Encomium of Emile Perreau-Saussine

“It looks as if we need some intrepid mortal, who values frankness above all, to specify the policy he believes best for the states and its citizens…. There will be no one to back him up. He’ll walk alone, with reason alone to guide him.”

-Plato, Laws

Plato knew that it takes courage to stand up to prevailing opinions; to speak out for the Truth in a hostile environment is, perhaps, the most dangerous thing one can do. Both Socrates and Christ paid for it with their lives. When I read of this “intrepid mortal,” I think of my erstwhile mentor (and friend) Emile Perreau-Saussine. Intrepid, frank; these all fit him quite well. However, in the end, I think Plato gets it only half right for Emile—Emile had both reason and faith as his guides.

Nearly a year ago, Fr. James Schall told me that if I was headed to Cambridge for graduate school, it was imperative that I meet up with this “hyphenated Frenchman.” I had no idea what I was getting into. Emile epitomized all that was the very best about Cambridge. He challenged me more than I’d ever been before. We always used to joke that one never walks out of his office feeling “satisfied” with one’s work. There was always more to read, always another angle to think about, always a different way of posing the question. The road to perfection is laborious. Sometimes Emile’s advice would even seem contradictory, but such is often the case with brilliant men. It was up to us to see how it cohered.

As much as Emile demanded, though, he returned with interest. He met with a group of us every week to read interesting books, giving up his valuable time for our benefit. These will be my fondest memories of him: the long, rainy walk up to Fitzwilliam College, mulling over the points I was hoping to make, preparing myself for the intellectual rapier that was Emile. As we came in each day, he’d always insist that we shift our chairs into a circle so as to indicate our equality in the discussion. I was always so shocked by his modesty (he insisted I call him by his first name). He made us feel like colleagues, although the truth is we were nothing of the sort; we were in the presence of a truly great and brilliant man. “And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me,” Socrates tells us in Theatetus, but “it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light…[and] it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring.” By Emile’s example—through his serious and pure love of ideas—he brought out the very best in us all.

He was even more than just a professor, though. He truly cared about what happened to us after Cambridge. He and I spent one rainy morning discussing life and the future, and I will remember his advice as long as I live. “We can be so limited by our imaginations,” he told me. Often we think of the imagination as a liberating faculty, but Emile reminded me that, to some extent, we can only imagine by piecing together things we have already experienced. The future is truly unimaginable. Perhaps, he said, unimaginably better than we could’ve imagined. I asked for an example. “I am very smitten with my wife,” he replied, “and to be honest, I never imagined I’d have found such an amazing woman.” I am sure there are other things that Emile would not have imagined—certainly not his untimely death.

While he probably never imagined it, I am sure he was ready for it. One day, we were picking out the next book the group was to read. Emile suggested Ockham’s political writings. I spoke up: “Why not his metaphysical works? These are probably more consequential.” At this, he laughed that characteristic laugh, saying, “Oh, perhaps… Perhaps, if there were not such a thing as the “good life” and a limited time to live it, perhaps then I would read such things.” Maybe just a superficial jab at a boring book, but maybe something more. The “good life.” A “limited amount of time to live it.” Emile knew, deeply, that everything—the world, our lives, our friends, our lovers, and each day we awaken—all these are gifts from God. We humans do not exist out of necessity; it is only because of a Sacred Love, the highest Love—pure gratuity. Emile lived with this faith: he exuded it from the interior of his very being.

I return to this idea of the “intrepid mortal.” As Plato says, “There will be no one to back him up. He’ll walk alone.” Anyone who knew Emile knew that his life, his writings, and his spoken words all opposed the trend of secular modernity. And Emile, like any witness, took his knocks for the Truth: at times ridiculed, at times ignored. Such responses to a Catholic intellectual—to a defender of the Faith—are, unfortunately, nothing new under the sun. He fought a lonely battle in a world dominated by what he called “the positivists”: those who, denying God, create a religion of man in its place. What fortitude! Beyond this, what elegance! To see him in debate was to watch a master. I can say of Emile what Alcibiades once said of his mentor: “in the midst of battle he was making his way exactly as he does around town, ‘…with swagg’ring gait and roving eye.’” Yet even in the thickest of fights, he retained his joy—how, we aren’t sure. Perhaps grace. He made a choice; he chose to go against the grain in the name of the Truth he knew and felt. He knew this would be hard going, but he did it anyway, knowing that this was the only life worth living. I am sure that he read the following lines from Spe Salvi: “It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.” How lucky I was to encounter this “intrepid mortal, who values frankness above all.” I hope that I can in a small way live up to his high example.

In thinking about Emile’s death, we ought to take his own advice, and not be “limited by our imaginations.” Who knows where he is now or what he is doing? At his own condemnation, Socrates told of how he was excited at the prospect of death, as through it he would join the company of all the greatest minds that ever lived, and could engage in an eternal conversation. I wonder if Emile is philosophizing with Socrates right now. For a thinker of Emile’s depth, I know such a chance would be the greatest thrill. Indeed, many of us have an even higher hope and faith. We hope and believe that Emile now basks in Wisdom itself, with all the complex questions he pondered over in life, answered. There is no more uncertainty for Emile—his faith is confirmed, and his pursuit of wisdom has reached fulfillment. If each day is a gift, then so was Emile. Thank you, God, for letting us know this man, however brief it was.