The Ignorant Schoolmaster

Five Lesson~in Intellectu~lE mdncz@tion

T~lilnslutedwzth '272 $rzta.od~~cdion,

iia; Knisrin Ross

Stanford Uiiiversity Press

Stanford, California a
4 The Society of Conternpr
75
The Law of Gravity, 76. Inequality's Passion, 80,
Rhetorical Madness, 83. The Superior Inferiors, 86.
The Phiiosopher-King and the Sovereign People, 89.
How to Rave Reasonably, 9r. The Speech an the
Aventine, 96.
5 The Emancipator and His Monkey L01
Emancipdtory Method and Social Method, r 0 2 . Ernan-
cipation of Men an$ Instructian of the People, 106.
Men of Progress, rog. Of Sheep and Men, r r 3. The
Progressives" Circle, i 1 7 . On the Heads of rhe Peopte,
I 2 2 . The Triumph of the C9ld Master, I 27. Society
Pedagogicized, x 30. The Panecastic's Stories, r 3 5
Emancipation's Tornb, I 38.
Ta:anslart6ax9sI neruduct don
In The Igtzovaat Schoalnz~is~.erJacques Ranciere re-
Counts the story of Joseyll Jacotot, a schoolteacher driven intn
exile duririg the Kestoratlon who atlowcd that experience to fer-
ment into a rnethod for showing illicerate parents how they
themselves could teach cheir rhildren how t.o read. That f aco-
rot's story might have somcthing ro do with the post-I 968 de-
bates about education iri France was not irnrnediately apparent
EO most of ehe book's readers when i t appeared in t987. Ilow
could the experiences of a man who had lived all the great peda-
gogical adventures of the French Revolution, arhose own uto-
pian teaching rnethods knew a brief-if worldwide and per-
fectly serious-flurry of atcention before passing rapidly inro
the oblivion Rancikre's book rescues them from-how coufd
these experiences "communicate" wir11 ndrninistrators face CO
facc with the problerns of educating immigrant North African
children in Paris, or with intellectuals intent on mapping the
Frenchi schooi, system's conriniied reproductiun of socia! ine-
qualicies? Ranciere's book explairied nothing about the failures
OE the school systern;" it entered directly into none of the con-
'French jnurnalism of the :g%2'r spoke frequently shout "I'Cchec de l'ficnle"; this f8iliire
was usually ccttihed by cornpnring the percenrage of Frcnch srudcnts whn atrain rhe lirrrr<t/arirPnl
( 3 0 prrcent in i s Y 5 ) with thc perccncagc of high schooi gradustrs in Japln (75 percent) end
rhe U n i t e d Stares (87.6 p e ~ c n t ) Given
. thc sdvnnccd nature c f thc French bdr-it includer
something like a*o ycars n l what Arnericans viev n i rotlege-level work-thcse statistirs pcrlia~:s
temporary polemical debates. tts poiemics, dramatically re- Educators read it-sorne quice anxiously, given Jacotot's aflir-
counted in the secund half of the book, were rather those of the mation thae anynne can learn alone-in the imperative, as a
era of the ignorant schoolmaster, Joseph Jacotot: the eEects of contemporary prescriptive, a kind of suicidal pedagogical how-
Jacotot's unusual rnethod; its fate at the hands of the reformers ao. A few reviewers read i t on the level ac which i t might, H
and pedagogical institutions it undermined; its effacernent by think, mose jmmpdiately address an Americatt or Bririsfi read-
rhe educationaf poiicies pur into effect, under the auspices of ership oniy beginning to come to terms with the Iegacics of a
Franqois Guizoc and Vicror Cousin, by rhejuly Monarchy dur- decade of Keaganisrn and Thatcherism: as an essny, or perhaps
inp the r 830's. The names of the most listcned-ro tt~eorerical a fable oa parable, that enacts an extraordinary pfiilosophical
voices on post-'68 education-those of Pierre Boürdieu and meditatisn on equality.
Jean-Ctaude Milner-are not mnrioned by Ranciire. Yet the
book's. subject was obviously educacion. Kej%A@rds fike "Bes- Bouidieu and the Nem~S~ciology
sons" and "intellectual," "ignorant" and "schoblm$~ter" ap-
The singular history of each national collectivity pIays a con-
peared, if in a somewhat paradoxical arrangcrnent, i$ its title.
siderabte role in thc probiems of education. Though thti Engfish
And education was again, in the rg80is, under srrutiny i n
translarion appearc in very different conditions," i t may bc use-
France.
ful to begin by discussing rhe book's French context, a context
Readers in Prance had difficulty situacing the book, as they
still profoundly marlced by the turbulencc of the student up-
have had dificulty, generaily speaking, kceping up with the
risings of May '48 and by the confusions and disappoinrments,
maverick inteIlectual itinerary of its author. JFor although in
the reversals and desertions, of the decade that followcd: rhe a13
1965, Ranciere published Lire le capitui with hic ceacher Louis
but total collapse of the Parisian intelligentsia nf the Left, the
Althusser, lie was better known for his celebrated leftist csitique
"end c>fpolitics" amid the triumph of sociology.
of his coauthor, La Eepn d'Altkxssw (1g74), an4 for the journal
For it was perhaps as a reacaion to the unexpectedness of tile
he founded the Same year, Rbobes irgiyaes. Trained as a phiios-
May uprisings ehae the 1970's favored the eiaboration of a num-
upher, a professor of philosophy ar the University of Paris, but
irnmersed rather unfashionably since 1974in easly-nineteenth- ber of social seismologies atid above all energized sociologicaf
teflecrion itseIP: ehe criticism oF institutions and superstruc-
century workers' archives, Rancihe wrote books that eiudect
eures, of the multiform power of domjnation. In the wakc of
classification--bds rkiat gave voice to the wild journals of ar-
the patitical failure of '58,che social sciences awoke to the study
tisans, to the daydreams of anonymous thinkers, to worker-
of power: ro the New Philosophcrs' self-prctmotional media
poets and philosophers who devised emancipatory Systems
alone, in ehe semi-unreal spaceitime of ehe scattered iate-night rakeover, to Michel Foucaulr, buc most imporcantiy, perhaps,
moments rheir work schedules allowed them. ' Were these books to rht sociology of Pierre Bourdieu-the enormous influcnce of
whose work would, given the timet lag and ideology of trans-
primarily history? Thc philosophy of history? The history of
lation, begin in earncst in the English-speaking wodd only in
phiiosophy? Some readers took 1.e Mndtw ignorant to be a frag-
the early rg8o's. No less chan the New Philosophers, Bourdieti
ment of anecdotal history, a curiosiey piece, an archivaf oddity.
'In rhc Unirrd States today. fur cxarnplr, argumentr about equaliry invariably tilrn nn rhc
indicate tiw eelitr nature of French schooling. 11s system of professional i n d vocational "rrxrk-
cubject of tace-not surprisingty in ehe nrtiy majoi industrtal narion bi~itron a Lrgacy o f <Jo-
ing." Frnm nearly a quarret to a third of aorking-claaand rural students fail the preparatory
rncsric slaucry.
Course fcrr rhc b#r, %linst under 3 percent for thosc fr«rn prt>fesslnnalFamtlies.
 pothescs of Marxism or the na'fveres of hope for social transfor-
could be said to have profited from both the success and the faif-
mation. I t al tonred, Rkjoites iogiqlrar argued, "tlie denunciation
ure of the May movement, rhe first granting his work the energy
of' borh the mechanisrns of domirtation and ihe iilusions of lib-
and posture of critique, the second reinforcing in it the graui-
tational pul1 06 scructure. erarion.""
If Bourdieu's work kiad little serious impact on rnethodolog- Ranciere, in his own critical contribucion to the volurne, at-
tacked Bourdieu and ehe new socio1ogy as the latest and most
ical debates arnong professional sociologists, its effect on his-
influential form of a discourse deriving its authority from the
corians, anthropologists, professors of French, educational re-
presumed nalvetk or ignorance of its objects of srudy: in tlie
formers, art histarians, ghetco high schooi teacheas, and pop-
realm of educarion, rhe milirant instructors in Lia Repuodrrt-rioa
ular journalists was widespread. Hn the introduction CO
who need the iegitirnacy nf the system's atithority to denounce
L'Enzpire dtl snczalogue (1984)~a collection of essays edired by
ihe arbitrariness of that lcgitimacy; an$ the working-clasc stu-
Ranciere and che Rkvolfes logiq~tescoltective, the authors attrfb-
dents excluded frorn the bourgeois System of lavors and privi-
ute the extraordinary success of Bourdieu's tl-iernes oF reyro-
duction and Jistinction-.the phenornenon of their being, so to
leges. whn r40 not (and cannot) understand rheir exclusion. By
tracing the Passage frorn Lei N&itiers to La Reprodzicfion, Ran-
speak, in everyone's head-to tbe simple fact that they aiorked,
ciere uncovered a logic whereby the social critic gains by show-
which is to say that they offered the most thorough philosophy
ing democracy iosing. Xt was, far exampte, afi too obvious, he
of thc social, the one [hat best explained to the most people
wrote, co say thet working-class yoiith are aIrnosr entirely ex-
the theoretical and political signification of the last twenty
cluded from the university System, and that their cultural in-
years of their lives. Bourdieu Iiad produced, in other words, a
ßeriority is a resuit. OE rheir econarnic inferiority. The sociotogisr
discourse enrirely in lteeping with his time, a time that corn-
attained the level of "science" hy prnviding a tautology whose
bined, in the words of the editors, "the orphaned fervor of de-
systemic workings, veiled to the agencs rrapped within its grip,
nouncing the system with the disenchanted certirude of its per-
were evident ro him aione. The perfect circle, accordirlg so Ran-
petuityVM2
ciere, was made "via two proposicions":
Before May 1968, steeped in ehe theorerical and political at-
nosphere of the Althusserian battle for revolutioriary science I . XVorking-cLass youth nre cxciuded from the Lrniversity berairse
against ideology, Bourdieu andJean-liaude Passcron published they are uriaware of the true reasons 6i,r which they are excludrd iLes
Les Hirztisrs ( 1964)~an analysis of the University thae helped H~Y?F/~~Y).
2. Their ignorance of rhe true reasons for which ehey are excludcd
fuel the denunciatiori of the insritution by showing it to be en-
is a striicturai effect produced by the vcry existence of tRe system that
tirely absvrbed in the reprduction oß unequal social structiires.
The posr-May dissipacion of hopes for social change, however.
'
exc ludes them (tß.Rep~od~tction).
served onty EO amplify the influencc of ehat work,,and partic- The "Bourdieu effect" could be surnmed up in this perfect
ularly of its theoretical sequets, Ld Re,b~odttctinv(1970)and La circle: "they are excluded because they don't Icnow why they are
Distincrian (1979).jBourdieu's structuralist rigor with a Marx- excluded; and they don't know why they are excluded because
ist accent permitted an exiiaustive interpretivc analysis uf class they are excluded."Qr better:
ciivision and irs inscriptinn-minutely cacalogucd i i i the tiniest 1. The system rcproduces iss exisrence because i t goes unrecog-
details of posture or daily behavior-an analysis that could nized.
carry on an existence entirely divorced frorn the practical hy-
xii Trunsluror's En/vodz~crion
2 . The system brings about, rhroitgh rhe reproductiori uf ics ex- sessed, thcn, Savary's refnrrners argurd, a new educacional com-
istence, an effect «f misrecagnition," manity must lie escablished: one based on undoing the rigid
srratificacion of scholars anci rheir knowledge-a kjnd of lev-
By rehearsing this tautology, the sociologisr ylaced himself "tn eling at rhe top--and crearing aconvitriat, open, egalicarian at-
the position of eternal denounccr of a system granted the ability
mospltere in the schools, which would be attentivc eo citl-
to hide itself forever from its agents": not only did the sociol-
"whole personafity" of the child. Savary, for instanre, favored a
ogist see what teacher (an$ student) did not, tie saw it beiaase compensatory acritude to unequal opporcuriity. H e had "prior-
the teacker and student couid not. Wasn't the ultimate concern ity zones" designated that saw supplemenrary funding, extra
evinced by the logic oF the new soclology, Rancierc suggested, reaching positions, and speciaily designed curricula established
that of reuniting ics reaim, legitimating its sptcificity as a Xi- in elementary schvols an$ high schools situared in poor neigh-
ence through a naturalizing objeccification cif rhe other?
borfinods.
t
When Savary's sucressor, Chevencment (currenrly M~nistcr
Pedagog ical Re forms s!
, of Defense under Mitteraricif, came ro power in 1984,he an-
nounced a halt to such atrempcs at egalicarian reforrn. Under
The sociologicai theories of Bourdieii and Passeron offered
the watchword of "repuMican elitisrn," Chevenement under-
something for everyone. k r the enlightetied reader, tho dis-
scored the imperatives of rechnoiogical modernization arid
abused Marxist, they oKered the endkessly renewable p l e a s ~ ~ r e
cornpetition for Frnnce in a period of worldwide economic cri-
of Iucidity, the fris~nnof demystification and the unvciiing of
sis. Advocating a rerurn to the Encyciopedist, rationalist, En-
the clockwork rnechanics of a.functionaiisrn usually reserved for
lightenrnei~tprinciples of Jules Ferry and the Third Republic,
crhe structuralise interpretation of fiction. But for the progres-
Iie called for che restoration of gramrnar, rigici examinacioris,
sive educator they offered ehe justification for a series of at-
civic instruction--a kind of curricular "back t » basics," and a
rempts to reform the social inequiries o f thc schoot system-
return to the rhetoric of selection t l ~ a tso long characterized
and this especially aftcr Franpis Mitterand and the socialists
French schoaiing. That a violent poIemic crrncerning the values
wcre e1ected in 198 I . At the levei of govesnmental education
of education should enipt in the journalisrn c;f thtt mid-
policy, the Mitterand adniinistration was riven by two warring
igb'o's-a moment of profound general anxiety about the ques-
idrological tendencies, ernbodied in the persons who strcces-
t i m of French "identicy" in the face of rising irnrnigration---
sively occupied the position of Minister of Educarion, AIain
was not surprising. But ehe terms of tAe debace were all tocl
Savary and Jean-Pierre Chevenemerit.
farniliar, as were thc polarizcd positions thac resuired: che moie
Savary, imbueti with sornething of the spontaneous, liber-
Rousseauist disciples of Savary arguiitg that even a "repubIican"
tarian ethos of May '68 and with the heady early rnurnents of
elitisrn could lead only to the excliisioti and marginalitation of
enacting the socialist agenda, saw his rnission as that of zeduc-
an important pcrceittageof French youtii; the "Enlightenmcnr'"
ing, through a series of reforms, the inequalities diagnosed by
fotlc~wersof Chevenemenc arpuing thar a socialist education sys-
Bourdieu and Passeran. If petit-bourgeois instruceors, intenc on
tem must be rarional and scientific,
capitafizing On the dist.inreians conferred on them by their
in intellecrual circles, the sornewhat brutal transition from
knowltdge were, as Bourdieu and Passeron argued, compla-
the warm bath oF Savary to the science of Chw2nemelit was fa-
cently reproducing the cultural models that acted to select "in-
cilitated bu the piihlication in r984 nf che linguist Jean-CLaude
heritors" and Legitimste the sociai inferiority of rhe Jispos-
Milner's controversial polemic, De I'hb. {Milner appeared an
the popular French Iiterary television show "Apostrophes" co
taik about his book and was invited by ChevPnement to thc
ministry to discuss his ideas on education.) Milner attributed
all the ills of the French systeni to a plot launched against
knowledge by a "triple alliance" of sringy administracors, hasri-
iy accredired garvenu high school. teachers, and weil-intended
reformers bent on advancing something they called "peda-
gogyV-what for Milner amounted co nothing more than the
ernpty science af teaching how t a teach, These pseudo-.
progressive advocates of the vaguely religious and virtuous vo-
cationof pedagogy produced, according to Milner, a purely par-
asitic discourse: reform after reform whose ends lay in sarrificing
true scholarly research and passion for a "convivial schootroom
atrnosphere." Not the least provocarive of his assercions u7as
tbat a teacher did not have to like children to be a good teacher.
Hearkening back approvingly CO the rigors of the Third Re-
pubIir, he argued chat schools and teachers should dispense
with xnodeling the "whole person'aad view cheir task instead
sirnply and unequivocably as that of transmitting knowledge,
as "insrructing," not "educaring." The unequal teiation be-
tween wacher and student was not to be dismantled but rather
celebtated, for in its inequafity, as in thar of psychoana.lyst and
patient, fay the key t o success. inequaiity produced in the stu-
dent the desire to know. True equality in schooling meant trans-
mitcing the same knowledge ro each student.
fn his review of Milner's book,' Ranciere conciirred with the
Linguist's frank characterization of the reformist programs as
"obscurantist" in their assumprion that the b e ~ cway ro reduce
inequalities in the realrn of formally transmitted knowledge was.
to cut back on knowledge itself; "tacist" in thrir supposition
tliat rhe children of the working class-and especially of im-
migrants-should be provided with a less "abstract" or "cul-
tural" curriculum; and "infantilizing" in their ideofogy of
cchool as a vasr, vaguely maternal enterprise b s e d on "nurtur-
ing." But the solution to afl this was not, RanciPte argued, a
return to some norion of pure, scientific transrnission a la Jitles
Ferry, fot such a thing had never existed, Wasn't schooling un-
der the Third Republic tainted by, if not obsesscd with, a hy-
gienic project of moral formarion? The terms af rhe debate-
Rousseau vs. Ferry--were misleading. Equalicy rnight reside in
reaching the same thing to everyonc, bur it was simply not true
that every child in France now-or ai any time in che past-
had a right tuparticipate in ttie comrnunity of knowledge. Sirn-
ilarly, Milner's notir)n of pure scholarly passion, Ranciere sug-
gested, masked the interests of rhe arisrocrats uf education, the
mandarins ac the top of the universiry and granc-funding hier-
archies, whose concern Bay in preserving, in the Face of a rising
tide of hastiIy accredited instructors, rhe traditional priviIcges
of' the possessors of culture.
The Lesson of Althusser
Mibner and Ranciere shared a scudent activist p s t , a friend-
ship, a ttacher-Louis Althusser-anJ a theoretical formatiori;
cwenty years previously, they had bot11 belongcd tu the Union
des Errldiants Chimmunistes, the Earnous "cercle d'lJlm'? the
srn2-311 group of young theorists including Etienne Balibar,
Pierre Machcray, jacques-Alairi Miller, and Rdgis Debray, who
artcnded Althusser's early seminats on Marx a t rhe Ecole Nor-
male. RanciPre and Milner were among the signatories elf thc
first-mimeographed-iss~ze of the group's journal, the C u h i e ~ ~
Mdvxisiros-LettinisteJ, an issue whose title, "Thc Function of Th@-
oreticai Formation," reveais its aurhors' eaxly preoccupation
with questjons of education and the stacus of intellectual dis-
Course.
A vast historical chasm separares Milner's De I'icole from "Tlie
Function of Theoretical Formation"--a cttasm filled with the
rnomrintous political defeat af Euroyean worker movemencs in
France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain; the defeat of Al-
thusserianism icself 011 the barricades uf Map; the Right's re-
cuperation of Way an$ its anarcho-libertarian icieology for ttie
Free Matket; and the virtual suppression of historical matesi-
alism in Prance after r97-3 at the hands of the inteflectual cur-
rents of the New Pkilosophy and post-struccuralism. And yet
in cerrain of Mifner's pronouncements about education, about
questions of autkarity and equality, for instance, an echo of che
sld master's voice, that of Louis Althusser, can be heard: "TRe
function of teaching ," Althusser wrote in I 964, "is to transrnit
a determinate knowledge to subjects who do not possess this
knowledge. The teacking situation thus rests ora tRe abscalute
condition of gn ineqi~diitybetween d knawledge aPrcl a nonknowl-
edge."8For Milner, as fot Altliusser, ehe fundamental pedagog-
ical relation is the one berween knowledge and ignorante. The
same histoticai chasm separates Ranci&reis Le Iaifar"lmtgatorunt
from his La I,epn d'Aitbrisrer, but Ranci&re's subject-educa-
tion, or more bxoadly, thc sratus of those who possess knowl-
edge versus rhe Status of those who don't--and orientation to-
ward authority temain unchanged; h t h books, in fact, an-
nounce thernselves as "lessons,"
By writing La Lern d'Aiirthuf~er,Rancitre performed what he
called "the first clearing of the terrain" for the kind of reflecrion
that has preoccupied him ever since: the consideration nf the
phiiosophical and historical relations between knowledge and
rhe rnasses. Althusserianism, in Lu Lepn d"Althusser, emerges
firsr and foremost as a theory of education. For Kanciire, Al-
thusser's only political-in the strict sense of the wotd-inter-
vention occurred during the early moments of student unrect,
when a controversy regarding higher education arose between
the student union (UNEF) and the Communisc Party. Student
discontent had begun at that pnint t o fwus on the form.r nf the
traosmission of kraowledge-the pedagogical relation of mag-
isterial ptofessdrsand docile students-as weil as its ends: form-
ing the future auxiliaries of the bourgeoisie. Already in ~ h eariy
e
196o's, students had begun tu question the arbitrariness of ex-
aminations and the ideology of individual 'research. In thesc
ciarly, tentative efEOrts-their slogan was "La Sorbonne aux etu-
diantsl'---politics apyeared in a new forrn: in the questioning of-
knowledge and its refation tu political power and i n the intro-
duction of a new line of division arnong ineellectuats betwecn
rhe producers and the consumcrs of knowledge. Althusser's in-
tervention was swift and cfear. In an article entitled "Problemes
4tudiants" (1964), he uurlined the correct priorities for Lorn-
munist students. They must first devclop their knowledge of
Marxism-Eeninicm and thcn conduct scienrifir analyses thae
would yield objective knowledge of the University. What
should matter to biarxists was less the form-the pedagogical
relation in which knowledge was disseminated-tilan "the
qualiry of knowledge itsclf." Their task must be that of "dis-
covering new scientific knowledge capable of illuminating atid
critricizing the overwhelrning illusions in which everyone is im-
prisoned," and tlte privilegcd vehicle for perforrning this task.
was individiial research. The real tocus of dass division in che
University was not in the inequitable relations between teachers
and students, but in the contenb of the reaching: "it is by the
very nature of the knowtedge that it imparts to students that
the bourgeoisje exerts . . . the profoundest influence over
them."
?For Rancikre, the Atthusserian concepr of science--in fact,
the sciencelideofogy distinction itself-had ultimately nu other
function than that of justifying the pure being of knowledge,
and, rnore important, of justifying che eminent dignity of the
possessorc of chat Irnowlerige. For if science (theory) forms a n
enclave of ffeedom in a world of ideologicai enslavement, if sci-
ence beiongs to the inrellectuals-ehe macters-and the cri-
tique of bourgeois content is resesvcd for those who alreadv
know, then there is only one way for students ro criticize their
masters' knowledge from thr point of view of ctass, and that is
co k c o m e their peers. ff everyone dwells in iilusion (ideology),
then the solution can oniy come from a kind of rnuscular the-
otetical heroism on the part of the aone theorist. Ranciere re-
counted what was for him the most graphic illustration of this:
Althusser's need tet deny the antiauthoritarian May rcvalt as i t
was happerling in order to pretend lacer to "discover," through
chance and solitary research, and to propose as a risky hypoth-
esis, whar the mass student action had already revcalcd tu every-
one-the function of the school as an ideological apparatus of
rhe state.'
Confronced with the events of May, the logic of Althusser-
ianism reacts according to the predictable ternporality of the olae
f . '68 was not the proper mornent Ernpirical pol-
z~rhok n u t ~ ~May
itics an$ theory must be dissociated frorn each other, and the
position that enacted rhat dissociatisn was thar of rlle educa-
cor-he who k n ~ w show to wait) liow to guard his distance.
how to rake the time of iheory. The last re~oar@~of pMlosophy
is to eternalize the division of lahot rhat grants-,~tits place.'"
IC
The Pracrice of Equality
If che phiiosophical traditiori is itself a product of the divi-
sion between mental an$ manual labor, then w h a ~authoriry is
CO be granted rhe restimony of this tradieion? And particularly
w1-ICIIphilosophy Sets itself rhe task, as ir delights in doing, of
speaking for those whose presumed ignoranae grants it its do-
main? Since Ld Lefon d;4I~husser,Ranciere's investigation of the
origin, continuation, and accasional subversion of the hierar-
chical division of head and hand has been lau-nched on two
fronts. The first: might L7e calied the archival level, the docu-
rnencing, chronicling, essencially recounting, of the experi-
ences and voices of early-nineteenth-century workers who
";ransgressed the boundaries srit for them": figures both rnar-
ginal and cencral to workers'communities whose emancipacion
rook the form of clairning fur chernselves what the middle
classes assurned t a be theirs alme, a realm of existente outside
rhe one defined by the circle of material necessitp. H e focused
on workers who claimed the right to aesthetic conternplation,
the tight to dead time-and, above all, rhe right to think, "I
took the great gauchzste theme-the relations of inrellectuai and
manual work-and put it in reverse: not rhe re-educacion of
intellecti~als,but the eruption of negativity, of rhinking, into a
social category always defined bv the posirivity of doing,'"'
This archival, narrative work has run parallei to--and enrer--
tains a cruciat dialogue with-rhe second, mote potemical and
discursive front: Ranciere's critique of the claims of bourgeois
observers and intel lectuals (philosoptiers, sociai historians, New
Philosoptiers, sociologists~to know, and thus "speak for" or ex-
plicate, the privileged other ofpoiiricai modernity, rhe worker. "
Rarici6re's cricique of the educational theories uf Bourdieu,
Althusser, and Milner shows them ro have at least one thing in
common: a Hesson in inequaliey. 'ff
with inequality, proves it, and by proving it, in the end, is
,- 1. is
Seen as the reproduction of incquality?~ourdieu)or as the po-
tential insrriimcnr fur the redsicrion oE inequality (Savary), the
effect is the säme: that oferecring and rnainraining ttie distance
separating a future reconciliation fmm a present inequalirp, a
knowledge in che oEng fiom tnday's intcllectual impoverish-
ment-a distance discursively invented and reinventerl so that
it may never be abolished. The poor stay in their place. The
Same temporal and spatial distance separates the t>edakogur
&om ttle studerrr as separates thc "explicator of rhe social-
the workes.
-k- ru
R
) de6arriire? What would ir inem to makc equaliry ap~es~~ppo~ztrOn
i rather ehan a goal, a pvactice rather tlran a reward situated firm1
D i v o r n e disrant future so as to all rhe betrer explain i t r p r e r c J
I ni- * . lity? This is rhe lesson providcd by JosephJacocor's ec-
perience--exphrience in the French Enlightenment sense of borti
"experiment" and "experience"-and the 1.essonwhuse plitical
and philosophical tirneliness Ranciere affirms by recounting Ja-
cotot's story.
All people are equally intelligent. This is Jacotor's startling
(or naive?) presupposition, fiis lesson in inieflectual emancipa-
tion. And from this starting point (the result o f an accideritill
discovery occasioned by ttie peculiar cirrumstances of cxile), Ja-
cotot came to reatize that kn2wledge is not necessary CO teach-
ing, nor explicatian necBarv to i e a r n i n ~ ."Lxplication," heb
-
Grites, "is the rnyth of pedanogy," Rarher tllan elirninating in-
capacity, explication, in fast, creates it, Ir does this in part by
establishing the temporal structure of delay ("a little further
along," "a little later," "a few more explanations and you'li
see the light") that, wrii tage, would become the whole
nineteenth-ceneury myth of Progress: "the pedagogical fiction
erected into thc fiction af che whole society," and rhe general
infantilization of the individuals who corniose i c . $he peda-
gogicaI myth divides the worid inta two: t h e w h e
ignorant, the rnature and the i~nformed,the capable and t&
tdcaoable. IJv the second halt of The lnnarant SckooIpndster, cbe
h s -- y ofdetay that links the popular classes, the child, and
rlae poor wirhin the discourse of rhe repubiican "Mcn of Prog-
ress" surrounding Jacoror is all too ciear.
The pedagogical ficcicin works by representing inequality iri
rerms of velociiy: as "slownecs," "backwardness," "defay." Per-
haps this humology oF delay, the whole ternporality of the "lag"
that the book exposes, will provide thr rneans f»r readers who
have pondererl the forms taken by rhe ideology of prcigrcss sincc
Jacotor's time to trace the cnnstellarion (the term is Walter Ben-
jamin's) that our own era fotrns with Jacotor's. For hasn't the
pedagogical fiction of our own time been cast on a global scale?
Never will the student catch iip wich the tcachet; never will the
"developing" nations catch up with the enligheened ,nations,
Are cven che critiques of "dependency theory" free of pedagog-
ical rhetoric in their discussions of the Third World? To say this
is ro clairn that a reading of The Ignorant Schoolmarter can suggest
hrrw roday's much-heralded "democratization" of the globe-
our own contempomry institucionaliz,aeion and representation
of pro.gress---is just the new name for inequality.
In The Ignamnt SchooEmaster, Rancikre bas found ehe means ol'
illustrating end defendingequaliry that exterids ro the very level
of formal risks he has takcn recounting the story. Ir is ahove all
the book's formal procedures that have allowed Rancitre t o
think the sociai itself in such a disrincely original fasliion. Foe
as Benjamin was not alonc in realizing, "the concept of rhe his-
torical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the con-
cepr of i t s progression thtough a homogenous, empty time.
And a critiqiie of such 3 pragrcssion musc br: thc basis of any
criticism of the concept nf progress itself."" The criticjue of
Progress, in ather words, rnust intervene at the levet of the pro-
gression, rhe speed nr pacing , the gractice of historical writing
itself. Viewcd from this perspcctive, rhe gradualist, "additive"
notiori of writing history-the slow, reasonecf accun~ulationof
clata wich which che hiscrjrian fills an empty, la~mogenous
time-begins to bear a distinct resemblancc ro rhc gradual,
stcp-by-step acquisitiun of rindersrandiiig throrigh rxplicstion
that Jacotot's method so dramatically explodes."
If che hisrorian's relation to thc past-and co his or her read-
ers--is not to he onc nf explication, rhen what can ir be? Early
writings of rhe Rievoites iogiqt~ejcollective announce its project
to be that of crr'ating an "alternative historical rnernory." This,
I think, suggests a motivacion akfn to that of Benjamin's to
biasr, as he put it, "a unique cxperience of the past" oitt of the
"continuum of hisr»ry" foa the purpose of wresting rneaning
from the past for the present. Ac the collective put i t :
An episodr Frorrt the past inrrrests us oniy inasmuch as i t becomes itri
episnde of the present wherein our rhoughts, aciioris, and straregies
are decided, . . . Whar interests us is thnr idcas be evcnts, [hat his-
rnry be at all rirnes a break, a rupture, ta be inrerrogared anly from
the perspecrive of tkie tiere and now, and only pulicically.''
'Fhe rnotivarion is ctear. But what are die formal nr rhetorical
crrategics, what are the wriring practices, that atlow an cpisode
from the past to becnrne an episode in ahe present? Xn tiie case
of The lg~rordntS c b o o l m ~ t c tfle
~ , story of Jacotot apens atid ends
'Rancierc is in facr Lesi known in rhe IJoircd Stnres ana~ngh~storians.for his pi>lemical
interve~irionscnncerning swial history as P a~reticr,and lor bis dpbarrs witl, p~rriciriars ~ c ~ a l
hisror~ansovcr the identity dlK! c:?n~ciousnrss11f ihr a r t i s a ~ SEI.
. ~sfn'cialty.h i ~~~ r h s n g~ ei t h
Wllliam Sewell, Ir., and Chrisrupher Johoscn iri " T h e hlytli I I tlic
~ Ariisan," tnter~iafrn~rni Lahnr.
rnd Ifit.hin(: C/"JI Hi~inyi,2 4 (Fall roHz1. Scr als.3 whnr i s rht n~ijstri>oroughdisctr~rlonn i
Rancicrck rclation to tlie practirr nf history, arid of his u~urkin geocral. Donntd R c ~ d inrro- i
diiction to t h rranslarian
~ 01 La Niiir d#~p~0~66orrtriN?~hf.* n/ Ltbor, Philadelphia. igllg) In.
pnr:anr essays by Ranciere oripinally published III Rhvltrs tngt9ii~iare nwilablc in Yuiisr nf ~ b r
Plopte, pd. Adrian Riikin anif R08r.r Thomas ILonilr>r~,1»RR).
withour RanciPre doing. on one level, anything ocher rhan riar-
rating it. Storytelling then, in and of itself, or recozrnting-orie
of the two basic operations of the intel!igence according to Ja-
cotot-ernerges as one of the concrete acts or practices that ver-
&es equality. (Equality, writes Jacotoe, "is neither givcn nor
claimed, it is practiccd, it is verified.") T h e vety act of story-
relling, an acr thar presumes in its interlocutor an equality of
intelligente rather than an inequality of knoudedge, posits
eqtiality, jusi as the act nf explicacion posits inequaliry.
Bur another, inore unusuat effect is created by the narrative
style of thc book: a particular kind of uncertkinty that readers
may experience concerning the ideneiry of the book's narrator.
'B'he reader, in other words, is not quite Sure where the voice of
Jacorot stops and Ranciere's begins, Xanciere slips irtto Jacotot's
text, winding around or worming in; his cornmentary concex-
tuali zes, rehearses, reiteraies, dramatizes, elaborates, catitilaurr
Jacotor; the effect is orie of a compiex echoing taking place be-
tween the author arid Jacocot at the level of voice, as thuugh an
enormously sympathccic disciple of Jacotor's had, by soxne
time-travel device familiar t o readers of science fiction, rurrjed
u p in the twentieth ccntury. 8 n e existential grounding for such
an echoing rnay be surmised. Jacocot's rcfatiun to posr-
Revolurionary France (bis experirnents, in a sense, pro/nn& ehe
revolutionary ctiergies o f 1789 inco the France of the r 820's and
1830's) i s doubled by Rancikre's relation to 1968. The two are
united by sorneching like a shared lived retation to cycles of
hope, then to cycles of discouragernent, and on to the displace-
ment of hope-a scquence that marks the experience of yeriods
of revolutionary ferment and their aftirmach, Thac such periodr
are also ones of productive ferrnent around the question of ed-
ucation--nr frclnrn~issic~ti-goes withour saying, Bus in the end
it is emancipation--not education--thac has drawn Ranciere
t o Jacotot.
For the reader, rhis narrative uuiicertainty will prove produc-
tive, I think, for it has the effecr of facilitating-----crcatingthe
means for-the book's (nonexplicic, iinexplicated) intervention
into the prcsent. Without rxplanation, rhe polirical rimeliness
of Jacotor's "naivere" is afirrned. For Rancikre, rhis particular
boak becomes thc rneans by which his rwo previously separated
activities-the arctiival, situated in the past, and the polemi-
cal, situated for the most part in the present of contemporary
tlieoay-.are merged, a merging ehac in turn con&)i,nn(.isany at-
cernpt to ctassify thc book generically. Are rhe nineieenth-
cenrury republican Men of Progress, thc founders of public ed-
iicatii~n,the sociologists of today? Aiid, if so, is rl~chock a sat-
ire? Does a sntirist's rage a t the fallen reality of postmodernisn,
otir own societp of experts, drive the teci tation of Jncotor's urn-
piari experience? I t is certainIy clear, frlr example, that Ran-
eitre's (and Jacrrtot's) distincri.de "unrimefiness" stands in agon-
istic relacion to the perfect tirneliliess and seamlessr-iess af the
"Bourdieu effect," the whoie conternporary sociology of "sys-
tems of reprisentation." Can Jacotor anci his series of concrere
practices verilying equality he rnarshaled tu do battfe with thc
dominant discourse of otir own time, thc discourse 0f a hidden
truth and its dernyscificacion bp thr tnaster explicator, the dis-
Course that asserts tt-iat "cherc is no science but of che hidcien"?'"
7 %Ignnruni
~ Schoa/itzujter forces us to confrnrir what any num-
ber of nihilistic, neo-liberal phiiosaphirs would havc us avoiti:
th? iounding term of our political mociernity, e q f ~ l i t yAnd
. in
the face of systematic aetacks on rhe very idea, powerfu1 ideol-
ogies that ~vniildrelegate it ro thedustbin of history or to some
dimlv radianr futttre, Ranciere places equality-z~zrtf~n/fy-in
the preserir, Against the seamlcss science of rhe hidden, Jaco-
tot's story remiiids its that equa1ity turns on anciclier, very dif-
ferent lagic: in division rather than Consensus, in a multipiicity
of concrete acts and actual rnoments and situations, sit~iarions
that crupt inro the fiction of inegalitarian socicty without thern-
selves hccorniug institutions. And in this. rny rendering of thc
title of the book as The ignormc Schoo/nrnster is perhaps rnislead-
ing, Fc~rJucotot had no school. Equalicy does not, as thry say
in FrencR, "faire ecule."
The Igs?ordnt Schou/ma~ter
Five Eessons in
Inteilecrual Ernancipation
 i n 1818, Josep1.i Jacotot, s lecturer in Frencfi lit-
erature a t thc Bfnivetsity of Louvain. had an inteflectual adven-
TUEK.
A long and eventful career should have made h i n irnmune to
surgrises: hc had celebrared his nineteenth birthday in 1789.
H e was at that time reaching rheroric at Dijon and preparing
for a career rn law. In 1792,he served as an artilleryrnan in thc
Repi~blicanarmies. Then, under the Convention, he worked
successively as instructor for the Bureau of Gunpowder, secre-
tary to the Minister of War, and substitiire for the director of
che Ecofe Polytechnique. When he returned t o Dijon, he tsught
anatysts, ideology, ancient languages, pure mathematics, tran-
scendent mathematics, an$ law. In March I 8 I 5 , the esreetn of
his cuuntrymen made hin1 a deputy in spite of himself. a'he re-
turn of the Bourbons fbrced him into exile, and by ehe gener-
'
osity of the Kiilg of the Netherlands he ohtained a position as
ra profssor at half-pay. Joseph Jacotnt was acquainted with the
laws vf hospiraiiey and counced on spending some calm days in
Louvain.
Chance dccided di&tentIy, Thc unassurning lecturer's les-
sons wcre, in Fact, highly appreciated hy his scudents. Among
those who wanted to avail thernselves of him wcre a good num-
ber of students who did not speak Prcncl~;but Jnseph Jacacarnt
knew no FlernEsh. There was thus nu language in which he could
teach them whae ehey sought from hirn Yet hc waneed to re-
spond to their wzshes. 'Ii, do so, the minimal link of a thing 117
cott2tlmon had tobe established beeween himself and ckem. At char
time, a bilingual ecircion of Tiiin~aqricwas being published in
Brtrsseis.' The thing in cornrnon had heen found, and TeFelema-
chus made his way into the iife of Joseph Jacotot. I-Ie had the
book delivered ro ehe studencs and asked rhern, through an in-
tergrcter, to Iearn rhe French iext with che help of rhe trans-
lation. When they had madc i t through the first half of rhe
book, he had chem repeac what they had learned over and wer,
and rhen todd them to read through rhe rest of the book until
they could recite it This was a forrur~atesolution, but ic was
also, on a small scale, a phrlosophtcal experirnent in tlie style uf
the ones performed during the Age of Enltghtenmenr. AndJo-
seph Jacotot, in r8t8, remained a man of ttie preccding cen-
tury.
But the experiment excecded his expectations. He asked the
srudents who had prepared aq instrucced to write in Prench whar
chey thouglit about whar rhey had read:
He expected horrendous barbarisms, or maybe a complrce inabiairy
ro perform. Wow could these young peupic, deprrved of expianation,
understand and resolve the difficiif ties of a Janguage entireiy ncw to
them? Mo matter! He had ro lind oiir where the route opened by
ihance bad caken rhem, whar had been the resuirs of that desperate
ernpiricism, hnd how surprised hc was tu dtscover that che students,
Ieft to themselves, managed r h ~ difficulc
s step as well as many Frrrich
couid have done! Was wanting alt that was necessary for doing? Were
atl rnen virtually capable of understanding what othcrs had done an4
understood"
Such was tlie revolution rhar this chance experiment un-
leashcd in bis rnind* Until chen, he had believed what all con-
@Penelün's<lidacr(cand urnpian 24-volumc novet. 7'8tet11nqve(1699).recourtcs rhe peregri-
nntiona of Tclemachu~,accompaoied by his spiritual guidc, Mentor. as hc atrcnprs to find his
bther, Odysseus. In i t , FPnclon proposes an "Art of Rcigning" and inwnrs ao ideal city, Sx-
Icnte, whose peacr-loviny citizens show exemplary civic virrur. 'l'he book was ewtremely dis-
pleasing ro Louis XIV, whosaw himself in zhe portrait of ldomeneus. Bur it was rnurh admired
by Enlightenmenr philosopherr, whn ptoclaimed FEnelon onr of theic most impor~antprc-
Cursors. In tcro~so i jacotor's adventurr, ~ h book
e could have been Ti/r;moune or any oiliir.
--TRANS.
scientious profecsoxs heiieve: rhat chc important busincss of tiie
master is to transmit his knowledge to his students so as to bring
them, by degrees, CO his own level of expertise. Like all con-
scientious professors, he knew chat teaching was not in the
slightesr about cramming studencs with knowledge and havirig
them repeat ic tike parrots, but he knew equally well that stu-
dents had to avoid the chance decours where minds still inca-
pable of distinguishing the essential frorn the accessory. the
principle from the conseqtience, gct lost. In short, thc essential
act of che master was to e,:xp.izctrte: to disengage the simple ele-.
ments d learniag, and to reconcile their simplicity in principle
with rhe factual sirnplicity that characterizes young and igrio-
rant minds. 7i, teach was to transmir Iearning and form minds
simuitaneously, by leading rhose minds, accordirig to an or-
dered progression, from the most sirnpte to che mosc complex.
Dy the reasoned appropriation of knowtedge and the forrnation
o l judgment and taste, a student was thus elevated co as high a
level as his social destination clemandcd, and he was in this way
prepared to make the use of the knowIedge appropriate to that
desrinacion: to teach, tu litigate, ot to govern for rhr lettered
elire; to invent, design, or make instrurnents and machines for
rhe new avant-gardc now hrzpefully to be drawn from tlte elite
of the common peopie; and, in ttie scientific careers, for the
minds gifted with this partic~ilnrgenius, to make new discov-
eries. Undoubresily the prvcedures of these men of sciencc
would diverge noticeahly from che reasoraed order of the peda-
gagues. But this was no grounds foi an argumenr agairist thar
order. O n the contrary, one must first acquire a solid and me-
thodicai foundation before tRe singularicies of genius could takc
flig ht . Post hot , e q r t prnpfer bot-.
This is how al! conscientious prufessors xeason. This was how
Joseph Jacotot, in his rhirty years at rlhe job, had reasoned and
acted. But now, by chance, a grain od sand had golfen inco tlle
rnachine. He had given no exptanation c t j his "scudents" on chc
tirst elcrnencs of the language. He had not expIained spelling
or corsjugations to chem. They had luoked for the French words
thae corcesponded to words they icnew and che reasons for their
grammaticak endings by themselves. Thcy had learned to put
them together to make, in turn, French sentences by rhem-
selves: sentences whose speiling and grammar became more and
nlore exact as they progressed through the book; but, above all,
sentences of writers and not oh schsoichildren. Were the school-
lnaster's explications therefore superfiuous? Or, if they weren't,
to whom and for what were they iiseful?
T h e Explicative Order
Thus, in ehe mind of JosephJacotot, a sudden iillumination
brutally highiighted what is blindly taken for granted in any
system of teaching; the necessity of explication. And yet why
shouldn't i t be taken for granted? No onc truly knows anything
oeher than what he has understood. And for cornprehension to
take place, one has ro he given an explicarion, the words of thc
rnasrer rnust shatter the silence of the taught tnaterial.
And yet that logic is not wifhoui ccrtain obscurities. Con-
sider, for example, a book in the hands of a student. The book
is made u p of a series crf reasonings designed to make a scudent
understand sorne material. But now the schoolmaster Opens his
rnouttl to explain the book. H e makes a series of reasonings i n
order to explain the series of reasonings that constitute the
book. But why shauld rhe book need such help? Inscead of pay-
ing for an explicator, couldn't a father siAply give the book in
his son and the child understarid directfy che reasonings of the
book? And if he doesn't understand them, why would he bc any
mare iikety to understand che reasonings that would explain to
hirn what Iie hasn't undersrood? Are rhose reasonings of a dif-
ferent nature? And if so, wouidn't it be r~ecessa~y to explain the
way in which to understand them?
So the logic of explication catls for the princi y le of a regres-
sion ad infinitum: there is nu reason for the redoubling of rea-
sonings ever ro stop, What brings an end to the regression and
gives the system i t s foundation i s sirnply that the explicator is
the sole judge of the point when the explication is itself expli-
cated, Eie is the sote judge of that, in itself, dizzying qucstioil:
has che student understood the reasonings thar teach hirn to un-
derstand thc rcasonings? This Is what tlle master has ovcr che
facher: how could the father be certain that tbe child has under-
stood the bonk's reasonings? Wtiac is missing for the father,
whar will always be missing in the trio he forms with the child
and the book, is the singuiar art of the expiicator: thc arc of
4istu~zre.Tke mastcr's sectet 1s to know how to recoanize the
distancebetween the taught material and the person being iq-
m u , the dzstancc also hetween learning and understandipg.
m i i c a t o r sets up and abolishes this discance-deploys i t
and reabsorbs it in the fullness of his speech.
This privileged scatus of speech does not suppress the regres-
sion ad infinitum without instituting a paradoxical hierarchy.
._............_I_*
Mow can wc understand this paradoxical privilege of speech over
writing, of hearing over sight? Wliat relationship thuc exists
between the power of speech and thc power of the rnaster?
This paradox irnrnediately gives rase to another: the u!ovdc the
child learns best, chose whose rneaning he best fathoms, those
he best makes his own through his own usage, are those he
learns without a master expticator, well before any tnaster ex-
plicaeur. According to ehe unequal returns of various intellec-
tual apprenticeships,what all human chiidren tearn best is whar
no rnaster can exptain: rhe mother tongue. \Te speak to ihem
and we speak around them, They hear and retain, irnicate and
repeat, make mistakes and correct thernselves, succeed by
chance and begin again methodically, and, at eon young an age
for explicators to begin instrucring them, they are almost all-
regardless of gender, social condition, arad skin cotor-abie tn
urderstand and speak the language of rheir parenrs.
And only now does this child who learned to speak through
his own intelligente and through instructors who did not ex-
all, he will say, the studenr must understand, and for that wr prescnce of a fnct. And Joseph Jacotot believed that all reason-
must explain even hetter. Such is the conccrn of rhe enlightened ing should he based on faccs and cede place to them. We
pedagogue. does the iittle ane understand? He doesn'c under- shouldn't conclude frorn this thar he was a materialist, O n tlic
stand. I will find new ways to explain it to him, ways more rig- conttary, like Descartes, who proved movement by walking,
orous in principle, more attractive in form-and I will vetify but also like his very royalisr and very religious contemporary
rhat he has understood. Maine de Biran, he corisidered the fact of R mind a t work, acring
A noble concern. Unfortunately, it is just this Iittie word, and conscious of its activity, to he more certain than any ma-
terial thing. And thjs was what it was a!l about: thefutt zum that
this slogan of the enlightened--understand-that causes all
his studeslts hudbed~nedro speak and to write in Prench without
the trouble. Br is this word [hat brings a halt tu the novemcnt
the aid of explicatiori. He hpd conmunicated nothing ro them
of reason, that desttoys its confidence in irself, tfiac diseracts rt
about his science, noexplications of the roots and flexions oF the
by breaking the worid of intelligence into two, by installing, the
French Ianguage. He hadn't even proceeded in the fashic.tri of
division between the groping animal and tke learned lirtle man,
those reformer pedagogtles who, like the preceptor in Rous-
between common sense and science. From the marnent this slo-
seau's Emzle, misled their students the bettet to guide them,
gan of duality is pronounced, all the perfecting uf the w q s of
arid who cunriingfy erect an obstaclc course for the studencs 1-0
mnkie nvdeirtuod, that grcat preoccupation of men of methods
Icarn tu negotiate themselves. He had iefc them alone wirh rhe
and progressives, is progress roward stulti fication. The child
text by Fkneion, a translation--.not even interlinear like a
who recites undct the threat OE the rod obeys the rod and that's
schoolbook-and their will to Jearn French. He had only given
all: he will apply his intelligence to samething else. But the
them the order to pass throtagh a forest whose openings änd
child who is explrlined to will devote his inteiligence to the work
clcarings he himself had not discovered. Neccssity had con-
of grieving: tu understanding, that is to say, to understanding
that he doesn'e understand unle5s he is explained to. H e is ne, strained him to leave his inteiligence entirely out of tlie pic-
pure-that mediating intelligerice of the rnaster that relays the
longer suhmitting to the rod, but rarher to a hierarchical world
prinred i ncel tigence of written words to che apprentice's. And ,
of intelligence. Fnr rhc rest, like theother chiid, he doesn't have
to worry: if the solution tu the probiem is too dificulc to pursue,
in one felI svroop, he had suppressed the irnaginary dist-aricethat
U the ptinciple of pedagogical stultificarion. Everyrhing had
he will have cnough intelligence eo npen his eyes wide. The
peeforce been piayed out bctween the inteliigence of Fenelon
master is vigilant and patient. H e wilf sce that che child isn't
who had wanted ca make a particulat use of the French lan-
following him; he will gut llim back on track by explaining
guage, rhe intelligence of ehe translacor who had wanted so give
things again. And thus rhe child acquires a new intelligence,
a FIernish equivalent, and the inteiligence of the apprentices
that of che master's explicgtions. Eater he can be an exylicatur
who wanred ro learn French. And it had appeared thaa no oeher
in turn. He possesses ehe eyuipment. But he will perfect it: he
will be a man of progress.
inteffigence was necessary. Wirhour thinking about it, he bad
made them discover this thing chat he discovered with them:

Chance an$ Will e thcm, are oof the same nature.

So goes the world of rhe explicnted expticators. So would ir
have gone fot Professor J a c ~ t o rif chance hadn't put him
iri the
page, no faise bottom &hatnecessitates thc work of an otber in-
tclligence, that of the explicator; na language of the master, no
language of the language whose words and sentences are abie to
speak the reason of the words and sentences of a text. The PLem-
ish sriidents had furnished the proofi to speak about Tklirncdqrde
thcy had at their disposition oniy the words of Tllkwaque. Fe-
nelon's sentences alone are nccessary to understand F6neton's
sentences and to express what one has understod about rhem.
Learnjng and understanding are two ways of expressing the
Same act of translation, There is nothing beyond texrs except
thc will to erpress, that is, to tramlate. If they had understood
the language by learning Fenelon, it wasn't simply through the
gymnastics of comparing the page On the left with rhe page on
the right. Ic isn't the aptitude for changing colurnns that
Counts, but rather the capacity to say what one tkinks in the
words of others. If they had learned chis frorn Fenelon, that was
because the acr of Hikneton the writer was irself one of transla-
tion: in order to translate a political lesson i'nto a legendary nar-
rative, Fenelon eransforrned into che French of Iiis century Ho-
mer's Greek, Vergil's Latin, and the language, wise or naive, of
a hundred other texts, frum children's stories io erudite history.
He had applied COthis double translarion rhe same intelligence
they empioyed in their turn to recount with the sentences of bis
book what they thaught about his book.
But the intelligence that had allowed them to learn the
French in Tdidtidape was the Same rhey had used to Iearn their
mother tongue: by observing and retaining, repeating and ver-
ifying, by retacing what they were trying to know to what they
already knew, by doing and reflecting about what chey had
done. They moved along in a manner one shouldn't move
alonp-the way children mom, blindly, fipuring out riddles.
And the quescion then became: wasn't it necessary CO overturn
the adrnissible order of intellectual valcies? W'asn't thae shame-
6u1 rnethod of the tiddle the true movement of human intelli-
gence taking pos3ession of its own power? DtJn't tits proscrip-
tiori indicate above all thfi will to divide the world u t inteIIi-
gence into two? The advocatec of rnethod oppose rhe
nonmethod af chance ro that of proceeding by reason. Bur what
tliey Want to provc is given i n advance. They suppose s little
nnima! who, burnping into things, explores a world that he isn't
yet ablr tu see and will only discern when they teach him ro do
so. Hiue the human child is first of ail a speaking being. The
child who repeats die words he hears and the Plernish student
"lost" in his TPIimqrir are not proceeding hit ot miss. All their
effurt, all their explorarion, is strained toward this: someone has
addressed words to them that they Want to recognize and re.-
spond to, not as students or as learned men, but as peuple; in
the way you respond to someone speaking to you and not to
scrmeone examining you: under the sign of equality.
The fact was there: they had learned by themselves, wirhout
a mascer explicator. What has happeriecl once is thenccfurch al-
ways possible. This discovery could, after all: overturn the prin-
cipfes of theprofes~orJacotot. Butjacotot rhc inan was in a bet-
tet position to recognize what great variety can be expected from
a human being. His father had been a burcher before keeping
the accounts of his grandfather, the cnrpenter who had sent his
grandsori to college. He hintself had been a professor of' rhetoric
wheri he had answered the call to arnls in X792 I-Bis compan-
ions' vore had made him an artiiiery captain, and he had showed
himseif tn he a remarkable artillerytiian. In r 793, at the Bureau
oF Powders, this Latinist became a chemistry instructor work- ,
ing coward the accelerated forming of workers being sent cvery-
where in the territory to apply Fourcroy's discoverics. At Four-
croy's own establishrnent, he had bccome acquainted with Vau-
quetin, the peasant's son who had trained liimself to be a
chemist without the knowledge of bis boss. He had seen yoilng
people arrive at the Ecole Polytechnique who haci heen selected
by improvised commissions on the dual basis of their liveiliness
of rnind and their patrintisrn. And he had seen them become
very good mathematicians, less through tlle cafcuIations Monge
and Lagrange explained to them than through those thar they
performed in front of them." He himself had apparently prof-
ited from his administrative functions by gaining competence
as a mathernatician-a competence he kad exercised later at the
University of Dijon. Similarly, he bad added Mebrew ro the an-
cient languages ke taughc, and composed an Euay an Hebvezo
Gra~naar.He believed, God knaws why, [hat that language had
a future, And hnally, he had gained for himself, reluctantly but
with the greatest firmness, a competence at being a reprcsen-
tative of the people. In shott, he knew what the will of indi-
viduafs and the peril of the counery could engender in rhe way
of unknown capacities, in circumstances where urgency de-
rnanded destroy ing the stagcs of expl icative progression. He
thought that this exceptionai state, drctated by the nacion's
need, was no different in principle from the urgency that dic-
tates the exploraeion of the wortd by the child or from that other
urgency thae constrains clte singular path OE Learned men and
inventors. Tkcough the experiment of che child, the learned
man, and rhe revolutionary, thc rnethod of chanca so successfully
practiced by the Flemish students reveaied its second secret.
The merhod of equality was above all a method of tkie will. One
could iearn by oneself and without a master explicator whea one
wanted to, propelled by one's own desire or by che tonstraint of
the situation.
T h e Emanciparory Master
In this case, thac constraint had raken the form of the com-
mand Jacotot had given. And it resuited in an important con-
sequence, no langer fot rhe students buc for rhe master. The
students liad Iearned without a master explicator, but not, for
all that, withdut a master. They didntt know how before, and
'Antoine Fran~oisFourcrcy l17))-180')), chemist and polirician. participatcd in the es-
rablishment of a rarional nomenclarure in chernisrry. Thc principal work of the mathematician
Joseph Louis dc tagrange ( 1 736- I 8 r 3) was che Mdraniq~iaaanalyfiqte ( r 788). Thc mathema-
ticinn Gaspard Monge (~7~6-1818) h+ed creatc the E.colc Normaie and foundcd the Ecole
Po1yrcchnique.--~RANS.
now they knew how. Therefore, Jacotot had taught them sorne-
thing. And yet he had cornmunicared nothing to them of bis
scierice. So it wasn't the master's science [hat the scudent
learned. His mastery lay in the cornmand h a t had enclosed the
students in a closed circle from which thcy aione could break
out. By leaving his intelligence out of the picture, he had al-
lowed their intelligence tograpple wich that of the book. Thus,
the two functions chac link rhe practice of the master explicator,
that of the savant and that of the master had been dissociated.
The ewo faculties in play during the act of tearning, nainely
intetligence and will, had ttiereforc also been separated, IiLer-
ated from each other. A pure relationsllip of will to will had
been established between master and student: a relationship
wherein the master's domination resuifred in an entirely liber-
ated reirationship between the intelligence of the studenr and
that of the book-rhe intelligence of the book that was also the
thing in common, the egalitarian inteifectual link between
rnascer and student. This device allowed the iurnkzlPdcatEFQs'ies
of the pedagogical air to be sorted oiit, . . C I' -
kc&on to be precisely defined. There i sr& -S
one incelligence is subordinated to another. A person-and a
cFGId i n partrcuiar----may need a rnaster when his own wilt is
not strong enough ta set hirn on track and keep him therc. But
that subjection is gurely one of w 1-.i Ir becomes stul-
tification when it links an intelliaencc
-. to another intellieence.
ril
In rhe act of teaching arad Iearning there are two wills and two
btgclligences. We wild. cali their coincidcnce sttilttfi~tion.In the
experimental situation lacoror created, the stutlent k a s linked
to a will, Jacotoc's, and to an intelligence, the book's-the two
entireiy distinct. We will cail the known and maintained dif-
of ali pedagogies. The pedagogues' pracrice is based on the op-
psition between science and ignorance. The merhods chosen to
render the ignorant person learned may differ: srricc or gentle

methods, traditional or modern, active or passive; the efficienc):
of these methods can be cornpared. Frorn rhis point of viciw, we
could, ai hrst giance, compare the speed of facotnt's srudents
with the slowness of traditional methocis. But in reality there
was nothing to cornpare. The confrontation of mechods presup-
poses a minimal agreement on the goals of the pedagogical act:
ehe transmission of the master's knowledge to the students. Buc
jacotot had rransmitted nothing. He had nor used any rnethod.
The method was purely the student's. And whether one learns
French more quickly or less quickiy is in itself a matter of iittle
consequence. The comparison was no longerb+~weeo rnethodr
but rarher between two uses of intelligence and two conceptions
of che inreltectual order. The rapid route was not tha@ a better
pedagogy. It was anorher route, that of liberty-that route thar
Jacotor had experitnented with in the arrnics of Year 11, the fab-
rication of powders or the founding of the Ecole Polvrechnique,
tlie route of liberty respnding to ttiie urgency of tlie peril, but
jusi as much to a confidence in the intellectual capacity uf any
human being . Benearh t he pedagogical relation of ignoranre to
science, the more fitndamentajl phiiosophic-al relation of stul-
rificaeion to ernancipation rnust be rccognized. There were thus
not two bur four terms in play. The act of learning could be
produced according to four variously combi ned deterrninations:
by an einancipatory master or by a stuttifying oae, by a learned
master or by an ignorant one.
. The Last propositian was the most difficult to accept. It goes
without saying that a scientist mighr do science without expli-
cating it. Bur how can we adrnit thnt an ignoranr person rnighr
induce science in another? Even Jacotoc's experiment was am-
biguous because of his position as a professor of French. But
since it had at least shown thar it wasn't the master's knowledge
that insctucted the student, thcn noching psevented the masier
ftoni teaching something other tlian his science, something he
didn'r know. Joseph Jacotor appiied kimself to varying the ex-
periment, to regeating on purpose what chance had once pro-
duced. He began to teach two subjects at which he was notabfy
incompetent: painting and the piano. Law students would iiave
liked hirn to be given a vacant chair in their faculry But thc
University of Louvain was aiready worried about rkis exrrava-
gant lectitrer, for whom srudents were deserting rhe magisrerial
courses, in favor of coming. euenings, to crowd into a much ron
srnall room. iir by only two candles, in order to hear: "I must
reach you that f have norhing ro teach you."' Tlie authority rhey
consulted thus responded that he saw no point in calling this
teaching. Jacotot was experimentiny, precisely. with rhe gap
between accrediration and act. Ratliei than teaching a l a a
course in Frenrh, hc taughi rhe students ro litig~cein PIemi~h.
Thev litigated very weil, but he still d~dn'cknow Fiernish.
#@\I T h e Circle of Power
The experitnenr seerned to hirn suficienr to shed light: one
can teach what one doesn'c know if ~ h studente is emancipated,
that is to say, if he is obliged to use his own incelligence. The
master is he who enctoses a n intelligence in the arbicrary circle
from which i t can o d y break out. by becoming necessary ro ir-
self, 2% emancipate an ignorant person, cme must be, anti one
need only Le, ernancipatcd oneself, thar is to say, cor~sci«usof
che true power of the human mind. The ignorant person wilI
Bearn by himself whai the master doesn'r know if thr master
believes he can and obliges him to realize his capacity: a circle
ofpozwi homoIogous to the circle of pnwerlessness that ties the
student ro rhe explicator of thc old method (to be cülled from
now on, sirnply, thc 4914 Masrer). But the relation of forces is
very parricular. Thc cirde of poweriessness is always already
ehere: i t j s rhe very workings of the social world, hidden in the
vident diKerence berwern ignorante and science. 'rhe circte o€
ower, on the other hand, can only take effect hy being made
hlic. But i t can only appear as a rautoiogy or an absurdity.
nnr can ehe tcarned rnaster ever understand thar he can teach
e d ~ e s n 'know
t as succecsf~cullyas what he does know? He 3
but take rhat inctease in intellccr~talpower as a deval-
:{
j:
:j
;t
---
------
I
true liberty was conditioned on it. After a11, they recagnized
rhat they shouid give instmceion t o rhe peogle, even at thc risk
of dispucing among themselves wkich instruction they would
give. Jacotot did not sec what kind of liberty fot the peopie
could result fxom the ducifulness of rheir instructors. O n the
contrary, he sensed in all this a new form of stultificarion.
Whoever teaches witkottt emancipaairlg stultihes. And whoever
ernancipates doesn't have to worry about whar the ernancipated
person Learns. He wili learn hc wants, nothing rnaybe. He
will know he can learn because ehe Same intelligcnce is at work
in all the productions of t h e human mind, and a inan can always
understand another man's words, jacntot's printer had a re-
rarded son. They had despaired of makiiig sumerhing of hirn.
jacotor taught hirn Hebrew. Later ehe child became an excetllent
iithographer. I t goes without saying that he never used the Hc-
brew for anyrhing-except eo know what more gifted and
iearned minds never knew: it t w n ' r Hebmw.
The matter was thus clear. This was not a method for in-
structing the people; it was a benefit to be announced to ehe
poor: rhey could do everything any man could. Ir sufficed only
to anrrottnce i t . Jacotot decided to devote hirnself CO this. He pro-
claimed that one coufd teach what one didn't know, an$ that a
poor and ignorant father could, if he was ernancipated, conduct
the education of his children, without the aid af aany mastcr
explicatoc. And he indicated rhe way of that "universal teach-
ing"-to leuvn something gnd to relute teo it nll rhe rest by thir prin-
ciple: all men I?tave qzcctl intelligente.
People wcre affected in Louvain, in Brussets, and in La Haye;
they took the rnail carriage from Paris an4 Lyon;they came from
England and Prussiü eo hear rhe news; it was procfaimed in Saint
Petersburg and New Orleans. The word reachrd as far as Rio de
Janeiro. For several years polemic raged, and the Repubtic of
knowledgc was shaken at its very foundations.
AI1 this because a learned man, a renowned man of sciencc
an$ a virtuous fainily man, had gone crazy fur not knowing
Fkmish.
The Ignorant One's Lesson
kec's go ashore, then, wirh Telernächus onto Calyp-
so's island Let's rnizkc our way with one of the visitors into the
madmari's lair: into Miss Marcellis's instt~utionin Louvatn; into
the home of Ma. Dcschuyfrrieere, a tanner transfnrrned hy Ja-
coeot inco a Latinist; into the Ecoie Normale Militaite i r i LULI-
vain, where ehe philosopher-prince Fredcrick of Orange had put
the Founder uf universal teachlng in charge of educating hture
mzlitary instructors:
"lrnagine recruits sicting on benches, murmuring in un~son:'Ca-
lypso,' 'Calypso could,' 'Calypso could not,' crc., etc.; two mor~ths
later they knvw how to read, writc, and count. . . . During this pri-
mary education, rhe one was taught Engiish, the otlier Ger~nari+ rhis
one fortification, that nne chemisrry, etc., etc."
"Did the Fsundcr knau. all these rhings?'"
"Not ar.aitl, but we explained then-t to hirn, anti I can assure you
he profited greatly from che Ecole Normabe,"
"But I'm confused. DiJ you all, then, know chemistry?"
"No, but we learned i t , and we gave hirn lcssons i n i t . That's uni-
versal teaching. It's the disciple that makes the mastet."'
There is an o d e r in inadness, as in everything. Let's begin,
then, at the beginning: Tiiimaque. "Everyrhing is in every-
thing," says the madrnan. And his critics add: "And everything
is in Te'/Fmque." Recause Tiie'maqrce was apparently the bonk
that could do anything. Docs the student Want to learn how tu
read? Does he Want to learn English or Gerrnan, the art of ljr-
igatron a r of cornbät? The madman, impereurbably, w11l puc a
copy of TPltmnqrde in his hands and the student will begiri to
repeat, "Calypso," "Calypso could," "Calypso couid not," and
so on, untit he knows the prescribed number of votumes of Tile-
mtrgtce and can recount them. He must ht able to ralk about
everything he learns-the form of che letters, the placement or
endings of words, ehe images, the reasoning, ehe characters'
feelings, the rnoral lessons-ro say wb@tbe jees, qhut hp rhinkr
~ h o t r tit, what he itnnkes nf zt There was onIy one icile: he must
be able to show, in the book, the materiaiity of everything he
says. He will be asked ro write compnsitlons and perform im-
provisations under the same conditions: he rnust use the words
and turns of phrase in the boak to coaistrucr his sentences; he
must show, in the book, the hcts on which 111s reasoning is
based. In short, ehe tilaster must be able to verify in the book
the macertaliry of everyrhing the srudent says.
The lsland of che Book
1 % bbaok.
~ Te/emaqfd@ or another one. Chance piaced T&l&mq8ke
at Jacutot's disposal; convenience rold him to keep it . TeIkmaque
has been transiatcd into many languages and 1s easily available
in hook9rores. It isn't thc greatesc masterpiece of che French
language; but the style is pure, che vocabulary vasned, and the
rnoraf severe. In it one learns mythoiogy and geography. Ancf
behind rhe Frcnch "translaii~n,"one can hear the echo of Ver-
gil's karin and Horner's Greek. In short, ic's a classic, one of
those books zn wliich a Language gresents the essential oF its
forms an$ its powers. A book that is a totalzty: a Center to urhich
ane can attach everyrhing new one iearns; a c~rclein which one
can zinderslnnrd each of thesr new things, find rhe ways ro say
what one Sees in i t , what onc thrnks about it, what one makes
of ir. This is rhe first principIe of universal caching: one must
Iearn somcthing and relace everything else to i t . Aild firx jome-
ust be learned. Would La Palice say as rnucf-i?"La Palicc
, but the ilid Master would say: such and suclt a rhing
be learned, and chen rhis other thing and after chat, this
other. Selection, progression, incomplerion: these ase hia prin-
ciptes. We learn tules and eternents, then apply them to some
chosen reading passages, and then do some exercises based on
, rhe acquired rudiments. 'Flien we graduate to a highcr level:
nther rudiments, another book, other exercises, another profes-
sor. At each stage the abyss of igriorance is dug again; rhe pro-
fessor fills it in before digging another. Fragments add up, dc-
tached pieres of an explicator's knowledge thai pur the student
an a trait, following a master with whorn he will never catch up.
The book is never whole, tlie lesson is never finished. The mastcr
always keeps a piece of learning-tiiat is to say, a piece of the
stude~it'signorante-up his sleeve. I understood that, says che
satisihed student, You think so, corrects the master. In fact,
rhere's a diFficulty here thac li've been sparing you unril now. We
will exptain it when we gct ro the corresponding lesson. What
dms this mean? asks the curious student. I cuuld cell you, re-
sponds tlae master, but it woufd bc prematurc: yoii wouldn'r
unrierstand at all. It will be cxplained to you next year. The mas-
rer is afways a iength ahead of the studrrtr, who always feels that
in order to g o farther he must have another inaster, suppiemen-
tary explicatioms. Thais does the triumphant Achilles d r a ~ Hec-
tor's corpse, attached to his chariot, around the city of 'IToy.
Reasoned progression uf knowiedge is an indefinitely rcpro-
duced mutiiation. "AG
rnanwhu is taught is only half a man."'
Don't ask if the little educated child suffers from this mu-
citation. The system's geriius is to transform ioss into profit, The
child ~dvdnces.He kas been taught, therefote he has learned,
therefore he can fnrget. Behind him ttme abyss of ignorante is
beina dug again. But here's the amazing parr: from now on the
*Ja<que, dr Chabanncr, La Palite (8470-5 5 25) was cclebrnrcd in liis own (imc os a n>ilirary
ieadcr, but whar made him immorral was a naive $uns clrrnlmscd by ltis rold~ers,which rnded
h line: "Fiftcen rnineices before lris ~LarhiNewas rtrli #live.'' In French. "clir words of
~ 9 1 t the
La Paiice" rcferr ro ang setf-evidc&irfvrmuiat1on.--TRANS
 ignorante is sorneane else's, What he has forgotcen, he has sur-
passed. He no longer has to spell out loud or stumhle his way
through a lesson like chose vutgar iritelligences and the children
in beginiling classes* People aren't parrots in his school. We
don't load rhe memory, we form the intelligente. I understood,
says rhe child, I am not a parrot, Tlie mure he forgets, the more
evident ir is to him that he understands. The more intelligent
he becomes, the more he can peer down frorn on high at those
he has surpassed, those who remain in the antechamber of learn-
ing, in front of the mute baok, rhose who repeat, because they
are not intelligent enough tn tmderstilnd. This is the genius of
the explicarors: they attach the creature they have rendered in-
ferior with the serongese chains in the land of stultificacion-
the child's consciousness uf his own superioaity.
This consciousness, moreover, daesn't kill off good feelings.
The little educated child will periiaps be rnoved by the igno-
rance oF rhe cornmon people and will Want tu work at instrucr-
ing them. He will know it is di&cult eo deat wich inincls hard-
ened by routine OF befuddled by unrnethodicalness. But if he ic
devoted, tte will know that there is a kind of explicacion a$apted
to each category in the hierarchy of intelligel-ice: he will corne
.- Ieve/,
down t a-.,,theiv
L.., --
' , . .
,.., . . ,
B u t now here is anöther story. The madrnan-the Founder,
his foilowers called him-comes on srage with hPs Telemaque,
ad it, he says to the poor person.
I don't knaw how to read, answers the poor person. F-Eow
wouid f understand what is written in the book?
As you have underscood all things up until now: by compar-
ing two facts. Hcre is a fact rhar 8 will tell you, ehe first sentence
of ehe book: "Calypso could not De consolcd after the'deparcure
of Ulysses." Repeat: "Calypso," "Calypso~could" . . . Now,
here is a second Fact: the words are written zhere. Don't you
: recognize anything? The first word I said to you was Calypso;
wouldn't rhae also be the first word on the page? Look ac it
closely, until youare Sure of aiways recognizing it in the middle
of a crowd of other words. In order to rfo this you must tell nic
everything you see there. Therc are signs that a hand triiced on
paper, signs wkose rype was assembled by a hand at the print-
er's. Teli rne "the story of the adventures, that is, the comings
and goings, the detours-in a word, the trajectory of thc pen
that wrote rhis word on paper or of the engraving tool thar eo-
graved it onto the copper."' Would you know how ro recognize
rhe letrer 4;) that one of my srudents-a Iocksmith by profes-
sion-calis "the round," the lerrer E chat he calls "rhe square"?
Te11 me the form of each letrer as you would dcscribe the form
of a n objecr or of an unknown place. Don't say ehat you can't.
You know how to See, how to speak, you know how to show,
you can remernber. What rnore is needed? An absolute attention
for seeing and seeing again, saying and repeating. Don't try to
fool me or fool yourseif. Is that reafly what you saw? Whdt dn
jou r t ~ i l l kitbnrtt it? Aren't you a thinking bcing? Or do yoil rhink
you are all body ? "The founder Sganarelle changed all rhat. . . .
You have a soul like mie."* There will be time afterward CO talk
about what the book talks abour: what do you think of Calypso,
of sadness, of a goddess, of an eternal springXhhow tile what
makes you say what you say.
The book prevenrs escape. The route the student will take is
unknown. But we know what he canncx escape; the exercise uf
his libert~.We know too that ttie rnaster won't have the right
tu stand anywhere else-anly at the door. The student must see
everything for hirnseif, compare and compare, and always re-
spond to a three-part question: what do you see? whar do you
thinkabout it? what do you rnake of it? And so ori, to infinity.
Bur that irifinity is no longcr the master's secret; ic is the stu-
dent's jaurney. The book is finished, It is a totality that the sru-
dent holds in his hand , that he can span entirety with a glance.
There is nothing the nlasrer can hide from Iiim, and nothing he
can hide from ehe master's gaze. The circie forbids cheating, and
above all, that great cheat: incapacity. I tan'b, I don't t/ndersrund.
There is nothing CO understand. Everything is i n the book. One
has only to recounr ie-the form of each sign, the advenrures
 --
24 The Ignurcant One's tessun
of each sentence, the lesson d e a c h volume. One must begin to
speak. Don't say ehat you can't, You know how to say "I can't."
Say in its place "Calypso could not," and you're off. You'rc off
on a route that you atready kncw, and that you should follow
always vithout giving up. Don't say: "I can'c." Or then, learn
to say it in the manner of Calypso, in the manner of Telema-
chus, of Pdarhal, of Idornenreus. The other circle has begun, the
circle of power. You will never run out of ways to say "I can't,"
and soon you witf able eo say everything.
A voyage in a circle. Ir's understood that the adventiires o i
Uiysses's son form rhe manual, and Calypso the first word. Ca:
lypso, the htdden one. But precisely what miiat be discovered is
thae there is nothing hidden, no words undernearh words, no
language that tells rke truth of language. Signs and Stil1 more
signs are learned, sentences and still more sentences. Ready-
made seritences are repeated. Entire books are learned by heart.
And the Old Master becornes indignant: so this is what learning
something means for you. First, your children repeat like par-
rors. They cultivate vnIy one faculty, rnemory, while we exercise
itlreliigence, taste, and irnagination. Your children .learn by
I-eart. That's your first misrake. And rhis is .youc sccond: yout
children a!o?zlt leitrtz by heart. You say that they do, but that's
impossible. Human brains in generat, and those of children in
particular, are incapabfe of such an effott of memory.
A circular argument. The discoucsc of one circle t o another.
The proposirions must be overrutned. The Old Master says thar
a clnild's memory is incapable af such eRoorcs because powerless-
ness, in general, is its Slogan. It says that memory is something
other than inrelkigence or imagination and, in so doing, i t uses
an ordinary weapari against those that Want t o prevail over pow-
erlessness: divigion. It beiieves memory CO be weak because it
doesn't beiieve in the power nf human intelligence. It believes
it inferior because it believes irr inferiors and superiors. in the
end its double argument amounts to this: there are inferiors and
superiors; inkriors can'r do what superiors can.
The 01d Master knows only this. Et depends on inequaiity,
but not the inequality that acknowfedges tlie Pritlcc's decrec,
the inequaiity that goes without saying, that is in all hcads and
in alt sentences. For that, it has its genrle weapon, difference:
this is not t h t , thir isfarfrom tbut, olle cannot compar~. . . Memory
is not intelligence; to repeat is not tn know; comparison isn't
reason; there is the ground and the background, Any fiour can
be ground up in ehe mill of distinction, A t ~ dthe argument can
thus be mdernized and extended to ehe scientific as weil as to
the humanitarian: tilere are stages in the developmenc of intel-
ligence; a chitd's intelfigence is not an adult's; a child's intel-
ligence should not Le overburdened--one runs the risk of in-
juring his health, his hculties. The 01ri Master demands only
thar hc be granted his negacions and his differentes: this is not
that, this is something dieerent, this is mare, this is less. And
this is enough to exalt all the thrones of the hierarchy of intel-
ligence.
Calypso and rhe kocksmith
Let ttte CPid Master h~ve11is say. Let's look at the facts. There
is a will rhat commands and an intelligence that obeys. Let's
call the act that makes an intelligence proceed under the abso-
lute constraint of a will artention. It makcs no difference whethcr
the act is directed ac che form of a letrer to be recognized, a
sentence to be mernorized, a relation to be found between two
mathematicai entities, or the ctements of a speech to Le com-
posed. There is not one faculty that records, another that un-
derstands, another that judges. The locksmith whocalls the let-
ter 0 "the round,"and L "the square" is already thinking about
relations. And inventing is not oP another order than ietnern.-
bering. Let the expiicators "form" che children's "tasre" and
,, imaginarion"; ler them expound on the "genius" of creators.
We will be content to do as creators do: like Racine, who mem-
orized, teanslated, repeated, and irnitated Euripides; Bossuet,
who did the same with Tercullian; Rousseau with Amyot ; Boi-
k a u with Horace and Juvenal; like Demosrhenes, who copicd
26 Tbr ignorant One's Lesson --
Thucydides eight times; I-,lioofr, wtio read Tacirus fifty-two
times; Seneca, who recommended [hat the same book be read
and teread; Waydn, who recreated six of Bach's sonatas over and
over; Michelangelo, who spent his time redoing rhe Same torso
again and again. Power cannor be dividcd up. There is only one
power, that of saying and speaking , OE paying attetltion CO what
one sees and says. One Iearns sentences and more sentences; one
discovers h c t s , that is, relations berweet~chings, and still orher
relarions that are all of the Same nature; one learns to combine
letters, words, sentences, ideas. It witt not be said that one has
acquired science, that one knows truch or has became a geriius.
But it will be known rhat, ,in the intellectual order, one can d o
what any man can do.
F h i s is what evtrything is in everytbing means: rlie tautology of
power. All the power of language is in the totality of a book.
All knowledge of oneself as an intelligence is in the mastery of
a bciok, a chapter, a scntence, a word. Everything is in evcry-
thing and everything is in Ti/inz(~qtce,scoff the crirics, and, to
carch the disciples off guard, they ask, 1s everyrhnng also in rhe
Frrst volurne of Td~kwyae? And in its Birst word? JS mathematicc
in TeIe'maque?And in the first ward of Te'lmuqae? And the dis-
ciple k e l s the grniind slip out From under him and calls on rhe
master for help: what should he answer?
You should have answered that ynu believe ali human works to be in
the word Calypso since this ward is a work of human intelligence.
He who calculared fractions is the same intellect~ialbeing as he who
made the worci Calypso. The artist knew Greek; he chose a word that
rneant "crafty," "hidden." The artisr resembles che one who imagined
the ways o l writing the word we're talking about.He resembles rhe
one who made ehe paper on which we write, the one who uses pens
to the same purpose, the one who sharpens the pens witk ii penknife,
ehe one who madc the penkriife out of iron, the one who procured the
iron, rhe one who made the ink, the oiie whn prinred rhe ward La-
lypso, the one who rnade che printing machine, the one who gener-
alized the explications, rhe one who made the princing ink, etc., etc.,
etc. All sciences, all art, anatomy, dynarnics, and so On, are the fruits
of the saine intelligence who made ttle word Calypso. A philosopher
arriving in an unknown land would know it was inhabiced when he
saw a geometrical Ftgure in the sand. "These are human foocprints,"
he says. I-fis cornpanions believe him mad because thc lines he shoals
rhem don'r Iook likt: a Footprint. 'I'he schotars of the perfecced nine-
teenth century open their startled eyes wide when someone points a
Finger ar the word Calypso and tells them, " Ahuman hand is there."
I bet rhat the man sent frorn rhe Ecole Nor~nalein France, looking at
the word Calypso, would say: "That doesn't I-tave the shape of a hand."
"Evevything: is in eo~wything.""
Here is everything that is it? Calypso: the power of inteili-
gence thar is in any human manifestation. The Same intelli-
gence makes nouns and mathematicnl signs. What's more, it
also makes stgns atld reasonings. These aren't two sorts of
rninds. TRere is inequality in ttie nmnijfe~r~rinni of intelligence,
according ro the greater or lesser encrgy communicated to rhe
inrelligence hy the will for discovering and comhining new re-
iations; but there is no hierarchy of ipttel'lectrlaal rapncity. Eman-
cipation IS becorning consciolis of tiiis equality of nature, This
is what Opens the way to all adventure in the land of knowledge.
Ir is a matter of daring to be advenruruus, and not whecl-ter one
learns more or Jess well or morc or less quickly. The "Jacotot
method" is nar betrer: it is different. That's why the procedures
used matter very Iittle in themselves. Xt could be T'di&mnqtle,or
it could be something else. O n e begins with t h r text and not
with gramrnar, wich entire words and not wich syltables, Ir is
not that it is absolutely necessary to learn this way co Icarri bet-
ter, and that the jacotot method is rhe forefarher of the g l o b l
method. In face, it's much faster to start with "Calypsn" and
not with rhe A,B,Cs. Bur the speed won 1s only an effecc of
power gained, a consequence of the emancipatory principle.
"The Old Master begins with letters because he directs srudentc
raccording t o the principte of intellectual inequatity, and espe-
cially rhe intellectual inferioriry oF children. He believes that
letters are easier t o dicringuish than words; this is wcong, but
this is what he thinks. He believes t l ~ a at child's intelligence is
only able t o learn C, A , C , and thar an adult, that is to say a
superior, intelligence is necessary to learn Catypso."' In short,
B, A,B, like Calypso, is a flag; in~abilitpversus abiliiy. Spelling
is an ace of contrition before being a way OE learning. That's
why one could change the order of the procedures without
changing anything in the principles.
The Old Master rnight one day rake ir into his head to train CO read
by words and only then, maybe, would we have our studenrs learn
how to spei1 chem. And what wouId result from this apparent change
of posrure? Nothing, Our students urouid bc no less emancipated and
the chlldren of the 01d Master no iess stultified. . . . The Old Master
doesn't stuitify hhis students by rnaking chern spell; he stultifres by
telling rhcrn rhat they can'c spell by cbernselves. Making them read
by words won't emancipate thern; it will deaden them because he will
be very careful to tell rhem that their young intefiigence ,can'r do
without the explications he pulls otrt of his aged brain. ift is thus not
the procedure, thc cnurse, the rnanner, rhat emancipates or stultifics;
it's the principle, The principle of inequality, thc old prrnciple, stul-
tifies no matter what one does; the pririciple of equality, theJacutot
principle, e~nancipatesno matter whac pracedure, book, or fair it is
applied to.'
- --
The problern is to reveveal an intelligence ro itself, Anyihing
can be used. Tef6m~lque.O r a prayer or a Song that tbe child or
the ignorant one knows by heatt. There i s always something tfie
ignorant one knows that can be used as a point of comparison,
something eo which a new thing to be learned can be related.
The locksmith who opens his eyes wide when told he can read
bears witness t o this. He doesn't even know the alphabet. Let
hirn take the time to glance at the calendar, Doesn't he know
the o d e r of the months and can't he thus figure out January,
February, March. He knows how to Count a little. An4 what's
to prevent hjm from counting sofrly while following the lines
iri order to recognize in written form what he already knows?
He knows he is calted William and thac his birthday isJanuary
I 6th. He will soon know how to find the word. H e knows that
February has only twenty-eight days. H e sees char one colurnn
is shorter than the others and he will recognize "28." And so
on. There is always ssrnething that the master can ask him to
find, something abouc which he can quesaion him and thus ver-
ify the work of his inteiligence.
The Master and Socrates I
These are in facr the master's two fundamental acrs. H e in-
tewogdtes, he cfemands speech, that is to say, the manifestation
of an inteiligence rhat wasn't mare of itself or ihai had given
up. And he uerifef rhar the work of the inteiligence is done with
attention, that the words don't say jusc anyrhing in order ta
escape from the constraint. 1s a highly skilled, very learned mas-
ter necessary t o perform this? On ehe contrarp, ahe learned mas-
W'S science makes it very difficult for him not to spoif the
method . He knows ehe response, and kis questions lead rhe stu-
dent to it naturally. This is the secret of good masters: rhrough
tbeir questions, chey discreetly guidc che student's intelli-
gence--discreerIy enough to make i c work, but not to the point
af Leavitig it ro iiself. Therc is a Socrates sleeping in every ex-
plicator. And it musr be very cfear how the Jacotot rnerhud-
that is co say, the student's merhod-diEers radically frnm the
method of theSocratic mastec.. Through his incerrogations, Soc-
rates Ieads Meno's siave to rccognize the mathemarical rruths
rhat lie within himself, This may be the path to Icarning, but
i t is in no way a path to emancipation. O n the contrary, Socrates
musr ~ a k thee slave by his hand so that the latter can find what
is inside himself. The demonstration of his knowledge is just
as much the demonctration oF his powerlessnesc: he will netfer
walk by himseif, unlesc it is to illusrrate the master's lesson. In
this case, Socrates interrogates a slave who is descined to remain
one.
The Socratic rnetfiod is thus a yerfecred form of stuitificatiun.
Like all learned rnasters, Socraees interrogates in order ro in-
struct. But whoever wishes to cmancipate someone must inter-
rogare hirn in the nanrler of men and nnt in the rnanner of
scholaxs, in order co he instructcd, not to instruct. And rhac can
only he performed by someone who effectiveiy knüws no rnore

rhan rhe student, who has never made the voyage before him:
the ignorant master. There's no rrsk of thls master sparing the
child the time necessary to account for the word Calypso. But
what does he have ro do with Calypso and how would he even
undersrand anything abour i t ? Let's forget Calypso for a mo-
m e n t . v h o is the chi1d who hasn't heard rhe ~ord'sPrayer, who
1 hasn't Iearned the words by lieart? In this way the thnng is
found, and the yoor and ignorant father who wants CO teach his
son to read will not be embarrassed He will certainly find some
obliging person In the neighbothood, someone litenate enough
to copy the prayer for him. With this, the faehec ot the mothcr
can begin the child's instruction by asking him wbere the word
Our 1s. "lf the ckild ~s attentive, he w ~ i say
l that the hrsr word
on the paper must be Our, since it is thc Arst wurd in the sen-
tence. Father will necessarily be the second word; rhe child will
be able to compare. distinguish, know these two words and rec-
ognize them e~erywhere,"~ Who rs the farher ar mother wha
would not know how to ask the child, struggling wirh the texr
o i the prayer, wtiat he Sees, what he makes of it or what he can
i say about it, and what he thinks about what hc's saying or
doing? Ir's the Same way he woutd ask a neighbor about the tool
he holds in his hand and how i t is uscd. T0 teach what one
doesn't know is simply t o ask questions abotit what one doesn't.
knotv. Science icn't needed to ask such questions. The ignorant
one can ask anything, and for the Voyager in the land of signs,
his questions alone will be true questions '
cornpelling rhe au-
tonomous exercise of h ~ intefligence.
s U J ~ one R ~doesn'r knozu is still a housewife's r n o r t ~ . " We
Granted, reglies the cr~tic.Bur that which makes the inter-
rogator forceful also makes him incompetcnr as a verificr. How
will lie know if the chiid is lasing his way? The father or morhet
can always ask the child: show me "Fathcr" or "'Hraven." But
how can they verify if ehe ckild has pointed to rhe right word?
The dif-cdty can only get worse as the chtid advances-if he
advances-in ltis training. Won't the ignorant rnaster and thc:
ignorant student be playing out the fable of the blind man lead-
ing the blind?
The lgnnratzt Onek Eer.rcln 3T
The Power of the Ignorant
Let's begin by reassuting ehe crirics: we will not make of the
ignorant one thc fount of an innate sciei-ice, and especialiy not
of a science of the people as opposed to that of the scholar. One
must be iearned to judge the results of the work, to verify tbe
srudcnr's science. The ignorant one himself will do les.r and tnove
a t t f ~ eSame time. He will not verify what the student has found;
he will verify that the student has searched. He wilj jitdge
whether or not he has paid artention. For onc need only be Iiu-
man to judge the facc of work. Just iike t l ~ ephilosopher who
"recognizes" human footprints in tfic Iines in the sand, die
mother knows how co sce "iri Iiis epes, in the chifd's fearures,
when he is doing work, when he is pointing to the words in a
sentence, if he is atrentive co what he i s doing,""' Th e ignorant '
rnaster inust demand frorn his ctudene that he prove to hirn that
he has studied attentively. Is this insignificant? ?'hink abour
ewrything che detnand implies for thc student in rhe way of an
endless task. Think about the intelligente it can afsu grant to
the ignorant examiner: "Whar prevents the igris~ianibur man-
~ipcttedmother frorn noticing ail the times that she asks the child
where 'Father' 15, whcrher or not he always poines ro thc Same
word; what prevents her hiding thc word and asking, what is
the wurd under n y finger? Etc., etc,""
A pious image, a housewife's recipe . . . This is huw che of-
ficia1 spokesman of the explicative rribe judged it: "Oizernn teilch
' ~ will ar-
gue that "maternal int~iition"does not exert any domestic priv-
ilege here. The finger that hides die word Father is the same
that is in Calypso, the hidden or rhe crafty: ehe mark of human
inteiligence, the most rlementary ruse of i ts teasun-the trur
reason, thr orie proper to each and comnion to alt, this reason
that is manifested in an exempiary fashion whenever the igno-
rant one's knowledge and rhe rnasrer's ignorante, hy becorning
equal, demonstrate the power5 of intellectual ecluality. "Man is
an animal wha can tell very well when a speaker doesn'r know
what he's talking about"; "that ability is what unites us as hu-
' ~ practice of the ignorant maseer is not rhe simple
m a n ~ . " The
expedient oF allowing clte poor who have neither time, nor
rnoney, nor knowledge, co educate their children, It is the cru-
ciai experiment that liberates the pure powers of reason wher-
ever science does not lend a hanci. What one ignorant person
can perform once, all ignorant people can always perform-be-
cause there is no hierarchy in ignorante. What ignorant people
and learncd people can both do can be called the power of thC.
intelligent being as such.
This power oE equaliry is at once one of dualiry and one of
cornrnuniey. Theee is no inreliigence where there is aggrega-
eion, the ßindisg of one mind to another. There is intelligente
where each person acts, tells wtiat he is dolng, anrl gives the
means of verifying the reality of his action. 'E'he thing in com-
mon, placed between two minds, is the gauge of that equalicy,
and this in twu ways. A material rhing is first of all "the oniy
bridge of communication between two minds."l4 The bridge is
a Passage, but it is also distance maintained. The rnateriality o f
the book keeps two minds ar an equal distance, whereas expli-
cation is the annihilarion of-one mind by anocher. Bur the thing
is also an always available source of material verificatioa: che
ignorant examiner's art is ro "bring che exarninee back to tke
material objects, to a thing that he can veriS with his senses,""
The exarninee is always beholden to a verifiration in the open
book, in the rnateriality of each word, thc c u m of each sign.
The tliing, the book, psevenrs cheating by both the ignorant
and the learned. This is why the igi~orantrnaster can from time
to time exeend his competence ro the point.ofverifying, not che
child's knowledge, but the attention he gives to what he is
doing and saying.
In this way you can even bc of service to one of your neighbors who
finds himself, because of circumstances beyond his conrral, fotced to
send his son ro school. Hf the neighbnr asks you to verify rhe young
student's knowldge, you need not hesirate ro perform this inquiry,
evcn t h o u ~ hyou have had no sclioolitig. "What are you learning, iny
little friend?" you wiII ack rhe cfiild. "Creek." "What?" "Aesop,"
"What?" "The Fabtes." "Which ories do you know?" "The first one."
"Where i s the first word?" "There i t is." "Give me your book.
rne the fourth word. Write i t . What ynti have written doesn't Iook
like rhe fourth word in rhe book. Neighbnr, rhe child doesn't kiiow
what he says he knows. This is proof that he wasn't paying attcntivn
whih studying or while displaying what he says he knows. Advise
him to study; I will return and tell you if he is learning the Creek
ehac I n~yselfdon't know, rhar B don't even know how to read."'"
TRis is the way rhat the ignorant master can instruct the
learned one as well as rhe ignorant one: by verifying thac he 1s
always searching. Whoevcr looks always finds. He doesn't nec-
essariiy find wtlat he was looklng for, and even less what hc was
supposcd to find. Bur he finds somcthing new to relate to che
thin8 that he already knows. What is essential i s the continuous
vigllance, che attention rkat never subsides wittiout irrational-
ity secting in-something that the learned one, like the igno-
rant one, excefs at. T\le rnaster is he who keeps the researcher
on his own route, the one thar he alone is following and keeps
following.
Ta h c h His Own
Still, to vcrify this kind of research, o n e must know what
seeking or researching means. And this is the heart of the
method. "10 emancipate someone ehe, one must be emancipated
oneself. One must know oneseif ro be a Voyager o f ahe mind,
similar to all otlier voyagew: an intellecrual subject parricipat-
ing in ehe power comrnon to incellectual beings.
How does one accede to this self-knowledge? 'X peasant, an
artisan (fathcr of a farnily!, will be intetlectuatly emancipared
if Irr rhinks ahout what he is and what kie does in the social
order."" This assertion will seem simple, and even sirnplistjc,
eo whoever ignores the weight of philosophy's old commanli-
rnent, from rhe mourh of Platr?, on the artisan's dectiny; Don't

do anything other than yovr oecm a@r, which is not in any way
bhinkin~,but simply nlnkivlg that thing rhat exhausts the deh-
nition oC your being; if you are a shoernaker, make shoes-and
make chifdren wllo will do the same. The Delphic oracie was
not speaking to you when it said, K.now yourself. And even if
the playful divinity had fiin mixing a Iirtie gold into your child's
soul , it is the golden race, the guardians of the city, who will
take on the task of raising him to be one of theirs.
The age of progress utidoubtediy wanted to shake the rigidity
from the old commandmcnt, Afong with ehe Encyclopedisrs,
this age undetstands that nothing is done by routine anymwe,
not even attisans' work. And it knows thac chere is no social
actor, no matter how insignificant, who is not at the Same time
a thinking being. Citizen Destutr-Tracncy recalled rhis ar the
dawning of the new century: "Every speaking man has ideas uf
ideolog~,grammar, logic, and etoquence. Every man whn acts
has principles of private morafs and social moralc. Every being
who merely vegetaces has his notions of physics and arithmetic;
and simply because he lives with those Bike himself, he has his
little cullection of hisroeica1 facts and his vay of evali~aring
them."'"
I t 1s L ~ L I impossible
S for shoemakers just to rnake shoes, tltat
they not also be, in their rnanner, gramrnarians, rnoralists, or
physicists. And this is rhe fjrst problern: as long as peasants and
artisans form rnoml, mathematical, or physical nlptions based
on their environniental routine ur their chance encounters, che
reasoned march of progress will be doubly at risk: slowed down
by men of routine and superstition, or disrt~ptedby the haste
of violent tnen. Therefore, a minimum of instruction, drawn
frum the principles of reason, science, and the general incerest,
is necessary co put sane norions into heads [hat would otherwise
form fauity ones.*Andit gocs without saying that the entetprise
wifl be all the more profitable if it rernoves the son of a peasant
OP artisan from the natural miiieii that praduces tliose false
i d m , But this evidcncc imrnediately runs u p againsr a Contra-
diction; the child who muse be removed from his rautine arid
--
The Ignorant O I ELesson
~ ~ 35
from superstitiuri musc nevertheless bc returned to his activity
and his condition. And since its dawning, the age of progress
has been alert to rhe mortal danger of separating the child of
the pcople from the condition to which he is destined aild from
the ideas that hold fast in that condition. Thus the age tutns
back an4 forth wirhin this contradicrion: rhac alI che sciences
are now known to be founded on simple principles availabfe co
all ehe minds who Want to make use of thcm, provided they
folfaw rhe rigt~tmerhnd. Bur rhe Same nature that opens up a
careet in science to alf rninds wants a social order where thc
classes are separated and where individuals conform to thc social
state rhat is their dcstiny.
Thc solution to thiscontradiction is found in the ordered bal-
ance of instructiori and rnoral education, the dividing up of rhc
roies that fall to ehe schoolmaster aiid to ehe father of the family..
Using the light of instruction, the First chases away the false
ideas thc cliild receives fron his parental rnilieu; thc cecond, by
moral education, chases away the extravagant aspirations the
scho«lchild would like to exrract fiom his young science and
take back to his life condition. The father, incapable of drawing
on his own experience to furcher his child's intejfectual instruc-
rinn, is, an the other hand, all-puwetful in teaching him, by
word and exarnple, the vircuc of remaining in liis condition.
The famify is at once the nucleus af inrellectual incapacity and
the principle of ethical objectivity, This double character trans-
lates into a double limitation on the artisaäi's self-corisciousness:
the consciousness of whar he does is dmwn from a science chat
is not his own; the consciousriess of what he js leads him back
to doing nothing orher than his own task.
Let us say ir more simply: rhe harmonious balance of instruc-
tion and moral edttcation is that of a double stultification.
Emancipation is precisely thc opposire of this; it is each man
becoming conscious of his nature as an ineellectuaf subject; it
1s ttle Cartesian forrnula of equality read backwards. "Descartes
said, '1 think, eherefore I am'; and ttiis nobie thought of the
grear phiiosopher is une of che principles of universal tcaching.
36 The Ignorant One'r Lessotz
We turn his thought around and say: 'I am a man, therefore 1
think.' "I9 TThe reversal equates "man" wirh cogtto. Thought is
not an attribute of the thinking substance; it is an attribute of
hzmzanzty. %O transform "Kn0.w yourself" inro the principle of
ernancipation of any human being, it is necessary to activate,
against the Platonic interdicrion, one of the fantasric etymol-
ogies of the CrarjIa~:man, the anthropos, is the being who ex-
amines whut /3e sees, who knows himself in so eeflecttng on his
act. 20 Tiie whole praceice of universal teaching is summed up in
tbe question: what do you think about it? iits whole power lies
in thc consciousness of emancipation that it realiaes in the mas-
ter and gives birth to in the stiident. The father'kould eman-
cipate his son if he begins by knowing himcelf, that ip'to say,
by examining the intellectual acts of which he is the subject,
by noticing the manner in which he uses, in these acts, his
power as a thinking being.
The consciousness of emancipation is above a!! the inventory
of the ignotant one's intellectual capabilities. He knows his lan-
guage. H e also knows how to use it to Protest against his state
or to interrogate those who know, or who believe they know,
more ehan he knows. He knows his trade, his toois, and their
uses; he would be able to pesfect them if need be. H e must begin
to reflect on bis abilities and on the manner in whicb he acquired
them.
Let's cake ehe exact measure of chat reflection, It is not about
opgosing manual knowledge, ehe knowledge of the people, the
inceiligence of the tool and of the worker, co ehe science of
schools or the rhetoric of ehe elite, It is not about asking who
built seven-gaced Thebes as a way to vindicate the place of con-
structors and makers in the social order. O n ehe contrary. it is
about recognizing thar there are not two levels of ineelligence,
[hat any human work of art is the pracrice of the same intellec-
tual potential. In all cases, i c is a question of observing, com-
paring, and combining, of making and notieing how one has
done ic. Whac is possible is reflection: that return ta oneself [hat
is not pure contennplacion but rathet an unconditiorial attention
to one's intellectual acts, tu the route they fol1o.r~and to the
possibility of always moving forward by bringing to bear tht
Same intelligence on the conquest of new territories, H e who
makes a distinction between the manual work of the worker or
the common man and clouds of rhetoric temains stultified. The
fabrication of clouds is a human work of arr that demands as
rnuch-neither more nor less-Iabor and intellectual attention
as the fabrication of shoes or locks. The acadernician Lerrninier
expounded on the intellecrual incapacity of the people. Ler-
minier was a stuitified person. But a srultiiied person is neither
lazy nor a foo3.. And we oursefves would be stuItified if wedidn't
recognize in his theses the same art, the Same intelligence, the
same Iahor as those acts thar transforrn wood, stone, or leather.
It is only by recogniting Eerminier's Iizbnr that we can recognize
the inteldige~cemanifesred in the most humble of works.
The poor vitlage people who live outside of Grenobie work ac making
gioves; they are paid thirty cents a dozen. Since they became eman-
cipated, rhey work hard at looking at, studying, and undersranding
a weil-made glnw. They will understand the meaning of all the sen-
tenceJ, all the tuoudj of the glove. They will end up speaking as wcll as
the city womeri who earn seven francs a dozen. 8rie has otily CO lcarn
a language spoken wirh scissors, needle, and thread. It is merely a
quvstion (in human societies) of understanding and speaking a lan-
g~age.~'
The material ideality of language refutes any opposition be-
,
tween the golden race and the iron race, any hienarchy---even
an invertcd one-between rnen devoted to manual work and
men destined to the exercise of thought. Any work of language
is understood and executed the Same way, Ir is for this reason
that the ignotant one can, as soon as he knows himself, verify
his son's research in the book he doesn't know how to read: he
doesn't know the maeerials he is working with, but if his son
teils I-iim how he goes co work at it, he will recognize if his son
i s doing reseatch, because he knows what seeking, researching,

is. H e has only one thing to ask his son: to move words and
sentences back and forth, as he hirnself moves his tools back an$
forth when he is seeking.
The book-TkI6m11qtie or any other-placed becween ewo
minds Sums up the ideal cornmunity inscribed in the materi-
aiity of things. The Look ir the equality of intelligence. This
is why the same philosophical commandment prescribed that
the artisan do nothing bur his own affait and condernned the
democracy of the book. The PIatonic phitosopher-king favored
the living ward to the dead letter of the book-that thought-
become-material at the disposition of men of substance, chat
discourse at once siient an$ too laquacious, wandering at ran-
dom among thosc whose only business is thinking. The expli-
cative privilege is onfy the small change of that interdiction.
And the privilege that the Jacotoe method gave to the book, to
the manipiitiation of signs, to mnenotechnics, was the exact. rc-
vercai of the hietarchy of minds that was designated in Plato by
the critique of ~ r i t i n g The
. ~ ~book seals the new relation be-
tween rwo ignoranr yeople who recognize eacl-i other from thae:
point on as inrelligent beings. And this new relation undoes the
stultiQing relation of intellectual inscruction an$ rnoral edu-
cation. lntervening in lieu of the disciplinary demands of ed-
ucation is the decision ro ernancipate that renders the father or
rnother capabie of taking the ignorant schuolmaster's place-
thae piace where the unconditional exigency of the will is in-
carnated. Unconditional exigency: the ernancipatoxy father is
not a simple good-narured pedagogue; he is an inrractable mas-
ter. The emancipatory commandment knows no compromises.
It absolutely cornrnands of a subject what: it supposes it is ca-
pable of comrnanding of itseff. The son will verify in the book
the equality of intelligence in the same way that the fariist or
rnother will verify the radical nature of his research. Lhe famity
unit is then no longer the place of a return that brings the ar-
ttsan back to ehe cnnsciousness of his incapaciey. It is one of a
new consciousness, of an overtaking of the seiF that extends each
person's 'own ilRdir" to the pnint wliere i t ir Part and parcel af
the common reason enjoyed by all.
T h e Blitid Man and His Dog
For it is indeed this tliat is verified: rhe principie of the equal-
ity of all speaking beings. By cornpellirig his son's will, the fa-
ther in a poor family verifies that his son has the same inrelli-
gence as he, that he seeks in the Same way; and what tfle son,
in turn, looks h r in tlie bouk is the intelligence of tlie book's
author, in ordcr to verify that it ptoceeds in the Same way as his
own. Thar teciprocity i s rhe hearc of the emancipatoty method,
rhe principle of a n e a philosophy tliat the Founder. by joining
together two Greek words, baptized "panecastic,"" because it
lovks for the total+ of human intelligence in euch iritelfeccuai
rnanifestation. No doubt the Iandowner who sent his gardener
to be trained at Louvain for the Lenefit of bis own sons' instruc-
rion didn't understand this wry weII There are no particular
pedagogical petiormances to expect from an emincipared gar-
dener or from the ignorant master in general Essentially, what
an ernancipated Person can do is be an emancipator: to give, not
the key to knowiedge, but the consciousriess of what an intel-
ligence can do when it considers itself equal to any other and
considers any other equal to icself,
Ernancipation is the consciousness of that equality, of that
reciprociry rhar alone perrnits intelligence to be realired by ver-
ification. What stultifies the common people is not the lack of
instruction, but the belief in rhe inferioriry of their intelli-
gence. And what rtultifies rhe "inferiors" stultifies rhe "supe-
riors" at the same time. For rhe oniy verihed intelligence is the
one that speaks to a Fellow-man capable of vetifying rhe equalitp
oF their tnrellipence. The supetior mind condemris irself to
never beirig understood by inferiors. He can only assute himself
of his intelligence by disqualifying those who could show h i n
'From rhe G r e e k ~ n rvexyrhing,
, and brhastor, cach: cverythinp: in C O ~ ~ , - T R & N S .
40 The Ignorant One's Lefson
their recognition of it. Consider the scholar who knuws that
feminine minds are inferior to mascutine minds; he spends the
essential part of his life conversing with someone who cannot
understand him: "What inrimary! What sweetness in the con-
versations of love! In the coupfe! Xn the famity! He who is
speaking is never Sure of being understood. H e has a mind and
a heart, a great rnind, a sensitive heart! But the corpse to which
the social chain has attached him, ala~!''~'Will the acimiration
of his students and of the exterior world console him for this
domestic disgrace? Whae worrh is an inferior rnind's judgment
of a superior mind? "Teil a paet: I was very happy,yqh your
latest book. He will respond, ptncking h ~ lips: s you give nie
~nnchhonor; that is to say, niy dear Fellow, I. cannot be fattered
by the commendation of so srnali an intelligence as y o ~ r s . " ~ "
But ehe belief in intellectual inequality and in the superiority
of one's own intelligence does not belong to scholars and dis-
einguished poets alone. Xts force comes frorn the fact that i c em-
braces the entire popularion undet the guise of humility. I
can't, rhe ignoranr one you are encouraging to teach himself
declares; i am oniy a worker. J.isten carefully co everything there
is in that syllogisrn. First of all, "I can't" rneans "X don't Want
to; why would I make the efforr?" Which also rneans: 1 un-
doubtedly couiid, for I am intelligent. But X arn a worker: people
like me can't; rny neighbor can't. And what use would it be for
me, since I have to deal with imbeciles?
So goes ehe belief in inequality. There is no superior mind
that doesn'e Find an even more superior one to bc lower to; no
inferior rnind rhat doesn't find a rnore inferior one to hold in
concempt. The professorial gown of Louvain Counts Iitcle in
Paris. And tlie Parisian artisan Rno~i~show inferior provincial ar-
tisans are to hirn; these, in turn, know how backward peasants
are. The day when those peasants think thae they know things
themselves, and rhat the Parisian professorial gown drapes a
lamebrain, the loop wiil bc closed. The universal superiotity of
inferiors will unite with the universal inferiority of superiors to
create a world where no inteiligence could recognize another as
its equal. For reason is iost whcre one Person speaks to another
who is unable to reply to hirn. "There is no more beautifuiil spec-
tacle, none more instructive, than rhe spectacle of a man speak-
ing. Bua: the listener must reserve the righc to think about what
he has just heard, and the speaker musc engage with him in
this. . . , The fistener must thus verify if the speaker is actualiy
within the bounds of reason, if he departs from it, if he returns
to ic. Without that authorized verification, necessitated by the
very eyuality of intelligente, I sec nothing in a conversation but
a discourse between a blind man and his dog.""
The apology of ehe blind man speaking to his dog is the world
of unequal intclligence's response to rhe fable of the blind lead-
ing the blind. We can see ihat it is a question of philosophy anrJ
hurnanity, not of reciyes for chitdren's pedagogy. Universal
teaching is above afl the universal verification of the similatity
of what all the emancipated can do, afl those who have decided
to think of thernselves as people jusc Iike everyone else.
Everything Bs in Everything
Everything is in everything. The power of the rautology is
that of equality, the power that searches for the finger of inteI-
tigence in every human work. This is the meaning of rhe ex-
ercise that astounded Baptiste Proussard, a progressive man and
director of aschooI in Grenoble, who accompanied the two sons
of the dcputy Casimir E t i e r co Louvain. A member of the So-
ciety of fiaching Merhods, Baptiste Froussard had already
heard of universal teaching, and in Miss Narcellis's class, he res-
ognized tke exercises that che society's president, Jean de Las-
teyrie, had dcscribed. He there saw young giris write compo-
sitions in fiteen minutes, some on the topic of "'ffhe Last Mari,"
others on "The Exite's Return," creating, as the Founder assured
him, pieces of titerature "that did not spoil the B&tdty of thc most
beautiful pages of our besr authors." I t was an assertion that
learned visitors had greeted with the deepest reservatians. Bur
Jacotot had found a way to convince them: since they evidentiy
42 The ignorant One? La.ron
6
.-
considered themselves to be among the best writers of their
time, they had only to subrnit themselves to the same resc and
give the students the possibiiity of comparing. De tasteyrie;
who had lived through 1 7 9 3 , had lent himself willingly to the
exercise. This had not been the case with Guigniaut, an envoy
frorn the Ecole Normale in Paris who, though he was unable tu
See any significance in Calypso, had managed to see the unfor-
givable lack of a circumfiex on cior^tvein one of the compositions.
Invited to the test, he arrived an h«ur late and was told to come
back the next day. But that afternoon he caught the maii car-
riage for Paris, carrying in his baggage as darnning cvidence thc
shameful i deprived of a circurnflex.
After reading the compositions, Baptiste Froussard sat in on
classes of improvisation, This was an essential exercise in uni-
versal teaching: to learn to speak on any subject, off the cuff,
with a beginning, a deveioprnent, and an ending. Learnirig to
improvise was first of all fearning ta wercoma on~seIf,to ovetcome
rhe pride that disguises itself as humility as an excuse for one's
incapacity to speak in front of others-that is to say, one's re-
fusal to submit oneseif to their judgment. And after that it was
tearning CO begin and to end, to rnake a totulity, to close up lan-
guage in a circle. Thus two students improvised with assurance
on the topic of "The Atheist's Death," after which, to dissipate
such sad thoughts, Jacotot asked another student to improvise
on "The Plight of a Fly." Hiiarity erupted in the classroom, but
Jacorot was ciear: tliis was not about laughing, it was about
speuking. And the young student spoke for eight and a half min-
utes on rhis airy subject, saying charming things and rnaking
graceful, freshly imaginative connections.
Baptiste Froussard had also participated in a music lesson.
Jacotot had asked him for fragrnents of Freflch poetry, on which
the students improvised rnelodies wir11 ac~om~anirnents that
they interpreted in a deiightful manner. Baptiste Froussard
came back tu Miss Marceilis's sever~timore times, assigning
cornpositions himself on morals and metaphysics; all were per-
forrned with aii admirable facility and talent. But the following
T h fgnnvcdnr One? Lesson 4.3
'i_,'
exercise surptised hirn the rnosr. One day, Jacotot addtessed the
students: "Young iadies, you know that in every human work
there js att; in a steam engine as in e dress; in a work of literatlire
as in a shoe. Well, you will now write me a cornposition an art
in general, connecting your words, your expressions, your
thoughts, to such and such passages from the assigned authors
in a way rhat lets you justify or verify everything."'"
Various books were brought to Baptiste Froussard, and he
himself indicated ro one student a passage from Atklie, CO an-
other a grarnmar chapter, to others a passage frorn Bossuet,
chapters on geography, on division in Lacroix's arithmetic, and
so ori. He did not have to wait iong for the rcsults of this Strange
cxercise on such bateiy comparable things. After a half hour, a
new astonishment came over him when he heard the quality of
the cnrnposicions just writren beneath his nose, and the impro-
vised comrnentaries that justified thern. He particularfy ad-
rnired an explication of art done on rhe Passage from Athiilze,
along with a justification ot verificacion, which was comparabie,
in his opinion, to rhe most brilliant lirerary lesson he had evcr
heard.
That day, more than ever, Baptiste Froussard understood in
what sense one can say that eterytbi?zg is in evetything. He already
knew that Jacotot was an astunishing pedagogue and he could
guess ar the quality of rhe scudents forrned under his direction.
But he returned home having understood one more thing: Miss
Marceliis's students in Louvain had the same intelligente as the
giovemakers in Grenoble, arid even--this was more difficult to
admit-as the giovemakers on the outskirts of Grenoble.
 We inusr look further into che reason for these ef-
fects: "We direcr students based on an apinion about ttle equaliey
of intelligence."
Whac is an opinion? An opinion, the explicators respond, is
a fetling we form about facts we have superficially observecl.
Bpinions grow especially in weak and common minds, and they
are the opposice of science, which knows the true reasons for
phenomena. If you like, we will teach you science.
Slow down. We grant you [hat an opinion is not a truth. Bur
this is precisely whac interests us: whoever does not know the
trutti is looking for i t , and there aee many encounters to make
atong the way. The only mistake would be to take our opinionc
for the truth. Admittcdly, this Aäppens all the time. But this
is precisely the one way t h a ~are Want to distinguish ourselves
(we others, the followers of the rnadman): we think thar our
opinions are opinions and nothing more. We have seen certain
facts. We believe thac this coutd be the reason for it, We (and
you may do the same) will perform some other experimencs to
verify ehe solidiry of rke opinion. Besides, ir seems to us that
chis procedute is not campletely new. Didn't physicists and
chrmists often proceed in this way? And we speak rhen about
hypothesis, about the scientific method, in a respccaful tone.
After all, respect means litcie co us, Let's limit ourselves to
the facts: we have seen tihildren and adulrs learn by themselves,
46 Reason Between Epuls -
without a master explicaeor, how to read, wrice, play music, and
speak foreign languages. We believe these farts can bc cxplained
by the equality of intelligence. This is an opinion whose veri-
fication we pursue. It's true there is a difficutty in atl this. Phy-
sicists and chernises isolate physical phenomena and relate them
to other physical phenomena. They set themselve(; to reproduc-
ing the known egecrs by producing their supposcd causes. Such
a procedure is forbidden us. We can never say: take two equal
minds and place them in such and such a condition. We know
intelligence by its effects. But we cannor isoiate it, measure it.
We are reduced to rnultipl~ingthe experiments inspired by that
opinion. But we can never say: alt intelligence is equai.
Br's true. But our probfern isn't proving that all intelligence
is equai. It's seeing what can be done undet that supposition.
And for this, ie's enough for us that the opinion be possible-
that is, ehat no opposing rruth be proved.
Of Brains and Leaves
Preciseiy, say the superior minds. The opposite fact is ob-
vious, That intelligence is unequal is evident to everyone. First
of all, in nature, no two beings are idcntical. Look at the leaves
falling from the tree. They seem exactly the Same ro you. Look
more closely and disabuse yourself, Among ehe thousands of
leaves, there are no two alike. individualiry is the law of the
worid. And how could this law thar applies tri vegetation not
apply afo~tiori to this being so infinitely moie elevaced in the
vital hierarchy that is human intelligence? TherQuve, each in-
telligence is different. Second, there have always been, there al-
ways wiji be, rhere are everywhere, beings unequally gifted for
inteliectual things: scholars and ignorant ones, intelIigent
people and fools, Open minds and closed minds. V e know what
is said on the subject: the difference in circumstances, social rni-
lieu, education . . . Well, let's do an experiment: let's take two
children who come from the same rniiiieu, raised in the Same
way. Let's rake rwo brothers, put them in che Same sehoof, make
them do the Same exercises. And what wilI we sec? One will du
berter than the other. There is cherefore an intrinsic difference,
And the difVerence results from this: one of the two is more in-
telligent, rnore gifted; he Iias More resources than thc other.
?%~refme, you can clearfy see rhat intelligence is unequal.
How to respond to this widence?Let's begin at the beginning:
with the leaves that superior minds are so fond of. We fully rec-
ognize that they are as different as people so minded couild dc-
sire. W only ask: how does one move from rhe diKerence be-
tween leaves to the inequality of intelligence? Xnequalicy is only
a kind of difference, and it is not ttie one spoken about in the
case of leaves. A feaf is a material tbing while a mind is irn-
material. Mow can one infer, without paralogism, the proper-
ties of che mind frorn the properties of matter?
It is truc that this terrain is now trccupied by sotne fierce ad-
uersaries: physiolugiscs. The ptopercies of the mind, according
to the most radical of them, are in fact tht: properries of the
hutnan brain. Differente and inequality hold sway there just as
in the confrguration and funccioning of all rhe other orgnns in
rhe human body. The brain weighs this inuch, so intelligcnce
is worth that much. Phrenologists arid cranioscopists are busy
with all tliis: this man, rhey teil u s , has rhe skull of a genius;
this other doesn't have a head for inarhematics. Let's leave these
co the examination of their protuberances and get
1ßrott~ber~nt.r
down to the serious business. One can imagine a canscquent
materialism that would be concerned only with brains, and that
could apply to them everything that is applied to material
beings. And so, effectively, the propositions of inteilectual
emancipation wouid baio nothing but the dreams of bizarre
brains, stricken with a particular form of thar oid mental mal-
ady called melanchoiia. In rhis case, superior minds-that is tu
say, superior brains-would in fact have authority over inferior
minds in the same way man has authority over animals. I6 tfiis
were simply the case, nobody would discuss the inequality of
intelligence, Superior brains tr~ouldnot go to che unnecessary
trouble of proving theie superiority over inferior minds-in-
capable, by definition, of understanding rhem. They would be
content to dominate rhern. And they wouldn't run inro any ob-
sracles: their rnreliectual superioriry would be demonstrated by
the fact of that domination, just like physical superiority. There
would be no more need for laws, assemblies, and governments
in the golirical order than thete would be for teaching, expli-
cations, and academies in the intellectual order.
Such is not the case. We have govetnments and laws. We havc
superior minds that try to teach and convince inferior minds.
What is even stranger, the apostles of the inequaijty of intel-
ligence, in their immense rnajority, dnn't hlieve the physiol-
ogists and niake fun of the phrenologists. The superiortty they
boasr of can't be rneasured, they believe, by Instruments. Ma-
teriaiism would be an easy explanarion for their superioriry, but
they make a different case. Their superiority is spiritual. They
are spirituaiists, above all, because af their own pood opinion
of themselves. They believe in the immaterial and imrnortal
soul, But how can something irnmaterial be susceptible ro more
or less? This is the superior minds' contradiction. They wanr an
irnmortait soul, a mind distinct ftam matter, and they want dii-
ferent degrees of intelligence. But ir's rnatcer that makes dif-
ferenses. If one insists On inequality, one must accept the theory
of cerebrai toci; if one insists on the spiritual principke, one
must say that it is thesame intelligence that applies, in different
circumstances, to different material objects. But rhe superior
minds Want neitlier a superiority that would be only material
nor a spirituality thac would make them the equals of rkieir In-
ferior~.They lay claim to the digerences of rnaterialists in the
rnidst of the elevaeion that beIongs to irnmareriality. They paine
rhe cranioscopist's skuils with the innzlte gifts of intelligence.
And yet they know very well that the shoe pinches, aiid rhcy
also know they have to concede something to the inferiors, even
if only provisionally. Here, tken, is how they arrange things:
ehere is in every man, they say, an irnmaterial soul. This soul
permirs even the mosa humble to know the great rruths of g d
and evil, of conscience and duty, of God and judgment. In rhis
we are all equai, and we will even cancede that the humble often
teach us in these rnatters. Let them be satisfied with this and
not prcrend to intellectual capacities that are the privilege-
ofren dearly paid for-of rhose whose rask is to wacch over tlie
general interests of sociery. And don't come back and teil us that
these differentes are pureiy social. Look instead at these swo
children, who come from ehe Same milieu, taught hy the Same
masrers. One succeeds, the other doesn't, Therefote . . .
So be it! Let's look rhen at your children and your t b ~ ~ r e .
One succeeds better than the other, this is a fktct. 1f he succeeds
better, you say, this is beiwirse he is more intelligent. Hcre the
explanation becomes obscure. Have you shown another frnct that
would be rhe cause of rhe first? Jf a physioiogist found one of
tlie brarns ta be narruwer or iighter than the other, rhis wouid
be a facr. He coutd therefnre-ize deservediy. But yoii haven't
shown us anorhet fact. By saying "He is more intelligent," you
have simply summed up the ideas that tell the story of the fact.
You have given ir a nnrne. But the name of a fact is not its cause,
oniy, at best, irs metaphor The 6rsr time you rold the story of
the fact by saying, "IIe succeeds better." In your reteiling of ~t
you used another name. "He is more intelfigent." But chere is
no more i n the second Statement than in the first. "This man
does better than the other becausc he is smarter. That means
precisely: he does better because he does better. . . . This
young man has more r w o ~ ~ c e sthey , say. 'What is more re-
sources?' I ask, arid they start to teQlrne the story of the two
children again; so mort resortrces, I[ say to myself, means in French
thc set of faccs X just heard; but ehat expression doesn't explajn
them at aB1.""
It's impossible, ~herefore,to break out of rhe circle. One
must show the cause of the ineqliality, at the risk of borrowing
it from the protuberants, or be reduced ro mereiy scating a tau-
tology. The inequality of intelligence explains rhe inequality of
intelleccuaf manifestations in the way the iiiutus domnitzgu ex-
plains the effects of opium.
 -
50 Reason Betzuee~aEiqr4nl.i
An Attentive Anima1
We know that a juscification of the equality of intelligence
would be equally tautologicsil. We wiil therefore try a different
patli: we will talk onty about what we See; we will name facts
without pretending to assign them causes. The first fact: "I See
that man does things [hat other animals don'r. I call this fact
mind, intelligence, as I like; B explain nothing, 1 give a name to
what I s ~ e . "I ~can also say that man is a teasonable animal. By
that I am registering the Fact that man has an articulated lan-
guage that he uses eo make words, figures, and comparis8?s for " equallg to enter human sociecy enjoying all the advantages and
the purposes of communicating his thoughcs to his fellow-men.
Second, when H coinpate two individuals, "I See rhat in thefirsg.
moments of life, they have absotutely the sanie intelligence;
that is eo say, they d a exacely the same things, with rhe same
goal, with the same intention. I say that these two humans have
equal intelligence, and this phrase, equd inrekIigence, is short-
hand fo'or all the facts that L have obsecved watchirig two very
young infants."
kater, I[ will See different facts. f will confirrn rhat che two
minds are no longer doing the sarne things, are not obtaining
the Same results. I could say, if X wanted to, thar one's inteili-
gence is more developed than che other's, so long as I know that,
here again, B am only vecounring a new fact . Norhing pseverits
me from making a supposition abour all this. I wiil not say that
the one's faculties are inferior to the other's. I will onily suppose
that ehe two faculties haven't been equally exercised. Nothing
proves rhis eo me with certainty. But nothing proves the op-
posite, It is enoiigh Bor rne to know that this lack of exercise is
possibfe, and that many experimenrs attest to it. I wilf thus dis-
place the tautology very siightly. I will not say that he has done
less well because he is less inreiligenc. I will say that he has per-
haps produced a poorer work betause he has worked more
pwriy, that he has not seen well because he hasn't llooked well.
I will say thar he has brought less attention CO his work.
By this I may not have advanced very far, but far enough,
nevertheless, to Lseak out of the circle. Attention is neither rhc
skull surrounding the brain nor an occult quality. I t is an im-
material L~ctin its principle, material in its eEects: we have a
thousand ways of verifying irs presence, its absence, or its
greater or lesser intcnsity. All the excrcises of universal teaching
tend toward this. In the end. the inequaiity OB artention is a
phenomenon whose possible causes are reasonably suggested to
us through experiment. We know why yoting children direcc so
similar an inrelligence to exploring their world and learning
rheir language. Insrinct and need drive them equally. Yhey all
have just ahour the samr needs to satisfy, and they all Want
rigbts of speaking heings. And for this, intelligence must not
come to a standstifl.
The child is surrounded by objects that speak to hin^, all a t once, i n
different ianguages; he must srudy them separately and together, rhcy
have no relationship and often contradict each other. He can make
nothing of all the idtoms In which nature speaks to him-through
his eyes, tits touch, through all his senses-simultaneously. He must
repeat ciften to remember so many absolurefy arbitrary signs. .
What great attention is necessary for all [hat!'
This giant step taken, the need becomes less irnperious, rhe
artention less coostant, and the child gets used to learning
theough the eyes of others. Circumstances becorne diverse, and
he develops the intelleceuaf capacities as those circumstance~de-
mand. The Same holds for tlle common peopie. It is useless eo
discuss whether their "lesser" intelligehice is an elect of nature
or an effeci of society: they develop the tntellrgcnce that the
needs and circumstances of their existente demand of them,
"shere where neetl ceases, intelligence slumbers, unfess some
stronger will rriakes irself' understood and says: concinue; ioitk
at what you are doing and what you ccbn do if you apply the same
inielligence you have already made use of, by bringing to eack
thing the Same arcention, by not letting youtself stray from
your path.

6y nn intelligente. P e i h n ~saying that wiils are unequalily de-
manding sufficcs to explain che differentes in attention that
would perhaps sufhce to explain the inequality of rntelfectual
performances.
Man is U will served by uaa
l intelligence. This forrnula is heir to
a long history. Summing up the thought of the great
eighteenth-century minds, che poet-philosopher Jean Prancois
de Saint-karnbert atifirmed: "Man is a living organization served
by an intelligence.'' The formula srnacked of rnaterialism, and
during the Restoration, the apostle of coiinterrevoiution the .
Viscount de Bonald, strictiy reversed i t . "Man," he proclaimed,
"is an intelligence served by organs."But this reversai caused a
v e ~ yainbiguous restoration of the intelligence. What the vis-
coune disliked about ttie philosopher's formula was not that it
gave too srnall a part ro human intelligence; he hirnself didn't
grant it much. What he disliked was the republican model of
a king at che Service of a collective organization. What he
wanted to restore was che good hierarchical order: a king who
commands and subjects who obey. The soveretgn intelligence,
for him, was certainlly not that of the child or worker, tending
to the appropriation of a world of signs; it was the divine in-
teliigence already inscribed in the codes gtven to man by the
divinity, in the very language thar owed its origin neither ro
nature nor t o h u m m art, but to the pure gife of God. Huinan
will's fot was to subrnit itself to rhar intelligence already man-
ifested, inscrikd in codes, in language as in social institutians.
Taking ehis stand broughn: wieh ic a certain paradox. To en-
siire the triumph of social objectivity and the objectivity of Lan-
guage over ehe "individualisr" phitosophy of the Enlighten-
ment, de Bonald had to take up in his turn the most "mareri-
aiist" formulations of that Same philosophy, In order to deny
any anteriotity of thought ovet language, in order to forbid in-
tefligence any right to search for a truth of its own, he had to
join u p wirh those who had reduced mental operations to thr
pure mechanism of material sensations and Linguistic signs: to
rhe point of rnaking fun of those monks on Mounc Athos who,
contemplating their navelr, helieved themselves visited by di-
vine inspiration. Tbus that CO-naturalirybetween linguistic
signs and the idcas of tinderstanding that tbe eighteenth cen-
tury snught, and rhac the Ideo1oguc.s worked at finding, fuund
itself recuperated, reversed to favor the prirnacy of the estab-
lished, in rhe frarnework of a theocratic and snciocratic vision
of tlie intelligence, ''Man ," wrure thc viscounr, "thinks his
speech before speaking his rhoughtl'-a materiaiist theory of
language rhat does not allow us ro ignore rhe pious thought thar
animares ie: "The faithful and perpetual guardian of the sacred
depository of the fundamental trutlis of the social order, society,
considered in general, grants knowledge of all rhis to its chil-
dren as they enter into the big family.""
In rhe face of these strong thoughts, an angry hand scratched
on his copy these lines: "Compate all this scandalous vcrbiage
with the oracle's response on the iearned ignorante of Socrates."
It isn't JosephJacotot's hand. I t is rhe hand of de Bonald's col-
ieague in the Chamber, the knight Maine de .Biran, who, a little
farther on, reverses rhe viscount's cntire edifice in two lines: the
anteriority of linguistic signs changes norhing for the preerni-
nence of the intellecrual act that, for every human infant, giver
them meariing; "Man only iearns to speak hy linking ideas tri
rhe words he learns frorn his nurse."' At first glance this is an
astonishing coincidence. At hrst it is dißicult to see what the
ersrwhile Bieutenant of Louis XVl's guard and thc erstwhile
army caprain from ~ e iI,r the administrative squire and the pro-
fessor from the central school, the deputy of the monarch's
Chamber and the exiled revolutionary, could possibly have in
common. At. ehe most, we might think, the Fact that borh were
twenty years oid at che onset of ehe Revolution, that botti lefc
the rumult of Paris at twenty-five, and chat both had rneditared
rather lengthily arid at a distance on haw much sense and virtue
rhe old Socratir axiom rnight have had, or might have now, i n
the middle of so many upheavafs. facotot understood the matter
more in the rnanner uf the moralists, Maine de Biran rnore
rnetaphysicatly. Nevertheless, 'ehere remains a cornrnon vision

that uphoids the Same affirmarion of the prirnacy of thought
over iinguistic signs: the Same balance shret of ehe analytic and
ideological tradition in which both had formed their thinking.
Self-knowiedge and the power of reason aae 110 tonger to be
sought in the rcciprocal transprency of linguistic signs and the
ideas of understanding. The arbitrariness of the will-revoIri-
cionary and imperial-has now enrirely taken over the promised
land of well-made languages that yesterday's reason promised.
Thus the certitude of thouglit withdraws beyond che transpar-
encies of language-.whether they be republican ot theocratic.
it bears on its own act , on that mental tensian that precedes and
orients any combination of signs, The divinity of the revolu-
tionary arld imperial era-the will-finds irs rationaliry at the
heart of ehat efforr each puts into himself, that autodetermi-
nation of the mind as activity. Incelligence is attention and re-
search hefore being a crpmbination of ideas. W111 is thc power
to be moved, ro act by its own movement, before being an in-
stance of choice.
A Will Served by a n Inteiligence
It is this fundamental turnarouiid that ctle new reversal of the
definition of man records: man is a will served dy a n intelfigence.
WiIl is the rational power that must be delivered from thc quat-
rels between the ideai-ist$ and the tbing-isu. Ir is also in this sense
that the Cartesian equality of the c&to must be specified. In
place of the tliinking subject who onty knows himself by with-
drawing fronl alt the senses and froin ali bodies, we Iiave a new
thinking subject who is aware of hirnself through tbe action he
exerts on himself as on orher bodies.
Here is how jacotot , according to the principles of universal
reaching, made his own iranrlntion of Dercartes's famous analy-
sis of thc piece of wax:
I Want ro look and I see. 1 Want to listen and I hear. I Want to touch
and my arm reaches out, wanders along rhe surfaces of objects or pen-
etrares into their interior; my hanci opens, develops, exterids, closes
hip; my fingers spread out or move togerher by obeying my will. In
ttiat acr of rouching, I know only my will cci tuuch. Thac will is nei-
tber rny hand, rtor rny brain, nor my rouching. That will is me, my
soul, it is rny power, i t is my faculty. I feel that will, ir i s present i n
me, i t is myself; as for rhc tnanner in which I arn obeyed, that f don'r
feel, that I only know by its acts. . . . 1 consider ideatioti like rnuch-
ing. I have sensatioos when I likc; 1 order my senscs ro bring them tu
me. I harre ideas when I like; 1. order rny inrelligence ro look for them,
to feel. The hand and the intelligence are slaves, eacli wirb i t s own
attributes. Man is a wiI1 cerved by an intelligence.'
I baiue ideds when I like. Descartes knew weit the power of will
over understanding. But he knew ir precisely as the power of
the false, as the cause of error: the haste to afirt,r when che idea
isn't clear and distinct. The opposite must be said: i t is tfie lack
of will that causes intelligence to make mistakes. The rnind's
original sin is not haste, but distrartion, absence. "Ta act with-
out will or reflection does not produce an intellectual act. Tlie
effecc that resul ts from this cannor be ciassed among the prod-
ucrs of' intelligence, nor can ic be cornpared to them. O n e can
see neithet more nor less action in inactivity; there is norhing,
Idiocy is not a facuity; ir is the absence or the sIumber or the
relaxation of [intelligence] ."R
I[ntelligeaice'sact is to seeand to compare whac has been seen.
Ir sees at first by chance. Iit muct seek to repeat: t o rreate the
conditions to re-sec whar i t has seen, in order to see similar facts,
in order co see facts rbat could be the cause of what it has seen.
Tt rnust also form words, sentences, and figures, in order to teil
othcrs what it has seen. In shcirt, the rnost frequent mode cpf
exercising intelligence, much to the dissatisfaction of geniuses,
is repetition. And repetition jc boring. The first vice is laziness.
It is easier to absent oneself, to half-see, co say what one hasn't
seen, to say whar one believes one sees. "Absent" sentences are
formed in rhis way, the "rherefores" that trarislate no mental
adventure. "I can'r" is one of these absent sentences. ''I can't"
is not the name of any fact. Nothing happens in the mind that
corresponds to that assertton. Properly speaking, it doesn't
zrtclntto say anything. Speech is rhus filled or emptied of mean-
ing depending on whether the will cornpels or relaxes the work-
ings oC the inrelligence. Meaning is the work of the will. This
is the secret of universai teaching. It i c also the seeret of those
we call geniuses: the relentless work to bend the body to nec-
essary habits, CO compel the inrelligence to new ideas, ro new
ways of expressing them; to redo on purpose what chance once
produced, and ro reverse unhappy circumstances intn occasions
for success:
This is rnie for Orators as for children, The Former are forrned in as-
semblies as we are Formed in life. . . . He who, by cliance, made
people laugh at his cxpense a t rlie last session could learn to get a
laugh whenever he wants to were he to study all the relarions thar led
to tticguttaws that so disconcerted him arid rnade him close his mouth
foreuer. Such was Demosthenes' debut. By making people laugh
without meaning to, he learned how he could excite peals of laughter
against Aeschines. Ruc Bemosrhenes wasn'r lazy. He couidn't be."
Once more universal teaching proclaims: dn individr*.alcdtz iio
anything he wanü. But we must not mistakc what wanting
means. Universal teaching is not the key to success gtantecf to
the entetprising who exptore the prodigious powers of the wiil.
Nothingcould be mure opposed co the thought of emancipatkon
rhan that advertising slogan. And rhe Fouiider becarne irrirated
when disciptes opened their school under the slogan, "Whoevet
wants ro is able to." The only slogan that had value was "The
equality of inrelligence." Universal teaching is not an expedienc
method. Ic is undoubtedly true that the arnbirious and the con-
querors gave ruthless illustracion of it, Theib: passion was an
inexhaustible source of ideas, and they quickly understood how
to direct generais, scholars, or financiers faultlessly in sciences
thcy rhemselves did not know, But what interests us is not this
theatrical effect, Whar the arribitious gain i n ehe way of intel-
lectual power by not judging themselves inferior to anyone,
they tose by judging themsefves superior ro everyone else. What
ineerests us is the exploration of tfie powers of any man when
he judges himself equal to everyctne else and judges evetyune
else equal ro him. i3y the will we mean that self--refiection by
the reasonable being who knows himself in rhe act. Ir is this
threshold of rationality, this consciousness of and esreem for the
seff as a reasonable being aceing, that nourishes the movemene
of the inrelligence. Tlie reasonabie being is first of all a being
who knows his power, who doesn't lie to himself about ir.
The Principle of Veracity
There are rwo fundamental lies: the one that proclaims, "I
am tclling the truth," and the one that states, "I cantiut say."
The reasonable being who retlects on himself knows the emp-
tiness of these two propositions. Thc hrst fact is the impossi-
bility of not knowing aneself. The individual cannor lie to him-
self; he tan only forget hirnseif. "1 can't" is rhus a sentence of
self-forgetfuiness, a sentence ftom which the reasonable ind i-
viduaI has withdrawn. No evif genie can iriterpose hirriself be-
tween conscio~isnessand its act. We must therefore reverse Soc-
rates's adage. "No one is voiunrarily bad," he said. We will say
the opposite: "All blunders come from vice.'"" No one makes
an error except hy waywardness, that is to say, by laziness, by
rhe desire to no longer listen to what a reasonable hcing w e s
hiinself. The principle of evil lies not in a mistaken knowledge
of the good chat is the purpose of action. It lies in ~infairhfulness
to oneself, "Know yourself" no longer means, in rhe Platoriic
manner, know wheire your good Lies. It means come back eo
yourself, to what you know to be unmistakably in you. hour
humility is norhing btit the proud fear of stumbling in ftonc of
others. Stumbling is nothing; che wrong is in diverging from,
leaving one's yath, no longer paying attention to whac one says,
forgecting what une is. So foliow yogr path,
Thls principle of veracity is at the hearr nf the emancipation
experience. I t is nor the key to any science, but the privileged
~elationof each Person to the ttuth, the orie that piits him on
his path, on his orbit as a seeker. I[t is the rnoral foundation of
the power to know. This ethical foundation of rhc very abilicy
to know is still a thought of its time, a fruic of the meditation
on rcvolutionary and imperial experience. But the majarity of
the thinkerc of the time undersrood i e in ttie opposite way ro
Jacotot. For them, the truth that commands intellectual agree-
rnent was to be identified with che iink that keeps men united.
Truth is what brings together; error is rupture and solitude. So-
ciety, its institutions, the goal ie pursues-these are what define
the desire with which the individual must ideneify in order to
reach a correct pereeption. Tlius reasoned de Bonald the theo- I
crat, and, after him, Philippc Buchez rhe socbalist and Auguste
Cornte the positivist. The eclectics, with their common sense
and their grand trurhs written in the heart of each Person, be
he philosopher ur shoemaker, were less severe. But: all were men
of aggregation. And Jacotot departed from them On rhis point.
8 n e can say, if one likes, that rrttth brings rogerher. But whnr.
brings people together, what unites chem, is nonaggregation.
Let's rid ourselves of the representation of rhe social remeet thar
hardened the thinking minds of tl-ie postretrolutionary age.
People are united because they are people, that is ro say, distck~t
beings. Language doesn'r unite them. O n the contrary, i r is the
arbitrariness of language that makes them try to comniunicate
by forcing them to transiate--hut also puts them in a com-
munity of intelligence. Man is a being thar knows very well
when someone speaking daesn'c ltnow whae he is talking abour.
Truth doesn't bring people together at all. It is not given tu
us. It exists independentiy from us and does not submic to our
piecemeal sentences. 'Truth exists by itself; ic is that which is
an$ not that which is said. Saying depends on man, but the
truch does not.'"' But for ali thar, eruth is not foreißn COus, and
we are not exiled from its country. The experience of veraciry
attaches ris to its absent cencer; ir rnakes us circle around its
foyer. First of all, we can see and indicate truths. Thus, "B
taught wfiat I didn't know" is a truth. Ir's the name of a fact
that existed, that can be repioduced. As for the reason for this
fact, that is for the moment an opinion, and it may always rc-
main so. Bur with that oginion, we are circfing around the
truth, from fact to facr, relarion ro retation, sentence to sen-
cence. What is essential is toavoid lying, not rnsay thar we havc
seen sornerhing wfien we've kept our eyes closed, not to helievc
ehat sornething has been explaincd tu us when it has only been
named .
Thus, each one of us describes our parahola around the truth,
No two orbits are alike. An$ this is why rtie expf icators endan-
ger our revolucion.
These orbits of humanitarian conceptions rasely inrersect and have
only a few points i n cornmon. The lurnbled ltnes tliat they describe
nevcr coincide withoiir a Jisturbance thac suspends Iiberty and, con-
sequently, the use of the intelligence thar fotlows from it. The student
fcels that , on his own, he wouldn't have foliowed the roure he has jus t
been led down; and he forgers rhat there are a thousand partis i n in-
cellectuai space Open ta his v~ill.l 2
This coincidence of orbits is whar we have called stultificatiari.
And we understand why stultificaticjn is ali the more profound,
rhr rnore subtle, the less perceptible, rhe coincidence. This is
why the Sacratic method, apparentiy so close to universal reach-
ing, represenrs the rnost formidable form of stultification. The
Socratic method oF interrogation rhat prcrends to lead ehe stu-
dent to his w n knowledge is in fact the merfiod of a riding-
school master:
He ordets turns, marches, and countermarches. As for hin, dusing
ttie training sessioit hc is relaxed and has the dignicy of arithority over ,
the mind he direcrs. From derour to detour, the srudenr's mind arrives
at a fitiish that couldri't even be glirnpsed a t rhe starting line. He is
surprised to rouch i t , he turns around, he sees his guide, the surprise
turns into adrniration, and that admiration stultifies tiim. The stu-
dent feels chat, a h n e and abandaned to himseif, he wo~ildnot have
followed ttiat route.
No orie has a relationship to the rruth if he is not on his own
orbit. But Iet no one, for ali that: gloat about bis singulariry
and go out, in his turn, to proclaim: Anlict6.r Platt, sed ~nagis
amzm t i ~ v i t ~ r sThat
! is a Iine fi-om rhc rheater. Aristotle, who said
i t , was doing nothing different f r o ~ nPlato. Like him, he was
 .-
Go Renson Between Eqwis
stating his opinions, he was telling the Story of his inrellectua1
adventures; on the way, he gathered a few truths. As for the
truth, it doesn't rely on phifosophcrs who say they are its friend:
1I it is only friends wirk itself.
i
1:
1, Reason and Eanguage
Truth is not told. IIt is a whole, and language fragments it;
it is necessary, and languages are arbitrary. I t was this thesis on
the arbitrariness OE languages-even more than the proclama-
tion of universal teaching-that made Jacotot's teaching scan-
dalous. In x 818, in his very first course at Ilauvain, he took .nc
his rheme this question, inherited frorn the eighteenth century
of Diderot and the Abbe Batteux: is "direct" construcrion, the
one that places the noun before the verb and the attribute, the
natural conscruction? And did French writers have the right to
consider that construction a mark of their language's inteilec-
tual superiority? He decided negatively, With Dideroc, he
judged the "inverred" order to be as natural as the so-called nat-
ural order, if not mote so; and he beiieved the language of Sen-
timent preceded that of analysis. But he attacked above alt the
very idea of a natural order and the hierarchies it might entail.
All languages were equally arbitrary. There was no language of
intelligente, no language more universal chan others.
The response didn't take Iong. I n the next issue of L'Qbser-
vdteur befge, a literary journaf out of Brussels, a young philos-
opher by the name of Yan Meenen denounced the thesis as a
theoretical warning to the oligarchy. Five years later, after the
publication of Langue mczternelie, a young Iawyer ciose to Van
Meenen who had takenJacotor's Courses and even published his
notes, got angry ip turn. In his Essai sz~rfe k2~f-e
de Monsreur]d-
cotot, Jean Cylvain Van de Weyer scolded this French professor
who, after Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Harris, B;ondillas, Dumar-
sais, Rousseau, Destutt de Eacy, and de Bonaid, still dared co
maincain that thought preceded language.
The position of thcse young and passionate contradictors rs
L
easy to understand. They represented rhe young Belgium, pa-
triotic, liberal, and Frencfi-speaking, in a state of intellectual
insurrection against Flernish dornination. To destroy the hier-
archy of languages and the universality of the French language
was, for them, to give the prize to the language OE the Flemish
oligarchy, the backward language of che Iess-civilized part of
the population, but also the secrer language of power. Follow-
ing them, the Co~<rrieu de /U Meztse attacked the Jacotot method
for coming in the nick of time to impose at little cost che lan-
guage and the civilization-in scare quotes-of the Flernish.
But rhere was more to it than this. These young defenders of
the Belgian identity and the French intelltctual iandscape had
read t he Viscount de Bonald's Rechevche~philosophic~~~es.They re-
tained frorn i r n fundamental idea: the analogy between the laws
of language, the laws of society, and the laws of thought and
their unity, in principle, in divine law. Undoubtedly they were
departing from the viscount's philosophicaf and political mes-
sage. They wanted a nationai and constitutional monarchy, and
they wanred the mind to discover freely the gceat metaphysical,
morai, and social truths inscribed by divinity 011 each petson's
heart. Their philosophical guiding light was a young phitoso-
pher in Paris named Victor Cousin. In the rhesis of the arbi-
trariness of ianguages, they saw irrationality being introduced
into the hearr of cornmunication, obstructing the discovery of
ehe true course where the phiiosopher's meditation must com-
mune wich the common man's cornmon sense. They saw in the
lecturer BTom Louvain's paradox the perpetuation of che vice of
those phiiosophers who "have frequently confused in their at-
tacks, in the name of prejudices, borh the deadly esrors whose
breeding grourid they discovered not far froin them and the fun-
damental eruths that they attributed to the Same origin. This is
because the truth remained hidden from them in depths inac-
cessibIe to atgumentacion's scalpel and ro the microscope of a
verbose mtrtaphysics, depths t-o which they had long ago given
up dcscending, depths where one is guided by the clarity of
good sense and a simple tleart a l ~ n r . " ' ~

T h e fact is rhat Jacotot d i d not want ro relearn that kind of
descent. He d i d not bear foolish sentences with good sense and
a simple heart. H e would have none of that Fearful l i b r t y guar-
anteed by the agreement of the laws oE rhought with t h e laws
of language and those of sociery. Liberty is not guaranteed by
any preestablirhed harmony I t is raken, it is won, it is lost.
solely by each persoo's effort. And reason is not assured by being
already written in ianguage's constructions and che laws of rhe
city. Language's laws have nothing ro d o with reason, and the
laws of the city haveeverything to d o wirh irrarionaiity. If there
is a divine law, thoughr irsetf, in its sustained truthfulness,
alone bears witness t o it. Man does not think hecatise hc speaks--
this would precisely submit thoiight CO rhe existing material
order. Mari thinks because he exists.
Et remains ehat thoiight must be spoken, rnanifesred in
works, communicnted t o other thinking beings, T h i s musc be
done by way of lnnguages with arbitrary significations. O n e
mustn't See in this an obstacie ro cornmunica~ion.Only the lazy
are afraid of the idea of arbitrariness and see in it reason's romb.
O n rhe contrary. Ilt is because t h e w is no code given by divinity,
n o language of languages, that hurnan intelligence employs all
irs arr to rnaking irself understoori and t o ' u n d e r ~ t a n d i nwhat
~ acruaily conrains a a.holp worid d those h i n g s t those choughtr.
tbe n e i g h b r i n g intelligence is signifying. Thoughr is not rold
i n twth; it is expressed i n verdcity. I t is dividcd, it is told, it is
translated for someone else, wlao will make of it another tale,
anorher tianslation, on one condition: rhe will to corntnunicate,
t h e will to figure o u t what the other is thinking, and this undrr
no guatantee beyond his narration, no universal dictionary ro
dictate what rnUSt be undetstood. Will 6gures out will. I t is in
this common effort thar the definition of man as a will served hy
an intelligenq cakes on irs ~neaning:
I think and I wanr ro commuaicare my thought; immediaref~my
incelligence artfully employs any signs wharsoever; i t combiner them,
composes them, andyzes them; and an exprecsion, an image, a ma-
teriui fact, emerges that will henceforth be h r me the portrait of a
rhought, that is tosay, of an immaterial fact. It will recall my thought
for rne, and 1 will rhink of i t each time I sre its portnit I can rhus
converse with myself when I like. And then, one day, t find myself
face ro face with anorher man; L rcpeat. in his presence, rny gertiires
and my words and, i f he likes, he will figure rne out. . . .
Bur one carinot reach an agreemenr through words about rhe mean-
ing of words. One nian wrnts to speak, rhe ather wants to figure ir
our, and thac's that. From rhis agreernent of wilis rhere results a
thougbt visible to rwo rnen at rhe samt rime. At hrst ir exists im-
materially for onc of them; then he says it to himself, lie gives fr,rm
to it with his eyes oi his ears, and tinalIy fie wants that form, <hat
material being. to rcpmduce foi anothcr man the Same primitive
thought. These crcations or, if you wili, these rnetamorphoses are tlic
eRict of rwo viiils iielping each other out. Thoughr thirs becomes
speecli, and thcn ihar speerii or that word becomes thought again; an
idea becomes matter, and that matter bccomes an idea-.snd aI1 this
is the effecr of the will. Thoughts fly fram one rnind co anather on
the wings o f words. Each word is senr OE wirli the intention of car-
rying jusr one thoughr, but. unknown to the one speaking and almosr
in spite of hirn, rhat speech, thai word, ~ h a rlarva, is made fruirful
by the listener's will; and che represencative of a rnonad becomes rhe
ccnter of a sphere of ideas radiating out in all directions, such thar
the speaker has actually said an irifinicy of things beyond what he
wanted ro say; he has formed tlir body of an idea with ink, and rhc
marter destined to rnysteriousiy envelop a solirary immarerial beinR
Peihaps we can now better understand the reason for univer-
sal teachingi marveis: rhe strengtlis it puts into play are simply
those of any sicuation of com~riunicationbecween rwo reason-
able beings. The relarion between two ignorant people con-
fronting the book they don't know how to read is simply a rad-
ical form of the efforr one brings every rninute ro translating
and counter-translating thoughts into words and words inro
thoughts. T h e will :hat presides over the operation is not a ma-
gician's secret spell. It i s the desire ro understand and to be
uoderstood wirhout which ncr man n~ouldever give meaning t o
rhe materialities of language. Understanding m ~ r be t under-
~ t o n din its true sense: not the derisive power to unveil things,
Perhaps he will only say a few things at first-for exarnple, "The
head is prerty." Bue we will repear. the exercise; we will show
him rhe same head and ask him to fook again and speak again,
at the risk of repeating what he already said. Thus he will be-
come more attentive, more aware of his abflity and capable of
imitacing, We know the reason for this eRect, something com-
pletely diEerent from visuat memorization and manual train-
ing. What the child has ver$ed by this exercise is that painting
is a language, rhat the drawing he has been asked to imitate
qeah ro him. Later on, we will pur him in front of a paintibg
and ask him to improvise on the zfnidy offeeliigpresent, for ex-
ampke, in that painting by Poussin of the buriaI of Phocion.
The conrioisscmr will undoubtedly be s'nocked by this, won't he!
How could you precend ro know that this is whas Poussin
wanted to pur in his painring? And what does this hypothetical
discourse have to do with Poussin's pictorial arx and with the
one the srudent is supposed to acquire?
We witl answer that we don't precend to know what Poussin
wanted to do, W are simply trying to imagine what he rnight
have wanted to do, We thus verify that all wantgng tn do is a
wariting to say and that this wanting to say is addtessed co any
reasonabic being. In short, we verif$ thac the utpoesispic~urache
artists of the Renaissance had cIaimed by reversing Horace's ad-
age is not knowledge reserved solely lor artisrs: painting, like
sculpture, engraving, or any other art, is a language that can be
understood and spokei~by whoever knows the language. As far
as art goes, "1 can't" translaces easilg, we know, into 3 h a r says
nothing ro me." The verification of the "unity of feeling," that
is to say, of the meaning of the painting, will thus be the means
of ernancipation for rhe person who "doesn't know how" ta
painr, the exact equivalent to the verificacion-by-book of the
equality of intelligence.
Undoubtedly, there's a great distance from this to rnaking
masterpieces. The visitors who appreciated the Iicerary corn-
positions of Jacotot's seudents often made a wry face ar their
paintings and drawings. But it's not a matter of rnaking great
painters; it's a matter of rnaking the emancipated: people ca-
pable of saying, "me too, I'm a painter," a Statement that con-
tains norhing in the way of pride, only the reasanable feeling
of power that belongs to any reasonable being. "Thzre is no
pride in saying out loud: Me too, I h a painter! Pride consists
in saying sofcly to others: 'i(Qii neirher, you aren't a painter."z'
'We too, I'm a painter" means: me too, I have a souI, I have
feelings to communicate to my fellow-men. Universal teach-
ing's method is identical to its morals:
VVe say in universal ienching rhat every man who has a soul was born
with a soul. In universal teaching we belicve that man feels pieasure
and pain, and thar it is only up CO him to know when, how, and by
wbat Set of circurnstances he felt this pleasure or pain. , . . What is
more, man knows that there are orher Leings who sesembie him and
ro whom he could comrnunicace his feelings. provided [hat he places
theni in the circurnstances ro which he owes his pains and his pfea-
sures. Ac soon as he knows what moved him, he can pracrice moving
others il he srudies the choice and use of che means of cornrnunica-
tion. Ir's a language he has co learn.21
TAe Poets' Lesson
Onc rnust fenrv. All rnen hold in comnion the abiliry to feei
pleasure and pain. Dut this resemblance is for each only a prob-
ability to be verified. And it can be verified only hy the long
path of the dissimilar. I must verify ttic reason for my thought,
ehe humanicy of rny feelings, but I cttn do i t only by making
rhem venture forrh into the forest of signs that by chemsetves
don't Want co say anything, don't correspond with that thought
or that feeling. Since Boileau, it has been said that if something
is well conceived, ~t will be clearly articulated. This sentence is
rneaningless. Eike afl sentences that surreptitiously slip from
thought to matter, it expresses no intellectual adventure. Con-
ceiving well is a resource of any reasonable person . hrticutating
well is an artisan's work that supposes the exercise of the tools
of language. It i s true that reasonable man can do anytliirig. Bur
he must stitl learn the proper ianguage for each of the ehings he
wants to do: to make shoes, machines, or poems. Consider, for
example, the akktionate mother who sees her son come back
from a long war. The shock she feels robs her of speech. But
"the long embraces, tlhe hugs of iilove anxious at the very rno-
rnent of happiness, a love that seems to fear a new separation;
the eyes in which joy shines in the middle of tears; the mouth
that srniies in order co serve as the interpreter of ehe equivocal
language of tears; che kisses, the fooks, thc attirude, the sighs,
even the ~ilence,"~'-alil that imprvvis~rioain short-is thts not
che mose eloquent of poems? You feel the emotiori of it. But try
to communicate it, The inscantaneousness of these ideas and
feelings that contradict each other and are infinitely nuanced-
rhis must be trarismitted, made to voyage in the wi'tds of words
and sentetlces. And the way to do that hasn't been invented. Por
then we would have t o suppose a third levet in berween the in-
dividuality of that thought and common language. Would this
be still another language, and how would its inventor be under-
stood? We are left with learning, witA hnding the tools of that
expression in books. Not in gramrnarians' books: they know
nothing of this voyage. Not in orators' books: these don'r seek
to be jignred out; they wane to be liste~zedto. l h e y don'c want co
say anything; they want to command-to join minds, subrn:r
wills, force action. 99ne must learn near those who have worked
in the gap beeween feeling and expression, between the silent
hnguage of emotion and the arbitrariness of the spoken tongue,
near tkose who have tried co give voice to the silent diahogue tke
soul has with itself, ~ v h ohave gambied all rheir cre$ibility on
ehe kt of the simiiarity of minds.
Let's learn, ihen, near those poets who have been adorned
with the title genius. It is they who will betr- to us the secret
of that imposing word. The secret of genius is that of universal
teaching: learning, repeating, imitating, translating, taking
apart, putting back together. in the nineteenth century, ir is
rrue certain geniuses began to boast of superhuman insptracion.
But the classics, those geniuses, didn't drink out of the Same
cup. Racine wasn't ashamed 0f h i n g what he was: a worker.
He tearned Euripides and Vergil by heart, likeapavrot. He tried
translating thern, broke down their expressions, recomposed
them in another way. He knew that being a poer meant trans-
laeing rwo rimes over: cransiating into French Verse a mother's
sadness. a queen's wrath, or a lover's rage was also rranslating
how Euripides or Vergil translared them. From Euripides' H@-
palytrts, one had to transfate not only Phhdre---thar's undet-
stood-but ako Athalie and josabeth. For Racine had no illu-
sions abour what he was doing. He didn't thii~khe Iiad a bettet
undetstanding of human sentiments than his listeners. "If Xa-
cine kncw a rnothcr's heart hetrer rhan I. he would be wasting
his time telling me a h a t he read in it; 1 would not reiogniie
his observations in my memories, and I wouId not be moveci,
Shis great poet presurnes the opposite; all his work, all his care,
all his revisions, are perforrned in the hope that werything will
be undersrod by his eeaders exactly as he underseands it him-
elf.“^' Like alf creators, Racine instinctively applied the
method, that is to say, the rnorai, of universal teaching. He
knew that there are no men of greor ihughts, only men of great
expressiotrs. He knew chat alt tke power of the poem is concen-
trared in two acts: cransfation and counter-translation. He knew
ehe limits of translation an$ the powets of counter-translation.
He knew that the poem, in a sense, is aiways rhe absence of
another poem: that si1ent poem that a mother's tenderncss or a
lover's rage improvises. In a few rare eEects. the first approaches
the second to ehe pcint of imitating it, as in Corneille, in on&
or thrce syllabIes: "Me," or beeter, "That he die!" For the rest,
the poet is suspended in thecounrer-rranslation the listener will
do of ir. It is che counter-translation that will produce the
poem's emorion; it is the "sphere of jdeas radiatinp forth" that
will reanimate the words. At1 af thc poer's egort, all his work,
is to create that aura around each word, each expression. Ir is
for this reason that he analyzes, dissects, translates others'
expressions, that he tirelessfy erases and corrects his own. He
strives to say ewrythiing, knowing that every thing cannot be

said, but that it is rbe unconditional tension oF the translator
that opens the possibility of ehe other tension, the other wili:
language does not allow everything to be said, and "I rnusc have
recoutse to my own genius, to all men's genius, to figure out
what Racine meane, what he would say as a man, what he says
when he is not speaking, what he cannot say since he is only a
p~et."~'
This is the true modescy of the "genius," that is to say, of the
emaiicipated artist: he employs all his art, all his power, to show
us his poern as the absence of another that he credits us with'
knowing as weil as he. "We believe ourselves to be Kacine, and
we are right.'This belref has nothing to do with any chariatan's
pretenslon. It in no way implies thae out Verse is as good as Ra-
cine's, or that it soon wili be. IF means first that we understand
what Racine has to tell us, that his thoughts ace not different
frorn ours, and that his expressions are orily achieved by our
counter-translation. We know first thuough hiln that we are
people like him. And we also know through hirn thc power of
a Ianguage that rnakes us know this via the arbitrariness of
signs. W e know out "equality" with Racinc: thanks to tlte fruit
of Racine's work. His genius lies in having worked by the prin-
ciple of the equaliry of intelligence, in having not believed him-
self superior tu those he was speaking eo, in having even worked
for those whu predicted that he would fade like a season, It is
lefr t o us to verify thar: equality, eo conquer that power through
our own work. This does not mean making tragedies equal to
Racine's; ir rneans, rather, employing as much attention, as
much artistic research as he, ro recounting Biow we feel and to
making others feel i c , despite the arbitrariness of language or
the resistance of ail matter to the work of our hands. The artist's
emancipatory iesson, opposed on every count t o the professor's
stuitifying lesson, is this. each one of us is an artist to the extent
that he carries out a double process; he is not content to be a
mere journeyman buc wants ro make ali work a rneans of expres-
sion, and he is noe content to feel something but irres to impart
it to others. Tbc artisi needs equality as the explicatot needs
inequality. And he rherefore designs the model of a reasonable
society where the very thing rhar is outside of reason-matter,
linguistic signs-is traversed by reasonable will: rhat of relling
the story and making orhers feel che ways in which we are sim-
We can thus dream of a s ~ i e t yof the emancipatcd thar
would be a sociery of artists Such a society would ripudiate the
division between those who know and those who don't, bctween
those who possess or don't possess the property of inteliigence.
It would only know rninds in action: people who do, whti speak
about what rhey arc doing, and who thus transform all their
works into ways of demonstrating the humanity thar is in tliem
as in everyone. Such people would know that no one is born wit h
more intelligence than his neighbor, thar t he superiotity tliat
someone might manifest is only tlie fruit of as tenacious an ap-
plication to working with words as anotlier mighc show to
working with toolr; thar the inferiorirp uf someone else is the
cansequence of circumstances ihar didn't cornpel him to scek
harder. tri short, they would know clrat rhe perfection someone
directs toward his own art is no more than the particular appli-
cation of the power cornrnon to all reasonable heings, the Une
that each person feels when he withdraws into rhar privacy of
consciousness where lying makes no sense. They wouid know
that man's dignity is independent OE his position, chat "man is
not born to a particular position, but is meant ru be happy in
irnself, independently of what fare btings,'42"and rhar tlie re-
ectiun of feeling that shines in ihe eyes of a wife, a son, or a
ear friend presents ro rhe gaze of a sensitive enough soul ade-
uate satisfaction.
Such people wouid not be occupied crcaring phalansteries
vocations woirld correspond 'to pacsions, communities of
ic organirarions harmoniously distributing
te humankind, tiiere is no heiter
 -
72 Reason Between Eqzi~ds

link than this identical intelligence in everyone It is this that other's verification. And only an equal understands an equal.
is the just measure of similarity, igniting that gentie penchant EqucfIiry and inrelliyena are synonymous rcrms, exactl y like rea-
of the heart that leads us to help each other an$ iove each otber. snv and will. This synonymy on wliich each man's inrellectual
It is this that gives someone the means of measuring the extent capaci ty is based is also what makes society, in gcneral, possible.
of tlie services rhat he can hope for from his fellow-man and of The equality of inrelligence is rhe common bond of human-
devising ways to show him his appreciation. Rut let's not taik kind, the necessary and sufficienr condition for a society of rnen
like utilitarians. The principal service that man can expect from to exist . "If rnen considered themselves equal, the consriturion
man depends on that faculty of intercommunicating their ptea- would soon be completed."'~t is rrue that we don't know that
Sure and yain, hopes and fears, in order to be moved recipro- men are equal. We are saying chat they migbr be. T h i' s is our
cally: "If men didn'c have rhe faculty, an equal faculty, they opinion, and we are trying, along wich rhose who think as we
woukd soon become strangers to each other; they wouid scatrer do, to verify it. But we know rhat this mighi is rhe very thing
at random throughout the globe and societtes woulb be dis, tkat makes a society of kumans possible.
solved. . . . The exetcise of that power is at once the sweetcst
of our pleasures and the most demanding of our needs.""
We scarcely have to ask what these wise peopie woiild have
in t!ie way of laws, magistrates, assemblies, and triblinais.
Feople who obey the dictates of reason have no need of laws and
magistrates. The Stoics knew that aiready: virtue that knows
itsetit; the virtue of knowing oneself, is the guiding power of
alil other virtues, But we ourselves know that reason is not the
privrlege of the wise. There are no madmen except those who
insist on inequality and domination, those who Want ro be
right. Reason begins when discourscs organtzed with the goal
of being right cease, begins where equality is recognized: not
an equality decreed by law or forre, not a passively received
equality, but an equality in act, verified, at each step by those
marchers who, in eheir canstant attention to themselves and in
their endless rwolving around ehe truth, find the right Sen-
tences to make themselves understood by ochers.
We must therefore reverse the critics' questions. How, they
ask, is a thing like ehe equaiity of inteliigence thinkable? And
how could this optnion be established without disrupting the
social order? We must ask the opposite question: how is intei-
Iigence possible witiiout equality? Intelligence u not a power
of understanding based on comparing knowledge with its ob-
ject. It is the power to make oneseff understood through an-
41) The Society of Contempt

But there is no such thing as apofszbie sociery. T h r r c

is only the society thar exists. We were gercing lost i n our
dreams, b u t here comec someone knncking at the door. It's the
envoy from rhe Minister of Public Insrcuction, who has come

out rhecondiciuns ior estabtishing a schooi in the kingdorn. It's

the officer from ehe Military School of Delft assigned ro bring
order to tlte strange Ecote Normale Mititaire in Louvain. Lt's the
rnessenger bringing the Last issue of Annules Acddmrriue i,ovaniett-
sfs, containing che mafio of our cofieague Franciscus Josephus
Dumbeck, who sounds t h e charge against universal teaching,
rbe new corrupter of youth:
Since education embraces the cotality of the penpie and its Grsr virtue
resides in unitary harmony, a perverse rnethod caa descroy thatr uniry
and split the city into opposing Camps. . . . Let us rid tlie countty
of this rnadriess. Guided by the Iove of beaiity an$ of literature, stu-
dious young peoplc rnusc not only attempt ro flee laziness as the most
serious of evils; they must also cling ro that Decency, that Modesty,
ceiebrated by all anriquity wich divine honors, Only then witl chey
be citizens oF ehe elire. drferiders of law, masrers of virtue, iriter-
pceters of the divine commandnients, upholders of the couäitry, «I
the honor of an enrire race. . . . And you ron, Royal Majesty, rnusr
Bisten! For ir is ro you that the care of your subjectc has been conficied,
especially at rkat cender age. It is a sacred dutg ta annihilate teachers
of this kind, ro siippress schools of darkness!'
82 'fhr Society of Contenzpt
Thus the social world is not simpf y the world of non-reason;
it is that of irrationality, which is to say, o l an activity of the
perverted will, possessed bv inequality's passion. In litzking one
Person or grouP to another by co~pdrison,individuals contin-
ually reproduce this irrarionality, this stultification thac insti-
tutions codify and explicators solidify in their brains. This pro-
duction of irrationality is a work at which individuals ernploy
as much art, as much intelligence, as they would for the tea-
sonable comrnunication of their minds' w r k s , Except that this
work is a work of grief. War is che law of the socjal order. Bur:
by the terrn '"war,'' lec us not think heie of anyi'fi&i cfash OE
materialforces, any unleashing of hordes dorninated by'bestinl
instincts. War, like ali human vvorks, is first an act of words.
But these words rejecr che halo of iJeas radiating from a
counter-translator representing another intelligence and an-
other discourse. The wilf no longer attempts to figurc out and
to be figured out. i t makes its gnal the other's silence, the ab-
sence of reply, the plurnmering of minds into the material ag-
gregaeion of consent.
The perverted will doesn't stop using inrelli&nce, but its use
is btpsed on a fundamentaf dist~dctinn.I r habituates intelligence
into only seeing what contributes ro preponderance, what serves
to cancel out the other's intelligence. The universe of social ir-
rationality is rnade up of wills served by inteiligences. But each
of these wills charges itself with destroying another will by pre-
venting another inteltigence from seeing. And we know thst
this result isn't difficult to obtain. One need only play the rad-
ical exteriosity of the linguistic otder against the exceriority of
reason. The reasonable will, guided by its distant link with the
truth and by its desire co speak with those like i t , controls tkar
exteriority, regains it chrough the force of attenrion. The dis-
tracted wtH, detoured h n l the toad of equality, use; it in the
opposite way, in the rhetorical mode, to hasten the aggregarion
of rninds, their plurnmet into thc universe of material artrae-
rion.
Rherclrical Madncss
This is the power of rhetoric: the art of vensalai?zg that trics to
annihilate reason under the guise of reason. Once the Engiish
and Ftench revolutians put the power of deliberative assemblies
back at the center of politicat Iife, curious rninds revived Plaro's
and Aristotle's grand inquiry into the power of the false that
imitates the power of the truth. That is why. in 1816, the Gc-
nevan Etienne Dumont translated his friend Jeremy Beneham's
Trentzse on Parii~mentarj~ Sophirtriei into Prench. Jacorot dnesn't
mention this work. But we can feef irs influence in tlie parts of
the Lnngae taaternelle devoted to rhetoric. Like Bentham, Jacocot
piits the irrationality of deliberative assemblles a t the center of
his analysis. Thr vocabulary he uses to talk about them is ctose
to Dumonc's. And his analysis of falsc modesty recalls Ben-
tham's chapter nri the argument ud z~everrrtrn'idra,~~ Bur if both
exposed-the machinery of the sarne comedy, they dift-erd rad-
ically iri riieir outlook and i n tlie rnoral they drew from it . Ben-
tham's polemic was against the English conservativr assemblies.
He demonstrated rhe ravages of the well-cfoaked authuritarian
arguments thar tlie beneticiaries of the exisring order empioyed
to oppose any progressive reform, He denounced the allegoties
that hypostasize the existing order, the words thar throw a veil,
pieasant or sinister as needed, clver things, the sophistries thar
serve co associate any propnsition for reform with the specter uf
anarchy. For him these saphistries are mplaincd by the play of
interesr, their success by the intellectual weakness of the voting
public and the srace of servitude under which ir is kept by au-
thority. This is to say that disinterested and free-thinking, ra-
tional rnen can cornbat them successfully, And Dumonc, less
imperuous than his friend, insisted on the rehsonable hope chat
assimiiates the Progress of moral instirutions to that of the
physical sciences. "Aren" there in morais as in physics, errors
that philosophy has caused ro disappear? . . . It is possible to
discredit false arguments to the point that they no longer dare
slave: so Socrares had taught Afcibiades, as he tiad Callicks be-
fore him. Alcibiades might be amused by the foolish face of a
shoernaker glimpsed in his workshop and expound on che stu-
pidity of tbo~epeople;the philosopher woufd be content to reply
to him: ''SVhy aren't you more at ease when you have to speak
in front of those people?"'"
Thc Superior lnferiors
"That was rhe case iong ago," the superior rnind, habituiited
to the setious speech of voters' assemblies, will say. This was
true of rhe demagogic assemblies drawn from the scum of the
peopie who curned Co and fro like a weathervane from Demos-
thenes to Aeschines, and from Aeschines back to Demosthenes.
Let's look at this more ciosely. fhestu~rditythat made the Athe-
nian people turn somccimes to Aeschines, sornetimes tu Be-
rnosthenes, had a very precise content. What made rhem sur-
render alternatively to ehe one or the other was not tkeir igno-
rance or their versatility. 1i was that this speaket or that one, at
a particular rnoment, knew best how to incarnate the specitic
ctupidity of the Athenian peoplc: ciae feeling of its obvious su-
periority over the imbecile people of Thebes. Iri short, what
moved the masses was the same thing that animates superior
minds, the Same thing that 111akes society turn on itself from
one age to the next: the sentiment of the inequality of intelli-
gence, the sentirnent that distinguishes superior minds only at
the price of confusing thcrn with universal belief. Even today.
what is it tkat allows ehe thinker to scotn ehe worker's intelli-
gence if not the wotker's rontempt foc the peasant-like the
peasant's foc his wife, the wife's for hds ncrghbar's wife, and so
on unto infinity. Social irrationaiity finds its formula in what
could be called ehe pradox of the "superior infcriors": each per-
son is subservient to the one he represents to himself as inferior,
subservrent ta the law of rhe masses by his very pretension EO
distinguish hirnself from them.
Don't cry to find an alternative to these demagogic assemblies
in rhe reasonable serenity of assemblies made up of grave and
respectabie notabjes. Wherever people join together on the ba-
sis of their superiority ovec others, they give thernselves orer to
the law of material rnasses, An oligarchical assembly, a congress
of "honest people" or of "capable ones," will thusobey the brutc
law of marter rnuch more certainiy chan a democratic assemtily.
"A Senate has a derermined pace and direction that it cannot
itself change, and the Orator that propels it down its own road
and follows in its steps, alwayc wins out over the oti~ers."'~ Ap-
pius Claudius, absoiutety upposed to taking any insrructions
from the plebeians, was the senatorial Orator par excellence, be-
cause he understood better than any ocher thc inflexibiliry of
the rnovcment chat pushe$ the leaders of the Roman elire in
"their" direction. His rherorical machine, the machine of su-
perior men, seized a unique day: the day wheri che piebeians
gachered on the Aventine. It wouid have taken a rnadman ithat
is ro say, a reasonable man) to save things on rhat day, sorneone
capabie of an extravagance impossible and incomprehensible for
an Appius Claudius: going to iisten to tlie plebeians, prcsuming
that their mouths emitted a ianguage and not just nnises; spcak-
ing to ttiem, supposing they had the intefligence to understand
the words of superior minds; in short, consideririg them equally
reasonable beings.
The parabie of the Aventine recaits the paradox of the in-
egaiitarian frction: social inequality is unthinkabie, impossible,
except on the basis of the primary equality of irttelligence. In-
equality cannot think itself. Even Socrates advised Callicles in
vain rhat to break out of the rnaster-shve circle he must learn
that trtde equality is proportion, thus joining the citcte of those
who think of justice in retms of geometry. Wherever there is
laste, the "supcriot" gives up his reasori to rhe inferior's law. An
assembly of philosophers is an inert body that rnoves on the axis
of its own irrationality, the irrarionality of everyone. fnegali-
tarian society tries in vain to underscand itself, co give itself a
narural foundacion, Ir's preciseiy because ehere is no natural rea-
son for dornination that cunvencion commands and commands
absolutely. Those who explain domination by superiority faii
ineo the old aporia: the superior ceases being that when he ceases
dorninatixsg. The Duke of Lkvis, academician an$ Peer of
France, worried abour the social consequcnces cif the Jacotot
System: if one proclairned the equality of intelligence, why
would wives still obey their husbands, and the administrated
their adminjsrrators? IIf r he duke hadn't been slfrstiacied, like al l
superior minds, he would have naticed that it was his System,
that of ttie inequality of intelfigence, that was subversive of the
social order. Hf authoriry depends on intellectual superiority,
what witl happen on the day when an administrated Person,
hirnself also convinced of the inequaliey of intetligence, thinks
his prefect is an imbecile? Won't it be necessary to test minisrers
and prefects, burgenneisters and office heads, to verify their su-
periority? And how will we be Sure that some imbecile, whose
shortcornings when recognized would lead to citizens' disobe-
dienre. might not slip in among rlicm2
Only che partisans of the equality of intelligence can undrr-
stand this: if the qadi makes his slaves obey hirn, the white man
his biacks, i t is becatise he is neither superior nor inferior to
them in incelligence. IC circurnstances and cnnventions separate
and malce hierarchies among men, if rhey create aurhotity and
force obedience, it is because they alone are capabte of doing
that. "ht's precisely because we are all equal by nature that we
musc all be unequal by circumstances."'6 Equality remains the
only reason for inequaliry. "Sociery exists oniy through disrinc-
tions, and nature presents only equalities. f t is in k c t impos-
sible for equality to last for a long time; but even when ie is
destroyed, it remains rke only reasonable explanation for con-
ventional distinctions.""
The equality of inteliigence does even rnore for inequality: ir
proves that the overturning of the existing order woiild be just
as irrational as the order itself. "If someone asks me, What do
you think of the organization oF human socieries? 1 would re-
spond: This spectacle seems against nature. Nothing is in its
place, since rhere are different piaces for beings that aren'r dif-
ferent. And if human reason is called on to change rhe order, i t
would havc to recognize its incapacity to do so. Order for ordrr,
places far places, differences for differences, there are no reason-
able motives for change."'"
T h e Philosopher-King and the Sovereign People
Thus equality alone remains capable of expiaining an in-
equafiey that the inegalitarians will always be pmwerless to
imagine. Reasonable man knows the reason h r his irrationaliry
as a cirizen. But he knows it a t ttie Same time ro be insur-
mountable H e is alone in knowing the tircle of inequality. Bur
as a cirizen, he hintself is enclosed in it. "There is only one rea-
son; yec i t haso'r organized the social order. So, happiness could
not lie therein.'"~hilosophers are undoubtediy right to de-
nounce the functionaries who try to rationalize the existing or-
der. That order has no reason. Bur they deceive themselves Liy
purs~iingthe idcaof a social order that would finaily be rational.
The cwc,extreme and symn~etricalpoles of that prerension are
known: the old Platonic drearn of rhe philosopher-king and the
modern dream of rhe people's sovereignty. Undoubredly a king
can be a philosopher just like any orhet man. As rhe head, a
king has at bis disposat his ministers' reason, who have their
bureau heads' reason, who in turn have cverybody's reason. It's
true that he is nor dependent on liis superiors-only on his in-
ferior~.Bur the philosopher-kiiig ur rhe kingiy philusopher
takes part in society; and siiriery irnposes its laws, its superi-
orities, and its explanatory corporations on hirn, as i t does on
everyone.
'I'his is also wliy the orher pole of the philosophicai drearn,
the people'r sovereignty, is no sounder. For that sovereignry,
preserited as an ideal to be rcalized or a principle to be imposed,
has always existed. And history resounds wieh the names of
those kings who lost their throne for having ignored ir: nor one
of them reigns except by the weight given hirn by the rnasses.
The ptiilosophers ate ~ndignanc.The people, they say, cannot
part with ies sovereignty. We will answer that perhaps it catz't,
bur that it has always clone so since the beginning of the wor1d.
"Kings don't make peoples; they would try in vain rodo so. But
peopies can make leaders, and rhey have always wanted to do
So."2" The people is atienated from i t s leader exactly like the
leader from his people. This reciprocal subjugation 1s the very
principle of the ppoliticat fiction whose oaigin lies in rhe aiien-
ation of reason by the passion of inequality. The philosophers'
paralogism is to assume a people of nies. But this is a Contra-
dictory expression, an impossible being. There are only peoples
of citizens, people who have given.up their reason to rhe in-
. ?"*?-3;. .$
egalirarian hctiori. ' C
Lec's not confuse this alienacion with another. N7earen't. say-
ing that the citizen is the ideal man, the inhabiranr of ar$.egal-
itarian pofitical heaven that masks the reality of the inequality
between concrete individuals. We are saying the opposite: that
there is no equalicy except between men. that is to say, berween
individuats who regard each orher only as reasonabke beings.
The citizen, on the contrary, the inhabitant of the political fic-
tion, is man fallen into the land of: inequality.'
Reasonable man knows, rherefore, that rkere is no political
science, no polirics of truth. Trurh sertles no conflicr in the pub-
lic place. It speaks co man only in the solitude of his conscience.
It withdraws the rnornent thar conflicr eruyts between two con-
sciences. Whoever hoges to rneet u p with it must know, in any
case, that it cravels alone, without any retinue. Political opin-
ions; on the other hand, never fail to give themseives the most
imposing retinue: "Brotherhood or Death," rhey say; or, when
rheir turns came, "Legitimacy or Death," "Oligarchy or
Death," etc. "The first term varies but rhe second is aiways ex-
pressed or understood on the Rags, the banners of all opinions.
O n the right, we rcad The Soverezgnt~of A or Dedh. O n t he left
it's Ths Srrtlereignty of B or Ilecath. Death is never rnissing; B even
know phiiosophers who say, Su@#i.essia~~ QJ the Deadh Peltalty 07
Death."zl As Eor truth, it isn't given any sanction; it doesn't as-
sociate wich death. Following Pascal, let's say: we have alway~
already found the means of giving justicc to force, bur weuren't
close to finding the way togive force to justice. a'lrie very project
doesn't make sense. A force js a force. It can be reasonable to
make use of i t . Biit it is irrational to Want ca render it reason-
able.
How t~ Rave Reasonalily
So it remains to che reasonable man to subinit to che madness
of being a citizen, while trying to safeguard his reason. Phi-
losoghers believe rhey have found the way: nopassr'ue obedience,
they say, no di~tieswithout rights! Btit this is speaking from
6stractin~.There is nothing, there will never be anything, in
the idea of duty that irnplies rights. Whoever is alienated is
absolutely alienated. To suppose anything eise is a poor ruse of
vanity that has no other effcct rhan to racionaiize alienation and
to trick the one who pretends orherwise. Reasonable man will
not be taken in by these tricks. He will know thar the social
order Lias nothing better to oEer him than the s~iperioricyaf
otder over disorder. "'Any sort of order, so long as it cansiot Re
troubled: that has characterized sociai organizations since the
beginning OE the ~ o r l d . "Keeping
~~ a rnonopoly on iegitimate
violence is still che proven best way to limic violence and atlow
teason some asy lum where it can brr freely practiced. Reasonable
man thus does not consider himself above rhe law. W r e he to
attribute this superiority to himself, he would plurnmet into
rhcdestiny of those inferior superiors who constitute the human
species arid maintain its irrationalicy. He will consider ehe social
order a rnystery situated beyond rsason's power, the work of a
superior reason that requires the partial sacrifice of his own. He
will submit himself as citizen to that which che irracionaiicy of
governments requires, refilsing only ro adopc the reasons given
by it. He wifB not, forall that, abdicare bis reason. He will bring
it back to its firsc principle. Reasonable wiii, we have seen, is
first of all the arr of conquering oneseif. Reason will preserve
itself faithftilly by controlling its own sacrifice. Reasonable man
will be uirttlozrs. H e will partially give away his reason a t the
command of irrationality, in order to maintain the threshold of
rationaliry thar is the capacitp tu conquer oneself Thus reason
will always maintain an impenetrabte stronghold in the middle
of irrationality.
Social irrationaiity is war in its two aspecrs; the battlefield
and the tribunal. The bstrlefield is the true portrait of society,
the consequence ~ r o d u c e dexactly and i n t e g r a l l ~by che opiniort
on which ic is founded,
When two men rneet each other, they are polite as though they be-
Iieved each ocher equal in inteIligence; buc if one of rhem i s found
deep in the middle OF the othet's counrry, there is no langer as mucti
ceremony: he abuses his force like his reason: evetyfhing about rhe
inrruder denotec a barbarian origin; he is treaced wirhout ceremony
like an idiot. His pronunciation causes peals of laughter; the awk-
wardness of his gestuces, everything about him, announces rhe bas-
tard species ro which he belongs: they are a heavy peopfe, we are light
and frivo1ous; they are coarse, we are proud and high-minded. In gen-
eral, one people believes itself in good faith to be superior to another
people; and when a little passion is thrown in, war erupts: as mang
people as possible are killed, on both sides, iikc insects being crushed.
The moxe kilied, the more glory. One is paid so much per head; a
crosc is demanded for a burned village, 3 grear ribbon if it's a big cicy;
and this traffic in blood is called love of country. . . . Ht i~ in rhe name
of country that you atrack neighboring peopies like savage beasts; and
if you were asked wiiät yoiir country is, yoii woulci all cut each other's
throats before agreeing on tlie nlarter."
And yet, says a chorus oF philosophers and the common ron-
science, we must make distinctions. There are un just wars, wars
of conquest rhat the madness of domination dcmands; and there
are just wars, those where we defend clic ground of r>urcouncry
under attack. The former artilleryman f oseph Jacotot m&sthave
known this, he who had defended his endangered country in
1782 and who, in 1815 , opposed with all his parliamentariaa,
strength the King's return i i i tbe harids «f the invaders. Bur ie
was precisely his expericnce rhat aflowed him to notice that rhe
morality oP the thing was compietely different from what i t had
seerned at first. The defender of the country under attack does
as a citizen what he would not d o as a man, H e doesn't have to
sacrifice his reasori to virtue. For reason requires the reasonable
animai to 90 what he can to preserve himself as a living being.
Reason, in this case, is reconciied wirh war, and egoism with
virtiie. There is thus no particular merit in all this. O n theother
hand, he who obeys tkie orders of the conquering country, if he
is reasonable, meritoriousiy sacrifices his reason to society's
mysrery. He needs far more virtile to preserve his interior for-
tress and to know, when duty is done, how to rerurn t o nature,
to reconvere into the virtue of free thaught the self-mastery he
invested in being obedient as a citizen.
But for all this, war between armies is scill reason's teasc dif-
ficult tesc. Reason is content to controf its own suspension, I t
suffices for ie to dominate itself as it obeys the voice of an au-
thurity that has enough power to make itseff unequivocatly
heard by everyone. Much more perifous is action in those placcs
where authority is yet to be established in the midsr of concra-
dictory passions: in assem blies deliberating law, in tribunals
judging how it is ro be appiied. These places presenr reason with
the Same sort of rnystery t o which one can only bow down. In
rhe middfe of passion's brouhaha and irrationaiiry's sophisrties,
the balance cips; iaw makes its voice heard, a voice that must be
obeyed like that of a general. But this mystery requires the rea-
sunable man's participation. It invites reason not onto the ter-
rain of sacrifice but onto terrain that i t assures i t is its own, that
of redroning. And yer the reasonable man knows i t is only a mar-
rer of combat; only the iaws of war prevail. Success dcpends on
ehe fighter's address and Force, not his reason. This is why pas-
sion reigns here through its weapon, rhetoric. Rhetosic, we
know, has nothing to d o witfi reason. But is the opposice true?
Doesn't reason have anything ro do with rhetoric? Isn't i t , in
general, the speaking being's control OE himself that permits
him co make, in any domain, an drtirtic work? Reason would
not be itsetf if it didn'r granr rhe power to speak in the asscmbly

as in any other glace. Reason is the power to learn ail languages.
Ht will thus learn tke langiiage of the assembly and the tribunal.
It will iearn to rave.
So we must firsr side wlth Aristotie and againsr Pllato: it is
shameful. far the reasonable man to get beacen in a tribunal,
shameful for Socrates to have lost the battle and his life to Me-
letus and Anytus. The language of Anytus and Meletus, tfie
orator's language, must be learned. And it is learned like other
languages, more easily, even, rhan the otiiers, for its vocabulary
and Syntax are enclosed in a tight circle. The "everything is in
everything" Slogan applies better here than in any orher study.
Thus jo?nethilag must be learned--a speech by Mirabeau, For ex-
ample-and the resr will follow. This rhetoric that required so
much work foc the students of the 81d Master is a garne for us:
"We know everything in advance; everytlaing is in our books:
only the narnes rnust be changed.'""
Rut we also know thar the bombast of sentences and stylistic
Ornament are not the quintessence of oratorical art. Their func-
tion is not to persuade ininds but to distrctct them. What carries
the decree-just as against a forrification-is assauit, words,
the decisive gesture. An assembly's fate is often decided by the
audacious person who, eo stiffediscussion, is the firsr to cry out
"voice votel" So let us also learn, we EOO, the art of crying out
"voice vote!" at rhe right moment. Lea. us not say this isn't wor-
thy of us and of reason. Reason doesn't need us; it's we who need
it. Qur so-called dignity is onty laziness and cowardice, similar
to tliat of the proard child who dc~esn'tWant to improvise in front
of his Peers. I n a little while, perhaps, wr will also'cry out
"voice vate!" But we will shoiit it out along wich thc band of
cowards who are echoing the winning orator-he who wiil have
dared whac we were too lazy to do.
1s i t , then, a matter of making universal teaching inro a
sctiooi of political cynicism, reviving the sophistries Bentham
denounced? Whoever wants ro understand this lesson of the reu-
3onalEbEe n2un ruvtng must rathec conipare it with tlaat of the zg-
normt schoolm~ster.It is a questiori of verifying, in ali cases, rea-
son's power, of always seeing what can be done with i c , what i t
ran do ro remain arrive in rhevery heart of extreme irrationality.
The reasonaMe man rauiug, encdosed in the circle of sociai mad-
ness, shows that the individual's reason never ceases to exercise
its power. In die closed field of tlie passions-exercises of the
distracred will-it must be shown that artentive will can always
do as mlich-and more than-what the passioias can do. The
queen af rhe passions can do better than they u ~ h oare her siaves.
?'
"The most seductive sophistry, the one with the most verisi- 4
1
rnilitude, will always be the work of the person who knows besc i'i
whar a sophistry is. H e who knows the righr way departs from :/I
;/I
it when necessary, as much as is necessary, and never too rnuch. i;
No matter what superiority passion grants us, it can itself be
dazzled, sioce ir is a passion Reason Sees everything as it is: it 8li
shows, it hicies, as much as it deems suitabie, never more not Er
$1,
i'?
iess."" This is a lesson not in ruse bur in constancy He who :I
,'.'
knows liow co remain true co himseif in the middle of irratio-
., ,
;b
nality will triumph over rhe passions of others exactly as he 9%
*ir
iii
triurnphs over his w n . "Everything is done by the passions, H jiit
know; but everything, even follies, would be miich better done :&
by reason. TAis is the unique principle af Universal Teach-
Are we ihen that far from Socrates? He too tauglit, in tlie
Phnrdrm as in 7he Reppuhblrc. that the philosopher will tell the
good lie, the one that is exactly necessary and sufficient, because ..
,i;r
he alone knows what lying 1s. The whole differente for ~ i iss pre- ''$
cisely in this: r e suppose rhat everyonc knuws what lying is. It #
is even by rliis thar we defined the reasonable being, by his in- 5
Ij
capacity tu Lie to BimseljF We are thus not speaking at ail about $1
rhe wise man's privilege, but about the power of reasonable
people. And this power depends on an opznzon; thar of the equal-
ity of intelligente. This is the opinion that was inissing in %C-
a t e s , and that Aristotle couldn'r corrert. The very superiority
that ailows the philosopher to locate the tiny diflsrence that
fmls every time dissuades him from speaking to rhe "cornpan-
ions of slaverp.""' Socrates did not wanr to rnake a spcrech to
gG The Soriety of Conrernpt -
please the people, to seduce the "ungainly animal.'We djdn't
Want to study ehe art of the sycophants Anytus and Meletus.
H e thought, and practically everyone praised him for it, that
this would decay his oacnphifosophy. But the basis for bis opin-
ion is this: Anytus and hieletus are imbecitic sycophants; thus,
there is no art in their speeches, only recipes; there is nothing
to be Iearned from thern. Yet the speeches of Atiytus and Me-
letus were a rnanifestation of ehe human intelligence like those
of Socrates, We won't say they were as good, We will say that
they derived from rhe Same intelligence . Socrates, the "ignorant
one," thought hirnself superior ro e-he rribunai'orators; he was
too lazy to Iearn cheir are; he consented to the world's ixratio-
nality. Why did he act like this? For the Same reason that de-
fiated Laius, Oedipus, and all the tragic heroes: he believed in
the Delpl~icoracIe; he thoughc thar he was ehe elect of the di-
vinity, that stie kad sent him a personal rnessage. He shared the
madness of superiot beings: the belief in genius. A divinely in-
spired h i n g doesn't learn Anytus's speeches, doesn't repeat
them, doesn't try, when he needs EO,to appropriace their art, It
is thus thar the Anytuses become masters in the social ordet.
But, one may srili. ask, wouldn't they be anyway? What good
is triumphing in the fotunl if one already knows that nothing
can change the social otder? What good is ic fur reasonable in-
dividuals-or the emancipated, if you will-to save their lives
an$ safeguard their reason, if they can du nothing to change
cociety and are redueed to tke sad advantage of raving better
than tke madmen?
The Speech on the Aventine
Let's reply firse of ail that the worsc is never certain, since, in
a given social order, it's possible for ail individuals to be rea-
sonable. Saciety as such will nevet be reasonable, but it could
experience the miracle oF reasonable mornents arising not in the
coinridence elf intelligentes-thar wouild be stultificacion-
bur in the reciprocal recognition of reasonabte wilis. When the
Senate raved, we joined Appitis Claudius's chorus. That was the
way to get i t over with most quickiy, to get to the Scene on tbe
Aventine sooner. It's Meneriius Agrippa who is spcaking now.
And the details of what he is telling the plebeians matter little.
The essential is that he is speaking to ehern, and they are lis-
tening to him; that they are speaking to him and he hcars them.
He speaks to them about legs and arms and stomachs, and that's
perhaps not very flatcering, But whar he imparts to thern is their
equaliry as speaking bcings, their capacity to understand as soon
as chey recognize themseives as equaily marked by the sign of
intelligence. He tells them they are the stomachs-this derives
from uhe art learned by studving and repeatitrg, by breakirig
a p r c and putting back together others' speeches; let's say,
anachronisticaliy, that it dcrives from inteliectual emancipa-
tion. But he speaks co them as men, and, in so doing, makes
them into men: this derives from intellectual emancipation. At
the murnent when society threatens to be shattered by t ts own
madness, reason gerforms a saving social action by exerting the
totality of its own power, that of the recognized equality of in-
tellectual beings.
Fot this rnornent of civil war undone, this rnornent uf the
reconquered, victorsous power of reason, it was worth Raving
saved his reason for so long, and apparenrly so futilcly, by ieasn-
ing from Appius Ciaudius rhe art of raving berter than he.
There is a life to reason that can remain faithful to itself within
social ~rrationaiity,and it can have an effect. This is what we
must work toward. Whoever knows how, for the good of rhe
cause, ro compose, with equal attenrion, the diatribes of an Ap-
pius Claudius or the fables of a Mencniiis Agrippa is a student
of universai teaching, Whoevet recognizes, along wich Menc-
aius Agrippa, that every man is born to understand what any
other man has to say to hirn knows inteliectual ernanciparion.
These happy encountets amount CO littje, say the impatient
or the self-sarisfied. And thr Aventine is oid history. Brit pre-
cisely a t the sanle rirne, other voiees. very different voices, n ~ ~ k e
themselves heard, t o afirrn that the Aventine is rhe beginning
98 The Soriety ofconrempt
of our kistory: that of the self-knowiedge that makes yesterday's what I arn saying, the nation would soon be emancipated, not
plebeians and today's proletarians capable of doing anything a wirh the emancipation given by scholars, by their explications
Inan can do. In Paris, another eccentric dreamer, Pieare-Sinon d t the 6 z ~ e olf the people's inrelligence, bue with the emancipa-
Ballanche, teils the Story of the Aventine in his own way, and tion seized, even against the scholars, when one ceaches one-
reads in it the Same jaw proclaimed: that of the equality of ~elf*''~f'
speaking beings, of rhe power acquired by those who recognize
themselves marked with the sign of inteliiigence and thus be-
come capable of marking a name in heaven. And he announces
this Strange prophecy: "Roman history, as it has appeared tn us
up till now, after having in parr ordered ourdestiny, after having
entered. in one form, into the composition of oür sociaf life, our
customs, our opinions, our laws, comes now, in a different form,
to order our new thoughts, those that must enter into the com-
position of our future social life.''28In the workshops of Paris ot
Lyon, a few clreaming minds hear this stury and recoune i t in
rheir turn anb in their manner.
Undoubtedly this prophecy of a new era is a daydream. Bus
this is not a daydream: one can alwoys, ae the vesy heart of in-
egalicarian madness, verafy the equaliry of intelligence, and thae
verificacjon has an eRect, Thr victory on the Aventine is very
real. And undoubeedly it isn't wliere we think it is. The tri-
bunes the plebeians won would rave just like the others. But
that everg pliebeian felt hirnself a man, believed hirnseif capa-
ble, believed his son and any other person capable, of exercising
tbe prerogatives of intelligente-this is not nothing. There can-
not be a dass of the emancipated, an assernbly or a society of
tbe emancipated, Bue any individual can always, ar any mo-
ment, be emancipated and emancipate sorneone else, announce
to others thepractice arid add ro ehe number of people who know
themselves as such and who no longer play the comedy of the
inferior supriors. A society, a people, a state, will always be
irrational. Bur onecan multipiy wishin thesebodies the number
of people who, as individuals, will make use of reason, and
who, as cititens, will know how eo seek die art of ravnving as rea-
sonably as possible.
It can thus be said, and it must be said: "Hf each family did
3 The Emancipator and
His Monkey

The duty of Joseph Jacotoc's disriples is thus sim-

ple. They mustr announce to everyone, tn all places and all ctr-
cumstances, the news, the practlce: one can reath what one
doesn't know. A poor and ignorant father can thiis begin edu-
cating his childrcn: sonterhing nzwt be Etwinedand nll the ver/ i.ela.ted
fo It, on thzs pvincrple: everjoppe 2s of equal intellzgeirce.
They must announce rhis principle and devote thernselves to
its verificacion: speak to the desritute Person, make him talk
about what he is and whar he knows; show him how ro instruct
Iiis child; copy rhe prayer that the child knows by hearr; give
him the first volurne of Tedemaq~~cand have him learn ie by heart;
respond to the demand of those who Want to Iearn from the mas-
ter of universal teaching u~hathedaesn'! knnw; finally, use all pos-
sible means of convtncing the ignorant one of his power. A Jis-
ciple in Grenoble couldn't persuade a poor and eIderly woman
to learn to read and write. He paid her to get her consent, She
learned in five months, and tiow she is emancipting her grand-
chitdren. '
This is what r-nust be done, all the while aware that a I.;nowl-
edge of TeIe'm~p4~ or of any orher rhing is, in itseif, irrelevant.
The groblem is noe to create schofars. Bt t s to raisc up those who
believe themselves inferior in intelligente, tn make thern leave
~ h swamp
e where they are stagnacing-not rhe swamp of ig-
norance, bur the cwamp of self-conternpt, of conrernpc tn nnd
 --
The Ernancrpdtos. find His Morskey
I02
ofirre(/ for rhc reasonable creature. It ir to rnake emancipated
and ernancipating men.
Emancipaiory Method and Soiial Method
Universal teaching shouidn't be placed on the prograni of re-
forrnist parties, nor should intellectual ernanciparion br in-
sctibed on the banners of sedition. Only a man can emancipte
a man. Only an individual can be reasonable, and ~ n l with y his
own reason. There are a hundred ways to instrucc, and ieaining
also takes place ar the srultderi school; a prokssor is a thing,
less easily handled than a book, undouhtedly, bur he can be
ledrrsed: he can be observed, imitared, dissccted, pur back to-
gether; his person, avaiiable forobservation, can be tested. One
always learns when Iistcn~ngto someonr s~eaking.A professor
is neither more nor iess intelligent than another man, and he
generally presenrs a great quanrity of facts for the researcher's
observation, Bur there is only one way to emancipate. And no
party or government, no army, schwl, ot insriturion, will cver
emancipate a single person.
This is not at all a meraphysicai proposition. The experimene
was performed in Louvain, under rhe patronage of His Majesty,
the King of the Netherlands. We know rhat the King was en-
lightened. His son, Prince Frederick, was taken with philoso-
phy. Responsible for the army, he wanred it modern and edu-
cated, like the Prussian arrny. He was interested inJacotor, ruf-
fered because of rhe disgrace the acadernic authorities nf
Louvain held him in, and wanted to do something for bim, and
for the Dutch arrny as well. Ar rhat time the army was a priv-
ilegrd rcrrain for rrying out reformisr ideas and new pedagogies.
The Prince so conceived it, and persuaded his father t o create a
military school in Louvain and to confide ihe pedagogical mis-
sion ro Jacotot,
This was a good intention but a poisoned gift: Jacotot was a
mastrr, not the head oh an insiitution. His merhod was designed
ro form emancipated men, not rnilitary insiructotr, or indeed
The Emancipdtor and Nis Monbrry r 03
servants of any kind of social speciality. Let's understand this
well: an emancipated man can just as well be a rnilitary insrruc-
tor as a locksmich or a lawyer. Bur universal teaching cannot,
withour being spoiLed, specialize in the production of a set kind
of social actor-especially ih these sociai acrors are insttuctnrs
of a body of rnen, rniiitaty or orheru~ise.Universal teaching he-
lorags ro famifies, and the best thar a n enlightened ruler can do
for its propagation is to use his aurtiority to protect the free cir-.
culation of the service. An enlightened king can certainly er-
ra1iIish universd ceaching when and where he pleases, buc such
an establishmeni would not endure, foc the human unimdl be-
iongs to the old merhod. The experimenr could undoubredly be
atrempted, for the glory of the ruler. I t a?oiiId obviously fail,
bue there are instructive failtnres. 0 n l y one guarantee was re-
quired: che absolute concentration of power, the social scenc
swept clean of all its incermediaries tci give free rein tu just one
couple, ehe King and the philosopher. This, rlien, was neces-
sary: firsc, to get rid of all the advisers nf the old method i n the
conventionai manner of civilized councries, that is co say, by
giving them all a promotion; cecond, tu supptess alf interme-
diaries &her than those chosen by rhe philosopher; and rhird.
to give all power to the philosopher:
They would do whar:I said, everything I s ~ i dnothing
, bur what I said,
and ttle responsibility would weigh entirely vn me. 1 uvould ask for
nothing; on the contrary, the intrrmediaries would ask rne what was
to be done, and how i t was ta 1,e doiie, everyrhing to be proposed to
ehe King. I woitld he regardeci not as an employed functionary, but
a a philosopher whose consulrations were needed. Finatly, ttie estab-
lishmenr 06' ~iniversal tcaching would be considered, for tlie time
beitig, the first and foremost of all the affairs in the Kingdorn.=
These are conditions thar no civilized monarchy could ac-
rnmodate, especially for ii Sure failute. Rievertheless, thc King
sisred on the experimenr, and Jacotor, as grateful puesc, at-
epred a basrard trial of cohabitation with a commission of mil-
ary instrucijon, under the auchority d the sommander in
arge at Louvain. The school was created on this basis in March
 -.
r 04 The E??znracipatnrand Hbs Motzkey
1 8 2 7 , and ehe students, a t first bewildered t o hear rhrough an
interpreter that their prokssor had nothing to teach thern, must
have found some benefit i n i t , since at the end of their reguiar
term, they petitioned ro have their stay a t sctiool prolonged so
they m i g h t learn languages, history, geography, mathematics,
physics, chemistry, topographical drawing, and hrtificarion by
the universal method. Bur ehe masrer wasn't satisfied wich rhic
.rpoiled universal. teaching, or with the daily conflicts wich rhe
civilian academic authorities aind the military hierarchy.
T h r o u g h his outburscs, he hastened rhe demise of the school,
Me had obeyed the King i n forming milirary itistructors by a n
accelerated method. But he had better things to d o ehan to fab-
ricate second lieurenants, a type that will never be'lacking in
any society. W h a t is more, he solemnly warned his students that
they should never try to militate for the establishrnent of uni-
versal teaching in che arrny. B u t neither should they forget that
they had witnessed an ddventtlre of the m i n d a licrle greater than
thc fabrication of subaltern oficers:
You fornled s~ibalternsi n a few months, it's true.
Bur ro persist in obtaining resutts as paltry as thoseof the European
schools, civil as much as rnilitary, is to spoil universal reaching.
Let society profit from y&r experiences and he content w i t h thern,
that will make me happy: you will be useful to the State. .
But never forget rhat you have Seen resulrs ofa much superior order
CO those you have obtained and to which you wiil be reduced.
Make use, then, of inrellectuat emancipation for the benefit of
yoursetves and your children. Help the poor.
Bilt for your councry, confine yourseives to making subafrerns and
acadernic citizeris.
You no longer need me to move forward in thar rut.]
T h i s speech by rhe Sjounder 6 0 his rnilicary disciples-he had
some fairhful ones.-appears on the frontispiece of the Mathe-
matirs vol~irneof Slniuersat Zaching, a work in which, in keeping
wich the rnaster's frustrating habit in every matter, there isn't a
singie word about mathematics. No onk is a disciple of universal
teaching if he hasn't tead that work as tbe history oF the Ecole
The Emn~ncipntorand Hif Monkey I og
Normale in Eouvain; if he isn't convinced of this opinion: uni-
versal teaching isn'c and cannot be asocial method. Ir cannor he
gropagated in and by social institlr tions. T h e emnczpated are Lin-
doubtedly respectful of the social ordet, They know chat ic is,
in any casc, less bad than disorder, B u t that's all that they grant
it, and no institution can be satisfied with this minirntim. Xt's
not enough for inequality rs be r e s p e c t d ; it wants t o be be-
tieved and loved. It wants co be e,uplicated. Every instjtution is
a n ex>licdtio~t in social act, a drarnacization of inequality. Its
principlc is and always will be antithetical to that of a method
based on equality and the refusal of explications. Universal
reaching can only be directed to individuals, never ro societies.
P-lumari sucieries, united in nations, Brom the Laplanders ro tlie Pat-
agonians, need form for their crability, some kind of order. Those who
arc responsible for maintaining rhe neccssary order must explain and
have it explained that this order is the besc of all orders, and they must
prevent. any conrradictory explanation. This is the goal of constitu-
tions antl iaws. Every sociaI order, telying on an explication, thus ex-
ciudes ali other explications and especially rejects thc mechod of in-
teliectual ernaricipation, based as i r is on the futility and wen the dan-
ger of explication in reaching, The h u n d e r even wenr s o far as ro
recognize that the citizen of a state musr respect the sacial order he's
a part of, as well as the explication of that order; bur he also estab-
iiished that the law only asked of a cirizen that he conform his actions
and words to this order, and could not impose tlioughcs, opinions, or
'
beliefs on hirn; that the inhabiranr ofa country, before being a cirizcn,
was a man; char che family was a sanctuary where the father was rhe
siipreme arbirer, ~ n that
d consequently, i c was there and there alnne
that inte1Eectual emanciparion could be fruicfully sown."
Let's a f i t m , then, that universai texfiing will not tnbe, it will
not be established in society. But it u4ll nntpcrirh, because it is
the natural method of the human rnind: tl-iat of all people who
look for tfleir path themseives. W h a t the disciples can d o is ro
announce t o a f f individuals, t o atl rnothers and fathets, the way
t o wach whar one doesn't know on rhe grinciple of the equality
of intelligence.
 r 015 The Emancipgtuv and His Monkey "-
Emancipation of Men and %nscructionof the People
It musr be announced to everyane. First, undoubtedly, to the
poor: they have no other way to educate thernselves if they can'r
pay the salaried explicatocs or spend long years on school
benches. And above ail, it is on them that the prejudice of the
inequality of intelligente weighs mosr heavily. It is they who
rnust be raised up from their hitmitiared position. Universal
teaching is the poor's method.
But it isn't a method of tbe poor. Xt's a method of rnen, rhat
is to say, of inventors. Whoever employs iti'xg mader what his
science or his rank, will mulripiy his intcllectual- powers.
must therefore be announced to princes, rninisgrs, and rhe
powerful: they cannot i n s t i t ~ t euniversal reaching, buc they can
apply ir to teach tlieir children. And they can make use of their
social prestige ro announce the service far and wide. Thus the
eniighrened King of the Nethetlands would have done better
to teach his children what he didn't know, and to speak out for
the difision of emanciparory ideas to families chrougkout the
kingdom. Thus Joseph Jacotnt's former colleague, General La-
fayette, could announce it to the Resident of the United Stares,
a riew councry not weighed down by centuries of scholastic stul-
tification. In the days following the July Revolution vf r 830,
the Founder ieft Louvain fvr Paris to indicate to the victorious
iiberals an$ progressives the means of realizing rheir good
. thoughts regarding the people: General Lafayette had only to
spread universal teaching throughout che national guard. Casi-
mir PCrier, former enthusiast of the docrrine and future Prime
Minister, was now in a position to spread the service far and
wide, Barthe, Laffitte's Minister of Public Instrurtion, camc.
hirnself to consult with Joseph Jacotot: whar rnusr he do to or-
ganize the education that the government owes the people and
ehat he intends to give them according to the best merhods?
Nothing, answercd rhe Pounder ; government doesn'r owe rhe
people an educarion, for the silnpte reason rhat one doesn't owe
people whar they can take for tliemselves. And education is like
liherty: it isn't given; it's taken. So what musr he done? asked
thc minister. You need onIy announce, he replied, that I am in
Paris at thc Corneille Motel, where every day I receive fathers of
poor farnilies to show them the means of emancipating rheir
children.
It must be told to all those who worr): about science or the
people, or both. The learned should also learii it: chey have che
means of increasing their intellectual power tenfold. They think
they are onIy capable of teaching what they know. We are aware
of rhat social ic)gic of false rnodesty where whar one tenouncec
establishes rhe sntidity of whar one annnunces. Rut scholars-
rhosc who research, certaiiily, not rhose wlio explicate the
knowledge of others-perhaps Want something a Iittle newer
and a %itrleless conventional. Ler them begin teaching what
they don't know, and maybe rhey will discover uns~ispectedin-
teliectuai powers ttlar will pur rhem on the road to new discov-
eries.
It musr be told to republicnns who Want a free and equal
people and who imagine rhat this is a tnarter of laws and con-
stitutions. It rnusr be told tu all men of Progress, who, with
generous hearts and fiery brains-inventors, phiianthropists,
and lovers of rnathemarics, poiytechnicians and philotechni-
cians, Fourierists arid Saint-Sirnonians-scm the counrries of
Europe and the fiejds of knowfecige in search of technical in-
ventions, agronomical arnetiorarions, economic forrnulas, pecfa-
gagical methods, moral institutions, architectural revolutions,
typogrqhical procedures, ericyclopedic publications, etc. , for
the ph~sical,intellectual, and moral improvement of the paar-
est and most ntimerous class. Thev can do rnuch rnore for the
poor rhan they chink, and at less expense. They spend time and
money experirnenting with and grornoting grainlofts and rnid-
dens, fertilizer and conservarion methods, in an attempt to irn-
prove cultivation and enrich the peasants, to ctean the rot out
of farm strearns artd the prcjudices out of rustic minds. It is
 "."
r 08 Tbe EmanciJatov and His MonLey
much simpler than that: with a used copy of TdLhnaqtte, or even
a pen and some paper to wrtte down a prayer, they can eman-
cipate the inhabitants of the countryside, make thern conscious
of their iniellectual power; and the peasants thenlselves will set
about improving ciil tivation and grain conservation. Stdtif;cn-
tion is not an inveterate superstition; it is fear in the face of lib-
erty. Routine is noc ignorante; it is the cowardice and pride of
people who renounce their own power for the unique pleasure
of afirming their neighbor's incapacity. It is enough to e?jza?z-
ctpdte. Don't ruin yourselves by inilndarirag fawyers, noeaties,
and phatmacists of subprefectures with enc~clopedicvolurnes
inaended to teach rhe inhabitants of the countryside the health-
iest ways to preserve eggs, brand slieep, hasten rnelon ripening,
salr butter, disinfect water, fabricate beet Sugar, and make beer
out of pea pods. Show them rather how to make their son repeat
"Calypso," "Calypso could," "Calypso coiild not," and yoti wi%B
see what they can do,
Such is the unique chance, the uriique chance of inteliectuai
emancipation:: each cirizen is also a man who makes a wo&, wirh
the pen, with the drill, or with any other rool. Each superior
inferior is also an equal who recounts and is in turn tofd by an-
other, the Story of what he has sern. I r is always possibte to play
wich this relation oF self to seif, to bring it back to its primary
veracity and waken the reasonable man in social man. Whoever
doesn't seek to introduce the method of universai teaching into
rhe workings of the social rnachine may awaken thar entirely
new energy that fascinated iovers of liberty, that power wi thout
gravity or agglomeration that is propagated in a ßash by the
contact between two poles. Whoever forsakes the workings of
the social machine has the opportunity to make the electricat
energy of emancipation circuiate.
Only che srultified followers of the Qld Master and those
powerful in the oid mode will be Cast aside. They were aiready
anxious about the evils of instruction for the sons of the people,
imprudentty cut oK from their condirion. What is speaking
about emancipation and rhe equality of inteliigencc worth, if
i t is only to say that husband and wife have rhe samc intelli-
gence! A visitor bad atready asked jacoroc if wurneri i n these
circumstances arouId stiII be pretty! Let's deprive the stultified
of a. response, then, and let them turn about within their
academico-noble circle, We know that it is this that defines the
stuitifying vision of the world: ro believe in the reality of in-
equalicy, CO imagine that the superiors in society are truiy su-
perior, and that society would be in danger if the idea should
spread, especially arnong the Ioafer classes, that this superiority
is onlp a conventional hrtion. In fact, only an einancipated per-
son is untroubled by the idea thar the sociat order is entirely
conventionaI: only he can scrupuiously obey superiors thar he
knows are Iiis equals. H e knt~wswhat he can expecr of the social
order and will not make a big ra-do about it. The stultified have
nothing to fear, bur they w i l l nevet knnw it.
Men of Progress
Let's leave therri, then, to rhe sweet ancf anxiotis consciotts-
ness of their genius. B u t standing right beside them is no lack
of rnen of Progress who shoiildn't fear tlie overturning of the
ofd inteIlecttia1 hicrarchies. W k understand men of ,brolj~.e.uin
the Iiteral sense of ttie term: rnen who moijefonunvd, who are not
concerned with the social rank of sorneone who 11as a&rmed
such 2nd such a thing, but g o See for themselves if rhe rhing is
true; Voyagers wt-io traverse Europe in search of all the proce-
dures, methods. or insticutions worthy of being irnitated; whn,
when atiey have heard tell of soinc new experirncnr hetc or
therc, g o to see thc facts, rry to reproduce the experirnent; wha
don't see why six years should be spent learning sornetlting, df
it's been proved that it can be done in two; who think, abovc
all, thar knowledge is nothing in itseif and that d o j q is every-
thing, that the sciences are pursued not to be explicated but tti
produce new discoveries and usef~tlinvenrions; who therefore,
when they hear about profitable invenrions, are not content to
praise them orcririque thern, but inctead nffer, if possible, their
 - Ths Emnncipdtctr an</His Monkey rI r
I ro Tbe Ernanciputi~rund Nzs ildonkey
acclirnatized to the Pyrenees. An ardent friend of liberry and
factory or thcir land, their capital or their devotion, to give
tlie Enlighrenment, he wanced co see fnr himself the results of
them a !ry.
rhe Jacotot mechod. Lonvinced, he promised his Support, and
There is no lack of Voyagers and irinnvaiors of rhis lcind who
wich his help, Durietz felr srrengthened in his quest to anni-
are interested in, even enthusiastic, about possible applicacions
hilate the "dealers iri supiries and gerunds" and other "satraps
of theJacotoe rnethad. They might be teachrrs in conflict with
of the university monopoly," . .
the Old Master iike Professor Durietz, norirished since fiis youth
Fcrdinand ~ i r n a u r rwas not rhc only industrialist tu move
on Locke and Condiflac, Helvetius and Condorc,et, who had
ahead in this way. In Mulhouse, the Industrial Society, an in-
early on mounted an assault on "the dusty ediftce of our Gothic
stitucion pioneered by thc philanrhropicai dynarnism of the
institutions.'" A professor at the central school in Lille, he had
Dollfus brothers, confidcd a Course in universal teaching for
founded in rhae city an establishment inspired by the principles
of h i s mascers. A victirn of thE Emperor's , "consumirig
-C*-%' hatred" workers to the care of its young animator, h c t o r Penot. In
Paris, a rnore modest industrialist, the dyer Beauvisage, heard
for rhe ideologuer, for "any institution <hatdidd1tgo aoog with
cell of che mechod. A worker who had made it on his own, he
his goak of universal servitude," but still devored to4haking oE
wanted to extend his affairs hy founditig a new factory in tfie
hcRtt,urd methods, he wenr to rhe Nerheriands to iidaertake the
Somme. Buc in so doing, Ite didn't Want to be separated from
education of the son of the Prussian ambassador, ehe Prince of
the workers, the brothers of his origins. A tepublican and free-
Hatzfeldt. I t is there that he heard about the Jacotot: method,
rnason, he dreamed of rnaking his workers his associates. Un-
visited the estabiishment that a former polycechnician, de
forrunately, this drearn ran up against an unpleasant reafity. In
Sepr+s, had founded on those principles, recognized aheir con-
his factory, as in aIi rhe orhers, rhe workers were erivious of. each
formity with his own, and decided ro propagare the method
other and only got along when in opposition to the master, Eile
wherever he could. This is whac he did for five years in Saint
wanred co give rhem rhe education thar would destroy the old
Petersburg ar Grand Marshal Paschov's, ar Prince Sherbtetov's,
man in thern and would perrnit rhe reatizarion of his ideal. For
and at the homes of several other dignitaries who were friends
this, he addressed himseif to the Racier brothers, fervent dis-
of Progress, before returning to Faance-not without propa-
ciples of the method, one of whom preached emancipation every
gating emancipation en raute, at Riga and Qdessa, in Germany
Sunday in the Halle aux Draps.
and Bcaly. He now wanted to "chop down rhe tree of abstrac-
In addition ro the industrialists, rhere nlereprogressive mil-
tions" and, if he coufd, pul! i r out "by the fibers of its deepest
itary men, ingenious officers prineipally of the artillery, guard-
roots
ians of rhe revoIucionary and polyteehnic tradition. Thus Eieu-
He spuke about his projects to Ternaur, rhe famous textile
eenant Schölcher, rhe son of a rich porcelain maker and an officer
manufacrurer and a deputy of the extreme liberal Left , No more of geniils at Vülenciennes, wenr regularly to visit Joseph Jaco-
eniightened industrialist could be found: Ferdinand Ternaux tot, who had temporarily retired there. 8 n e day he brought
was not content to reorganize his father's tottering factory,and
with him his brother Vicror, who wrate in various newspapers,
inake it prosper during the troubling times of the Revolukion who had visited the Unitcd States and rerurned indignant that
and the Empire, He wanted ro be useful r o the national industry tliere could still exist in the nineteenth century thac denial of
in gencral, by favoring the produccion of cashrnere. To this end,
kumanity called slavery.
he recruited an orientalist from the Bibliothkque Nationale and But the archetype of all chese progressives was surely the
sent him to Tibet to find a herd of fifteen hundred goats to be
 h
rI2 The Emanriparor nnd Mir Mo~fkej~
Count of kasreyrie, a sepcuagenarian and president, founder, or
mainspring of the Society for the Encouragemenr of National
fndustry, rhe Society for Elementary Education, the Society for
hautual Teaching, the Central Sociery for Agronomy, the Phi-
lanthropic Society, the Society of Teaching Methods, the Vac-
cine Society, the Asian Society, the jourr~atd'idacdtion er n'itr-
strjiction, and ahe Journal des cnnnni~sancesmtreiies. Please don't
snicker, imagining some pot-bellied academician, peacefiilly
snoozing away in presidential armchairs, O n the contrary, de
Lasteyrie was known for not staying in one place. In his youth,
he had visited England, Icaiy, and Switzertand to perfect his
knowledge of economics and improve the rnanagemenr of his
dornains. At tirse a parcisan of the Revolution like his brotlier-
in-law, the Marquis de kafayette, he neverthelttcs, roward Year
111, was obliged tn go hide his title in Spain. There he Learned
the language wen enough to translate various anticlerical
works, seudied rnerino sheep well enough to publish two books
on the subject, and appreciated their merirs weil enough to
bring a herd back to France. He eraveled through Holland,
Denmark, Sweden (whence he brought back rutabaga), Nor-
way, and Cermany. He looked into the fattening of livestock,
into the appropriate kinds of pits for grain scorage, into the cul-
tivation of cotcon, and of indigo plants and vegetables thac pro-
duce the color blue. In 1812 he learned of Alois Senefelder's
invention of iithograpiiy. He irnmediately lefc for Munich,
Iearned rhe process, and created the first lithographic press jn
France, The pedagogicai power of this new industry oriented
him toward questions of education. He was chen militating for
ttie introduction of mutual teaching using rhe bncasrrian
rnethod. But he wasn't ar all exclusive. Among otber societies,
he founded the Society of Teaching Methods Pot the study of alf
pedagogicai innovations. Alerred by public rumor of the mir-
acles being produced in Belgium, he decidcd tu go See them for
himself.
Still alert at seventy years otd-he would live twenty rnoie,
wriring books and founding societies and journals to cleave ob-
scurantism asunder and promote science and philosophy----he
rook tke maif carriage, saw the Founder, visired Miss Marcelfis's
insritution, gave improvisatinns and cnrnpositions ro ehe stu-
dents to do, and verified thac they wroce ac well as he did. The
opinion of ehe equality of intelligence didn'r frighten hirn. H e
saw in ie a great encouragernent to the acquisition of science iind
virtue, a blow far more deadly than any material power to be
struck against the intellectual aristocracy. Hc hoped that its ex-
actitude could be shown. So, he thought, "the pretensions of
rhose proud geniuses wouirf disappear, those who, believifig
then~selvesprivileged by nature, believe themselves equatly in
the right to dominate their fellow-men and to reducr thein i o
the levei of beasts, so as to enjoy exclusively the material gifts
that blind fortune distributes and that are known ro be acquired
by profiting from human i g n ~ r a n c e . "H~e came back to an-
nounce it to the Society of Teclching Methods: an irnrnense step
had just Lxen taken for civitizacion and the happiness of the hu-
man species. Ie was a new method that the sociery rnusr exarnine
and recommerid to the first rank of thrise best suited to fiasten
the progress of rhe people's education.
Caf Sheep and Men
Jacotot appreciated the count's zeal. Buc he was immediacely
obliged ro denounce his di~tt.actzon,I t was Strange, in Fact, for
sorneone who appiaudc-d rhet mdea of intellecc~ialemancipation
to then submit it to che approbation of a Society of Methods.
What exaccly is a Societj~of Methud~?An Areopagus of superior
minds who Wane mass education and try to select rhe best meth-
ods of arriving at it. This evidently stipposes that pcior families
are incapable of seletting on their own. For that they would have
to be alrcady educated. In such a case, they wouldn't need in-
strucrion. In stich a case, rhere would be no need for the soci-
ety-which ic contradi~torywith the hypothcsis.
Ir's a very oid ruse, rite learned sociery one, by which the world has
aiways been duped and probnbly always w i l l be. The public is fote-
rr4 Tbe E mant+zlov iarid Hir Monkq
scatied from taking the pains ro examine things. The Jairrtral is in
charge of seeing, rhe Sociecy takes care of judgirig; and to give tliein-
seives an air of imporrance rhar inrimidates rhe Iazy, they don't praise,
tiever blame, neither too much nor cao lirrlc. Only a small niind ad-'
rnires unreservedly; bur by praising or blaming in a measured fashion,
besides gaining a reputation for impareialicy, onc is thus ptritied above
rliose one judges, one is worch more than they, one has wisely sorted
out the good fror11the rnediocre and the bad. The report i c an excrlicnr
stultifying explication rhar cannot help being successful. Several Little
axiotns are invoked i n addirion, and used to interlard one's speech:
"Norhing is perfect," "One musr rnistrust exaggerarion," "Time will
celi." . . . One o l these characters takes ehe Aoor and sayc: My dcar
friends, we agree among ourselves that all goad methods will be pur
to our test, and rliat the Iirench nation will have confidence in the
results rhat derive from our analysis. The people our in thc deparr-
nieiirs canrrot have societies like ours to direct their judgmenrs. Hrre
and there, in snrne af rhe big towns, there are corne iirrle resting
placcs; but the best test, rhe rest parexcellence, is only found in Paris.
Ai1 the good rnethods compete for the honor of being retined, verified
by our rest, Uniy one purporrc to revolt; bur, we insist, it will fade
like the others. The mernbers' intelligencr is the vast laboracory
wherein the legitimace analysis of alt rnethods i s performed. I n vain
does Universal Teaching argue againsc our rulec; chey gire us the right:
ro judge it, and we will judge i t . R
Yet don'r h i n k (hat the Society of Methods judged the Ja-
cotot method with iil-will, Br shared its prestdent's progressive
ideas and knew how co recognizeafl ihdt w~sgoodin the method.
Undoubtedly a few snickering voices were raised in the Areo-
pagus of professors ro denoiirice ehis rnarvelous sirnplificarion
brought to the jot, of teaching. Undoubtediy some rninds re-
rnained skeptical when confrotlted with the "curious details"
thae their "indefarigable president" brought back from his voy-
age. Geher voices besides made themselves heard deslouncing
the ct~arlatan'sdramatizacion, the carefully prepared visits, the
"improvisatiorts" learned by heart, the "original" compositions
copied from the master's books, books that opencd all by rliem-
selves to the samc spot. Tlley also laughed about tlie rnaster who
didn't know how to play guitar whose student played a different
rnelody frorn the one he had under his eyes." But the mernbers
of rhe Society of Methods weren't men to believe one teport,
Froussard, a ckepric, went to verify de Lasceyrie's report and
came back convinced. Boutmy verified Froitssard's rnthusiasm ,
then Baudoin Doutrny's. Ai1 recurned convinced. But they alt
returned eqaially convinced precisely of the erninentprogl-e~sthat
this new teaching method fepresenred. They weren't at all con-
cerned with annvuncing ir ro the poor, with using it to instruct
rheir childten, or with using i t to tcach what they didn't know,
They asked ehat the society adopt it for the "orthoaatic" school
it was organizing, something that would dernonstrate the ex-
cellence of the new methods. The rnajority of the society and
de kasteyrie himself opposed this: the society could not adopa
one merhod "to the cxclusion of ali those that presenr them-
selves or that will present thernselves later on." Thnt woiild
"prescribe Ii~nttsro perfectibilicy" and destroy tiie cenrral tenec
of the society's philosopkical faich and its practical resison fot
being: the progressive perfectirig of dil good rnethuds-past,
present, aad future. " T h e society tefused rhe exaggerarion, but,
imperturbably serene and objective fn the face of rhe jcers about
universal teaching, it aliocated a roorn in the orrhornatic school
to the jacotot rnettiod of teaching.
Such was d e Lasteyrie's inconsiscency: in earlier days he
hadn't thought ro convoke a cornrnission on the value of rnerino
sheep or lithographv, to make a reporr on the necessiry oF jm-
porting one or the other. He imported them hirnself so he could
tty them out on hisown. But he iudged different'ly when it came
ro importing emancipation: this was for him a public aEair rhat
must be treated by saciety. This unfortunate differente was it-
self based On an unforrunate identificarion; he confuseci pcopie
to be educated with a flock of sfteep. Flocks of shcep don't drive
rhemsefves, arid he thought ic was the s a n e for men: cercainly
they had co be emancipated, but it was üp toenlightened minds
ro d o it, and for thae, all ideas should be put in common in ordet
ro find the best methods, the best insrrumentc of emancipation.

Emancipation for him meant putting light in obscurityls place,
and he rhought that the Jacotot method was one method of in-
sttuction like the others, a system for enlightening minds com-
parabie to the others: an invention tliat was certainly exceltent
but oE the Same nature as all rkose that proposed, weck after
week, a new pergecting of the perfecting of the people's edu-
cacion: Bricait le's panlexigraphy, Dupont's citolegy, Monte-
mont's stiquiotechnics, Ortin's stereometrics, Painpare and Lu-
pin's typography, CouIon-'Thevenot's tachygraphy, Payet's ste-
nography, Carsrairs's calligraphy, Jazwinski's Pofish method,
rhe Galiic method, the Levi method, the methods of Senocq,
Coupe, Lacombe, Mesnager, Schlott, Alexis de Noailles, and a
hundred others whose books and memoirs piled up on the so-
ciety's desk. From then an, everything was Set: sociecy, com-
rnission, examination, report, journal, theve's good and Rdd in it ,
tfnzti will teil, necgrobdtir nec imgrohcbtii, and so on unril the end
of time.
\Vhen it was a question of agricultural and industria! irn-
provements, de Lasteyrie liad acted in rhe rnanner of universal
teaching: he had seen, compared, reflected, imitated, tried,
corrected by himself. But when it was a matter of annotsncing
intellectual emancipärion to rhe fathers of pour and ignorant
farnities, he was distracted, he forgot everything. He ttanslated
equaiity as PROGRESS and the emancipation of the fachers of
poor families as EDUCAT~NGTHE PEOPLE. And in order to be
concerned with these abstractioris, these oratologies, other ab-
stractions-corporations-were necessaty. A man can drive a
herd of sheep. But for the herd PEC)PLE, a herd called I..EARNED
SOCIETY, UN1VERSITY, COMMISSION, REVIEW, etc., Was nec-
essary-in shorc, stultification, rhe old rule of the socdal fiction.
lntelleccual emanciparion pretended to replace it. Yet it found
stultification there on its own route, erected as a tribunai.
charged with trying out universal teaching's principtes and ex-
ercises for their suitabi licy or unsuitability to families, and with
judging it in the name of progress, and indeed in the name of
the emancipation of the people.
The Emancipntov and His nlLo82key rr7
T h e Progressives' Circle
The inconsistency did not owe simply to de kasteyric's weary
brain, It was the contradictioti thar inteifectuaf emancipation
meers head on when it addresses itself to rhosr-the men of
progress-who wanc: just as it daes, the happiness of the poor.
The o~acleof stuliification had warned the Founder well: "To-
day mure than ever, you cannot hope for success, Tbey believe
themselves to be progressing, and their opinians are soIidIy
hinged ori this. 1 laugh ar your efforts; rhey will not budge,"
The contradiction is easy ro expose. Wfe said: a man of prog-
ress is a man who moves forward, who gocs to see, experiments,
changes his practice, verifies his knowledge, and so on wi rhout.
end. This is the literai definition of rhe word progress. B u t now
a Inan of progress is somerhing else as well: a man ~ l h o s ethink-
in& takes the opiniola of progress as ics poinr af departure, who
erects that opinion tu the level of rhe dominant explicarion of
the social order. ,
We know, in fact, thar explication is not only the stultifying
weapon of pedagogues but the very bond of the social order.
Whoever says order says distriburion irito ranks. Putting into
ranks presupposes explication, the distributory, justificatory
fiction of an inequality that has no other reason for being. The
day-to-day wotk of explication is only the small change of the
dominant explication that characterizes a society. Wars and rev-
olutions change the nature oT clorninanr explications by chang-
ing che form and jlirnits of empires. But this change is narrowl~
circurnscribed. We knaw, in fatt, that explication is the work
of laziness. I t need only introduce inequality, and that is done
at little expense. The most elementary hieratchy is that of good
and euz/. The simplest fogical relationchip that can serve to ex-
plain chis hierarchy is that of before and @&er. With these four
terms, good and evil, before and afier, we have rlle matrix of all
explicatioiis. Things were better before, say some: the Ilegislator
or ttie divinit-y arranged things; people were frugal and happy,
I r8 'The Emancipdtor atzd His Mo~zkey --
leaders paternal and obeyed, the ancestors' faith respected, func-
tions well distributed, and hearts einited. Now, words axe cor-
rupted, distinctions crumble, ranks are condused, and solici rude
for the young has been Lost, along wich respect for the aged.
Let's try then to preserve or revive that which, in our distinc-
tions, still holds us to the principle of the good. Happdness will
come tomorrow, respond the others: the human species was like
a child Left to the caprices and terrors OB his imagination, rockcd
to sleep with ignorant nursernaids' fairytales, subjected to the
brutal force of despots and priestiy superstition. Now, minds
are enlightened, customs are civiiized, and indusrry spreads.its
benefits; people know their rights, and education will reveal to
them their duties witti science. Capdcify must from now on de-
cide social ranks. And ir is education that wiH reveal and de-
velop it.
We are at the momenr when a dominant explication is in the
process of succumbing to another's conqiiering force: an age of
transition. And rhis is what explains the inconsistency of men
of progtess llike the Count. Before, when the university bIun-
dered rhrough Barbara, Cehrent, and Barali~ton,there were,
ozri~ideof i t , gentlernen or doctors, bourgeois or Church peoplc,
who ailowcd it ta go on spcaking and w e e busy doing some-
thing ehe: they had lenses cuc and polished, or polished them
themselves for opticai experiments; rhey had thetr butchers save
them animals' eyes so they could study akatorny; they informed
each other of their discoveries and debaied eacti other's hy-
porheses. Thus, in rhe pores of the old society, progress-that
is, realizations of the human capacity to understand and todo-
was accomplished. The counr still resembles these experimentai
gentlemen a little. Bur as time passed, he had been snatched up
by the rising force of the new explication, the new inequality:
Progress. I t 5s no longrr the curious and the fault-findess who
perfect one or another branch of rhe sciences, such and such a
technical method. It's society that pcrfects itself, that takes per-
fectibility as ehe watchword of irs order.' lt's society that pro-
gresses, and a society can oniy progress socially; that is ro say,
ali together and in good ordet. Progress is the new way of saying
inequality.
Bur that way of saying it has a much more formidable force
than the old way. The lastet was coneinually obliged to go
against the grain of its principle. Things were better before, it
said; the more we advance, the closer we get to decadence. But
rhis dominant opinion t ~ a dthe shortcoming of not being ap-
plicable to the dominant explicatory practice-that of peda-
gogues. These people were certainiy obliged co suppose that the
child approached his perfection by being distanced from his or-
igin, by growing up and progressing under their direction from
his ignorante to their science. b c r y pedagogical practice ex-
plains the inequality of knowfedge as an evii, and a reducible
evil in an indefinite progression toward tbe good. AI1 pedagogy
is spontaneously progressive. Thus rhere was a discordance be-
tween the grand explication and the Iittleexplicarors. Boch were
stuitifying, but in a disorderty fashion. And this disorder
within stuftification left some space Open for emancipation.
Those times were ending. Theteaftcr, the dominant ftction
and the daily stultification went in the Same direction. There is
a simple reason for this. Progress is the pedagogica1 ficrion built
into the fiction nf the society as a whole. At rhe heart «f the
pedagogicai fiction is the representation of inequality as a reravd
in one's development: inferiority, in irs innocence, lets irself be
taken in; neither a lie n i r violence, inferiarity is only a laceness,
a delay, that is posited so one can piit oneself in the position of
curing it. Of Course, this will never happen: nature itself makes
sure of it; there will always be delay, always inequality, But one
can rhus continually exercise the privilege of reducing it, and
there are double benefits to be gained from this.
The progressives' presuppositions are the social absolutizing
of what is presupposed by pedagogy: before, steps n7eretaken
gropi ngly, blindly ;words were gathered more ot less badly from
the mouths of unenlighrened mothers or nursemaids; things
were guessed at, false ideas drawn from the first contacc with
the material universe. Mow, a new age is beginning, the one
where the man-child takes tkierighr road to maturity. The guide
points to the veil covering all things and begins to raise it-
suitably, in otder, step by step, progre~sive(y. "A cettain delay
must be worked into the p r ~ g r e s s . " 'Methods
~ are necessary.
Without a method, without a good rnethod, the child-man or
the pople-child is prey ro childish fictions, to routine and prej--
udices. Wirh a rnerhod, he sets his feet in the footsteps of those
who advance rationally, progressively. He grows up in their
wake in an indefinite process of coming closer. Nevet will the
Student catch up with ehe master, nor the people with its en-
lightened elite; but ttie ho& of gettinf: r h q e mäkes them ad-
:' D
vance along the good road, the one of perfected explications.
The century of Progress is that of che triumpha~:'exp1icamrs,
of humanity pedagogicized. T l ~ eformidable force of this new
stultiticatton is that it still imitates the approach of the men of
progress of a former day; it attacks the old srultificsttion in terrns
rhat wilt put minds just akerted to emancipation on the wrong
scent, will make rhem srumble at the slightest distraction.
This is also to say thac the ongoing victory of the progressives
over the OId Master is just as much the OId Master's victory by
virtue of their very opposition: the absolute triumph of insti-
eutionalized inequality, the exemplary rarionalizaeion of that
iiistitutiori, And rhis is the solid foundation on which the pe-
rennial power of ehe 81d Masrer is based, The Fourider tried tu
show this to the progressives of good faith: "The explicators of
industry and everyone have already repeated: look at civiliza-
tion's progress! The people need arts, and we soid them only
Latin they can't use. They will draw, design machines, eec. Phi:
losophers, you are light, and I admire your zeal under the reign
of a Great Master who doesn't help you at alt, lounging laziiy
on his throne of dead languages. 1 admire your devotion; your
philanthropical goal is undoubtedly, more useful than that of
the Old Master. But aren't your ways the Same as his? Isn't ynur
method the sarntt? Aren't you afraid of being accused of sus-
taining, as he does, the supremacy of the master e ~ p l i c a t o r s ? " ~ ~
Goodwill thus risks becoming an aggravating circurnstance.
The Old Master knows what he wants-stultification-and he
works to that end. The progressives, on the other hand, Want
to tiberate minds and promote the abilities of the masses. But-
what they propose is to perfect stultification by perfecting ex-
plications.
This is the progressives' circie. They warit to tear rninds away
from the old routine, from the controf of priests and obscur-
anrisrs of any kind, And for ttiat, rnore rational explications and
methods are necessary. They must be tested an4 compared by
way of commissions and reports. A qualified and Iicensed per-
sonnel, learned in the new methods and monitored on their ex-
ecution of them, must be employed to educate thc people.
Above all, the irnprovisations of inccirnpeeents rnust be avoided;
nne must not permit minds formed by chance or routine, ig-
norant of the perfecred explications and progressive metl3nds,
to have the possibiiity of opening a schooii and reaching a,ny-
thing in any which way. Pamilies-thosc places of che routine
reprodiicing of inveterate supersticion, of empirical knowledge
an$ obscure sentiment-must be prevented from taking on
their children's instruction. For this, a weil-ordered system of
public instruction is necessarp. A University and a Grear:Masrer
are necessary. It will be poinred out in vain that the Greeks and
Romans had neither a University nor a Great Master, and that
things didn't go badly for them. In the era of progress, the most
ignorant of backward peoples need no more than a brief stay in
Paris to be convinced that "'Anytus and Melerus demonstrateci
from that point a n the necessiey of an organization that derer-
mines ( I ) that one must explicate; ( 2 ) what one will explicate;
( 3 ) how one wi 11 explicate it," Without these precautions, they
see clearly that " ( I ) our shoemakers might put iiizivevsd tedding
around the boor on their signs, as was dune in Wome or Athens,
for want of a careful organization, Candf ( 2 ) the tailor will Want
to explain developabie surfaces, without any previous exarni-
nation, as occurred in Rorne," with the result that what must

strength. This is aiso why Jacorot's name is not btoadcasted and
dishonored. Inssead they speak of rhe nntzrr~ir~zethud,a method
recognized by the besr niinds of the pasr: Socrares and Mon-
raigiie, Locke and Condillac. Hadn't the maiter himself sard
that there was no Jacorot method, oniy ihe studenr's method,
the natural rnethod of the human mind? So what good would
it d o to brandish his name like a fan? As earfy as 1828, Duriecz
had warned rhe Founder thar he wanted to chop down "the tree
of abstractions," hur he wouldn'r do it iike a woodcutcer. He
wanted to creep slowly and engineer "sewral ostensible suc-
cesses" in ordet to prepare the metkiod's triumph. He wanted to
move toward intel~lectuai emancipation throrigli universal
teaching,- ''
But the victorious revolutiori of r 830 offered a more gran-
diose theater for that effbrr. The occasion arose in 183 i . pro-
vided by the most modern of the progressives, the young jour-
nalist Emile de Cirardin. He was twenty-six years old, H e was
rhe grandson of the Marquis de Girnrdin wko had prctrected
Emir'e's author. it's ttue he was a bastatd, but this was the Start
of a new era when no one had to biush about one's birth. i i e
was one with che new era and the new forces: work and industry;
professional insrruction and dornestic economy; public opinion
and the press. He laughed at Latinisrs and pedants. He laughed
at the young foois the good provinciaf families sent to Paris co
study law and flirt wirtt working-girls. He wanted accive elites,
lands fettiiized by the larest chemical discoveries. a people ed-
ucated in everything that could lead to its material happiness,
and enlightened on the balance of rights, duties, and interests
that creates ehe equilibrium of modern sbcieries. He wanred all
this to come about very fast, for youth ro be p-pared by rapid
methods ro become useful to the community a t an early age, for
the discoveries of scbolats and inventors to become Part of rhe
life of workshops an$ households immediately, even in the most
distanr countryside, so new thoughrs rnighr bbeengendered. H e
wanted an organ to disserninate chrse benefits without delay. Of
course, there was de Lasteyrie's Joztrt~nldes connrtissance~urz(elies.
Bur tiiiz kind of publication was expensive and tlius inevitably
-- The Emanci#dtui. dnd His Monkeg. r 23
reserved for a public who had no need of it. What good was ir
to vulgarize science fot academics and domestic sckence for
women of high society? So he iaunched theJotrinal des corznais-
snnces d e s in an edrtion of a hundred chousand copies thrrtugh
a gigantic subscriptron and advertising campaign. To sustain
the journal and prolong its action, he fourtded a new sociery and
called it simply che National Society for lntelfectuai Emanci-
pation.
The ptinciple of that ernancipatian was simple. T o r consti-
turions as for edihces, a firm and level soil is necessary. Instruc-
tion gives inteIiig6nce a level, a soil for ideas, . . . lnstruction
for the masses puts absolutist governments in danger. Their ig-
norance, on the other Iiand, is perilous to republican govern-
rnents, for though the masses can learn of their rights through
partiamentarg debates, they cannot be expecced to exercise them
with discetnment. As soon as a people knnws its rights, there
is only one way ro govern it, and that is tu instruct ir. l'hus,
what is necessary ro every republican government is a vasr sys-
tem of graduated reach~ng,national and professional, rhat
sheds light onto the dark souls of the masses, rhat replaces all
arbitrary demarcations, that assigns each class to its rank, each
man to bis place." "
This new otder was, of course, that of the recognized digniry
of the laboring population, of ies preponderanc place in rhe so-
cial order. Intellectual emancipation was the ovetturning of the
oid hierarchy actached to instruction's privilege. Until that
time, instruction had been rhe monopoly of the rnanaging
cfasses juscifying their hegemony, with tlie weil-known conse-
quence that an educated child of the people no longer wanted
his parents' life. The s ~ c i a logic
l of rhe sycrem had to be over-
turned. Frorn now on instruction would no longer be a privi-
Bege; rather, the Iack of lnstruction would be an inenpanty. To
oblige ihe people to ger educated, any man of twenty who could
not read in 1840 should be declared an incapable civilian. One
of che first nurnbers from the drawrng that condemned unlucky
young people to miiitary service must be oficially reserved for
him. This obiigation contracted with the people was just as
much an obligation contracted against it. Eipeditious methods
to teach afl Prench youth how to read before 1840 had to be
found. This would be the Narionai Society for Intellectual
Emancipation's motto: "Pour instruction onto the heads oP the
people; you owe it this baptism."
Cbver the baptismai font stood the secretary of the society, the
rake from che Society of Methods, universal teaching's enthu-
siastic admirer, IEugPne Boutmy. i n rhe journat's first issue, he
prornised to indicate expedi tious methods for educating ehe
masses. J-ie kept his word in an article entitIed "Teaching by
Onesekf." The master should read aloud "Calypso" arid the stu-
dent repear "Calypso"; then, separating the words well, "Ca-
lypso could," "Calypso could not," erc. The method was called
nattdrdluniv~r~dl teaching, in honor of nature itself, which taught
it to chil.dren. An honorable depucy, Victot de Tracy, had in-
structed forty peasanrs f i o n ~his cornmune in this way with
enough success that they were able to write a letter in which
rliey poured out to him their deep gratitude for his having thus
ushered them into intellectual life. Let each teader of the jour-
?zal do the same, and soon the leprosy of ignorante would dis-
appear entirely from the social body. '"
The society, which wished to encotirage exemplary insritt!-
cions, was also interested in d e Sepres's establishment. It sent
commissaries to exarnine rhat method of "u~todiduxy"that
taughe yoüng boys to reflect, to speak and to reason from facts,
by following the natural meehod that had always been ehe ve-
hicle of great discoveries. The establishmenr's tocation ori the
rue d e Moneeau, in the Parisian quarter rnost known for its air,
the wholesomeness of its food, its hygiene, and its gymnastics,
as well as its moeal and religious senriments, left little to be
desired. And, in rhree years of secondary teaching, at a maxi-
mum price of eighr hundred francs a ycar, ehe institution un-
dertook to bring its seudents to the point where they couid pass
any exarnination. Thus, a father couId foresee exactly how rnuch
his son'c education would cost and calculate whethet it was
worthwhile. The society conferred on de Gpres's insriturion thc
title National Lycee. On the other hand. it urged the parents
who sent rheir children ehere to read rhe programs carefully so
as to deterrnine what career their sons should follow. That career
determined, the sociery's commissaries watched to make Sure
that the Course of study the parents wanted was scrupulously
folioweci, so thar the Student urould learn everything needed for
a distinguished profession, and, above all, that he didn't learn
" Unfortunately, the comrnissaries hardlr
myththrng stlpetfl~~ori~.
had time CO pursue their coltaboration with rhe National Lycbe's
work. A Breton agricultural institution, desigtleci to spread
agronontcat knowledge at the sarne time that it rcgenerated
part of the unemployed city youth, was the financial abyss into
which the Nationaf Sociery for Intellectual h a n c i p a t i o n col-
iapsed. At Least it had sown seeds for rhe future: "It was a good
journal, tliat usefut knowledge one. We took your word abour
inteflectual emancipation, and we are emancipating our sub-
scribers by dint of explicationc. Tliat kind of emancipation is
not at afl dangerous. When a harse is bridled and rnounted by
a good borseman, wc know where we're going. He doesn'r know
anything, but we can becalm; he will not ctray in rhe mountains
and ~alleys.""~
T h e Triumph of the gbld Master
And so universat reaching and even the words inteli,estual
emancipation could be put in the Service of progressives who in
fact wotked ro the Old Master's greatest profit. The division of
labrpr worked this way: for the progressives, the rnethods and
licenses, tlie reviews and journals rnaintaining rhe love of ex-
piications by the indefinite perfecrittg of their perfecting; for
the CPl$ Master, the institutions and the examinations, thc
administraelon of the solid foundations of tlie explicative insti-
rution, and the power of social sanciion.
Frorn rhere all those Iicensed invenrions [hat coltide with each orher
in ihe void of cheexplicatory System: explications of reading, writing
metamorphosed, languages rnade simple, synoptical rables, perfertcd
r a8 The Emaricipacor und His Monkey
merhods, etc., and so many other hea~ttifuirhings, copied ineo new
boaks containing a new explicacion of the old ones; everything rec-
ommended by the perfected expticators of our era, who all tightly
make.fun nf each other as forerunners. Mever have certified oficers
been more to be pitied than in our time. There are so many of them
that they can hardly find a schootchild who doesn'c have his Iittle Fr-
fecced explication; to the point that they will soon be reduced ro ex-
plicating ta each other rheir recpective explications. . . . The Oid
Master laughs at these disputes, excites them, names commiscions CO
judge them; and, since tlie crtrnmissions approve all the perfectings,
he doesn't part with his old scepter for ,anyo~e.Dizlzde gnd conquw.
The Old Master rerains for himself rhe colleges, univenities, and con-
servatories; he gives the ochers only what's left and tells chem that's
already a lot, and they believe ;C.
Like tiine, the explicatory system i s nourished by its ownchildcen
whom it devours as ir ptduces theiai; a new explication, a new per-
fecting i s born and imrnediately dies to make roorn for a tbousa~id
othcrs. . . .
And thus the explicatory system is renewed, rhus tiie Lacin colleges
and the Greek universities are maintained. People will cry out, but
the colleges will endure. People will make fun of rhem, but the rnosa
iearned and the inost enlightened will continrie to greet each othcr,
humorlessly, in their old ceremonial suits; t h e young indirsrriäl
method will insult its grandmother's scienrific agectations, and yee
the indusrrialiscs will srill use rheir rufers and their perfected com-
pasces to build a chmne where the old drivelet can sit arid rule over
all ehe workshops. In a word, che industrialists will make explicatory
pxofessotial chairs for as long as there is wood on rhe earrh.z3
Thus olle victory in progress of rhe Izmzinotl~over the ob~~r~ran-
ti~tsworked t o rejuvenate the oldcst cause defended by the ob-
scurantists: thc inequality of intelligente. There wasn't, in fact,
any inconsistency in rhis division of toles, W h a t the progres-
sives' distrarinw was based o n is the passion that underfies all
disrraction, rhe opinion of inequality. A progressive explicaror
is first of all an explicator, that is t o say, a defender oF inequality.
f tS very true that tke sorial ordcr doesn'r tequire anyone CO be-
lieve in inequality, nar does i t prevent anyone from announcing
emanciparion t o individuals and hmilies. Bur that simple an-
nouncement-which there are never enough police tu pre-
verit-is also rhe onc that rneets the most impenetrable resis-
tancc: that cf the inrelIectual hierarchy that has no other power
except the rationafizarion of inequality. Progressivism is the
modern form nf that power, purified of any mixture wich she
material forrns of traditional authorit y: progressives have no
pu~uet'ofher than that ignorante, thar incapacity of the people on
which their priesthood is based. How, without opening up an
abyss under their own feet, can they say to workixig peopie that
they don't need thern in order to be free men, in ordcr to be
educated in everything suitable to eheir dignity as men? "Each
one of thcse so-called emaricipacors has his herd of emancipated
people whorn tie saddles, beidles, and spurs onward,"" Thus,
they all Eound themselves united in rejecting t h e only bdd
merliod, the dirastrozkf merhod, that is t o say, the method of Rad
emancipation, Jacocot's method-or rather, his anti-method.
Those who erased this proper riame knew whac they were
d o i n , ~For
. it was the proper name thar made all the differencc,
thar said e g s r a l i ~o[ zinteflipence and would have opened up the
abyss underneath the feet of alf thc givers of instruction and of
happiness t o the peuple. The name nced only be silenced for the
nnnotlncemetzt not tn rake place.
Y013 rry mit in vain in writing; tbuse who don't know l-iow t o read can
only learn from us whac you have ptinted, and we would be very fool-
ish tu announce to them that they don'r nced out explicarions. If we
give reading lessons co some, a c wilf concinue to use aiI thc go»d
methods, never those that could give the idca of intelicctual emacl-
cipation. Let's make siire not io begin with having tl-iern read prayers;
the chil$ who knows them might think that he could have figurecf
them out by hin-iself. Mc must sbove atl rlever know that he who
knows how to read prayers can leatn to read everything else by him-
self. . . . Let's make Sure never to p;onounce those emancipatory
words: learning irnd re1ating.l'
W h a t had t o be prevented ahave ail was letting the poot know
rhar rhey could educare themselves by their own abilities, that
they had nhi/itie.r-those abitisies that in rhe social and politjcal

order now succeeded the old titles of nobiiity. And the best way
to do this was to educate thern, that is ro say, to give thein the
measute of their inability. Schools were opened everywhete, and
nowhere did anyone Want to announce ehe possibility of learn-
ing witbotit a mastet explisator. Intellecrual emancipation had
founded its "po1itics"on a principie: not to seek to penetrate
social instirutions, to work inscead wich individuals and fami-
lies. But this was a moment when that separation, which was
emancigation's only chance, was breaking down. SociallLinsti- .
tutions, inteiiectual corporations, and political parties now
came krtocking on farnilies'cioors, addressing themselves to all
individuals for the purpose of educating them. Heretofore, rhe
University and its baccalaureate had only controlled access to a
few professions: a few rhousand lawyers, doctors, and acadein-
ics. All ehe other soc-ial careers were open to those who forined
rhemselves in their own way. Bt wasn't, for example, necessary
to have a baccalaureate r o be a polytechnician. But with the sys-
tem of perfected explications came the installation of the system
uf peificted exarninations. From this goint On, the Qtd Master,
wtth the help of che petfecters, would increasirigly use his ex-
aminations to curb che liberty ro l e h n by any means other than
his explications and the noble ascension of his degrees. The per-
fected exarnination, the exemplary representation o l the mas-
ter's omniscience and of the student's inability to ever equal
hirn, was from that poinr on erectcd as the unbendable power
of the ineqiiality of intelligetice over the path of whoever might
wish to move through society at his own pace. Intellectuai
emancipation thus saw its retrenchments, the pockets of the oid
order, inexorahly invested by thc advances of the expficatory
machine.
Saciety Rdagogicized
Everyone conspired in this, and especially those most pas-
sionately bent on the repuhlic arid the happiness of rtie people.
Repilblicans take the sovereignty oP the peopie as a principte,
-.
The Emancipdtor and H ~ M
J ankey I I
but they k n m zJeq well that the sovereign people cannot be iden-
tified with the ignorant swarm devoted solely to the detense of
its own material interests. They also knutli uery zbvll that che re-
public signi6es the equality of rights and duties. but that it
cannot decree the equality of intelligence. J t is clear, in fact,
that a backward peasant does not have rhe intelligence of a re-
publican leader. Some think that this inevitabie incquality de-
rives from social diversity, tike ehe infinite variety of ieaves de-
rives from the inexhaustible richness of nature. Qne need only
make Sure that the inferior intelligence not be prevented from
understanding his rights and, especially, his duties. Qrhers
think that time, littie by Iittle, progressively, will attenuatc- chc
dehcirncy caused by centuries of oppression and obscilricy. In
the two cases, equatity's cause-good equality, nondisastrous
eqiiality-has the same requisite, che instruction of the people:
the instruction of the ignorant by the ilearned, of rnen buried
in egotistical material concerns by men of devotion, of individ-
uals enclosed in their particularities by the universality oE reason
and public power. This is called public instruction, that is 00
say, the instruction of the emgirical people, programmed by the
representatives of the sovereign concept of the people.
Public Instruction is the secular arm of progress, the way to
ecluafize ineqtiality prngressively, that is to say, to unequalize
equatity indefinitely. Evcrything is still played out according 1.0
a sole ptinciple, ehe inequality of intelligence, If this principle
is granted, tlien one consequence alone can logically be deduced
from it: the intelligent caste'c rnanagernent of rhe stupid mul-
ritude. Republicans and all sincere men of progress feel heavy-
hearted at rhis consequence. All their efforcs are directed at
agreeing wich the principle without accepting the consequence.
This is what the eloquent autiior of the Book oflhe People, F4liciek
Robert de Lamennais, makes ciear: "Without a doubt," he rec-
ognizes horrestly, "men du not possess equal facultie~."~'Bur
must the man of the people, for all that, be condemned to pas-
sive obedience, he brought down to the level of an anirnal? It
cannot be this way: "The sublime artribute of intelligence, self-
r 32 The E~rtdnctpntora d His iMotzhY
sovereignty, distinguislies the man from ehe b r ~ t e . Undoubr-
"~~
edly the unequal distribution of this sublime attribure imperiis
tfie "City nf God" rhat the preacher urged the people to build.
Bur it remains possible if the people know how to "use wisely"
ics regained rights. The ways that the man of thc people might
nor be br^~z~ghddow~z,the wlays rhat he might M E ruisely his rights,
the ways to make equaliry out of'inequality-this is the edu-
cation of the people, that is to say, the inrerminable making up
for its belatedness.
Such is the logic that puts things in their place, that of the
"teduction" of inequatities. Whoever has consenced to the fic-
tion of rhe inequality of intelligente, wh0ever has refused thc
unique equaiity that ehe social order can allow, can do nothing
hut run from ficcion CO fictian, and f r i m ontolagy to corpora-
tion, to reconcile the sovereigri people with the rerstrdrd people,
ehe inequality of intelligerice with rhe reciprocicy of rights and
duties, Piiblic Instruction, che institured social fiction of in-
equality as lateness, is the magician chat will reconcile ali ehese
rcasonable beings. Ir will do i t by inhnitely extending tfie fieid
of its explications and the examinations that control them. By
this account, the Otd Master will always win, supported by a
newi industriaf ptilpir and the luminous fairh of the progres-
sives.
Against this tkere is nothing else ro do but to teil those sup-
posedly sinccre rnen again and again to pay more attention:
"Change the form, unrie tRe tether, brcak, break every pacc
with thti Old Maseer. Realite rhat he is not any stupider than
you. Reflect on this and y o i ~will teil rnc what yug think ahut
&."26 But how could they ever understand the consequence?
How could they understand thar the rnission of rhe luminous is
not to ~nlightenthose who dweit. in obscurity? What man of
science and devotion would accept in this way to Ieave his light
undcr a Lasket and the salt of rhe earth without savor? And how
arould the fragile young plants, the childlikc mit-rds of the
people, how would they grow without rhe beneficial dew o i ex-
piications? W h o could understand that the way fctr them t a rise
Th@'h~.~~nanczptor
u n d His iklonkey r 33
up in the intellectual order is not to learn what rhey don't know
from scholars btit rather to teach i t t o other ignorant ones? A
man might, with a great deai of difficulty, understand rhic rea-
soning, but no ledrned Person will cver understand it . Even Jo-
seph gacotot hirnself would never have ctnderstood it without
the chance event that had ttirned him into tlte ignurant school-
master. Only chance is strong enough to overturn the instituted
and incarnared belief in inequality.
And yec a n o t h i q wotild be atl that's necessary. Ir would suf-
fice for the friends of the penple, for one short instant, tu fix
their atcention an this poinr of departiire, on this first principle
curnmed up in a very simple and very old metaphysical axiom:
the nattire of the totality cannot be tlie sarne as that of irs parrs.
Whatever rationality is given to society is taken grrorn the in-
dividual~that make it up. And what is refused to ehe individ-
uals, society can easily take for itself, bclt i t can never give it
back to them. This goes for rcason as it goes for equality, which
is reason's synonym. One must choose to attribute reason to real
individuals ot to their frcrive uniry. O n e rnusr chuose between
making an unequal society out of equaf men and making an
equal society out of unequal rnen. Whnever has sorne taste for
equality shouldn't hesitate: individuals are real beings, and sn-
ciery a ficrion. It's for real beings thar equality has value, not
for a fiction.
One neeci only learn how to be equal men i n an unequal so-
ciecy. This is what Ireilzg emanctpdted rneans. But this very simple
tliing is the fiardest to understand, especially since the new ex-
plication-progress-h~s inextricably cunfused equality wirb
its opposite. The task to which t h t repubiican hearts and minds
are devoted ic to rnake an equal society our of unequal rnen, to
t'edzice inequality indefinitely. But whoever takes this pnsition
has only one way of carrying it through to the end, and that i s
the inregral pedagogicization of society-the general infantil-
ization of the individuals chat make it up. Eater oii chis will be
ralled continuing educacion, rl-rat is co sag, thc coextension of
tlie explicatory instisution with society. The society of the su-

I 34 'rhe Enau~cipatovund His Motzkey .-
perior inferior~will be equal, it will .have reduced its inequal-
ities once it has been entirely transformed into a society of ex-
plicated explicacors.
Joseph Jacotot's singularity, his nzt~dtzess,was to have sensed
this: his was ehe moment when the young cause of emancipa-
tion, that of ehe equalicy of men, was being transforrned into
the cause of social Progress. And social progress was first of all
progress in the sociai order's ability to be recognized as a rational
order. This belief could only develop to the decriment of the
emancipatory efforts of reasonabie individuals, at the price of
stifling the human potenc.i.al ernbraced in the idea of equality.
An enormous machine was rewing up"ti equaliry
chrough instruction. This was equality represenred, socialited,
made unpqual, good for being peTjfected-thar is ,&I say, deferred
from commission eo commission, from report to report, from
reform to reforrn, until ehe end of time. Jacotot was alone in
recognizing the effacement of equali ry under progress, of ernan-
cipation iinder instruction. Lee's understand this well. Outspo-
ken anti-progressives were a dime a dozcn in thar century, and
rhe atmosphere today, one of a fatigued progress, leads us to
praise their lucidity. This is perhaps to give them too much
honor: they merely hated equalicy. They hated gxogress because,
like ehe progressives, ehey confused i t with eqi~aiiry.jacotot was
the only egdzbvian to perceive the representaeion and institu-
tionalization of progress as a renouncing of the moaal and in--
tetlectual adventure of equality, public instruction as the grief-
- work d ernancipation. A knowledge of this sort makes for a
frightening solitude. jacotot assumed thae solicude. He refused
al1 progressive and pedagogical tcanslation of emancipatory
equality. On eliis point he agreed with the disciples who hid his
name under the labe! "natural method": no orte in Europe was
scrong enough to bear that name, the nameof the madman. The
name Jacotot was the proper name of that a t once desperate and
laughable knowiedge of the equaliey of reasonable beings bur-
ied under the fiction of progress.
-
liSe Emnncipator and His Monkey q5
Ttie Panecast ic's Stories
There was nothing else to do but to triaintain chegapattached
to ehe proper name. Jacotot thus broughr things into fociis. Fot
the progressives that came t o See him, he had aszeve to yut them
rhrough. When they became impassianed for rhe cause of
equality in his presence, he softIy said: "one can teach what one
doesn't know." Wnfortunately, the sieve worked too weil. Xt was
iike trying CO pur a finger in tkie dike. The saying, ehey said
unanimously, was poorly chosen. A littte army of disciples tried
ro hold the flag against rhe professors of "nattirat" universal
reaching. With thern he proceeded in his way, tranquilly; he
Jivided thern intn twu groiips: teachw or exfiticator disciples of
thejacotot method who sought to leacl che students of universal
teaching to inteliectuai e&iancipation; emncipatory disciples
who iaughc only with ernancipation as a prelirninaty, or who
even taught nothing at ali and were contenr CO emancipate fa-
thers by showing them how to teach their childrcn what thcy
didn't know. I t goes withouc saying that he didn't hold rhe two
in equaf esteem: lie preferred "an ignorant emancipated Person,
one aloric, co a hundred million schotars taught by universal
teaching and not ernancipared."" Bur thc very wotd ernanci-
pation had become equivocaf. After rhe fall o€ the Girardin en-
terprise, de Sipr&shad retitled his journai Emdncipatiot2, gen-
erously pliimped up with the best essays by ehe National l[.yc&e
students, A Society for the Propagation of Universal Teaching
became associated with it-a society whose vicc-presiderit
pleaded eloy uentl y for the necessity of qualified masters and thc
impossibili ty of fathers of poor filmilies concerning themselves
with their children's educarion. The difference had to be undet-
lined: Jacotot's journal, che one rhac his rwo sons edited under
his dictation-illness prevented him from wtiting; he was
obliged to hold up a head that no lunger wanted to Iiold itself
straight-this journal thus took the title ofjourml dephifoso~hie
ficrnkcds~iq~e.In its irnage, the Faithful created a Society fos Pane-
 The EmancI;oator atzd His Monkey
- -.
I 36
castic Philosophy. NO one would try to take that name away
from him,
We know what it meant: in each intellectual rnanifestacion,
there is a totality of human intelligence. The panecastician is a
lover of discourse, like rhe mischjevous Sscrates and the nar'vc
Bhaedrus. But unlike Plato's proragonists, he doesn'r recognize
an y hierarchy arnong orators or discourses. Wbat interests hin1
is, on the contrary, looking for their equaliay. He doesn't expect
truth from any discourse. Trurh is k l t and not spoken. It fur-
nishes a rule governing the speaker's conduce, but it will never
be manifested in his sentences. Nor does the panecastian judge
the morality of a discourse. The morality thar counts for him is
the one that presides over the act of speaking and wiiting, that
of rhe intention to communicate, of recognizing the other as an
intellectuat subject capable of understanding whae another in-
tellectual subject wants to say to him. The panecastician is in-
terested in all discoutses, in every intellectuai manifestacion, 60
a unique end: to verify that they put the same iinrelligence ro
work, to verify, by ttanstating the one into the other, the equal-
ity oF intelligence.
This presupposed an original relaiion to the debates oF the
time. The inrellectual batrle on the subject of the people and
its capacity was raging: de kamennais had published his Book aJ'
ibe Peopie. Jean Louis Lerrninier, a repencant Saint-Simonian and
oracle of the Rewe da d e m mondes, had denounced the book's
inconsistency, George Sand, in her turn, had raised rhe ffag of
ehe people and its sovereignty. Tbe Jot~vndlde phiiosophze &uni-
castiqtle analyzed eack of these intelleccual manifestations. Each
pretended t i artest to the truth of a political camp. That was
someching thac concerned the citizcn, but rhe panecastician got
riothing- out of ir. What interested hirn in that cascade of ref-
utarions was the art tbar some used eo express what they meanr.
H e wouid show how, by eranslating themselves to each other,
they were translating a thousand other poems, a thousand other
adventures of the human mind, of classical works frnm the story
of Bluebeard to the recorts of prnletar~anson the Place Maubert.
The Erndntljkztov and Hif Monkey
r 7
The search for art was not a learned person's pleasure. It was a
philosophy, the only one the people could praccice. The old phl-
losophies slzid the truth and taughr morals. They supposed, for
that, a h ~ g hdegtee of learning. The panecastician, on ttie other
hand, didn't say the truth and preached no morals, And it was
simple and easy, fike the sttlry each person tells of his intelfec-
tiial adventures. "It's the story of each one of us. . . . N o mat-
ter what your specialty is, sheptierd or king, you can discuss thc
human rnind. Intelligente 1s at work in ail trades; it is Seen at
all ttie Levels of the social ladder. . . . The faiher and rhe son,
both ignorant, can talk to each nther about p a n e c a ~ t i c s . " ~ ~
The prnblem of the proletarians, excluded from the official
society and from political representation, was no different from
the ptobfem of the learned and the powerful: like them, they
co~ildn'tbecorne men in the full sense of the word except by
recognizing equality. Equaiity is not given, nur is it clairned; it
is practiced, it is z~erzfied.And proletarians couldn't verify it ex-
cept by recognizing the equality of intelligence of theit charn-
pions and their adversaries. They were undoubtedly interested,
for example, in ffeedom of the press, under attack frorn the Sep-
tember 1835 iaws. But they had co recognize that the reasoning
of the defenders of that principle had neither rnore not less force
in trying to establish ir than its adversaries had crying to refute
it. In short, said sorne, I want people to have the liberty tu say
everything they shouid have tke liberty to say. In short, re-
sponded the others, I don't wanr people to have the liberty to
say everyching they shouidn\ have the Iiberty CO say. What was
important--the rnanifesration of liberty-lay elsewhere: in the
equal art rhat, in order to Support these antagonistic positions,
the one translated from rhe other; in the esteeni for that power of
the intelligence that doesn't cease being exeircised at the very
heart of rhetorical irracionality; in rhe vecognilion of what speak-
ing can rnean for whoever renounces the pretension of h i n g
right an$ saying the rruch at the price of the orher's dcath. To
appropriate for oneself that art, ro conquer that reason-this
was what counted for ehe protetarians. One must firsr be a man
 The place of publicarion on Bjrench-tangiiage nlorks is
Paris unless ocherwise noted.

I . Jacques Ranciere (wich Alain Faure), Lu Pcsrole ortvri2rt (1976);

Rancikre, La Nrtit desprofitaire.r ( I 98 r ) , translared by Cionald Keid as
The Nights of Labov (Philadelphia, 1989);Rancierti, Le Phifnsophepii-
biien, ed. Louis Gabriei Ciauny ( 1983).
2. RPYalta logiqtief collecrive, L'Empit-e ci7t snriolugtte ( 19#4), p. 7 ,
3. At1 three works have been translared iriro English by Richard
Nice: The It~hevitorj (Chicago, 1979); b2ept.odrrrtion (London, 1977);
Distinction (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).
4. LIEmpirt. d~ sociolog~~e,
p. 7 .
3. Jacques Aanciere, "L'Ethiqur de ia saciologie," in ibid., p. 28.
G. lbid., pp. 28, 29.
7 . Jacques Ransiere, review of ].-C. Milner, D o f'icoie, Lu Qzrin-
zuine lit~iraive,4 2 2 (Aug, 1984).
8. Louis Afrhusser, "Prohl+rnes etudiants ," La Notivello Critiqtie.
1 5 2 (Jan. 1964).
9. Louis Althusser's "ldeology and Ideological State Apparatuses"
appeared originally in La Penslo in 1970. f r was translated the follow-
ing year in k n i n and Phiiosophy. tr. Ben Hrcwster (New York, 197r ) ,
pp. 127-86.
10. La Leqon A'Atthwt~( 1 9 7 4 ) ~ P. 35.
1 r . jacques Ranciere interview with Francois Ewald, "Qu'est-ce
que la classe ouvri&re?," Magazine litttcrdire, I 75 (July-Aug. 198 11,
 I 2 . See, in particular, Jacques RanriPre, Le Phifo~opbeek sespa~vres
(1983).
I 3. See Jacques Ranciere, Azix dord dzi politique ( r 990).
14. Wafcer Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History." in
Ilfnmrnarionf, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York, 1969).
1 5 . Rit~oltesfogiques collective, "Deux ou trois choses que I'his-
rorien ne veut pas savoir," Lc Mardvernetlt sorial, roo (July-Sept,
1977).
I 6. Hourdieu, Repvod~ction,p. iv.
I . Pelix and Victor Ratier, "Enseignemenr universel: Emancipa-
cion inteliectuelle," Journal rZe pbiloso~hiepanicartiq~~e, 5 ( I 838): r 5 5 .
2. J . S. Van de Weyer, Sornnaair-edes fepttspubliques de M . Jaccitot szsr
Ies principes de l'enseignement rtniz;tvsel (Brussefs, 11822), p. I I .
3. J jacotor , E nseigne?ncnc uniziet+sel:Lnngue mairemelle, 6th ed.
( I 836), p. 448; jaurnrtl i i e t'~rnancip~rian int~llectaelle,3 f I 835-36}:
I2 I .
4. J. Jacotot, Enseignement universei: Langae kran@re, 2d ed.
t182g), p. 219.
I. J . Jacotot, Enseignemelzt rrniz'erjef:&idthimtique~,2d ed. i~
8291,
PP. 30-5 r .
2 . L.ettre du FonaCztefir rle lenseignement trnt'slersel att g & i d Ldfnyette
(Louvain, 1829), P. 6 .
3. foutnul L t'kmanczpation intcllectuefle, 3 ( r 8 35-36): r 5.
4. Jbid., p. 380.
5. B . Gonod, Nouuelle exposiiion de % . mdhode de,Joseph Jacotot
( I 830j, pp. I 2-r 3.
6. J. jacocor , Ensetg~rernelat .vniversd: tangtfe mutemefle, 6rh ed.
( 18361, pp. 464-6s.
7, Jotdrnal de I'imncipation irrtellectir'efle,3 ( r 835-36); 9 .
8, Ibid., p. 1 1 . 9 , Xbid., 6 (1841-42): 72.
10. Ibid., p. 73. 1 1 . Ibid'
I 2 . C. Lorain, Rt@tation de fa m~thodeJncototf xgjo), p. 9 0
13. Jacotot, Lungiie nadernelle, p. 2 7 r ;jot/rnalde l'kmanciputiost ia-
tefle~tuelfe,3 ( I 835-36): 32 3.
x 4.Jatrrnal de I'imncipation inft/lecturrlle,3 l r 835-36): 25 3.
1 5 . Ibid., p. 2 5 9 .
16. Ibid., 4 (1836-37): 280,
I 1. Jacotot , Langae maternelfe, p. 422.
r 8. A. Destutt de Tracy, Observations suv le sysrtme actzrel d'instyrdc-
tion prrbfiqtte (Year IX).
I c). J. S. Van de Weyer, Somrnuire de~Eeqvns #a.lltliqt/cj dt M . J ~ ~ o r o t
srrr /es princ+es de L'enseignenlent universei f Brussels , i82 21, p. 2 3.
2 0 . Plaro, C~atyl?ls,jygc: "Palone among the anirnafs, man was
called anrhropos precisely because he exarnines what he Sees (clnadhron
/311 o ~ o ~ P ) . ' ~
2 1 . J . Jacotot, Etzseigncrnentnt ~rniversef:
Mtdsiyfte, 3rd ed. (r83of, p.
349-
22. See Plato, Phuedrtts, 274ciz77a; and jacques Kancikre, Le
Philojophe et ses putwes ( x983), especially p. 66.
z 3. journa f de l'imancip~tionintcllectrrelli!, 5 ( r 838): 168.
24. J. Jacotot, M&funge~postht,7ne~ dephilosophzepznk~;?~~iqr~e ( I 84 I ),
p. 176.
2 g . Joztrtzaf de I't+natzcipution intellectuelle, 3 ( I 83 5-36): 3 34.
26, B, Froussard, f x t ~ r ae res umis dzl stljet de ia ?nbbodede M . Jacoiot
fr829). p. 6 .
Clwpter Tbree
I . J . Jacotot, Enseignement miversei': hnglte brang?re, 2d ed.
( I ~ z F ) )pp,
, 228-29.
2. Ibid., p. 229.
3, J , Jacotor, Enseigwement ttnivevsel: tangrre maternefle, 6th ed.
(I&), p. 199.
4. L. de Bonald, RecherL-hes philosopbiqites jur /es puenzierr objets des
co~enaissaptcesrnoralej f x 8 I 8), voi . r , p . G7 .
5 . L, de Plonald, Legislution primitive con.rtdet'ke &ns lesprentiers tefnps
par les seules IidtnieP.es de la raison, in Oezrures comp!Ptes ( (x 8591, vol. K , p.
r I 6 r ; de Bonald, Rechercbes phi/orophrqrrer, vol. I , p. 1 0 5 .
6. M. Maine de Biran, "Ees Recherches phiiosophiqiics de M. de
Bonald," in Oeuvres cotnpiPtes ( 1 9 3 ~ )vol. ) ~ 1 2 , p. 252.
7 . J";drnaI de I'imancipation intellect?ieife, 4 ( I 836-37): 430-3 I .
8. J . Jacotot , Enscignement uni#ersel: Droit et phiktsofthie pan6castiqtte
f 1838),p, 278.
g , Jacotoc, I ~ n g u emcsternefle, p. 330.
xo. Bbid., p. 33.
 I L. Jorrtnal de IYetnancIp~tiortzt~teliectue/le,4 ( I 836-37): I 87.
I 2. Jacotot, Droit et philuuphie panicastiqrie, p. qz .
13. Ibid., p. 41.
1 4 . L'Obsewa!etlrbelge, 16, 426 (1818): 142-43.
r 5 . Jacotoi, Dt'oit et phiiorophie panic&iyz(e, pp. i 1-1 3.
16. Hbid,, p. 231.
I 7. J , Jacotot, Ensejgnenlent xniiarsel: iW~(siq~ie, 3d ed, ( t 8 3 0 ) ~p.
I 63.
18. Ibid., p. 314.
i9. Jacotot, Droif ei phiiosnphie panicajtiqzle, p. 91.
20. Jacotor, M~tsiqae,y. 347.
2 E. jacotor, Lung~cetnaternelle, p. 149.
22. Jacotot, Mrssiqate, p. 322.
2 3. Jacotot , Langrre materneile, p. 28 r .
24. Ibid., p. 284. 25. Ibid,, p. 282.
26. Ibid., p. 243. 27. Jacotot, IMmiqne, p. 3 3 8
2 8 . Journal de philorophie pdnkrastiqtte, 5 ( r 838): 265.
I . F. J . Dunibeck, Annsrlrs Acddetniae La~uniensis,9 6 I 825-26):
216, 22a, 222.
2 . Jonvnaf de i'itnancipation ittteilectrrelie, 3 ( I 8 35-36): 22 5
3. J . Jacorot , iMLlunge.r posthmes de philosophie pattPc@.~tiq~~e ( r 84 r ),
p. 118.
4. J . jacarot , Enseignemeqt ~oziversel:Langur itrnngsre, 2d ed.
(18291, P. 7 5 .
5. Jacorot , Mkjanges posthzunes, p. i 16.
6. J . Jacotor, Enseignement ztnivwsel: Mrisique, gd ed. ( I 810), p. 5 2 ,
7. J Jacotot, Enseignetnent trniverxl: Langue rnatekriefle, 6th ed.
(18361, p. 278.
8. Ibid., p, ga.
9. Ibid., pp. :$Ga--63.
ro. "'If one points our a vice in our insriturions and proposris a
remedy Tor it, immediately a great functionary stands up and, wirh-
out discussing the prnposirian, cries out in a serious manner: 'B'm nor
prepared to examine the question, I admit my incapaciry, etc.' But
here is the hidden meaning of his words: 'If a man Like me, higbly
situared and gifted wirh gcnius proporiionate to his dignity, admits
his inability, isn't i c presumptuoiis, isn't i t madness on che part: of
those who pretend to have a ready-made opinion?'This is an indirect
metliud of intirnidation; ic's arrogante beiienth a very thiri veil of
modesty." Jeremy Bentham, Tkziti des ~ophismespcrrlementaives, tr.
Etienne Dumont (Paris, n840), p. 84.
r :. E. Dumont, preface to Jeremy Bentham, Tacfiquedafdssernblies
parletnenfaires (Geneva, r 8 x G), p. xv.
1 2 . Jeremy Bentham, "Essay an Politicai Tactics," in vol. z of The
\Vor.k.r -J Jeremy Benthafri, ed. John Bowring {New York, xgzG), p.
306.
r 3. Jacotot, bngtie mrztevnelle, pp. 328-29.
14. Jm~.'~'l(ri
de l'itnnncipntion i~tteilecttrelle,4 ( r 836-57): 357.
ir 5. Jacotot, Langue materneile, p. 3 39.
16. Xbid., p, 109,
17. Jacorot, Itlrrsiqzde, pp. 194-95.
18. Ibid., p. 193.
ag. Jacotot, k n p e marernelle, p. 365.
20. J. Jacotot, "1-c Gontrat sucial," inforrrnai Je philosoprtiic palltni-
custtqdse, 5 (1838): 62.
2 r . Ibid., p. 2x1.
z a . jacotot, LangIre ktrangire, p. I 23.
2 3. Jacorot, I,angtre muternelle, pp. 289-90.
24. Ibid., p. 355) 25. ibid., p. 356.
2 6 . Ibid., p. 342. 27. Plato, Phaen't-IIJ.2 7 3 e .
28. P.&. Ballanche, "Essais de paling6nesie sociale: Formule g6-
nerale de I'histoire de tous Les peuples appliquke a I'histoirc du peuple
rnmain," Revxe de P~rlvij,April 1829: ~ 5 5 .
29. J . Jacotot, Marrrret de l'imatacij~rrioninteliectirellc ( r 84 I ), p, I 5.
Chaptrv Five
r . P. Reter de Brigton, lZlanlrei po!rrtlnire de Ir? mithode _ltacitur
(18301, p. 3.
2 . J. Jacotot, Enseignement rlnir:errel: Malhi?ttatique.r,i d ed. (T 829),
P. 9 1 ,
3. Ibid., pp. 1-2.
4. Jnflrnrll de pltt'fofopbiepaniajtiqrtc, 5 ( r 838): i---I 2.
5 Ihid., p. 277.
6 . Ibid., p. 2 7 9 .
q . J . de Easreyrie, Risxnd Re ld tnethode clE- I'enseignement rtnzt~ersd
d'ap& M . Jacotot (r8zg), pp. xxvii-xxuiii,
 8. J . Jacotot , Btl~eignenrentuniuer.wl; Langue matevnelLe, 6t h ed .
(1836),pp. 446, 443.
9. See Retnurques SZIP fu 1IiIithoiIe ~ f M
e , jacotot (Brussel~,1827); and
L'Universit6prot;giepur f'znerie des discipfesdeJvsephJurvtot ( I 830).
15, jor/rnal deduration et d'instvucddo~, 4: 81-33, 264-66.
I I . jor/rnal de ti4wrtctparion inteE6ectftef/e,4 ( X 836-37): 32 8
I 2. Jacotot, Mnthi»tatique.r, pp. 2 1-22.
13. Ibid., p. 143.
14. Jbid., p. 22.
1 5 . Bbid,, p. 2 1 .
1G. Journal de philosolrhie pai~[r;a~tique, 5 ( I 838): 279.
r 7. Jorrrncal des cvnnajSjr?vceszdtiies, j ( P 83 3): .g
18. Ibid., 2 , 2 (Feb, 1832): 19-21.
rg. Ibid., 3: 208-10. ,L
2 0 . Jrtrcvnul dc I'imuncip~tionin!t/lerttreIIe, q ( r g36 5: 328.
2 I . Jacotot, Mathitnatiqgees, pp. I g I-gz.
2 2 . J . Jacotot , Enseigrzemevt rrniuersel: Droit et phifoso~iepankus-
tique (18381,p. 342.
23. Ibid., pp. 330-31.
24. E de Lamennais, Le Livre du peupfe (x838), p. 6 5 , cited in
Jotivnczl de Irt philv~opbiepu~tfcastiqae,5 ( I 838): r 44,
2 5 . A paraphrase of d e Lamennais, Liz~redz,pezrpte, p. 73, in ibid.,
P 145.
2 6. Jacotot , Msth4rnutiq/~es, p. 2 2 .
27. jotlrnaf de ll4r11~ncipidtio~intefle~taefle,3 ( I 835-36): 276.
28. Jacotot, &oi? et phifosophie @nicd~tiq~ie, p. 2 i4.
29. Ibid., p. 293.
30. J . Jacotot, Mikrqe~poesthi~m~~ dephilosopbiepande~~tique ( a 84 I ),
PP. 349-51.