SOURCE: "Auden's Local Culture," in Hudson Review, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter, 1995, pp. 543-68.

In the following essay, Jacobs examines Auden's communitarian sympathies and moral vision. According to Jacobs, "Auden understood both the costs and benefits of choosing to cultivate local knowledge and local attachments better than almost any political thinker writing about such issues today."

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One of the more interesting developments in American political and social thought in the last decade or so has been the emergence of communitarianism—in large part because, though no one knows exactly what communitarianism is, people do tend to think good thoughts about the notion of community. As Wendell Berry writes, "Community is a concept, like humanity or peace, that virtually no one has taken the trouble to quarrel with; even its worst enemies praise it." Perhaps some communitarians have chosen not to define their aims and goals too specifically because they know...