Word: babbittism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Professor Babbitt believed that, in its essential features, the artistic, philosophical, and critical life of today are an integral part of the Romantic Movement which flourished most brightly in the early part of the last century. In this sense he was dissatisfied with the "modern movement", which he was able to track back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in one of his chief works, "Rouseau and, Romanticism". His other books extend the idea of intellectual and moral decline since the days of Rousseau and the democratic theorists to the field of politics in "Democracy and Leadership", to modern education, in "Literature...
...Harvard professors have had the power to inspire their students that Professor Babbitt had," said E. K. Rand, '94 Pope Professor of Latin said on Sunday night, in connection with the death of Irving Babbitt, '89 professor of French and Comparatine Literature and protagonist of the philosphy of the New Humanism. "He was, of course one of the stoutest defenders of the cause of the classics and humanism. His works were read all over the world, and like his lectures, show great virility and a high sense of value. His place will be impossible to fill...
...Among the members of the Harvard faculty who devoted themselves to the study of letters no man so full a knowledge of the literature of different countries than Professor Babbitt." C. B. Gulick '90, Eliot Professor of Greek, said on Sunday, voicing his deep regret. "His reading was extraordinarily wide and penetrating and he has done much to present his students with the continuity of literature from the days of the Greeks to our own. He was a devoted friend of the classics and he made the ideas of classical literature the standard of reference for his wise and acute...
...death of Professor Babbitt is a grievous event which will shock those who have loved or envied Harvard for its handful of truly great thinkers. But the student of Professor Babbitt who has studied the details of his life-long fight against the drifting artificial culture with which many so-called "moderns" annoint themselves, will realize the two-fold significance of his death. For the world has lost a remarkable man; at once a brilliant teacher and a great warrior...
...hard to believe that history will find the true measure of Professor Babbitt. Grief, especially for an intellectual enemy, is likely to be brief, and the world of letters will not pause long to honor one who was heard but not heeded. With the loss of his penetrating criticism, there will undoubtedly be a new flow of shallow carping by the second-rate "genius" which has long been embarrassed by the dam of sound appraisal he so carefully built up. It may be that what he took for senile decadence in the political and literary life of world, especially...