Everyone knows that this is not so simple

The stimulus has become, as common sense according to Descartes, "the thing in the world the best shared." In a few weeks, crisis requires, on all continents, it now has its plans, its experts, its cells of crisis and even, since, in France, his Ministry. Yet, the very idea of stimulus little questioned. It remains, more often, this summary representation: the complete blackout threat, the only solution is to do everything to put the machine in highway. This mechanistic vision sees economic activity about as an engine. The system down Inject fuel here, to resolve a piston there, work a bolt on the side. With a good ignition advance, recovery is ensured.

Everyone knows that this is not so simple. More than ever, indeed, it becomes aware that the economy is not an exact science. Therefore, instead to consider even the stimulus as a mechanical operation, it would be better open the focal length, take back. Is it indeed sufficient that there is a willingness to relaunch, and ways to act, to make it all work The issue is not technical. He would go about philosophers, to consider, for example, how their analysis of the relationship between our decisions and the results of our actions have evolved.

In Europe, these centuries, industry and will have been two parallel stories. Their simultaneous development was too little noticed. Descartes, inaugurating the modern time, wish make us rational knowledge "as masters and possessors of nature." At the same time, he says that the will is as big in us as God and superior to the intellect. In the 19th century, when triumph machines, the stock market and capitalism, other philosophies of desire, more radical, is built including with Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. The drift of this construction, when it is enlargement, it is the ideology of voluntarism. It believe that the resolution of the heads, parties, people farm could outweigh all determinations social, political or economic. Totalitarian regimes are all volontaristes, even if, of course, all wilfulness is not totalitarian.

It is yet not enough to decide that the result follow. Kant has this nice formula: "my thinking does no need to things." Let us not throw overboard the part of the risk, what Clausewitz called the "fog of war", this rush of small coincidences, these packs of grains of sand, these kyrielles of unpredictable incidents which are sufficient to all upset. That bogged down the finest battle plans, it is sufficient to a bad transmission, a sudden storm of a misunderstanding.

It is hoped the success of the stimulus, of course, to also deny the mechanistic illusion and the voluntarist mirage. The clock to the perfect workings and friction forces zero is not of this world. The omnipotence of our decisions belongs to the field of dreams. In the historical reality, nothing is guaranteed. Hazards are legion, the uncertain struggle it is what makes it real and interesting. In other words, the experts do their best, the policies also, but do not know, to speak true, if this will walk or to what extent.

There is not many people to say This is not to weaken the morale of the troops. But it is also by the effect of permanent overestimate our theoretical models and their supposed effectiveness. We are continually tell us that we harness events, we can refer them to our liking. Today, against such as Vertigo, the role philosophers perhaps stubbornly remember the boundaries of our knowledge and our powers. Them that were once friends of knowledge, they should become, to play the railings, guards of ignorance.