Carnal Spirit: The Revolutions of Charles Péguy. By Matthew W. Maguire

Abstract

Debate has long raged over whether the writings of Charles Péguy writing should be characterized as part of a nationalist and anti-Semitic tradition that contributed towards the development of fascism, or whether it should be seen in opposing terms. Despite having been a Dreyfusard and a socialist, Péguy’s brand of exclusionist, spiritualist nationalism led to his writing being used by collaborationists during the Second World War. It is against this backdrop that Matthew W. Maguire seeks to revive Péguy from recent neglect and to persuade scholars to re-evaluate his work through closer reading. Maguire argues that at the core of Péguy’s work were questions about modernity. Péguy rejected notions of a linear, subjective temporality, conceiving it rather with reference to ‘philosophical commitments and practices’ (p. 85). Yet he also saw it as more than simply an ‘epistemological or metaphysical project’ considering it in terms of ‘political and rhetorical practices’ (ibid.). Drawing particular attention to the influence of Blaise Pascal’s thinking on the orders of body, mind, and charitable love, Maguire suggests that Péguy reconceived being modern as the neglect of the latter: the ‘ambition to achieve a loveless mastery and control over others and over experience through intellect’ (p. 87). Much of the book explores Péguy’s conception of the body in spiritual terms. Having been shaped by the Catholicism and secularism of his upbringing, Péguy criticized both cultures for excluding the spiritual from the body and misunderstanding the relationship between the body and the soul. Maguire analyses in depth Péguy’s ideas on the relationship of space and time with the body, especially the influence of Henri Bergson’s thinking. The relationship of the body with the past led Péguy to reflect on memory and history, considering the former in terms of involvement in an event and the latter as ‘passing alongside’ events (p. 99). Examining Péguy’s famous formula that ‘tout commence en mystique et finit en politique’ (p. 164), Maguire argues that, for Péguy, the moral and spiritual corruption of mysticism was inevitable. While he believed that suffering sanctifies mysticism, unlike Renan and Nietzsche, he did not think that mythologized memories of suffering or violence generate mystical love. Rather, he maintained that love precedes suffering. Maguire concludes that Péguy was a writer who spanned the seemingly irreconcilable in his political and cultural outlook, religious ideas, and concepts of modernity. In so doing, Maguire offers a complex and nuanced study of Péguy’s work and life. He writes with a sympathy that sometimes veers towards a defensiveness in response to criticisms of Péguy’s nationalism. While he concedes that Péguy sometimes expressed nationalist views, he suggests that this aspect of Péguy’s writing has been overstated. Maguire also offers broader reflections on historical methodology, making some thought-provoking arguments about the nature of historical scholarship in which he appears to be writing with an eye on the present as much as on Péguy’s own time. This is therefore an important book with wider significance for scholars’ understanding not just of the intellectual environment of late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, but of historical scholarship today.