SOURCE: James, E. D. “Scepticism and Positive Values in La Rochefoucauld.” French Studies 23, no. 4 (October 1969): 349-61.

[In the following essay, James argues that scholars who consider La Rochefoucauld a skeptic are mistaken, insisting that the writer has a complex but positive conception of virtue.]

La Rochefoucauld's sceptical account of human motivation and conduct seemingly obscures the boundaries between virtue and vice, the self and selfishness, what is necessarily so and what is often so. The problem is posed acutely by an often discussed maxime which first appeared in the definitive edition of the Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales:

Nous ne pouvons rien aimer que par rapport à nous, et nous ne faisons que suivre notre goût et notre plaisir quand nous préférons nos amis à nous-mêmes; c'est néanmoins par cette préférence seule que l'amitié peut être vraie et parfaite.

(81)

This apparently is not an assertion of a contingent fact, but of something that is logically necessary. Even what is known as disinterested friendship is necessarily self-interested. The thesis is paradoxical and self-contradictory. If what is disinterested is in reality necessarily self-interested the meaning of both terms is in doubt, since each has a meaning only if contrastable with the other, and if both terms denote the same thing then no contrast is possible. But the maxime sets out to revise our conception of perfect friendship and has in fact to rely on the very distinction between the terms which it appeared to destroy. Perfect friendship is held to be a virtue which consists in a refined and controlled form of self-interest. However, the explanation of our preferring our friends to ourselves as being necessarily a function of our pursuit of pleasure is exposed to a familiar objection. To exercise a choice or preference is indeed to do ‘as one pleases’, and in this sense it is a tautology to say that it is pleasure that determines our preference. But it is only in this innocuous sense and not in any other that the assertion is necessarily true. And in any case, from the proposition ‘nous ne pouvons rien aimer que par rapport à nous’ it does not follow that we necessarily love selfishly. None of our actions can be totally unrelated to ourselves, otherwise they would not, by definition, be our own actions. But this self-relatedness is neutral with respect to the moral character of the actions. It is not however true to say that amour-propre itself is normally a morally neutral term in La Rochefoucauld. La Rochefoucauld confuses and oscillates between two conceptions of self-interest, one of which serves in making moral judgments, while the other merely makes a logical point, namely that human action necessarily has a subject or an owner.

The long and eventually discarded reflexion on amour-propre (563), which was apparently La Rochefoucauld's first attempt in his chosen genre, seems to reveal a comparable oscillation. The reflexion begins by defining amour-propre in Augustinian fashion as ‘l'amour de soi-même et de toutes choses pour soi’ and adds ‘il rend les hommes idolâtres d'eux-mêmes, et les rendrait les tyrans des autres si la fortune leur en donnait les moyens’. But it seems that as he proceeds La Rochefoucauld loses sight of this definition with its distinct character of moral condemnation. By an extended metaphor the reflexion as a whole attributes to amour-propre all the powers and faculties of a human mind so that it hardly seems possible to distinguish between amour-propre and the self as a dynamic whole.

A posthumously published reflexion (510), more quietly argued, tends the same way. Intérêt and amour-propre are distinguished. Amour-propre is a tendency (or perhaps a general name for psychological tendency); intérêt is the final cause which activates it. What is at first said of amour-propre in the reflexion is finally said of man himself: ‘l'amour-propre séparé, s'il le faut dire ainsi, de son intérêt, ne voit, n'entend, ne sent et ne se remue plus’, and ‘un homme perd connaissance et revient à soi selon que son propre intérêt s'approche de lui ou qu'il s'en retire’.

From La Rochefoucauld's taking the logical necessity of the connection between the concepts of the self and of the actions of the self for a natural necessity such that our actions must be selfishly motivated, from his equivocal identification of amour-propre with both the self and a force or forces within the self, there arise difficulties which are brought out by Dr Moore's account of the matter. Amour-propre is described as the ego, a term which denotes predominantly (although not exclusively) the conscious self, but it is also described as ‘this demonic self’, already suggesting depths, and then as ‘this subconscious part of human nature’, ‘the heart’. Thus amour-propre is both conscious and unconscious, rational and instinctive, part and whole of the self. Prompted by suggestions in reflection 563 that amour-propre is something which lies behind contradictory features of human behaviour, Dr Moore comes to conceive of it as some neutral, non-moral, organic drive, a ‘universal appetite for self-preservation’, ‘a biological factor in the human make-up’, a factor beyond our control, therefore.¹ In Professor Starobinski's terms man is possessed—or dispossessed.²

The Maximes indeed emphasize the part played in our moral life by forces, human or non-human, which elude conscious rational direction. Man is subject to the caprices of fortune or chance, and of humeur or mood. His judgments lack objectivity, being determined again by humeur, or by goût, irrational likes and dislikes. The mind is deceived by the heart or unconscious. The very freedom of the will is endangered by unconscious tendencies, which may be physiological in origin. But if, as La Chapelle-Bessé suggested—in a metaphor less uncompromising than Starobinski's image of demonic possession—La Rochefoucauld thinks of the heart of man as the commander of a besieged city, it does not seem that the city is overwhelmed.³ Man does not lose all power of self-direction. Not all La Rochefoucauld's sceptical contentions are universal propositions. ‘Il s'en faut bien que nous connaissions tout ce que nos passions nous font faire’ (460). ‘Les humeurs du corps … ont une part considérable à toutes nos actions’ (297). And where an assertion is categorical: ‘L'esprit est toujours la dupe du cœur’ (102) it may have to be set off against another which is less so: ‘L'homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu'il est conduit; et pendant que par son esprit il tend à un but, son cœur l'entraîne insensiblement à un autre’ (43). In some of the maximes which are cited to show that tendency in La Rochefoucauld's thought which would destroy the foundations of rationality, freedom and value, restrictions are made which imply that these foundations survive.

A significant concept here is that of goût. The term goût is commonly used in the Maximes to refer to subjective tastes, likes and dislikes. ‘La félicité est dans le goût et non pas dans les choses’ (48). De gustibus non est disputandum. But there is another use which is of importance, since it concerns the question how far La Rochefoucauld considers man to be a rationally judging and acting being. La Rochefoucauld speaks not only of subjective taste but also of good taste (258). A clear distinction between subjective taste and good taste, or good judgment, which is the discernment of a competent judge, is made in the tenth of the Réflexions diverses, ‘Des Goûts.’ ‘Il y a différence entre le goût qui nous porte vers les choses, et le goût qui nous en fait connaître et discerner les qualités.’⁴ And analogously in the Maximes with the verb goûter: ‘Celui-là n'est pas raisonnable à qui le hasard fait trouver la raison, mais celui qui la connaît, qui la discerne et qui la goûte’ (105). Here unmistakably is the recognition of the objective discernment of what is in accord with the reason, and reason in this context has moral implications.

Nevertheless, Starobinski attributes to La Rochefoucauld a radical scepticism concerning human virtue. La Rochefoucauld seeks to ‘démoraliser l'homme en dénonçant l'incompatibilité de notre conduite et desg exiences de la vertu’:⁵

L'échelle idéale des valeurs persiste et règne dérisoirement, sans trouver nulle part d'application réelle. Cette échelle des valeurs permettra d'apercevoir que les hommes, incapables de s'y conformer, sont trop déchus pour mener une existence justiciable d'une appréciation morale. Le bien et le mal, le vice et la vertu existent, mais dans le monde à part des concepts: quant aux hommes, ils ne sont ni bons ni méchants, ni pleinement vertueux ni complètement vicieux.⁶

But the argument is incoherent. To say that men are neither fully virtuous nor completely vicious is itself to formulate a moral appreciation. And this is incompatible with the claim that man's conduct is not ‘justiciable d'une appréciation morale’. La Rochefoucauld is not a radical moral sceptic.

Again, Starobinski's assertion that it is congenial to La Rochefoucauld to ‘maintenir au loin l'image d'une perfection chimérique’ is not without obscurity.⁷ The notion of perfect virtue raises difficulties. It is true that La Rochefoucauld insists on the mixed character of the motives that determine our acts, and a maxime like the following suggests a wistful longing for an unattainable perfect virtue whose actual occurrence would be undetectable: ‘S'il y a un amour pur et exempt du mélange de nos autres passions, c'est celui qui est caché au fond du cœur, et que nous ignorons nous-mêmes’ (69). A comparable maxime shifts the criterion of perfection in the direction of sincerity and absence of pose. ‘La parfaite valeur est de faire sans témoins ce qu'on serait capable de faire devant tout le monde’ (216). It is true also that La Rochefoucauld sometimes conceives of amour-propre as essential to man's nature so that he could cease to be selfish only by becoming depersonalized (an inference which forms a pendant to the claim that man is depersonalized through being determined by forces beyond his control). La Rochefoucauld nevertheless also talks of a friendship which is perfect yet self-interested. Clearly these views are not all compatible with one another.

What is evident is that La Rochefoucauld often affirms the existence of true virtue, and particularly in distinguishing true from false. ‘La sincérité est une ouverture de cœur. On la trouve en fort peu de gens; et celle que l'on voit d'ordinaire n'est qu'une fine dissimulation …’ (62). ‘Les faux honnêtes gens sont ceux qui déguisent leurs défauts aux autres et à eux-mêmes; les vrais honnêtes gens sont ceux qui les connaissent parfaitement et les confessent’ (202). ‘L'envie est détruite par la véritable amitié, et la coquetterie par le véritable amour’ (376). ‘Le désir de mériter les louanges qu'on nous donne fortifie notre vertu, et celles que l'on donne à l'esprit, à la valeur et à la beauté contribuent à les augmenter’ (150). Such affirmations of the reality of goodness and virtue accord with ordinary usage in which we do not withhold recognition from excellence merely on the grounds that it is not absolute.

There seems but little justification for Starobinski's further claim that in La Rochefoucauld we find as a substitute for virtue a cult of sheer energy or force,⁸ although it is of course true that great stress is laid in the Maximes on the weakness and laziness of humanity. It is notable that La Rochefoucauld evaluates force in relation to reason and will. ‘Nous avons plus de force que de volonté’ (30)—we do not adequately direct our energies. ‘Nous n'avons pas assez de force pour suivre toute notre raison’ (42)—we do not always have the strength to do what we know to be right. One of the examples adduced by Starobinski in support of his thesis of a cult of energy makes better sense in this light. ‘Nul ne mérite d'être loué de bonté s'il n'a pas la force d'être méchant: toute autre bonté n'est le plus souvent qu'une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté’ (237). This is hardly to substitute force for moral values. Rather does it resemble a view sometimes attributed to Kant, namely that our virtuous actions are the more virtuous the more strongly we feel inclined away from virtue. Virtue is a conquest, or at any rate, as Dr Moore has noted, it must be willed or chosen.⁹ The intrepidity of the hero is itself distinguished precisely by willpower and rational control:

L'intrépidité est une force extraordinaire de l'âme, qui l'élève au-dessus des troubles, des désordres et des émotions que la vue des grands périls pourrait exciter en elle, et c'est par cette force que les héros se maintiennent en un état paisible, et conservent l'usage libre de leur raison dans les accidents les plus surprenants et les plus terribles.

(217)

H. Coulet speaks with some justice of a rehabilitation of the heroic ethic.¹⁰ There is no sign here of the amoralism which Starobinski considers to characterize La Rochefoucauld's conception of greatness.¹¹

It is true that La Rochefoucauld finds value in the actions of great men even when their purposes are evil or dubious. Tenacity, grandeur of aims, brilliance of execution—these are intrinsic goods even though they be put to bad ends. It does not seem that the recognition of such values constitutes ‘amoralisme’ unless, as does not appear to be the case, they are put forward as a substitute for moral values held to be universally inoperative. A curious example quoted by Starobinski as amoralistic is a maxime also commented upon by Dr Moore: ‘Il y a des héros en mal comme en bien’ (185). It began as a sardonic moral reflection:

Les crimes deviennent innocents, même glorieux, par leur nombre et par leurs qualités: de là vient que les voleries publiques sont des habiletés, et que prendre des provinces injustement s'appelle faire des conquêtes. Le crime a ses héros ainsi que la vertu.

(Dutch edition, 4)¹²

Here the heroism is clearly a ‘vice déguisé’. But when the reflection has been condensed and recast in the form of a maxime the emphasis appears to be on the value attaching to the style of the hero's operations and not on their moral character. In a discussion on the same topic, Jacques Esprit speaks of ‘forfaits illustres … plans suivis et ordonnés’, which are executed ‘avec résolution, avec éclat et avec fermeté’.¹³ One discarded maxime also quoted by Starobinski asserts indeed that the sole feature which distinguishes great from common souls is greater aims and not greater virtue (602). This does mean that grandeur d'âme is not a specifically moral concept, but it does not put the grande âme beyond moral evaluation. A final example: ‘La magnanimité est assez définie par son nom; néanmoins on pourrait dire que c'est le bon sens de l'orgueil, et la voie la plus noble pour recevoir des louanges’ (285). This maxime makes greatness of soul a self-interested virtue which has moral value of a kind.

Whether or not these maximes are consistent with one another, they all attach a value to style and prestige. This is by no means novel in a moralist. It is a familiar feature of so influential a work as the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle that it finds value in such external goods as riches, honour, good fortune and worldly success. In La Rochefoucauld, fortune in particular is a factor outside man's control, which contributes positively and markedly to human greatness. In the fourteenth of the Réflexions diverses, entitled ‘Des Modèles de la Nature et de la Fortune,’ La Rochefoucauld remarks how curious it is that fortune, commonly a name for chance, change, caprice (and so it often, but not always, is in the Maximes), appears to have a hand in the production of great and extraordinary men who are models for posterity. Nature and fortune combine to produce these men: nature furnishes their attributes and fortune puts these to work and shows them in their proper form. La Rochefoucauld observes interestingly: ‘On dirait alors que la nature et la fortune imitent les règles des grands peintres, pour nous donner des tableaux parfaits de ce qu'elles veulent représenter’.¹⁴ This, then, is an aesthetic view of the great life, with fortune as a force making (in particular cases) for order, form and meaning—without, however, reducing to nothing the great man's own contribution (343, 392, 399).

To other aesthetic values recognized by La Rochefoucauld, Starobinski attributes a peculiar significance. Since for La Rochefoucauld, he alleges, ‘l'action est impossible; la connaissance est compromise; nulle règle qui puisse nous aider à nous diriger’, we are reduced to an invincible despair from which the only semblance of an escape is through a ‘transmutation esthétique’,¹⁵ ‘arbitraire et gratuite, sans rapport avec un désespoir auquel elle n'apporte aucun remède.’¹⁶ There is ‘un ordre esthétique où l'homme est inventeur de ses valeurs’, and this is the code of honnêteté which, being an ‘ethic of expression’ and no longer an ethic of action, floats as it were detached from the ‘humiliation métaphysique’ which has been inflicted on man irrevocably.¹⁷ The thesis seems to rest on the postulate that the radical scepticism attributed to La Rochefoucauld destroys only the possibility of moral action, and on a quasi-existentialist distinction between values considered as pure essences or predetermined universal principles, and values considered as created by man.¹⁸ Values of the second kind are thought to escape La Rochefoucauld's form of scepticism. There is perhaps a conflation of two theses here: the thesis that virtues are never perfectly pure, and the thesis that we are never in control of our actions or judgments. The first thesis in fact leaves all kinds of value judgments perfectly possible; the second must be fatal to all values. ‘Tout s'égalisait dans la triste trame d'un destin subi’, ‘la monotone domination d'une nécessité neutre’ as Starobinski himself so excellently put it,¹⁹ wrongly supposing that though this were so aesthetic values might yet escape a like fate. But as he implicitly admits with his reference to a ‘battement sémantique’ in the terminology of ethics and aesthetics,²⁰ moral and aesthetic values are not always sharply distinct. It is indeed in the evaluation of motive, purpose and character that ethics comes closest to aesthetics. Aesthetic and moral values are affirmed side by side by La Rochefoucauld. He is not a metaphysical sceptic concerning either values in general or moral values in particular.

Although Starobinski holds that for La Rochefoucauld man is dispossessed, that the moi is a void filled by autonomous and uncoordinated psychical or other forces, he nevertheless argues that according to La Rochefoucauld this primitive, unregenerate, amorphous moi can in some sense be redeemed by the adoption of a certain manière d'être, a certain style which must be in accord with the nature of the primitive moi.²¹ The difficulty here is to give a meaning to the concept of a harmony between a new aesthetic social persona and a primitive inner being which is either a void or a disorganized mass of autonomous tendencies. Starobinski appears to hesitate between affirming that the primitive self is modified as a result of this superposing of a social self, and affirming that it remains unchanged.²² He says both these things and the difference seems significant. For if there is any sense in which man can redeem himself—redeem his ‘self’—then it appears that the thesis of man's essential dispossession by forces beyond his control is invalid and we must attribute to man's primitive self the power of self-direction and value-judgment. Moreover, in the reflection ‘Des Goûts’ La Rochefoucauld recognizes the existence of naturally harmonious personalities, those with instinctive good taste and judgment: ‘leur amour-propre et leur humeur ne prévalent point sur leurs lumières naturelles; tout agit de concert en eux, tout est sur le même plan’. To such personalities the concept of an artificial social redemption hardly seems applicable.

Starobinski's thesis leads him to give an implausible account of certain of the arguments in the Réflexions diverses concerning sincerity. According to this account, être vrai (and the expression is not, I think, used in the Maximes or Réflexions diverses) does not consist in ‘l'aveu et la connaissance sans résidu de ce qu'on est’ or in ‘l'épuisante exigence de la sincérité, qui suppose une réflexion préalable et une saisie tout intellectuelle de notre «essence»’; ‘ce mérite réside bien davantage dans la consonance «musicale» des dehors de la personne avec le dedans présumé’.²³ Now of course if being sincere entails complete and perfect knowledge of ourselves, of some metaphysical essence of ourselves (and if this requirement has a meaning), then clearly we can never be truly sincere and the dedans to which the dehors are to correspond can at the most be only présumé. (In fact the scepticism which Starobinski attributes to La Rochefoucauld is so radical as to put in doubt the meaning even of a dedans présumé). In reality the harmonie or concert between the inner and the outer which La Rochefoucauld praises is much less mysterious. In the fifth of the Réflexions diverses, ‘De la Confiance,’ he defines sincerity as ‘une ouverture de cœur qui nous montre tels que nous sommes; c'est un amour de la vérité, une répugnance à se déguiser’.²⁴ And in a passage from the third of the Réflexions diverses, ‘De l'Air et des Manières,’ which is quoted by Starobinski specifically in support of his argument, we read ‘les uns veulent paraître ce qu'ils ne sont pas, les autres sont ce qu'ils paraissent’.²⁵ The contrast is a commonsense one. There is nothing in this reflexion when read without preconception to suggest that man is essentially corrupt and that this corruption can be ‘redeemed’ only in outward show.²⁶ Quite the contrary. La Rochefoucauld's point is that there is corruption of our air and manner when we try to appear what we are not, when our manner does not conform to our nature. The reflexion clearly implies that it is possible to know ourselves and so to behave in a way which is in accord with our nature. And knowledge of ourselves here seems knowledge in an ordinary sense, not knowledge of a metaphysical essence, not even complete knowledge nor knowledge which is beyond all possible doubt. For La Rochefoucauld constantly prompts us to more complete, more profound knowledge of ourselves.

The thirteenth of the Réflexions diverses, ‘Du Faux,’ treats of falseness of judgment and character. Our qualities of character are uncertain and confused; our views are equally so. We do not see things precisely as they are; we value them more, or less, highly than we ought; and we do not judge their relation to ourselves in the way which fits them and fits our estate and character. The result is that we tend to be attracted by whatever flatters our vanity or appeals to our temperament, and we are governed by custom, convenience or fashion. But

Si les hommes ne voulaient exceller que par leurs propres talents, et en suivant leurs devoirs, il n'y aurait rien de faux dans leur goût et dans leur conduite; ils se montreraient tels qu'ils sont; ils jugeraient des choses par leurs lumières et s'y attacheraient par leur raison; il y aurait de la proportion dans leurs vues et dans leurs sentiments; leur goût serait vrai, il viendrait d'eux et non pas des autres, et ils le suivraient par choix, et non pas par coutume et par hasard.²⁷

Far from suggesting some artificial aesthetic substitute for true self-knowledge and right judgment, this is a perfect expression of classical reason.

In the fifth of the ‘Réflexions diverses,’ ‘De la Confiance,’ the bond of friendship and social relations is said to consist in our confiding in others, and this differs from perfect sincerity and frankness only in being restricted by a necessary concern for others' interests. But in the second of the Réflexions, ‘De la Société,’ a less noble restriction on openness in social relations is recognized, namely the ubiquitous presence of amour-propre:

Chacun veut trouver son plaisir et ses avantages aux dépens des autres; on se préfère toujours à ceux avec qui on se propose de vivre, et on leur fait presque toujours sentir cette préférence; c'est ce qui trouble et qui détruit la société [= social relations]. Il faudrait du moins savoir cacher ce désir de préférence, puisqu'il est trop naturel en nous pour nous en pouvoir défaire; il faudrait faire son plaisir et celui des autres, ménager leur amour-propre et ne le blesser jamais.²⁸

This passage is referred to by Starobinski as supporting his thesis of an essential inner corruption concealed by the game of social relations:

Ainsi, au nom d'un système d'agréments et de convenances capables d'assurer les plaisirs de la société, La Rochefoucauld rend à la vie masquée une légitimité qu'il lui avait âprement contestée. Mais il s'agit cette fois … de porter le masque sans s'en cacher, connaissant parfaitement les convoitises que l'on refoule et les défauts que l'on feint d'ignorer en autrui.²⁹

This at once prompts the question whether the notion of a ‘refoulement conscient’ is genuinely compatible with that of demonic possession which was the basis for the claim that man is essentially corrupt. And if by ‘vie masquée’ is meant ‘vice déguisé’ then it seems that it is not only in social etiquette and the convenances that value is attached to this. ‘Les vices entrent dans la composition des vertus comme les poisons entrent dans la composition des remèdes; la prudence les assemble et les tempère, et elle s'en sert utilement contre les maux de la vie’ (182).

But how vicious in fact is this society and how much of a masquerade is the behaviour recommended by La Rochefoucauld? It seems an exaggeration to find evidence in the following of a profound corruption of society:

Bien que le commerce que les honnêtes gens ont ensemble leur donne de la familiarité et leur fournisse un nombre infini de sujets de se parler sincèrement, personne n'a assez de docilité et de bon sens pour bien recevoir plusieurs avis qui sont nécessaires pour maintenir la société [= social life]: on veut être averti jusqu'à un certain point, mais on ne veut pas l'être en toutes choses, et on craint de savoir toutes sortes de vérités.³⁰

And what is recommended in another passage is not dissimulation but considerateness:

On peut leur [= à ses amis] parler des choses qui les regardent, mais ce n'est qu'autant qu'ils le permettent, et on y doit garder beaucoup de mesure: il y a de la politesse, et quelquefois même de l'humanité, à ne pas entrer trop avant dans les replis de leur cœur; ils ont souvent de la peine à laisser voir tout ce qu'ils en connaissent, et ils en ont encore davantage quand on pénètre ce qu'ils ne connaissent pas.³¹

Nor does this next passage really suggest, as is alleged, the moral complacency of a Philinte:³²

Il faut être facile à excuser nos amis, quand leurs défauts sont nés avec eux, et qu'ils sont moindres que leurs bonnes qualités; il faut surtout éviter de leur faire voir qu'on les ait remarqués et qu'on en soit choqué.³³

And the following requires genuine goodness of men in their social relations:

On doit aller au-devant de ce qui peut plaire à ses amis, chercher les moyens de leur être utile, leur épargner des chagrins, leur faire voir qu'on les partage avec eux quand on ne peut les détourner, les effacer insensiblement sans prétendre de les arracher tout d'un coup, et mettre en la place des objets agréables ou du moins qui les occupent.³⁴

La Rochefoucauld speaks of the maintenance of amicable social relations as a grand ouvrage requiring intelligence, good sense, consideration for others and compatibility of humour or temperament.³⁵ No doubt all this could be said to require at most the virtue of refined self-interest—which would itself be to go further than Starobinski who talks of veiled corruption. But it does not seem entirely accurate to describe the society of which La Rochefoucauld writes as simply self-interested, for the kind of ‘concealing’ of one's self-interest recommended by La Rochefoucauld is largely indistinguishable from what are normally called charitableness, moral effort and resistance to selfish promptings, and it does not appear that La Rochefoucauld takes a more sceptical view here. Such moral virtue is left intact by his recognition that certain ‘æsthetic’ features of social relations are compatible with, or even arise from, moral defect.

To make of La Rochefoucauld a metaphysical sceptic is to make his work self-defeating. The concepts of value, responsibility, even of a human agent, lose their meaning, as Starobinski has recognized.³⁶ Yet he is tempted by the metaphysical interpretation, seeing La Rochefoucauld in very Pascalian terms as inflicting a ‘metaphysical humiliation’ on corrupt man, and in existentialist terms as destroying belief in value concepts as eternal essences realizable in experience.

La Rouchefoucauld's moral concerns appear in fact to be much more practical. He sets out to give men—or at least the privileged few—a better grasp of their moral nature with a view to right judgment and right action. This practical aim is most marked in the Réflexions diverses. The great majority of men and the great majority of their actions are determined by motives and tendencies which are anything but rational, deliberate, disinterested. A large area of men's activities is in any case beyond their control, but otherwise the range of choice and value judgment may, for a few, be enlarged by self-knowledge and effort.

The recognition of the complexity of the factors which need to be taken into account in formulating value judgments certainly conflicts with a simplistic conception of virtue and goodness, vice and evil, as pure essences. But it does not follow from this that all actual value judgments are arbitrary and gratuitous. Nor is it true that La Rochefoucauld consistently attacks the notion that men's actions, characters and achievements can be judged in the light of predetermined rules, for in his observations on good taste in the reflection ‘Des Goûts’ he states that they may be so judged.³⁷ On the other hand, the reflection ‘Du Vrai,’ a remarkable little classical treatise on value, shows precisely that objective value judgments require a variety of criteria. It does not show that value concepts have no application.

La Rochefoucauld has concepts of pure virtue, of virtue simply (which may result from value-neutral factors), and of self-interested virtue. And self-interested virtue is not far separated from disguised vice on a scale which runs from pure virtue to pure vice. Yet there can be no doubt that La Rochefoucauld believes that objective distinctions can be made on that scale. And if virtue is not separated from vice by an abyss, neither is one kind of value judgment from another kind. Ethical and aesthetic judgments run into one another.³⁸ The recognition of aesthetic components in our judgments of human worth is not to be confused with the rejection of moral judgment.

To reveal complexity is not necessarily to consent to arbitrariness. And the arbitrariness of men's judgments in La Rochefoucauld's view clearly comes at least partly from their failure to recognize the complexity of the features to be taken into account in judging objectively.

Notes

1. W. G. Moore, French Classical Literature, pp. 128-9.

2. J. Starobinski, ‘La Rochefoucauld et les morales substitutives’, Nouvelle Revue Française, July and August 1966. July, p. 16ff.

3. Pléiade edition, p. 393. W. G. Moore draws attention to this image in his French Classical Literature, p. 129, and his article ‘La Rochefoucauld: une nouvelle anthropologie’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, 1953, p. 303.

4. Pléiade edition, p. 520.

5. Art. cit., July 1966, p. 25.

6. Ibid., p. 24.

7. Ibid., p. 25.

8. Ibid., pp. 26-8.

9. W. G. Moore, ‘La Rochefoucauld: une nouvelle anthropologie’, p. 306: ‘La vertu qui n'est pas voulue, choisie, ne mérite pas le nom de vertu’. But compare maxime 365.

10. H. Coulet, ‘La Rochefoucauld, ou la peur d'être dupe’ in Hommage au Doyen Étienne Gros, p. 109. This is an important article on the positive content of the Maximes. P. Bénichou's celebrated chapter ‘La Démolition du héros’ in his Morales du grand siècle requires some qualification in what concerns La Rochefoucauld.

11. Art. cit., July 1966, p. 28. Professor Starobinski's use of the terms éthique, morale, amoralisme is confusing.

12. Pléiade edition, p. 305. W. G. Moore, French Classical Literature, pp. 125-6, and ‘La Rochefoucauld: une nouvelle anthropologie’, p. 303. J. Starobinski, art. cit., July 1966, p. 26.

13. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, ed. J. Truchet, p. 47, note 1.

14. Pléiade edition, p. 526.

15. Art. cit., August 1966, p. 211.

16. Ibid., p. 212.

17. Ibid., p. 213.

18. Ibid., pp. 213-4, pp. 215-6, p. 224 (init.).

19. Ibid., p. 213.

20. Ibid., p. 217.

21. Ibid., p. 223.

22. Ibid., pp. 219 and 221.

23. Ibid., p. 223.

24. Pléiade edition, p. 514.

25. Pléiade edition, p. 513. Starobinski, art. cit., August 1966, pp. 222-3.

26. Starobinski, ibid., p. 219.

27. Pléiade edition, pp. 524-5.

28. Ibid., pp. 508-9.

29. Art. cit., August 1966, p. 226.

30. Pléiade edition, pp. 510-11.

31. Ibid., p. 510.

32. Starobinski, art. cit., August 1966, p. 226.

33. Pléiade edition, pp. 509-10.

34. Ibid., p. 510. Mlle Leconte in her valuable article ‘Recherches sur les dates de composition des «Réflexions diverses»’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, April-June 1965, p. 187, interprets the phrases ‘On doit … leur épargner des chagrins, leur faire voir qu'on les partage avec eux …’ as recommending merely an outward show of sympathy, and assimilates this passage to another in La Rochefoucauld's self-portrait where he says of himself: ‘Je suis peu sensible à la pitié et je voudrais ne l'y être point du tout. Cependant il n'y a rien que je ne fisse pour le soulagement d'une personne affligée; et je crois effectivement que l'on doit tout faire, jusqu'à lui témoigner même beaucoup de compassion de son mal; car les misérables sont si sots que cela leur fait le plus grand bien du monde; mais je tiens aussi qu'il faut se contenter d'en témoigner et se garder soigneusement d'en avoir.’ Pléiade edition, pp. 13-4. However there seems to be a certain affectation in La Rochefoucauld's attitude here as elsewhere in the Portrait. In any case, if La Rochefoucauld is to appear consistent in this passage, his rejection of pity and compassion must be thought of as a rejection of sentiment. The active and willed element in compassion remains. La Rochefoucauld clearly recommends succouring the distressed for their own sake.

35. Pléiade edition, p. 509.

36. See ‘Complexité de La Rochefoucauld’, Preuves, May 1962, p. 39. Much of this article reappears in Starobinski's Introduction to La Rochefoucauld, Maximes et Mémoires (‘Le Monde vu en 10/18’) 1964, and the whole discussion is taken up again and developed in the articles dealt with above.

37. Pléiade edition, p. 520: ‘… il y a différence entre le goût qui nous porte vers les choses, et le goût qui nous en fait connaître et discerner les qualités, en s'attachant aux règles’. La Rochefoucauld speaks also of those whose instinctive taste or judgment achieves the same accuracy as reasoned taste or judgment, but without the process of conscious reasoning.

38. Cf. Maximes, ed. J. Truchet, p. LXVI.

The text used is that of the Œuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1957. The Maximes are referred to in the text of this article by the numbers given in the Œuvres complètes for the edition of 1678 and for the Maximes supprimées and posthumes; otherwise page references are given below.

I have been greatly helped by the critical edition of the Maximes (and related works) by J. Truchet (Garnier) 1967.