Irving Babbitt
Encyclopedia
Irving Babbitt was an American
academic and literary critic
, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism
, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative
thought in the period between 1910 to 1930. He was a cultural critic
in the tradition of Matthew Arnold
, and a consistent opponent of romanticism
, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle
and Edmund Burke
. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism
implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions.
, and moved with his family over much of the USA while a young child. He was brought up from age 11 in Madisonville, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio
. He entered Harvard College
in 1885. On graduation in 1889 he took a post teaching classics
at the College of Montana
. After two years, he went to study in France, at the École Pratique des Hautes-études linked to the Sorbonne
. There he studied Pali literature
and Buddhism
, for a year. Then he took a master's degree at Harvard, including Sanskrit
.
At this point, he moved away from a career as a classical scholar
, taking a teaching position at Williams College
in romance languages — just for one year, as it turned out. He then was offered in 1894 an instructor's position, again at Harvard, in French. He was to stay at Harvard, rising from the ranks to become a full professor of French literature
in 1912. He is credited with introducing the study of comparative literature
there.
It was in the early 1890s that he first allied himself with Paul Elmer More
in developing the core doctrines that were to constitute New Humanism. In 1895 he gave a lecture What is Humanism?, which announced his attack on Rousseau. At the time Babbitt had switched out of classics; he would later clarify his position on the contemporary textual and philological
scholarship demanded in that area, in the Germanic tradition, as a finite task, which he was unhappy to see placed above teaching based on 'eternal' content. His ideas, and More's, were characteristically written as short pieces or essays, and later gathered into books. Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908) caused a stir, but it was assembled from writings already circulated.
He continued to publish in the same vein, often derogatory of figures from the French literature that was his avowed specialism. He also singled out Francis Bacon
, and denounced 'naturalism' and utilitarianism
. He met with increasing controversy down the years: those provoked into announcing their opposition included R. P. Blackmur
, Oscar Cargill, Ernest Hemingway
, Harold Laski
, Sinclair Lewis
, H. L. Mencken
, Joel Elias Spingarn
, Allen Tate
, and Edmund Wilson
. In the case of Mencken, at least, Babbitt gave as good as he got; he branded Mencken's writing as "intellectual vaudeville", a criticism with which posterity has had some sympathy. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1921.
He had an early influence on T. S. Eliot
, a student of his at Harvard. Eliot in his 1926 essay The Humanism of Irving Babbitt, a review of Democracy and Leadership, had become equivocal, finding Babbitt's humanism not sufficiently receptive to Christian dogma; his position vis-à-vis religion is still debated.
The identifiable figures of the New Humanist movement, besides Babbitt and More, were mostly influenced by Babbitt on a personal level and included G. R. Elliott (1883-1963), Norman Foerster (1887-1972), Frank Jewett Mather
(1868-1953), Robert Shafer (1889-1956) and Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926). Of these, Sherman moved away early, and Foerster, a star figure, later reconsidered and veered towards the New Criticism
.
More peripherally, Yvor Winters
and the Great Books
movement are supposed to have taken something from New Humanism. Scholars influenced by Babbitt include Milton Hindus, Russell Kirk
, Nathan Pusey, Peter Viereck
, Richard M. Weaver
, Claes G. Ryn
, and George Will
. A relationship has been traced between Babbitt and Gordon Keith Chalmers
, Walter Lippmann
, Louis Mercier, and Austin Warren
; claims in cases where such influence are not acknowledged are not easy to sustain, and Babbitt was known to advise against public tributes.
From a position of high prominence in the 1920s, having the effective but questionable support of The Bookman
, New Humanism experienced a drop from fashionable status after Babbitt died in 1933 and modernist and progressive currents became increasingly dominant in American intellectual, cultural and political life. By the 1940s its enemies pronounced it nearly extinct, but Babbitt continued to exercise a partly hidden influence, and a marked revival of interest was seen in the 1980s and ensuing decades. Babbitt is often name-checked in discussions on cultural conservatism
. Babitt's influence in China, which was notable in the 1930s and 40s, is again on the rise with the publication of many books by or about Babbitt.
The position of Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature was endowed by Harvard University in 1960. The National Humanities Institute
runs an Irving Babbitt Project.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
academic and literary critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism
New Humanism
New Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...
, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
thought in the period between 1910 to 1930. He was a cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
in the tradition of Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
, and a consistent opponent of romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
and Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions.
Biography
He was born in Dayton, OhioDayton, Ohio
Dayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...
, and moved with his family over much of the USA while a young child. He was brought up from age 11 in Madisonville, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
. He entered Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
in 1885. On graduation in 1889 he took a post teaching classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
at the College of Montana
College of Montana
The College of Montana was a private liberal arts college that existed in Deer Lodge, Montana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1878 as the "Montana Collegiate Institute," the school was the first institution of higher learning in Montana. The College of Montana name was...
. After two years, he went to study in France, at the École Pratique des Hautes-études linked to the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. There he studied Pali literature
Pali literature
Pali literature is concerned mainly with Theravada Buddhism, of which Pali is the traditional language.- India :Main article: Pali CanonThe earliest and most important Pali literature constitutes the Pali Canon, the scriptures of Theravada...
and Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, for a year. Then he took a master's degree at Harvard, including Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
.
At this point, he moved away from a career as a classical scholar
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, taking a teaching position at Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
in romance languages — just for one year, as it turned out. He then was offered in 1894 an instructor's position, again at Harvard, in French. He was to stay at Harvard, rising from the ranks to become a full professor of French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
in 1912. He is credited with introducing the study of comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
there.
It was in the early 1890s that he first allied himself with Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.-Biography:More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University...
in developing the core doctrines that were to constitute New Humanism. In 1895 he gave a lecture What is Humanism?, which announced his attack on Rousseau. At the time Babbitt had switched out of classics; he would later clarify his position on the contemporary textual and philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
scholarship demanded in that area, in the Germanic tradition, as a finite task, which he was unhappy to see placed above teaching based on 'eternal' content. His ideas, and More's, were characteristically written as short pieces or essays, and later gathered into books. Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908) caused a stir, but it was assembled from writings already circulated.
He continued to publish in the same vein, often derogatory of figures from the French literature that was his avowed specialism. He also singled out Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
, and denounced 'naturalism' and utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
. He met with increasing controversy down the years: those provoked into announcing their opposition included R. P. Blackmur
R. P. Blackmur
Richard Palmer Blackmur was an American literary critic and poet. He was born and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. An autodidact, Blackmur worked in a bookshop after graduating from high school, and attended lectures at Harvard University without enrolling...
, Oscar Cargill, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
, Joel Elias Spingarn
Joel Elias Spingarn
Joel Elias Spingarn was an American educator, literary critic, and civil rights activist.-Biography:Spingarn was born in New York City to a well-to-do family. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895...
, Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, and Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
. In the case of Mencken, at least, Babbitt gave as good as he got; he branded Mencken's writing as "intellectual vaudeville", a criticism with which posterity has had some sympathy. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1921.
He had an early influence on T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, a student of his at Harvard. Eliot in his 1926 essay The Humanism of Irving Babbitt, a review of Democracy and Leadership, had become equivocal, finding Babbitt's humanism not sufficiently receptive to Christian dogma; his position vis-à-vis religion is still debated.
The identifiable figures of the New Humanist movement, besides Babbitt and More, were mostly influenced by Babbitt on a personal level and included G. R. Elliott (1883-1963), Norman Foerster (1887-1972), Frank Jewett Mather
Frank Jewett Mather
Frank Jewett Mather was an American art critic and professor.He was born at Deep River, Conn., and graduated from Williams College in 1889 and from Johns Hopkins in 1892: he studied also at Berlin and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris...
(1868-1953), Robert Shafer (1889-1956) and Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926). Of these, Sherman moved away early, and Foerster, a star figure, later reconsidered and veered towards the New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
.
More peripherally, Yvor Winters
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters was an American poet and literary critic.-As modernist:Winters's early poetry, which appeared in small avant-garde magazines alongside work by writers like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, was written in the modernist idiom, and was heavily influenced both by Native American...
and the Great Books
Great Books
Great Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
movement are supposed to have taken something from New Humanism. Scholars influenced by Babbitt include Milton Hindus, Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
, Nathan Pusey, Peter Viereck
Peter Viereck
Peter Robert Edwin Viereck , was an American poet and political thinker, as well as a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College for five decades.-Background:...
, Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
, Claes G. Ryn
Claes G. Ryn
Dr. Claes Gösta Ryn is a Swedish-born, American academic and educator.-Background:Ryn was born and raised in Norrköping in Sweden. He attended the Latin Gymnasium, Norrköpings Högre Allmänna Läroverk' . He was an undergraduate and a doctoral student at Uppsala University...
, and George Will
George Will
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...
. A relationship has been traced between Babbitt and Gordon Keith Chalmers
Gordon Keith Chalmers
Gordon Keith Chalmers was a scholar of seventeenth century English thought and letters, president of Rockford College and Kenyon College, and a national leader in American higher education.-Early life and education:The son of Wiliam Everett Chalmers and his wife Mary Dunklee Maynard, Gordon...
, Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
, Louis Mercier, and Austin Warren
Austin Warren
Austin Warren was an American literary critic, author, and professor of English.-Childhood and Education:...
; claims in cases where such influence are not acknowledged are not easy to sustain, and Babbitt was known to advise against public tributes.
From a position of high prominence in the 1920s, having the effective but questionable support of The Bookman
The Bookman (New York)
The Bookman was a literary journal established in 1895 by Dodd, Mead and Company. It drew its name from the phrase, "I am a Bookman," by James Russell Lowell; the phrase regularly appeared on the cover and title page of the bound edition. It was purchased in 1918 by the George H. Doran Company. In...
, New Humanism experienced a drop from fashionable status after Babbitt died in 1933 and modernist and progressive currents became increasingly dominant in American intellectual, cultural and political life. By the 1940s its enemies pronounced it nearly extinct, but Babbitt continued to exercise a partly hidden influence, and a marked revival of interest was seen in the 1980s and ensuing decades. Babbitt is often name-checked in discussions on cultural conservatism
Cultural conservatism
Cultural conservatism is described as the preservation of the heritage of one nation, or of a shared culture that is not defined by national boundaries. Other variants of cultural conservatism are concerned with culture attached to a given language such as Arabic.The shared culture may be as...
. Babitt's influence in China, which was notable in the 1930s and 40s, is again on the rise with the publication of many books by or about Babbitt.
The position of Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature was endowed by Harvard University in 1960. The National Humanities Institute
National Humanities Institute
The National Humanities Institute is a nonprofit interdisciplinary educational organization founded in 1984. It is known to be affiliated with traditionalist conservatism.It publishes Humanitas and the Epistulae Occasional Papers....
runs an Irving Babbitt Project.
Works
- Literature and the American College (1908)
- The New Laokoön (1910)
- The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912)
- Rousseau and Romanticism (1919)
- Democracy and Leadership (1924)
- On Being Creative (1932)
- The DhammapadaDhammapadaThe Dhammapada is a versified Buddhist scripture traditionally ascribed to the Buddha himself. It is one of the best-known texts from the Theravada canon....
(1936) translator, with essay - Spanish Character, and other essays (1940) reprinted as Character & Culture: Essays on East and West
- Representative Writings (ed. George A. Panichas, 1981),
External links
- Papers of Irving Babbitt : an inventory (Harvard University Archives)
- Irving Babbitt Project (National Humanities Institute)