Summary
Author of Culture and Anarchy, read in essay 36 of Edward Said’s Reflections on Exile and Other Essays as connecting the virtues of culture, in a frank manner, with the coercive, authoritarian violence of the national state — the state as the nation’s collective best self (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.388-391).
Details
- Arnold places his hopes for culture in a state borrowed from France and especially Germany as ideal; influenced by Renan, Hegel, Michelet and von Humboldt, he inherits a tradition of thinking about nations and nationalism including national genius, linguistic and mental types and the hierarchy of races (PDF p.388).
- Quoted: “The framework of society” “is sacred … because without order there can be no society, and without society there can be no human perfection”, and his father’s letter endorsing for rioting “flog the rank and file, and fling the leaders from the Tarpeian Rock!” (PDF p.389).
- His “best” is a comparative, selective term — a contest fought through and won — demonstrated by his literary touchstones; for Arnold Europe stands at the very top, and England was finally preferred to Germany or France (PDF p.390).
- Lionel Trilling’s account, which Said engages, holds Arnold’s emphasis on culture as a corrective to class feeling and a way of mitigating the abuses of nationalism; Said answers that the culture Arnold discussed was deposited inside a European and English identity (PDF p.390-391).
Related pages
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Edward Said, Ernest Renan, Ernest Gellner