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H. Stuart Hughes - The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation 1930-1960

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H. Stuart Hughes The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation 1930-1960
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The years of political and social despair in France-from the great depression through the Nazi occupation, Resistance, and liberation, to the Algerian War-forced French intellectuals to rethink the values of their culture. Their faltering attempts to break out of a psychological impasse are the subject of this thoughtful and compassionate book by a distinguished American historian. In this first treatment of contemporary French thought to bridge philosophy, literature, and social science and to show its relation to comparable thinking in Germany, Britain, and the United States. Hughes also assesses the work of other writers in terms of their emotional biography and role in society.

Hughes found those who struggled to find meaning and purpose amid chaos to be among the most brilliant minds of their century. They included the social historians Bloch and Febvre; the Catholic philosophers Maritain and Marcel; the proponents of heroism Martin du Gard, Bernanos, Saint-Exupery, Malraux, and DeGaulle; and the phenomenologists Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. They also included the strangely assorted trio of Camus, Teilhard de Chardin, and Levi-Strauss, who showed the way to a wider cultural community. Yet in nearly every case these scholars achieved something quite different from what they set out to do. For this self-questioning generation, the interchange between history and anthropology became most compelling and of greatest interest to the world outside.

The Obstructed Path blends H. Stuart Hughes concern for the many ways in which historians define and practice their craft, his lifelong interest in literature, his fascination with the influence of Marx and Freud, and his empathy with the varieties of Christian thought. It also demonstrates his delicate grasp of singular personalities such as Bernanos, Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre and Levi-Strauss. His profound insight into the flaws of many elaborate philosophical constructions, and into the core of deep emotions, bold images, and searing passions that were often hidden in them, bring us close to these thinkers and makes this an enduring work.

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French Social Thougt in the Years of Desperation 1930-1960
The
Obstructed
Path
H. Stuart Hughes
with a new preface by
Stanley Hoffmann
Originally published in 1968 by Harper Row Publishers Published 2002 by - photo 1
Originally published in 1968 by Harper & Row, Publishers
Published 2002 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
New material this edition copyright 2002 by Taylor & Francis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001027200
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, H. Stuart (Henry Stuart), 1916-
The obstructed path : French social thought in the years of desperation, 1930-1960 / H. Stuart Hughes; with a new preface by Stanley Hoffmann.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7658-0850-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. FranceIntellectual life20th century. I. Title: French social thought in the years of desperation, 1930-1960. II. Title.
DC33.7.H844 2001
944.081dc21
2001027200
ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0850-9 (pbk)
For Judy
Plus tost seront Rhosne, et Saone desjoinctz
Que davec toi mon coeur se dsassemble.
MAURICE SCVE Delie
Contents
H OW difficult it still is to write a study of the French intelligentsia in the years of turmoil and torment which were also years of tremendous literary and philosophical exuberance1930 to 1960! So much was indeed going on, so much talent was on display. The observer of the period is torn between putting all these figures into the camps that ideological battles and political choices determined, with the risk of reducing their originality as writers or thinkers, and focusing on the latter (and on their contribution to the old French cleavage between Cartesianism on the one had, faith and romanticism on the other), at the cost of underestimating the effects of their political and ideological commitments. Compare, for instance, H. Stuart Hughes book, published in 1967, with Tony Judts Past Imperfect published in 1992: Judts reads like a brilliant indictment of the political stance, the (left-) totalitarian temptations, the parochialism and the posturing of a generation whose illiberalism he deplores. Hughes deliberately focuses on what this generation produces that was work or high seriousness and universal scope, on the disinterested study of society rather than on the sound and fury of the ideological battlefield. Judts is a prosecutors brief, rather unconcerned with nuances; Hughes is the explorer of a fascinatingly diverse and fertile continent. Judt tends to reduce it to St. Germain des Prs and the strident Temps Modernes. Hughes blends his constant concern for the many ways in which historians define and practice their craft, his lifelong interest in literature, his fascination with the influence of Marx and Freud, his empathy with the varieties of Christian thought, and his delicate grasp of singular personalities.
The result is a book whose main and enduring value lies in the superb portraits of such writers as the great, tragic Bernanos, the artist-adventurer. Malraux (who, in my opinion but not in Hughes, remained faithful to his death-defying heroism even when he served as Frances official purveyor of culture), the elusive, brilliant, and badly known Merleau-Ponty, and that formidably gifted mlange of profundity and abundance, intellectual dmesure and political naivet, Jean-Paul Sartre. The story of Marc Blochs relation with Lucien Febvre has been told several times, but Hughes remains the fairest. He pays attention and tribute to thinkers whose stars have faded, such as Maritain, Marcel and Teilhard du Chardin (but leaves aside such other Catholics as Mauriac and, except very briefly, Mounierless important as thinkers). His sketch of Levi-Strauss deep contribution to anthropology does justice to a powerful and pessimistic mind.
Even for a man as subtle and thoughtful as Hughes, predictions are a slippery business. Martin du Gard (whose grand series of novels, Les Thibault, he judges more harshly than I do) did not give up completely his final project: Maumort is a fragment, but like Camus First Man, a masterly and fascinating one. After the abrupt end, ca. 1975, of French fascination with the Soviet Union and Marxism, Camus reputation has soared again, while Sartres has fallen (there is more justice in the formers posthumous fate than in the seconds). The rather drab vision Hughes leaves to his readers at the end of his book, that of a structuralism that banned both humanism and the starker attitudes that had issued from it, was soon to be dispelled by the new burst of spontaneity and romanticism of 1968. Foucault himself turned out to be an odd mix of objective anthropology and highly subjective, and very traditionally French, rebellion against social constraints and coercion.
In so rich and perceptive a book, I find two pieces missing. Greater attention might have been lavished on Lesprit des annes 30, on that intellectual revolt against the political and social status quo whose champions ended up divided between Fascism or Vichy, and the Resistance. French Fascist literature is barely mentioned: Brasillach (and his trial) dont appear, Drieu la Rochelle gets a couple of sentences. In French intellectual as well as political history, the confrontation of Fascism and anti-Fascism, after 1934, was of great importance. The other element that isnt given the place I think it deserves is the incredible effervescence of French intellectual and literary life in the years of desperation, when French films, the plays of Giraudoux, Anouilh, Sartre, and Camus, the public quarrels among famous minds, the blend of philosophy and show business on the Left Bank, the presence of brilliant stage directors, and a mass of magazines proved how much vitality, curiosity, and excitement there was in an otherwise lamentably weakened nation.
We should nevertheless be grateful to Hughes for his constant empathy and for the range of his concerns. Unlike Judt, he is willing to comprehend the reasons why Marxism and philo-Communism marked many French intellectuals after the warwithout whitewashing them. Also, he understood that most of the time between 1930 and 1960 French social thought had had poetry at its core, that writers who had thought of themselves as rigorous theorists had been poets without knowing it. This is a profound insight, both into the flimsiness of many elaborate philosophical constructions, and into the core of deep emotions, bold images, and searing passions that were often hidden in them, and keep us close to these thinkers.
Stanley Hoffmann
F OR a long time I was perplexed as to what kind of sequel I should write to my Consciousness and Society-published ten years agoor indeed, as to whether I should follow it with any sequel at all. Certain major tendencies of European social thought in the four decades (18901930) covered by that volume had established themselves clearly in my mind: the succeeding era seemed to lack a comparable focus.
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