G. K. Chesterton may be "the most unjustly neglected writer of our time," as Dale Ahlquist writes, but I can’t think of any 20th century writer as unjustly neglected as Christopher Dawson.
Interestingly, Chesterton and Dawson make for a remarkable comparison. This hit me one day when I was interviewing Dr. Adam Schwartz, Assistant Professor of History at Christendom College. Dr. Schwartz was in the Twin Cities for the Annual Chesterton Conference some time ago when I interviewed him on behalf of a local Catholic journal. At one point in our interview, he explained to me that Dawson had distinguished himself from the other historians of his day particularly by means of his meta-historical approach to history. According to Dr. Schwartz,
English historiography particularly at this time—early to mid 20th century—was much more based on putting together facts and telling you exactly when things happened. Dawson thought that was absolutely necessary and didn’t like it when historians didn’t do that, but he also believed in what he called metahistory, which was trying to divine the meaning of events as well as the matter of them. For Dawson, of course, metahistory meant looking at history from a theological standpoint. He articulated very well, and better than any of his English counterparts did, a very explicitly Christian Catholic view of history, which saw the Incarnation as not only an important moment in salvation history but in secular history; it was the turning point in all of history. That was his main lodestar for how he understood history, and that set him apart from many of his peers, who either didn’t have a metahistorical view at all or, if they did, had a more philosophical one—Marxist, or something like that, but not a supernaturalist viewpoint.
I well remember that as Dr. Schwartz was explaining all of this I couldn’t help but think of Chesterton and his very fine book The Everlasting Man, after which, of course, this site is named. And so I went ahead and brought it up. "Your description of Dawson’s historical vision sounds a great deal like that of G.K. Chesterton’s in The Everlasting Man." To which he responded,
Very much so. I don’t know that Dawson was particularly influenced by that book. At least, we don’t have any evidence of that. But he certainly knew of and admired Chesterton’s work. And it actually worked vice versa. Although Dawson was writing toward the tail end of Chesterton’s career, Chesterton was aware of his work and did praise it in a couple of Illustrated London News columns. So they did know of each other. As far as intellectual affinities go, you are absolutely right. They both had that sense that the pivotal event for understanding history was God becoming human. Dawson worked it out in slightly more philosophical terms—Chesterton in more imaginative terms. But they had the same basic insight.
[As it turns out, Dr. Schwartz has done a great deal of work on Dawson and Chesterton.]
