Reconsideration

THERE ARE SERIOUS obstacles in our way when we try to acquaint America with the personality, the role, and the thought of Charles Maurras (1868-1952). One of these obstacles is that American scholars and their academic endeavors have been mostly shaped by the Germanic spirit, with here and there a representative of Latinitas, a Santayana, or a Maritain. The French university system is far from their accustomed mode of thought, and theFrench model of schooling is more distant still. The works of Maurras have therefore been little translated, hardly discussed (this would be today politically incorrect), let alone read on any academic level. The fact, too, that T.S. Eliot was a great admirer of Maurras does not help, and even diminishes the French thinker in the eyes of American critics. There are other reasons, too, for the wide gap. Maurras is the quintessential antidemocratic thinker, and “pluralism” would mean for him the coexistence of several closed worlds, “republics” under the unifying monarchy. Or they would be “minorities” as we would call them: Protestants, Freemasons, Jews, and foreigners. These almost self-con-