Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920Oxford University Press, 1988 M03 24 - 557 pages Between 1870 and 1920, two generations of European and American intellectuals created a transatlantic community of philosophical and political discourse. Uncertain Victory, the first comparative study of ideas and politics in France, Germany, the U.S., and Great Britain during these fifty years, demonstrates how a number of thinkers from different traditions converged to create the theoretical foundations for new programs of social democracy and progressivism. Kloppenberg studies a wide range of pivotal theorists and activists--including philosophers such as William James, Wilhelm Dilthey, and T. H. Green, democratic socialists such as Jean Jaurès, Walter Rauschenbusch, Eduard Bernstein, and Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and social theorists such as John Dewey and Max Weber--as he establishes the connection between the philosophers' challenges to the traditions of empiricism and idealism and the activists' opposition to the traditions of laissez-faire liberalism and revolutionary socialism. By demonstrating a link between a philosophy of self-conscious uncertainty and a politics of continuing democratic experimentation, and by highlighting previously unrecognized similarities among a number of prominent 19th- and 20th-century thinkers, Uncertain Victory is sure to spur a reassessment of the relationship between ideas and politics on both sides of the Atlantic. |
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action activity American analysis argued argument believed Bernstein Bourgeois British bureaucratic challenge conception consciousness critical critique Croly Croly's cultural democracy Dewey Dewey's Dilthey Dilthey's discussion economic Eduard Bernstein emphasized empiricist epistemology essay Evolutionary Socialism Fabian Fabian Society Fouillée Fouillée's France freedom French German Green Hegel historical sensibility Hobhouse Hobhouse's human ideal idealist ideas idées-forces individual industrial intellectual interpretation James's Jaurès Jaurès's Kant Kant's L. T. Hobhouse labor liberal Lippmann logic Marx Marx's Marxists Max Weber means Methods of Ethics moral nature nineteenth century party philosophy political pragmatic Preface to Politics Principles of Psychology problem progressive progressivism radical empiricism Rauschenbusch religious responsibility revolution revolutionary role Sidgwick Sidney Webb social democrats social gospel socialist society Sociology solidarity theory of knowledge thinkers thought tion truth utilitarianism values via media Webbs Wilhelm Dilthey William James writings wrote York
Popular passages
Page 408 - But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs.
Page 336 - Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct Yet very frequently the "world images* that have been created by 'ideas...
Page 421 - Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give ; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!
Page 68 - If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff...
Page 88 - The knower is an actor, and co-efficient of the truth on one side, whilst on the other he registers the truth which he helps to create. Mental interests, hypotheses, postulates, so far as they are bases for human action — action which to a great extent transforms the world — help to make the truth which they declare. In other words, there belongs to mind, from its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote.
Page 360 - Economically conditioned' power is not, of course, identical with 'power' as such. On the contrary, the emergence of economic power may be the consequence of power existing on other grounds. Man does not strive for power only in order to enrich himself economically. Power, including economic power, may be valued 'for its own sake.
Page 140 - Democracy and the one, the ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonyms. The idea of democracy, the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, represent a society in which the distinction between the spiritual and the secular has ceased, and as in Greek theory, as in the Christian theory of the Kingdom of God, the church and the state, the divine and the human organization of society are one.
Page 97 - No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met "cut us dead...
Page 409 - ... unassured and precarious. At times it seems as if we were caught in a contradiction; the more we multiply means, the less certain and general is the use we are able to make of them.