Denis de Rougemont /// Atomic Homeopathy
Denis de Rougemont was on retreat in Lake George, NY, when the news reached him that America had unleashed its doomsday weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The event prompted a series of letters, to an anonymous friend, published the following year by Brentano’s as Lettres sur la Bombe atomique. We present here, on the 75th anniversary of its writing, a translation of the first of these letters.
"What is homeopathy? The action of a remedy that is materially absent. What is the atomic bomb? The action of a particle of matter suddenly made absent."
You see, homeopathy is not an advance on traditional medicine but a complete overthrow of its basic notions. It is the revelation of a new universe, where the least will produce the most, where potency will no longer depend on accumulation but, on the contrary, on subtlety pushed to the point of disappearance. The same goes for the atomic bomb.