28. The Invention of America
American treasure and the rise of capitalism – the great frontier – Philadelphia, America’s capital of the mind – the first artists, the first doctors, the first philosophers in America – Franklin – Rush – ‘the American Homer’ – Paine – Jefferson – Notes on Virginia – America compared with Europe – the Indian problem – democracy – the federal constitution – the role of law – law as America’s first literature – federalism – de Tocqueville visits America
PART FIVE: VICO TO FREUD
Parallel Truths: The Modern Incoherence
29. The Oriental Renaissance
Portuguese secrecy over the New World – Jesuit–Hindu relations – China’s ‘Society of Renewal’ – Chinamania – Muslim uninterest in the West – theories of Muslim backwardness – William Jones and the Bengal Asiatic Society – link between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin – hieroglyphics deciphered – Shakuntala in the West – Schlegel, Bopp and von Humboldt – Schelling – Schopenhauer and Buddhism – poetry as the mother tongue – Western writers influenced by the East – the Aryan myth – Goethe, Hugo, Flaubert – Wagner’s Buddhism
30. The Great Reversal of Values – Romanticism
Romanticism: the third turning-point in history – Vico’s vision – Herzen – the will – Goethe and Herder – Fichte and the self – the reversal of values – the artist as outsider – Sturm und Drang – Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth – the romantic ‘moi’ – the second self – Turner and Delacroix – Beethoven – Schubert – the conductor – the piano – the first great virtuosi – Weber – Berlioz – Schumann – Chopin – Liszt – Mendelssohn – Verdi – Falstaff – Wagner – The Ring
31. The Rise of History, Pre-history and Deep Time
Napoleon in Egypt – the beginnings of archaeology in the West – Humboldt’s education reforms in Germany – the PhD – Hegel and the rise of history – philology – textual criticism of the Bible – Schleiermacher – David Strauss’ Life of Jesus – cuneiform deciphered – Neanderthal man identified – birth of geology – Neptunists v. Vulcanists – geology and Genesis – Palaeozoic identified – Lyell’s Principles of Geology – uniformitarianism – Vestiges of Creation – the ice age – Lamarck – Wallace – Darwin – Mendel – Descent of Man – the three-age system – Palaeolithic and Neolithic
32. New Ideas About Human Order: the Origins of Social Science and Statistics
Guillotin and the guillotine – the legacy of the French Revolution – the revolution in measurement – ‘l’art social’ – abbé Sieyès – Condorcet – Saint-Simon and the positive sciences – the industrial cities of England – child labour and disease – Comte – Herbert Spencer – Marx – Weber – Tönnies – Simmel – Durkheim – Suicide – anomie – sociological medicine – epidemiology and statistics – urbanisation and the census – Quetelet – Laplace – Legendre – Gauss – Pearson – l’homme moyen/average man – Chadwick and ‘cause of death’
33. The Uses and Abuses of Nationalism and Imperialism
Britain’s first empire – her second – the impeachment of Warren Hastings – modern slavery – the slave trade – the Vatican’s view of slavery – racism and slavery – Wilberforce – Congress of Vienna – ‘Germanophiles’ – cultural nationalism – patriotic regeneration – the nineteenth-century surge in German creativity – the concept of ‘Innerlichkeit’ – Klimt, Lagarde and Langbehn – anti-Semitism – Virey’s biological racism – Gobineau – Lapouge – Sumner, Fiske and Veblen – Ratzel’s Lebensraum – Nordau’s Degeneration – Royer – Loring Brace – imperialism and culture – Jane Austen – Kipling – Conrad – the history of English
34. The American Mind and the Modern University
The Saturday Club – Emerson – Oliver Wendell Holmes and the common law – William James, Charles Peirce and pragmatism – the New Experimental Psychology – John Dewey – Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century – London and the Irish universities – Newman’s ‘Idea of a University’ – Harvard – Yale – William and Mary – Princeton – Eliot – the age of invention
35. Enemies of the Cross and the Qurʾan – the End of the Soul
Loss of faith, in the nineteenth century – scientists who still believed – spread of secularisation – role of newspapers – Marxism, socialism and atheism – changing views of the Enlightenment – popularisers of Strauss, Lyell and Darwin – changed meaning of dogma – French anticlericalism – church and socialism – Catholic Institutes as a response – papal infallibility and edicts against modernism – reform and science in Muslim Turkey – Islamic modernists – al-Afghani – Muhammad Abduh – Rashid Rida – ‘the constitutional countries’
36. Modernism and the Discovery of the Unconscious
Freud’s ambition – compares himself to Copernicus and Darwin – Freud lionised – the beginnings of the unconscious: Mesmer, Charcot and Urphänomene – Schopenhauer – von Hartmann – Janet – The Interpretation of Dreams – the great revision of Freud – Freud as charlatan and cheat – Van Gogh, Manet and Haussmann’s Paris – the new metropolises and modernism in the arts – Hofmannsthal – Ibsen – Strindberg – Dostoevsky – Nietzsche – the avant-garde
Conclusion: The Electron, the Elements and the Elusive Self
The Cavendish Laboratory and the birth of particle physics – importance of the experiment – experiment as a rival authority to religion – the soul, Europe and the experiment as the three most important ideas – the great ‘turnings-in’ throughout history – Aristotle’s legacy more fruitful than Plato’s – the mystery of consciousness – the inner self elusive
Notes and References
Further Notes
Index of Names and Places
Index of Ideas
About the Author
By Peter Watson
Copyright
Author’s Note
In the acknowledgements to his book The Joys of Yiddish, published in 1970, Leo Rosten thanks a friend of his who, in making a critique of the manuscript, brought to bear ‘his singular acquaintanceship with ancient history, Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Hebrew, Aramaic and Sanskrit’. It is that last touch I liked – Aramaic and Sanskrit. To be able to speak English, German and Italian is impressive enough; add on Latin, Greek and Hebrew and that marks you out as a linguist of unusual distinction; but Aramaic (the language of Jesus) and Sanskrit? Such an individual can only be what Rosten himself identifies elsewhere in his book as a great scholar, a chachem, ‘a clever, wise or learned man or woman’. In a work such as Ideas it is comforting to think of learning and wisdom as one and the same but Rosten immediately punctures any such hope. ‘A bright young chachem told his grandmother that he was going to be a Doctor of Philosophy. She smiled proudly: “Wonderful. But what kind of disease is philosophy?” ’