History of Ideas

In the early 15th century, the general council assembled at Constance and, representing the universal Church, put an end to the scandalous schism which for almost forty years had divided the Latin Church between rival lines of claimants to the papal office. It did so by claiming and exercising an authority superior to that of the pope, an authority by virtue of which it could impose constitutional limits on the exercise of his prerogatives, stand in judgement over him, and if need be, depose him for wrongdoing. In so acting, the council gave historic expression to a tradition of conciliarist constitutionalism that long competed for the allegiance of Catholics worldwide with the high papalist monarchical vision that was destined to triumph in 1870 at Vatican I and to become identified with Roman Catholic orthodoxy itself. This book sets out to reconstruct the half-millennial history of that vanquished rival tradition.

Edmund Burke (1730–1797) was one of the most profound, versatile, and accomplished thinkers of the eighteenth century. Born and educated in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, but remained to make a career in English politics, completing A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) before entering the political arena. A Member of Parliament for nearly thirty years, his speeches are still read and studied as classics of political thought, and through his best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he has continued to exercise a posthumous influence as ‘the father of conservatism’. This, the first of two volumes, covers the years between 1730–1784, and describes Burke's Irish upbringing and education, early writing, and his parliamentary career throughout the momentous years of the American War of Independence. Lavishly illustrated, the book provides an authoritative account of the complexity and breadth of Burke's philosophical and political writing and examines its origins in his personal experiences and the political world of his day.

This is the concluding volume of a biography of Edmund Burke, a key figure in eighteenth-century British and Irish politics and intellectual life. Covering the years 1784–97, its leading themes are India and the French Revolution. Burke was largely responsible for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, former Governor-General of Bengal, whose long trial is recognized as a landmark in the history of Britain's relationship with India. The author provides the first day-by-day account of the entire trial, highlighting some of the many disputes about evidence, as well as the great speeches by Burke and others. In 1790, Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, the earliest sustained attack on the principles of the Revolution. This remains, to this day, the most widely read book on the subject. Additionally, the biography examines Burke's parliamentary career, his family, friendships, philanthropy, and personality. The book's numerous illustrations and contemporary caricatures convey how Burke was perceived by an uncomprehending public. Controversial in his time, he is now regarded as one of the greatest orators in the English language, as well as one of the most influential political philosophers in the Western tradition.

Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called ‘superstitious’ by educated elites. For centuries, religious believers used ‘superstition’ as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith ‘wrongly’. From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what ‘superstition’ was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make ‘rational’ sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons. Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving ‘superstitious’ customs as folklore and ethnic heritage. This book offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of Western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, the author constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular ‘superstition’ in the European mind.

The author presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in Radical Enlightenment, and now focusing his attention on the first half of the 18th century, he returns to the original sources to offer a new perspective on the nature and development of the most important currents in modern thought. The author traces many of the core principles of Western modernity to their roots in the social, political, and philosophical ferment of this period: the primacy of reason, democracy, racial equality, feminism, religious toleration, sexual emancipation, and freedom of expression. He emphasizes the dual character of the Enlightenment and the bitter struggle between, on the one hand, a generally dominant, anti-democratic mainstream, supporting the monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical authority, and on the other a largely repressed democratic, republican, and ‘materialist’ radical fringe. He also contends that the supposedly separate French, British, German, Dutch, and Italian enlightenments interacted to such a degree that their study in isolation gives a hopelessly distorted picture.

This book provides a history of the rise of realism in American culture. It captures the character and sweep of this all-encompassing movement—ranging from Winslow Homer to the rise of the Ash Can school, from Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Dreiser. It begins with a look at the idealist atmosphere of the antebellum years, when otherwordly themes are considered the only fit subject for art. Whitman's assault on these standards coincided with sweeping changes in American society: the bloody Civil War, the aggressive advance of a modern scientific spirit, the popularity of photography, the expansion of cities, capitalism, and the middle class—all worked to shake the foundations of genteel idealism and sentimental romanticism. Both artists and the public developed an ever-expanding appetite for hard facts, and for art that accurately depicted them. As the book proceeds through the 19th century, it traces the realist revolution in each major area of arts and letters, combining an analysis of the movement's essential themes with incisive portraits of its leading practitioners. Here we see Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., shaken to stern realism by the horrors of the Civil War; the influence of Walt Whitman on painter Thomas Eakins and architect Louis Sullivan, a leader of the Chicago school; the local-color verisimilitude of Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Orne Jewett; and the impact of urban squalor on intrepid young writers such as Stephen Crane.

This book provides a compelling explanation of the contents and substance of conservative ideas, their intentions and consequences, and the historical contexts that contributed to their formulation and dissemination among a variety of audiences. The book adds a novel, comparative dimension to the study of those ideas that informed conservatism by examining the subjects, motives, and personal and intellectual origins of historians who were also successful, polemical public intellectuals. Until at least the 1960s, in their search for a persuasive and wide appeal, conservatives depended upon history and historians to provide conservative concepts with authority and authenticity. Beginning in 1913 in Britain and 1940 in America, conservative historians participated actively and influentially in debates about the heart, soul, and, especially, the mind of conservatism. Four historians in Britain, F. J. C. Hearnshaw, Keith Feiling, Arthur Bryant, and Herbert Butterfield, and three in America, Daniel Boorstin, Peter Viereck, and Russell Kirk, developed conservative responses to unprecedented and threatening events domestically and internationally. They shared basic assumptions about human nature and society, but their subjects, interpretations, conclusions, and prescriptions were independent and idiosyncratic. Uniquely close to powerful political figures, each historian also spoke directly to a large public, who bought their books, read their contributions to newspapers and journals, listened to them on the radio, and watched them on television. Additionally, the book addresses the dominance of both conservatism and Conservatism in 20th‐century Britain and the delayed development in America, until the Reagan ascendancy, of both a Conservative party and popular conservatism.

Giving an historical perspective on the changes in scientific thought over the last 100 years, this book explores the study of social evolution and the ongoing search for human nature. The book provides a detailed perspective on the reasons behind the shifting emphasis in social thought from biology, to culture, and again to biology. The book examines why these changes took place, the evidence and people fostering these changes and why students of human nature decided to accept this momentous change in thought. It suggests varying ideologies as the underlying force behind this shift in the study of social science. From Darwin's theory that human social behaviour has drastically evolved from animals, to the belief that human experience serves as the basic differentiating factor in humans, this book provides an examination of the roots of human behaviour.