Barzun’s Warnings Still Relevant 80 Years Later | Eastern NC Now

M.D. Aeschliman writes for National Review Online about the continuing significance of one historian’s decades-old work.

ENCNow
Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Mitch Kokai.

    M.D. Aeschliman writes for National Review Online about the continuing significance of one historian's decades-old work.

  • Eighty years ago, in that ominous year 1941, the Franco-American historian Jacques Barzun (1903-2012) published a work of cultural history that has retained power and relevance when most such books, however worthy, live a life of temporary influence and then are occasionally consulted on the shelves of university libraries. Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage has had a longer and deeper subsequent influence, being republished in only slightly revised editions but with new prefaces in 1958 and 1981 and frequently reprinted in paperback. It is a great, antiseptic book, almost as necessary now as it was at the high tide of German National Socialist "racial science" and Soviet Communist "scientific socialism" in 1941. ...
  • ... Barzun's case against both Darwin and Marx is that both are writers of evasive, convoluted, confused prose that obscures not only truth itself but their own scientistic, mechanistic premises about the meaninglessness of mind, free will, and purpose in human affairs. He himself had started out his own academic career by writing a strongly anti-racialist book in 1937, Race: A Study in Modern Superstition, at a time when Darwinian "racial science" was riding high not only in Germany but throughout the West, leading to eugenic laws in several American states even before the Nazi national policy of eliminating "lives unworthy of life." ...
  • ... Barzun's short anatomy of Marx and Marxism, quietly devastating, is permanently worth reading for its clear understanding and lucid explanation of the self-contradictory and damaging character of Marxism and all forms of reductionism. He insists on the perennial need for an at least minimally accurate description of human personality, the reality of the human mind, and the scope of human free will. (Reductionism, he wrote in 1964, "is congenial to the modern temper, and what it reduces is the individual.")

Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published )
Enter Your Comment ( text only please )




Supreme Court To Rule on Major Issues as Term Winds Down John Locke Foundation Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics Durham Probe Cost Roughly $1.5 Million During First Six Months as Special Counsel


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

If you are covering Roy Cooper in Greensboro today, please consider the following statement from the Republican National Committee:
Obama and Biden judges abuse power for political reasons to try to stop Haitian deportations
teachers union rally held on major socialist / communist May Day holiday
Democrats foment climate of violence against Trump and GOP

HbAD1

Cheryl Hines. Dennis Quaid. Nicki Minaj. All became associated with the Trump administration. What happened next?
A federal grand jury in North Carolina has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two charges related to making threats against President Donald Trump.
Their goal was simple: to put a Planned Parenthood in every mailbox in America.
Treasury officials allege these groups pose as humanitarian entities while covertly siphoning donations to Hamas.
President Donald Trump has publicly floated regime change and other aggressive actions toward Cuba.
With a new roadside plaque unveiled in Ellerbe on April 23, legendary wrestler and local resident André René Roussimoff is finally getting the formal recognition fans believe he deserves.

HbAD2

Following a string of attacks, critics are calling for denaturalizations. It's not that simple.
Understanding how parties work is important for making informed decisions regarding elected officials.
The solution is not to legalize the problem; it is to enforce the law consistently and deter future illegal immigration.
The teachers union is pushing to cancel school on May 1 as Chicago public schools continue to report dismal student proficiency rates.
Mission accomplished on sending inspiration from the dark side of the moon.

HbAD3

 
 
Back to Top