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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