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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2019
This article traces the invention of pluralist political language in France to a very specific ideological source: Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and the progressive Catholic circles that gathered around the journal Esprit in the 1930s. It shows that the dialogue with the émigré Russian Jewish sociologist Georges Gurvitch was an important influence on the Esprit circle, but also that it was Maritain rather than Gurvitch who did most to disseminate the language of pluralism. The paper thus builds on recent work according Maritain and Christian democracy a central place in the intellectual history of twentieth-century politics. It also contests the Anglo-American bias that has dominated histories of pluralism, and instead places France at the centre.
1 Müller, Jan-Werner, What is Populism? (Philadelphia, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.
2 Britain's priority is emphasized by Barker, Rodney, “The Pluralism of British Pluralism,” Journal of Political Ideologies 14/1 (2009), 31–45, at 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; America's by Zunz, Olivier, “Genèse du pluralisme américain,” Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 42/2 (1987), 429–44, at 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Barker, Rodney, “Pluralism, Revenant or Recessive?”, in Hayward, Jack, Barry, Brian and Brown, Archie, eds., The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), 117–45, at 123–4Google Scholar.
3 Nicholls, David, The Pluralist State (London, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirst, Paul Q., ed., The Pluralist Theory of the State: Selected Writings of G. D. H. Cole, J. N. Figgis and H. J. Laski (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Runciman, David, Pluralism and the Personality of the State (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stears, Marc, Progressives, Pluralists, and the Problems of the State Ideologies of Reform in the United States and Britain, 1909–1926 (Oxford, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bevir, Mark, ed., Modern Pluralism: Anglo-American Debates since 1880 (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On American pluralism see Gunnell, John G., “The Genealogy of American Pluralism: From Madison to Behavioralism,” International Political Science Review 17/3 (1996), 253–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 For this argument see Runciman, Pluralism, especially chaps. 3–5.
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6 Laborde, Cécile, Pluralist Thought and the State in Britain and France, 1900–25 (Basingstoke, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Some examples: Rosanvallon, Pierre, The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France since the Revolution (Cambridge, MA and London, 2007), 9Google Scholar; Rosanvallon, , La légitimité démocratique: Impartialité, réflexivité, proximité (Paris, 2008), 51Google Scholar. On Rosanvallon's pluralism see Chabal, Émile, A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France (Cambridge, 2015), chap. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jainchill, Andrew and Moyn, Samuel, “French Democracy between Totalitarianism and Solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and Revisionist Historiography,” Journal of Modern History 76/1 (2004), 107–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 d'Estaing, V. Giscard, Démocratie française (Paris, 1976), chap. 6, esp. 96–7, 99, 104Google Scholar. For Bayrou see interview on RTL, 13 Feb. 2012, at www.mouvementdemocrate.fr/article/il-est-necessaire-que-le-pluralisme-ait-droit-de-cite-a-la-presidentielle. “Orleanism” is the term used by René Rémond to label this strand of the French centre right: Rémond, René, Les droites en France (Paris, 1982), esp. 294–304Google Scholar (on Giscardisme and Orleanism).
11 F. W. Maitland, “Moral Personality and Legal Personality” (1903), reprinted in Runciman, David and Ryan, Magnus, eds., State, Trust and Corporation (Cambridge, 2003), 62–74, at 66Google Scholar; Figgis, John Neville, Churches in the Modern State (London, 1913), 23–4, 56Google Scholar. Jan-Werner Müller notes that “Pluralist thinkers had been deeply impressed by Germany's Kulturkampf”: Bismarck's (perceived) defeat proved to them that “all-powerful state sovereignty was an illusion.” Müller, Contesting Democracy, 51.
12 Laski, Harold J., Authority in the Modern State (New Haven, 1919), ixGoogle Scholar.
13 Wright, A. W., G. D. H. Cole and Socialist Democracy (Oxford, 1979), 73Google Scholar. Cole's library is held at Nuffield College, Oxford.
14 Key contributions include Wright, Julian, The Regionalist Movement in France, 1890–1914: Jean Charles-Brun and French Political Thought (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosanvallon, The Demands of Liberty; Topalov, Christian, ed., Laboratoires du nouveau siècle: La nébuleuse réformatrice et ses réseaux en France (1880–1914) (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar; Wright, Julian and Jones, H. S., eds., Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic in France (Basingstoke, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chatriot, Alain, La démocratie sociale à la française: L’éxpérience du Conseil national économique (Paris, 2003)Google Scholar.
15 On republicanism the classic study remains Nicolet, Claude, L'idée répubicaine en France (Paris, 1994)Google Scholar; on solidarism the key works are Audier, Serge, Léon Bourgeois: Fonder la solidarité (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar; and Blais, Marie-Claude, La solidarité: Histoire d'une idée (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar; as well as Ewald, François, L’État providence (Paris, 1986)Google Scholar. The republican origins of the campaign for the reform of the state are emphasized by Wright, The Regionalist Movement in France, esp. chap. 2.
16 I draw here on “word history,” as practiced, for instance, by Dixon, Thomas, The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2008), esp. 33–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Skinner, Quentin, “Language and Political Change,” in Ball, Terence, Farr, James and Hanson, Russell L., eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), 6–23, at 8Google Scholar.
18 This is the practice adopted in Wright and Jones, Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic.
19 The dates were selected on this basis: 1915 was the date when Laski first used the term, and thus marks the beginnings of a self-conscious anglophone political pluralism. By 1955, the term was well entrenched in the emerging literature on democracy and totalitarianism.
20 In JSTOR—which is admittedly weighted towards academic journals and the serious periodical press, there were 167 hits for the period from 1915 to 32 (eighteen years) and 178 for the period from 1933 to 1940 (eight years). In the latter period, Esprit alone accounted for eighty-two hits. Those eighty-two usages in Esprit were overwhelmingly sociopolitical rather than philosophical.
21 There is a large literature on Esprit, including de Senarclens, Pierre, Le mouvement “Esprit” 1932–1941 (Lausanne, 1974)Google Scholar; and Winock, Michel, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit, 1930–1950 (Paris, 1975)Google Scholar. On Sept see Coutrot, Aline, Un courant de la pensée catholique: L'hebdomadaire “Sept” (mars 1934–août 1937) (Paris, 1961)Google Scholar.
22 Maritain, Jacques, Du régime temporel et de la liberté (Paris, 1933)Google Scholar. Literally “The Temporal Regime and Liberty,” this appeared in English as Freedom in the Modern World (New York, 1936)Google Scholar. Maritain, Jacques, Humanisme intégral: Problèmes temporels et spirituels d'une nouvelle chrétienté (Paris, 1936)Google Scholar. This had been published in Spanish in 1935, and a version of chap. 2 was incorporated into Maritain, , “Deux essais pour un nouvel humanisme,” Esprit 37 (1935), 80–117Google Scholar. By contrast, in his collected works for the period from 1929 to 1932, the sole use of pluralisme and the sole use of pluraliste were in the strictly philosophical sense. Maritain, Distinguer pour unir ou les degrés du savoir (1932), in Oeuvres Complètes de Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, 17 vols., Paris (1982–2007) (henceforth OC), 4: 257–952, at 619; and Maritain, Le docteur angélique (1930), OC, 4: 1–191, at 68.
23 Jacques Maritain, Du régime temporel et de la liberté, OC, 5: 319–515, at 371.
24 Maritain, Du régime temporel, OC, 5: 376.
25 Maritain, Humanisme intégral, OC, 6: 293–642, at 476. The French is “une structure organique impliquant un certain pluralisme, beaucoup plus poussé que celui du moyen âge.”
26 Maritain, Humanisme intégral, 177: “une hétérogénéité organique dans la structure même de la société civile.” OC, 6: 476–7.
27 Maritain, Humanisme intégral, 177. In the middle of this statement came a quotation from Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. OC, 6: 477.
28 Maritain, Jacques, Questions de conscience (Paris, 1938), 86–90Google Scholar. On Maritain's discussion of anti-Semitism see Crane, Richard Francis, “Surviving Maurras: Jacques Maritain's Jewish Question,” Patterns of Prejudice 42/4–5 (2008), 385–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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30 Moyn, Samuel, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia, 2015), 82Google Scholar.
31 Maritain, Droits de l'homme, OC, 7: 619–95, at 631–2.
32 These are explored by Hellman, John, “Maritain and Mounier: A Secret Quarrel over the Future of the Church,” Review of Politics 42/2 (1980), 152–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsewhere Hellman calls Maritain “le plus célèbre démissionnaire du mouvement personnaliste”: Hellman, , “Personnalisme et fascisme,” in d'Astorg, Bertrand, ed., Le personnalisme d'Emmanuel Mounier (Paris, 1985), 116–42, at 123Google Scholar, but that exaggerates the extent of the rift.
33 For example, “Programme pour 1935,” Esprit 27 (1934), 355–6 at 356Google Scholar; editorial note to Dami, Aldo, “La crise de la démocratie et la réforme de l’État: VI.—Les remèdes,” Esprit 27 (1934), 433–69, at 433Google Scholar; “Chronique des amis d’Esprit,” Esprit 27 (1934), 533–7, at 534Google Scholar; editorial note to Labrousse, Roger, “Le problème éthico-juridique de la communauté dans la tradition française classique,” Esprit 28 (1935), 622–36, at 636Google Scholar; Mounier, Emmanuel, “Révolution communautaire,” Esprit 28 (1935), 548–80, at 580Google Scholar. This last piece formed part of a volume he published later in the year, Révolution personnaliste et communautaire (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar, where this passage is at 209.
34 Mounier cited the collective volume in Personalist Manifesto (London, 1938), 239Google Scholar. The prospect of a special issue was signaled by Mounier, Emmanuel, “Conversation à l’étape,” Esprit 35/6 (1935), 667–73, at 672Google Scholar.
35 Mounier, Personalist Manifesto.
36 Mounier, Personalist Manifesto, 238–9, 249–50. In the last case, “pluralist state” translates “cité pluraliste.”
37 James Chappel, “Slaying the Leviathan: Catholicism and the Rebirth of European Conservatism, 1920–1950” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2012), 166.
38 Simon, P. Henri, “Principe de l’État pluraliste,” Sept 145 (1936), 4Google Scholar; and Simon, , “Schéma d'un État pluraliste,” Sept 147 (1936), 4Google Scholar.
39 Prélot, Marcel, “Personne et société politique,” La personne humaine en péril: Sommaire des leçons de la XXIXe session des Semaines sociales de France, tenue à Clermont-Ferrand du 19 au 25 juillet 1937 (Lyon, 1937), 84–8Google Scholar.
40 Marcel Prélot, “Des conditions présentes d'un régime de liberté,” Politique, Oct. 1937, reprinted in Prélot, Marcel and Genuys, Françoise Gallouédec, eds., Le libéralisme catholique (Paris, 1969), 389–93Google Scholar.
41 Prélot, Marcel, Histoire des idées politiques (Paris, 1959), 620Google Scholar.
42 Laski, Harold J., “The Sovereignty of the State,” in Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New Haven, 1917), 1–25Google Scholar.
43 The first book-length study of pluralist political thought was by a scholar, Chinese, Hsaio, K. S., Political Pluralism: A Study in Contemporary Political Theory (London, 1927)Google Scholar.
44 Laski, “The Sovereignty of the State,” 6, 11, 21. On Laski's invention of the vocabulary of pluralism, and on his (limited) debt to the pragmatists, see Runciman, Pluralism, 178–80.
45 The sole exception is a substantial article by Hoog, Armand, “Les théories d'Harold Laski et le pluralisme démocratique,” Archives de philosophie du droit et de sociologie juridique 7/1–2 (1937), 140–65Google Scholar.
46 Maritain, Jacques, Man and the State (Chicago, 1951), 22–3 n. 14Google Scholar.
47 Sorel specifically cited James as one of the few philosophers who had “received” pluralist doctrine. Sorel's pluralism is highlighted by Eric Wendeborn Brandom, “Georges Sorel, Autonomy and Violence in the Third Republic” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 2012), esp. chap. 3.
48 J. Bourdeau, “La sociologie de M. Durkheim,” Journal des débats, 31 Jan. 1911, 1. See also Bourdeau, , Pragmatisme et modernisme (Paris, 1909)Google Scholar. For the wider reception of pragmatism in France see Pudal, Romain, “Enjeux et usages du pragmatisme en France (1880–1920),” Revue française de sociologie 52/4 (2011), 747–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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50 Julian Wright's work has been notably important in rehabilitating this neglected socialist tradition: e.g. Wright, Julian, “Socialism and Political Identity: Eugène Fournière and Intellectual Militancy in the Third Republic,” French Historical Studies 36/3 (2013), 449–478CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Leroy see Zylberman, Patrick, “Maxime Leroy, analyste du déclin de la loi révolutionnaire,” History of European Ideas 11/1–6 (1989), 83–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chatriot, Alain, “Maxime Leroy, la réforme par le syndicalisme,” Mil neuf cent: Revue d'histoire intellectuelle 24 (2006), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Bosserman, Phillip, “The Twentieth Century's Saint-Simon: Georges Gurvitch's Dialectical Sociology and the New Physics,” Sociological Theory 13/1 (1995), 48–57, at 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gurvitch's pluralism is discussed by Joshua Humphreys, “Utopian pluralism in twentieth-century France,” in Wright and Jones, Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic, 122–37.
52 Gurwitsch, Georg (sic), “Otto v. Gierke als Rechtsphilosoph,” Logos: Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur 11 (1922), 92–3Google Scholar.
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54 Jones, H. S., The French State in Question: Public Law and Political Argument in the Third Republic (Cambridge, 1993), chaps. 6–7Google Scholar.
55 Gurvitch, Georges, “Les idées-maîtresses de Maurice Hauriou,” Archives de philosophie de droit et de sociologie juridique 1 (1931), 155–94Google Scholar.
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57 Gurvitch, “Mon itinéraire intellectuel,” 9.
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59 Gurvitch, “Mon itinéraire intellectuel,” 6. The importance of Russian influences on Gurvitch's thought is underlined in Antonov, Mikhaïl and Berthold, Étienne, “Sources russes de la pensée de Georges Gurvitch: Écrits de jeunesse dans les Annales contemporaines (1924–1931),” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 121 (2006), 197–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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62 Gurvitch, Georges, La déclaration des droits sociaux (Paris, 1946), 109–10Google Scholar. This text was first published in New York in 1944.
63 “Le pluralisme et les libertés,” letter from Gurvitch to the editor, Le Monde, 22 Aug. 1946, 5; and “Le pluralisme et les libertés,” response from Charles Flory, Le Monde, 27 Sept. 1946, 5. Flory was president of the Semaines sociales, a close associate of Marcel Prélot, and later a senator.
64 Laborde, Pluralist Thought and the State, 185 n. 12.
65 Gurvitch, “Le principe démocratique et la démocratie future,” 403–31; Gurvitch, Georges, L'expérience juridique et la philosophie pluraliste du droit (Paris, 1935), subheading at 254Google Scholar. The only previous instance came, significantly, in Gurvitch's first contribution to Esprit, where he wrote that liberalism today presupposes the achievement of industrial democracy and a pluralism of organizations. Gurvitch, Georges, “Libéralisme et communisme: Réponse à M. Ramon Fernandez,” Esprit 21 (1 June 1934), 449Google Scholar. Significantly, Gurvitch was here responding to a paper presented by Fernandez to the Union pour la vérité just a few days after Maritain, in the same series, had spoken to the Union pour la vérité about his conception of pluralism: Jacques Maritain, “De la liberté dans une chrétienté moderne,” OC, 5: 1042–51, at 1045–7.
66 A notable exception is Fourcade, Michel, “Jacques Maritain et l'Europe en exil (1940–1945),” in Hubert, Bernard, ed., Jacques Maritain en Europe: La réception de sa pensée (Paris, 1996), 281–320Google Scholar, where Maritain's wartime exchanges with Gurvitch are briefly discussed at 312–13. But there is no reference to Gurvitch in Doering, Bernard E., Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals (Notre Dame and London, 1983)Google Scholar; and neither are Maritain, Mounier, or Esprit referenced in Balandier, Georges, Gurvitch (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar. Loubet del Bayle's classic study of the nonconformists of the 1930s refers to Gurvitch in passing, but in the context of the reception of German thought. He does not feature in the chapter on Esprit. del Bayle, Jean-Louis Loubet, Les non-conformistes des années 30: Une tentative de renouvellement de la pensée politique française (Paris, 1969)Google Scholar. Jaye Miller has noticed the Esprit circle's use of Gurvitch's work in the context of a discussion of the affinities between Esprit and Proudhonian anarchism. Miller, B. Jaye, “Anarchism and French Catholicism in Esprit,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37/1 (1976), 163–74, at 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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71 Maritain's pupil and friend Yves Simon recalled that he first met Gurvitch in 1927, and since Simon was only twenty-four it seems likely that Maritain introduced them. Yves Simon, review of Gurvitch, Georges, Sociology of Law, Review of Politics 4/3 (1942), 361–2Google Scholar. For the Union pour la vérité see Maritain, OC, 5: 1051. Other participants included Benda, Drieu La Rochelle, Ramon Fernandez, Georges Izard, Pierre Unik, and Georges Guy-Grand.
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81 This is a key argument of Chappel, “Slaying the Leviathan,” especially chap. 4.
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89 Maritain, Humanisme intégral, 170.
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91 Balandier, Gurvitch, 45.
92 Socialism without liberalism, he wrote, was like air without oxygen. Gurvitch, “Libéralisme et communisme,” 449.
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102 Rémond, René, “Droite et gauche dans le catholicisme français contemporain,” Revue française de science politique 8/3 (1958), 529–44, at 535CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
103 On the significance of Cold War pluralism in the United States see Gilman, Nils, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (London, 2003), 49–59Google Scholar.
104 Burdeau, Georges, Traité de science politique, vol. 1, Le pouvoir politique (Paris, 1949), 371, 471Google Scholar; Barre, Raymond, “La politique économique en démocratie,” Revue française de science politique 5/5 (1954), 800–8, at 801Google Scholar. Burdeau drew heavily on Gurvitch, and moved quite explicitly from legal to political pluralism. By contrast his footnotes indicate a lack of familiarity with the work of American political scientists such as David Truman, although he was aware of Laski's work.
105 Aron's review of Gurvitch appeared in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 5 (1936), 118–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For his first use of the term “pluralism” in the sense which would later be fundamental for him, see Aron, Raymond and Clairens, François, Les français devant la constitution (Paris, 1945), 89–92Google Scholar. I am grateful to Iain Stewart for these references, and for clarifying Aron's position on pluralism and the common good. On Aron's relations with Maritain, see Jones, H. S. and Stewart, Iain, “Positive Political Science and the Uses of Political Theory in Post-war France: Raymond Aron in context,” History of European Ideas 39/1 (2013), 35–50, at 38–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
106 Chappel, “Catholic Origins of Totalitarianism Theory,” passim.
107 François Bayrou, speech at Risoul (Hautes-Alpes), 29 Aug. 1999, at www.vie-publique.fr/cdp/notices/993002140.html, accessed 17 June 2019; Bell, David S., Parties and Democracy in France: Parties under Presidentialism (Abingdon, 2018), 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bayrou's Mouvement démocrate likewise invokes Maritain and Mounier as intellectual ancestors. See “Le sens de notre Histoire,” at www.mouvementdemocrate.fr/article/le-sens-de-notre-histoire, accessed 26 Nov. 2018.
108 Maritain wrote the preface to Paul Vignaux's wartime study Traditionalisme et syndicalisme: Essai d'histoire sociale (1884–1941) (New York, 1943)Google Scholar. Vignaux's first contribution to Esprit was “Réflexions sur les relations du travail,” Esprit 70 (1938), 474–87Google Scholar. I am grateful to James Chappel for alerting me to this connection. See also Jainchill and Moyn, “French Democracy,” 111; and Laurent, Jean-Pierre, “Paul Vignaux; inspirateur de la ‘Deuxième gauche’: Récits d'un exil français aux États-Unis pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale,” Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 60 (2000), 48–56Google Scholar.
109 For an important exception see Müller, Contesting Democracy, 135–40.
110 Moyn, Christian Human Rights, 68. See also Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA and London, 2010)Google Scholar; and Moyn, “Jacques Maritain, Christian New Order, and the Birth of Human Rights” (1 May 2008), at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1134345.
111 The significance of pluralism in Maritain's thought has recently been noted in two important works of intellectual history: Chappel, “Slaying the Leviathan”; and Rosenboim, Emergence of Globalism, chap. 8. See also Chappel, Catholic Modern, 113.
112 Scott, Joan Wallach, Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (Chicago, 2005), esp. chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
113 Among the very large literature on this question see Fernando, Mayanthi L., The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (London, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Laborde, Cécile, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
