The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914

Rating:
Summary: Crisis of Narrative
Review: This book is a part of the Yale Intellectual History of the West series, edited by J. W. Burrow, William Bouwsma, and Frank M. Turner. I bought this book in search of a contemporary synthesis for the period in question: 1848-1914. I wanted to learn more about the influence of such individuals as Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx.

What I discovered, contrary to the alluring blurbs on the back of the book, was nearly impenetrable. I could not identify an argument from page to page, let alone a thesis for entire chapters. The author occasionally makes interesting pairings of individuals to discuss (Bakunin and Wagner, for instance) or statements about this or that, but the overall effect is frustratingly fragmentary and at times superficial. The latter is particularly in evidence in the author's coverage of Darwin and evolution. Having just read Gertrude Himmelfarb's Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (a masterwork of intellectual history), I wanted to place those particular ideas in a wider context. But Burrow gives them short shrift, devoting only a few pages to them.

I could forgive this shortcoming if it were limited to Darwin, but other heavyweights of the period receive the same abbreviated treatment. Although the author imparts a great deal of knowledge about lesser figures of the period, he seems unwilling to devote more attention to certain key individuals. I did not detect that this choice was dictated by some post-modern egalitarianism or equivalency, but I could not detect any coherence in the narrative, either.

It could be that I am not the intended reader for this book. The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement concluded that the book was "for people who know about Taine and Renan, have heard of Virchow and Helmholtz, but have no idea that Johann Muller's laboratory in Berlin was 'an intellectual power-house of the mid-century.'" That description excludes me (a zero score), but if this book turns off an avid reader of the TLS (and an admirer of intellectual historians such as Crane Brinton and Arthur Lovejoy), it may only be appropriate for academic historians.

Those who are undeterred or unintimidated will still undoubtedly benefit from the book's decent index.