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PARTrSAN REVIEW
The proliferation of the social sciences is even more dangerous than
the scientistic superstition. I refer not to the real value of these sciences,
which is estimable, despite the frailty of their methods and the uncer–
tainty of their conclusions, but to the misuse of them by ideologues
wearing the mask of professor or scientific researcher. The harm done has
been twofold: political and aesthetic. Our classics, apart from their being
examples of formal perfection and sources of spiritual pleasure. were
teachers of political wisdom for two millennia. Today this function is
fulfilled by professors of sociology and so-called political science. The
majority of these people are ignorant of the classical heritage. or scom it.
Firmly seated on their dogmas, they impart from their university chairs
formulas that explain any and every social phenomenon save that of their
own peculiar position in the modern world. In the name of modemity,
they have been the spokesmen - and sometimes the middlemen - of a
new political and intellectual obscurantism. Intolerant sophists, they are
unworthy heirs of the Enlightenment. In recent days we have been wit–
ness to dramatic changes in those European countries living under the
regime of "bureaucratic socialism." It would be futile to search through
the writings of the professors for the slightest premonition of these
prodigious changes. for that matter, or an explanation today of their
cause. In order to find coherent critics who foresaw what is happening
now. it is necessary to reread the texts of the dissidents and the excom–
municated. The professors' blindness comes from their faith in ideologies,
the domain of illusory certitudes. and from their disdain for history,
which is subject to chance and the unpredictable. Classical literature, on
the other hand, is thoroughly imbued with the random nature of
hi storical events. Machiavelli and Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Marx
profited from their reading of the poets and historians of antiquity. What
do academic politicologues read today, if anything? There are exceptions,
of course, but still they are exceptions.
The application of the methods of the natural sciences to the study
of society and social change has not had, so far, the results hoped for.
Despite this failure. smug and thoroughly confused theorists have decided
to extend the scientific method to literature as well. They forget that
different realities require different methods, different criteria. The trans–
formation of a cell is not the same thing as the transformation of a soci–
ety; nor does social change suffice to explain change in the realm of
art
and literature. The creative work is reduced to nothing more than a
s0-
cial document, and then the claim is made that the text does not really
say what it says. In other words, a text is a mere cover for some social,
political reality. The mission of the critic is to uncover that reality. To
read a text is to decipher it, stripping it of its supposed meanings to
reach what the words conceal. Literary criticism becomes an exercise
in
