Safeguarding a «Civilization in Crisis»: La Revue Universelle's Conceptualization of Western Civilization and its Renewal,1920–1935

Abstract

Safeguarding a <Civilization in Crisis>: La Revue Universelle's Conceptualization of Western Civilization and its Renewal, 1920-1935 This article contributes to a comparative study of the «Conservative Revolution» in Europe by exploring the French journal Revue Universelle in the 1920s and the early 1930s. Led by Henri Massis, Jacques Bainville and Jacques Maritain, the intellectuals contributing to the journal developed a unique cultural politics that evoked the decadence and decline of Western civilization under the forces of modernity, and called for the defence and renewal of this civilization through revitalised conservative values of Catholicism, authoritative leadership, elitism, and a return to the spiritual sources of Western culture. However, while the Revue Universelle team intentionally cultivated a pan-European scope for their journal and promoted its cultural politics as a common language for all European conservatives, their aim was compromised by their francocentric and germanophobic conceptualisation of the West and civilization.