A "Third way" Catholic Intellectual: Charles Du Bos, Tragedy, and Ethics in Interwar Paris

This article explores how the intellectual and spiritual sensibilities of the French Catholic literary critic, Charles Du Bos (1882-1939), provide an insight into the construction of a particular "third-way" Catholic intellectual form of engagement during the interwar period. It is argued that the intellectual disposition underpinning Du Bos's third way rests fundamentally upon an accommodation of the "tragic." The evolving concept of tragedy in Du Bos's life and thought, before his conversion to Catholicism and beyond, facilitates his embrace of an "ethic of responsibility," which is deployed in his third-way politico-ethical position on the Munich crisis of 1938.