Extract
Irving Babbitt and cultural renewal.
It is tempting to think of Irving Babbitt as a voice crying in the wilderness, a lonely prophet attempting the impossible task of reversing the course of history. Such a view of Babbitt has the bonus of imputing a special virtue to those few, like ourselves, who are able to appreciate his real importance. Indeed, to think of Babbitt in this way is not entirely wrong--he did take unpopular stands, and he did oppose what he saw as the dominant trends of modern thought, Baconian naturalism and Rousseauian romanticism. Attractive though such a view might be, however, it should be rejected. Babbitt himself was uninterested in the consolations of defeat. The romance of the Lost Cause was not for him. Though he was unsparing in his criticism of the laxities of American culture, Irving Babbitt was unwilling to concede that contemporaries like John Dewey were somehow more "American" than he. When American "progressives" looked to Jefferson for inspiration, Babbitt turned to George Washington. (1) When American cultural radicals took Emerson as their hero, Babbitt claimed the Emerson who knew that the "law for man" was not identical with the "law for thing." (2) Shrewdly criticizing Whitman's "democratic vistas" not for their affirmation of democracy ...
See the full content of this document
