Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Quote of the Day (Irving Howe, on ‘Serious Politics’ and Its Limits)


“To see politics everywhere is to diminish the weight of politics. Serious politics recognizes the limits of its reach; it deals with public affairs while leaving alone large spheres of existence; it seeks not to totalize’ its range of interest. Some serious thinkers believe that the ultimate aim of politics should be to render itself superfluous. That may seem an unrealizable goal; meanwhile, a good part of the struggle for freedom in recent decades has been to draw a line beyond which politics must not tread. The same holds, more or less, for literary study and the teaching of literature.”—Jewish-American literary and social critic Irving Howe (1920-1993), “The Value of the Canon,” The New Republic, February 18, 1991

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