ABSTRACT
Erich Kahler's work on central Europe remains peerless. Few have equaled him, and perhaps Leo Lowenthal has rivaled him, in giving expression to the cultural formations which made possible the dominance of dictatorships in that part of the world. The celebration and not just analysis of irrationalism, the discontent with ordinariness no less than the corruption of elites, is exposed in essay after essay by Kahler. And yet, the antidote to this miasma of the irrational, was never found by him. It is as if constitutionalism in politics and utilitarianism in philosophy are a lesser breed. Kahler, in these essays at least, is at war with the culture of political darkness, without understanding the light that was shining in the Anglo-American world he so happily inhabited. Sadly, in this he is more a prototype than an antidote to what ails deracinated European intellectuals who cannot go home again, and yet who cannot find a home in their adopted Anglo-American environment.
