deflect the criticism of others while finding a way to make them subservient to us? Obviously, a new faith of which we were the object would be ideal. Most in their heart of hearts dream of this. Lacking it, a faith of which we were the appointed disciple would certainly fill the bill. “Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style” (F, 133). But this awaits a vast social movement. Until then we are each of us alone and on our own. What is to be done?
Disarm the opposition, of course. Since each, like the Brazilian fish, is waiting for the least sign of vulnerability to tear us apart, we must carefully contrive our public presence to keep them at bay. But, since no one is above reproach, and all of us are thus vulnerable, it will no longer do, as Clamence had done, to take our respectability for granted. This is particularly true since there no longer is any church or value system of which we might make ourselves devotees, dominating in its name, as did the early Christians, according to Nietzsche.7 Actually, moral values are so discredited today that protestations of belief are seen by the sophisticated as but a more clever way of selling oneself.
Lacking a church, therefore, “I had to find another means of extending judgment to everybody in order to make it weigh less heavily on my shoulders.” How to get everyone involved in order to have the right to sit calmly on the outside myself” becomes his concern. “Should I climb up to the pulpit, like many of my illustrious contemporaries, and curse humanity? Very dangerous, that is! One day, or one night, laughter bursts out without a warning. The judgment you are passing on others eventually snaps back in your face, causing some damage” (F, 137). If you exercise your vocation for judgment by moralizing, you are left vulnerable to the counterattack. His strategy will be a preemptive strike.
Inasmuch as one couldn’t condemn others without immediately judging oneself, one had to overwhelm oneself to have the right to judge others. Inasmuch as every judge some day ends up a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up a judge (F, 138).
Central is the induction of guilt. Those who are satisfied with their own innocence will demand respect. They may even claim the right to judge others, for outraged innocence is the root of revolt. Where then will the guilty be? Even worse, “if pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent, cher monsieur, and in my opinion . . . that’s what must be avoided above all” (F,41).
How then to induce guilt, which undermines self-respect, while not
leaving oneself open to the counterattack? In our post-Christian world this problem has become more acute, original sin being out of style. There is no longer anyone to confess to without leaving oneself vulnerable. Nor is there any church through whose service our confession can become a path through absolution to domination and salvation. As for the recognition of guilt, “God is not needed to create guilt nor to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. . .. [There is no need to] wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day” (F, 110—1).
What is required is to steal a march on the others, to deflect their attack while earning the right to judge them. “Each of us insists on being innocent at all costs, even if he has to accuse the whole human race” (F, 81). If one cannot be innocent, one must spread the guilt to all. If some are able to maintain their sense of innocence, how would the rest of us be able to stand it? We must create a modern equivalent of “the little-ease,” that medieval invention of genius by which “every day through the unchanging restriction that stiffened his body, the condemned man learned that he was guilty and that innocence consists in stretching joyously” (F, 109—10).
The emerging strategy reverses the procedure by which a human community is established, as communication gives way to an “interminable subjectivity which is imposed on others as objectivity.” Such is “the philosophic definition of terror. This type of objectivity has no definable meaning, but power will give it a content by decreeing that everything of which it does not approve is guilty” (R, 243). While dialogue binds together, monologue isolates. “Dialogue on a human level is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian regimes in the form of a monologue dictated from the top of an isolated mountain” (L’HR, 350; R, 283—4). Clamence acknowledges as much when he comments, “I like all islands. It is easier to dominate them” (F, 43). Reversing the path of The Plague, we move away from outraged innocence to universal culpability, seeking to entrap all in the tangled web of self-recrimination.
I stand before all humanity recapitulating my shames without losing sight of the effect I am producing, and saying: “I was the lowest of the low.” Then imperceptibly I pass from the “I” to the “we.” When I get to “this is what we are,” the trick has been played and I can tell them off I am like them, to be sure; we are in the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it and this gives me the right to speak. . . . The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden (F, 140).
By judging himself severely, Clamence becomes both the object condemned and the subject condemning. As object condemned he is the lowest of the low, and all can join in the universal condemnation. But as the judging subject, he is simultaneously other than the guilty one. As other, he is not guilty. Rather, he is above the sins by the very act of condemning them. He stands for the values by which such sins are condemned. He is above those who are guilty. By then subtly developing the condemnation of himself as other so as to implicate human nature itself, without even seeming to do so —perhaps by suggesting an ontology demonstrating that all humans are by nature as self-centered as he—he will have succeeded in extending his condemnation to all. Having first joined in his self-condemnation, we are now implicated. No longer can we stand outside, observing and passing judgment on his confession. Now we ourselves are called upon to confess. At the same time, attention may be turned away from the penitent one, who, now “liberated” from our critical scrutiny, is free to become our judge. In fact, to the extent that he succeeds in implicating us, we will accept his right to judge us. We will even begin to do it ourselves. Our self-confidence shaken, our unease growing, we may condemn ourselves for our egoism. Disoriented by an emerging sense of guilt, we lose confidence in our right to condemn others, Clamence included. Self-abasement is generalized, and human dignity loses its claim on individual commitment. With the spread of cynicism, the burden of guilt is lifted from the shoulders of our judge-penitent. In fact, the terrain is well-prepared for the emergence of an individual or a movement offering new directions to individuals adrift. By thus working to undermine our sense of personal dignity and self-respect, this strategy prepares us to seek out a cause or a faith to which we may feel the need to subject ourselves. The post-Christian era has found its true prophet. It now only awaits its true church.
A BOURGEOIS HELL
The rebel feels he has a right to rebel. If he can be denied that feeling—if guilt and self-abasement can be cultivated in its place—the nourishing springs of rebellious ferment will dry up, and the pathway to collective enslavement will open up before us. In fact, we will even seek it as our salvation. The judge-penitent is the dialectical fulfillment of the Christian-bourgeois project grounded in the metaphysical commitment to individualism. It responds to the anxiety that isolated individuals feel, bearing the burden of their life in the face of an impenetrable destiny, by undercutting that self-respect and promising to relieve that burden. At the extreme, it offers the promise of a collective salvation in which the burden and the freedom are no more.8
Here we have reached the inferno of the modern world. In these murky waters of induced self-incrimination, personal guilt has sought to assuage its lonely burden through the establishment of “objective criminality.” Political cynicism spawns the “universe of the trial” (R, 240). “This philosophy of the guilty conscience has merely taught [the followers of Hegel] that every slave