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The Doubter's Companion

Page 32

by John Ralston Saul


  E

  1 EDUCATION, PUBLIC—Newsweek, 20 September 1993, 44. The study was carried out by the U.S. Department of Education.

  2 ELECTORS OF BRISTOL—O’Brien, The Great Melody, 75.

  3 ETHICS—John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

  F

  1 FACTS—Denis Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, vol. 2, 97. “Fait” “…On peut distribuer les faits en trois classes, les actes de la divinité, les phénomènes de la nature, et les actions des hommes. Les premiers appartiennent à la théologie, les seconds à la philosophie, et les autres à l’histoire proprement dite. Tous sont également sujets à la critique.”

  2 FAITH—From “The Apology” in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (London: Penguin, 1954), 71.

  3 FRIENDSHIP—William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” in The Writings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: The Nonesuch Press, n.d.), Plates 17-20, 157.

  G

  1 GANG OF FIVE—Voltaire, Dictionnaire, under “Cartésianisme,” vol. 3, 82.

  H

  1 HELL—Voltaire, Dictionnaire, vol. 4, 308. “Enfer.” “Dès que les hommes vécurent en société, ils durent s’apercevoir que plusieurs coupables échappaient à la sévérité des lois; ils punissaient les crimes publics; il fallut établir un frein pour les crimes secrets; la religion seule pouvait être ce frein.”

  2 HELL—Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, vol. 2, 125, under Fortune (Morale).

  3 HUMANISM—René-Daniel Dubois, 9 October 1991, Présentation du Mémoire conjoint de l’AQAD et du C.A.D., “Nous ne voulons pas d’un monde dans lequel le sentiment d’être un humain est une maladie.”

  I

  1 IMAGE—The Toronto Star, 26 March 1994, A15.

  2 INAUGURATION GALA—Kitty Kelley, His Way—The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 285.

  3 INFERIORITY COMPLEX—Alfred Adler broke away from Sigmund Freud in 1911 and is known as the father of the inferiority complex. His key writings on the subject are:

  1909: Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Physical Compensation.

  1908: Aggression Drive.

  1910: Inferiority Feeling and Masculine Protest.

  1912: The Neurotic Constitution.

  1918: Social Interest.

  4 INSTRUMENTAL REASON—Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Illinois: The Free Press), 115.

  5 IRRADIATION—Compiled by Barbara Dinham, The Pesticide Hazard: A Global Health and Environmental Audit (London: 2 ed Books for The Pesticide Trust, 1993).

  6 IRRADIATION—Ibid.

  J

  1 JOBS—The Guardian Weekly, 28 February 1993, 4.

  2 JOBS—The Globe and Mail, 23 February 1994, B7.

  L

  1 LUDDITES—Quoted by David Suzuki, The Toronto Star, 17 July 1993, D8.

  2 LUDDITES—Oscar Douglas Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, vol. 1 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1921), 321.

  M

  1 MEMORY—Johnson, Dictionary, 116. “Memory: the power of retaining or recollecting things past; that faculty by which we call to mind any past transaction.”

  2 MEMORY—The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, vol. II (London: Book Club Associates, 1983), 1306. “Memory: 1. The faculty by which things are remembered.... 3. Recollection, remembrance.... An act or instance of remembrance; a recollection....”

  3 MUSSOLINI—Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (London: Paladin, 1983), 144.

  4 MUSSOLINI—Le Quotidien de Paris, 7 June 1993, 15. A study of the football strategy has been done by the historian Paul Dietschy.

  5 MUSSOLINI—The Economist, 2 April 1994, 5 and The Economist, 9 April 1994, 13.

  N

  1 NEO-CONSERVATIVE—Smith, Mussolini, 134.

  2 NIETZSCHE—Ibid, 15.

  3 NIHILISM—E.M. Cioran, quoted in an interview by Branka Bogavac Le Comte in Les Lettres Français, no. 33, June 1993, 18. “Si vous essayez d’être libre, vous mourez de faim, et on ne vous tolère que si vous êtes successivement servie et despotique!”

  O

  1 ORAL LANGUAGE—Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951).

  2 ORAL LANGUAGE—Dante, quoted in Innis. Ibid, 22.

  3 ORGASM—The New Yorker, 29 November 1993, 8.

  4 ORGASM—Johnson, Dictionary.

  P

  1 PLATO—For a remarkable portrait of the atmosphere in Athens, see Donald Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy (London: Secker and Warburg, 1990).

  2 POWER, PUBLIC—Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, vol. 2, 275. “Pouvoir” (Droit nat. et politiq.). “Le but de tout gouvernement, est le bien de la société gouvernée. Pour prévenir l’anarchie, pour faire exécuter les lois, pour protéger les peuples, pour soutenir les faibles contre les entreprises des plus forts, il a fallu que chaque société établît des souverains qui fussent revêtus d’un pouvoir suffisant pour remplir tous ces objets.”

  3 PROGRESS—Prof. Andrew Watson (Toronto), 26 June 1993. See also The Islamic City, ed. A.H. Hourani and S.M. Stern (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970), Chapter on Housing and Sanitation, 174–194.

  4 PUBLIC RELATIONS—Smith, Mussolini, 144.

  R

  1 ROTTEN BOROUGH—The New York Times, 25 January 1993, A13.

  S

  1 SAT—The New York Times, 28 February 1994, A12, “New SAT sets students cramming.”

  2 SCHOLASTICISM—Diderot, L’Encyclopédie, vol. 2, 15, “Ecole (philosophie de 1’),” “…scholastique, qui a substitué les mots aux choses, et les questions frivoles ou ridicules, aux grands objets de la véritable philosophie; qui explique par des termes barbares des choses inintelligibles … Cette philosophie est née de l’esprit et de l’ignorance …on raisonna sur les abstractions, au lieu de raisonner sur les êtres réels: on créa pour ce nouveau genre d’étude une langue nouvelle, et on se crut savant, parce qu’on avait appris cette langue. On ne peut trop regretter que la plupart des auteurs scholastiques aient faits un usage si misérable de la sagacité et de la subtilité extrême qu’on remarque dans leurs écrits.”

  3 SCHOLASTICISM—Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. II: Medieval Philosophy (New York: Image Book, Doubleday, 1993), 312.

  4 SCHOLASTICISM—Innis, The Bias of Communication, 80.

  5 SCHOPENHAUER—Leni Riefenstahl, The Sieve of Time: The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl (London: Quartet Books, 1992), 178.

  6 SCHOPENHAUER—Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Book 3, vol. VII, 263, 277.

  7 SEX—John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 488.

  T

  1 TALENT—Milano Citta, Spring 1993.

  2 TASTE—The Spectator, 20 February 1993, 39.

  3 TECHNOCRAT—John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1851, Everyman’s Library, ed. Ernest Rhys (London: J.M. Dent & Co., n.d.).

  4 TECHNOLOGY—Johnson, Dictionary.

  5 TECHNOLOGY—Charles de Gaulle quoted in Charles de Gaulle, jour après jour, Olivier Germain-Thomas et Philippe Barthelet (Paris: Nathan Press, 1990) 53, “...les sociétés préservent la liberté, la sécurité et la dignité de l’homme. On ne voit pas d’autre moyen d’assurer en definitive le triomphe de l’esprit sur la matière.”

  6 THINK TANK—Edited by Alan J. Day, Think Tanks: an International Directory (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1993).

  7 TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—Robert Dassanowsky-Harris, “Wherever you may run, you cannot escape him: Leni Riefenstahl’s Inner Migration, Self-Reflection and Romantic Transcendence,” from Nazism in Tiefland, 1994, unpublished paper.

  8 TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—Analysis by Elizabeth Kolbert of “The Living Room Candidate: A History of Presidential Campaigns on Television, 1952–1992,” The New York Times, 17 July 1992, 81; an exhibition at the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York.

  9 TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—Anton Kaes, From H
itler to Heimat (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5.

  10 TRUTH—Engraved over the fireplace in the living room of the house Frank Lloyd Wright built for himself in Oak Park, Illinois.

  V

  1 VISION—Euripides, The Bacchae and Other Plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (London: Penguin Classics, 1954).

  2 VISION—Shiva Naipaul, North of South (London: Penguin Books, 1980), 119.

  3 VOLTAIRE—Voltaire, Dictionnaire, vol. 6, 350, “Lettres, Gens de Lettres, ou Lettrés.” “Les gens de lettres qui ont rendu le plus de services …ont presque tous été persécutés.”

  W

  1 WESTERN CIVILIZATION—Twelve-ton statue of George Washington by Horatio Greenough, 1840. Placed in the Capitol. Inspired by Phidias’s Zeus.

  2 WISDOM—Voltaire, Dictionnaire, vol. 8, 128, “Sens Commun.”

  Z

  1 ZEALOT—Johnson, Dictionary.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many of the people who made Voltaire’s Bastards possible—even if I don’t name them again—have offered advice and information, answered desperate phone calls at strange hours and been good enough to disagree in long discussions.

  Adam Bellow and Cynthia Good have again given great help as editors and applied their imaginations and persistence. Indeed, the enthusiasm of everyone at Penguin Books and The Free Press has been very important to me.

  Laura Roebuck and Donya Peroff have been a constant support. Advice, information, criticism and dozens of other forms of help have come from Alain Chanlat, Anoukh Foerg, Pier Daniele Napolitani, Hans Wuttke and Jagoda Buic, Scott Sellers, de Montigny Marchand, Noël and Dominique Goutard, Christine Klose, Elisabetta Sgarbi, Rolf Puls, Gilbert Reid, Margaret Atwood, Niels de Groot, Jean-François Garneau, Mary Adachi, Charles Rubinsztein, Matthieu Debost, Francesca Vallenti and my good friend, Father Joe Maier.

  WORD LIST

  A

  A

  A Big Mac

  À La Recherche du Temps Perdu

  Aaron

  Abasement

  Abelard, Peter

  Absolute

  Academic Consultants

  Académie Française

  Acapulco

  Acceptance Speech

  Ad Hominem

  Advertising

  Agriculture

  Air-conditioning

  Allies

  Amorality

  Anglo-Saxons

  Animism

  Anorexia

  Answers

  Anti-Intellectualism

  Ants

  Apple

  Applied Civilization

  Applied Corporatism

  Armaments

  Armpits

  Aspen Institute

  Autobiography

  Award Show

  B

  Babel, Tower of

  Baby Seal

  Bacon, Francis

  Bad News

  Bad People

  Balance

  Ballroom

  Banality

  Bankers

  Barons: Robber, Press, etc.

  Bees

  Biographical Films

  Biography

  Birth Control Pill

  Blood (1)

  Blood (2)

  Blue Jeans

  Boring

  Bretton Woods

  Briefing Books

  Buddhism (Tibetan)

  Burke, Edmund

  Business Conferences

  Business Schools

  C

  Calm

  Canada

  Cannibalism

  Capitalism

  Carlyle, Thomas

  Chicago School of Economics

  Children

  Citizen

  Civilization

  Class

  Clausewitz, Carl von

  CNN

  Collectors

  Comedy

  Competition

  Comte, Auguste

  Confessionals

  Conrad, Joseph

  Consultants

  Consumption

  Control, Being in

  Convenience

  Corporation

  Corporatism

  Cosmetic Surgery

  Courtiers

  Criticism, Political

  Critics

  Critics, Bad

  Croissant

  Cure

  Cynicism

  D

  Dandruff

  Davos (The Annual Conference of the World Economic Forum)

  Death

  Debt, Unsustainable Levels of

  Deconstructionism

  Democracy

  Denial

  Depression

  Deregulation

  Descartes, René

  Deselect

  Dessert

  Destiny

  Dialects

  Dictatorship of Vocabulary

  Dictionary

  Direct Democracy

  Divorce

  Doubt

  Dual Use

  E

  Econometrics

  Economics

  Economist, The

  Education, Public

  Efficiency

  Electors of Bristol, Address to the

  Élite

  Élite Education

  England

  Error

  Ethics

  Executive

  Existentialism

  F

  Factories

  Facts

  Faith

  False Hero

  Fashion

  Fast Food, Philosophy of

  Fear

  First Class

  Florida

  Foreigner

  Free

  Free Speech

  Free Trade

  Freedom

  Freud, Sigmund

  Friendship

  G

  Gambling, State-Run

  Gang of Five, The

  GATT

  Global Economy

  God

  Growth

  H

  Happiness

  Happy Birthday

  Happy Family

  Happy Hour

  Hard Work

  Harvard School of Business

  Hell

  Heroes

  History

  Hobbes, Thomas

  Holy Trinity—Christian

  Holy Trinity—Post-Christian

  Holy Trinity—Late Twentieth Century

  Humanism

  I

  Ideology

  Image

  Inauguration Gala

  Individualism

  Indolence

  Inefficiency

  Inferiority Complex

  Instrumental Reason

  Intelligence

  IRA

  Irony

  Irradiation

  J

  Jobs

  Jogging

  Judge

  Jury

  K

  Kant, Immanuel

  Kiss

  L

  Lagos

  Leadership

  Left versus Right

  Level Playing Field

  Los Angeles

  Love

  Loyola, St. Ignatius

  Luddites

  Ludendorff, Erich

  M

  McDonald, Ronald

  Machiavelli, Niccolo

  Mainstream

  Manager

  Manners

  Market-place

  Marxist

  Melon, The

  Memory

  Monarchs, In Particular, Royal Alliances

  Money Markets, International

  Money, the Volatilization of

  Moral Crusade

  Moro, Aldo

  Museums

  Mussolini, Benito

  Muzak

  Myrmecophaga Jubata

  Mythology

  N

  NAFTA

  Nannyism

  Nationalism

  Nationalization

  N
atural Death

  Negative Wealth

  Neo-conservative

  New World Order

  Nietzsche, Friedrich

  Nihilism

  O

  Oil

  Olympic Ideal

  One

  Optimism

  Oral Language

  Orgasm

  P

  Panic

  Participation

  Peace Dividend

  Pectoral Muscles

  Penis

  Pessimism

  Philosophy

  Plato

  Platoon

  Politeness

  Power, Public

  Praetorian Guard

  Private Lives

  Privatization

  Progress

  Propaganda

  Property

  Property Development

  Propriety

  Public Relations

  Public Trust

  Punctuality

  R

  Rationalize

  Reality

  Reason

  Recession

  Referendum or Plebiscite

  Regulation

  Responsibility

  Richelieu, Cardinal

  Right

  Right Versus Wrong

  Rotten Borough

  Round Table

  S

  SAT

  Scholasticism

  Schopenhauer, Arthur

  Second-Generation Fertilizers, Herbicides and Insecticides

  Serious

  Seventy-Three

  Sex

  Socrates

  Socratic Inheritance, The

  Solutions

  Sophists

  Special Relationships

  Speech-Writers

  Standards of Production

  Strawberry, The

  Subjunctive

  Super Bowl

  Superiority

  T

  Talent

  Taste

  Taxation

  Taylor, Frederick

  Taylorism

  Technocrat

  Technology

  Tennis

  Tenure

  The

  Think Tank

  Third World

  Tough

  Trade

  Trading with the Enemy Act

  Transnational Corporations

  Trickle-down Economics

  Triumph of the Will

  Truth

  U

  Unconscious

  Unemployment

  United States

  University

  Urban Rich

  Urbane Weather Patterns

  V

  Venereal

  Venice

  Vico, Giambattista

  Virginity

  Vision

  Voltaire

  W

  War

  War on Drugs

  Weather Forecasters

 

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