Socratic Elenchus

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...In an examination of the intellectual roots of Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, Richard Hofstadter suggests its links with the Populist movement as well as the change in American intellectual milieu which led to reevaluations of this work...

...Read any issue of the American Historical Review and the extent of the retreat is shocking...

...As HISTORIAN, BEARD WAS A REVOLUTIONARY who broke the old molds and forced the remaking of all prevailing syntheses of American history...

...As a consequence, "what began as a testimonial to a man vitally alive and in the thick of controversy has ended as a memorial...

...This ironically hopeful approach to history might well be extended by Beard himself to this book appraising him as historian, teacher, critic and public figure...

...Covering the period in which Lenin was an active participant in the creation of the Soviet state, Mr...

...A Publication of the London School of Economics and Political Science...

...too many books, not enough strife of experience...

...Great teacher that he was, Beard constantly urged his students to work in the substance of the future, not simply the ashes of yesterday...

...Third, the bee fertilizes the flower that it robs...

...Schapiro makes frank statement of his biases and opinions...

...CHARLES A. BEARn: AN APPRAISAL, edited by Howard K. Beale...

...Schapiro argues that the totalitarianism of the Russian state is essentially the creation of the Leninist regime, deriving from theoretical foundations and the exigency of maintaining in power an unpopular minority...

...Prevalent anti-Beardism, to be sure, consists of more than simply taking a position against that special brand of isolationism (Beard referred to it as "continentalism") which the historian advocated in the last years of his life...

...In this sense, the contributors to this volume merit the respect due those who defend original thinkers against their detractors...

...397 pp...

...7.00...

...Second, the mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind ex ceedingly small...

...The editor, Howard K. Beale, begins with a curious introduction whose very candor would have delighted Beard...

...In his five-page introduction the editor feels compelled to mention no less than four times that most of those originally invited to participate so fell out of sympathy with Beard's views or came to dislike him so intensely that they withdrew from the project...

...and the only tolerable goal of our labors must be an artistically perfect adjustment of our conduct and ideas to the noblest imagined potentialities of the constantly becoming situations, thus uniting the word and the deed which were not asunder in the beginning and will not be at the end...

...Little has changed since the days Beard wrote that he found in the universities "too much routine, not enough peace...

...Here is the man who, more than any other, brought the study and writing of American history to life, stirred fresh life into the deadliest of the American social studies and, to cap it all, became involved toward the end of his life in the bitterest and most far-reaching controversy of his career over America's role in the world...

...Which is precisely what gives some value to this preliminary study of Beard...

...We learn that this volume, originally planned in 1939-40 by admirers of Beard, was intended to honor him " . . . while he was still alive and under serious attack for his latest writings...

...Finally, "When it gets dark enough you can see the stars...

...All this in favor of the "real," the description of the traditional bare bones of history...

...S. P. BOOKS RECEIVED THE ORIGIN OF THE COMMUNIST AUTOCRACY— Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase: 1917-1922—by Leonard Schapiro...

...In the light of this, the question of the extent to which Beard was influenced by Marxism—discussed in several essays of this volume—seems curiously academic although incidentally throwing light on his complete open-mindedness...

...We can here cite only a few of the essays, though all of them have their interest...

...too many students, not enough seekers...

...a new Ice Age set in...

...too much calm, not enough passion...

...Here is the founder of a whole school of historiography, the author of, at one time, the most widely accepted and influential history of America...

...Further, and this was his equally important contribution to our life, he brought to the surface the question of power (social, economic, political and class power) in American life, forced its recognition and examination...

...Howard K. Beale fruitfully traces the career of Beard, the historian...

...In fact, two volumes of essays were originally intended...

...they have rejected his vision...

...But, as Professor Beale puts it, World War II came...

...Or, bearing in mind the current divorce between knowledge and action, reflect on the hostility which our thinkers and intellectuals today must feel toward these words of Beard, contributed to his students: The Socratic elenchus is the prime instrument for training intelligence...

...Charles A. Beard once summarized for a friend the "laws of history": First, whom the gods would de stroy they first make mad...

...They were to be Festschriften in homage to the dean and greatest of living twentieth century American historians...

...Or, more exactly, the academic ice floes which made up American historiography and which Beard had blasted apart, froze solidly together again...

...Agree with these or not, his book is massively documented, containing between its covers the first thorough history of political opposition in the early years of the Soviet Union...

...The academicians who now lead American historical writing have rejected far more than this or that specific interpretation of Beard, their concentrated efforts to break down details of his work through the minutae of research notwithstanding...

...and perhaps most sympathetic of all, Walton Hamilton presents a brilliant tour de force, done with the full vigor of Beard's style and consisting of fragmentary comments on American life and government today...

...A fuller review will appear in a forthcoming issue of DISSENT...

...They have rejected his sense of history, his scope and his style, his epic mood and manner of painting history in broad strokes...

...Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass...

...too many theories, not enough theory...

...This, after all, had nothing in common with the Hoover brand of reactionary isolationism but was Beard's last desperate effort to save something of his epic "American dream" that the New World, by creating a superior civilization, might by example save the Old World...

...Yet, today, the decline in his influence is apparent to all and, in so far as our historians now grapple with the ideas of history, most work against the Beardian concepts and attempt to roll back the stream of social and economic liberal interpretation of which he was the master...