How could such a figure aspire to any kind of recognition from the
world? It was not so much with his friends as with himself that he seems
to have stubbornly bickered! We know that those who tried to stay with

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charles pguy

him, finding themselves progressively disheartened, would ruefully ask

each other: So, how far did you get with the Cahiers before unsubscribing? More to the point we might ask: how far did Pguy get before
unsubscribing from himself?

I. Pguy and Modernity

Why did Pguy put himself through this torture? Because he wanted
to experience the full force of the brutality of the age in which he lived.
If its true that Nietzsche made use of his own body as a seismograph
on which to register the mood of the age, then its even more true for
Pguy, whose life was given over to recording the shifts of the fin-de-sicle
tectonic movements. If theres one word that runs through the three
huge volumes of his Oeuvres compltes, from start to finish, its the adjective modern. The modern world has rendered institutions incapable
of renewing themselves by means of intuition. For Pguy, there must be
something in the modern world that has corrupted the wellspring of
(nothing less than) our entire common existence: our biological lives,
our economic lives, our intellectual lives, our spiritual lives, our civic
lives, and our religious lives.
Ultimately, Pguys greatness as a philosopher stems not from the
way in which he exposed the contrast between intuition and institution,
nor from the way in which he continually yearned for institutions to be
renewed by the fiery wind of intuition. Rather, his greatness consists
in the fact that he was prepared to strain every sinew (to give his life
would not be an overstatement) to diagnose the impossible reprise at the
very heart of modernism. That of which his age was most proud, Pguy
saw as a canker. He wasnt the only one saying such things at that time.
But Pguys voice was the most insistent and indeed the most lucid, for
rather than focusing on its derivative effects (industrialization, urbanization, the media, solipsism, working-class poverty, or the problem of
anonymity), he labored to describe this canker as it attacked every aspect
of human life. He had this in common with Nietzsche. But Pguy was
able to do so with a depth of field and a generosity of which Nietzsche
was not capable, blinded as he was by his revilement of Christians and
of the ordinary man (and thus of the ordinary Christian man). Pguy
would have thought that Nietzsches doctrine of the Eternal Return, for
example, was nothing more than a piece of pagan nonsense, nothing
but a philosophical cribbing of Salammb.
Pguy was wrong about so much in his own lifetime (this is the same
Pguy, of course, who predicted a three month war in August 1914, a

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war that would go on to endure over four long years of quagmire and
butchery).32 But his instincts were sound in predicting what the modern
world was going to lack. This is the great paradox of his work: he was
continually arraigning the nineteenth century for presiding over a situation of universal debasement, but that catastrophe only arrived in the
century that followed. All the same, whilst the powers-that-be were united
in celebrating the advance of progress, science, and democracy, Pguy
foresaw that we were heading toward the abyss. Its as if the forty short
years of his life foreshadowed the terrible wars of the period 19141945,
as well as the no-less-terrible period 19141989, the short twentieth
century. He didnt know what would happen, and certainly wouldnt
have predicted what did happen, and yet somehow Pguy managed to
diagnose the suicide of Europe that was to come, as modernism exploded
(such that this period has been called by some the period of the first
globalization).33 Under the bonnet of the stupid nineteenth century,
Pguy caught a glimpse of the appalling twentieth century.
For Pguy, what is the explanation for the gross, all-encompassing,
ineradicable defect embodied in the modern world? It all stems from
the way in which it provides neither a time nor a space in which it might
deploy that which it claims to be instituting. The modern world simply
does not provide a livable space-time (what Bergson always tries to say
demurely, Pguy is prepared to shout from the rooftops). It is against
the entire philosophical foundation of the ecosystem of the moderns that
Pguy trains his sights. So, yes, he did welcome war with Germany. But
he saw it as an event sure to lead to ruin, not to the glorious future
that so many others anticipated. The face of Germany represented for
him a portent of an apocalyptic destruction that would soon engulf the
whole world.
Was there any other philosopher who saw things in that way? Was there
any other philosopher who was prepared to sacrifice his temporal life in
order to drink this bitter cup to the dregs? All the other thinkers, all the
other militantshowever critical, however disabused of hope, however
lucid they werecome across as cheerful optimists by comparison with
the alarm-bells sounded by Pguy: you, you the moderns, are leading
us into the abyss because you have neither the time nor the space to
house the people you are claiming to modernize. And yet, was Pguys
diagnosis awry? A century on, from our vantage point, would we say
otherwise? Do you really think that the ecosystem of the moderns has
become any more habitable in the intervening years?

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II. The Moderns and Time

That time should have failed is something that can be readily understood: the moderns disclose an impossible temporal continuity by smoothing over its discontinuities by means of a kind of perpetual miracle (this
is the subject of the Cahier, posthumously published, entitled Un pote la
dit, as well as the Note conjointe and, of course, Clio). This is the miracle
that allows the moderns to claim that they no longer believe in miracles,
that they have no metaphysics, that they can do without the light of the
heavens above and that they have decisively broken from the pastbut
also that, thanks to it, they can explain everything else. This miracle is
also what authorizes so-called scientists to mobilize secondary causes,
by means of the construction of two implausible sciences, history and
sociology, which are wheeled out as a way of explaining consequences
by antecedents, without noticing that the discontinuity between cause
and effect renders such an explanation unfeasible in advance:34
Just think about the way in which the Moderns, particularly Modern historians
and sociologists, request, request, postulate a perpetual miracle, a miracle for
every day, a miracle for every deed, a miracle for every detail, insofar as the
historian must preside over every day, over every deed, over every detail, and
insofar as the sociologist must be omnipresent and omnitemporal, co-extensive
with all space and contemporary with all time. The very same world that has
categorically denied the possibility of miraclesnot only their existence, but the
very possibility of their existenceis thus the same world that requires, requests,
postulates and demands a miracle all the more, in fact, the most difficult miracle
to believe in, whoever you are. A temporal miracle isnt any less a miracle. In a
certain sense, its more of a miracle. For a temporal miracle that is perpetuated
throughout time constitutes a sort of infinite miracle.35

More seriously, this same miracle becomes the explanation of temporal

power (a recurrent term in Pguys work, which we should take to mean
that which gives rise to a certain type of temporality), the temporal
power of capitalism. Capitalism nullifies the discontinuity of time (or
at least it seems to) by making us believe that what will happen in the
future is already so determined by the past that we can always calculate
its yield. This is precisely what Pguy fights against tirelessly: for him, the
temporal logic (we might almost say the tempering logic) of a bank
savings account is that it causes the past to be propelled toward the
future like a ball rolling down an inclined plane. An inclined business
plan . . .36 For Pguy, the concept of money is a discordant mixture of
socialism and Bergsonism. Money is the past encountering the future
by leaping overor claiming to leap overan irreducible presence.

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The drama, the crime, or the destiny of the moderns is to have

standardized the action of historical time in every domain of life: there
was to be a chain of cause-and-effect in the physical world (such would
seem to be a valid inference) and a logic of secondary causation in
the domains of history and sociology (that inference would seem to
be no longer sustainable), all of which was to be singularly accounted
for by the structure of the capitalist economy (that one is the big lie).
The consequence? There is no time in the sense of an event or a presence. There is merely the continuity of past time, above the intractable
hiatus of the present, a hiatus that must be denied if it is to be passed
over without the thread being broken. (Clio, ancient Clio, knows all
about time passing, which is why she is always poking fun at the inconsequence of consequences). The future offered by the progressives is a
religion based on the past, the worst kind of religion, one in which the
permanent miracle of continuity glosses over the permanent miracle
of discontinuity. The Modernization front will advance by causing the
time-that-is-to-come (the time of Advent, the time of the Parrousia, as
well as the Bergsonian dure) to disappear everywhere from the face of
the earth. And all the while the Moderns dont consider themselves to
be without God, without a religion, and without a metaphysics.
What terrifies Pguy about the modern world and about the enthusiasm displayed by le parti intellectuel for such a world is the coherence of
this same principle as it is applied to every domain of existence. This
accounts for his odd obsession with Bergson. Ranged against the entire
coalition forces of modernity, he sees Bergson standing alone, who is
here compared to Napoleon:
A man arrived on the scene. At once, he noticed the location of the Pratzen
Heights.37 At once, he understood that this lofty position was the key to the
long battle that was to follow. . . . He knew he had to locate himself at once at
the very heart of, in the secret place, of the present: that was the hidden key.
He would not allow himself to be dislodged from that place at any cost. . . .
One day, history will record that Bergsons maneuver was exactly equivalent to
Napoleons: to be ensconced right in the heart of enemy territory.38

Pguy could easily have titled his Note something like Bergson and
Bergsonism against all the temporal powers. If the connection between
Napoleon and Bergson can be explained by the fact that Pguy also
found himself in the midst of a battle, theres no doubt that Bergson
enabled him to pinpoint his diagnosis of the condition of the modern
world and to glimpse a possible solution for it. The moderns wanted to
nullify time by replacing present time with the continuity of the past.
They had committed the unforgivable crime of wanting to ignore the

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53

hiatus imposed by the present. The antidote, then, was to establish institutions that could re-present themselves, take themselves in hand, revive
themselves, all by refusing to swallow the miracle of temporal continuity
and by acknowledging in its place the miracle of discontinuity. By doing
so, they would be able to profit from the thread of tradition, from their
heritage, without the idea of a continuous thread, indeed, by resisting this
idea. Yes, to obtain the imperishable only by means of the perishable. And
thereby truly without God and without religion, the theism and religion
of the moderns, which were the guarantors of the permanent miracle.
To make this happen, yes, a new religion would have to be made and a
new God would have to be instaured. The imperishable was no longer
to be found above, in front of, below, or after the perishablebut in
it and above all through it. Once again, back to the Note conjointe: Such
deep povertyhow we have to start all over again. And yet, in Modernity,
there is peace of mind and contentment.39
This explains Pguys interest in (we might even say passion for)
Christianity, or for the reprise of Christianity. This passion, it hardly needs
repeating, explains why so many critics scorn his work: do you really want
us to take seriously a Christian philosopher, a Catholic one at that?
(Wed only be able to countenance such attention for a Protestant!).
Critical thought can handle almost anything, but not somebody who
advances a philosophy that is examined, corrected, and renovated by
Christianity. Exceptions tend only be made for those who are venerated
(Pascal) or for those who come across as exotic (Kierkegaard). And yet
it turns out that Pguy isnt at all a run-of-the-mill Catholic philosopher.
Nor is he merely a socialist converted to Catholicism.40 He never actually converted. Like Bergson, all he ever did was think about the same
problem throughout. There arent many philosophers who have been as
consistent as him. But for Pguy, it was precisely because the modern
world was so consistent that he had to be, in turn, counter-consistent.
And yet, it turns out that the question of the present, of presence,
is one that has been elaborated, instituted, worked over, and ritualized
by Christianity for two thousand years beforehand (and by prophetic
Judaism, Pguys true intellectual homeland,41 for a longer time still).
We shouldnt think of Pguy as offering a philosophy to which is added
a dose of socialism (which might be acceptable) and then a dose of
Catholicism (which might be slightly more embarrassing); rather, with
him, the Catholicism is there precisely because he is a philosopher and because, when it comes to thinking about the problem of the present, no
prejudice should be allowed to interrupt thoughtnot even the outcry
of the anti-clericals. Hidden in the folds of the dogma of the Incarnation, he finds a crucial concept, the most important in all history (Clio

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dixit), namely, that the eternal is begotten in time, that God is dependent
on human beings (in an entirely different manner from that envisaged
by Voltaire and Ludwig Feuerbach).42 But in order to disentangle this
idea from the straightjacket of dogma, Pguy will once again be required
to establish the difference between Church-as-institution and Churchas-intuition.
In this matter, once again, Pguy was unlucky. He was born at the
worst possible moment in the entire history of the Church. Under the
Third Republic, and in spite of the ralliement,43 Catholicism found itself
in an entirely defensive mode, not open to creative ideas (when did it
stop being like that?). Having put Bergson on the Index (in a decree of
June 1914),44 the magisterium, beginning to panic, suggested that their
intellectuals should return to the embrace of Aquinas. At a time when
what was needed was a new Francis of Assisi, what they ended up with
was a Jacques Maritain! The more they put modernism on the Index,
the more the institutional Church found itself behaving in line with
the worst excesses of modernism: taking refuge in the past in order to
nullify Presence. Certainly, to re-engage with the same problem in a
deeper way, it would be necessary to remake Christianity in spite of the
Church, just as it would be necessary to remake socialism in spite of the
socialists and the work of commentary in spite of those who were glossing. Had he lived in another time, Pguy might have been a formidable
Luther against Rome (an even more angry and polemical one)but his
target was always that other church, le parti intellectuel, that fiction set up
expressly to allow the Cahiers to be the Reformation.

III. The Moderns and Space

What theoretical benefit accrued to Pguy by looking to the Christian
tradition for traces of the fundamental problem he had identified in
socialism, that couldnt come via Bergson or via the establishment of
his Cahiers? Something that couldnt be found in Bergson, and indeed
something that he had only served to render more opaque, namely, the
question of space. To be without timetemporality, historicitywas one
thing. But to find oneself without a place, without spatiality, was something
else, albeit equally serious. And yet, if there was an intractable hiatus of
the present, there was just as much an intractable hiatus in belonging
to a space. If a lack of time results in a sense of suffocation, a lack of
space ends up asphyxiating. Capitalism is a morbid religion of space
just as much as it is a morbid religion of time. For just as it defines the
future by means of the past, short-circuiting the irreducible hiatus of

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55

the present, in the same way it defines that which is universalor, we

might say, globalby short-circuiting the very earth on which we stand.
The earth becomes nothing more than the backdrop for the agency
of money. There are no more places, since there is no longer a place
characterized by the hiatus.
Unfortunately, Pguy could find very few allies who would uphold
his diagnosis concerning the space of the modern world. The utopia
envisaged by socialism was evidently no help, its internationalist stance
even less so (its clear that Pguy was right, not Jaurs, who, even in July
1914, was still trusting in the basic pacifism of his German comrades);
and as for Bergson, his distinction between geometric space and la dure
would only lead Pguy off-track. Pguy had to invent with his own tools,
against the grain of the world. He did so via a twofold strategy that was
fraught with risk (this would have been the case for any philosopher, but
it was especially so for one working in the heyday of le petit pre Combes):45
he ransacked the metaphorical resources of the Christian tradition for
describing what it means to be spatially rooted (lenracinement spatial ),
and he ransacked the metaphorical resources of the nationalist tradition for describing what it means to belong to the earth (lappartenance
au sol). A Christian and a nationalist: could there be a more pernicious
combination than that? And yes, its true that what seems most ugly to
us about Pguy is the way he goes further and deeper than anyone else:
in regard to race, Christianity, the people, and above all France herself,
with his description of her as a redeemed land and as a blessed land (adding for good measure, and to unsettle us still further, the image of the
French soldier, fully armed with sword and flag).
Its not the figure of Clio who crystallizes the misunderstanding of
space that lies at the heart of the modern world; rather, its the figure
of Joan. Yes, Joan of Arc! What! I hear you say, the same Joan of Arc
before whose statue those (misnamed) National Front idiots parade
during their May Day celebrations? But no, were not talking about
the same Joan. Pguy isnt talking about that gilded idol of nationalist
identity. The Joan hes talking about provides the antidote to the whole
modern conception of space, in the journey of her life from Domrmy to
Rouen, in the way she contested every occupation (for her the English,
just as for Pguy the Germans, were those who sought domination over
a territory), in the way she flattened every hierarchy (she, the Maid,
ends up leading the king, in the same way that, for Pguy, the eternal
is always dependent on the temporal). The great paradox here is the
way in which Pguy helps himself to concepts that seem closed (such
as race, earth, nation, people) in order to lever wide open that which
the moderns claimed to have settled for good (before they proceeded

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to plunge into nearly a century of nationalistic and patriotic madness).

We can only imagine how violently Pguy would have turned against
Bergson when he indulged in the awful pathos of la France ternelle
against Teutonic barbarism. Once again, just his luck: Joan of Arc had
served to vaccinate Pguy against nationalism, and yet after his death
on the field at Villeroy, he found himself appropriated as a nationalist
patriot in the image of one like a Paul Droulde.46
The Maidanti-globalization? Yes, its quite ludicrous. But the idea
works. Not philosophically, but poetically. To shatter spatiality (just as
he shattered temporality), and to begin to speak afresh of the earth,
of belonging and of rootedness, Pguy has to invent an entirely new
poetic style, one that surprised even him, but which emerged, all of a
sudden (although his friend Romain Rolland had predicted it), in one
particular Cahier.47 To be more precise, it emerges on page 727 of the
second volume of the Pliade edition of his complete works in French
(as a parenthesis, we might note that this edition, even though it is
meticulously researched and careful to foreground the text in every
instance, contravenes everything Pguy said about critical apparatus):
It is fortunate for the Modern world, which makes use of it liberally, and with
an unaffected ease, it is fortunate for it, and for we who watch it do so, that
other worlds, its forefathers, should have come into the world before it, and
that those damnable, pathetic beastsalthough thats not what they were, are,
or ever have been, that much is for certainconstructed and bequeathed to
them from the past Notre Dame and La Sainte-Chapelle, bequeathed to them the
admirable Invalides and the Arc de Triomphe, bequeathed to them, my God, even
the Panthon, and the most incomparable monument the world has ever known:
Paris itself.48

And with that word Paris, Pguys style suddenly kicks in (and rolls on
for the next forty-seven pages, none of which have the slightest connection with what this particular Cahier was supposed to be about). Pguy
realizes that by means of his poetic style alone, by means of long enumerations of place-names, he can communicate the hiatus of existence for
the space-dimension of this world, for those who are earth-bound, for
the terrestrials (lespace terrestre, terriens, et terreux), just as previously by
means of repetition alone he was able to communicate the hiatus of the
present for the time-dimension of this world. He audaciously sets out
to capture all this by means of poetry. But its precisely because he is a
philosopher that he can dare to grasp the potential of poetry to bring
about that wonderful feeling of rootednessall by contrast with the
system of thought of his time, which was continually blown off course
by the utopia of a global marketplace, only to find itself bogged down

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57

for four long years in the quagmire of the trenches, and then for nearly
a century afterward plunged into a world at war.
From that moment, Pguy was continually on the lookout for small
territories of landJoans had stretched from Domrmy to Rouen; his,
from Orlans to Villeroyclaiming them, all by means of this style, in
defiance of, in revolution against, in resistance to the moderns who
sought to occupy them. Attack the invader! (for him, that strange historical amalgam of the English and the Germans). Attack the pacifists!
(for him, those who fail to defend the earth, those for whom no hiatus
ever interrupts their progress, those for whom the deployment of money
is the only form of power). Nobody is less patriotic than Pguy. Thats
why in Cahier after Cahier he sought to make known, via the contributions of his collaborators, the misery of those living under the yoke of
colonization, modernization, or despotic rule. In fact, from within that
little shop poured forth, by means of an overwhelming effort, a geopolitical system that was wholly without illusion, one that was absolutely
honest about the benefits of progress and the advance of Enlightenment.
Pguy fought so that we could think about, so that we could grasp in
a new way, what it meant to be a countrybut for everyone. Pguy was a
true thinker of globalization, even though he lived for most of his life
in a shoebox! For to inhabit a particular time and a particular place
was in itself to fight against capitalism. The forces of death must not be
allowed to triumph over the living.
What mattered most of all for Pguy was to show by means of repetition and enumerationtwo concepts generated by style (not to be
confused with mere effects of style)that it is possible to inhabit an
entirely different space-time from the rest of the moderns. He wants
us to get going on that journey right now, walking-boots on our feet,
bag on our shoulders. If poetry can help, then he will put regiments of
quatrains by our side. Or if something more sentimental is required,
hell hand over the reins to such things, too. Just for a moment, can
you put yourself in the shoes of one of the loyal readers of the Cahiers
and imagine their confusion and distress when Eve fell through their
letter-boxes like a paving-stone, all 35,000 alexandrines of it!49 But at
the same time, they must have been amazed. A man has arrived on the
scene, one capable of renewing everything under the sun, everything
since the days of Adam and Eve, in verse, no matter what impression he
made (Pguy loved his schoolboy japes).50 Here is a reprise even more
comprehensive, even more radical, even more generous, than the one
given by that other foot-solider, that other outsider (although he has
since been welcomed into the ranks of the scholarly establishment), the
author of the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, the one generally considered

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the philosopher of the twentieth century. Ah, the twentieth centurya

cul-de-sac for thought!

Conclusion
So, one hundred years on, where have we got to? Its quite obvious
that in the course of the century that has followed, things have become
much worse. That which Pguy fought against has begun to prevail
and the institutions in whose instauration he invested most hope have
found themselves increasingly on the wane. We now realize that the
rampant capitalism of the nineteenth century was nothing but a tiny
traders booth compared to the monster we see before us today. And
theres absolutely no point challenging it with merely an ersatz socialism (Jaurs, if only we could hear your voice now!). As for politics, who
today would dream of conjoining it with the word mysticism! What
about the Church, then? It has merely sunk into the role of being the
dreary policeman of peoples moral behavior. Were it to withdraw the
imprimatur today, nobody would even bat an eyelid. What about Science,
then? These days were reminiscing about a science that used to be bold
and adventurous, in the same way people used to speak, at the turn of
the previous century, of Greek and Latin. Science will soon be offered
up on the altar, just as happened, previously, to the antique cultures.
Yes, we too, it seems, are the defeated ones. And as for philosophy?
Unless he is quite mad, a philosopher nowadays wouldnt dare follow
Pguy in consistently and stubbornly attacking the whole ecosystem of
the moderns.
Pguy always complained that he was not born at a good time; but
at least his death took place on a date that sums up all of the history
of Europe: August 1914. Of course, he shares the anniversary of his
death with millions of humble soldiers. And yet, all the same, how can
we avoid quaking a little when, for the first time in our lives, we come
across a date that ends in 14?51 Even if we know that history doesnt
repeat itself, there are parallels here that send a shiver down the spine.
And we know all too well that ancient Clio might have more than one
trick up her sleeve, and that she is perfectly capable of causing history
to rebound for the worse.
What should we be preparing ourselves to face, then? In 1905, when
Pguy completed his foreboding work Notre Patrie, it was obvious that
behind the apparent tragicomedy of the Kaisers visit to Tangier there
was the sense of an entirely different tragicomedy soon to play out:
Everybody, every single person, understood at the same time that the

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threat of a German invasion was present, that it was nearby, that the
imminence of it was real.52 And yet, by concluding with the following
words, we can see that hes really referring to something else:
The growth, the spread, of this knowledge, a knowledge that was harder and
harder to ignore, was nothing like the discontinuous, atomized circulation of
run-of-the-mill gossip passed along by means of word-of-mouth; rather, it took
the form of a communal, interior recognition, a muffled, but profound, form
of understanding, the communal echo generated by a single sound; when
this was first emitted, at its first intonation, every single one of us heard it, we
recognized it, we listened to its deep resonance, as if it was something already
known and familiar to us; it wasnt a voice that came from the outside, rather, it
was a voice hidden in the recesses of our memory, welling up from a time and
a place that was unknown to us.53

A century later, we are hearing the same voice welling up from a time and
a place that is unknown to us. Its not whispering to us about the threat
of a German invasion. For us, its not the territory of Alsace-Lorraine
that is at stake. For us, its the whole Earth. Who is ready to take it back?
The one thing we perhaps have to our advantage in the century that
has passed is that Europe is no longer the hub of modernity. She can no
longer wreak such havoc. Instead, Europe could put herself to thinking.
Will she be capable of recovering her time and reoccupying her space,
of reinstauring herself once again?
Sciences Po, Paris
Translated by Tim Howles
Notes
1 See Alain Finkielkraut, Le Mcontemporain: Pguy, lecteur du monde moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 1999); Damien Le Guay, ed., Les Hritiers Pguy (Montrouge: Bayard, 2014); Graldi
Leroy, Charles Pguy: linclassable (Paris: Armand Colin, 2014); and Camille Riquier, ed.,
Les Cahiers du cerf. Charles Pguy, cent ans dj (Paris: Le Cerf, 2014).
2 Glenn H. Roe, The Passion of Charles Pguy: Literature, Modernity, and the Crisis of Historicism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014). The translator thanks the author for granting
access to uncorrected proofs of his book in advance of publication.
3 See Bruno Latour, Biography of an Inquiry: On a Book about Modes of Existence,Social Studies of Science 43, no. 2 (2013): 288.
4 Latour, Exegse et ontologie propos de la resurrection (doctoral thesis, University of Tours, 1973); Latour, Les Raisons profondes du style rptitif de Pguy, in Peguy
crivain: colloque du centenaire de la naissance de Charles Pguy (Paris: ditions Klincksieck,
1977), 78102.
5 Latour, Nous sommes des vaincus, in Les Cahiers du cerf: Charles Pguy, cent ans dj,
ed. Riquier (Paris: Le Cerf, 2014), 339 63.

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6 Charles Pguy, Clio: dialogue de lHistoire et de lme Paenne, in Oeuvres en prose compltes,
3 vols., ed. Robert Burac (1987; Paris: Gallimard, bibliothque de la Pliade, 1992), 3:1007.
7 Pguy, Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne (1914), in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:1255. All translations from the French, unless otherwise noted, are my own.
8 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1993).
9 See Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2013) and accompanying digital platform at www.modesofexistence.org.
10 The translation below has attempted to follow the somewhat idiosyncratic cadences of
the original article (this is caused by the way in which Latour self-consciously acts as both
interpreter of Pguy and apologist for his style). Latours original text, including footnotes,
has been represented in full. Where it is strictly required for clarity, an explanation of the
translators decision is provided in the form of a footnote. In addition, where context is likely
to be obscure for a reader unfamiliar with the history of the French Troisime Rpublique,
short explanations have been provided in square-bracketed notes. The translator would
like to thank Professor Bruno Latour for his guidance of this translation throughout.
11 Pguy, Note sur M. Bergson, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:1269.
12 [For more on Pguys relationship with Jaurs,see Patrick Charlot, Pguy contre
Jaurs: laffaire des ficheset la dlation aux droits de lhomme, Revue Franaise dHistoire des
Ides Politiques1, no. 17 (2003): 7391.]
13 Pguy, The Portal of the Mystery of Hope, trans. David Louis Schindler (London: Continuum, 2005).
14 [This refers to Deleuzes two separate works on Nietzsche. See Deleuze, Nietzsche et
la philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962) and Deleuze, Nietzsche (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1965)].
15 This concerns Pguys use of the concept of repetition. See Deleuze, Difference and
Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 2004), 2, and at various places throughout.
16 [Pguy set up the publishing operation for his Cahiers de la Quinzaine in October 1901
in a small boutique located at the address 8, Rue de la Sorbonne: this property still stands
today under the sign Boutique des Cahiers.]
17 See Marie Gil, Pguy au pied de la lettre: la question du littralisme dans loeuvre de Pguy
(Paris: Le Cerf, 2011), as well as her chapter entitled Ras. Rasibus! La pense de la
lettre chez Pguy, une antiphilosophie, in Les Cahiers du cerf: Charles Pguy, cent ans dj,
ed. Riquier (Paris: Le Cerf, 2014), 31338.
18 [Gustave Lanson (18571934) was a French historian and literary critic. His historicist
method was taken by Pguy as the epitome of what he most wanted to contest in le monde
moderne. For more on Pguys reception of Lanson, see Pauline Bernon, Pguy critique,
lenvers du tragique, Revue dhistoire littraire de la France 105, no. 3 (2005): 57386 and
Roe, The Passion of Charles Pguy, 16369.]
19 [Corneilles Le Cidwas the subject of a heated polemic during the middle part of the
seventeenth century on the subject of its apparent flouting of the classical unities. This
polemic frequently made comparison with de Castros playLas Mocedades del Cid, published
in 1618, upon which Corneilles Le Cid was based.]
20 Pguy, LArgent suite (1913), in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:860, 862.
21 [Trans. habitue/dshabitue. These terms recur throughout the essay to describe the
reading approach that Pguy demands for his own work. An examination of this aspect
of Pguys thought is taken up by Latour early in his career in Latour, Les raisons profondes, in Pguy crivain, 78102. For an analysis of Latours use of Pguy in this regard,
see Henning Schmidgen, The Materiality of Things? Bruno Latour, Charles Pguy, and
the History of Science, History of the Human Sciences26, no. 1 (2013): 328.]

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22 [The phrase nous sommes des vaincus repeats the title of a posthumously published
article written by Pguy to be found in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:131551.]
23 Pguy, Clio, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:1008.
24 [For Pguys reading of Corneilles Polyeucte martyr in relation to Lanson, see Pguy,
Victor-Marie, comte Hugo (1910), inOeuvres en prose compltes, 3:300 ff.]
25 Pguy, Marcel, premier dialogue de la cit harmonieuse (1898), in Oeuvres en prose compltes,
1:55117.
26 [For Pguys characterisation of (what he perceived to be) the intellectual majority
grouping, which he described as le parti intellectual, see Pguy, De la situation faite au parti
intellectuel dans le monde moderne devant les accidents de la gloire temporelle (1907), in Oeuvres
en prose compltes, 2:678774.]
27 Pguy, Un pote la dit (1907), in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:835.
28 Pguy, Un pote la dit, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:835.
29 Pguy, Largent suite, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:860.
30 See Isabelle Stengers, La thse que Pguy na jamais crite, in Les Cahiers du Cerf:
Charles Pguy, ed. Riquier (Paris: Le Cerf, 2014), 3168.
31 The formulation on nest pas heureux occurs at various places in Pguys work; see
Pguy, Clio, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:1133.
32 A note written by Romain Rolland, the man above the battle (Au-dessus de la mle
was the title of a book published by Rolland in 1914), seems worth remembering here as
we try, one hundred years on, to make sense of all that slaughter: The bugles sounded.
But let us not pretend any longer that the Great War was imposed upon us against our
will. Be honest with yourselves! Admit and dare to confess (or even proclaim, if this is what
your God demands of you) that a whole generation of French men marched into battle
gleefully, and that Pguy was to be found at the front, marking the step, chanting la
Marseillaise de Marathon. Rolland, Pguy (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1945), 246.
33 See Suzanne Berger, Notre premire mondialisation: leons dun chec oubli (Paris: Le Seuil,
2003).
34 Pierre Bourdieu recognized late in his career that the sociologist is implicitly situating himself in the position of Godin this regard, there is nothing new under the sun:
Bourdieu is for us what mile Durkheim was for Pguy. Its curious, however, that Pguy
never made reference to Gabriel Tarde, even though he could have been found just down
the road, working at the Rue de la Sorbonne, in the school of Dick May.
35 Pguy, Un pote la dit, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:82930.
36 [Latour develops the implications of the modern notion of the business plan in
Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, 427.]
37 [The Pratzen Heights was an elevated position taken by Napoleon during the Battle
of Austerlitz, December 1805.]
38 Pguy, Note conjointe sur M. Descartes et la philosophie Cartsienne (1914), in Oeuvres en
prose compltes, 3:143940.
39 Pguy, Note conjointe, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 3:1440.
40 This point is strongly endorsed by Riquier: What is surprising is that when Pguy
rediscovered his Christian faith, having previously abandoned it, he never claimed it as
a moment of deepening. The Socialist revolution would take the form of the sublation
(Aufhebung) of the revolution enabled by Christianity: he was convinced of this before
and it was no different for him afterwards. See Riquier, Charles Pguy: Mtaphysiques de
lvnement, in Philosophie des possessions, ed. Didier Debaise (Dijon: Les Presses du Rel,
2011), 197232.
41 [Trans. Latour suggests that this was the la vritable patrie intellectuelle de Pguy, thus
punning on le parti intellectuel of which he was so critical.]
42 [For Latours reading of Voltaire and Ludwig Feuerbach, see Latour, Will NonHumans be Saved? An Argument in Ecotheology,The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute15, no. 3 (2009): 45975.]

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43 [The attempt made by Pope Leo XIII in 1890 to induce French Catholics to abandon
royalism and to accept the Third Republic is known as le ralliement.]
44 [A Papal Decree of 1st June 1914 banned Bergsons three principal works in philosophy: Essai sur les donnes immediates de la conscience (1889), Matire et mmoire (1896), and
Lvolution cratrice (1907).]
45 [mile Justin Louis Combes(18351921) was aFrench politician who led the Bloc des
gauches cabinet between 1902 and 1905. He was familiarly known as le petit pre on account
of his role in the December 1905 law on the separation of church and state.]
46 [Paul Droulde(18461914) was a French author andpolitician, one of the founders of the nationalistLeague of Patriots, who became a figurehead to anti-Dreyfusardist
nationalists.]
47 Pguy, De la situation, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:678774.
48 Pguy, De la situation, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:727.
49 One such response was as follows: I am devoted to my grandparents and to Pguy,
but Im terrified of both of them, in Jrme Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, Notre cher Pguy
(Paris: Plon, 1926), 200.
50 [Pguy puns on the French en vers (in verse) and inverse (inverse)].
51 [The original article was written and published in 2014].
52 Pguy, Notre Patrie (1905), in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:60.
53 Pguy, Notre Patrie, in Oeuvres en prose compltes, 2:6061.