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because he antedates the actual historical epoch in which this movement
comes into being; and I think the issues of the Counter-Enlightenment
are defined in more extreme, and therefore more lucid, fashion by the
figures of Continental rather than English literature. One can begin
with Rousseau, and from him one can draw a rather continuous curve
into the present: Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer (a very under–
rated figure at the present) ; Stendhal, who on one side is all in the tradi–
tion
of French logic and lucidity, but who in his travels in Italy became
obsessed with the connection of art and aristocracy, and in whose novels
the irrational became more and more the very substance of human na–
ture; Dostoevski, Tolstoi in his later phase; Nietzsche, who lived com–
pletely this duality of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment,
for despite his attacks on rationalism he also conceived his historic role
in analogy with an eighteenth century
philosophe;
Bergson, Freud, Hei–
degger, Ortega y Gasset, and, in a certain way, Whitehead. And, outside
of philosophy and the literature of ideas, there is that deep and con–
tinuing tendency toward primitivism in modern art and literature gen–
erally. The list could be expanded, though it is already sufficiently dense
to suggest that we are present here at an important historical movement
of thought. The figures engaged are too many and too great for the
movement to be dismissed as a mere aberration of reason, and to the
extent that contemporary rationalism does not explore this movement
seriously it is likely itself to be thin and superficial.
Obviously it would be impossible to summarize in any compact way
the complex ideological content of this Counter-Enlightenment, but one
can at least name the actual historical conflict within our civilization that
this movement reflects: the deep-seated conflict between instinct and rea–
son that has become articulate in Western culture during the last 150
years. So far as this is a real historic conflict, we cannot foresee concretely
its resolution within some definite future culture, but we can at least make
some provision now as to the general lines along which a solution, if
it is to be a really desirable solution, is likely to be found: in the conflict
between instinct and reason, it is only reason at last that can adjudicate.
True, a reason that became too remote from instinct might deal very
badly with the instincts, with the result that the instincts themselves
would take revenge-which is only to say that a certain kind of ration–
alism might be very irrational indeed. 'On the other hand, the instincts
left to themselves, though they might ultimately reinstate a more primi–
tive and vital kind of community, would cancel out too much that is of
value in our culture and that Messrs. Chase and Trilling, and myself,
would not want to lose. So, while we must recognize that our tradition
