Tradition and the Critical Talent

Abstract

Abstract From Montaigne to Edmund Burke to Matthew Arnold and William Bennett, tradition has been the special weapon of conservative critics attacking modernity and reform. In a further sign, if one were needed, that old intellectual and political oppositions are in flux, tradition has lately reappeared in a different guise especially among intellectuals on the “Left.” In The Past in Ruins David Gross attempts to formalize this conceptual reorientation by reintroducing tradition not primarily as an object for critical analysis but as a potential grounding for critical opposition to the dominant culture. His work introduces but does not quite answer the crucial question of tradition's place in a society where heterogeneity and division rather than homogeneity and unity are the rule.