1/21/23

An interesting, and often illuminating, argument about how materialism, or rather, popular perceptions of it, might have helped bring about the worst episodes of the twentieth century. I'm going to have to disagree with HadriantheBlind's assessment. Barzun's focus, or, rather, target, here isn't Darwin's science per se, it's how his age jumped at the chance to make Darwinism into a general principle, usually with terrible results. The point is that Darwin himself -- who wasn't he most forceful personalities -- was almost immediately obscured by his interpreters. Barzun also pauses to consider other evolutionary theories that predated Darwin and to consider some of and exactly what separated Darwin from these, which is pretty instructive for anyone concerned with the history of ideas.

"Critique of a Heritiage" is, in a sense, broad-strokes intellectual history, an attempt to figure out how a few great ideas shaped a century's worth of history, and a reminder that even great ideas have their limits and misuses. Barzun, in effect, wants to identify the ideological, often ignored intellectual bulwark that supported materialism and, by doing so, traces the fanaticism and intellectual dogmatism that many people rightly identify with the twentieth century to a few works in the nineteenth. He can be hard on what he considers error -- the elder Huxley, Spencer, Marxists of various stripes, and Marx and Wagner themselves are treated very roughly, on both a personal and intellectual level. But "Critique of a Heritage," though it doesn't mention Freud too often, can be weirdly holistic and psychological, even hopeful. Maybe because this was written in the midst of the Second World War, Barzun seems to want to impress upon his readers these theories' inevitable overreach and their failure to account for every part of man's being. The phrase "the return of the repressed" seems to loom over this entire book. The last few chapters are an impassioned plea for intellectual moderation, the importance of ideas and human consciousness, and general empathy. Now that Marxism's no longer a really viable political force in much of the world and has even lost some cachet in academia, some readers might find it a bit dated. Still, it's nice to find those ideas expressed so succinctly and sincerely. The three individuals mentioned in the title have inspired a library worth of books, but this one is still worth reading. I'd recommend "Critique of a Heritage" for no other reason that it lets readers spend time with a truly educated and organized mind, and that's always a pleasure. ( )

A flawed criticism of three of the big names of 19th century history, whose thought and works most profoundly affected ours.

The arguments contra Darwin are baseless. He's going after the foolish eugenics of Dalton and Spencer, which Darwin is somehow responsible for. Biologically, Darwin's theories are almost completely unassailable. He's turning evolution into 'Darwinism' - a distorted ideology which apparently is most mentioned by creationists. A rehashed attempt at 'Oh, but he's taking the beauty out of life and breaking it down and making it scientific'. Buncombe. If anything, the strides in biology can only deepen our appreciation for the complexity of life.

Marx, of course, is still up in the air, and this recession has only dragged him from his grave once more. Social historicism and the class struggle are still fiery debates that I will not drag in.

Wagner is thrown in as a racist buffoon to drag the others down, a stand-in for Nazism. I won't even attempt to defend his folly. Fine musician, absolutely terrible otherwise.

The whole work is a critique of materialism, which the author believes may have led to the catastrophes of the 20th century (this was written in 1941). If he had instead gone after, say, Herbert Spencer, Lenin, and Wagner/Hitler, he might have had more stable fitting. Barzun is a fine historian and a stylist, and that saves him from the ignominy of 1 star, with Twilight and American Psycho. ( )