The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

Bertrand de Jouvenel

–          “arbitrary Power, swept on by the passions of the mob and swayed by the ardours of the holders of office, lacking both rule and bit and limit, constitutes, for all its tinsel dresses, a despotism such as the West has never known before. It is none the less dangerous for being unstable – all despotisms have been unstable. As none is outside its power, it makes for servility; as every conquest is open to it, it breeds ambition.”[1]

Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) was a French journalist and thinker, whose career as a scholar and organizer in the 20^th century had a lasting impact that have often been overlooked. Born into a family of literary and social esteem, de Jouvenel’s father Henri was a French Senator, Ambassador, and High Commissioner for Syria and Lebanon.[2] Bertrand ultimately followed a bit more in the footsteps of his uncle Robert, a writer who contributed a key study of French politics in his own time.

The younger de Jouvenel was an early participant in French politics but was transformed by the onset and events of World War II. While later criticized for his 1936 interview of Adolf Hitler, de Jouvenel opposed the Munich policy of appeasement and the Vichy regime that collaborated with Hitler, serving in the infantry himself until France’s 1940 capitulation. After the war’s experiences and disappointments, de Jouvenel became private secretary to Czechoslovakian President Edvard Benes, observing at close range the successful machinations by Soviet and Czech Communists resulting in Benes’ resignation and the Communists’ seizure of power.

After these various dislocations, de Jouvenel was able to publish, in Geneva, his first masterwork, Power, a historical, anthropological, and philosophical examination of the work’s namesake. A significant contribution to the literature of political philosophy, de Jouvenel traces the origins and development of power from tribal organization to the modern state in a well-organized, challenging treatment. While not an overtly Christian work, de Jouvenel regularly incorporates Christian teaching and concepts in his writing, an approach I found refreshing as a believing reader.

De Jouvenel followed Power by several other significant works that established his reputation as a scholar and original thinker. His books Sovereignty and The Pure Theory of Politics form, with Power, a trilogy that examines the structures, causes, and concepts of politics and authority in the Western world. In them, de Jouvenel successfully roots an understanding of society based in the family, human cooperation, and limited government. Politics, in de Jouvenel’s view, is naturally based in the recognition that each individual is dependent, needy from birth, and so people work together pursuing voluntarily the vision of trusted, vigorous leaders. These visions come and go, and conflict arises when they are arbitrarily enforced to the detriment of the individuals who support them. As a result, leaders should strive more to be peacemakers among than men of action, recognizing the imperfection of their own ideas and enthusiastically incorporating and maturely shaping the new ideas of the next generation of leaders to prevent the strife and hostility that naturally flow from life in a world of scarcity and dependence.

Nor were these excellent volumes Bertrand de Jouvenel’s only contributions. He wrote a short book, The Ethics of Redistribution, which demonstrates both his breadth as a thinker and his ability to accept and incorporate the original thought of others. Because of his scholarship, he was welcomed as a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society with F.A. Hayek, Michael Polanyi, Milton Friedman, and others. Nevertheless, despite de Jouvenel’s career of significant work, he is often overlooked today by students and political philosophers. Professor Daniel J. Mahoney of Assumption College has produced a focused study of de Jouvenel that can hopefully reverse the current state of affairs and restore de Jouvenel to high-level consideration among 20^th century political thinkers. Polarization, division, and radicalism appear to be on the rise today. De Jouvenel’s emphasis on trust, dependence, and community, tempered by a humble appreciation for freedom,  and the intrinsic value of the individual brought by the Christian faith, would be a rewarding addition to our political discourse.

–          “The entire existence of man in Society rests on confidence. The stranger whom we meet constitutes no menace to our persons or to our property. We see in him, on the contrary, one of those countless anonymous fellow-workers who guarantee to us the daily satisfaction of needs which have in the course of centuries gradually multiplied….Our security turns on the admirable regularity with which a whole host of services is rendered to us by a countless number of members of the same society who do not know us and whom we do not know. We, too, play our part, but its efficaciousness and value are due to all the parts being concerted. The mind slips all too easily into the passive acceptance of this harmonious working; once meditated on, it becomes both astonishing and admirable, and is sufficient proof that ‘Each for all and all for each’ is not the motto of an improbable Utopia but the formula of Society in being.”[3]

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[1] Bertrand de Jouvenel, Power, (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1948), 308.

[2] Ibid, 9.

[3] Ibid, 308.