SOURCE: A review of Pour l'amitié and Les Intellectuels en question, in World Literature Today, Vol. 72, No. 1, Winter, 1998, pp. 101-2.

In the following review, Jaron discusses the intersections between literature, politics, and morality in Pour l'amitié and Les Intellectuels en question.

Like Paul Valéry before him, Maurice Blanchot explains of himself that he has very little “historical” memory, which is to say, he knows that he lived during a dark age and in some measure participated in it, but he is unable to reconstitute it in his current writings. The recent release of two short books by him therefore gives us pause for reflection on the relation of literature and philosophy to political action and the moral conscience.

Pour l’amitié was first published as the preface to Dionys Mascolo’s 1993 A la recherche d’un communisme de pensée. It is less an introduction to Mascolo...