Introduction

Along with the previously published correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin2 and between Willmoore Kendall and Leo Strauss,3 these letters provide both an opportunity to observe the actions and thoughts of figures important in the development of contemporary political philosophy unfold and present an eagle’s eye view of developments in the field of political philosophy and political science more generally.

These letters are interesting for a number of reasons. First, they document the intellectual development and professional struggles of Willmoore Kendall, and to a lesser extent, the career of Eric Voegelin. Voegelin comes across as a mentor who encouraged Kendall to achieve the highest level of work of which he was capable.4 Kendall’s first letter in this collection was written while he was Assistant Professor at Richmond University in 1941, and the last from the University of Dallas in 1966 after he had established the graduate program in Literature and Politics at that institution. In between we have letters from Kendall at Yale, Stanford, Notre Dame, aboard the Queen Mary, and from various European locations. Kendall’s turbulent relationship with Yale University is the backdrop for many of these letters, first with Kendall’s efforts to orchestrate the hiring of Voegelin in the late 1940s, and then his growing frustration and final break with Yale in the mid-1950s. (Kendall was on the Yale faculty from 1947 until 1961, when he accepted a buy-out of his tenured contract.) The correspondence concludes with Kendall’s announcement that he had established a Ph.D. Program in Politics and Literature at the University of Dallas, “”built…in the image of you and Strauss.””5 Kendall died on June 30, 1967, less that a year after he informed Voegelin of this new program.

Second, they provide an interesting snapshot, primarily from Kendall’s perspective, of American political science in the middle of the twentieth century. Kendall’s efforts to organize a panel for the 1949 American Political Science Association meeting are the focus of a number of early letters, and in 1959 Kendall provided Voegelin (who had relocated to Munich) with a candid appraisal of the state of political theory in America, including the influence of “”Strauss and his ‘boys’.””6

Finally, these letters complement the recently published correspondence between Kendall and Leo Strauss, and therefore help to provide for a more robust portrait of Kendall. We invite readers to set the letters in the present volume alongside those already published between Kendall and Strauss, for they address many of the same topics, and the differences that readers discover should be illuminating.

The first letter deserves a note of explanation. Voegelin had given Kendall an article on John Locke7 for his critique. Kendall responded with a letter of twenty-eight pages, detailing well over 100 suggestions for revisions—in numbering his suggestions Kendall ran through the alphabet twice, first in lower case and then in capital letters, and then numbered additional comments from 1 to 65. A reading of the published version of this essay shows that Voegelin accepted almost all of Kendall’s suggested changes—by our count Voegelin accepted at least 109 of Kendall’s suggested alterations. We have edited this letter by over half, trying to keep the flavor of the letter but saving the reader from the tedium of reading proofer’s notes. While this initial letter shows Kendall’s attention to detail, it also had an interesting effect on his later relationship with Voegelin. In 1948 Voegelin8 recalled his “”shock”” at receiving Kendall’s critique, and wrote that this memory was a deterrent in sending future pieces for Kendall’s review. The “”shock”” was primarily related to the amount of time Kendall had spent reading and responding to the Locke essay. As Voegelin was writing Order and History, Kendall repeatedly volunteered to help proof the texts, and it is clear that this initial shock had not totally subsided.

These letters, often written in haste, contain some errors common in personal correspondence. We have corrected these obvious errors without notation, and have standardized spelling and punctuation to common American usage. We have left Voegelin’s occasional misspellings of Kendall’s first name unaltered. Except for the first letter, all of the letters appear in their entirety.

Covering twenty-five years, this correspondence includes twenty-one letters from Kendall to Voegelin, fourteen letters from Voegelin to Kendall, and an exchange between the Chair of the Political Science Department at Yale and Voegelin. This correspondence is a monument to an intellectual friendship that is all the more remarkable because of Kendall’s reputation for being cantankerous and unable to keep friends. It is our hope that the publication of these letters will encourage a renewed interest in the work of Kendall, who truly was unique as both scholar and individual.

Correspondence

Richmond, Va.
Dec. 22nd, 1941.

Dear Professor Voegelin9

I have not kept my promise to you. As luck would have it, your chapter came finally to my hands while I was in the midst of preparations for a debate at Town Hall, N.Y., on Dec. 12th, and our examination period here began on the day of my return; and the truth is I handled both with such consummate inefficiency that I was not able, until last night, to give your manuscript the careful consideration I wanted it to have before beginning its journey home. I greatly hope I have not inconvenienced you in such fashion as to make you regret having sent it to me.

It is an admirable chapter, really, and one that leaves me with a tremendous appetite for the rest of the book. My answer to your main question, therefore—will it stand up?—is an unhesitating prediction that there’s nothing in it for which you will have to apologize to any reviewer. Many won’t like it—your very first sentence10 will alienate not a few, who (as I point out in my little study11) like to think of Locke as the fountain of the basic concepts of the American constitution, thus eo ipsoa the great political philosopher of all time. Some—refusing to recognize the limitations of your medium—will perhaps say that you have concerned yourself too much with where Locke stands with respect to the central problem of your essay on political religions; and I myself would say that, as it stands, the chapter needs (what I’m sure you have provided in earlier chapters) preparatory clarification of that problem, and a preparatory statement of your reasons for regarding it as central. I myself have no quarrel with you at this point, mind you: in the broad sweep of political philosophy what matters about Locke is what he said about that problem, and the influence he can be shown to have had upon what others have thought and felt and acted with respect to that problem. I wish I might have said as much in my book. So, I say, by all means let it ride, with entire confidence that your reviewers, though inclined to protest, will learn much (as I have) from your chapter.

On the following minor points I’d like to say a word more (at the risk of seeming impertinent with my suggestions about language):

a)     p. 1, l. 4. has wielded. Since you limit your statement to the 18th century, the sentence seems to call for simple past tense here.

b)    p. 1, l. 11. Omit “”why””?

c)     p. 1, l. 12. Omit “”the”” before “”popular appeal””?

. . .

o) p. 2, l. 23: “”Wins Locke’s approval,”” instead of “”finds Locke’s consent””? Because “”consent”” figures in the argument with a rather special meaning. Unless you intend a pun, in which case italics are indicated?

. . . 

s) I have no specific objection worth urging about this paragraph—but this is a pretty elusive section of the Treatise. I.e., you never know here when Locke is saying how he thinks things ought to be done, or merely how they can be done and yet enjoy his approval. E.g., though you commit him (l. 18) to the notion that the executive functions permanently “”in contrast”” to the legislative, he himself says (xiii., 151): “”In some commonwealths where the legislative is not always in being, etc.“” (italics mine). Wherefore this is not a general statement of the position of the executive?

. . . 

B)    p. 4, ll. 22-24: Suggested: “”Furthermore, while Hooker citations abound in certain sections of the Treatise, they are conspicuously etc.”” In order to avoid ambiguity regarding the reference of “”they.””

. . .

D)   p. 5, ll. 9-10. The dictionaries to which I have access give no comfort to this spelling of “”easy-going.”” “”Seriously”” would carry more weight if written before “”impair,”” and I’d like “”Locke’s. . .philosophical habits,”” rather than your “”of”” construction.

. . . 

M)   p. 7, first paragraph. Admirable!—especially if you have foreshadowed this in treating Luther & Calvin.

. . . 

Q)   p. 7, l. 23. Suggested: “”What is by no means so clear to many is the fact that this danger (i.e., the growth of anti-Christian creeds) is only a special case of a general type of revolutionary danger evoked by toleration.””

. . .

Z)    p. 8, l. 23. “”We cannot blame the people for taking what they can get; if we don’t like it we must offer something better.”” All this is terribly exciting for me: I have been working for a couple of years on an article in defense of Rousseau’s Civil Religion, or its equivalent, as a minimum for a society capable of retaining the allegiance of its members.

. . .

2)    p. 8, l. 26. “”Rather”” takes all the zest out of this key sentence, by suggesting, as it does a little, that there’s no particular urgency. If the problem was—how commit myself to very soon, which is what I want, without saying that later than very soon will be too late,—such an expression as “”within the near future”” would get you around it. Also, if you will permit the suggestion, you do this important sentence an injustice by throwing the crucial verb into the passive voice, which never packs much of a wallop in English. Better: “”Unless they speedily close the gap between the despiritualized public sphere and the privatized sphere, even the Anglo-Saxon democracies may well find the future full of surprises. Hitherto, as a consequence of the broader Christianization of their citizens (itself a result of Puritanism, Quakerism, Methodism, etc.), those countries have seemed immune to political religions.”” This breaks it down into the two-sentences-instead-of-one manner which English likes so much better than German (though not your German, as I see it in your essay), and will help your readers. Even so, I’d like another sentence here in which you might endeavor to say why Quakerism, Puritanism, and Methodism, having given us resistance hitherto, can’t be counted on to give us resistance in the future. I agree both that they performed that function in the past (even so recently as my own boyhood, in the Methodist church in Oklahoma), and that the chances are strongly against their doing so tomorrow or the next day; but this raises the question “”why?””—and I feel you owe your reader a little more help at this point. Methodism at least is stronger (statistically) today than ever before, thus ceteris paribus in better case than formerly to provide the necessary immunization. Is it because these movements, by and large, no longer have any meaning for those who participate in them? Is it, as I suspect, that in their bid for membership and wealth they have ceased to impose standards of conduct on their members? Or is it that they (the movements) were incapable—inherently—of providing the immunization except in a non-political context like the American frontier? Let me repeat: I think your paragraph cries out for completion at this point.

3)    p. 8, last line, to end of paragraph. Here, as in 2) above, I feel you have weakened a splendid sentence by dressing it up too much and over-complicating it—concretely by throwing the main idea into a relative clause and the coup de grace into the passive voice. Why not: “”A military triumph over National Socialism and (or?) Communism will not relieve the existing revolutionary tension, or make the world safe for sweet spiritless normalcy.”” Your disagreement with “”those who believe”” the contrary will emerge all the more clearly for being stated thus, and your readers will be all the wiser for having to guess at the disappointment.

. . .

6)    p. 9, ll. 4-7. A very difficult sentence to read. Why not: “”Milton’s emphasis is, broadly speaking, that to which we have given the name of National Spiritualism: he would give the life of the spirit nation-wide public status, and at the margin would not hesitate to use compulsion in order to make that status secure. Toleration, that is to say, meant for Milton the advancement of the public forms of the national spirit within a certain range.”” I don’t see, frankly, what you add to this by saying “”as far as it moves within a certain range.””

. . . 

18) p. 10, l.19. I understand what you mean here, but only I think because of the explication you have thrown between commas after the word “”lunch.”” In American idiom, at least, “”supper”” actually comes closer to the connotation you are assigning to “”lunch”” than “”lunch”” does—since (particularly church) suppers are often handled on a chip-in basis. Happily, our non-academic language has just the phrase you want, and I think you could use it without prejudice to the tone you set with the ironical “”exquisite”” in the preceding line. Thus: “”This exquisite interpretation of the Lord’s Supper as the Lord’s Dutch Lunch, to which etc.”” This would be readily intelligible to everyone.

. . .

22) p.10, ll. 27-28. Suggested: “”or, as with Hobbes, a fusion of personalities.”” Since you say “”a”” before “”mystical body”” and here before “”fusion”” also, why “”the”” before “”Christian”” and “”national””? Better: “”be it Christian, or national, or, as with Hobbes, an assumed fusion of personalities.””

23) p. 10, last line. Why “”form”” and why “”animated””? I mean I’m not sure at all of your meaning here, since if I understand “”animated”” man is animated as a matter of course. Do you perhaps mean: “”not as a spiritual personality but as mere man, equipped with pragmatic intelligence and reasoning power but (as far as the Commonwealth is concerned) nothing more.””?

. . .

30) p. 11, ll. 22-24. This seems to me your weakest point. I would want a) further elaboration of the indictment, and b) a little documentation (e.g., citations of passages in which Locke reveals the obtuseness you here attribute to him. I have urged another view in my study (pp. 71-77).

. . .

38) p. 12, last three lines. I hope you will decide against this form of words. I.e. you don’t need the irony here (having put it across earlier), and many readers will need the help you could give them by saying tout court:  “”It is, finally, an assertion which is difficult to reconcile with the traditional picture of Locke—and ascribed to by many excellent authorities—as not only deeply religious, but also peculiarly sensitive to human dignity.””

. . .

43) p. 13, l. 10. Highly Teutonic! Better: “”somewhat reminiscent even of that which the Diggers dreamed.””

. . . 

55) p. 15, l. 5. But shouldn’t you make explicit here the breadth of Locke’s definition of “”property””—to include life and liberty? On the whole point, cf.—for what it is worth!—my brief chap. viii.

. . .

60)  p. 16, l. 11. “”obscene””? Sacrilegious, perhaps; but I’d be sorry to see you commit yourself to “”obscene.””12

. . .

As I have argued in my book, Locke may indeed have been attracted to the inequalities of capitalist society, but his “”standards of political order”” (your phrase, in your last paragraph) are precisely those majoritarian standards upon which Marx rested his demands for proletarian revolution. And, naturally, I think this interpretation of Locke deserves more notice than you’ve given it—not, as I hope you’ll believe, because it is mine, but because it is there, in The Treatise. But I’m much too fresh from writing my book, much too full of it, to have much “”perspective”” about it, so I won’t press the point.

Once again: it is a fine chapter—much better all the way ’round than Janet’s or Sabine’s or Cook’s or Catlin’s.13

Sincerely,
Kendall

P.S. I hope you won’t find the stylistic suggestions too impertinent. I know, from my time in Spain, what it is to use a language not one’s own—else I wouldn’t have dared.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New Haven, Connecticut
28 February ’48

Dear Voegelin—

It was good to learn that you were in a position to accept this department’s invitation to come along for a lecture, and that the date is to be so early as 12 March. One of my very great regrets through the years since our first meeting at the political science association has been that our paths so seldom cross, and the notion of finally meeting you under less hectic circumstances is delightful indeed.

Unless you are already committed to Cleanth and Tinkum,14 I’d like to expect you to be my guest while you are in New Haven. In Mrs. Kendall’s absence (at Lake Success) I am occupying a resident fellow’s suite at Pierson College, and I think everyone you will be willing to see will find [p. 2] it easier to make connections with you if you are staying on the campus. Besides which, it will be a real privilege for me to have you here.

I have my car here, and will plan to meet you at the railway station or airport if you’ll let me know when you are arriving. This, of course, without regard to whether you are in a position to accept my invitation to Pierson.

Yours sincerely,
Willmoore Kendall

PS—I have just taken the liberty of phoning the Brooks, and they agree with me that the purposes of your visit will be best forwarded by resigning yourself into our hands at Pierson. Okay?  WK

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge, Louisiana]
March 2, 1948

Dear Kendall:

Thanks for your delightful letter of February 28.

I shall be very happy to accept your invitation to stay with you at the House. It certainly will be the most convenient arrangement for meeting people. And besides I have heard so much about these Houses (or, I think, it’s Colleges you call them) that I am quite eager to see one from the inside.

As for the time schedule: I shall arrive in New York, by train, on Friday in the forenoon. I have written to the Macmillan people for an appointment to talk some business. And I intend to take a train to New Haven after lunch, say the 2 o’clock train from New York. This would bring me into New Haven whenever the said vehicle that leaves N.Y. at 2 o’clock should happen to arrive at its destination—which I am sure you can ascertain easily. My guess is, it will be around 3:30.—I shall leave, at the latest, around Saturday noon, because that afternoon and evening I want to spend with some friends in New York. The details, that is the time when I shall leave exactly, will depend on your plans and intentions for me. Corbett15 in his letter suggested I should stay over night and into Saturday because it might facilitate getting together with various people.

It is very kind of you, indeed, that you will pick me up at the station and take me under your wings. That will make things much more comfortable for me—and besides I get a chance to see as much of you as possible, which certainly is something to look forward to.

With my best thanks, I am,

Yours very sincerely,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
March 15, 1948

Dear Willmoore:

I am back home, as you see, and I hasten to thank you for the splendid reception I have found with you and for the most generous hospitality which you have extended to me. The memory of your princely suite will be indelible.

Let me say that the impression which I have gained of Yale made me nostalgic: so many people with whom one can talk, while here the number of persons with whom I can associate is dwindling with every term. In particular the evening of the lecture was most impressive. I have not seen in years a group that could fire questions like that; and in particular the students seemed to have a very high caliber.

#page#

My great regret is that I could not see more of you personally. What you told me the last day about your work on Rousseau is most intriguing. When will your translation come out? And I presume that you will write some kind of introduction or essay on the occasion, which of course I should like to see. If you have anything finished you would do me a great favor if you could let me see the MS.

I also regretted that I could not see more of Cecil Driver. The luncheon hour was a bit short for forming a more intimate acquaintance; and he seems to be a most fascinating person. In general I found it a pity that the situation required that I should be the target of questions and not do a little sniffing myself. Well, perhaps an occasion will come in the future where I can be receptive and let the others do the talking.

Now that we have renewed our acquaintance, I should like to ask you something that I have refrained from doing for many years: whether I can send you a piece of MS, (for instance the chapter on Plato’s Laws) for your criticism? I have not done it in the past because I still remember my shock when I received your criticism of my very inadequate chapter on Locke. The idea of your going through a MS with this conscientiousness, at the expense of your time, was a deterrent thereafter. Now, however, the language has improved so that it would be just a matter of reading the stuff and voicing your wild disagreement; and I would dare now to ask you whether you would be kind enough and interested enough. I am suggesting the Laws because there you might find something that would touch also your Rousseau problems.

Please, give my regards to Penniman and Wells. I regretted that I saw so very little of Penniman and had not even a chance to ask him how his wife and the children are doing. With many thanks and my best regards, I am,

Yours very sincerely,

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Jamaica, NY
2 April 1948

Dear Eric—

You must forgive my apparent churlishness vis-à-vis your good letter: this is Spring vacation (two weeks we get!), and I am in refuge in Mrs. Kendall’s apartment in Jamaica—where my mail reaches me sporadically at best, tardily always, not at all sometimes.

Many thanks for your kind words about your brief visit in New Haven, and about any modest part I may have had in making it pleasant for you. I only wish it might have been a series of lectures, instead of only one, and that the opportunity I had for some real talk with you at Cleanth’s house, might have been many times repeated. You made a deep impression upon your listeners, I can tell you, particularly upon the younger members of the department and upon the graduate students, both of which groups are starved at New Haven for the kind of intellectual leadership you could give them. I eagerly await final word as to what the colonels in the department, who alone make the relevant decisions, will have decided in that regard; but I am not optimistic: every [p. 2] attempt in recent years to move the department away from its bets upon mediocrity, unproductiveness, and drift has smashed itself against the colonels’ determination to parlay these numbers into a fortune or bust, and I shall be as astonished as pleased if it proves any different this time. I can think of nothing I should like so much for the long pull as to (I shan’t say teach, for I should think of it in terms of learning) be in the same department with you.

By all means send me the piece on the Laws. Your letter leaves me shuddering a little at the thought that my blue-pencilings on the Locke chapter were possibly on the presumptuous side, and I hope you will believe me when I say that all that was in question was my wish that no emphasis of your argument should be lost on any reader because of the language barrier. In any case, you must give yourself no concern over [p. 3] any possible drain upon my time—either on this occasion or in future. If I don’t have the time, I shall say so; and if I do, it’ll be a genuine pleasure to be of any small assistance I can. (May I, in this connection, reiterate my long-standing offer to read the proofs of the history, as a further guarantee against typographical errors?)

All the best to the L.S.U. group.

Yours sincerely,
Willmoore Kendall

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
April 8, 1948

Dear Willmoore:

Your good letter came somewhat like a relief. I was a bit disturbed by the complete silence following the adventure of a month ago; and I did not quite know what to make of it. (I do not mean your silence but the general silence, from Corbett as well as from Brooks, and from everybody else). Now, your letter has restored the proportions: the idea to ask me for a lecture was the disturbing spurt of activity, now we are back to the paralysis as usual. I must confess that I was a bit surprised at the time by the sudden interest in me, as well as by the broad hints (even from Corbett) that an offer was in immediate prospect; your intimation of the general atmosphere has confirmed my original conviction that miracles don’t happen. So let me join you in being surprised and pleased if something should happen after all.

This whole affair comes at a somewhat delicate moment. I do not remember whether I told you that next year I get for the first time a comparatively decent salary ($5800.—); and that our salary reform is under way, so that in all probability it will be $6800.—. The prospect of losing a lot of money through the inevitable expenses of moving a library of 2500 volumes, etc., just now, is not quite appealing,—especially since I have suspicions about the salary which Yale would offer if the unbelievable should happen. Besides I have next year my sabbatical leave in the second semester, which I should lose if an offer from Yale should materialize. It would be unfortunate if an offer were good enough not to allow for an outright rejection, but lousy enough to make me feel exploited. Well, we’ll see.

Enclosed you will find the chapter on the Laws. I am sending you this particular chapter because it gives a fair idea of the method which I use. Besides, of course, the content is quite interesting. What fascinated me particularly about this last of Plato was the literary form which has certain resemblances to Proust’s recherché—though I did not stress that point in order not to frighten the illiterates more than necessary. You would oblige me in particular if you could tell me whether the presentation is now clear enough to be acceptable to the “”profession,”” and whether I have hidden the metaphysical problems carefully enough so that they will escape the average reader. I have deliberately tried to present the subject-matter in such a manner that the oily rendering will cover the serious implications.

There is a very important article on Rousseau by Strauss in Social Research (December, 1947).16

With kindest regards,

Sincerely yours,

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New Haven, Connecticut
Wednesday [nd—probably
April/May 1948]

Dear Eric—

I have been swamped, these past days, with 3-4 thesis-direction chores, and have been unable as yet to give your Laws chapter a really thorough reading. But I will by the end of the week, and this is merely to let you know that a) I am among the quick; and b) I have not absconded with your ms.

I am sick, sick, sick over this business here—the more because the question continues to force itself upon my mind: Could I, by handling it differently, have brought it off? What was in question, ab initio,b was an at-[p. 2]tempt on the part of the younger group to change the department into a different kind of enterprise—if you like, to carry through a revolution; and this killed either consent or abdication on the part of the full professors. Either Driver (who is determined that no-one shall come here who can threaten his popularity as a lecturer [I owe my appointment here exclusively, I think, to the fact that I am, notoriously, a dull & clumsy lecturer17] or compete with him for intellectual prestige among the graduate students); or Wolfers, [p. 3] who quit studying 10 years ago and just doesn’t like people to think in his vicinity, or both, saw in time what was happening, and moved to scotch it. Concretely, if we had put forward only you or only Finer18 we might have got by with it.

Sincerely,
Willmoore

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
May 27, 1948

Dear Willmoore:

I am sorry I have not answered yet your letter with the interesting news. In the meanwhile I have received a letter from Corbett thanking for the lecture. I shall always be glad to hear what is going on in Yale.

The other day came the MS back. I studied your corrections carefully; and I am very grateful, indeed, for the detailed penciling that you have undertaken. I have not found a single correction that was not more than justified. It seems that for the greater part the mistakes are typical and recurrent: infinitives where gerund constructions should be used, use of the definite article where it should be omitted, etc. That is, of course, most valuable for me when such definite habits are pointed out. With one sweep a whole batch of mistakes can be cleared out. Let me thank you again for the pains which you have taken. I can only hope that this has not taken too much of your time. I know why I hesitate to send you a MS.

Of course, I should be very grateful if you could also add a few critical remarks concerning content, method and presentation.

By the middle of June we shall go to Cambridge. Since I hope that by that time we shall be the proud owners of a very old car, we may pass through New Haven. Will you be around?

With all good wishes,

Sincerely yours,

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

On board, RMS Queen Mary
27 Sept. 1948

Dear Eric—

I finished the year at New Haven so fagged-out, so empty both of content and of resources, that I permitted myself the pleasure of dropping everything (including Department politics!) and moving out to do what I pleased for the Summer. For the most part, this is what I’ve done; and of course the major sufferer has been my correspondence, which as you’ll have observed [p. 2] has gone completely by the board.

This year I shall be smarter, thus a great deal less busy; and the chief purpose of the present letter is to say, as I think I did not get around to saying last Spring: a if my marginalia really were useful, I’d like nothing better than to do as much, over the next months, for your whole book; and b if you [p. 3] are going forward with your plan to keep moving about this year, and could use a few days or weeks even at the Yale Library, the room you occupied in the Spring is entirely at your disposition. (Though unless you see how the Berlin mess is to be untangled, you’d best make it sooner rather than later.)

Sincerely,
Kendall

[p. 4] PS—After the appointments fiasco in May (they finally brought in Lane Lancaster, and settled the theory offerings, definitively I suppose, upon me), I’m returning to New Haven in a mood of complete quietism as regards the world of becoming (= my department is laid up in heaven!). This should make Corbett and Driver happy; and it suits me fine. Since if war comes, and I return to Washington, I shall plan to remain there, there may well have been [p. 5] nothing really at stake to begin with. WK

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New Haven, Connecticut
17 June 1949

Dear Eric:

The program for the Christmas meeting of the APSA calls for a series of five “”sections”” on the single theme Authority versus Liberty in a Revolutionary Age. I am not happy about the title, & we may yet hit upon a better one; but all of us who have been concerned with the planning are in general agreement about the question we wish to see ventilated, namely, do we have a political theory in terms of which we can deal with the problem posed in the modern democratic “”state,”” our own especially, by e.g. a Fascist or Communist minority? We’d like to have a discussion in which the question will be kept on the level of theory, but one which would go forward under the shadow of the loyalty program, the recent action by the University of Washington, the trial in New York, etc. I hope you would agree with me that most even of the people who tend to support demarchesc of the kind I have mentioned are very far from recognizing the extent to which they are breaking with the ideas upon which they were brought up; and I hope you would also agree with me that there is [p. 2] much to be said for showing at least the people who teach political theory that there is another approach to the problem of liberty.

We are to have papers from Latham (on the recent court decisions on free speech), from Kaufmann (on the “”nature”” of civil rights), from Drucker (authority vs liberty and the American creed), from Niebuhr (on a topic yet to be determined), from DeGrazia (on shared belief as a presupposition of free government), etc.; and I am awaiting answers from Chester Barnard19 and one or two other people. Our hope is to have a publishable book out of it: the actual presentation of the papers at the meeting will be held rigorously to a twenty-minute maximum; but the written version can and should be much longer.

Have I said enough to suggest the general line along which I expect the discussion to move? If so, let me go on to say that I’m thinking of those last paragraphs of your chapter on The Laws, and of the argument of the little volume20 you presented me a few years ago. Could you be persuaded to be the first speaker of the fifteen, and get the issue right out into the open in your inimitable manner? [p. 3] I know you’ve many commitments, and I shouldn’t dare make the request if I didn’t think you could get this out of a bin. I’d thought of Authority versus Liberty: the Present Status of the Question in Democratic Theory as a possible title for you, but will be more than open to other suggestions.

I’d appreciate an air mail letter from you about this at your early convenience. My address:

c/o Juan Andrade
10 Rue Puteaux
Paris (XVIIe)

Yours in haste,
Kendall

PS—I’d thought of putting Kaufmann21 on the same panel with you.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Cambridge, Massachusetts
July 9, 1949

Professor Wilmore Kendall:
c/o Juan Andrade
10 Rue Puteaux
Paris XVIIe

Dear Wilmore:

Thanks for your letter of June 17. I am answering it only today because in the meanwhile I have been traveling, and now I am for the summer here in Cambridge.

Your suggestion interests me very much, and I shall be very glad to supply a paper if you program people want it. The general title “”Authority versus Liberty in a Revolutionary Age”” sounds quite good to me. It certainly hits the decisive point that the problems of liberty look different in times of revolution, and that the niceties of constitutional government do not fit every situation.

With regard to the special title you suggest for my paper, I have hesitations. “”The Present Status of the Question in Democratic Theory”” implies that there is such a thing as “”democratic theory.”” Now, I do not believe that there is any more than that there is a “”communist”” or “”national socialist”” theory. Theory in critical science is just theory; any attempt to combine it with a political adjective is already a concession, in my opinion, to the fascists and communists. If you want to keep the title, I suggest that you replace the word “”democratic”” by “”political.”” But you may prefer perhaps one of the following titles that would define the issue with more precision:

(1) Freedom of expression in an age of revolution

(2) Freedom of expression in an age of intellectual disorder

(3) Freedom of expression in an age of spiritual disorder

(4) Political science versus political creed

(5) The danger of paranoic creeds

(6) Toward a pathology of political ideas

Well, that should give you some freedom of choice; and, of course, you may hit on better titles.

With all good wishes for a pleasant summer, I am,

Yours very sincerely,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Paris, France
7 August 1949

Dear Eric:

I’m desperate ou que’qu’ chose d’approchantd for word from you about the paper, and am wondering if my plaintive missive of a couple weeks ago may have miscarried. I had written saying Yes, no doubt, but there is a theory of the democratic state, which must’ve been e.g. what you were having at at the end of your discussion of the laws, and would you—without prejudice of course to your lading into your treatment of it all you could wish of your own position, be willing to do us a paper on “”The Present Status of the Toleration Issue in the Theory of the Democratic State.”” That would give us, for the opening act of our quiet little drama, Kaufmann on “”The Nature of Civil Rights,”” you on that, and (I hope) Chester Barnard on “”The Limits of Toleration in Democratic Society,”” under (I hope) the chairmanship of Adolf Lowe—which I think, moi, would be a pretty fancy panel. But I’m pretty much stymied about all this until I know whether I am going to have to expend further scarce resources in getting the discussion started on a certain plane, so I am taking the liberty of sending along this urgent plea for [p. 2] word from you about this. Griffith22 wants a mostly-definitive “”provisional”” program for 19 September.

The above address is best from here on out.

Cordially,
Willmoore

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Cambridge, Massachusetts
[nd]

Dear Wilmore:

By all means, choose any title for the paper that you think suitable for your plan—about which unfortunately I still do not know very much. I’ll come over with something that is appropriate to the occasion.

I hope you have a good time in Paris,

Sincerely yours,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Paris
21 Aug. 1949

Dear Eric:

If you had meant to imply in your last letter—which I am sure you didn’t—that I’d have better success asking people to do things for the December show if I were a little clearer in my own head about what I’m trying to accomplish, you’d have been dead right. The letter was, therefore, good for me, in that it sat me down to a typewriter to fight out with myself some problems I hadn’t yet faced up to. Now I do know what I am trying to accomplish with the symposium; better still, I am now prepared to let you in on it; best of all, the core you are now tentatively down for should be more to your liking than the one about which I was approaching you earlier in the Summer.

I am keeping the old general topic, “”Liberty versus Authority in the Age of Revolutionary Change,”” rather because it means nothing in particular than because I don’t realize it means nothing in particular: i.e., it will leave the participants in the symposium quite free to move out as far as they like beyond the edges of the assigned topics—and to step the discussion up to whatever level of generality seems good to them. In general, however, in order to have the participants talking about more or less the same thing and in order to keep them from saying more or less the same thing I’m tailoring the individual assignments out of a much narrower piece of cloth.

As for what I am up to, let me put it, unofficially, as follows: There is, as I hope you will agree, a generally accepted “”doctrine”” in the United States regarding freedom of thought and expression—scratch 99 out of 100 people at the December meeting and that is the kind of blood you will draw. It asserts, on the one hand, that people have a “”right”” (or that it is a good thing to give them a right, or that the good society would as a matter of course give them a right) to think and say and write what they bloody well please, that there must be no “”standard of orthodoxy”” to which ideas can be referred with a view to declaring them beyond the pale, that truth is what we are after and the way to get it is by maintaining conditions of free competition in an open market, etc. and so forth, but that this right can and should be withdrawn or restricted if and when its exercise constitutes a “”clear and present danger.”” Different people would of course say all that in somewhat different words, but it seems to me to come to very much the same thing no matter how you slice it, and if I feel safe in stating it thus sketchily here that is because I assume that this is precisely the position, or the kind of position, at which you were striking in those fine paragraphs at the end of your chapter on The Laws. Now: while the [p. 2] sanctions of this doctrine as it is applied by the courts are of course “”constitutional,”” it is I think generally believed that the doctrine in fact rests upon unexceptionable theoretical grounds, and that it is applicable to countless situations (e.g., where “”academic freedom”” is at stake) which could hardly come into the courts at all—i.e., the doctrine is one of the “”basic principles”” upon which we are running not only our government but our society as well.

Now: I’m as you know no great admirer of the kind of thinking that has gone into all that, and I could name you a long list of reasons (which, however, I propose to spare you) for thinking that the time is ripe for a public “”reventilation”” of the whole question, and I figure that a good way to get such a reventilation started would be to cause some people who love the doctrine to attempt, at the beginning of the symposium, to state it, to say where they think it comes from, and to lay it on the line as to what they think there is to be said for it. Let us, then, think of the first four papers as: a) the traditional doctrine restated, b) the sources and theoretical bases of the traditional doctrine, c) the recent Supreme Court decisions (do they in any sense represent a departure from the traditional doctrine), and d) the alleged conflicts between the traditional doctrine and certain recent demarches in public and institutional policy (the “”loyalty”” program, the New York trial, the NEA statement on the employment of Communist teachers, etc., all of which, as you know, many people regard as flagrant and indefensible invasions of freedom of thought and expression).

So much for the front end of the symposium. From hereon out what I am trying to do is lay before the house whatever doubts may be lurking in certain people’s minds as to whether the doctrine makes any sense, whether anybody ever really meant it, whether you can possibly run a society in a twentieth century world and act consistently with such a doctrine, as to whether the questions to which the doctrine afford answers are perhaps questions mal posées,e as to whether there are alternative approaches to the problem that perhaps deserve more attention that they have been getting, etc. The next two papers, then, will be Lawrence Dennis23 on “”The Technique of ‘Legal Revolution’ and Its Implications for the Traditional Doctrine,”” and Gerhart Niemeyer24 (who has not yet accepted) on “”The Traditional Doctrine and Contemporary Socio-Political Fact”” (this shouldn’t require from him much more than a re-writing of a twenty-page section in his recent book).

#page#

I am under mandate, unhappily or not as the case may be, to relate the third section-meeting to the luncheon on that day, at which Maritain25 and Charles Taft26 are to hold forth on the relations between democracy and religion, whatever the hell that is, and I have had myself quite a hard time deciding how I could obey the mandate without playing hell with the plan of the symposium. I assume that Maritain and Taft, in addressing themselves to such a topic, will talk mainly [p. 3] platitudes calculated to suggest that there is no ultimate quarrel between the Catholics and the Protestants, and that everything is going to be okay if we but love one another, which is to say I shouldn’t expect to hear much at the luncheon about e.g. whether there are any limits whatever to the amount of diversity as regards basic beliefs that a society can afford. I figure the section-meeting might well be used, then, to move them along toward some more productive kind of discussion, and this I propose to do by having them listen to a) Eric Voegelin, whom begging his leave I am inviting to speak on The Political Religions and the problem they pose for the traditional doctrine, and b) Sebastian DeGrazia, who will present the thesis of his Political Community under the thin disguise of the following title: “”The Findings of Cultural Anthropology and their Implications etc. etc.”” A third speaker, probably Drucker, will speak on the alleged analogy between Catholicism and Communism that has figured so prominently in recent discussions of academic freedom. I am of course thinking, as I ask you to speak to this topic, of the line of argument in the little book27 you sent me several years ago, and hoping you will see fit to say your say about the wedge between politics and religion. I’m assuming you could do this without a lot of extra work, and I do hope the idea will strike you as a good one.

Also I’d like to have any comments or suggestions you might care to make about the plan as a whole? Some of the other topics I am arranging to have papers on are: The Majoritarian Challenge to the Traditional Doctrine (Riesman), The Clear and Present Danger Corruption of the Traditional Doctrine (Meikeljohn), The Emergent French Doctrine of Responsibility for the Consequences of Utterance (Bertrand de Jouvenel). The last section-meeting will go on what might be called “”ventures in re-thinking the problem,”” and the prospective speakers are Chester Barnard, Ed Shils, Reinhold Niebuhr.28

Can I hope for a line from you about all this by return?29

—Yours sincerely,
                                                                                                                Willmoore Kendall

 

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New York, New York
14 October 1955

Professor Eric Voegelin
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Dear Eric,

I have taken on the part-time chore of running the book review section of a new “”journal of conservative opinion””30 that friends of mine are launching in New York, and I daresay you will not be surprised to learn that one of the hopes I’m indulging is that we can have an occasional book-review from you in the tone of the last chapter of The New Science.

Concretely, there is a new book by Arthur Bestor, The Restoration of Learning, that everyone here would be delighted to see you take on if you could be persuaded to do it. I know Bestor’s earlier work: he is a vigorous critic of public school education in the United States, and thinks—so one gathers—that he is resting his criticism on a traditional view of what education ought to be. My guess, from certain remarks of yours at the Buck Hills conference,31 is that you would find him hardly less objectionable than the characters he is attacking, and that what you would have to say about the book would make good reading in National Review. We should be obliged to confine you to some 450 words (for which, however, we can pay at the rate of nine cents a word).

Hope your European junket proved pleasant and rewarding. Your lectures have filled my mind ever since June.

Sincerely,
Willmoore

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
November 6, 1955

Professor Willmore Kendall
National Review
211 East 37th Street
New York 16, N.Y.

Dear Willmore:

That was a pleasant surprise to have you calling the other day.

I am very grateful indeed for your offer to read proofs when they come. And I shall inform the LSU Press so that they will send you the galleys. But I suspect that will not be before January or February. My only sorrow is that it might be too much of an imposition on you. If you find yourself too busy, please withdraw the offer.

What exactly is the National Review which you seem to be editing? Is that some enterprise financed by the Volker Fund?

As I told you on the telephone, for the moment I am buried under work. But in the course of December things will become better. And then I shall be quite glad to do the review for you, which you have suggested in your letter.

        With all good wishes, I am,

Yours sincerely,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New York, New York
15 Oct. 1956

Dear Eric,

I got Natrev‘s32 review copy of the book on Saturday, and have hardly put it down since (nor shall, until I have read it and re-read it). Even so, I’m only half way through, though quite far enough to say without hesitation that it is the most breath-taking book I have ever seen, and that all of us owe you a deep debt of gratitude for it.

I shall be reviewing it for National Review as a matter of course. But we are thinking some of running two reviews, in order to draw to the book something more like the attention it deserves, and have Frank Meyer in mind for the second review. We shall, therefore, require another copy—which, naturally enough, we should expect to pay for; and I am writing to ask you to intercede with the Press to see to it we get it (publishers are often quite reluctant to fill orders prior to publication date). The bill for [p. 2] the book should be sent to me personally at the magazine; the book itself I’d like mailed to

Frank S. Meyer, Esq.33
Ohayo Mountain,
Woodstock, N.Y.

Sorry to trouble you about this—and should not have dared to but for the fact that what we propose to do might help the book a little.

Sincerely,
Willmoore

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Baton Rouge, Louisiana
October 22, 1956

Professor Willmoore Kendall
National Review
211 East 37 Street
New York 16, N.Y.

Dear Willmoore:

Many thanks for your generous letter of Oct. 15. I am happy indeed that you find the book interesting; and I am most grateful that you want to support it with not only one, but even two reviews.

The copy will, of course, be sent to Frank S. Meyer. And the bill (if any; certainly with the largest possible discount) will go to you. Don Ellegood, the publisher, was delighted—but I do not know to what extent he will translate his delight into generosity.

On November 7th I shall be in New York. It will be a rather crowded day, since the next morning we shall embark for Europe. But I shall try at least to call you and to have a few words over the telephone. There will be more time on the way back in January.

The partly hoped for, partly dreaded, has happened. I have got the Berufungf on the new chair for Political Science in Munich. In December I shall negotiate with the people about the details—and then we shall see.

With many thanks, and the hope at least to talk with you soon,

Yours sincerely,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

New Haven, Connecticut
March 13, 195734

Professor Eric Voegelin
Department of Political Science
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Dear Professor Voegelin:

Although no vacancy at the full professorship level is currently open, the staff members now of that rank have been asked by Associate Professor Willmoore Kendall to express a judgment of the prospects for his eventual promotion. We are therefore exploring this question according to the usual procedure applicable to promotions.

This procedure includes, among other matters, the securing of external evidence bearing on a man’s standing in the profession. This takes the form of confidential evaluative statements by leading scholars outside the Yale faculty who are particularly knowledgeable about the special field of the candidate being considered. We should be grateful if you would aid us in our consideration by providing such an evaluation of Professor Kendall.

We have found it particularly helpful to have a candidate’s professional standing appraised in comparison with other men of his field and age group, and I hope you will undertake such a comparison in this instance.

        With appreciation, I am

Sincerely yours,
James W. Fesler
Acting Chairman

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
March 20, 1957
Professor James W. Fesler

Acting Chairman
Department of Political Science
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.

Dear Fesler:

I have your letter of March 13th, requesting an evaluation of Willmoore Kendall’s qualifications for a full professorship. At the moment, I hesitate to give such a formal evaluation to be placed in your official file. Hence, I beg you to treat the following lines as a strictly personal note.

The reason for my hesitation is the opening paragraph of your letter: You request such an evaluation, though there is no vacancy to which it would apply. Kendall’s request for judgment, and your willingness to prepare it, look like an internal affair of your Department in which an outsider should not mingle. I plead the Supreme Court principle: No opinion, unless there is a bona fide case.

Since a refusal of this kind is exposed to speculations concerning ulterior motives which may not be flattering to Kendall, I furthermore want to make clear the lines on which my formal evaluation, if the case should arise, would run.

I am greatly impressed by Kendall’s qualities as an analyst of political ideas, as well as by his abilities of presenting the results. With regard to his range of learning, his powers as a philosopher, and the extent of his performance, he does not rank as high as Leo Strauss (Chicago)—but nobody else does. Strauss is hors concours.g Otherwise, I would rank him with regard to his solidity of thinking, the seriousness of his concern with philosophical problems, his flair for the relevant issues, and his intellectual know-how in handling them, as high as anybody else in the field—let’s say with the three or four best.

On the debit side must be set, at least as far as I am concerned, his publicistic activities for the cause of ideological conservatism. One could, of course, make a case for it by saying that in the economy of public opinion one foolishness should be balanced by another one, so that neither one will run to extremes. And under that aspect, one might esteem this activity a public service—certainly Kendall sees his activity in this light—though he would not consider every ideology, regardless of content, a foolishness, as I do. But I do not know [p. 2] what you think in such matters, and I do not want to prejudice the case. Anyway, I deeply regret that a man of Kendall’s potential as a scholar should waste his time and energy on such activities.

And here is the one point at which your request concerning a hypothetical case touches a concrete issue. I have the feeling, if Kendall were sure of his prospects at Yale, he would settle down and abandon his diversions. Such an outcome would be most desirable. For there can be hardly a doubt that Kendall, once he concentrates his intellectual powers on the problems which he sees, will produce most valuable work.

With my best regards, I am,      

Sincerely yours,
Eric Voegelin

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
March 20, 1957

Dear Willmoore:

Walter Berns35 sent a clipping of your review of “”Israel and Revelation”” to the LSU Press; and they passed it on to me yesterday. And naturally I read it with great delight.36

You certainly did well “”to resist the temptation”” of making enthusiastic predictions concerning its success, because we can be fairly sure it won’t have any, the intellectual climate being what it is. I admired greatly your ability to concentrate essentials in four points, and in such brevity still to say something that gives a correct impression. I was not quite clear about the degree of your seriousness, when you spoke of “”the breathtaking implication”” that the current attempts and theories to order society as if it were not under God are all wrong. Certainly you are right if you say that is implied (it is perhaps even a bit more than implied)—but I wouldn’t say that is exactly news. Just last night I read Eliade’s  Eternel Retour, and he is also quite explicit on the point. And I could name of course a dozen Catholics and Protestants of international reputation who have harped on it during the last generation. Hence, I presume you are aiming your rhetoric at the ideological crowd. But that has the embarrassing consequence that your rhetoric forces you, for the sake of politeness, to include yourself among the “”we”” whose breath is taken away by the horrendous discovery that what goes under the name of “”political theory”” is a lot of rubbish—though, of course, you know that for at least as long as I have known you. In brief, as you may have already sensed, I am coming back to my beef: Are you doing yourself any good, by engaging yourself in this ideology fight and by compromising yourself, even if only in a modus of rhetoric????? (the series of question marks to be indefinitely prolonged).

Anyway, I thank you for this kind review.

When I was in New York, toward the end of January, I tried twice to reach you at the National Review, without success. I hope the lady has passed on the information.

Just now I am over my ears in the preparation of the next two volumes for the printer. What are you doing—besides mangling liberals?

With all good wishes,

Yours cordially,

 

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Notre Dame, Indiana
Friday [nd—late March or early April, 1957]

Dear Eric,

I have been here all week delivering some lectures, and your letter has been forwarded to me.

I am glad you were pleased with my little review. I had only very limited space, of course, and deliberately subordinated everything, in writing it, to making clear to our “”hard-core”” readers that Israel37 is a book they must make themselves familiar with; so my fear had been that I might end up pleasing them and displeasing you.

You are quite right in catching me up on “”breath-taking implication””: i.e., the implication is evidently not breath-taking to me (though very haunting), and what I meant was that it would be breath-taking to my readers; yet I did end up saying as clearly as possible that it is breathtaking to me, and thus fibbing—or, as you put it, by compromising myself in a modus of rhetoric. And, just to put a stop to that indefinitely prolonged series of question marks: No, I’m not doing myself any good by engaging in this ideology fight, and know that I am not. Qui est pire,h I’m doing myself harm by it, at least in the sense of dissipating my energies. But this time I am going to fool you and go further: give me 6 more months to straighten out my financial affairs, and I’m going to get out of it—indeed, I will say confidentially that I am considering, and already half committed to, an even more drastic break than you have in mind: getting out of Yale as well as National Review, and going off to Europe—probably Spain, because of the exchange—and staying until my money runs out; which, again confidentially, ought not to be sooner than 10 or 12 years hence.

If I do that, I shall wish some talk with you about what I might do with myself. I only know at this point that I would start out by regaining [p. 2] my Latin, which I possessed when I was in my teens, and by learning Greek.

As you will gather from the above, there’s more going on in me—particularly with respect to the intolerableness of my situation in the Yale Department—than the realization that I must get down to serious work. I might combine serious work with ideological fighting; but I can’t combine it with constantly pausing to pull the Feslers and Drivers and Watkinses out of my hair.

Yes, the girl told me you called, and I was greatly disappointed to have missed you. This second semester as last year’s second semester, I seldom go to New York.

I am very eager to learn whether you accepted at Munich.

Sincerely,
Willmoore

P.S. Let me renew my offer to read through your proofs. It would be a pleasure.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

[Baton Rouge]
April 9, 1957

Dear Willmoore:

That is indeed a radical project you are mulling over at the moment. Not that I am surprised that a man wants to get out of Yale, if he has means of his own to live on. Certainly I would not hang around there, if I were a rich man. Still, the routine of a profession is not lightly to be discarded; and your idea to get out of it altogether certainly merits several second thoughts.

I very much should like to see you some time. Will it be possible to get together again in Buck Hill Falls? I have not heard from them; and perhaps this time I have been rotated out of