Irving Babbitt Archives ~ Page 2 of 3 ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The Conservatism of Robert Nisbet

By Bradley J. Birzer|2021-04-27T21:06:48-05:00January 7th, 2018|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christopher Dawson, Conservatism, Culture, Edmund Burke, History, Imagination, Irving Babbitt, Religion, Robert Nisbet, Romano Guardini, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Tradition|

Robert Nisbet, in direct contrast to Russell Kirk, argued that conservatism was purely a modern ideology. For Nisbet, the entire history of conservatism began as a reaction to the French Revolution… When it came to the history of conservatism, the grand sociologist and man of letters, Robert Nisbet, disagreed with the mighty founder of modern [...]

Irving Babbitt’s Higher Will

By Bradley J. Birzer|2021-04-27T21:24:14-05:00September 18th, 2017|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Conservatism, Featured, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Religion, T.S. Eliot|

Irving Babbitt believed that man defined himself not by his rights, but by his duties, and particularly how willing he was to restrain his darker impulses and sacrifice himself for another… Famously, when Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt were debating one another while on a walk, the former, exasperated, asked: “Good God, man. Are [...]

Irving Babbitt & Cultural Renewal

By James Seaton|2021-04-27T21:46:29-05:00September 18th, 2016|Categories: Culture, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Modernity, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join James Seaton as he discusses the importance of Irving Babbitt’s imaginative conservatism. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher It is tempting to think of Irving Babbitt as a voice crying in the wilderness, a lonely prophet attempting the impossible task of reversing the [...]

Can a Conservative Embrace Romanticism?

By Bradley J. Birzer|2021-04-27T21:47:33-05:00August 30th, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christopher Dawson, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot, The Imaginative Conservative|

Undoubtedly trying to shock many of his readers—most of whom understandably associated him with radicalism in poetry and the Bloomsbury group in London—T.S. Eliot exclaimed rather baldly in the late 1920s, “I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.” […]

What Is the Moral Imagination?

By Jon M. Fennell|2022-01-20T19:10:28-06:00April 11th, 2016|Categories: Edmund Burke, Eva Brann, Imagination, Irving Babbitt, Moral Imagination, Russell Kirk|

Like many of you, I am sure, my first encounter with the term “the moral imagination” came through reading Russell Kirk. In an attempt to make better sense of what, for me, was a problematic concept, I followed Kirk back to his admitted predecessors on this matter, Irving Babbitt and Edmund Burke. I must confess [...]

Irving Babbitt: Against Romanticism

By Milton Hindus|2019-07-23T14:06:01-05:00August 28th, 2015|Categories: Books, Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Tags: 1UB|

Rousseau and Romanticism by Irving Babbitt (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991) This reprint of the best-known work by Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) is a sturdy addition to Transaction’s Library of Conservative Thought. When it was initially published in 1919, it was recognized by discerning readers as the landmark it has since become. The New York Evening Post [...]

What Was Irving Babbitt’s Philosophy of Man?

By Claes G. Ryn|2016-07-14T23:47:19-05:00July 15th, 2015|Categories: Christian Humanism, Christianity, Claes Ryn, Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Tags: 1MA|

No intellectual task could be more urgent today than refuting the pseudo-scientific distinction between ”facts” and “values” and restoring to the humanities and social sciences a sense of transcendent moral purpose.[1] In this effort we would be well-advised to reconsider the work of a great American whose ideas have yet to be fully comprehended and [...]

Irving Babbitt and the Buddha

By Bradley J. Birzer|2021-08-28T09:16:21-05:00October 23rd, 2014|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Eastern Thought, Irving Babbitt, Stoicism, Western Civilization|

Irving Babbitt embraced the inherent Stoic qualities not only of the ancient Western world but also of high, ancient Asian culture as well. One of Western Civilization’s greatest defenders in the twentieth century, Harvard University’s Irving Babbitt, founder of the New Humanism, best friend to Paul Elmer More, and the teacher of T.S. Eliot, considered [...]

Irving Babbitt: American Burke

By David Hoeveler|2021-07-14T22:08:48-05:00April 2nd, 2014|Categories: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt|Tags: 1TAC|

Irving Babbitt did not believe that society could save itself by reform at the bottom. “All reform must start at the top,” among the leadership classes. For conservative thinkers the past 15 years have been a season of self-assessment. In moods of disenchantment, anger, and even betrayal many have staked out positions differentiating their views [...]

Will the Future Be Superficial?

By Irving Babbitt|2018-08-31T14:28:03-05:00May 25th, 2013|Categories: Conservatism, Irving Babbitt, Quotation|

Irving Babbitt According to Mr. Lloyd George, the future will be even more exclusively taken up than is the present with the economic problem, especially with the relations between capital and labor. In that case, one is tempted to reply, the future will be very superficial. When studied with any degree of thoroughness, [...]

Making Modernity Human: Can Christian humanism redeem an age of ideology?

By Bradley J. Birzer|2016-02-12T15:28:36-06:00November 8th, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Irving Babbitt, J.R.R. Tolkien, Russell Kirk|Tags: 1TAC|

Irving Babbitt, C. S. Lewis, Russell Kirk In a world agog with labels and categories we too often leave important ideas behind. With paleocons, traditionalists, neocons, Leocons, libertarians, classical liberals, anarcho-capitalists, distributists, and agrarians, the right can be as bad as the left in its fetish for classification. One group that defies easy [...]

Democracy and Leadership: An American Classic

By Claes G. Ryn|2015-02-17T22:41:16-06:00October 18th, 2012|Categories: Books, Claes Ryn, Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leadership, Politics|Tags: 1UB|

Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt. Foreword by Russell Kirk, Liberty Classics, 1979, 390 pp. The appearance of a new edition of Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership (first published in 1924) is one sign among many that interest in this controversial thinker is growing markedly. Several scholarly studies related to his work have been published [...]

Irving Babbitt and Cultural Renewal

By James Seaton|2017-09-19T12:49:25-05:00August 16th, 2012|Categories: Irving Babbitt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Tags: 1HU|

Irving Babbitt It is tempting to think of Irving Babbitt as a voice crying in the wilderness, a lonely prophet attempting the impossible task of reversing the course of history. Such a view of Babbitt has the bonus of imputing a special virtue to those few, like ourselves, who are able to appreciate [...]

The War of the Three Humanisms: Irving Babbitt and the Recovery of Classical Learning

By Robert C. Koons|2016-07-26T15:39:50-05:00April 5th, 2012|Categories: Classical Education, Classical Learning, Irving Babbitt, Liberal Learning|Tags: 1MA|

Irving Babbitt Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?—T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) is not much remembered today, except perhaps through Sinclair Lewis’s snarky naming of the eponymous villain of the satire of mid-American manners and mores, Babbitt, after [...]