The Political Activity of Dignity: Some Reflections on Arthur Koestler's DARNKESS AT NOON.

This paper is a reading of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. Perhaps no other novel so vividly sets out to probe the depths of the subservience of politics to means-ends rationality. Only by taking the dangers of reason through to the end does Koestler begin to develop an account of the opposing measure of decency and dignity. He does so, I argue, by developing the importance of the infinite in politics. Political action, he suggests, must be informed by a non-rational and non-religious appeal to the infinite that is the one true guarantee of a human politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]