A must-read book for anyone who cherishes wisdom and insight is Democracy and Leadership (1924) by former Harvard Professor Irving Babbitt (1865-1933). It is a work of profound learning, wide and deep, though without any complex scholarly apparatus. It feels more like a wonderful fireside lecture from a man whose wisdom you will find yourself eager to absorb and remember. Babbitt surveys the opposed and intermingled spiritual and philosophical ways and traditions of the West and the East, from Plato and Confucius to the present, as a background to his main emphasis on the strengths and weaknesses of the democratic ideal in the Western world. Perhaps the main message of the book is the failure of individuals in the West (and of Western democratic systems) to heed the need for humility and personal and national self-restraint, by way of alignment with -- and discipline to -- an ethical centre in life (hence, the lack of leadership at which he takes aim in the title of the book). In this respect, he is sharpply critical of the progressive element in the modern liberal democracies which he shows is descended from the revolutionary work of Rousseau. The crucial change in Western moral life that Rousseau brought about was the transfer of the locus of evil, so to speak, from within ourselves (which requires what he calls inner working) to society outside ourselves (which transfers the focus to outer working in practices such as imperialism, materialism, social progress, socialism, totalitarian democracy, etc.). On this note, and in a lighter but deeply serious vein, Babbitt includes in a footnote a little poem sent in to an Ohio newspaper in 1924. Babbitt adds that this newspaper poet is nearer to the wisdom of the ages than some of our college presidents. I should say, perhaps all of them. Here it is, and worth memorizing: And so I hold it is not treason To advance a simple reason For the the sorry lack of progress we decry. It is this: instead of working On himself, each man is shirking, And trying to reform some other guy. --Democracy and Leadership, William Gairdner, March 22, 2013 williamgairdner/journal/2013/3/22/democracy-and-leadership.html *********************************** *********************************** ...the work of Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), the Harvard literary scholar and cultural thinker, will always stand as a monument to American intellectual culture at its finest. Though frequently misunderstood and even maligned, Babbitt is likely to live on after most of his critics have faded from memory. One reason Babbitt has not yet acquired the general reputation he deserves is that his central doctrines went contrary to the intellectual currents of his time. He subjected to sharp and sustained criticism dispositions on which many of his most influential contemporaries were basing their claims to moral and aesthetical sensibility. Indiscriminate benevolence toward mankind, translated into various progressive egalitarian schemes in education and politics, he viewed as a caricature of ethics and love as understood in traditional Christianity and other high religions. He insisted that a genuinely moral concern for others presupposes difficult self-discipline on the part of the bearer, and a keen awareness of both the lower and the higher potentialities in self and others. In aesthetics, Babbitt similarly went against the tide by arguing that various doctrines of lart pour lart are blind to the ultimate purpose of art. Truly great works of the imagination are such not by virtue of their intuitive coherence alone but by virtue of the moral quality of experience they convey. These and other highly inopportune themes, which were not always formulated with diplomatic tact but sometimes with sharpness, irony and ridicule, were not designed to spare him intense, emotional opposition. Babbitts ideas were the subject of much controversy in the 1920s and 30s. They often served as the focal point for criticism of the so-called New Humanism, inspired in large part by his work. This controversy involved at one time or another practically every leading figure in American literature and scholarship. Unfortunately, discussion of Babbitt was characterized more by vague generalities or vituperation than by careful and dispassionate examination of his ideas. The influence of Babbitts numerous opponents--including such men as Edmund Wilson, Joel Spingarn, R. P. Blackmur, Oscar Cargill, H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis and Ernest Hemingway--was sufficient to deny his arguments a real hearing. Because of the animosity that he and his disciples encountered, it sometimes seemed dangerous even to mention his name. Babbitt himself cautioned his students accordingly... An important reason why Babbitt has not yet received the widespread attention he deserves is that, with very few exceptions, his interpreters have not attempted a philosophical explication and assessment of his work. Babbitt was well versed in many aspects of philosophy and brought to most of his subjects the kind of comprehensiveness that is characteristic of good philosophy. Yet he was not a professional, technical philosopher... The real import of Babbitts central insights can be demonstrated by careful philosophical analysis of his work as a whole. There is a strong need to lift his thought out of the sphere of rather general discussion in which friendly and unfriendly commentators alike have placed it. The renewed and growing interest in Babbitt in recent years underscores the scholarly necessity of relating his ideas to the enduring concerns of philosophy proper... --Irving Babbitt: An Introduction, Claes G. Ryn, from Will, Imagination and Reason: Irving Babbitt and the Problem of Reality nhinet.org/babintro.htm nhinet.org/babbitt2.htm *********************************** *********************************** A Harvard French literature scholar and eccentric genius, Babbitt was heavily influenced by Edmund Burke. In the 1890s he and Paul Elmer More formulated what became The New Humanism, opposing the emotional, intuitive tenets of Naturalism and Romanticism. They instead called for classical ethics, morality, systematic reason, and universal conservative values. Novelist Sinclair Lewis denounced the New Humanists in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, having not-so-coincidentally named the narrow-minded, philistine title character of his 1922 novel “Babbitt” after Irving Babbitt. Babbitt went on to write such classic conservative works as “Democracy and Leadership” (1924). For Babbitt, the world was not a series of accidents, but had a transcendental purpose. Individuals are born with certain natural rights, which the government should protect, particularly property rights. Morals are not relative but absolute in his world. Babbitt was an educator for more than 40 years, and he believed that civilization’s most crucial act is the education of its children. As Prof. Robert C. Koons wrote of Babbitt’s idea: “All other social and political practices, whether the scope of civil liberties, the worship of gods or ideals, or the distribution of benefits and burdens, are merely the epiphenomena of the cultural ethos created by education.” newsmax/TheWire/16-great-conservative-thinkers/2013/11/18/id/537274/ *********************************** *********************************** The War of the Three Humanisms: Irving Babbitt and the Recovery of Classical Learning theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/04/war-of-three-humanisms-irving-babbitt.html
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:14:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015