IF MARCEL PROUST'S CENTRAL PREOCCUPATION WAS THE unsettling instability of human character, an important minor consideration was the equally marked instability of intellectual and cultural life. À la recherche du temps perdu offers a series of brilliant sketches demonstrating the impact of fashion upon intellectual reputation, and these are usually scathing because of an implicit sociology condemning the frivolity and philistinism of ‘arbiters of taste’. Now whilst the sociology of the matter is, as we shall see, different, there can be no doubt that fashion has not exempted political theory from its attentions. This is obviously unsettling, but does it really matter? Is not fashion trivial, even harmless?