Dialogues withJacques Bouveresse
According to Zeev Sternhell, "the permanent confrontation between a set of ideas rooted in the principles of the Enlightenment and an ideological corpus that claims to be an alternative to them has [...] become one of the great constants of our world. This confrontation may change face or dimension, one aspect rather than another may be privileged, but, since the second half of the 17thcentury , the rejection of the Enlightenment has been part of our intellectual and political horizon [1] ". Instead of speaking, as is generally done, of an opposition between, on the one hand, the Enlightenment and rationalism (which are supposed to represent modernity) and, on the other, a reaction against them (which is at the same time a reaction against modernity and whose inspiration is even essentially anti-modern), we could speak without exaggeration - and in a way that is probably more relevant - of the conflictual coexistence, which has lasted for over two centuries, between two species of modernity that continue, today more than ever, to clash. In this competition, contrary to what their opponents say and repeat, who complain about the absolute power they have come to wield, the Enlightenment (and Reason, which for its representatives constituted the supreme reference and principle) has probably never really triumphed and has even, at times, come close to losing out definitively.
The difficult question of which of the two modernities really held and exercised intellectual, moral and political power throughout this period cannot, of course, be separated from the question of which of the two can be held responsible for some of the most abominable catastrophes humanity has had to endure during the period in question. Sternhell's answer is, on this point, without hesitation. In the assault on the rationalism and universalism of the Enlightenment, the veneration of the particular and the rejection of the universal were the common denominator of all counter-Enlightenment thinkers, with truly disastrous consequences: "The relativity of values is a key aspect of the critique of the Enlightenment, and the devastation wrought by this concept will be considerable. It is this other modernity that is engendering the European catastrophe of the twentieth century [2] It's worth noting, however, that there is a fundamental disagreement as to whether or not it is indeed this modernity that is essentially to blame. It is faith in universal values and truth that is generally held by the defenders of relativism to be truly responsible for the horrors and massacres of the twentieth century: "It is the Franco-Kantian Enlightenment, and not the war on universal values that culminated in fascism, that still bears responsibility for the misfortunes of our time [3]