15201. A Reply
- Author:
- Daniel Gordon
- Publication Date:
- 03-2002
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- French Politics, Culture Society
- Institution:
- Conference Group on French Politics Society
- Abstract:
- Intellectual life is a kind of combat," wrote Fernand Braudel. I see no reason why historians, who happen to study early-modern civility, should behave like courtiers toward each other. But in point of fact, I do not describe Professor Chartier as a member of a terrible "sect." The term "sect" appears only in a quotation from Zygmunt Bauman. And readers will observe that what Bauman and I are both getting at is the need to be critical of the process of canonization that has been at work in Elias's case.