Julien Freund
French sociologist and philosopher
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Biography
Born in Henridorff (Moselle) on 8 January 1921, to a peasant mother and a socialist working class father, Freund was the eldest of six siblings. When his father died he had to end his studies. He became a teacher aged 17, and secretary to the council in his hometown.
His brother Antoine, conscripted against his will into the Wehrmacht, was injured in the battle of Orel in Russia and then deserted. This should have caused the deportation of his family, who were also aiding the resistance in Lorraine. However, they were able to destroy the Gestapo-held documents relating to their proposed deportation.
The resistance
During World War II, Freund was a member of the resistance. A member of the Libération group founded by Jean Cavaillès, he was taken hostage by the Germans in July 1940. He managed to escape to the Free Zone of France. In January 1941, he began fighting for the Libération movement of Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, then in combat groups run by Henri Frenay, all the while getting his degree in philosophy.
Arrested in June 1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, then again in September in Lyon, he was accused alongside Emmanuel Mounier in the trial of Combat. Jailed in the central prison of Elysses, then in the fortress of Sisteron, he escaped on 8 June 1944. Returning to Strasbourg in November 1944, he became a journalist and political activist.
Academic career
Initially, Freund was a young teacher in Hommarting (Moselle). He then became professor of philosophy in collège Mangin de Sarrebourg (1946–49), lycée Fabert de Metz (1949–53) and then the lycée Fustel de Coulanges de Strasbourg (1953–60). From 1960 to 1965, he was a head of research at CNRS. In 1965, the year of his thesis at Sorbonne, he was elected professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg, where he founded the departement of social sciences. He then taught from 1973 to 1975 at the College of Europe in Bruges, then in 1975 at Université de Montréal.
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Ideas
Freund was a support of limited democracy and that growing democratisation increases the reach of government, allowing it to become ever more invasive. Politics, Freund believed, cannot solve any cultural problems or impose social values upon society, and it should not be involved in religious affairs. Equally, religion also cannot impose upon the principles of democracy. Freund's work also drew attention to the corruption of language and its misuse in democracy: "La démocratie se décompose quand elle dilapide la sincérité en démagogie et en flatterie", i.e. "Democracy breaks down when it squanders sincerity in demagoguery and flattery".
His idea of "mesocracy" was first used in 1978, against the overuse and overreach of democracy. Mesocracy from its Greek roots, is a form of power that exists in tandem with other 'counter powers'. Rather than speaking of a singular, abstract “freedom”, Freund preferred to refer to specific freedoms, freedom of the press, of association, of conscience etc. Without such concrete freedoms, Freund argued, we will never have freedom in the singular.