MPS fractured partly over a temperamental secretary’s militant anti-neutralist stance

Evidence

Hunold also possessed a notoriously abrupt and irascible personality, and his rhetoric lacked the soft edges that characterized the communicative styles of his academic colleagues. His close friend Wilhelm Röpke acknowledged that their “serious brawl” after the war over the establishment of the journal Occident demonstrated that “occasionally, his temperament may carry him away.” After only one meeting … Hunold was already complaining that the society was insuffi ciently “aggressive” and proclaiming that it was “useless to discuss anything” with one member, Maurice Allais, who reminded him of “socialists and communists.” Irritability is a characteristic that only rarely diminishes with the passage of time, and Hunold grew more vocal with his complaints as the society matured. In 1959 he publicly referred to the society’s recent debates as a “playground for softpedalling [sic] neutralism and impotent scientism which would divert our Society from its real aims and drive it into moral bankruptcy,” and he privately complained that the “neutralists” among its members needed to be taken “by the horns.” His disenchantment with the society’s direction was aggravated by an impression that his ideas and suggestions were not receiving the attention they deserved. He channeled the resulting frustration into periodic eruptions about issues of relatively trivial signifi cance, alienating the society’s other members and leading them to grow increasingly concerned about his capacity to fulfi ll his secretarial duties. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 332

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Camridge/communication-theory material in this library on how personality and temperament, not just ideas, structure intellectual movements.