Society for History Education

History and Utopia by E. M. Cioran

Review by: Patricia Warren
The History Teacher, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May, 1989), pp. 334-335
Published by: Society for History Education
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334 The
History
Teacher
which contributed
significantly
to the
positive
structural
integration
of the Reich"
(p. 16).
Professor Dukes examines the German Arms Bill of
1913,
cited
by
some
scholars--e.g.,
Fritz Fischer-as evidence of a will to war on the
part
of
imperial Germany's military
leaders. Dukes focuses on the
question
of whether the Arms Bill of 1913 was in fact
justified.
In
answering
that
question,
he
argues
that German
foreign policy during
the
period
was not
"really
so different or
unique
when contrasted with the other
European
Great
Powers"
(p. 22).
An increase in
German
armaments in 1913 was understandable and
legitimate
in
light
of the
changing
international situation.
Other
essays
contribute further to a more balanced view of
imperial Germany.
Spectacular
economic
growth
characterized the
period.
Like all nations
undergoing
industrialization,
Germany grappled
with the
problems
that
accompanied rapid
urbaniza-
tion. Peter
Merkl
(University
of
California,
Santa
Barbara) argues
that
Germany
was
perhaps
more successful than either
England
or the United States. German workers
experienced
a
steady
increase in real
wages,
a low
unemployment
rate,
and a solid social
security system
not
equaled anywhere
else. Unlike workers in liberal
England,
where half
over 65 ended their lives in the
poorhouse,
German workers could look forward to some
benefits,
however small.
Andrew Lees
(Rutgers University),
like
Merkl,
demonstrates that the urban citizen in
imperial Germany
was luckier than most of his
contemporaries
in the West. German cities
excelled in the
quality
of their
municipal
administrations. Their
municipal governments
enjoyed
a level of
independence
that enabled them to
attempt
novel solutions to the new
urban
problems despite opposition
from old
patricians
and the nouveau riche.
Other
essays
deal
similarly
with the
questions
of
alleged
discrimination
against
Catholics,
the role of women in the
Reich,
and the achievements of German
higher
education,
especially
the role of the universities. A
particularly
welcomed feature is the
extensive
(21 pages) bibliographical essay
that concludes the volume. It
provides
an
excellent
summary
of
book-length monographs published
since 1961 and is
designed
to
compliment
the
bibliography
in Gordon
Craig's Germany
1866-1945 (Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press, 1978).
In
summary,
Another
Germany:
A Reconsideration
ofthe Imperial
Era is a welcomed
addition to the
historiography
of
imperial Germany.
It should find its
way
into
college
and
university
libraries,
where it can be consulted
by history
teachers and
graduate
students.
Liberty University
Paul R. Waibel
Books
History
and
Utopia, by
E. M. Cioran. New York: Seaver
Books,
1987. 118
pages.
$16.95,
cloth.
History
and
Utopia, by
E. M.
Cioran,
a collection of six
highly
abstract and
passionate-
at times
overwrought--essays, explores contemporary
Western
society's attempts
to
transcend
history through
the
comforting
illusions of
utopia,
illusions which will
ultimately
prove
to be its
undoing.
Cioran
conceptualizes history
as an irresistible force
propelling
man
away
from a lost
paradise
of the "eternal
present"
to a
"negative eternity,"
a dismal
record of
mediocrity,
failure,
cruelty, passivity,
and
oppression.
The central themes of Cioran's work are introduced in the most
personal essay
of the
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Books 335
collection,
"Letter to a
Faraway
Friend." Here he describes his
nostalgia
for the lost
innocence of
childhood,
a
nostalgia
later
amplified
into man's
longing
for the selflessness
of the
golden age
before
history.
His
youthful passion
was manifested in an
early
admiration for
tyrants
and totalitarianism that is echoed in his
argument
that men are drawn
instinctively
to
tyrannical regimes
and absolutist
ideologies.
Reflections on his
long-
standing
exile in Paris--he left his native Romania in 1937-become the basis for a
discussion of the
mediocrity, torpor
and
vulnerability
of the democratic West. The
very
freedom and
liberality
which
typifies
the West has
permitted
it to
dissipate
its
energy
on
meaningless
and selfish
pursuits.
According
to
Cioran,
man is
fundamentally
violent,
greedy, vengeful,
amoral
and,
above
all,
passionate.
Action is his essence. Cioranbelieves
tyranny
is the truest
expression
of
man's
being,
and,
ultimately,
the source of Russia's inevitable
triumph
over the West.
He
postulates
an
apocalyptic struggle
between the totalitarian East and the liberal West
which
inevitably
the West will lose.
Orthodoxy
and absolutism have
permitted
Russia to
conserve her
strength
and channel man's
rapacious
and rancorous nature into the service
of the state. Cioran maintains that Russia took the West's
utopian
schemes and made them
uniquely
her
own;
in so
doing,
Russia
developed
an
ideology
which will
ultimately bury
the
supine
and defenseless West.
Utopia
is,
for
Cioran,
an
"imagined happiness,"
without which life "is
suffocating," yet
he reviles
utopian thinking
as a mere
fantasy,
the mother of
ideology,
a result of feckless
idealism. In the final
essay,
"The Golden
Age,"
however,
Cioran
suggests
that
utopianism
is an
expression
of our
nostalgia
for an era before
history,
before human
self-consciousness.
Utopian thinking
is Western man's
way
of
denying
that
history
is
merely
the result of the
inchoate actions of isolated
individuals,
some of whom have a
greater
will to
power
than
others. Yet for
all
his Nietzschean
histrionics,
Cioran concludes on a
surprisingly benign
and
ultimately bewildering
note. He maintains that we can return to the lost Eden of the
"eternal
present" by internalizing
our
longing
for it and then
by withdrawing
into an inner
realm of utter
selflessness,
discovering
there an ultimate
reality,
"a
fulfilling void,"
which
contains "more
reality
than all
history possesses
..
."
History
and
Utopia
is a
compelling yet profoundly troubling
work. In the flow of
Cioran's
impassioned writing,
it is too
easy
to overlook his flawed conclusions and the
near-mockery
he makes of historical
analysis.
He offers little which cannot more
profitably
be drawn from the
writings
of more
insightful
and
compassionate
writers,
such as
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn,
Milan
Kundera,
and even
Jean-Frangois
Revel. Students and
teachers alike would
gain
far more
reading
and
discussing
Nietzsche's
works,
rather than
this derivative
recasting
of his
thought.
California
State
University, Long
Beach Patricia Warren
The White Generals: An Account
of
the White Movement and the Russian Civil
War,
by
Richard Luckett. New York:
Routledge
and
Kegan
Paul,
1987.413
pages.
$25.00,
cloth.
First
published
in
1971,
Richard Luckett's informal
history
of the Russian Civil War
may
be on the
way
to
becoming
a minor
classic,
for the first test of time is a second edition.
At the
outset,
The White Generals did not seem destined for
permanence,
because the book
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