No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Twilight of History: the Standpoint of Cournot
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
In 1790 Melchior Grimm wrote to Catherine II: “Two empires will share all the benefits of civilization, power, genius, letters, the arts, weaponry and industry: Russia in the East and America, which has recently become independent, in the West.” Eighty years later Bachofen made public the same strongly held conviction: “I am beginning to believe that the twentieth-century historian will have only to speak of America and Russia.” In the intervening period Tocqueville concluded the first volume of his work Democracy in America thus: “There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. …The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1972 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Quoted by François Bondy at the Berlin Colloquium. See La démocratie à l'épreuve du XXème siècle, Paris: Calman-Lévy, pp. 207-208.
2 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. H. Reeve, New York: Vintage, Vol. I, p. 452.
3 L. Slonimsky, "Les économistes oubliés, Cournot et Thünen," Messager de l'Europe, October 1878—cf. also V. K. Dmitriev, Essais économiques (Ricardo, Cournot, Walras), Paris: CNRS, 1968.
4 Augustin Cournot, Traité de l'encbaînement des Idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'bistoire, Rome: Edizioni Bizzari, 1968.
We draw your attention to this reprint of Cournot's work by Edizioni Bizzari, who have published three other works by the same author on political economy in their series "Anastatic Reprints of Old and Rare Works." The series also includes works by Condillac, Vauban, J. B. Say, Julgar, etc.
The extracts from Cournot's works quoted in this exposition are translations from the French text.
5 M. Leroy, Histoire des Idées sociales en France, T. 3, cp. V, pp. 122-123.
6 Traité, II, p. 327.
7 Ibid., "… in human societies there are certain things capable of continuing while always expanding and improving so long as the conditions necessary to maintaining the health of the social body endure. The totality of things of this kind, which admit of a continual progress, this progress if not unlimited in itself being such that a limit cannot be determined, is what in the present day is included (whether it be realized or not) under the term ‘civilization'…" p. 329.
"Societies, more than individuals, admit in certain things of indefinite progress and, provided favourable conditions obtain, unlimited duration." p. 16.
8 Ibid., p. 422.
9 Ibid., p. 380. "But we shall find the parallel more striking and instructive if, instead of taking things in their present states, we wait until modem European civilzation has finally achieved so decided a superiority that it makes all rivalry impossible…".
10 Ibid., p. 357.
11 Ibid., p. 327.
12 Which Cournot prefers to call "the aetiology of history." The first chapter of Considérations sur la marche des idées et des événements dans les temps modernes treats "of the aetiology of history and the philosophy of history" neatly distinguished from the history of civilization, the general history of mankind or an historical teleology. Cournot writes in the preface: "This requires us… to state in what respects our philosophy of history essentially differs from that of many others whose pretensions were to have discovered laws in history. Whether or not there be laws in history, it is enough that there be events and that these events be sometimes interdependent, and some times independent of one another, in order that there take place a critique whose goal is to unravel, in some cases the interdependence, and in others the independence. And as this critique cannot lay claim to incontrovertible demonstrations… so let its role be limited to making best use of analogy and induction of the kind with which philosophy must be content… it follows that it is proper that we should give to the critique in question, which despite its uncertainties remains so enticing, the name ‘philosophy of history'."
13 Traité, II, pp. 350-351.
14 Ibid., pp. 351-352.
15 Ibid., p. 352. "The philosophy of history has as its essential object the selection from the entire set of historical events of general dominant facts which compose its frame or skeleton, and the explanation of how other facts, including facts of detail which may still be of dramatic interest and arouse our curiosity, although not philosophically, are subordinate to the general ones of the first order."
16 Ibid., p. 422. "After having examined the historical picture in its most significant aspects, we are naturally led to detach from this view of the whole what interests us most, namely, the history of our Western civilization, in order to examine within more restricted a space and on a smaller scale facts which a moment ago might have been considered details but which, from this point of view, have now become facts of the first order."
17 F. de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. W. Baskin, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966, p. 122.
18 Ibid., p. 107, cf. also p. 122. "In a language-state, everything is based on relations."
19 Traité, II, p. 353.
20 Ibid.
21 F. de Saussure, op. cit., "… in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences witbout positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonetic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified." p. 120.
"In language, as in any semiological system, whatever distinguishes one sign from others constitutes it. Difference makes character just as it makes value and the unit." p. 121.
"Language, in a manner of speaking, is a type of algebra consisting solely of complex terms. Some of its oppositions are more significant than others; but units and grammatical facts are only different names for designating diverse aspects of the same general fact: the functioning of linguistic oppositions." p. 122.
22 Traité, II, p. 380. "It is interesting to see how the contrast between China and Europe, between the Far East and extreme West…".
23 The expression is used by Cournot, pp. 361-374. He likewise speaks of the "theatre of history" (Traité, II, p. 324 and Considérations…, I, p. 83).
24 Raymond Aron, Peace and War, A Theory of International Relations, trans. R. Howard & A. B. Fox, Garden City (NY): Doubleday 1966, pp. 182-183. Aron considers space as environment, theatre, and stake in his examination of it as a factor in international relations.
25 Traité, II, p. 361.
26 Ibid., p. 383.
27 Ibid., p. 380.
28 Ibid., p. 381.
29 Ibid., p. 395.
30 Ibid., p. 359.
31 Ibid., p. 385.
32 Ibid., p. 386.
33 Ibid., p. 361.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., p. 362.
36 Ibid., p. 366.
37 Ibid., p. 377.
38 Ibid., p. 376. "Europe has repeatedly received the religious institutions of the Orient and made them her own, while always, however, modifying them according to her politics and philosophy, or Europeanizing them so to speak; on the other side of the world China has likewise welcomed dogmas and rites which have come to her from the West, but she has never permitted them access to the offcial quarters of knowledge and power."
39 Ibid., p. 388.
40 Ibid., p. 224.
41 Ibid., p. 389.
42 Ibid., p. 394.
43 A. de Tocqueville, op. cit., vol. I, cp. XIV, p. 262.
44 Traité, II, p. 233. "The question of sovereignty is one of those with which reason cannot deal without confronting insoluble contradictions." P. 235: "In whatever way therefore that one wishes rationally to construct a theory of public powers, he encounteis insoluble difficulties and is left only with negations."
45 Ibid., p. 389.
46 Ibid., p. 231.
47 Cournot, Souvenirs, p. 210-211. In the year 1848, or shortly thereafter, Cournot was made a member of a "commission for advanced studies" charged with organizing "the School of Administration which is destined to be for administrative careers what law faculties are for the legal profession and polytechnical institutes for professions concerned with public works."
48 Traité, II, p. 190. See also pp. 238-239.
49 Ibid., p. 195.
50 Ibid., p. 229. "The administrative system of Diocletian was more knowledgeably if not more skilfully devised than that of Augustus, while King Servius, to whom the Romans in large part gave credit for their political organization, probably did not even possess the notion of what we call administration; yet, the political right of sacerdotal and patrician Rome was more complicated than that of Rome the mistress of the world under Augustus and Diocletian."
51 Ibid., pp. 239-240.
52 Ibid., p. 391.
53 Hegel, G. W. F., La Raison dans l'Histoire, Paris, Plon, 1965, pp. 279-280.
54 Ibid. p. 280.
55 Traité, II, p. 395.
56 Ibid., p. 332.
57 Ibid., p. 344.
58 Ibid.
59 R. Buyer, L'bumanité de l'avenir d'après Cournot, Paris, Felix Alcan, 1930, cp. I.
60 The domain of theory being here characterized by the "predominance of the rational, theoretical, or properly scientific element." Traité, I, p. 362; cf. also p. 322; vol. II, pp. 320-321.
61 G. Duveau, Sociologie de l'Utopie, Paris: PUF, pp. 62-63: "Let us call to mind three precursors of technocracy-Saint-Simon, Cournot, and Rathenau."
62 Raymond Aron, op. cit., p. 319.
63 Raymond Aron, Dimensions de la conscience historique, Paris, Plon, p. 281.
64 Raymond Aron, Progress and Disillusion; The Dialectics of Modern Society, New York, Praeger, 1968, p. 36.
65 M. Merleau-Ponty, Les aventures de la dialectique, p. 302.
66 Ibid., p. 303.
67 J. K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston, Houghton Mifllin, 1967.
68 Ibid., p. 389.
69 Traité, II, p. 376.
70 H. Carrère d'Encausse and S. R. Schram, L'URSS et la Chine devant les révolutions dans les sociétés préindustrielles, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris, Colin, 1970.
71 Traité, II, p. 44. Cournot distinguishes between anthropology and ethnology. Anthropology is concerned "with all that, in the constitution of the human species and its various subspecies, is attributable to the spon taneous activity of natural forces, acting on man in the same manner as on other living species." Ethnology "will be concerned with all incidental facts occasioned by the grouping of men into distinct societies in accordance with the instincts of sociability, which come under the jurisdiction of anthro pology inasmuch as they are part of the common fund of human nature or assume special forms characteristic of each of the primitive human subspecies." The ethnological element is thus not a racial one supposing a biological origin.
72 William H. Hinton, Fanshen, A Documentary of a Revolution in a Chinese Village, New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1966. Literally, ‘fanshen' means ‘to turn the body' or ‘to turn over.'
73 "To establish with the most undiminishing vigour the absolute autho rity of our great commander-in-chief, Chairman Mao, and his thought commits us to defending at the cost of our lives his position as supreme helmsman" (cf. Pékin information, February 13, 1967). "Whoever opposes Chairman Mao, whoever opposes Mao Tse Tung Thought, at any time or under any circum stances, will be condemned and punished by the whole Party and the whole nation." (Report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China by Lin Piao, April 1, 1969, Peking Review No. 18, p. 29, April 30, 1969).
74 Etiemble, Connaissons-nous la Chine?, p. 172.
75 See the articles published after the visit of the French parliamentary delegation to China, in particular the one by A. Peyrefitte in Les Nouvelles littéraires (August 27 and September 3, 1971) and the one by Robert Guillain in Le Monde (September 21 and 22, 1971).
76 Quoted by B. de Jouvenel, Arcadie, essais sur le mieux-vivre, pp. 229-230. This passage is taken from André Chih, L'Occident "chrétien" vu par les Chinois vers la fin du 19ème siècle (1879-1900), Paris, PUF 1962.
77 Statement by Wo Jen (1867) quoted by de Jouvenel, op. cit., p. 230.
78 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. J. Nugent, New York, Hafner 1949, Book XIX, cp. 18. "… the laws of China are not destroyed by conquest… and as it will happen that either the conqueror or the conquered must change, in China it has always been the conqueror."
79 Marthe Engelborghs-Bertels "Tradition et mutation dans la révolution culturelle en Chine," in Balandier (ed.), Sociologie des Mutations, Ed. Anthropos 1970, pp. 463-479.
80 "Constitution of Anshan Iron and Steel Company Spurs Revolution and Production," Peking Review No. 16, p. 3 (April 17, 1970).
81 Rossana Rossanda, "La révolution culturelle et la structure sociale de la Chine communiste," L'Homme et la Société No. 21 (July-September, 1971) (Colloque de Cabris, Sociologie et Révolution).
82 An observation which provides a theme and a starting point for Marcuse's analysis: cf. Soviet Marxism and One-Dimensional Man.
83 D. Riesman, Abundance for What? And Other Essays, Garden City (N.Y.), Doubleday 1961. See the articles entitled "The Suburban Dislocation" and "Flight and Search in the New Suburbs."
84 G. Burdeau, Traité de science politique, T. III: La dynamique politique, Titre II, cp. 3: "De la lutte à la gestion."
85 Allen Schick, "The Cybernetic State," Trans-Action 7, 14-26 (February 1970).
86 See Raymond Aron, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society, London, Weiden feld & Nicholson 1961; and Raymond Ruye. Éloge de la Société de consom mation, Paris, Calman-Lévy, 1969.
87 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: a Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, New York, Harper & Row, 1964.
88 G. Balandier (ed.) Sociologie des mutations, p. 37.
89 Traité, II, p. 17.
90 "Le modèle chinois à l'honneur," Le Monde (November 3, 1971).
91 Robert Guillain, "La Chine après la Révolution culturelle, I: Un autre monde," Le Monde (September 21, 1971).
92 Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, p. 398.