Rousseau and Romanticism (The Library of Conservative Thought)

Rating:
Summary: THE FINAL WORD ON ROUSSEAU
Review: THIS IS A CLASSIC AND NO ONE SEES ROUSSEAU MORE CLEARLY THAN IRVING BABBITT.

Rating:
Summary: Two Hearts
Review: Writing during America's Gilded Age, Babbitt believed that the dynamic between impulse and restraint was not only moving too far toward impulse but that elevation of impulse itself was being turned into a sham religion. It was becoming increasingly popular to believe that one needed only to follow the desires of one's own heart to find happiness, or to expresses pity or sympathy or an indiscriminate love of all mankind to be considered a moral person. These views could be found throughout the work of Rousseau, who declared man essentially good, and it was against Rousseau and certain strains of romanticism that Babbitt wrote this book.

Drawing on classical, Christian, and Buddhist sources, Babbitt offered the notion of a 'second heart' which kept in check man's more destructive impulses. He believed that the conviction of man's essential goodness impeded the classical quest for self knowledge and self-discipline because it erased the notion of man's duality, the reality that his heart contained both good and evil. If every desire were good, after all, there was no need for moral reflection, improvement, or analysis of one's behavior, or for that matter law or restraint of any kind. For Babbitt, happiness and morality were bound up with reflection and ethical action; one judged a life by its fruits. Although the fruits of the romantic movement included much fine poetry, it also included much violence, despair, and suicide, which were proof enough to examine carefully its actions and admonitions.

The book reveals its age in the chapter on romantic melancholy, which today we would call clinical depression. As an exponent of mind over matter, Babbitt believed 'melancholy' was merely another example of moral evasion and weak will. He lived before medical science proved that melancholy was an organic illness, not a part of any philosophical movement. These discoveries in biology and chemistry, moreover, would reinforce rather than refute the classical self-scrutiny of which he approved. The admonition to know thyself naturally encompassed psychiatry and any other field which could shed light on man's nature and behavior.

The reader will have no trouble locating in today's world examples of the expansive instinct and the dream of limitless desires, even without Babbitt's many literary allusions. The affirmation of personal responsibility against selfishness and narcissism is a tale as old as mankind and therefore always worthy of consideration. Neglect of Babbitt, then, with his focus on the central issues of life, has persisted for too long. He was an immensely learned scholar, distinctly American, with a wide-ranging intelligence, who synthesized his learning in surprisingly plain, accessible prose. One can agree or disagree with Babbitt, but any time spent with his work encourages in the reader a fruitful dialectic.