“The ‘utopias’ of the twentieth century rested on the myth of self-creation, self-foundation, and on the self-sufficiency of mankind, conceived to be capable of rebuilding any lost heritage. They claimed that one could say nothing about mankind, per se. The reexamination of totalitarianism therefore calls for thinking about limits, which are statements about mankind. Limits bestow a name and an identity upon man, since the human being takes his name and identity from what distinguishes and therefore limits him. The lesson of the twentieth century is the following: we have limits that we do not choose, and which it would be in our interest to accept rather than suppress, given the damage attempts at suppression have caused.”

Chantal Delsol, The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century: An Essay on Late Modernity, trans. by Robin Dick (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 30-1.

Typically I would consider “limits” as referring primarily to man’s epistemological limits: the limits of our knowing, which therefore limit our action. Here Delsol implies the reverse; her “limits” are the limits of our acting, which therefore limit our knowledge. In the same chapter as the above paragraph, she appropriates Marcel Gauchet’s phrase “the contrary evidence inflicted by reality on belief” (28) to describe the situation of communism today, its ideals discredited by history and its tenets proven false by experience. The twentieth century’s tragedies have resulted in a kind of tentative “experiential knowledge about man” (30)—a knowledge, says Delsol, which can be debated but which cannot be rejected wholesale.

Such debate is the source of a safeguard against the misuse even of such experiential knowledge. Delsol argues that the late modern stands between the Scylla of fanaticism and the Charybdis of relativism. Even when rejecting ideological and grasping experiential truth, “he sooner or later risks becoming its unconditional accomplice or henchman.” (98) Instead of drawing absolute and essentially abstract conclusions from experience, this knowledge must avoid both fanaticism and relativism by avoiding “depersonalization, the deepest source of the ills that might befall us.” And to avoid such depersonalization we must assume a certain view of truth and adopt a certain approach in dealing with it: “For the truth is not meant to be hammered into others or to be suppressed: it is to be pursued.”

The pursuit of the truth is tied to the person, which Delsol refers to as the “modern subject,” (85) in at least three ways. First, it cannot be “hammered into others;” it must be pursued willingly by each person out of his individual motivation. Second, it must involve the individual mind in debate and questioning. Third, it finds its source in experience as acted and observed by individuals. Yet this individualistic aspect is not merely subjective, for three parallel reasons: experience takes place in a world peopled by other subjects; the act of debate and dialogue is necessarily communal; and one’s conclusions about ethical truth, though they cannot be “hammered,” may be displayed in his actions by the subject as witness. “Morality is not a science or knowledge that can stand on thought alone,” writes Delsol, echoing Karl Jaspers; “morality is a practice.” (112)

I approve of this conclusion. But I think Delsol’s assertion that limits are “statements about mankind” is open to criticism or at least to further discussion. She says man “takes his name and identity” from limits, but Aristotle says that man takes his identity not from a limit but from ability: the capacity for speech and, more generally, the capacity for social life. Perhaps we could say that Aristotle saw the polis as arising in some sense from man’s limitations, from necessity—though he states this more positively in terms of self-sufficiency and higher good. Epistemologically, of course, Aristotle bases almost every one of his conclusions in an experientially grounded sort of thinking. Delsol’s idea of limits, then, might be no more than a restatement in modern terms of Aristotelian empiricism, relying on the individual subject to avoid the dangers of excessive certainty and excessive skepticism.