Doctor Hart’s Political Survival Kit

Not long ago a bright but very troubled student dropped inonmeatmy office in the handsome Georgian building that houses the Dartmouth College English Department. The student wanted some advice. He had long and as a matter of course inhabited the world of conventional liberalism that passes as a sort of inheritance to middle-class Ivy League students. Liberalism is a code of manners; it is part of the air a student like this had always breathed. His own experience and some reflection, however, had given birth to doubts of escalating intensity. In the early fall of 1975 he had at last stepped out of the liberal bungalow and, like Nora in A. Doll’s House, closed the door behind him. But he had stepped into a kind of void, so far as he could see. There was nothing outside the door. Could I suggest a few books that might help him rethink things and reconstruct a position?

AN answer to such a question is always somewhat arbitrary. You really cannot say, “Begin at the beginning, where our bankrupt educational system ought to have begun you a dozen years ago.” You cannot say, “Begin to absorb the mind of the West, from Homer through the present, with perhaps special attention to Dante.” That would be an ideal answer of sorts, but not sitting in your office at 2 p.m. on an October afternoon talking to an unhappy sophomore. What you need are five or six key books, each addressed to a specific intellectual purpose, each getting beneath and beyond liberalism. It is best if they are recent—have the feel of contemporaneity, have transactions with current issues. They should be brilliant and powerful, indeed intellectually overwhelming, but they should not require several years of effort to master. You cannot say, “Try Eric Voegelin, and come back and see me during your senior year for a second suggestion.” But it is possible to recommend five or six recent books which, absorbed and integrated into an overall shape, do go a long way toward solving my student’s intellectual problem. They provide new ground to stand on. In Wallace Stevens’ phrase, they are “parts of a world” and together they limn a whole one.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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Not long ago a bright but very troubled student dropped inonmeatmy office in the handsome Georgian building that houses the Dartmouth College English Department. The student wanted some advice. He had long and as a matter of course inhabited the world of conventional liberalism that passes as a sort of inheritance to middle-class Ivy League students. Liberalism is a code of manners; it is part of the air a student like this had always breathed. His own experience and some reflection, however, had given birth to doubts of escalating intensity. In the early fall of 1975 he had at last stepped out of the liberal bungalow and, like Nora in A. Doll’s House, closed the door behind him. But he had stepped into a kind of void, so far as he could see. There was nothing outside the door. Could I suggest a few books that might help him rethink things and reconstruct a position?

AN answer to such a question is always somewhat arbitrary. You really cannot say, “Begin at the beginning, where our bankrupt educational system ought to have begun you a dozen years ago.” You cannot say, “Begin to absorb the mind of the West, from Homer through the present, with perhaps special attention to Dante.” That would be an ideal answer of sorts, but not sitting in your office at 2 p.m. on an October afternoon talking to an unhappy sophomore. What you need are five or six key books, each addressed to a specific intellectual purpose, each getting beneath and beyond liberalism. It is best if they are recent—have the feel of contemporaneity, have transactions with current issues. They should be brilliant and powerful, indeed intellectually overwhelming, but they should not require several years of effort to master. You cannot say, “Try Eric Voegelin, and come back and see me during your senior year for a second suggestion.” But it is possible to recommend five or six recent books which, absorbed and integrated into an overall shape, do go a long way toward solving my student’s intellectual problem. They provide new ground to stand on. In Wallace Stevens’ phrase, they are “parts of a world” and together they limn a whole one.