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"Temporal and Eternal" is a profound and poetic assessment of the
relationship between tradition and liberty, between politics and
society, and between Christianity and the modern world. The Liberty
Fund edition includes a new foreword by Pierre Manent, professor of
political science at the Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond
Aron in Paris.As the twenty-first century begins, the relationships
this book explores are as relevant as they were in the last
century, when French poet and essayist Charles Peguy addressed them
in "Memories of Youth" and "Clio I," the two essays in this volume.
In these essays Peguy develops his theme of "la mystique"--that
which a person or a nation is--and "la politique"--mere policy.
According to Peguy, "Everything begins as a mystique and ends as a
politique." A nation, then, that loses its mystique--that is, those
traditions and customs that predate politics--loses both its
liberty and its self-respect and becomes prone to totalitarian
terror, by the right or the left. Specifically, Peguy uses the
Dreyfus Affair (1894) as an example of how ideology and "national
interest"--again, from both the right and the left--can deform
mystique into politique. The reader is transported into an
imaginative engagement with the great issues of liberty that were
at stake when a single individual--Dreyfus--was unjustly condemned
by his state solely for the convenience of persons in power.Peguy
rightly discerned in the displacement of mystique by politique in
European life "the coming of a demagogic domination disastrous for
liberties." Thus, observes Pierre Manent, "the most important event
in Peguy's life and for his work was also of capital importance,
not only for the French of his generation but also for the Western
world ever since."The brevity, beauty, and timeless relevance of
Peguy's prose make this volume attractive for historians, scholars,
and laymen.
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