Keywords
literature and politics
political philosophy
liberalism
nationalism
How to Cite
Abstract
This paper examines three key political thinkers of the interwar years—Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and T.S. Eliot—for their responses to the question Julien Benda posed in 1927 in La Trahison des Clercs: What duties do intellectuals have to their nations? For each of these critics of liberalism, intellectuals are closely implicated in the failures of liberal regimes to defend against the totalitarian threat, and the solution must be thought theologically. Both Schmitt and Strauss analogize the position of German Jews to that of the clercs, poised between universal and national loyalties. But as Schmitt descends into Nazism and Strauss sets the philosopher against the city, Eliot develops a theory of mediation, giving clercs the task of communicating universal ideas into particular national idioms. I argue that Eliot provides the most helpful guidance amid contemporary anxieties for intellectuals who feel torn between loyalty to guild and to country.
Similar Articles
- Rachel Alexander Cambre, Women and the Virtue of Friendship in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 2 (2023): The Future Before Us: Early Career Women in Political Theory and Constitutional Studies
- Barry Cooper, Glenn Hughes, S.F. McGuire, Carol Cooper, Tilo Schabert, Author Meets Critics: Tilo Schabert's The Figure of Modernity: On the Irregularity of an Epoch , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 2 (2021): Symposium: Russell Kirk in the 21st Century
- Lee Trepanier, Eric Voegelin and Political Economy: An Introduction , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 1 (2023): Political Theory and Economics, and other Essays
- Grant Havers, Leo Strauss on Nazism , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Sarah Gustafson, Opening the American Heart , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 2 (2023): The Future Before Us: Early Career Women in Political Theory and Constitutional Studies
- John von Heyking, “Had Every Athenian Citizen Been a Socrates” , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 46 No. 1 (2022): Symposium on Political Theology
- Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, Order and Command , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 47 No. 1 (2023): Political Theory and Economics, and other Essays
- Grant Havers, Does Politics Need a Theology? , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 46 No. 1 (2022): Symposium on Political Theology
- Michael Hanby, Before and After Politics , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 43 No. 2 (2019): Symposium: The Missouri Compromise at 200
- Katherine Philippakis, Michael S. Kochin, Pimps, Cuckolds, and Philosophers , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 46 No. 2 (2022): Jefferson, Paine, Tolstoy, Frankenstein, and more!
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Kenneth B McIntyre, Conservative Practice versus Conservative “Values” , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 40 (2016): A Symposium on Paul Gottfried’s Conservatism in America
- Frederick D Wilhelmsen, The Political Philosophy of Alvaro d’Ors , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 20 (1991): Reviews
- Ethan Alexander-Davey, Paul Gottfried, David Conway, Michael Harding, Yoram Hazony, Symposium on Yoram Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 43 No. 1 (2019): Essays
- Eugene F Miller, David Easton’s Political Theory , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 1 (1971): Reviews
- Lee Trepanier, What Can Political Science Learn from Literature? , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 44 No. 1 (2020): Symposium: Wit in the History of Political Thought
- Bernat Torres Morales, Josep Monserrat Molas, The Significance of Plato’s Philebus in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 41 No. 1 (2017): Symposium: Eric Voegelin and the Ancients
- Leah Bradshaw, Hannah Arendt: The German Years , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Grant Havers, For the Love of the Bourgeois , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 40 (2016): A Symposium on Paul Gottfried’s Conservatism in America
- Mark Blitz, Heidegger During the War , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Judith Stewart Shank, Form and Restraint in John Crowe Ransom’s Vision of Community , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 30 (2001): Symposia on Kant Studies and on <em>I’ll Take My Stand</em>