not with a destiny of total recapitulation close to absolute Mind, but
with a simple and very modestlearning compact that alone is capable
of trying to find out what the associations of humans and nonhumans
propose, and which goes beyond the actions controlled by each entity
in unpredictable ways. If humans need government, it is not because
they lack virtue, but because they are not in control of their common
actions—and their governors have still less control over them. All
knowledge of the public good must in its turn also be the object of me-
ticulous experimentation. The State ensures the comparison between
matters of concernnandn+1.
If this definition appears too weak to those who believe they must
be heirs of Louis XIV, Rousseau, Danton, Hegel, Bismarck, or Lenin,
they should recall the importance attached to the fragile envelope that
separates the inside of the collective from the outside. If it is true that
the State has the monopoly on defining the enemy, the power to fol-
low up can inherit that burdensome task, provided that the word “en-
emy,” as we have already seen, changes meaning. The term will no
longer be used to designate human neighbors gathering troops along a
border; nor will it be used to incriminate beings so unassimilable that
one would have the right to deny them even existence itself, by elimi-
nating them once and for all as irrational. No, the enemy, human and
nonhuman, is the one who is rejected but who will come back the next
day to put the collective at risk: today’s enemy is tomorrow’s ally.^27 In
EXPLORING COMMON WORLDS
207Box 5.1. Complementing Box 4.1, this box recapitulates the contribution of the
various skills from Chapter 4 to the task of following through, in order to char-
acterize in a concerted fashion the virtue of the learning curve.Task no. 7: power to follow through
Contribution of administrators:follow-through on the protocol of experiments,
failures, tests.
Contribution of scientists:detection of a research front.
Contribution of politicians:choice of opportunities that allow the reversal of
power relations.
Contribution of economists:unstable equilibrium that ensures movement.
Contribution of moralists:quality of intentions and directions.