ABSTRACT

The gap between anticipation and reality and the effects of reaching a ceiling are two major causes of the appearance of cyclic phenomena. But there are certainly other cases to take into account. Certain phenomena put in motion, in a quasinatural manner, overshooting effects which in their turn put in motion a reaction in the opposite direction. When a social state E is seen as undesirable, it tends to give rise to the appearance of ideologies and of utopias preaching its reform. But in order for the ideologies in question to be effective, they must simplify and exaggerate the criticism. First, because, as Simmel and Weber noted, it is easier to achieve a

high level of agreement on negative propositions of rejection than on positive propositions; and second, because a message is assured of a larger diffusion in proportion to how simple it is. But if the ideology is effective, it is likely to lead to excessive measures which set off a return of the pendulum. Thus we observe ideological cycles where the growth of the power of the State over civil society is alternatively recommended and denounced. In taking the analyses of Pareto further, we equally draw the conclusion that ideologies, by their intrinsically excessive character, have a tendency to contain their own contradictions. The excesses of the artificial vision of society developed by the philosophy of the Enlightenment (as well as the practical consequences the Revolution drew from this philosophy) instigated the development, for example by Bonald and de Maistre, of a traditionalist vision which itself bears an excessive aspect. After Bonald and de Maistre, the vision of social engineering reappeared with the Saint-Simonians. We can discover in the analysis of ideological phenomena another phenomenon with a cyclic effect, foreseen by Tarde in his analyses of fashion: when a product (or an attitude) is adopted by the élite, it has a tendency, in certain circumstances, to become diffused and to lose its function of distinction in the eyes of the élite (Simmel’s Vornehmheit), who will have thus a tendency to abandon it for another product (or another attitude). This type of phenomenon explains for example the fact that ‘structuralism’ takes and holds an important place in the teaching of philosophy in the lycées, at the moment when a declared scepticism is developing concerning it among the intellectual élite.