Evaluates the conceptual novelty and disciplinary trajectory of 18th-century thought, emphasizing the pervasiveness of reason. In contrast to the Renaissance concern for maths-based systems, the Enlightenment sought for approaches to accommodate continuous, scientific progress. Descartes and Newton exemplified the former, while the French philosophes represented the latter, as they were responsible for introducing systemic analysis to philosophic thinking. Leibniz bridges this gap, due to his theory of entities (monads) in an ever-becoming status. Lessing, the poet, emerges the author’s final hero for adding to rationalism’s perfunctory analysis an endemic creative power. Deeply exploring concepts across many fields — science, religion, statecraft, psychology, aesthetics — this is a first-rate history of ideas.
Book abstracts
16. Himmelfarb, Roads to Modernity (23 Oct 2016)
British thinkers following in the footsteps of Locke and Hume — Berkeley, Hutcheson, Gibbon, Smith joined by Burke and Wesley — were the Enlightenment’s first and foremost cohort, seeking to elaborate social compassion, benevolence, and sympathy. Where the French philosophes concentrated on the ‘ideology of reason’, born of universally applying the systems of Newton and Descartes to society’s structure and pursuits, and the American Founding Fathers on equitable political liberty, the British sought new precepts for a gentler, more virtuous society. These moral philosophers ‘posited a moral sentiment in man as the basis of the social virtues’. Himmelfarb places a major emphasis on Methodism (as an offshoot of the Anglican Church) and Dissent. Burke’s role was to take the British approach further, ‘by making the “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” of men the basis of society itself, and, ultimately, of the polity as well’.
17. Himmelfarb, The New History and the Old (6 Nov 2016)
Essays criticizing the theoretical basis and methodology of ‘new history’, including social history, psychohistory, quantification, and work driven by socialist theory. Each violates the principle of deriving explanations of the past from its base of evidence. The social sciences, whatever their merits, are often unsuitable for considering the ‘things that really matter’ to a given topic. The opening chapters on social history (e.g., Annalisme) and socialist history are most persuasive, as there are several decades of output to evaluate. Interesting but inconclusive discussion of the idea of progress, which takes the reader toward the territory of philosophy of history.
18. Elton, The Practice of History (17 Nov 2016)
History exists distinct of the social sciences because it treats of particular people and events as they have changed over periods of time. The purpose of assessing dynamics is unlike disciplines which seeks to draw conclusions, even laws, from a static, measurable state of affairs. Further, the study of history is its own end, toward the understanding of what happened, rather than any analog or determinant of future events. History is rarely settled because new evidence appears and new ways of conceiving problems are formulated. But history is never relative: the past is dead. It is not the problems studied nor lessons learned but intellectual rigor of assessing evidence and explication that distinguishes the practitioner and the output. Evidence itself can never fulfill the job; while one must gather all he can, one must also criticize (evaluate) its contents and use imagination (investigative thinking) to assess the gaps and the misdirection. While there is a place for description and analysis, narrative is the highest form of the craft; the format will often be suggested by the problem.
19. Turner, The Frontier in American History (6 Dec 2016)
The American frontier was settled by rough-hewn individuals and families migrating in search of the best free land to homestead, wanting to get away from coastal or regional elites. Settlement typically created a new type of American, as descendants of Puritan New England, Germans from Pennsylvania, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from the Piedmont South merged together into communities which were helpful to one another, but ultimately individualists who did not much trust government. Jacksonian democracy, with its eponymous hero, was its first political expression. Settlement of the old Northwest and Midwest of the country — roughly, Big 10 country — was the most significant phase as the region first tipped the balance between north and south toward the free soil, then produced the greatest generals and politicians (including Lincoln) of the age, and finally yielded the great resources for America’s industrial rise. Interestingly, the far Great Lakes and upper plains states (eg, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas) were often heavily peopled by immigrants — Germans and Scandinavians. Free land served as a natural outlet for low-wage earner of the cities. By the time the frontier closed in 1890, the migrants had switched to favoring government intervention to protect individuals from the economic power of consolidating industrialists. Another important outlet was the Midwest’s rise of the state university, to cultivate the talents of the new citizen.
20. Richards, A Game for Hooligans (16 Dec 2016)
Surveys elite-level rugby union from the 1860s to the 2007 World Cup. Most attuned to competitive outcomes, the author elaborates the impact of law changes, regional distinctions and trends, and even socioeconomic influences but declines to articulate a superordinate narrative. For example, while amateurism’s distortions figure in most in the work, the storyline seemingly forgets the old code as it portrays the new features of an overly professional game. This may be conscious decision: to present a more encompassing theory might have forced Richards into a history of World Rugby (nee International Board), which would be far more difficult to research, probably less interesting, and certainly exclusive of the majority. Although diligently touching base on emerging countries, there are omissions of the Pan American and Pacific Rim tournaments, plus the sign-off misses the growth of the Olympic version, seven-a-side. A very useful bibliography.
1. Beer, To Make a Nation (7 Jan 2017)
The origin of American federalism lays in the English Commonwealth, specifically the work of John Milton and James Harrington. The latter’s
- Oceana
most completely broke from the hierarchic, corporate views embodied in Thomas Aquinas and carried on up through the aristocratic Edmund Burke (the work’s antihero). Colonial- and Revolutionary-era Americans faced the task of justifying an expansive republic governed by popular sovereignty, in contradistinction to the classical small republic (as advocated by Montesquieu) or parliamentary sovereignty. Here James Madison and then James Wilson come to the fore, the former for overturning the prejudice against small states by asserting conflict rationally resolved prevents tyranny of the majority, and the later (the unexpected hero) for explaining how the people would come to love their federal government. Ben Franklin also is to be admired; Alexander Hamilton is slighted. The work is particularly strong in showing how the people are simultaneously to be in control of and benefit from the administration of government; but there is ever the hint of viewing the Constitution as a ‘living’ document, which would seem to unsettle all of its theoretical underpinnings and equipoise.
2. Shapton, Swimming Studies (22 Jan 2017)
A wistful, ‘pointillist’ review of the author’s competitive swimming, applying her conclusions to her aspects of her artistic and publishing career. There are shrewd insights, such as athletes train through injury because only training makes them forget they are hurt, and glimpses of why athletic performance inspires spectators. Yet the author never articulates why she thinks she wasn’t good enough, or why she peaked in 1988 (having returned to compete in 1992). Further, although swimming clearly remains important, judging from the number of European swimming and bathing facilities she’s continued to visit, presented in a series of prints, or her suit collection, it’s unclear why she disdains to train for simple fitness or to consider open water competition. Separately, many promising anecdotes end too abruptly, more stylish than insightful. Still, the book is revealing and bracing change from ghostwritten superstar monographs.
3. Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (20 Feb 2017)
Examines the expansion of democratic government since the French Revolutions and evaluates reasons for its decay. Building on
-
Origins of Political Order
, Fukuyama shows how the sequencing of a strong (capable) state machinery, rule of law, and accountability influence the course of progress toward democracy and also national history, contrasting the US, an earlier adopter of manhood suffrage without developed machinery, Italy (machinery suffused with ‘partrimonialism’), and Germany (lack of accountability). Although Britain extended the franchise relatively late, its strong rule of law and accountability gave it a more credible democratic government than clientelistic America, which conquered the problem only with the rise of Progressivism, heralded by Pinchot’s Forest Service(!). After reviewing the influence of geography and economics (e.g., natural resources), the author turns to democratic governance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Fukuyama remains an advocate of Asia’s strong state model, even though few countries have reached full democracy. Then comes corruption in democracies, and recidivism. The final chapters consider the possibilities of America’s surmounting its rule-bound bureaucracy and ‘repatrimonialism’. Because he contends that ideas are products of events, Fukuyama continues to overlook ancient Greece, even though America’s founding fathers staked much of their thinking on classical political thought. Another thorough work, evidencing the same teleological shortcomings.
4. Kagan, Peloponnesian War (18 Mar 2017)
The Peloponnesian War ended an era of sociopolitical progress. Sparta’s defeat of Athens discredited democratic government as well as a flourishing art and culture: the war’s barbarism prompted the relapse of Greek civilization. Kagan extends beyond retelling Thucydides’s master work by incorporating the findings of modern scholars, or synthesizing the greater, more prominent controversies. Left to the reader’s judgement are the related questions of how Pericles strategy of outlasting Sparta through civic sacrifice could have been improved, and how two ideologically opposed powers on a collision course can coexist?