Politics and Language in the Thought of Louis de Bonald
JONATHAN DEN HARTOG
Introduction
What is this modern world in which we live? I ask this question to point out that a number of thinkers have endeavored to comprehend the nature of modernity. Their analyses differ, but many thinkers agree about key points on the road to modernity: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, to name a few. I would like to revisit one of those periods: the French Revolution. To some, the Revolution heralded political liberalism with cries of "liberté, egalité, and fraternité." To others, the Revolution signified the rejection of the West's heritage of the past two millennia. As the Revolution was occurring, a number of thinkers sensed its challenge to the old order (not only politically, but more importantly, philosophically). One of these thinkers, the Viscomt Louis De Bonald, described the political problems of the Revolution. In doing so, however, he also developed a theory of language, and his theory of government and his theory of language interrelate. Though Bonald was probably mistaken on some of what he wrote, he still wrote much that is worthy of consideration. Though he reflects a distinctively pre-modern world-view, his ideas seem contemporary in addressing our post-modern world.
Biography
Bonald was born in 1754 in Millau, a town in the Rouergue region of southern France, to an aristocratic family. He studied at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly. As an aristocrat, military service was expected, so in 1773 he joined the Musketeers. The days of Athos, Pathos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan had long passed for the Musketeers, however, and they were dissolved in 1776 by Louis XVI, thus freeing Bonald of his military duties. Returning home, Bonald became involved in public affairs, becoming mayor of Millau in 1785. Bonald supported the early phases of the French Revolution. He directed his efforts at the local and regional level to maintain order, which he was largely successful in doing. Even after the National Assembly abolished the aristocracy, Bonald was reelected as mayor and then elected to the departmental assembly. The turning point in Bonald's relation to the Revolution came with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which subordinated the Catholic Church to the new national government. Bonald believed it wrongly stripped the Church of its position in society. By refusing to force the clergy to take the oath of allegiance, Bonald disqualified himself from holding public office, though he was still largely supportive of the Revolution. By October 1791, however, Bonald had joined the counterrevolution and had emigrated from France. Hopes of overthrowing the Revolution from without, however, failed, and Bonald returned to France in secret in 1797, hiding in Paris. His hiding continued until 1802, when he received a pardon from Napoleon. Later, Bonald entered the Napoleonic government, serving on the Great Council of the Imperial University. After Napoleon's abdication in 1814, Bonald quickly joined the restoration monarchy of Louis XVIII. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the national legislative body. Bonald continued to serve under the next monarch, Charles X. Bonald refused to serve under Louis Philippe, who had come to power in the Revolution of 1830. He withdrew to his country home, where he died in November 1840.
Theory of Government
In the midst of this turbulent political environment, Bonald wrote a great deal about the nature of society and government. These writings established him as one of the foremost theorists of the Counterrevolution. In discussing his theory of government, I begin with an extended quote, which opens his book On Divorce: To Bonald, man is a social creature. The first man had been placed in a society, and man had continued in society ever since. In Bonald's theory of government, the first principle is that of power or authority (pouvoir). The power originated in God, the originator of human society, but God then transmitted that authority throughout the society. The authority is expressed through the various relations in society. As Klinck wrote: Regarding relationships, Bonald believed that a triad of relationships is the natural, always-occurring, order of the universe. The triad consists of a power, the minister of that power, and the subject. Bonald accepted as natural that French society on the macro-level should be ordered according to this triad, with the king (as power) ruling via the aristocracy (as ministers) over the subjects (the third estate). Such a society was the opposite of the atomistic liberal society which Bonald saw as a necessary result of the principles of the French Revolution. A rightly-ordered society would be both healthy and well-functioning.
     A healthy society for Bonald meant a society in which power was not only resident in the king, however, but was also spread through a variety of social relations. Such institutions in society would include the family, the Church, and organizations such as guilds. These institutions would check the acquisition of power by the king. They thus serve as intermediary institutions, protecting the individual from a too-powerful centralized government. Democracy could not claim such beneficial effects. By concentrating only on the individual and the state, it effectively eliminates any intermediary institution. As a result, the individual stands alone before a Leviathan state, which has no checks to keep it from accumulating even more power. This argument, it should be noted, was also described quite clearly in Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Bonald's critique of modern liberal democracy, while grounded in a medieval view of the state, still offers an important contribution to thinking about political society, one which the conservative movement in America appropriated.
     Bonald also worked to apply his theories in the real world. In the realm of French politics, he opposed the French Revolution. Once the monarchy was reestablished, he supported it and attempted to use it to reestablish a rightly-ordered political system in France. Another practical application of his ideas was his work against divorce. He both wrote against it (in On Divorce, his most famous political tract) and worked in the national legislature to end the practice. To Bonald, the family represents a rightly-ordered miniature society: the father possesses the power, which was to be administered through the mother, to rule over the subject children. Divorce means a fragmentation of such a society, the ripping apart of a harmonious, organic whole. The wife/mother would be set adrift, separated from her proper position; the husband/father would lose his means of ruling; and the children would not be properly governed. The destruction of the smallest society would have consequences throughout the larger society, as well. Hence government had a political duty to insure that such destruction would not take place. To conclude this story, Bonald was successful in abolishing legal divorce in France, and the practice was not reinstituted until the Third Republic in 1884.
Theory of Language
Having briefly discussed Bonald's politics, we can turn to his theory of language. Again, I begin with an extended passage where Bonald's ideas shine forth: But if man today receives speech as he receives being; if he speaks only insofar as he hears speech, and speaks only the language he hears spoken; if it is even physically impossible for man to invent speech by himself, as it is impossible for him to invent being by himself (which can be shown by considering the operations of thought and those of the vocal organ), then it is necessary that man in the beginning received speech and being together. Now this truth, which would be an even physical demonstration of the existence of a first being, though combatted, or rather misunderstood, by the sophists, is little by little establishing itself in society; and already Jean-Jacques Rousseau had said: "Overwhelmed by the difficulties which present themselves" (in the discussion of Condillac's novel on the invention of language), "and convinced of the nearly proven impossibility that languages could have arisen and established themselves by purely human means, I leave the discussion of this difficult problem to anyone who cares to undertake the task . . . and I believe that speech was very necessary to invent speech."
     It is, in effect, these last words which present the reason for the impossibility of language by men: for to invent is to think, and to think is to speak inside oneself. Signs are required for thought, because they are required for speech; and one can say, to summarize, that man thinks his speech before speaking his thought, and expresses his thought for himself before expressing it for others.
     Human reason is in divine speech, as the child's reason is in the father's speech. That is why speech and reason are expressed in Greek by the same word, logos; and man could not have reasoned by himself; and if I do not understand the incomprehensible mystery of human speech, why should I seek to penetrate the mystery of divine speech?
     In writing about language, Bonald again begins with God (Whom he calls the "Verbe Eternel"), the originator of language. Such a divine origin is the only possible means for language to start, since language needs thought and thought needs language (thought being but internal conversation). W. Jay Reedy wrote, "Viewed thus, science is le fond and letters la forme; thought and expression are inextricably joined and complementary." Moreover, language is a social phenomenon. A solitary human being could not create it by himself. Rather, man began in a society consisting of himself and God and shortly entered the society of the first family. In such conditions, language use could be received and transmitted (through families primarily, but also through society in general), thus beginning the continuing human process of language transmission. To complement this view, Bonald developed a theory of the functioning of language. To him, words serve as verbal signs which interact and act on the brain.
     From this general theory, Bonald then discussed specific languages by examining (perhaps unexpectedly) their grammar. Words, phrases, and their interaction, for Bonald, reveal natural truths: Although the original language had been perfect and perfectly descriptive of the world, sin and the course of time led to its degeneration. Languages thus exist in various states of health. They can be judged, however, according to how well they reflect natural order. One important part of the natural order is (again) the relation of power, minister, and subject. Further, societies who were naturally ordered used and promulgated languages in harmony with nature. Those societies which were farther from reflecting natural truths had less-natural (inverted or transpositive) languages. As might be expected, Bonald believed that French during the era of Louis XIV most-accurately reflected the natural order (as Bourbon authority ordered society), just as pre-revolutionary French society had most-accurately conformed to the natural order. By contrast, the French Revolution was also a linguistic event, whereby a disordered view of the world produced (and was furthered by) a distorted use of language.
     Such views have important implications. One implication which Bonald wrote about is in literature. If thought and language are intimately connected, then the language a person uses will affect their thought. Hence a certain nationality of people might be expected to produce a certain type of literature. Bonald believed that the French should continue writing their particular variety of literature, which he believed would be ennobling (reflecting the natural order). Bonald's example is French literature at its height--the literature of "Racine, La Fontaine, La Bruyère, and Fénelon, literature which combined beauty, thought, and order. Such a view, however, runs the risk of depersonalizing the authors, of reducing them to only the mouthpiece of the nation. A second implication thus involved questions of consciousness. Could the individual thinker actually think for himself? Some, like Klinck, have argued that Bonald's theory of language destroyed such a possibility: Such a radical determinism, however, does not need to be the only interpretation. Whether Bonald himself would have accepted such a radical position is doubtful. But, if we grant the position, would not even Bonald then be merely reacting in ways determined by his language?
Connections
A number of connections can be drawn between Bonald's theory of society and government and his theory of language. The first is that both derive from his belief in a created order. The order inheres in the "nature" of nature. Since this was the case, philosophers could contemplate the world as it is and abstract the truths of nature. For Bonald, one of the most important truths of nature is the existence of relationships, specifically of triads. Hence both his social theory and his theory of language are arranged around organic arrangements which exist triadically. Secondly, language became for Bonald an essential part of his theory of society. To Bonald, language becomes the means of socializing individuals. In other words, society is built through shared language. The organic community which Bonald described would have been impossible without the human interaction of language. Language thus becomes a bridge by which the individual is connected to the larger community.
Questions
In the light of this study of Bonald, I would point to three areas which Bonald's thought suggests we examine more carefully:
     A. The Importance of Language. Bonald showed the importance of language in developing his theory of society. Similarly, language today remains a central issue. If societies are in some way built around language, then anyone concerned with a society (for instance, American society) ought to be concerned with the problem of language. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Foucault and Derrida, thoughtful people realize the importance of knowing their ideas. Much depends on what people decide language is and how it ought to be used. To turn a cliche, "Linguistic ideas have consequences."
     B. Conservatives and Language. The study of language should not be abandoned by traditionalist conservatives. As Bonald demonstrated, language and tradition are bound together. Similarly, the view advanced by Bonald ought to bear a certain attraction for conservatives. Bonald viewed man as situated within both a culture/society/tradition and within a language. Those two settings are connected. Conservatives of today believe man should begin by being rooted in his culture before addressing other cultures. Similarly, the individual should accept his place in the language he uses. Both the cultural setting and the language setting have the effect of relativizing the individual, who can no longer claim an objective, all-comprehending position of relating to the world. Such a position does not destroy humanity; rather, it liberates it through an acknowledgment of human finitude.
     Ironically, such a view holds certain affinities with some twentieth-century ideas about language (ideas which our seminar last semester discussed). For instance, the French thinker Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote of human embodiment as an important part of our theory of knowledge. In other words, humans are part of the world they are trying to understand. Such a view results in the rejection of the subject/object distinction in epistemology and undermines the Enlightenment claim to possess "objective knowledge," as if the thinker stepped outside the world. Interestingly enough, however, such views actually hearken back to an earlier, pre-modern understanding of the world. Similarly, Martin Heidegger describes the search for truth as a difficult project. Because of human finitude, all of truth cannot be known simultaneously. The very action of concentrating on one area ("unconcealing it") necessarily means losing the truth in another area (as it becomes concealed once more). Such notions of uncertainty, human finitude, and situatedness within a setting actually agree with conservate thought and recommend a conservative approach to politics (since they recommend humility).
     C. Language as Apologetic. Finally, I believe a reassessment is in order of Bonald's claim that language ultimately had a divine source. Remember, though, that language to Bonald meant the entire system of communication, not only words but syntax and relation of words. This claim rests upon his argument that if thought and language are co-dependent, one cannot begin without the other. Then to start the language process, some outside idea is necessary. If this is the case, language serves as a type of apologetic for the existence of God as the originator of language. Such an apologetic would not be airtight, and it might only demand a deistic first cause. Still, it is a large and important claim. In the twentieth century, a similar argument was made by Owen Barfield, who argued that the development of language and consciousness of which we are aware (moving backward through historical and pre-historical times) suggests that some type of mind or idea had to precede the arrangement of matter and human interaction. Apart from Barfield, I am unaware that others have made this argument in the twentieth century.
     And as I suggest that this might be an area for further study, I am well-aware that there is a dominant hypothesis quite counter to this. The evolutionist claim is that through chance developments over time, the appearance of design can develop. To evolutionists, the evolution of language fits nicely into their account of the evolution of life and perception. It is beyond the scope of both my paper and my research to evaluate such claims. Nonetheless, I offer this as a suggestion for further discussion and research.
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, allow me to reiterate the value of understanding Bonald. First, he gives us insight into the intellectual life of France during the turbulent yet vitally important period of the French Revolution. Historically, we can trace his thought in its influence on the entire sociological tradition in France (and from there to sociology in the United States). It also gave a small impetus to the development of the conservative movement in the United States in the past half-century. Although Bonald was on the "losing," side, his thought sheds light on the modern world, primarily through his critique of it. His critique, which was decidedly medieval, gives the investigator a place outside the Enlightened modern world a place to stand, by which he can critique it. In this way, his thought appears decidedly contemporary, pointing to important and contemporary issues. In doing this alone, Bonald continues to do worthy service.
Works Cited