Renan deliberately chose cultural parity with his nation over critical distance

Evidence

What is specially interesting in Renan is how much he knew himself to be a creature of his time and of his ethnocentric culture. On the occasion of an academic response to a speech made by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1885, Renan averred as how “it was so sad to be a wiser man than one’s nation.… One cannot feel bitterness towards one’s homeland. Better to be mistaken along with the nation than to be too right with those who tell it hard truths.” The economy of such a statement is almost too perfect to be true. For does not the old Renan say that the best relationship is one of parity with one’s own culture, its morality, and its ethos during one’s time, that and not a dynastic relation by which one is either the child of his times or their parent? — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 380

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s broader thesis of the scholar’s complicity with his own culture, useful against later Islamophobia readings on how experts serve rather than critique the nation-state.
• QUESTION: Does Renan’s parity-with-nation stance prefigure later claims that area-studies scholars insulated themselves from political critique?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 380