Socratic Remnant” versus “Creative Democracy”
Irving Babbitt’s Anti-Deweyan Vision of Leadership
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13044581 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luke Foster (0000-0002-2742-1820, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 493-524 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Thought (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2161-1580 • E-ISSN: 2161-1599 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/721952 |
| OpenAlex | W4307326489 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
This article reimagines the role of universities in American public life today by examining two early twentieth-century critics of the research university. Both worried that the new educational system could fracture democratic society, but they drew opposite conclusions about the positive role of universities. Irving Babbitt led a New Humanist school that made the case for liberal learning as a good in itself, but one also capable of cultivating an ethic of self-restraint through the study of classical texts. This would serve to train leaders who could question democracy’s impulse for self-gratification. He fiercely criticized John Dewey, who argued that learning must be practical and experimental because truths are not received as a canon but created through living together. This article demonstrates that Babbitt’s corpus develops a unified educational and political theory for elite formation by linking Socratic psychology and the constitutional order of the United States
Aesthetics · Babbitt · Courage · Democracy · Elite · Humanism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Socratic method · Academic Freedom and Politics · Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies · Law · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology
The Revolt of the Elites
The cultural contradictions of capitalism
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Can the Great Books Serve the Common Good? Tocqueville on Aristocratic Education in a Democratic Age
Curriculum
The Popularization of Knowledge
The New Humanism
Beloved Community
Irving Babbitt
The Emergence of the American University
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |