The Plastic Nietzsche, Part V: A Serial Review of Ratner-Rosenhagen's American Nietzsche

Prior Entries: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

After four installments wherein I evaluated the criticisms and praise of others in relation to American Nietzsche, I am now ready to hazard my own commentary, concerns, and questions.Today's entry deals with questions and criticism more than praise, but the latter will appear in my last entry. [Note: Minor editing corrections were made to this post 9:00 am CST]

In the first installment of this series I asserted that the book is "an indispensable companion for intellectual historians who need to think through their works' relationships to Nietzsche's life and writings." It was a sense I had immediately after my reading, and that feeling was confirmed, for the most part, by the other reviews. But this thesis is not a hard one to defend even without reference to the Nietzsche scholarship. How? Ratner-Rosenhagen's book is the first intellectual history to systematically work through the reception of Nietzsche among all types of thinking Americans. It's one of a kind.

Beyond that, however, I believe that future studies of Nietzsche will have to go through American Nietzsche for other reasons. I noted in my first entry that "our reception of Nietzsche, over various time periods, measures our receptiveness to the contradictions, problems, and possibilities of democracy." That last part is the key. Ratner-Rosenhagen is concerned with Nietzsche in relation to how democratic culture is structured and maintained in a modern world that occasionally needs interventions by authorities. This involves thinking about religion, philosophy, ethics, secularism, technology, popular culture, cultural life, diversity, how people identify with society, and, ultimately, how people relate to each other.  

Despite a review thesis that is not hard to defend, and perhaps overly laudatory, there are many questions one can ask in relation to the topics just enumerated. My first questions came up in relation to religion, in particular in relation to Catholicism and its status as a transnational entity.


For starters, what of Nietzsche by way of those Europeans whose writings were popular in America, people like G.K. Chesterton, who was highly critical of Nietzsche and Nietzscheans? Chesterton was the public enemy of George Bernard Shaw, a popularizer of the Ubermensch and directly referenced in American Nietzsche (pp. 112-113, 117). Along with Chesterton one might also look at the popularity of Hillaire Belloc or Etienne Gilson in relation to Nietzsche. As you can see, my point pertains particularly to Catholics, especially European Catholics who received attention in the United States from both conservative/traditionalist and liberal wings of the faith. The popular figures I mention above could have been addressed in chapter two, where Catholics are already covered (pp.80-87). In those passages Ratner-Rosenhagen focuses on Maude D. Petre (who used Nietzsche positivelyl), but also eventually includes Joseph B. Jacobi (anti-Nietzsche usage), and James Martin Gillis (anti-Nietzsche usage). This attention to Petre's articulate, engaging, but dissenting minority views detract from the story of how other figures ("most American Catholics" Ratner-Rosenhagen confesses) controlled the dialogue in Catholic circles. Those figures were indeed troubled by Nietzsche's antifoundationalist thinking. The attention to Petre also ignores the question of whether she was responding to an already established, typical Catholic interpretation of Nietzsche.

My sense is that coverage of figures like Chesterton, Belloc, and Gilson would enrich the story of "scary Nietzsche", the bugaboo of traditionalist Christians. This is the Nietzsche who did not merely observe Western problems and decay, but was believed to be more than a messenger---indeed a source of decay and corruption. Covering this topic adds to both the transnational and American stories. It also raises interesting questions. What was the first Catholic reaction to Nietzsche? From whom did it arise, theologians, a particular order, or lay people? Why? When did it reach the U.S.? To what extent are Catholic thinkers still afraid of Nietzsche? Perhaps this topic was too big and complicated for American Nietzsche. If so, then I see need for another study.

A book that could have helped Ratner-Rosenhagen make deeper connections with the American Catholic intellectual scene is Jay P. Corrin's Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (2002, and here's a review by S-USIH friend Kevin Schultz). Neither Maude Petre nor Nietzsche are prominent in the text (one mention each, I think), but Ratner-Rosenhagen could have used Corrin to triangulate, to enrich, her narrative of American Catholic views of Nietzsche. As for Chesterton and Nietzsche, numerous books and articles outline their "relationship" and provide opportunities to connect both to American Catholic audiences.

My next question about American Nietzsche moves away from religion and toward subject's status in American popular culture---his place as an icon. The question also borders on nit-picking. Given the importance of embodied ideas and Nietzsche's persona, well-established in the text (pp. 51-67), why is one of the more important "iconographic" images of Nietzsche, head supported by fist (right, from 1882, mentioned on p. 52), not in the book? Why the one 1882 photograph and not the other? Given the importance of how Nietzsche was imported to America, and perhaps oversold to Americans, the reader must be given all the images seen by Americans that the author feels is relevant. The omission was likely the result of a licensing problem, but that probably should have been mentioned in a note. The assertion of importance in the text requires some explanation.


Related to Nietzsche's persona, how did the culture industry, discussed (on pp. 231-33) but not applied to Nietzsche, fit into the picture? Is Nietzsche yet another case of a capitalism subsuming the current culture of cool? What of Nietzsche as a marketing phenomenon? Perhaps Ratner-Rosenhagen felt this was beyond the scope of the book? An example of where this topic could have been useful is in relation to H.L. Mencken. Being the consummate newspaper man and self-promoter, perhaps he oversold his story of Nietzsche in relation to his own industrious cultural criticism. A plastic Nietzsche would be convenient to a creative critic looking to mold an exotic character to his own ends.

Thinking more about Nietzsche's reception, what of his writing style? It would seem that a full accounting of readers' response must include some assessment of his mode of writing. I wonder if a concentrated discussion of that topic is needed early in the book. Several provocative quotes from Nietzsche are utilized in each chapter, but is there no account of his prose style in the literature that has assessed Nietzsche's legacy? Several of those cited by Ratner-Rosenhagen discuss his style, but she leaves control of that discussion to the historical actors. What is it about his writing mode that captivated audiences? Can we separate his writing style from his ideas?

On his ideas, here I have to rebuff at least one of the reviewers (e.g. Posnock). Ratner-Rosenhagen does briefly discuss Nietzsche's beliefs and philosophy beyond the broad strokes of foundationalism and antifoundationalism. In the opening pages of chapter two (pp. 69-74), for instance, Nietzsche's thoughts on God, morality, his own legacy are addressed by Ratner-Rosenhagen. And she uses specific texts. It's all done briefly, but Nietzsche's philosophy and more specific views are there. After the Introduction, Nietzsche is largely quoted only at the start of each chapter, and then the book leaves interpretation to the authors cited within each time period. This is proof positive that you, the reader, are getting the orthodox, unorthodox, and mixed receptions of Nietzsche. The reader will, at times, long for a fact-checking of Nietzsche and be frustrated. And I have little doubt that Ratner-Rosenhagen felt and resisted this urge, at times. Her successful resistance to the urge to judge Nietzsche's readers is what makes the book. It is an, not the intellectual history of Nietzsche. This is her contribution to the literature. Do not read American Nietzsche in the hope of finding a systematic categorization of his truth claims, either with regard to Nietzsche himself or his interpreters. You will only find a "foundational Nietzsche" in the detail demanded by fellow philosophers.

Although I am fine defending Ratner-Rosenhagen's brevity in relation to explaining Nietzsche's ideas, I did desire to know more about Nietzsche's literary corpus. First, a useful, brief addition to the text might have been a 1-2 page timeline of Nietzsche's signal life events, original publication dates of his books, and, last but not least, the dates of significant English translations. Second, I believe that some very brief, focused, and non-interpretive summaries of the contents of select Nietzsche works could have helped. For instance, the Gay Science appears in the text on at least six different occasions. But the reader will know no more about the book, as a whole, at the end of American Nietzsche as he or she had at the start. So, despite my praise for Ratner-Rosenhagen's resistance of the urge to fact check and re-present everything, and her focus on Nietzsche's ideas, it would have felt more satisfactory, in spots, to have a few of those summaries. This suggestion, with the timeline, might have added 5-10 pages to the text. That is significant. But I believe it would give the reader just enough comfort with Nietzsche's writings to triangulate some of the points of reception.

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This concludes Part V of my serial review of American Nietzsche. Next week I will continue with my own criticisms, praise, and questions.

The Challenge of Catholic Thought

What studies have followed Patrick Allitt's excellent 1993 book, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics?  I admire the work of Kristin Heyer who continues to write very interesting stuff on the prophetic witness of the Catholic Church since the mid-1980s.  And there are collections of books, many of them filled with essays on law and natural law, on Catholic critiques of liberalism.  But has there been a book that takes the straight-up intellectual history approach of Allitt's volume to the period after 1983?

I ask because I am working through questions about the kind of vacuum that Richard John Neuhaus's The Naked Public Square seemed to fill.  In searching for studies that consider the infighting among Catholics in the mid-1980s and the stark difference that appeared to grow between Catholic intellectuals over issues of war and peace; poverty and wealth; and justice and rights, I have yet to find a volume that does what Allitt's did for the period from Buckley to Michael Novak.  Novak is a case in point: has there been a good study of his transition from the left to the right to the halls of political power?

I pasted a photo of John Courtney Murray in this post because it seems that all post-1945 Catholic thought touches upon his influence in moving Catholics intellectuals toward a new understanding of their relationship to the nation.  Neuhaus seemed to position himself as Murray's successor, but here again, I can't find much on this particular connection.

Like my post proposing a bibliography for the New Christian Left, I wonder if we might consider a list on either the New Catholic Right or the schism in Catholic thought.

The Catholic Mind Of Rick Santorum

While I've been engrossed in other minor matters over the past few days, I've been fascinated with the sudden rise of Rick Santorum's Republican presidential bid over the past few weeks. As a Catholic I'm supposed to be treating Santorum's campaign with respect because of his pro-life credentials, his general family values, and his espousal of subsidiarity. Although I attend to these issues and more when I evaluate my candidates, as an intellectual historian I also look at their long arc of development---the things that seem to occupy their minds and hearts as well as their public political personae. With that, today I want to meditate on the Catholic mind of Rick Santorum, as well as what one might call the "Romanization of the American culture wars." As our new contributor LD perceptively quipped at our Facebook page yesterday, "Come for the current events; stay for the history." Indeed.

One could do worse in analyzing Santorum's thinking than starting with a primary source: an essay penned by the candidate himself and published on January 20, 2012 (hat-tip to Ethan Schrum for pointing me to this). These two pieces have a lot of meat in them (both containing deeper issues on which to ruminate), but I'm going to stick to Santorum himself today. What follows is an interlinear, but non-exhaustive, breakdown of the ten-paragraph piece (links, bolds, and underlines mine):

In 1977, Peter Berger and the late Richard John Neuhaus published a now-famous essay, “To Empower People,” which argued that “mediating structures” such as family, church, charities, and neighborhood associations are essential for a healthy civil society.* I entirely agree, and as those who have followed my career will know, I attempted to develop these ideas throughout my time in the United States Senate and in my own 2005 book, It Takes a Family. I believe passionately that the family is the basic building block of society, and that in contrast to President Obama’s immense sums of borrowed money being spent on entitlement programs and his undermining of charities and religious liberty, we can and must do far better—here in South Carolina and throughout the country.

Neuhaus is of course famous for many things, not the least for being a confidant of, or at least an inspiration to, President George W. Bush. Here Santorum is trying to go a little deeper---trying to capture something of the spirit Tocqueville observed about American society. The first sentence of this piece, however, has been cribbed from the publisher's blurb for a collection of essays edited by Michael Novak titled To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (not coincidentally promoted at the American Enterprise Institute's website). As a post-World War II emigrant intellectual from Austria, Berger is someone who ought to get more attention here at USIH, especially since James Davison Hunter was apparently one of Berger's students.

My problem with this paragraph is its maxim that "the family is the basic building block of society." It's true---as far is it goes---and Catholics return to this principal over and over again, but many treat it as if it's the end of the story. Even conservatives, especially politicians, who espouse "mediating structures" often de-emphasize those structures in favor of talking about "family values" in the context of the Culture Wars. I agree with Andrew Hartman that this talk is sincere and not merely a Republican political canard. The language captures something fundamental---that it is related to an identity crisis, instigated by own ongoing lack of adjustment to modernity, that underlays so much of the late twentieth-century's incarnation of the Culture Wars. Even so, the Catholic overlay given by Santorum, as well as by Cathoolic intellectuals, is that we can solve the question of the meaning of America by simply communicating better with our fathers (heavenly and earthly), mothers (ditto), sisters, and brothers. The rhetorical focus is on blood family and our Church-going compatriots rather than our self-made tribes, ethnic groups, and, strangely enough, larger forms of identity that bind together America as a nation. Indeed, if we followed Santorum's, Neuhaus's, and Berger's advice to an extreme, American culture would be more Balkanized and local than it already is---perhaps more than it ever was in the nineteenth century. It's this anti-globalism that differentiates Santorum from Romney as much as anything. ...Returning to the essay...

I am running for President because I believe in practical, constitutional, and limited government that respects the rights of ordinary citizens and makes room for local communities to thrive because real people who know one another support one another. In my tradition we call this the principle of subsidiarity: the idea that whenever possible, reform should happen locally because people closest to the need have the most invested in the solution. From its first day in office my presidency will restrain the overreach of Washington by giving space for civil society institutions like congregations, families, businesses, charities and community organizations to flourish—acknowledging that the kind of solidarity that exists in local communities is far stronger and more effective than taxpayer-funded subsidies from Washington bureaucrats.

Two historians, Michael Kazin and Thomas Sugrue, have tackled the issue of subsidiarity in recent pieces about Newt Gingrich, Saul Alinsky, and President Obama. Just last week I referenced those pieces (point #4) at USIH. Gingrich accidentally and indirectly denigrated subsidiarity by trashing Saul Alinsky. Apparently Gingrich was unaware of the Alinsky's links to one of the great Catholic cosmopolitan thinkers of the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain. Maritain found a way to support both subsidiarity and international human rights, while also respecting personhood and the political process. I don't foresee Santorum referencing Maritain anytime soon in campaign speeches (despite the former's enthusiasm for natural law, which as Molly Worthen reminded us does connect with Thomas Aquinas). But at least Santorum has not rhetorically ruled out the connection, the possibility, for liberal Catholics who lean right and may be unhappy with Obama.

Wikipedia offers two entries for subsidiarity---one with a kind of secular bent, and oriented toward European politics, and the other focused on the Catholic teaching of subsidiarity. I linked to the secular one in the excerpt above, but the Catholic one applies as well. Here are the first few lines from the Catholic-oriented entry:

"The principle of subsidiarity was developed by German theologian Oswald von Nell-Breuning.[2] His work influenced the social teaching of Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno and holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. Functions of government, business, and other secular activities should be as local as possible. If a complex function is carried out at a local level just as effectively as on the national level, the local level should be the one to carry out the specified function. The principle is based upon the autonomy and dignity of the human individual, and holds that all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, should be in the service of the human person."

The best discussion I've seen of Catholic subsidiarity in intellectual history is Jay Corrin's excellent transnational study, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy (Notre Dame Press, 2002). I first wrote about Corrin's book here (about two-thirds down the page), and have long had plans for an extended retrospective review. In the post you get a taste---Corrin's book receives just a summation in a single paragraph. [Two asides: (a) If someone from Notre Dame Press is reading this, get that book out in paperback! (b) On my long-planned review, I have twenty-some note cards filled, front and back, with thoughts on the book.]

Returning to Santorum...

In the last three years, the current President has added more to America’s deficit than the collective total of all prior presidents—and this comes at tremendous cost to our children and grandchildren, and it is not working. Unemployment continues to exceed the promised “8 percent” he told us his whopping $787 billion stimulus package would guarantee. But even more problematically, Mr. Obama’s policies have made far too many of us less resilient, less responsible and less free. Food stamps usage has increased by 41 percent since the President took office. More than 1 in 7 U.S. adults—and an astonishing 1 in every 4 children—today receive food stamps. The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program received billions in additional annual spending. Subsidized housing, the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) and the numbers of children born out of wedlock—are all up. As a father this breaks my heart. This should not be.

This is, to say the least, a very one-sided definition of freedom. First, it is not the assistance that makes people "less resilient, less responsible and less free." Indeed, this assertion is inconsistent with existential Christian theology and philosophy which would assert that freedom begins with a state of consciousness about one's own responsibility for her/his relationship with God. Not that Catholicism has ever been exceedingly friendly to Christian existentialism. Is there, by the way, a historical theological-philosophical study out there of Catholic existentialism, or of Soren Kierkegaard's influence on Catholic thought? My point here is that there is nothing in Catholic theology, including the principal of subsidiarity, that necessitates an inverse relationship between government assistance and less resilience, responsibility, or freedom. Only Catholic ideologues like Father Coughlin assert this absolutely.

Returning to Santorum's essay (though the intellectual returns are diminishing)...

I will address this issue of father-absence and family-strengthening head-on, because doing so makes sense both culturally and economically. Today, more than 25 million American children, at least 64% of African Americans and 36% of Hispanics, live in father-absent homes. Research tells us that low-income children without a father at home are five times more likely to remain poor. Children growing up without a dad are 2-3 times as likely to become teen parents and engage in criminal behavior: for these young people, economic realities follow cultural-relational realities, not the other way around. We need courageous fathers; that’s what moms want and America’s children need.

I'm not qualified to speak about this point in relation to social science and American intellectual history. I wonder if Santorum is working from research within the conservative tribe, by Charles Murray no less, on the so-called breakdown of the working-class male work ethic over the past 30-40 years? Anyway, it's clear that Santorum prioritizes culture over economic drivers. It's a very Catholic way of seeing the world. Santorum sees a conservative-liberal dichotomy: liberals believe that work availability engenders a work ethic, conservatives believe people are the way they are (e.g. working-class whites are now lazy and overprivileged, won't accept retraining, and jobs hence should be outsourced). But Catholic conservatives like Santorum believe that if we can change the culture, the economy will grow again. Hence conservative Catholics believe that the Culture Wars will literally pay in the long run for America. ...Returning to the essay.

As president I will support state and local funding options that strengthen marriage and support for low-income families so that dads are incentivized to support their children and be involved in their lives. I will not attempt to “transform” faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government, but will instead look to devolve resources to states, much as I did in 1996 in reforming welfare. And put wind behind the back of great charities like the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities which have been discriminated against by liberal courts, regulators, and now the Obama Administration.

So, Santorum doesn't want to make "faith-based and community organizations into bureaucratic arms of the federal government," but he'd be happy to make them arms of the state government to recreate America's Christian "moral establishment" at a more local level? He needs to read David Sehat's study of what happened when that was the case. Check out the four reviews in our round table on David's book (here, here, here, and here), as well has his response. ...Back to Santorum's essay.

The Obama Administration only makes it harder for generous Americans to help those in need, even though Obamanomics has resulted in 1 in 6 Americans being in poverty. Obama has proposed limiting deductions for charitable giving, for those Americans who are large givers which United Way estimates could cost charities between more than $4 billion a year, larger than the operating budgets of of the American Cancer Society, World Vision, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, and the American Heart Association combined. President Obama has also worked to define “religious employers” in ObamaCare so narrowly that it’s doubtful that Jesus Christ’s ministry would even qualify.

It's hard to take seriously a paragraph anchored by the incendiary political rhetoric of "Obamanomics" and "Obamacare," but I'll give it my own Catholic analysis. Whether one agrees the his reasoning or not, Santorum's political point about the religious employers-contraception debate must have had political legitimacy because the Obama administration modified their policy. I don't think it's wrong to measure that kind of legitimacy in relation to actual actions. There were many religious leaders who feared the long-term implications of religious institutions being forced to deliver health care that conflicted (potentially or really) with moral teachings. The administration therefore gave way (though some Catholic bishops, and probably Santorum, felt the administration's move is still inadequate).

Beyond that I'll make only one observation: Isn't it interesting how Santorum has made our economic and cultural situation dependent on long-range cultural and political problems (i.e. family breakdown and federal overreach), but also largely blamed those same problems on policies enacted over only three years by a Christian president who supports responsible fatherhood (and with one full year, and counting, of those policies refracted by a Republican House and gridlocked Senate)? ...Back to the essay.

Moreover, his Administration stopped Catholic Charities from their long-standing partnership with government to help women who are victims of sex trafficking because they do not support abortion, just vulnerable women being abused. Is that caring for the least of these, respecting the free exercise of religion, or is that playing to the extreme left to the detriment of women? Many on the left care more about being politically correct and imposing their agenda than caring for those with HIV or kids that need adopted. They didn’t stop there. They told a positive marriage program to help teenage girls that they could talk about marriage just not abstinence. So marriage is OK just not fidelity.

I'm not qualified to speak on either the Catholic Charities-sex trafficking or teen abstinence program issues. But I can say anecdotally that I've not seen any poll numbers that support the notion of raped and abused women being forced to keep the resultant babies. On this point abolitionist pro-lifers, Catholic and otherwise, are strongly at odds with American culture.

I was the best advocate for private sector charitable activity and giving incentives in Congress for many years, taking on those who wanted to restrict freedom and civil society, and successfully passing several provisions into law that enabled the donation of food to the hungry, good equipment to volunteer firefighter companies, and large IRA contributions to faith-based groups, education, and other charitable groups. I will continue to be an advocate for the little platoons of faithful servants who help their neighbors all around our country.

Now for the big finish...

It is time to stop rewarding bad behavior via government handouts that have unintended consequences, and to instead respect hard work, family, and local civil society institutions (like the hundreds of congregations, private hospitals, and grassroots community organizations throughout South Carolina) that make our country truly great. When the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville visited our land 200 years ago, he said that our political associations “form only a detail in the immense picture that the sum of associations presents here”—and that those associations are “essential for defending liberty from State tyranny.”

Saturday's primary election is an opportunity to send a clear message to the current president that freedom is back. We do not want a European-style welfare state; we want freedom to be neighbors to our neighbors. We want the federal government to focus on keeping us free and standing for our values and interests around the world. With your help, I will defend our country, restrain federal spending, restore the honor of marriage and family, while respecting civil society which forges local solutions to the challenges we face in America.

Line one from the first paragraph above is a standard talking point of the post-1960s New Right. It is also one of the three points from Albert O. Hirschman's 1991 book, The Rhetoric of Reaction: the perversity thesis. In a nutshell, the helpful hand of the mid-century welfare state only results in a decrease in the real welfare of the recipient via spiritual degradation. I don't get the pivot here to Tocqueville beyond the association already made above to subsidiarity. It is an anachronistic association in that Tocqueville was unaware of how voluntary associations would work in a post-industrial, globalized industrial-financial state.

I don't mean to say that references to Tocqueville in 2012 are useless, but rather that they have to be done carefully. And that care must also be used in relation to romantic medieval visions of village subsidiarity that dominated the thinking of late nineteenth-century thinkers like Chesterton, Belloc, and others who influenced early twentieth-century American Catholicism. - TL

From Traditions to Histories: Back from the Brink

[Editor's Note: Today's post is authored by William Fine, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown - emeritus. It responds to a forum in the January 2011 issue of Historically Speaking titled "From Histories to Traditions: A New Paradigm of Pluralism in the Study of the Past." The lead-off piece is authored by Christopher Shannon, with three responses from Daniel Wickberg, Mark Weiner, and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, as well as a final reply from Shannon. This particular forum is part of an ongoing HS series dedicated to "questioning the assumptions of academic history." The topic was first mentioned at USIH about three weeks ago. Enjoy!]

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In "From Histories to Traditions," Christopher Shannon raises important issues about the discipline of history and where it's going. But it's difficult to see exactly what he's proposing, which generates some uncertainty and perhaps uneasiness in his interlocutors. He calls for a pluralism broader and deeper than "liberal" history, but "tradition-based history" evokes fears of orthodoxy. Does his pluralist paradigm imply a postmodern relativism, or might it presage some new catechism?

To complicate matters, while calling for a shift "from histories to traditions," Shannon draws upon Alasdair MacIntyre to characterize liberal history as already a "tradition," though denying itself as such. Like the "liberal modernity" to which it's inextricably bound, it's unwilling "to confront its true nature." While it sees itself using abstracted, value-neutral analytic practices and procedures to generate impersonal, value-free knowledge, the reality for Shannon is that history rests on mostly unexamined philosophical assumptions and moral values. Indeed, it's a holistic culture or moral community that both requires and produces particular kinds of persons deeply committed to it.

Shannon distinguishes his new pluralist paradigm from liberal history, though he admits difficulty in describing it, and indeed it's a somewhat murky concept. Because liberal history is now seen as a tradition, rather than a set of detachable, neutral analytical practices, it engages with other traditions on a deep epistemological, moral and existential level. As he puts it, a plurality of traditions "highlight[s] the substantive and incommensurable pretheoretical frameworks" used in historical study, which "put[s] historical debate on the proper footing," which is to say, the "study of history across traditions… becomes something like interfaith dialogue."

History seems to lead a double life: the liberal history "tradition" specifically, and history as a pluralistic space, a site at which diverse traditions, including liberal history, challenge one another. The latter implies not only rules of engagement, but a language that can mediate incommensurables, building on commonalities while respecting differences, fostering challenge without divisive conflict, moderating the interplay of traditions, etc. But this sounds like the old pretense of liberal rules abstracted from any cultural base. Or, if they do constitute a sort of super-tradition, at what point does it come up for critical examination? The question is, what becomes of history when it's conceived as a faith, or as a site modeled on religious dialogue? Is this a post-secular post, a great leap backward, or some weird hybrid?

If reason cannot be divorced from faith, as Shannon contends, one has to ask, whose faith? Yet some sort of answer seems to be assumed, since the "new model of professional pluralism would distinguish itself from its liberal predecessor by an explicit commitment to the pursuit of Truth -- that is, a truth beyond that which is empirically verifiable." Pluralism may have its limits, even though Shannon assures us no "grid of catechism" is to be imposed. At one point, though, responding to the concern his paradigm might imply a Babel of views, he reassures us that a "truly traditional Muslim perspective" could be excluded. Maybe "Truth" just can't be a plural.

The range of possible outcomes seems clear: utter incommunicability, conflict and fragmentation, a restricted pluralism, Truth wedded to faith, or the continuation of something much like "liberal history," perhaps with ghettoized subfields. In any case, ours is a time when many see conventional history as shallow or thin, formalistic, detached from real life and public issues, fragmented, inauthentic. One is reminded of Christopher Lasch's depiction of the late Victorian restlessness of the new intellectuals; or, indeed, the concluding paragraph of Max Weber's essay "Science as a Vocation," still the best articulation of issues of objectivity and neutrality. In this sort of milieu, tradition has great appeal -- as do similarly capacious and integrating concepts such as revolution and epochal breaks and turns. This is due in part to its totalizing or holistic character, its insistence on the inseparability, on the non-abstractable character of things -- the shallow and the deep, means and ends, technique and culture, everyday life and ultimate meaning, minutiae and fundamentals, practices and their original forms, facts and interpretive frameworks, how we're living and who we are. It provides at once the reassurance of a meaningful whole, an invitation to explore non-obvious, deep and distant connections, and an urgent raison d'etre for critical thinking.

In this holistic approach to the discipline, all facets and levels are seen tightly bound, sometimes in ways that appear quite deterministic. Neither Talcott Parsons nor Louis Althusser could do much better. The behavior of professional historians is sociologically bound to their socialization as particular kinds of persons, and an identitarian mechanism ensures that "who they are" explains their approach to history. [In Walter Benn Michaels' terms, this is identity politics with a vengeance, as issues of truth become matters of "who we are," history becomes tradition, and science turns into faith.] Analytical and research practices are meaningfully, even logically, bound to underlying values and epistemological preconceptions; and a sort of historiographic determinism explains that liberal historians invariably celebrate the progress of choice, freedom and agency. Finally, a political determination guarantees that liberal history mirrors and helps reproduce liberal modernity.

Shannon's totalizing view of the discipline gives his piece a something-for-everyone character. To Daniel Wickberg, it supports the view that history, for reasons more "practical and ideological…than intellectual," diversified its topics instead of facing up to the philosophical challenge of the linguistic turn, clinging to "the modernist certitude of fact." Like Shannon, he criticizes Gabrielle Spiegel's effort to historicize postmodernism as [in fact?] politically motivated epistemic avoidance. For Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Shannon raises important questions about the "underlying assumptions and dominating practices" of history, including its empty careerist model of identity and "interpretive exhaustion." Thus liberal history gears directly into the "meaningless" freedom-without-purpose of modern therapeutic society, which can prompt an escape from freedom into some new bondage. But she seems less concerned finally that "Catholic history" would threaten the discipline as a whole than that it would be absorbed into a "totalizing pluralism" in which fundamental debates have been replaced by each historian's freedom to choose whatever perspective "works for her" and doesn't "interfere with her lifestyle," to use the clichés.

Mark Weiner believes Shannon’s arguments can provide a “quickening agent” for liberal ends, challenging historians to articulate their core values, find out who they are, and incorporate the interpretive and stylistic approaches of a wider diversity of traditions, including non-western. Here is an improved liberalism that recalls and updates Raymond Williams’ sense of culture as a critique of bourgeois society. At the same time¸ even as they criticize liberal history, none of the articles question the market model of history as a profession, rendering it a microcosm of liberal modernity. This may both assume and give away too much, foreclosing possibilities for critical thinking.

Of the possible outcomes, continuation of something approximating "liberal history" appears most likely, short of utter societal collapse. Over the last hundred years, history has faced challenges that strike at the foundations, which it has dealt with or sidestepped in one way or another, wobbling but coming back to some version of the "myth of objectivity," to the artificiality of specialized attention. For better or worse, there are powerful mechanisms that tend to maintain the secularized professionalism of modern disciplines, including a periodic re-negotiation of boundaries and an only occasional focus on moral, political, epistemological issues with which they're not well equipped to deal. Which isn't to argue they shouldn't make an effort. These mechanisms of course include the translation of epistemological challenges into historical topics, which both Shannon and Wickberg criticize. Along with this, as Novick describes, specialized journals like History and Theory can proliferate in all directions, allowing, in this case, epistemological issues "too hot to handle" to be "formally ghettoized as an esoteric concern." Who now reads History and Theory?

These are part of the persistent and dominant tendency, which is to generate until-further-notice agreements to deal primarily with questions that can be answered to some level of felt adequacy, using recognized disciplinary procedures of rational analysis and conventions for deciding what constitutes evidence. For all its limitations, there is something to be said for this, just as there is for scientists giving most of their time and attention as scientists to the study of natural processes, rather than pondering the ultimate meaning of creation -- unless like the old natural philosophers they can manage both at once. There are good reasons to talk about science as a tradition, perhaps analogous in some respects to faith. But that's a long way from re-framing it as an interfaith dialogue, between, say, evolution and intelligent design -- and the distance is not reduced by our yearning for "meaning."

Paradoxically, to argue that history become authentic by conducting itself as a tradition may turn it into something radically different from what it's been, which is perhaps the point. It both promises and asks too much, taking accountability and the hope of authenticity to the point of absurdity. We shouldn't overly burden ourselves, as if everything in the world depended on what we think and say. [But of course all of this begs the question.] There's a slippery slide of perception, as the discipline moves from a fiction of autonomy, to a synecdoche of the whole, to being seen as foundational, as if the global really could be remade locally. I can't but recall my sad experience in "radical" American Studies in the late 60s and early 70s: first it was a site from which to launch an American revolution, then imperceptibly [to us] became a project to revolutionize the field of American Studies, and, finally, pretty routine academic politics. Passion, commitment and a fierce urgency were undiminished throughout. This is the sort of thing helps account for the otherwise bizarre turn famously described by Todd Gitlin, in which efforts to transform society turned into struggles to control the English Department.

From Traditions to Histories: Back from the Brink

[Editor's Note: Today's post is authored by William Fine, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown - emeritus. It responds to a forum in the January 2011 issue of Historically Speaking titled "From Histories to Traditions: A New Paradigm of Pluralism in the Study of the Past." The lead-off piece is authored by Christopher Shannon, with three responses from Daniel Wickberg, Mark Weiner, and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, as well as a final reply from Shannon. This particular forum is part of an ongoing HS series dedicated to "questioning the assumptions of academic history." The topic was first mentioned at USIH about three weeks ago. Enjoy!]

-------------------------------------------------

In "From Histories to Traditions," Christopher Shannon raises important issues about the discipline of history and where it's going. But it's difficult to see exactly what he's proposing, which generates some uncertainty and perhaps uneasiness in his interlocutors. He calls for a pluralism broader and deeper than "liberal" history, but "tradition-based history" evokes fears of orthodoxy. Does his pluralist paradigm imply a postmodern relativism, or might it presage some new catechism?

To complicate matters, while calling for a shift "from histories to traditions," Shannon draws upon Alasdair MacIntyre to characterize liberal history as already a "tradition," though denying itself as such. Like the "liberal modernity" to which it's inextricably bound, it's unwilling "to confront its true nature." While it sees itself using abstracted, value-neutral analytic practices and procedures to generate impersonal, value-free knowledge, the reality for Shannon is that history rests on mostly unexamined philosophical assumptions and moral values. Indeed, it's a holistic culture or moral community that both requires and produces particular kinds of persons deeply committed to it.

Shannon distinguishes his new pluralist paradigm from liberal history, though he admits difficulty in describing it, and indeed it's a somewhat murky concept. Because liberal history is now seen as a tradition, rather than a set of detachable, neutral analytical practices, it engages with other traditions on a deep epistemological, moral and existential level. As he puts it, a plurality of traditions "highlight[s] the substantive and incommensurable pretheoretical frameworks" used in historical study, which "put[s] historical debate on the proper footing," which is to say, the "study of history across traditions… becomes something like interfaith dialogue."

History seems to lead a double life: the liberal history "tradition" specifically, and history as a pluralistic space, a site at which diverse traditions, including liberal history, challenge one another. The latter implies not only rules of engagement, but a language that can mediate incommensurables, building on commonalities while respecting differences, fostering challenge without divisive conflict, moderating the interplay of traditions, etc. But this sounds like the old pretense of liberal rules abstracted from any cultural base. Or, if they do constitute a sort of super-tradition, at what point does it come up for critical examination? The question is, what becomes of history when it's conceived as a faith, or as a site modeled on religious dialogue? Is this a post-secular post, a great leap backward, or some weird hybrid?

If reason cannot be divorced from faith, as Shannon contends, one has to ask, whose faith? Yet some sort of answer seems to be assumed, since the "new model of professional pluralism would distinguish itself from its liberal predecessor by an explicit commitment to the pursuit of Truth -- that is, a truth beyond that which is empirically verifiable." Pluralism may have its limits, even though Shannon assures us no "grid of catechism" is to be imposed. At one point, though, responding to the concern his paradigm might imply a Babel of views, he reassures us that a "truly traditional Muslim perspective" could be excluded. Maybe "Truth" just can't be a plural.

The range of possible outcomes seems clear: utter incommunicability, conflict and fragmentation, a restricted pluralism, Truth wedded to faith, or the continuation of something much like "liberal history," perhaps with ghettoized subfields. In any case, ours is a time when many see conventional history as shallow or thin, formalistic, detached from real life and public issues, fragmented, inauthentic. One is reminded of Christopher Lasch's depiction of the late Victorian restlessness of the new intellectuals; or, indeed, the concluding paragraph of Max Weber's essay "Science as a Vocation," still the best articulation of issues of objectivity and neutrality. In this sort of milieu, tradition has great appeal -- as do similarly capacious and integrating concepts such as revolution and epochal breaks and turns. This is due in part to its totalizing or holistic character, its insistence on the inseparability, on the non-abstractable character of things -- the shallow and the deep, means and ends, technique and culture, everyday life and ultimate meaning, minutiae and fundamentals, practices and their original forms, facts and interpretive frameworks, how we're living and who we are. It provides at once the reassurance of a meaningful whole, an invitation to explore non-obvious, deep and distant connections, and an urgent raison d'etre for critical thinking.

In this holistic approach to the discipline, all facets and levels are seen tightly bound, sometimes in ways that appear quite deterministic. Neither Talcott Parsons nor Louis Althusser could do much better. The behavior of professional historians is sociologically bound to their socialization as particular kinds of persons, and an identitarian mechanism ensures that "who they are" explains their approach to history. [In Walter Benn Michaels' terms, this is identity politics with a vengeance, as issues of truth become matters of "who we are," history becomes tradition, and science turns into faith.] Analytical and research practices are meaningfully, even logically, bound to underlying values and epistemological preconceptions; and a sort of historiographic determinism explains that liberal historians invariably celebrate the progress of choice, freedom and agency. Finally, a political determination guarantees that liberal history mirrors and helps reproduce liberal modernity.

Shannon's totalizing view of the discipline gives his piece a something-for-everyone character. To Daniel Wickberg, it supports the view that history, for reasons more "practical and ideological…than intellectual," diversified its topics instead of facing up to the philosophical challenge of the linguistic turn, clinging to "the modernist certitude of fact." Like Shannon, he criticizes Gabrielle Spiegel's effort to historicize postmodernism as [in fact?] politically motivated epistemic avoidance. For Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Shannon raises important questions about the "underlying assumptions and dominating practices" of history, including its empty careerist model of identity and "interpretive exhaustion." Thus liberal history gears directly into the "meaningless" freedom-without-purpose of modern therapeutic society, which can prompt an escape from freedom into some new bondage. But she seems less concerned finally that "Catholic history" would threaten the discipline as a whole than that it would be absorbed into a "totalizing pluralism" in which fundamental debates have been replaced by each historian's freedom to choose whatever perspective "works for her" and doesn't "interfere with her lifestyle," to use the clichés.

Mark Weiner believes Shannon’s arguments can provide a “quickening agent” for liberal ends, challenging historians to articulate their core values, find out who they are, and incorporate the interpretive and stylistic approaches of a wider diversity of traditions, including non-western. Here is an improved liberalism that recalls and updates Raymond Williams’ sense of culture as a critique of bourgeois society. At the same time¸ even as they criticize liberal history, none of the articles question the market model of history as a profession, rendering it a microcosm of liberal modernity. This may both assume and give away too much, foreclosing possibilities for critical thinking.

Of the possible outcomes, continuation of something approximating "liberal history" appears most likely, short of utter societal collapse. Over the last hundred years, history has faced challenges that strike at the foundations, which it has dealt with or sidestepped in one way or another, wobbling but coming back to some version of the "myth of objectivity," to the artificiality of specialized attention. For better or worse, there are powerful mechanisms that tend to maintain the secularized professionalism of modern disciplines, including a periodic re-negotiation of boundaries and an only occasional focus on moral, political, epistemological issues with which they're not well equipped to deal. Which isn't to argue they shouldn't make an effort. These mechanisms of course include the translation of epistemological challenges into historical topics, which both Shannon and Wickberg criticize. Along with this, as Novick describes, specialized journals like History and Theory can proliferate in all directions, allowing, in this case, epistemological issues "too hot to handle" to be "formally ghettoized as an esoteric concern." Who now reads History and Theory?

These are part of the persistent and dominant tendency, which is to generate until-further-notice agreements to deal primarily with questions that can be answered to some level of felt adequacy, using recognized disciplinary procedures of rational analysis and conventions for deciding what constitutes evidence. For all its limitations, there is something to be said for this, just as there is for scientists giving most of their time and attention as scientists to the study of natural processes, rather than pondering the ultimate meaning of creation -- unless like the old natural philosophers they can manage both at once. There are good reasons to talk about science as a tradition, perhaps analogous in some respects to faith. But that's a long way from re-framing it as an interfaith dialogue, between, say, evolution and intelligent design -- and the distance is not reduced by our yearning for "meaning."

Paradoxically, to argue that history become authentic by conducting itself as a tradition may turn it into something radically different from what it's been, which is perhaps the point. It both promises and asks too much, taking accountability and the hope of authenticity to the point of absurdity. We shouldn't overly burden ourselves, as if everything in the world depended on what we think and say. [But of course all of this begs the question.] There's a slippery slide of perception, as the discipline moves from a fiction of autonomy, to a synecdoche of the whole, to being seen as foundational, as if the global really could be remade locally. I can't but recall my sad experience in "radical" American Studies in the late 60s and early 70s: first it was a site from which to launch an American revolution, then imperceptibly [to us] became a project to revolutionize the field of American Studies, and, finally, pretty routine academic politics. Passion, commitment and a fierce urgency were undiminished throughout. This is the sort of thing helps account for the otherwise bizarre turn famously described by Todd Gitlin, in which efforts to transform society turned into struggles to control the English Department.

New Book: Massa Offers A Catholic Intellectual History Of The 1960s

Continuing somewhat this week's discussion of the intellectual history of religion in the United States, I present to you a new work by Boston College Professor of Church History---and Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry---Mark Massa titled The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever.

I learned of Massa's new work from John Fea, who also presented a relevant discussion with Massa conducted by Daniel Burke. It's not the most comprehensive or penetrating of interviews, but I offer a few excerpts nonetheless:

-----------------------------
- "Massa's [book]...describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church."
- "Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964? A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not."
- [Massa] "A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether. ...Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning."
- [Massa] "Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want...certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness."
- "Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s? A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself."
-----------------------------

As a practicing Catholic and intellectual historian, my personal sense is that this book will find an audience---either via discussions about reviews or through actual readings. Why? Conservative Catholic intellectuals fancy themselves keepers of the true/real/authentic/orthodox history of the Church (and hence police new histories). Liberal Catholic intellectuals either still celebrate the era of concern, or at least wonder what the fuss today is about (and hence may read the book for curiosity's sake). My prediction, however, is that if this book gets wider attention, it'll be because of disgruntlement by the former rather than celebration by the latter.

Unless another faithful USIH reader or contributor wants to review Massa's new offering, I think I'll commit myself to the task (although multiple reviews of a book never hurt---even if published by the same entity). - TL

New Book: Massa Offers A Catholic Intellectual History Of The 1960s

Continuing somewhat this week's discussion of the intellectual history of religion in the United States, I present to you a new work by Boston College Professor of Church History---and Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry---Mark Massa titled The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever.

I learned of Massa's new work from John Fea, who also presented a relevant discussion with Massa conducted by Daniel Burke. It's not the most comprehensive or penetrating of interviews, but I offer a few excerpts nonetheless:

-----------------------------
- "Massa's [book]...describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church."
- "Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964? A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not."
- [Massa] "A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether. ...Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning."
- [Massa] "Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want...certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness."
- "Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s? A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself."
-----------------------------

As a practicing Catholic and intellectual historian, my personal sense is that this book will find an audience---either via discussions about reviews or through actual readings. Why? Conservative Catholic intellectuals fancy themselves keepers of the true/real/authentic/orthodox history of the Church (and hence police new histories). Liberal Catholic intellectuals either still celebrate the era of concern, or at least wonder what the fuss today is about (and hence may read the book for curiosity's sake). My prediction, however, is that if this book gets wider attention, it'll be because of disgruntlement by the former rather than celebration by the latter.

Unless another faithful USIH reader or contributor wants to review Massa's new offering, I think I'll commit myself to the task (although multiple reviews of a book never hurt---even if published by the same entity). - TL

Tim's Light Reading (02/3/2010)

1. Studying Reading Reception: The Reception Study Society and its associated annual, Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, should be of interest to practicing U.S. Intellectual historians. Why? It seems to me that every single community of discourse that ever existed in U.S. history worked, in some way, around the production and reception of some kind of text. Practitioners of reception history studying recent times have recourse to oral histories. This is an exciting development. In the past, however, reception was studied only through personal or institutional papers, and published accounts. On the last, I believe that book reviews are an understudied and under-explored resource for intellectual historians. While I fully understand the weaknesses of this source (e.g. word limitations, written for money, notoriety, for spite, etc.), the problems in assessing authorial motivations in reviews are no different than for any other publication. In other words, we can correct for those limitations, or publicly acknowledge them, and still pick out relevant nuggets of thought from reviews. Of course there are limits: How do we assess the audiences of reviews? That seems to throw us back into the archives to examine personal papers, diaries, etc.

2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:

Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."

[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."

Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).

3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.

4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)

5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:

International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)

Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity

April 10, 2010

This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from José de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards – new findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].

Tim's Light Reading (02/3/2010)

1. Studying Reading Reception: The Reception Study Society and its associated annual, Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, should be of interest to practicing U.S. Intellectual historians. Why? It seems to me that every single community of discourse that ever existed in U.S. history worked, in some way, around the production and reception of some kind of text. Practitioners of reception history studying recent times have recourse to oral histories. This is an exciting development. In the past, however, reception was studied only through personal or institutional papers, and published accounts. On the last, I believe that book reviews are an understudied and under-explored resource for intellectual historians. While I fully understand the weaknesses of this source (e.g. word limitations, written for money, notoriety, for spite, etc.), the problems in assessing authorial motivations in reviews are no different than for any other publication. In other words, we can correct for those limitations, or publicly acknowledge them, and still pick out relevant nuggets of thought from reviews. Of course there are limits: How do we assess the audiences of reviews? That seems to throw us back into the archives to examine personal papers, diaries, etc.

2. The Weight Of Tradition In Publishing: A Berkeley study, summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, unsurprisingly reports that tradition weighs heavily on authors in considering publication options. This paragraph sums up the situation:

Although the seven fields surveyed have very different cultures, which are explored at length in the 733-page report, the executive summary points to the persistence of doing scholarly business as usual. "Experiments in new genres of scholarship and dissemination are occurring in every field, but they are taking place within the context of relatively conservative value and reward systems that have the practice of peer review at their core," the report states. It found that young scholars "can be particularly conservative" in their behavior, perhaps because they have more to lose than senior scholars, who "can afford to be the most innovative with regard to dissemination practices."

[The report's authors] identified five key needs of faculty members in regard to scholarly communication. Those include developing "more nuanced tenure and promotion practices that do not rely exclusively on the imprimatur of the publication or easily gamed citation metrics," and reassessing "the locus, mechanisms, timing, and meaning of peer review."

Here are the report's findings on its "History Case Study" (p. 388-503).

3. The Effects Of Catholic Higher Education On Catholics: Positive, Negative, Or In-Between?: Some relatively conservative American Catholic organizations criticize Catholic colleges and universities on the historical grounds that Catholics who attend Catholic institutions come out less Catholic (intellectually, socially, theologically) than when they entered. I have not seen a precise starting date put on this trend by critics. In his comprehensive history of American Catholic higher education, titled Contending With Modernity, Philip Gleason identified a turning point as the 1967 Land O' Lakes Conference held in the Wisconsin town of the same name. Here is the famous statement produced at the conference. Conservative critics pointed back to Land O' Lakes during last year's debates about Obama's Notre Dame address. But a new study, underscored by this InsideHigherEd article, forwards that while Catholics do indeed lose ground on specific Catholic teachings, they gain ground on others at Catholic colleges. In sum, the broad claim by some that Catholic colleges are really not functioning as such is questionable at best. It is more the case that Catholic colleges are not doing exactly what the conservative critics want.

4. Book of Interest: Williams, Zachery R., In Search of the Talented Tenth: Howard University Public Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race, 1926–1970. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. xiv, 250 pp. $39.95, isbn 978-0-8262-1862-9.)

5. Workshop of Interest: This Harvard University gathering will be of interest to some of our readers:

International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825 (Bernard Bailyn, Director)

Workshop---Intellectual History: New Findings, New Approaches, in the Study of Religion, Science, and Cultural Identity

April 10, 2010

This Workshop will concentrate on current innovations in the study of the intellectual history of the Atlantic world, the flow of ideas between Europe and the Americas, from José de Acosta to Jonathan Edwards – new findings on Biblicism, alchemy, science, architecture, critiques of idolatry, and approaches to the Enlightenment. The intention is not to present descriptive summaries of these subjects but for leading authorities to identify, from work in progress, innovative points of inquiry and to indicate profitable lines for future study. ... To register, and for additional information, please see our Web site or contact the Atlantic History Seminar [Emerson Hall 4th Floor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Phone: 617-496-3066; Fax: 617-496-8869; e-mail elebaron-at-fas.harvard.edu].

Tim's Light Reading (12/17/2009)

1. What Today's Philosophers Think: Although I understand some of the questions given here by The PhilPapers Surveys, another subset are beyond me---at least as of today. The authors of the quiz concede that they framed many of the questions within the analytic tradition, and my strengths (the few I possess) do not lie in the history of that era, or in its terminology, so my ignorance should not have surprised me. Still, I'm intrigued by what I do know of the issues. The demographics portion of the survey included a question (at the bottom) about the non-living philosophers with which today's group identified. Notice Foucault garnered only 11 votes, and Adorno only 6. I was shocked to see Hume at the top, as well as Aristotle---one of my favorites---still holding at #2. My other favorite is Aquinas, who came in at #24 with 69 votes. Dewey, Sellars, and Peirce came in at 29, 30, and 31 with 31, 30, and 28 votes, respectively. James entered at 34 with 22 votes. Based on my more recent, less historical observations of Catholic thought and the analytical framework of the questions, I'm somewhat surprised to see neither this guy nor this movement on the lists. I figured one or the other would get the 5 minimum nods to be counted.

2. Livingston At HNN: Here's a partial reprise of James Livingston's USIH address, which is also an excerpt from his new book, The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century. And here's his new blog address. There he takes on the criticisms of Eric Alterman given during the conference, and reveals---at the end of the post---that he told a (white) lie to Alterman and the rest of us during Q&A.

3. Culture Wars at "The Great Books College of Chicago": As an observer and student of trends in the history of the great books idea, I can't resist bringing to your attention a story out of Chicago. The gist is this: Some faculty and and students at Shimer College are worried that the administration, headed by President Thomas K. Lindsay, is engineering a conservative take over of the institution. A bit of background is necessary. Shimer began as a small liberal arts college in Illinois, originally located in Mount Carroll, that took on a great books curriculum in the 1950s. That curriculum derived from the thinking of Robert Maynard Hutchins, former University of Chicago president, and probably Mortimer J. Adler, Hutchins's friend and intellectual advisor. The college's great books list originally looked a lot like the one comprising Britannica's 1952 Great Books set, but evolved to something more liberal and inclusive as time passed. With regard to its staff, faculty, and students, Shimer became known, especially in the 1970s, for its liberal social and cultural atmosphere. This was evident not just in behavior (which hearsay has probably amplified) during the "Me Decade," but also---and more importantly---in Shimer's radically democratic shared governance scheme, the "Assembly," discussed in the first link above. While some comments to the article express dismay at the culture wars overlay in the piece, saying this is an administrative issue only, there does appear to be a right-ward trend in relation to new Board of Trustees members. This weblog is documenting student, faculty, and staff resistance to the changes. There's a lot to say about this story, but my biggest surprise is that this political-social tug-of-war is only just now hitting Shimer. I'm shocked it didn't happen in the 1980s or 1990s, well before its move to Chicago.

4. The Great Books College of C.S. Lewis: Thanks to John Fea, I have learned that a C.S. Lewis-inspired, ecumenically Christian college is opening in Northfield, MA. The curriculum is, of course, to be based on the great books idea. John didn't say which version of the great books idea they'd be utilizing, but I can imagine a Britannica connection. I'd have to explore their website to learn more. I'll wait on that project, however, until they actually open and host a first class.

5. So you read the Encyclopedia Britannica?: Continuing the great books/Britannica subtheme of today's entries, A.J. Jacobs reflects on the proportion of things-remembered to things-learned after having read the Encyclopedia Britannica near the beginning of this decade. He recorded much of that endeavor in his 2004 book, The Know-It-All. Two parts from the Youtube clip caught my attention. Jacobs emphatically declares that he's forgotten "a huge amount" right off the bat-- about 97-98 percent he thinks. But he also reflects, around the 55 second mark, on the fact that he's gained a deeper, more useful-than-trivia kind of knowledge from that reading. For instance, he cited a justified, affirming optimism about humanity's ability to adapt and grow (my words) that has resulted from his survey of the accomplishments of human civilization.

6. Midsouth Philosophy Conference: I bring this to your attention because of the openness of the call---meaning historians of the Lovejovian variety might be welcome: "The thirty-fourth annual Midsouth Philosophy Conference is scheduled for Friday afternoon and Saturday, March 5-6, at The University of Memphis. Papers in any area are welcome. There will be a $25 registration fee, payable by cash or check at the conference (but not by credit or debit card). Alastair Norcross (University of Colorado at Boulder) will deliver the keynote address."

Tim's Light Reading (12/17/2009)

1. What Today's Philosophers Think: Although I understand some of the questions given here by The PhilPapers Surveys, another subset are beyond me---at least as of today. The authors of the quiz concede that they framed many of the questions within the analytic tradition, and my strengths (the few I possess) do not lie in the history of that era, or in its terminology, so my ignorance should not have surprised me. Still, I'm intrigued by what I do know of the issues. The demographics portion of the survey included a question (at the bottom) about the non-living philosophers with which today's group identified. Notice Foucault garnered only 11 votes, and Adorno only 6. I was shocked to see Hume at the top, as well as Aristotle---one of my favorites---still holding at #2. My other favorite is Aquinas, who came in at #24 with 69 votes. Dewey, Sellars, and Peirce came in at 29, 30, and 31 with 31, 30, and 28 votes, respectively. James entered at 34 with 22 votes. Based on my more recent, less historical observations of Catholic thought and the analytical framework of the questions, I'm somewhat surprised to see neither this guy nor this movement on the lists. I figured one or the other would get the 5 minimum nods to be counted.

2. Livingston At HNN: Here's a partial reprise of James Livingston's USIH address, which is also an excerpt from his new book, The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century. And here's his new blog address. There he takes on the criticisms of Eric Alterman given during the conference, and reveals---at the end of the post---that he told a (white) lie to Alterman and the rest of us during Q&A.

3. Culture Wars at "The Great Books College of Chicago": As an observer and student of trends in the history of the great books idea, I can't resist bringing to your attention a story out of Chicago. The gist is this: Some faculty and and students at Shimer College are worried that the administration, headed by President Thomas K. Lindsay, is engineering a conservative take over of the institution. A bit of background is necessary. Shimer began as a small liberal arts college in Illinois, originally located in Mount Carroll, that took on a great books curriculum in the 1950s. That curriculum derived from the thinking of Robert Maynard Hutchins, former University of Chicago president, and probably Mortimer J. Adler, Hutchins's friend and intellectual advisor. The college's great books list originally looked a lot like the one comprising Britannica's 1952 Great Books set, but evolved to something more liberal and inclusive as time passed. With regard to its staff, faculty, and students, Shimer became known, especially in the 1970s, for its liberal social and cultural atmosphere. This was evident not just in behavior (which hearsay has probably amplified) during the "Me Decade," but also---and more importantly---in Shimer's radically democratic shared governance scheme, the "Assembly," discussed in the first link above. While some comments to the article express dismay at the culture wars overlay in the piece, saying this is an administrative issue only, there does appear to be a right-ward trend in relation to new Board of Trustees members. This weblog is documenting student, faculty, and staff resistance to the changes. There's a lot to say about this story, but my biggest surprise is that this political-social tug-of-war is only just now hitting Shimer. I'm shocked it didn't happen in the 1980s or 1990s, well before its move to Chicago.

4. The Great Books College of C.S. Lewis: Thanks to John Fea, I have learned that a C.S. Lewis-inspired, ecumenically Christian college is opening in Northfield, MA. The curriculum is, of course, to be based on the great books idea. John didn't say which version of the great books idea they'd be utilizing, but I can imagine a Britannica connection. I'd have to explore their website to learn more. I'll wait on that project, however, until they actually open and host a first class.

5. So you read the Encyclopedia Britannica?: Continuing the great books/Britannica subtheme of today's entries, A.J. Jacobs reflects on the proportion of things-remembered to things-learned after having read the Encyclopedia Britannica near the beginning of this decade. He recorded much of that endeavor in his 2004 book, The Know-It-All. Two parts from the Youtube clip caught my attention. Jacobs emphatically declares that he's forgotten "a huge amount" right off the bat-- about 97-98 percent he thinks. But he also reflects, around the 55 second mark, on the fact that he's gained a deeper, more useful-than-trivia kind of knowledge from that reading. For instance, he cited a justified, affirming optimism about humanity's ability to adapt and grow (my words) that has resulted from his survey of the accomplishments of human civilization.

6. Midsouth Philosophy Conference: I bring this to your attention because of the openness of the call---meaning historians of the Lovejovian variety might be welcome: "The thirty-fourth annual Midsouth Philosophy Conference is scheduled for Friday afternoon and Saturday, March 5-6, at The University of Memphis. Papers in any area are welcome. There will be a $25 registration fee, payable by cash or check at the conference (but not by credit or debit card). Alastair Norcross (University of Colorado at Boulder) will deliver the keynote address."

First Drafting Recent Historical Events: The Case Of Ave Maria Law School

You might call this a first draft of the history of Ave Maria Law School, as well as Ave Maria University in general. Of course Ave Maria forwards their own version of events. That's the nature of history. The comments to the Washington Monthly article, however, provide a tidy object lesson in the hazards of drafting first accounts of any institution's history in the age of Culture Wars---especially skirmishes of the religious variety. - TL