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PARTISAN REVIEW
first incident, the convIction that sociological categories reveal the
inner essence of existence, has vanished as if it had never existed.
The present which confronts us in 1952 was inconceivable in 1935.
We knew then that the future would be different, but we expected
it to be a continuation and development, not a complete breach
with the social consciousness which preoccupied intellectuals then.
Although we know very well now in 1952 that the present
period will come to an end, our knowledge of this truth is isolated
from most of our thinking, just as our knowledge of mortality is put
aside in daily life. Yet it is very important to remember how dif–
ferent 1952 is from 1935, and to summon to consciousness the fact
that the present, and the way in which we think about it, is tem–
porary, limited, or wrong. The more we reflect upon the changes of
past and present, the clearer it becomes that the present, what–
ever else it may be, is essentially an intermediate period, a period of
both
after
and
before}
a time of waiting in darkness before what
may be a new beginning and morning, or a catastrophic degrada–
tion of civilization. The only
~ertainty
is that overwhelming and
radical modifications in the nature of society have begun. For
example, the peoples of Asia have entered into the destiny of Western
civilization, and an enormous mass audience has begun to assert
itself in the theater of Western culture. But these instances give us
only knowledge of our ignorance.
It is in the light of this darkness that the will to conformism,
which is now the chief prevailing fashion among intellectuals, reveals
its true nature: it is a flight from the flux, chaos and uncertainty of
the present, a forced and false affirmation of stability in the face
of immense and continually mounting instability. The desire for
stability is understandable, particularly in the midst of an earth–
quake, or its social and spiritual equivalent. What is difficult to
understand is the illusion that genuine stability is gained by denying
the earthquake and by pretending, after two world wars and a great
worldwide depression, that nothing has changed and that there is no
crisis apart from the cultivated desperation of certain poets and
painters. The intellectual will to conformism is formulated in terms
of the startling discovery that the middle class is not entirely de–
praved, that liberalism does not provide an answer to all social ques–
tions, and that a state of perpetual revolution in literature and art
