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| Place de la Bourse (Brussels), the day after. Aurore Belot / BELGA / AFP |
When Jihadist terrorism still just hit so brutally blindly, that is - once again - the stunning dominates. But what can we do to be rid of and beyond? In particular, when we want to react as an informed citizen, and willing to participate meaningfully in the necessary public debate on how to deal with terrorism? Four great ways we seem open, expressed by four verbs: to explain, understand, forgive, judge. These verbs mean so many different postures, which it should attempt to assess the merits and value.
Explain
It is a stance that seems necessary. Obviously, an explanation effort is needed more than ever. We can not fight obscurantism by another obscurantism. This is what led a number of intellectuals and researchersto strongly criticize Manuel Valls have condemned "those who constantly seek excuses or cultural or sociological explanations" to the terrorist attacks on the ground, he , that "explain is already want some excuse."
Cast doubt on the explanation, is not it a 'injunction not to understand and ultimately not to think " ? As noted by Bernard Lahire , how to refuse the critical interrogation work, investigation and interpretation which engage social scientists to try to account for actions of terrorists?
Reject a priori explanation of this endeavor is "an incredible regression obscurantist" particularly regrettable that understand what happened can prevent the risk of terrorism, as stated a report issued March 3 the Minister of Education: "Knowing the causes of a threat is the first condition to protect themselves." It is therefore essential to try to explain.But can we be satisfied? And what else?
Understand
sometimes we take for equivalent terms to explain and understand.Bernard Lahire, it is indeed "to understand the world as it is." But understanding commits something other than just explain. We can already observe that the essential analysis of the "mechanisms and processes" that led to the terrorist act has internal limits in terms of causal attribution.
This was very well highlighted by the American writer and essayist Paul Berman , for whom research even causes is a fairly futile company regards jihadism. For if, apparently, the social scientists have no difficulty in identifying the cause, in the end there are so many "root causes" as experts! "And they say everything and its opposite." At best, we can highlight "favorable circumstances".
To understand the terrorist rage, which for Paul Berman in the order of hate speech should be approached as an emotion, arranging for it a "poetic". But is not there a risk then being won by emotion? To understand is to grasp a meaning, and a way to share it. Thus understanding can lead to admit, even to approve. Since this is so, that's good too ... In wanting to understand the risk is not to judge, and to acquiesce in the horror, which we find excuses!
Excuse
Regarding fact criminal and barbaric acts, it will come-it seems the idea of anyone wanting the excuse. Unless a victim of Islamist ideology, and taken away in a frenzy Islamo-Fascist terrorists we take for heroes and martyrs. Or except, perhaps, if one part of the relatives of those who believed that God could ask them to blow up innocent people.
However, we have said that the temptation to excuse awaits those who ultimately understand too well. Acquiescence to the real value can take the "blessing of the fact." Two questions arise. How to guard against the temptation to excuse? And how, first of all, can we be sure that certain behaviors are inexcusable? What therefore can rely certainty - that seems unanimously shared today - that the posture of the excuse is unacceptable, and must absolutely refuse to go this route?
Judge
Scientific analysis differs in principle the judgment. The laboratory is not a court, writes Bernard Lahire. The logic of the search for social determinism should not be confused with that of research responsibilities. To each his work. Specifically, then, take note of the fact that a double work is needed, and be aware of what it commits. Because the value of one (work of scientific explanation) not to forget the urgency of the other (ethical judgment of work).
The analysis of jihadist terrorism can be in two different orders: the order of facts, and the order of values. In the order of facts, researchers conduct their critical interrogation of work "without judgment on the state of things" (Lahire). In the order of values, it decides on the facts.One judge, first by reference to the law, the other by reference to the Ethics, and its requirements. In the order of facts, bow, and we agree: things are what they are. In the order of values, we refuse. We say no to the unacceptable, crime, cruelty, horror.
Malraux was very well exposed the problem in his book The Conquest "judge is, obviously, do not understand because, if we understood, we could no longer judge." For the social sciences, the explanation at best leads to understanding. After that there is nothing more to say. But there's more than ever as to say, in the order of values. That the highest freedoms, as wrote the parents of a university Grenoble who died at the Bataclan, "is able to keep his life, remain alive in all circumstances." That terrorist acts are heinous in nature and inexcusable. There will never be an excuse for wanting to kill creatures that often, as Brassens sang, "Life is about their only luxury here below."
All in all, we believe that can do better today, informed citizen who wants to overcome its stunning, is to refuse without hesitation or weakness the temptation to excuse. Being attentive to the explanations furnished by the social sciences, but without understanding at all costs. And above all to exercise its power of judgment to discern and affirm the ethical requirements that only compliance is likely to save us from barbarism.For if the question of responsibility is not scientifically relevant, it is humanly hot.
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