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What Happened to Excellence?
Excellence, which can be defined as the state of excelling and of surpassing merit, is now increasingly one of the lost words of the English language. And increasingly the special qualities that this...
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Irving Babbitt: An Act of Reparation
Irving Babbitt wrestled with those fundamental life questions that relate to the fate of man in the modern world. What he chose to say about this world of increasing material organization continues to...
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Irving Babbitt’s Higher Will
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,...
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Irving Babbitt Against the Decaying Republic
Seeing himself and his allies on the losing side of the war against the modern spirit, Irving Babbitt made a fierce call to arms, advocating the need for a “remnant” to preserve all that is good,...
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The Conservatism of Robert Nisbet
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…...
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An Emblematic American: The Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt was in no way a dogmatic, ossified traditionalist. He was a creative traditionalist: He encouraged renewed expressions of imaginative vision, and he was open to the possibility of a...
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Measuring the Influence of Russell Kirk and Other Conservative Authors
By using Google’s Ngram Viewer, we find that Russell Kirk’s reputation hit its highpoint in 1964, and then began a painful decline that remained unabated until his death in 1994. What does Ngram tell...
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Remembering Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt’s humanism was not radically intricate or convoluted: It was a reflection of nature and, at least to the wise, of common sense. No one could—in his wildest dreams—dismiss the humanism...
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Humanism as Realism
We live in a world completely mastered and permeated by economic ideals, yet expecting better government within societies brought up on humanitarian thinking strikes us as yet another fantasy. Much...
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A Philosophy for Our Age: Historicist Humanism
Historicist humanism has been largely ignored in the American intellectual consciousness. But for those individuals who realize the depth of our national crisis, who sense the emptiness of mainstream...
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Irving Babbitt and the Crisis of Nationalism, 1915
For Irving Babbitt, a saving remnant of those who possess a humane understanding of the West and its great men and great ideas existed—one that could counter the nationalists and internationalists and...
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Reflections on Leadership
We need to restore moral value to leadership. In whom do we now recognize and salute leaderly qualities? Who are representative of great leadership? What accounts for the growing diminution of...
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Irving Babbitt: The Man and His Thought
Irving Babbitt was an eccentric, armed with both a brilliant mind and personality. While we ought to remember his thought, we should also remember the man. As the leader of the American humanists,...
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Irving Babbitt & Richard Weaver: Conservative Sages
Moral indolence and apathy, both Babbitt and Weaver stress, must be surpassed if one is to fly beyond the nets of naturalism and temperamental excesses. Character and Culture: Essays on East and West,...
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