In The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009), Michael Kimmage identified a philosophical turn away from the social and the political, towards the individual and the aesthetic. Although Kimmage labeled this a “conservative turn,” through his creative use of fiction in analyzing the intellectual development of Trilling and Chambers, he showed their eventual rejection of the saving power of politics, both left-wing and right-wing. While Trilling’s and Chambers’ renunciation of Communism did represent a turn away from Leftist ideology, more significant and compelling is their turn away from social solutions, away from politics as Read more