Laclos and the Dark Side of the Enlightenment

This is a paper I presented to the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, January 2010, St Hugh's College, Oxford.

The Enlightenment, as we know, has fallen on hard times in recent decades. Traditionally it has been regarded the luminous Age of Reason – the age of the French philosophes, of English thinkers such as Hume and Hutcheson, the age in which militant Reason overthrew the last bastions of religious superstition and feudal authoritarianism to usher in a new world of individual rights, tolerance, human dignity, science, and progress. More recently, however, the Enlightenment has been painted in rather different colours. The “Enlightenment project”, as the modern phrase has it, is now often depicted as the underlying cause of many of contemporary ills – a cultural and philosophical movement that promised civilised values and human dignity but in fact delivered two World Wars, the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, and a world of continuing violence and oppression. For thinkers of this persuasion, such as Adorno, Levinas, Lyotard, and Foucault, the Age of Reason was, strange though it may seem, the origin of our modern catastrophe.

I don’t wish to get embroiled in this debate, or to take sides in it. The Enlightenment continues to have its defenders as well as its accusers, and I suspect that the issues dividing them will remain in dispute for some time to come. My aim today is to call attention to an error, or at least an oversight, which, it seems to me, is sometimes committed by thinkers on both sides of this polemical fence – an error that tends to misrepresent the Enlightenment by giving a one-dimensional view of its intellectual achievement.

Essentially, I would argue, thinkers on both sides of this debate think of the Enlightenment in roughly the terms I have mentioned: that it was an optimistic new era in Western civilization that raised high the banners of reason, science, individual rights, tolerance, human dignity, and progress. Opinions are now divided about the intellectual and historical consequences of the event – that is, whether these lofty ideals masked tendencies of a more sinister and destructive kind; but there tends, nonetheless, to be widespread agreement in both camps that the Enlightenment itself saw its achievements – and especially the triumph of Reason – in wholly positive terms, and looked to the future with more or less unqualified faith in the new values it was establishing.

Now, undeniably, it is very difficult to read the philosophical writings of the eighteenth century without sensing the widespread enthusiasm for the new horizons that were opening up. And although the French Revolution’s “Festival of Reason” was a short-lived affair, the fact that it was held at all testifies to the immense prestige associated with this central Enlightenment value by the late eighteenth century. But if we look a little more closely, we begin to see, I believe, that there were certain figures at the time – admittedly a small minority – who, despite a strong attachment to Enlightenment values, were, nonetheless, rather less sanguine about some of the implications of this new Age of Reason – figures who are much less easy to fit into the conventional image of the Enlightenment I have alluded to.

The names that spring most readily to mind in this connection, I think, are Goya in his late period, de Sade, and the writer I want to say something about today, Choderlos de Laclos, author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. None of these three, I should say, was in any sense an opponent of Enlightenment values, hankering for a return of the previous dispensation. Goya fell foul of the Spanish authorities for his libertarian sympathies; Sade was, as we know, fiercely anti-religious, and Laclos was a strong supporter of the French Revolution. All three were partisans of Reason, so to speak, but each, nonetheless, discovered that the universe of Reason has some unexpected, and at times forbidding, inhabitants. They expose, if you will excuse the unintended echo of Star Wars, what I call the “dark side” of the Enlightenment – the side that the conventional picture often ignores but which, surely, we cannot afford to ignore if we wish to give an accurate account of the event and, just as importantly, of its implications for us today.

 I am sure you’re all familiar with at least the broad outlines of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, if not from reading the novel itself then possibly from the stage adaptation or one of the films versions. In very summary form, it’s the story of a deception, or rather a number of interlocking deceptions, practised by the two central characters, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, on their unsuspecting victims. In the words of the twentieth century French writer, André Malraux, who wrote a brilliant essay on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the novel is “an architecture of lies”, a series of adroit manoeuvres designed to mislead and entrap. Ultimately, Merteuil and Valmont themselves meet unsavoury fates – their deceits are exposed, Merteuil goes bankrupt, contracts smallpox and flees to Holland, and Valmont dies in a duel. This turn of events, one can’t help but feel, however, is something of a sop to the reader, designed to soothe outraged sensibilities. The heart of the novel, the element that leaves a much stronger impression, is what goes before: the carefully crafted web of deceptions, the ruthlessness of the two central characters, and the portrayal of their victims’ vulnerabilities. In other words, if we read it as a moral tale in which the wicked get their just desserts, Les Liaisons dangereuses, it seems to me, is somewhat forced and artificial; but read as the depiction of a certain kind of character – a certain kind of human behaviour – it is a powerful and very disturbing literary work.

Why do I say disturbing? In essence, I think, because the reader wants to condemn the actions of Merteuil and Valmont unreservedly; yet there is something about both of them – something not easy to pin down – that seems to command our respect, however unwillingly we give it. I want now to spend a few moments looking at their characters a little more closely to see what that something might be.

I have quoted Malraux’s comment that Les Liaisons Dangereuses is “an architecture of lies”. It is a series of deceptions carefully designed to manipulate others. Now the first thing we might want to say, I suppose, is that deception is nothing new in Western literature. It abounds in Boccaccio’s Decameron, for example; it occurs frequently in Shakespeare (perhaps Iago might be Shakespeare’s most memorable deceiver), and it’s a stock-in-trade of novel-writing in Laclos’ own century. Lesage’s Gil Blas, for instance, has scarcely set foot outside his native Santillane before falling victim to trickery, and Tom Jones is repeatedly wrong-footed by deceivers who wish him ill. What, then, is new about Les Liaisons Dangereuses? What role do lies and deceptions play here that they have not already played in the literature of Laclos’ predecessors?

The difference, essentially, I would argue, is that for the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont deception and the manipulation of others is a way of life – almost an end in itself. Iago manipulates Othello because he is envious and wants revenge; Gil Blas is tricked by a flatterer who wants to inveigle money out of him; Tom Jones is deceived to ruin his chances with his beloved Sophia. But while Merteuil and Valmont also have their objectives – the desires they wish to satisfy – in their case these seem to be secondary – almost, I would say, pretexts. Merteuil’s plan to ruin Cécile Volanges is certainly motivated by her desire to settle scores with one of her former lovers, Gercourt, but as André Malraux comments – correctly I think – this is little more than mere information for the reader – a kind of necessary trigger for the plot. There is no question of a genuine hatred for Gercourt – of a passion thirst for revenge. Merteuil deceives, in other words, essentially because she wishes to live in a world in which she controls the actions of others, and the same can be said for Valmont. Certainly, Valmont admires Mme de Tourvel, and eventually even develops a kind of love for her – even if, as Merteuil points out, it is nothing more than the love a Sultan might feel for his chief Sultana; but fundamentally Valmont deceives for the same reason Merteuil deceives – so that he will always act in accord with what he calls his “principles”, and those principles, like Merteuil’s, do not merely require the satisfaction of a desire. They require the conduct of an accomplished general on a field of battle who controls his enemy’s movements by skilful deception, and who wins the battle not by mere force but by feints and manoeuvres, and who glories not simply in the victory but in the skill and intelligence that brought it about.

What is this so? The answer, I would argue, is that Merteuil and Valmont, are true children of the Enlightenment – truer than we might suspect – and they do not simply believe in the value of Reason in an abstract, philosophical sense; they have resolved to live the life of Reason – to think and act, in their relationships with others, in ways that never offend against the requirements of lucid, rational thought. What does this mean exactly? What does it mean to “live the life of Reason”?

I think it’s useful here to compare Les Liaisons Dangereuses with a work of a very different kind, let’s say Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. For both Romeo and Juliet, as for the play’s audience, their love for each other is ultimately an unexplained fact – a given – that they and the audience simply accept as part of their unfolding story. Love in this sense is truly a passion in the sense that it simply takes hold, overwhelms, and compels one to follow its path – come what may – without fully understanding it. I do not mean, of course, that Romeo and Juliet have nothing to say about their love; on the contrary it’s a topic they discourse on endlessly. But their love for each other, like that of Tristan and Isolde, or of the Princesse de Clèves and the Duc de Nemours, or even of Tom Jones and his Sophia, remains nevertheless, in essence, a coup de foudre in the French phrase – a fate, a destiny, so to speak, that simply descends on them and which, while occupying their thoughts to the point of obsession, rules over them far more than they rule it.

For Merteuil and Valmont, however, the case is very different. For both characters, any action worth pursuing must be accompanied by, and justified by, its explanation – its reason. This is why Malraux comments, very aptly I think, that Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a novel that talks a lot about passion, but in which passion is in fact almost completely absent – the one exception being Madame de Tourvel who finally yields unreservedly to Valmont. Romeo and Juliet – to pursue my comparison a little further – are pledged to each other “come what may” – for good or ill: their love is their “fate”. For Merteuil and Valmont, by contrast, the world of “fate” is anathema – or, rather, it is the world of fools. Their guiding principle is, precisely, that nothing should be left to fate, that everything should be calculated in advance. Not, of course, that they are clairvoyants with foreknowledge of future events. In fact, they are sometimes surprised by unexpected developments – as Valmont is, for example, when Madame de Volanges warns Madame de Tourvel about his disreputable past. What is at issue here, however, is not a power of predicting the future but a particular manner of thinking and acting. For Merteuil and Valmont, the only action worthy of the name is one that is “thought-out” beforehand – an action constructed like a move in a well-played game of chess where nothing is left to the vagaries of fate. In such a world every act is accompanied by its explanation – its reason. As Malraux succinctly puts it, Merteuil and Valmont are characters who “act according to what they think”; and they do this consistently, right through to the moment of victory. Near the end of the novel, as Valmont contemplates the spectacle of Madame de Tourvel finally confessing her love for him, he reflects for a moment on the possibility of not taking advantage of his conquest – of showing some mercy for his victim. But the thought is instantly dismissed. To do so, he tells himself, would be to betray his “principles” and act like a “foolish school boy”. In the world of reason, there is simply no place for compassion – for a senseless act that would simply undo a victory won and allow one’s prey to escape. Compassion would be weakness – feebleness of mind. In the world of Reason there is only victory or defeat; there are no other options.

What is so curious about all this, when we reflect on it, is that Merteuil and Valmont, who are undoubtedly among the most abominable characters in eighteenth century fiction, are as I have suggested, embodiments of a central Enlightenment value. The Enlightenment claimed to scatter the forces of superstition and mystery, to subject everything to the bright light of Reason, and reveal the general laws that govern the world. Its battle cry is Kant’s injunction: “Sapere aude!” And Merteuil and Valmont, as we can now see, do exactly that. Not that they claim to discover the “general laws of human psychology”: they are not philosophers or armchair psychologists and their aim is not to compile a list of abstract propositions about human nature. Their mission is to introduce Reason into the world of human experience – to live and act in a world of Reason, to live and act in a world in which lucidity triumphs over mystery and chance, a world which, therefore, as a matter of felt experience, and not simply as abstract concept, is a world governed by laws. The unexpected consequence, however, as Laclos’ novel reveals, is that once established as the well-spring of human action, this quintessentially Enlightenment value leads to forms of human behaviour which seem wholly at variance with what, in an informal, everyday sense, we might describe as an “enlightened” sensibility. Instead of valuing equality, we discover a will to dominate; instead of a pursuit of truth we find a will to mislead; and instead of compassion we discover an implacable will to humiliate and destroy. In the realm of human sensibility – as distinct from the world of philosophical abstractions – the bright light of Reason, in other words, quickly assumes a dark and forbidding aspect, nurturing forces and dispositions which are the very reverse of what one might hope for or expect.

 In an intriguing comment on Les Liaisons dangereuses, André Malraux remarks that the sensibility Laclos describes may not be irrelevant to the excesses of the French Revolution and the apparently easy acceptance of the use of the guillotine by the “sensitive souls” of the time.[1] I find the observation interesting. Many eighteenth thinkers do in fact seem to think that their age was an age of the “sensitive soul” – that is, of enlightened men and women of refined feelings who had sloughed off the cruder mores of former, barbaric ages, and who were animated by sentiments of natural human sympathy for their fellows. But how real was all this? How deep did it run? The historical drama of the French Revolution was, of course, played out on a much larger stage than that of Les Liaisons dangereuses, but the psychology of the Terror, with its implacable will to crush and exterminate opponents, seems far closer to the psychology of Laclos’ novel than to any world of fine feelings and natural human sympathies – of “sensitive souls”. Optimistic spirits of the time perhaps assumed that an enlightened century nurtured on the fruits of Reason would be one in which an event such as the Terror would be unthinkable – much as those nurtured later on nineteenth ideals of human progress no doubt assumed that, in the twentieth century, extermination camps would be unthinkable; but as things turned out, these were rather mistaken assumptions. At the level of human psychology, as Laclos’ novel reveals, the logic of Reason accommodates itself very well to a will to crush and exterminate, and it is perhaps not far-fetched to suggest, as Malraux does, that these subterranean forces of Reason, if I may so describe them, played some part in the psychology that despatched thousands to the guillotine.

However that may be, one thing at least is clear. The view I mentioned at the outset – that all Enlightenment thinkers believed that the fruits of Reason could only be beneficial – seems difficult to sustain. Laclos, for one, provides a perspective on the world of Reason that does not square at all with that view. Working at the level of individual psychology, Reason in Les Liaisons dangereuses divides the world into the strong and the weak – more specifically, the astute and the naive. It defines human worth in terms of a capacity to outwit and control others, a capacity that can only be fully expressed by the complete defeat and humiliation of one’s adversary. Around this time, Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy was furnishing a categorical imperative based on Reason that would certainly aim to forbid conduct of this kind; but once we move away from the abstract realms of moral philosophy to the regions of human psychology, Reason, Laclos suggests, speaks a very different language and follows imperatives of a very different kind. Laclos, as I have intimated, was not the only eighteenth voice to cast doubts on the limits of Reason. Goya and de Sade do so also – in very vehement ways. These voices, it seems to me, should not be ignored. A one-dimensional view of the eighteenth century that brushes them aside does the Enlightenment an injustice because it forgets that there were those, even then, who knew that Reason had its dark side.