A task like this involves careful definitions of terms. AntiSemitism, for example, cannot be imputed to one who simply differs theologically with Judaism in the same way that a Catholic might differ with a Baptist, or a Christian or Jew with a Buddhist. The pejorative label antiSemitic is rightly used when it is clear that the feeling of difference extends to Jews as persons as well as to their supposed beliefs: when Jews appear to be held in some generic sense to be unchangeably different psychologically and even biologically from others, so that they could never "fit in" to the rest of a society, and their influence and even mere presence is therefore destructive to the unity of society. This antiSemitic way of thinking involves stereotyping in terms of a generic quality that all Jews, regardless of individual differences, are supposed to have. Therefore the antiSemite presumes that his antipathy toward Jews requires words—and actions—that are directed toward Jews as a whole.
We must acknowledge that it is possible to use terms like fascist, antiSemitic, or rightist (especially in the European sense) as though they enabled a blanket condemnation of a person and all his work,
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sometimes even when the condemnation is really for other ideological reasons. Without denying the moral seriousness of the issues raised by such terms, one must still be prepared to examine honestly the quantitative and qualitative importance of that which evokes the charges relative to a writer's total corpus. The critic must then come to clarity on just how those accusatory words may be connected to other aspects of the person's intellectual work. Certainly there are unities in all of a major thinker's endeavors—deep structures, paradigms, polarities, values that run through them. A tendency to think in generic terms of peoples, races, religions, or parties, which as we shall see is undoubtedly the profoundest flaw in mythological thinking, including that of such modern mythologists as our three, can connect with nascent antiSemitism, or the connection may be the other way. A negativity toward Judaism, for example, seen as a religion of a personal monotheistic deity acting in the history of a particular people, may well resonate elsewhere in the writer's pages with a general negativity toward divine personality, toward the notion of history as the defining framework of human experience, toward historical ways of thinking in general, and toward any sense of religious mission by any particularized group. But it is important that such intellectual continuities not be just assumed, but—as difficult as that may be in this case after Auschwitz—assessed freely and fairly on their own terms, not only by a kind of intellectual guilt by association unless the association is clearly evident. Some structures, some generic categories, are probably necessary to any intellectual work and can be found in writing, including writing about Judaism, far removed from antiSemitism. These are hard things of which to write and speak; I can only hope that the remainder of this book will make my meaning in respect to them clear.
For there is no doubt that the three mythologists here under consideration have intellectual roots in the same spiritual climate as that in which early fascism and sometimes antiSemitism flourished: Nietzsche, Sorel, Ortega y Gasset, Spengler, Frobenius, Heidegger, the lesser Romanian nationalists and German "volkish" writers and, before his courageous rejection of Nazism and exile, Thomas Mann. Most of these just named were not fullblown partisans of their respective national fascist parties; some, such as Nietzsche, would have condemned political fascism as utterly contrary to the heroic individualism for which they stood. So also, by their own later testimony, did the three mythologists. Yet there is in that climate and the three mytholo
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gists an unmistakable common intellectual tone: antimodernism and antirationalism tinged with romanticism and existentialism. This subset of modern thought is deeply suspicious of the larger modern world, as that world was created fundamentally by the Enlightenment (despite, as we shall see, their embracing of some themes, like nationalism and the purifying revolution idea, carried over from the Age of Reason's turbulent finale). Above all, the romantic antimoderns decried modernity's exaltation of reason, "materialistic" science, "decadent" democracy dependent on the rootless "mass man'' its leveling fosters.
In contrast, they lauded traditional "rooted" peasant culture, including its articulation in myths that came not from writers but from "the people," and they no less praised the charismatic heroes ancient and modern who allegedly personified that culture's supreme values. Above all, one felt in these writers a distinctive mood of worldweariness, a sense that all has gone gray—and, just beneath the surface, surging, impatient eagerness for change: for some tremendous spasm, emotional far more than intellectual, based far more on existential choice than on reason, that would recharge the world with color and the blood with vitality. Perhaps a new elite, or a new leader capable of making "great decisions" in the heroic mold of old, would be at the helm.
This flavor was in the air to a remarkable extent in the United States during the ten years or so after 1945. Any overtly fascist overtones were, needless to say, well disguised in those years after the great victory over that lost cause. But in a sense it was not so much that the larger antimodern intellectual context in which fascism flourished was lost, as that, willingly shedding its bastard fascist form and redressed in new apparel, it came back to haunt a world weary from the struggle against fascism. For the root dissatisfactions of the modern mind were far from laid. Reformatted, wistful versions of Spengler and Nietzsche and Heidegger and the mythological mood suited the spiritual and intellectual fatigue many felt after the great war and the ideological battles of the 1930s. Traditional religions were on the rise. Purposeless amidst abundance, people felt "decadent" and alienated from something crucial, which had probably been better known in the remote past. This spirit also consorted well with the emerging anticommunism of the 1950s, since Marxism presented itself as quintessential modern and "scientific" politics at the opposite
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pole from such reactionary nostalgia; and much in the reactionary mood also fitted well with the antirational discourse of thenfashionable existentialism, despite the fact that many existentialists, especially the French, claimed to be politically left. Above all, nostalgia for lost values provided a platform for those of both the elite right and the elite left critical of emergent 1950s "mass culture": the new world of television, the automobile, and suburban tract houses. The 1950s "Beats" liked Spengler, and the same sort of ideas at least were savored by rightist critics in the mold of William Buckley, Russell Kirk, and B. I. Bell. It was also around 1950 that the vogue for Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell began to accelerate in the United States.
In dealing with these matters, as well as what might be called the cumulative political philosophy of these three figures, much will have to be taken into account. I will plead guilty to the charge that the three main chapters of this book, one on each of the three figures, cover several domains: the mythologist's personal and intellectual biography, a consideration of his late modern times, a summary of his view of myth and its explicit and implicit political ramifications, and here and there my own critical response. But to my mind this is simply unavoidable. These are complex persons and issues. None of these strands can be separated out from a study such as this is intended to be because they are all profoundly interlinked. Whatever they may have thought, the mythology of the three was not from the perspective of eternity, but as much a product of its times as any intellectual endeavor, and was interwoven with the subject's own life and political context. To bring this out is very much the point of this book.