It is said that when Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he paused for a few seconds before replying: “I think it would be a very good idea.” It was an amusing response even if it was a bit unfair. There was once such a thing as Western civilization; but the fact is, it is more or less behind us now. To speak of “civilization” in the context of modern Europe is to hide behind a fancy word. Deep down we all know it, even if it’s hard to admit: the game is up.

Our future replacements, should we have any, and should they happen to think of us at all in a few centuries’ time, will feel neither indignation nor anger; they will not care. They will probably feel a vague sense of disgust, and above all, immense confusion. The more learned ones will try to dispel the confusion by writing enormous books, of which The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains the classic example. A simplified summary of Gibbon’s thesis — that the Roman Empire fell due to the rise of Christianity — besides being convincing and clear, has the advantage of extending naturally into Auguste Comte’s theory of humanity’s passage from the theological stage to the metaphysical stage, whose sole function is destruction. And so, the decline of the West finds its natural explanation in the collapse of Christianity, initiated by Protestantism and completed during the Enlightenment. Nietzsche says much the same thing, adding some amusing special effects involving acrobats and eagles.

The thing that doesn’t fit this explanation, however, is the fact that things aren’t going any better in Asia. Demographic decline is even more rapid in the world’s most technologically advanced countries — Japan, South Korea, and more recently China — to the point that their populations risk disappearing in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, it is modernity itself, in its entirety, that is destroying itself before our bewildered eyes.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”, wrote WB Yeats in 1919, sensing that, for Europe, the war that had just ended was merely the herald of even greater catastrophes to come. War gave birth to war, Nazism opened a dark door that has never fully closed, and both world wars merely hastened the breakdown of the countries foolish enough to get involved. A century after Yeats’s poem, the center has indeed failed to hold — and nowhere is this more obvious than in the political center of Europe itself: Brussels.

In Belgium, euthanasia, available to those suffering from “psychological distress” since 2002, has been extended to minors since 2014. A few barriers still stand, but one after another the levees are breaking, and we are being engulfed by the “blood-dimmed tide” of which Yeats speaks in the following line.

France is likely to be the next place whose defenses will be swept away by that tide. It is still possible to prevent it, but hope is dwindling. For several years now I have fought against euthanasia, even as my conviction has steadily grown that I am fighting a battle already lost. I feel as if I have played every card in my hand — and now, perhaps, I am beginning to cheat. But for one last time, I do not think it futile to urge those whose votes will carry the force of law to reflect on the tiny number of philosophers who, over the centuries, have approved of suicide. It is indeed rather astonishing how so-called progressives can dismiss out of hand not only every existing religious tradition — but also pretty much everything that earlier philosophers were able to come up with too. I don’t think human history has ever known such arrogance. But philosophy, unlike religion, speaks above all to the human intellect, and struggles to reach into the core of our being. Catholicism — despite a few alleged recent stirrings — has long since lost its grip in Europe, and I am not at the point of preferring Islam simply because secular society deviates from moral law. But neither am I certain that I want to belong to a society that legalizes euthanasia. By all means defend the West — but only so long as it deserves to be defended.

One need only examine the arguments put forward by advocates of euthanasia to be overcome with disgust — and for that disgust to mutate into moral insurrection. In reality, all such arguments boil down to a single argument — dignity. But the word has been used so often, and in such a perverse way, that it has become difficult to grasp what it actually means.

For supporters of euthanasia, the dying person’s desire for dignity — according to those close to them — is generally expressed in phrases like: “He would have hated being a vegetable.” The statement would be more convincing if they were able to complete it as follows: “He would have hated being a vegetable — he would have preferred to be a corpse.” We should also note that the vegetable metaphor reflects a painfully utilitarian idea of a human being. Ideally, a human should move, accomplish things, lead an active life. And if that proves impossible, then they should at the very least communicate, that is, they should be capable of interacting — if only through speech — with the rest of society. Humans are thus reduced to their use-value — that is, their initial value minus a depreciation coefficient. It is hard to imagine a more direct contradiction of Immanuel Kant’s insistence that humanity, whether within oneself or in others, must always be treated as an end in itself and never merely as a means. The first corruption along these lines occurred, sadly, during the entirely justified battle against animal cruelty. The “anti-speciesists” contrived to fight this battle in the name of “animal rights”, always a dubious notion. It would have been enough to listen to the eternal voice of compassion, modest but incandescent. With euthanasia, however, we are no longer dealing in distortions. We are plunging into the abyss.

For Kant — and for the thinkers of more innocent centuries — human dignity was linked, quite simply, to the fact of being human. We no longer see things that way. Human dignity is now something that gradually decays within us; our lives are themselves a process of decay, and we must be prepared to justify our existence at any given moment, both in our own eyes and in the eyes of others (if that even makes any difference). For nearly two centuries, the specter of nihilism has haunted Western Europe. Now it is here — it is among us. But it does not take the form we expected. It is not dark or murky. It is colorful, even cheerful. To picture it, you shouldn’t think of Dostoevsky or Nietzsche, but rather All Is Beauty, an advert produced by a Canadian clothing retailer named Simons, which purported to depict a happy euthanasia. Here was a dignity to make you scream. Filmed beside the sea, it featured waves and cellos and a large, festive meal complete with cheesecake and bursts of laughter. The soon-to-be-dead woman was young, poignant, likable and an artist — you could see her drawing shapes in the sand with a stick. Simons pulled the video after it attracted too many sarcastic comments online, mocking its use of the visual language of luxury advertising to promote euthanasia. Indeed, it looked less like a meditation on death than a commercial for Chanel or YSL.

Let’s get a little deeper into this question of dignity. Back when I was researching the case of Vincent Lambert — the French nurse whose family dispute over his right or otherwise to die became a cause célèbre in 2019 — I can remember reading a white paper on the operation of the specialized facilities known in French as EVC-EPR Centers (État Végétatif Chronique – État Pauci-Relationnel), established under the wide-ranging healthcare reforms introduced by French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner in 2002. These were the places where Lambert ought to have been cared for had the medical system functioned properly. One particular story struck me, concerning a woman who had remained silent for years and then, quite unexpectedly, began speaking again during an unannounced visit. When a doctor expressed his astonishment, explaining that he had spent years unsuccessfully trying to establish contact with her, she replied: “What you had to say wasn’t all that interesting.” A severely compromised state of health may excuse certain lapses in politeness — but the episode nevertheless offers an important lesson: when people do not speak to you, it is sometimes simply because they have nothing they wish to say to you.

More from this author

How France lost her dignity

By Michel Houellebecq

Anyone who has ever written — or even merely attempted to write — knows that however difficult it may be to explain why, it is sometimes possible to express in writing realities inaccessible to speech. And anyone who has truly written knows something sadder still: what one actually manages to write will only ever be the merest trace of what one dreamed of writing. Even someone as monstrously productive as Balzac acknowledged as much: the books we have written are less beautiful than those we imagined writing. Speech is only a fraction of writing, which is itself only a fraction of our inner life. To reduce the human spirit to its capacity for oral communication is, quite simply, dumb.

If one looks at the matter from the standpoint of manners, comporting oneself with dignity would mean adopting an attitude of calm, restrained stoicism in the face of life’s sufferings and sorrows. In short, dignity would not much differ from reserve or discretion — which is already enough to arouse suspicion. If reserve is already a dubious sentiment, a little too closely associated with shame, then emotional reserve is by far the most toxic form it can take. I’ve heard the media praise the “dignity” of the victims of this or that tragic news story so often, I’ve come to take a strong dislike for the very word dignity. In the face of great suffering, the healthiest response is clearly to weep, to cry out, to groan, to implore the pity of God or of other human beings. The figure of the Stoic is really nothing more than a hollow theoretical puppet — and Stoicism itself is a philosophy that would be best ignored.

I now realize with some surprise that it is not only in sexual matters that we have completely reversed our position from the “free love” era of my youth. When I was an adolescent, it was the done thing to decry the phrase “boys don’t cry”, and, indeed, to encourage boys to express their emotions freely. It should be said that the historical weight of that phrase has been greatly exaggerated. The literary records show that the knights of the Middle Ages shed tears without restraint at the deaths of their comrades. Indeed, it was only from the beginning of the 20th century — and especially in English-speaking countries — that the compulsion to repress one’s emotions took hold, at the same time as the idea that death must be concealed from view, and for the same reasons.

Half a century on from the hippie era, everything has changed. It is no longer only men who are expected to hold back their tears; women, preferably, should do so as well. And as a direct result of this display of dignity, as a direct result of this emotional reserve, others eventually come to assume that one scarcely has any feelings at all — and so, they may calmly return to their own affairs. In the end, then, dignity has only one function — though it is a huge function. It legitimizes the constant practice of the most perfect selfishness.

Modesty, the visible manifestation of dignity, has other, still more poisonous effects when it no longer just concerns emotions but attacks the body. This is something far graver, far more deadly and weighty than mere sexual modesty. Let us allow dignity to speak for itself. Is it really so modest and dignified to appear in public when one is so physically diminished — when one is so close to being a vegetable? Even to appear before anyone at all? In the final accounting, is it truly modest and dignified even to exist?

More from this author

The narcissistic fall of France

By Michel Houellebecq

And now the process is complete: you are in the system, you are ashamed of your very existence, and euthanasia is waiting for you around the corner. I have often amused myself by making fun of Nietzsche — and I cannot resist doing so once again, he is so ridiculous with his moustache — but I would nevertheless like to pay tribute to him by quoting these lines from The Gay Science (1882):

“Whom do you call bad? — He who always wants to make others feel shame.
What is the most humane thing? — To spare someone shame.”

We are perhaps no longer entirely human, painful though it is to admit. After a detour of several millennia, the West really does seem to have returned to an ancient animal wisdom. In almost every social species, a sick animal will withdraw from the group in order to die alone, knowing full well that it can expect no compassion from its fellows, and indeed, like the birds in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, is more likely to be pecked to death. For a long time, we thought of ourselves as a tribe of a higher order. We were mistaken, the animalists tell us, and thus this return to animal law of the animal — and here is the strangest thing of all — ought to be regarded as progress. What is certain, in any case, is that progressivism works just like a ratchet mechanism. Once a “social advance” (abortion, abolition of the death penalty, same-sex marriage, medically assisted reproduction, surrogacy, whatever it may be) has been established, there can be no question of going back. No one would even dream of it. But this is anti-democratic, circular reasoning. What one law has done, another law can undo; that, at least, is my understanding of law. But it does allow us to identify progressivism for what it is in reality: a destiny.

It’s possible that I’m right in thinking that there’s no point struggling against destiny — and that every tragedy must run its course. But I still can’t help thinking that, in demanding access to euthanasia for its citizens, France is asking for its own euthanasia. Some have expressed surprise that I should oppose this proposed law, since I have often been saddled with a bizarre neologism: I am said to be a déprimiste — a prophet of depression. Granted. It is true that I have devoted myself to examining the symptoms of the suicide of the West and the rise of nihilism. But I do not recall ever having rejoiced in any of it. We are entering a world in which it will be easier to die. I would have preferred a world in which it was possible to live.

Nos remplaçants s’il y en a, et s’il leur arrive de penser à nous dans quelques siècles, n’éprouveront ni indignation ni colère ; ils ne seront plus concernés. Ils ressentiront probablement un vague dégoût, et surtout une immense perplexité. Les plus lettrés tenteront de la réduire par l’écriture d’énormes ouvrages, dont « Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l’empire romain » reste un exemple classique. Un résumé simplifié des thèses de Gibbon expliquant la chute de l’Empire romain par le développement du christianisme, outre qu’il est convaincant et clair, présente l’avantage de pouvoir être prolongé sans difficulté par les thèses d’Auguste Comte sur le passage de l’état théologique à l’état métaphysique, dont l’unique fonction aura été de détruire. Le déclin de l’Occident trouve ainsi son explication naturelle dans la chute du christianisme initiée par le protestantisme, accomplie par le siècle des lumières. Nietzsche dit à peu près la même chose, en y rajoutant d’amusants effets spéciaux mettant en scène des saltimbanques et des aigles. Ce qui ne colle par contre plus très bien, c’est que les choses ne vont pas mieux en Asie ; le déclin démographique, dans les pays technologiquement les plus avancés — Japon, Corée, plus récemment la Chine — y est même encore plus rapide, au point que leurs populations risquent, à un terme pas si éloigné, de disparaître. C’est bel et bien la modernité toute entière qui s’autodétruit sous nos yeux incompréhensifs.

« Les choses tombent en morceaux ; le centre ne peut plus tenir / La pure anarchie est lâchée sur le monde » écrit Yeats en 1919, pressentant que, pour l’Europe, la guerre qui vient de s’achever n’aura été que l’annonciation d’autres désastres plus considérables. La guerre a donné naissance à la guerre, le nazisme a ouvert une porte sombre qui ne s’est jamais totalement refermée, les deux guerres mondiales n’ont fait qu’accélérer la décomposition des pays qui ont commis la folie de s’y engager. Un siècle après le poème de Yeats, le centre n’a pas tenu — et cela apparaît avec une évidence particulière dans le cas du centre politique européen, Bruxelles. En Belgique l’euthanasie, ouverte aux « personnes en souffrance psychique » depuis 2002, l’est aux mineurs depuis 2014. Quelques marges tiennent encore, mais l’une après l’autre les digues cèdent, et nous sommes submergés par cette « mer noircie de sang » dont parle Yeats dans le vers suivant.

English Translation

Test article

By Michel Houellebecq

France should be the next barrier swept away by this sea; it remains possible to avoid it, but hope is dwindling. For some time now, several years already, that I have been striving to fight against euthanasia, while the conviction grows in me that I am fighting a losing battle, I feel like I have played all my cards, and even started to cheat. One last time, I do not think it useless to recommend to those whose vote will have the force of law to reflect on the few philosophers who, over the centuries, have approved of suicide — it is even quite astonishing: “progressivism” sweeps away with contempt, with a wave of the hand, not only all existing religious traditions, but almost everything previous philosophers have thought; such arrogance, I think, has never before manifested in human history. But philosophies, unlike religions, speak mainly to the intelligence of the human being, and hardly reach what is essential in him. The Catholic religion, despite apparently some recent stirrings, has long been lagging behind in Europe, and I am not at the point of preferring an Islamic society, on the grounds that secular society deviates from moral law. But I am not sure I want to belong to a society that legalizes euthanasia; defending the West is fine, provided it deserves to be defended. It is enough to examine the arguments of the supporters of euthanasia to be overwhelmed by disgust, and that by force of disgust a moral insurrection is triggered; these arguments are actually summed up in a single one, which is dignity, but this word has been used so often, and in such a perverse way, that it has become difficult to grasp its meaning. Seen by supporters of euthanasia, the desire for dignity expressed by the dying person, as testified by loved ones, is generally expressed by phrases like: “He would not have endured becoming a vegetable.” The assertion would be more convincing if they could complete it like this: “He would not have endured becoming a vegetable, he would have preferred to become a corpse.” Let us add that the vegetable metaphor reflects a painfully pragmatic view of the human being. Ideally, a human being should move, perform acts, in short, lead an active life. And if that is definitely impossible, at least he should communicate, show himself capable of interacting, at least by speech, with the rest of society. The human is reduced to his use value, that is to say his initial value diminished by a coefficient of wear. It is hard to imagine a more direct opposition to human dignity in the sense of Emmanuel Kant, with the Kantian idea that humanity, in its own person as in that of others, must always be considered as an end, and never simply as a means. A first alteration had already occurred, and unfortunately it was on the occasion of the so justified fight against animal suffering, when the “antispeciesists” undertook to lead it in the name of the dubious notion of “animal rights,” when it would have sufficed to continue to heed the modest but incandescent, eternal, voice of compassion. With euthanasia it is no longer a matter of alteration, but of a plunge into the abyss. For Kant, for the thinkers of more naive centuries, human dignity was simply linked to the fact of being a man. We no longer see things the same way. Human dignity is altered in us, our life is in itself a process of alteration, and we must at every moment be ready to justify it in our own eyes, even in those of others (insofar as that makes a difference). For nearly two centuries, the specter of nihilism has haunted Western Europe. Now that’s it, here we are; we were not expecting nihilism in this form, it is neither dark nor twilight; it is rather colorful and cheerful. To picture it, one should not think of Dostoevsky, nor of Nietzsche, but rather remember a Simons store commercial (it is a Canadian clothing store chain) that was supposed to depict a happy euthanasia. It was a dignity to scream about.
Filmé au bord de la mer, il y avait des vagues et du violoncelle, un grand repas convivial avec du cheesecake et des éclats de rire, la chose était titrée « Tout est beauté », la future morte était jeune, émouvante et sympathique, il s’agissait d’une artiste, on la voyait dessiner des formes dans le sable avec un bâton. Simons a retiré son clip, il y avait eu sur Internet trop de commentaires sarcastiques se moquant de l’utilisation des codes de l’industrie du luxe pour promouvoir l’euthanasie. En effet, on se serait cru dans une pub Chanel ou Saint-Laurent.

Let’s dig a little into this matter of dignity. Back when I was researching the Vincent Lambert case, I remember a “white paper” on the operation of EVC-EPR centers, those created by the Kouchner law, and in which Vincent Lambert should have found his place if the medical system had worked properly. One anecdote struck me, that of a woman who had been silent for years, who suddenly started talking again during an unexpected visit. While a doctor expressed his astonishment, because for years he had tried in vain to establish contact, she replied: “What you were saying wasn’t all that interesting”. A very compromised state of health can excuse certain lapses in politeness, but still, it’s a lesson worth remembering: if people don’t talk to you, sometimes it’s because they have nothing to say to you.

Anyone who has written, or even simply tried to write, knows that it is sometimes possible — it’s hard to explain, but it’s true — to express in writing realities inaccessible to speech. And anyone who has actually written knows something else, something sadder: what you’ve written will only be a faint trace of what you dreamed of writing. Even someone as monstrously productive in literature as Balzac admitted it: the books you’ve written are less beautiful than those you only dreamed of. Speech is only a fraction of writing, which itself is only a fraction of inner life. Reducing a man’s mind to his oral communication skills is simply stupid.

If you look at things from the angle of morals, to behave with dignity would be to adopt, in the face of life’s sufferings and sorrows, an attitude of calm, restraint, stoicism. Dignity would, in short, be little different from emotional modesty; which already gives reason for suspicion. If modesty is in all cases a rather shady feeling, a bit too associated with shame, emotional modesty is, of all the forms it can take, by far the most toxic. I’ve heard the “dignity” of victims of this or that tragic news story praised so much in the media that I’ve come to take a dislike to the word dignity. In the face of great suffering, the healthiest attitude is obviously to cry, to scream, to moan, to beg for pity from the deity or from other people. The stoic is basically just a theoretical puppet, devoid of all plausibility, and stoicism a philosophy best left unmentioned.

It’s not only, I realize with surprise, on the sexual level that we are the opposite of the baba cool years that marked my youth. When I was a teenager, it was fashionable to criticize the saying “boys don’t cry”, and instead to encourage boys to freely express their emotions. The significance of this saying had, moreover, been greatly overestimated: literary accounts clearly show that knights of the Middle Ages shed tears without restraint at the death of their comrades-in-arms; it was only from the beginning of the 20th century, and especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, that the injunction to modesty took hold, at the same time as the choice to hide death, and for the same reasons.

Half a century after the baba cool era, everything has changed, and it’s no longer just men who must hold back their tears; women, preferably, too. With so much dignity, with so much modesty in showing one’s emotions, others come to suppose that you hardly feel any, and that they can quietly go back to their own business. Dignity, in the end, has only one use: to legitimize the constant practice of the most perfect selfishness. It’s a considerable use.

La pudeur, version plus explicit of dignity, has other even more poisonous consequences when it no longer concerns only emotions, but attacks the physical body — and this is something much more serious, much more deadly and heavier than sexual modesty. Let dignity speak. Is it really modest and really dignified, when one is so close to being a vegetable, when one is physically so diminished, to appear in public? To show oneself, even, to anyone? Is it really modest and really dignified, ultimately, to exist?

Now that’s it, you are in the pipeline, you are ashamed of your own existence, and euthanasia awaits you around the corner. I, who have so often amused myself by mocking Nietzsche — and I couldn’t help myself this time again, he’s so funny with his mustache — I would still like to pay tribute to him by quoting these lines from the Gay Science:

“Who do you call bad? — The one who always wants to make others feel ashamed.

What do you consider most human? — To spare someone shame.”

We are, it’s painful to say, perhaps no longer quite human. After a detour of several millennia, the West seems to have returned to that ancient animal wisdom which drives, in almost all social species, the sick animal to move away from the tribe to die alone — knowing well that it has no compassion to expect from its fellows, that it is more likely to be, like the birds of Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, sent off with pecks. We had long believed ourselves to be a tribe of a higher order; we were mistaken, say the animalists, and this return to animal law, here’s the strangest thing, should be considered as a progress. What is established in any case is that progressivism functions absolutely like a ratchet mechanism. When a “societal advance” (abortion, death penalty, same-sex marriage, IVF, surrogacy, anything) has occurred, it is out of the question to go back, no one thinks of it. This assumption is antidemocratic: what one law has done, another law can undo; at least that’s the idea I have of the law; but it allows us to identify progressivism for what it really is: a destiny.

One may be right to think that it is vain to fight against destiny, and that every tragedy must go to its end. I can’t help but think that by asking for its citizens access to euthanasia, it is its own euthanasia that France is asking for. People have been surprised that I am hostile to this bill, even though I have often been labeled with a strange neologism: I would be a deprimist. Let’s admit it. It is true that I have worked to scrutinize the symptoms of Western suicide, the rise of nihilism; but I do not recall ever rejoicing in it. We are entering a world where it will be easier to die; I would have preferred a world where one could live.

I thought my life was going to be happy, and I didn’t even exactly imagine unhappiness. Life seemed to me to be a delight and a gift, and reading was one of the joys of this endlessly delightful life.

I was a child. I was happy, and happiness leaves few traces.

Little by little I learned what the life of men was really like; I learned it, too, through their books. Probably my grandparents never paid attention to the age difference that existed in principle between the works of the Bibliothèque rose (Pink Library) and those of the Bibliothèque verte (Green Library); what other explanation can there be for the fact that I was able to find myself reading Graziella at the age of ten?

This book contains the whole of nascent romanticism, in its budding youth and strength, and ‘Le Premier Regret’ (‘The First Regret’), with which the book concludes, is a poem of incredible purity. Never before Lamartine and never after him (not even in Racine, or Victor Hugo) had a poet written, or will ever write, alexandrines with this naturalness, this spontaneity, this impulse straight from the heart.

How could Lamartine, who knew Graziella when he was 18 and she was 16, ever have forgotten her? How could he still continue to live? And how could the reader of Lamartine devote his life to anything other than meeting a 16-year-old Graziella? What fascinating crap literature is, you have to admit it… So pernicious, so powerful, incredibly more powerful than cinema, and even more pernicious than music.

More from this author

The narcissistic fall of France

By Michel Houellebecq

There were other things, too. There was the nauseating Jack London, whom Lenin loved so much (and it’s undoubtedly Lenin’s overt admiration for Jack London, his cynical acceptance of the struggle for life, poles apart from the supposed generosity that attaches to the word ‘Communism’, which opened my eyes and stopped me in advance, once and for all, from getting close to Marxism). There was the marvellous Dickens (never again will I laugh so loudly, so heartily, never again will I laugh until I cry, great gales of laughter, as I did when I was nine years old and discovered The Pickwick Papers.) There was Jules Verne, there were Andersen’s tales — The Little Match Girl broke my heart, and continues, with ruthless regularity, to break it again every time I re-read it.

I also remember the Rouge et Or collection, with its naive illustrations (a bit more expensive probably, most likely a birthday or Christmas present). I have only good memories of that period. Still, they shouldn’t have let me read Graziella when I was ten. Little girls were seeking my company at the time, and some, I realise today, already had ulterior motives. Anyway, on the whole, things were off to a good start, but soon after that came puberty, just as the fashion for mini-skirts began, I struggled to reconcile that with reading Graziella, I started to reject what was reaching out to me — even though it inspired me with terrible longings — and to look for things in life that weren’t there; in short things started to get pretty screwed up for me, and I still think a bit it’s partly Lamartine’s fault. It was around the same time that I gave up children’s collections for paperbacks.

For me, there were two worthwhile collections: Le Livre de Poche and J’ai lu. I hated Folio and Présence du Futur: too expensive, with off-putting covers and above all horribly poorly made; you only had to open these books a dozen times and the poorly glued pages would fall out and the book would go to shreds — while the books published by Livre de Poche and especially J’ai lu were indestructible, and this was essential because these were the books I opened more than a dozen times. I took them everywhere, to the cafe, to the high-school canteen, on the train — and soon I wasn’t just taking commuter trains, but trains that crossed Europe. It was the time of the inter-rail card. I slept in dusty campsites, in the cellars of damp buildings, and my J’ai lu books are still around. I have them near me as I write. Now I’m rich, I travel in business class. They have nothing to worry about, it’s all okay.

More from this author

How France lost her dignity

By Michel Houellebecq

Later, after my marriage and my professional life broke down, I took up writing. I started, more precisely, to write novels, which were published, which brought me fame and fortune, relatively speaking. Suddenly I started to read my contemporaries, I discovered normal editions. However, I have never stopped reading, or rereading, paperbacks, and it was a great joy for me to be published in J’ai lu — of course, I wouldn’t have refused Folio or Presses-Pocket if my editor had wished it, but, all the same, the moment when I saw myself for the first time coming out as a J’ai lu remains one of the most beautiful moments of my life.

Today I read my contemporaries a little less. I reread more — that’s normal, I’m getting old. I now know that I’ll read until the end of my days — maybe I’ll stop smoking, obviously I’ll stop making love, and the conversation of men will gradually lose its interest for me; but I can’t imagine myself without a book.

I have never felt any particular fetishism for original editions, for the book as object — I’m mainly interested in the content. And I’m gradually replacing my books in regular paperback editions with some of those wonderful objects, so practical when travelling — the Pléiades, the Bouquins or the Omnibus. There are still a few exceptions, for sentimental reasons, and it seems unlikely to me — even if things go wrong again, even if I end up in a furnished room with one or two big suitcases, and that’s still possible, of course — that I will ever part with certain of my books; especially certain of my J’ai lu books.

Michel Houellebecq’s Interventions 2020, where this essay originally appeared, is published by Polity books. 

I use that quote from Pascal (Pensées, 229) because I am not setting out to assert positive truths nor to defend opinions. I see a situation which — as Pascal writes in his next sentence — “offers nothing but cause for doubt and anxiety”.

In asking me to give an opinion on the now celebrated “Letter of the Generals,” UnHerd‘s Will Lloyd rightly notes: “What seems most extraordinary about the furore that followed is that so few people questioned the premise of the letter — that France is on the point of collapse.”

This is indeed surprising. Why France? Why France rather than any other European country when the others seem to be in a more or less similar situation and sometimes worse off?

I might as well admit from the beginning that I have no solution to this mystery (even though I know France well and I am a Frenchman). I will try to avoid straying into confused notions of the “psychology of nations” kind; but it will be difficult.

From the point of view of Islamist terrorism, it is true that, for a time, France was especially targeted by Isis, the latter believing (not without reason) that France had attacked them by intervening in Syria and Iraq. But those days are behind us, and if one considers the last decades, we see that Great Britain, Spain, Belgium and, to a lesser extent, Germany have also suffered murderous terrorist attacks. What would be difficult, in fact, is to find a country in the world that has been spared Islamist violence.

Are crime and violence, whether or not linked to drugs, really wreaking more havoc in France than in other European countries? I have no idea, but it would surprise me a little; if this were the case, French journalists would not have failed to emphasise it.

More from this author

How France lost her dignity

By Michel Houellebecq

There is in France a vague and widespread ambiance of self-flagellation — something that hangs in the air like a gas. Anyone visiting France and watching television cannot help being struck by the obsession of its presenters, journalists, economists, sociologists and assorted specialists: they spend the greater part of their time on air comparing France to other European countries, invariably, with the goal of belittling France.

In general, it is sufficient to point to Germany; but sometimes Germany does not have such a good record so they refer to Scandinavia, the Netherlands and, more rarely, Britain. Whatever the subject may be, it is of course always possible to discover a country that is superior to us; but such an extreme delight in masochism is surprising.

This is just a detail. By far a more important subject, since it is not only a symptom of decline but decline itself — decline in its very essence — is of course demography. Recently, politicians and commentators were disturbed to learn that the “synthetic index of fertility” (that is, the number of children per woman) has fallen in France to 1.8.[1. The United States and Russia are both at 1.8; China is at 1.7.]

Such a figure would be a dream come true for the countries of Southern Europe: for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, where the rate is 1.3.[2. These figures from 2019 come from an informational bulletin, Population et sociétés, published by the Institut National d’Études Démographiques; their data come in turn from a report published by the UN’s population division. This bulletin also engages in projections of countries’ populations by 2050. They are probably banking on a certain percentage of immigration, which would explain the differences with what follows from fertility rates. As such, the population of the United States increases significantly (that of France as well, though much less), whereas that of Russia and China decrease slowly; in 2050, the most populated country in the world should be, by a wide margin, India.] It is worse still in Asia, in parts of the world that are as technologically advanced as they are far away but generally admired. The rate in Singapore and Taiwan is 1.2.

South Korea is only 1.1. This country risks losing a tenth of its population by 2050; if that continues it will only have one chance of survival: to annex North Korea, which is at 1.9. I’m joking, but only just.

Suggested reading

The death of the French intellectual

By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

With a rate of 1.4, the Japanese are almost muddling through, which is surprising, since the most amusing news on declining birth-rates typically comes from Japan. These news items are so crazy that I hesitate to repeat them (but the improbable is sometimes true):

• Old men are apparently so numerous in Japan that they can no longer be housed, so they have to find a way of breaking the law to find lodgings in prison.
• The Japanese government is reported to have to broadcast pornographic videos in primetime on public television, in order to stimulate the sexual appetites of Japanese couples. After all, screwing does end up producing a few children.

In France, it is clear that we have not quite sunk to his level, at least not entirely. The truth is that French obsession with the idea of decline is far from new. Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserts somewhere (or is it Voltaire? I’m too lazy to check; these authors are tedious to read. Anyway, it is one of the two), that sooner or later — “the thing is certain”: we will be enslaved by the Chinese.

France sometimes reminds me of one of those hypochondriac old men who never stops complaining about their health; the kind who are constantly saying that this time they really do have one foot in the grave. People usually respond sarcastically: “You watch, he’ll end up burying all of us.”

Suggested reading

Macron, the failed Machiavelli

By John Lichfield

The United States of America seems, on the other hand, to have erected optimism into a principle of existence. One can doubt the soundness of this attitude. When Joe Biden claims that “America is once again ready to lead the world” (here again, I am too lazy to find the exact quotation; Biden is even more tedious than Voltaire), I immediately interpret this as:

• America will not be long in embarking on a new war;
• As always, she will wind up conducting herself like a piece of shit;
• She will waste a lot of money, while reinforcing up the near-universal loathing of which she is the target; this will allow China to strengthen its position.

No, we are not really dealing with a “French suicide” — to evoke the title of Eric Zemmour’s book — but a Western suicide or rather a suicide of modernity, since Asian countries are not spared. What is specifically, authentically French is the awareness of this suicide. But if we consent to set aside for a moment the particular case of France (and really it would be wise to do so), the conclusion becomes crystal clear: the inevitable consequence of what we call progress (at all levels, economic, political, scientific, technological) is self-destruction.

By refusing all forms of immigration, Asian countries have opted for a simple suicide, without complications or disturbances. The countries of Southern Europe are in the same situation, although one wonders if they have consciously chosen it. Migrants do land in Italy, in Spain and in Greece — but they only pass through, without helping to sort out the demographic balance, although the women of these countries are often highly desirable. No, the migrants are drawn irresistibly to the biggest and fattest cheeses, the countries of Northern Europe.

Suggested reading

Why we love to hate the French

By Ed West

I should mention in passing the Leftist/progressivist/humanist opinion: we are not dealing with a suicide but with a regeneration. Ethnic composition is, admittedly, being modified, but in the essentials everything else remains unchanged: our republic (or rather in Europe, mostly our monarchy) our culture, our values, our “Rule of Law,” all that stuff. I sometimes hear this opinion being defended (though more and more rarely).

The 45% of French people who believe, on the other hand, in impending civil war help to show (and it is almost sweet) that France remains a nation of braggarts.

It takes two to wage war. Are the French going to take up arms to defend their religion? They haven’t had any religion for quite some time; and in any case, their former religion is the sort where you offer your throat to the butcher’s blade.

Would it then be a war to defend their culture, their way of life, their system of values? What exactly are we talking about? And supposing it does exist, is it worth fighting for? Does our “civilisation” really still have something to be proud of?

Europe seems to me to be at a crossroads. Reading Pascal helps me a lot: but, like him, I see “nothing but cause for doubt and anxiety”.

Translated by Dr Louis Betty. 

© Michel Houellebecq c/o Agence Intertalent info@intertalent.fr

This piece was originally published in June. 

I use that quote from Pascal (Pensées, 229) because I am not setting out to assert positive truths nor to defend opinions. I see a situation which — as Pascal writes in his next sentence — “offers nothing but cause for doubt and anxiety”.

In asking me to give an opinion on the now celebrated “Letter of the Generals,” UnHerd‘s Will Lloyd rightly notes: “What seems most extraordinary about the furore that followed is that so few people questioned the premise of the letter — that France is on the point of collapse.”

This is indeed surprising. Why France? Why France rather than any other European country when the others seem to be in a more or less similar situation and sometimes worse off?

I might as well admit from the beginning that I have no solution to this mystery (even though I know France well and I am a Frenchman). I will try to avoid straying into confused notions of the “psychology of nations” kind; but it will be difficult.

From the point of view of Islamist terrorism, it is true that, for a time, France was especially targeted by Isis, the latter believing (not without reason) that France had attacked them by intervening in Syria and Iraq. But those days are behind us, and if one considers the last decades, we see that Great Britain, Spain, Belgium and, to a lesser extent, Germany have also suffered murderous terrorist attacks. What would be difficult, in fact, is to find a country in the world that has been spared Islamist violence.

Are crime and violence, whether or not linked to drugs, really wreaking more havoc in France than in other European countries? I have no idea, but it would surprise me a little; if this were the case, French journalists would not have failed to emphasise it.

More from this author

How France lost her dignity

By Michel Houellebecq

There is in France a vague and widespread ambiance of self-flagellation — something that hangs in the air like a gas. Anyone visiting France and watching television cannot help being struck by the obsession of its presenters, journalists, economists, sociologists and assorted specialists: they spend the greater part of their time on air comparing France to other European countries, invariably, with the goal of belittling France.

In general, it is sufficient to point to Germany; but sometimes Germany does not have such a good record so they refer to Scandinavia, the Netherlands and, more rarely, Britain. Whatever the subject may be, it is of course always possible to discover a country that is superior to us; but such an extreme delight in masochism is surprising.

This is just a detail. By far a more important subject, since it is not only a symptom of decline but decline itself — decline in its very essence — is of course demography. Recently, politicians and commentators were disturbed to learn that the “synthetic index of fertility” (that is, the number of children per woman) has fallen in France to 1.8.[1. The United States and Russia are both at 1.8; China is at 1.7.]

Such a figure would be a dream come true for the countries of Southern Europe: for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, where the rate is 1.3.[2. These figures from 2019 come from an informational bulletin, Population et sociétés, published by the Institut National d’Études Démographiques; their data come in turn from a report published by the UN’s population division. This bulletin also engages in projections of countries’ populations by 2050. They are probably banking on a certain percentage of immigration, which would explain the differences with what follows from fertility rates. As such, the population of the United States increases significantly (that of France as well, though much less), whereas that of Russia and China decrease slowly; in 2050, the most populated country in the world should be, by a wide margin, India.] It is worse still in Asia, in parts of the world that are as technologically advanced as they are far away but generally admired. The rate in Singapore and Taiwan is 1.2.

South Korea is only 1.1. This country risks losing a tenth of its population by 2050; if that continues it will only have one chance of survival: to annex North Korea, which is at 1.9. I’m joking, but only just.

Suggested reading

The death of the French intellectual

By Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

With a rate of 1.4, the Japanese are almost muddling through, which is surprising, since the most amusing news on declining birth-rates typically comes from Japan. These news items are so crazy that I hesitate to repeat them (but the improbable is sometimes true):

• Old men are apparently so numerous in Japan that they can no longer be housed, so they have to find a way of breaking the law to find lodgings in prison.
• The Japanese government is reported to have to broadcast pornographic videos in primetime on public television, in order to stimulate the sexual appetites of Japanese couples. After all, screwing does end up producing a few children.

In France, it is clear that we have not quite sunk to his level, at least not entirely. The truth is that French obsession with the idea of decline is far from new. Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserts somewhere (or is it Voltaire? I’m too lazy to check; these authors are tedious to read. Anyway, it is one of the two), that sooner or later — “the thing is certain”: we will be enslaved by the Chinese.

France sometimes reminds me of one of those hypochondriac old men who never stops complaining about their health; the kind who are constantly saying that this time they really do have one foot in the grave. People usually respond sarcastically: “You watch, he’ll end up burying all of us.”

Suggested reading

Macron, the failed Machiavelli

By John Lichfield

The United States of America seems, on the other hand, to have erected optimism into a principle of existence. One can doubt the soundness of this attitude. When Joe Biden claims that “America is once again ready to lead the world” (here again, I am too lazy to find the exact quotation; Biden is even more tedious than Voltaire), I immediately interpret this as:

• America will not be long in embarking on a new war;
• As always, she will wind up conducting herself like a piece of shit;
• She will waste a lot of money, while reinforcing up the near-universal loathing of which she is the target; this will allow China to strengthen its position.

No, we are not really dealing with a “French suicide” — to evoke the title of Eric Zemmour’s book — but a Western suicide or rather a suicide of modernity, since Asian countries are not spared. What is specifically, authentically French is the awareness of this suicide. But if we consent to set aside for a moment the particular case of France (and really it would be wise to do so), the conclusion becomes crystal clear: the inevitable consequence of what we call progress (at all levels, economic, political, scientific, technological) is self-destruction.

By refusing all forms of immigration, Asian countries have opted for a simple suicide, without complications or disturbances. The countries of Southern Europe are in the same situation, although one wonders if they have consciously chosen it. Migrants do land in Italy, in Spain and in Greece — but they only pass through, without helping to sort out the demographic balance, although the women of these countries are often highly desirable. No, the migrants are drawn irresistibly to the biggest and fattest cheeses, the countries of Northern Europe.

Suggested reading

Why we love to hate the French

By Ed West

I should mention in passing the Leftist/progressivist/humanist opinion: we are not dealing with a suicide but with a regeneration. Ethnic composition is, admittedly, being modified, but in the essentials everything else remains unchanged: our republic (or rather in Europe, mostly our monarchy) our culture, our values, our “Rule of Law,” all that stuff. I sometimes hear this opinion being defended (though more and more rarely).

The 45% of French people who believe, on the other hand, in impending civil war help to show (and it is almost sweet) that France remains a nation of braggarts.

It takes two to wage war. Are the French going to take up arms to defend their religion? They haven’t had any religion for quite some time; and in any case, their former religion is the sort where you offer your throat to the butcher’s blade.

Would it then be a war to defend their culture, their way of life, their system of values? What exactly are we talking about? And supposing it does exist, is it worth fighting for? Does our “civilisation” really still have something to be proud of?

Europe seems to me to be at a crossroads. Reading Pascal helps me a lot: but, like him, I see “nothing but cause for doubt and anxiety”.

Translated by Dr Louis Betty. 

© Michel Houellebecq c/o Agence Intertalent info@intertalent.fr

Proposition one: no one wants to die. As a rule, we prefer a diminished life to no life at all; because we think we will always have the little pleasures of life. And are there any pleasures other than little ones? That is a subject worth exploring.

Proposition two: no one wants to suffer. Suffer physically, that is. Moral suffering has its charms, it can even generate aesthetic material (as I have discovered for myself). Physical suffering is pure hell, devoid of interest and meaning, from which no lessons can be drawn. Life has been sketchily (and falsely) described as a quest for pleasure; it is, more accurately, an avoidance of suffering; and more or less everyone, given a choice between unbearable suffering and death, chooses death.

Proposition three, the most important of all: physical suffering can be eliminated. At the beginning of the 19th century, morphine was discovered. Many similar substances have appeared since then. At the end of the 19th century, hypnosis was rediscovered; it remains little used in France.

Ignorance of these facts might explain the alarming opinion polls which support euthanasia (96% in favour, if I remember correctly). Ninety six percent of people think that they are being asked the question: “Would you rather be helped to die or would you like to spend what remains of your days in appalling suffering”. The other 4% know all about morphine and hypnosis. Those proportions seem about right to me.

I’m going to resist launching into an argument for the decriminalisation of drugs here (and not just “soft” drugs); that is a subject on which I yield to the wisdom-filled observations of the excellent Patrick Eudeline.

Partisans of euthanasia like to gargle on words whose meanings they distort to such an extent that they should no longer even have the right to utter them. In the case of “compassion,” the lie is palpable. When it comes to “dignity”, things are more insidious. We have seriously deviated from the Kantian definition of dignity by substituting, little by little, the physical being for the moral one (and maybe even denying the very notion of a moral being), substituting the human capacity for action with a shallower more animal concept of good health — turned into a sort of pre-condition of all possibility of human dignity, even maybe its only true meaning.

Put in this way, I have rarely had the impression that I have manifested extraordinary dignity at any time in my life; and I do not have the impression that this is likely to improve. I am going to end up losing my hair and my teeth. My lungs will be reduced to shreds. I will become steadily more or less impotent, more or less incapable, perhaps incontinent and possibly even blind. Once a certain stage of degradation has been reached, I will inevitably end up telling myself (and I will be lucky if it is not someone else pointing it out to me) that I no longer have any dignity.

Well, so what? If that is dignity, one can very well do without it. On the other hand, everyone more or less needs to feel themselves necessary or loved; and, failing that, esteemed—even in my case admired. It is true that can also be lost; but one cannot do much about that; others play in this respect the determining role. And I can easily imagine myself asking to die in the hope that others reply: “Oh no, no. Please stay with us a little longer.” That would be very much my style. And I admit this without the slightest shame. The conclusion, I am afraid, is inescapable: I am a human-being utterly devoid of all dignity.

Part of the usual sales pitch for euthanasia consists in maintaining that France is “lagging behind” other countries. The preamble for the bill that will shortly be proposed is in this respect comical: looking for countries that France is allegedly “lagging behind,” they can only find Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg; frankly, I am not impressed.

The rest of the preamble consists of stitching together citations from Anne Bert, presented as “admirably forceful”, but which have the unfortunate effect of raising my suspicions. For example, when she maintains: “No, euthanasia does not fall under the heading of eugenics.” On the contrary, it is obvious that the partisans of both the ideas are exactly the same people, from the “divine” Plato to the Nazis. Likewise, when she adds, “No, the Belgian law on euthanasia has not encouraged inheritance theft.” I admit that I had not thought of this, but now that she mentions it…

Immediately afterwards, she lets the cat right out of the bag by claiming that euthanasia “is not a solution of an economic nature”. There are, however, indeed certain sordid arguments that one only hears from “economists,” insofar as that term has any meaning. None other than Jacques Attali has insisted, in an already dated work, on the cost to the public purse of maintaining the lives of very old people; it is hardly surprising that Alain Minc, more recently, has gone in the same direction, Attali just being a stupider version of Minc (without even speaking of that clown François de Closets, who is something like the performing monkey of the other two, their Hanswurst).

Catholics will do their best to resist, but, sad to say, we have more or less got used to the idea that the Catholics always lose. Muslims and Jews, on this subject as on other subjects deemed “societal” (that ugly word), think exactly the same as Catholics; the media are generally in strong agreement about hiding this fact. I do not have a lot of illusions; these faiths will end up by giving way and submitting to the yoke of “republican law”. Their priests, rabbis, or imams will in future visit euthanasia candidates to tell them that yes, it is an ugly business, but tomorrow will be better, and that even if people have abandoned them, God will take care of them. Let us be honest about that.

From the point of view of the Lamas, the situation is without doubt even worse. Any attentive reader of the Bardo Thodol knows that death throes are a particularly significant moment in a man’s life, for they offer him a final chance, even in the case of unfavourable karma, to free himself from samsara, the cycle of rebirth. Any early interruption of death-agonies is thus a frankly criminal act; unfortunately, Buddhists rarely intervene in public debate.

There remain only the doctors, in whom I had placed little hope, doubtless because I am not very familiar with them; but it is undeniable that some of them resist and refuse to kill their patients and that they will remain perhaps the last barrier to euthanasia. I do not know where they get this courage; maybe it is only respect for the Hippocratic oath: “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course”. It is possible. The public uttering of this oath must have been a significant moment in their lives. In any case their struggle is an admirable one, even if it is a struggle “for honour”.

The honour of a civilisation is not exactly nothing. But really something else is at stake; from the anthropological point of view. It is a question of life and death. And on this point I am going to have to be very explicit: when a country — a society, a civilisation — gets to the point of legalising euthanasia, it loses in my eyes all right to respect. It becomes henceforth not only legitimate, but desirable, to destroy it; so that something else — another country, another society, another civilisation — might have a chance to arise.

This essay appeared in Le Figaro on 5 April 2021. Translated for UnHerd by Dr Louis Betty.