Rousseau and Romanticism

by Irving Babbitt

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1919. Not illustrated. ... CHAPTER IV ROMANTIC THE IDEAL The period that began in the late eighteenth century and in the midst of which we are still living has witnessed an almost unparalleled triumph, as I have just said, of the sense of the individual (sens propre) over the general sense of mankind (sens commuri). Even the collectivistic schemes that have been opposed to individualism during this period are themselves, judged by traditional standards, violently individualistic. Now the word individualr jsna needs as much as any other general term to be treated we need in the interests of our present subject to discriminate between different varieties of individualism. Perhaps as good a working classification as any is to distinguish three main a man may wish to act, or think, or feel, differently from other men, and those who are individualistic in any one of these three main ways may have very little in common with one another. To illustrate concretely, Milton's plea in his "Areopagitica" for freedom of conscience makes above all for individualism of action. (La foi qui n'agit pas estrce unefoi sincere ?) Pierre Bayle, on the other hand, pleads in his Dictionary and elsewhere for tolerance, not so much because he wishes to act or feel in his own way as because he wishes to think his own thoughts. Rousseau is no less obviously ready to subordinate both thought and action to sensibility. His message is summed up once for all in the exclamation of Faust, "Feeling is all." He urges war on the general sense only because of the restrictions it imposes on the free expansion of his emotions and the enhancing of these emotions by his imagination. Now the warfare that Rousseau and the individualists of feeling have waged on the general sense has meant in pract...

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Romanticism, Criticism

Paperback

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

New humanism movement of American scholar Irving Babbitt sought to revive interest in classical virtues in literary criticism.

Irving Babbitt, a noted academic, in his role from 1910 founded a known, significant influence on discussion and conservative thought in the period. He in the cultural tradition of Matthew Arnold consistently opposed romanticism, as the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau represented. Politically, he without serious distortion followed Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He advocated and offered an ecumenical defense of religion. He implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_B...

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great Amherst College professor Theodore Baird, my first Shakespere teacher and my correspondent for thirty years, told how going from Hobart to Harvard--taking Shakespeare with Kittredge--the "only intellectual argument" in the graduate school was between John Livingston Lowes (the Road to Xnadu) and Irving Babbit, who found Romanticism responsible for the decline of civilization. In his intro, Babbit says, "the total tendency of the Occident at present is away from, rather than toward civilization"(1919 ed, p.x). In a point pertinent now, "establishing a sound type of individualism is indeed the specifically modern problem"--and I would add a century later, the specifically American problem, since we are awash with weapons and massacres, and our constitution guarantees that we wear targets on our backs. (We should insist gun-owners take out insurance, as we do for also deadly cars, and they should wear real targets, as the rest of us wear metaphorical ones.)
Matthew Arnold and Renan meant by the "modern spirit" the critical spirit that refuses to take things on authority: this creates an emergency, the break from the past. Those supporting the modern spirit have tended to deny the duality of human nature that Christianity holds. Moreover, "Perhaps the most pernicious of the conceits fostered by the type of progress we owe to science is the conceit that we have outgrown this older experience."(xviii) Having outgrown older experience is a common American idea, nearly universal.
"Romantic" focuses on the wonderful rather than the probable, while "classic" on something not unique, representative of a class. "The uncultivated human imagination in all times and places is romantic in the same way. It hungers for the thrilling and marvellous, and is, in short, incurably melodramatic. All children...and most men ...probably always will be romantic." Looking at American film, the superheroes, the melodramatic conflicts, appealing to teens ("children") who are the only dependable film-goers: the "uncultivated...hunger for the thrilling and marvellous"(5).
Rousseau was the first to use the term, "creative imagination" in remarking on his erotic fantasies (Les Confessions, Bk IX). "Illusion" involves "imagination," a fairly recent notion: A world of imagination would be called by a Hindu, the World as Illusion (māyā), or by Aristotle, the World as Fiction.
Goethe said art gives the "illusion of higher reality." And Voltaire said thet "illusion is queen of the human heart" (42). The Wordsworthian/ Romantic desire for the simple life, Santayana denied to most people: "Nothing is farther from the common people than the corrupt desire to be primitive." Horace's ironic poem on the joys of the simple life is spoken by the old usurer Alfinus, who at the end puts out his money again" (77).
Rousseauistic individualism, in effect, wars against both classical and Christian traditions. Babbit sees the Renaissance as the breaking away of man, and the critical spirit, from theological restraint, which saw human nature as bankrupt. The later Renaissance finally arrived at what might be called the "Jesuitical comprimise": the Church consented to make religion easier, less ascetic. One could live inwardly on the naturalistic level while outwardly going through the motions of a profound piety.
There is an unmistakeable analogy between the hollowness of a religion of this type and the hollowness one feels in so much neo-classical decorum. The Jesuitical system is in all respects so ingenious, and in some respects so admirable: the Greek and Latin classics are taught in such a way as to become literary playthings rather than the basis, a philosophy of life-- a humanism that is external and rhetorical rather than vital, combined with a religion that tends to stress submission to outer authority at the expense of inwardness and individuality. (118)
Babbit's fine point on Rousseau's "Discours sur les Sciences": "If man had not been so heartened by scientifc progress they would have been less ready...to listen to Rousseau when he affirmed that they were naturally good" (122). Rousseau virtually denies the struggle of good and evil, sees evil as the impositions of society; he minimizes moral struggle and choice, and drifts toward naturalistic fatalism.(Ch V)
(By the way, Babbit sees Christian "humility" as an expression of the deterioration of the Roman Empire.)
Rousseau's idealism meets a particular craving in the "psychology of the half-educated man": the "half-educated man is incurably restless, filled with every manner of desire. In contrast, the uneducated and the cultivated both share a few simple desires, like Socrates.
The romantic object is elusive, because it is not strictly an object at all but "a dalliance of the imagination with its own dream: Cats, says Rivarol, do not caress us; they caress themselves upon us. Cats suffer from what the new realist calls the egocentric predicament*, but they can hardly vie in the involutions of their egotism with the Romantic lover.(225)
Babbit concludes, "It is not easy to take such...universal dreamig seriously. In the long run, the dreamer himself [may not]. His attempts to live his chimera result, as we have seen in the case of romantic love, in more or less disastrous disillusion and defeat. The disillusioned romanticist continues to cling to his dream, but intellectually he often stands aloof from it."(239)
To conclude with Bourget, where B started: "All those who took the romantic promises at their face value rolled in abysses of despair and ennui.."(xvi, from Bourget's Essais de Psychologie)

* This sounds so much like my great friend and author of the Romantic Sublime, Tom Weiskel, the heroic parodist in my latest book, Parodies Lost.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, and imminently thought provoking. This is my third time through, and each time I find new insight. We are presently living through the repercussions of believing the tenets that were first espoused during the dawn of the Romantic Age. Rousseau's mistakes have echoed down through centuries of time and have left us a legacy of brilliant works of art and literature, but also fascism, the Holocaust, moral relativism and rebellion. If you want to understand the modern mindset--the philosophy of modern time--then you must read this book. Then heed Babbitt's plea for a return to saner, classicist values.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too conservative for my taste; I plan to read Lytton Strachey's book on Rousseau next for a different perspective.

[T.R. Flâneuse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prolix but comprehensive and thoughtful. Chapter 1 defines "classic" and "romantic" and sets the book's tone, which I would describe as scholastic but not pedantic. I have the 1919 version which adds a certain sensory joy to reading this book. Replete with historical references and quotations, it is the kind of book I like to read with a notebook and pen nearby. Chapter 2, "Romantic Genius," discusses the word views of Voltaire and Rousseau. If you've read/listened to Terence McKenna, many of the ideas in this chapter are redolent of what he calls the "archaic revival" - only situated in terms of literature and scientific development. Chapter 3 discusses the "Romantic Imagination" and honestly, I was lost. As a lay reader, the sheer number of unfamiliar references was enough to make me want to toss my notebook and quit. A better-read individual would likely be less intimidated. However, Chapter 4, which covers "Romantic Morality" is a joy to read. This is as far as I've gotten so far. I hope to update this review once/if time permits.

[Coyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Babbitt's greatest work. Well-written, but repetitive and sonorous. Especially for those who've read Democracy and Leadership, which is a far superior book. Babbitt should be read, but not this volume.

[Jonathan]

None

[S]

I read a snippet of this. What I read was superbly written and had no end of beautiful quotations. Certainly a work about a poem can be a poem in itself.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

more than 5 stars are deserved!