By John Paul Royal
France, once the acknowledged cultural leader of the West, is experiencing what many French men and women describe as 'La Malaise' - the societal apprehension, unease, and disillusionment caused by a perceived sense of national decline and economic stagnation. For Americans interested in understanding this now prominent state of ennui and melancholy, Chantal Delsol's new book Prosperity and Torment in France offers a clear diagnosis of its ideological, intellectual, and spiritual roots.
Delsol, a prominent French Catholic writer, philosopher, and member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France, reflects on the persistent paradoxes and pathologies undermining the French republican ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Her compelling analysis draws from and modernizes critiques first put forward by Alexis de Tocqueville in The Old Regime and the Revolution, which detailed the conditions in France that led to the Revolution of 1789.
This short study, published by the University of Notre Dame Press and translated by Andrew Kelley, argues that despite France's enviable fortunes, it is a depressed country due to its unrealistic expectation of an earthly utopia. France has the "national riches of Germany, the social expenditures of Denmark, and the happiness of. . .Mexico." Daniel J. Mahoney, Claremont Institute senior fellow and professor emeritus at Assumption University, who has written extensively on French political thought, provides an insightful foreword placing Delsol's rich and provocative arguments in a broader historical and philosophical context.
Despite its rich cultural legacy, high living standards and a generous welfare state, Delsol contends that France fears "relegation" from a great national power to a middle-tier nation. While France considers its language, way of life, and social model to be without rival, many feel a sense of humiliation that its socialist governing system and social compact are inadequate, and must adapt in order to compete with the outside world.
Delsol traces these feelings of inadequacy and "torment" through manifold historical and cultural paradoxes. She discusses France's primacy as the "eldest daughter of the Church" starting from the baptism of Clovis, the barbarian king, in 496 AD. This primacy has been destroyed due to aggressive anti-clericalism and secularism, and replaced with being the "eldest daughter of revolution."
Delsol describes France's small, fervent Catholic community of young families (often among the elite class, surprisingly) which provides a glimmer of hope for the future. But France is now the most nonreligious country in Europe. According to Delsol, this has resulted in a search for substitute religions, renewed paganism, and especially worshipers of Gaia and ecology. The laws, behaviors, and morals inspired by Christianity essentially no longer exist in France.
In contrast, the author describes the "tortuous, hypocritical" support given to Islam by French media and intellectuals, even often-times radical Arab-Muslim immigrants. This stems from "colonialist" guilt, which undermines French ideas of unity and fraternity, and produces "a kind of redemptive self-flagellation."
The statistics are startling: according to a 2015 survey, nearly a third of young Muslims in France prefer Sharialaw to French law. In the near future, Arab-Muslims will represent one in four inhabitants. Every two weeks, a new mosque opens while a church closes; and many cities in France already appear more Arab-Muslim than French, with large neighborhoods that police dare not enter. A 2023 study found that 87 percent of the French said they feared civil war as a result of Islamic fundamentalism and liberal immigration policy.
Assimilation and integration are common problems across much of the West, especially in relation to Muslim communities. Delsol identifies the Achilles heel of French intellectuals: "We believed that religion w...
