Volume 9, Number 12 · January 4, 1968
Catching Up With History
By George Lichtheim
The Obstructed Path. French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation 1930-1960
by H. Stuart Hughes
Harper & Row, 304 pp., $6.95
Some months ago, in taking note rather too briefly of Mr. Roy Pierce's valuable study, Contemporary French Political Thought (Oxford, 1966), the present reviewer felt constrained to remark that American and British writers rarely perceive what is most striking about France: the commitment of so many Frenchmen of all political hues to a kind of doctrinal rigidity foreign to the Anglo-American mentality. There is not, in this respect, much of a choice between General de Gaulle and his critics, with the possible exception of a few determinedly 'Atlantic' and pro-American liberals such as M. Raymond Aron or M. Jean-François Revel; and even they tend to sound more doctrinaire than their British or American colleagues.
Review, 2292 words
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