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Yale Intellectual History of the West
The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914
This elegantly written book explores the history of ideas in Europe from the revolutions of 1848 to the beginning of the First World War. Broader than a straight survey, deeper and richer than a textbook, this work seeks to place the reader in the position of an informed eavesdropper on the intellectual conversations of the past.
J. W. Burrow first outlines the intellectual context of the mid-nineteenth century, using ideas taken from physics, social evolution, and social Darwinism, and anxieties about modernity and personal identity, to explore the impact of science and social thought on European intellectual life. The discussion encompasses powerful and fashionable concepts in evolution, art, myth, the occult, and the unconscious mind; the rise of the great cities of Berlin, Paris, and London; and the work of literary writers, philosophers, and composers. Most of the great intellectual figures of the age―and many of the lesser known―populate the book, among them Mill, Bakunin, Nietzsche, Bergson, Renan, Pater, Proust, Clough, Flaubert, Wagner, and Wilde. The author wears his erudition lightly, and this distinguished book will be both entertaining and accessible to scholars, students, and general readers alike.
J. W. Burrow first outlines the intellectual context of the mid-nineteenth century, using ideas taken from physics, social evolution, and social Darwinism, and anxieties about modernity and personal identity, to explore the impact of science and social thought on European intellectual life. The discussion encompasses powerful and fashionable concepts in evolution, art, myth, the occult, and the unconscious mind; the rise of the great cities of Berlin, Paris, and London; and the work of literary writers, philosophers, and composers. Most of the great intellectual figures of the age―and many of the lesser known―populate the book, among them Mill, Bakunin, Nietzsche, Bergson, Renan, Pater, Proust, Clough, Flaubert, Wagner, and Wilde. The author wears his erudition lightly, and this distinguished book will be both entertaining and accessible to scholars, students, and general readers alike.
271 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 2000
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About the author
J.W. Burrow
12 books9 followersJohn Wyon Burrow was an English historian of intellectual history. His published works include assessments of the Whig interpretation of history and of historiography generally. According to The Independent: "John Burrow was one of the leading intellectual historians of his generation. His pioneering work marked the beginning of a more sophisticated approach to the history of the social sciences, one that did not treat the past as being of interest only in so far as it anticipated the present."
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 16, 2009
This is an unusually well-written survey of European Intellectual History of the late-nineteenth century. The book begins with a compelling prologue discussing the intersection of Mikhail Bakunin and Richard Wagner in the revolution of 1848. The rest of the book is less action-packed, but no less interesting, as it traces the development of European thought on several fronts, including science, philosophy, and even the "occult." Especial attention is given to the discussion of "immanence" or materialism, transcendence, and the self.
The book is useful as a teaching tool, because it introduces each figure clearly, traces influences, and makes connections across fields. Discussion of such areas as the biological and social sciences will also serve as excellent springboards to important developments later in the twentieth century. It is also a useful reference, because an excellent index allows one to find both where each individual is discussed in depth, including birth and death dates for each, and the various points in which the individual is listed as an influence on later thought. An Epilogue on the development of the Avant Garde is less exciting than the Prologue, but nonetheless a fine conclusion to a useful and interesting read.
The book is useful as a teaching tool, because it introduces each figure clearly, traces influences, and makes connections across fields. Discussion of such areas as the biological and social sciences will also serve as excellent springboards to important developments later in the twentieth century. It is also a useful reference, because an excellent index allows one to find both where each individual is discussed in depth, including birth and death dates for each, and the various points in which the individual is listed as an influence on later thought. An Epilogue on the development of the Avant Garde is less exciting than the Prologue, but nonetheless a fine conclusion to a useful and interesting read.
January 21, 2026
A truly excellent work of intellectual history. Marvellously collates and details the currents of thought within the period, touching upon just about every different discipline. A must read.
May 9, 2023
This is an excellent history of Western thought in the mid-to-late 19th century.
The title, “The Crisis of Reason,” is somewhat confusing. The crisis part was the break from Christian authoritarianism (God’s word) that had dominated Western thought for centuries to modes of thinking that were distinctly not that at all. Mainly, the replacement thought paradigm was scientific, which is to say materialistic-based, and not religious or metaphysical at all. This in turn prompted questions and concerns about the human place in the cosmos - meaning, and the grounds for moral behavior. Taken to its extreme, without God, there was no purpose, with the possible exception of humanitarianism, but that was threatened by the social Darwinians and the argument that only the fittest survive. Thus, the reference to reason, might have been this transition between the Platonic-Christian notion of universal and eternal reason, as embodied by the Good and God, and the non-transcendent notion of reason that employed rational end-means coordination for humanitarian benefit.
I was struck by the presence of so many not currently well-known thinkers who led the move toward a this-worldly-based belief system. These included Jacob Moleschott (1827-1893) who saw energy as a quality of matter, and who viewed life as matter in motion. Ludwig Buchner (1824-1899) cast religion aside completely in favor of materialist science (interestingly, he apparently tied Pythagorist and Plato to Brahmic thought), expressing confidence that science alone could watch out and care for humankind as “scientific humanitarianism.” He took Moleschott’s “No matter without force and no force without matter” and said that force - the source of all movement - was within matter, not above, located in some non-material realm. John Tyndall (1826-1893), a successor to Faraday, linked matter and activity, and said that matter creates life and that life was about the conservation of energy.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) focused on the non-divine, historical Jesus. In taking that Christian icon down a notch, he replaced the gospel of Jesus with the gospel of science, especially Darwinism, and reputedly turning this into a sort of a nature worship. The human task was to “ennoble nature” and invest it with attributes of divinity. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1915) wrote similarly with his monism where evolution was the manifestation of the cosmos’s creative force and the evolution of the world soul, and nature contemplation was the contemplation of the All. Matter for him was alive with its attributes, and governed by desire/dislike, lust/antipathy, attraction and repulsion.
Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) said that the “universal empire of causality” forbade “the erection of any crucial barrier between the human and physical sciences.” The self’s task was to know universal laws and to submit to them. Taine also argued for a science of culture in which people are seen as products of their past - he was Lamarckian not Darwinian, though Darwin walked a fuzzy line here - and, thus, character was modifiable and those modifications were inheritable. That view was taken to an extreme by Taine’s follower, Gustave LeBon (1841-1931), whose, The Crowd dismissed the sheer irrationality of mass behavior, likening it to a massive electro-magnetic field.
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), known for his work in physics, saw human behavior strictly in environmental determinism terms. Humans were formed from the outside. There is, thus, no self. There is only perpetual adaptation to what the environment dictated. Knowledge for humans was pretty much left to adaptive utility. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1913) echoed Mach by saying that mind’s role was in service of adaptive success, but he took a step further in this line of thought by arguing that knowledge had a non-utilitarian function by making humans feel better. God, immortality and free will are the big three in these “useful fictions.”
Parallelling Schopenhauer, Eduard Von Hartmann (1842-1906) talked about “the unconscious Will,” but unlike Schopenhauer, he saw it as teleological - the emergence of the conscious from the unconscious, with the former eventually overcoming the Will’s relentless striving. The only relief for Hartmann was the suspension of desire via the emancipation of the intellect (consciousness) from the Will, and the merger, via selflessness, into the great cosmic web. Whereas the unconscious was both Will and Reason, for Hartmann, consciousness was Reason’s (the Idea) precedence over the Will, and a return to the original state of non-willing, nothingness and a state of quiescence (Nirvana).
The book covers other facets of European thought, but these thinkers that occupy a key transition between philosophical religion and science-based philosophical modes of thinking interested me most.
The title, “The Crisis of Reason,” is somewhat confusing. The crisis part was the break from Christian authoritarianism (God’s word) that had dominated Western thought for centuries to modes of thinking that were distinctly not that at all. Mainly, the replacement thought paradigm was scientific, which is to say materialistic-based, and not religious or metaphysical at all. This in turn prompted questions and concerns about the human place in the cosmos - meaning, and the grounds for moral behavior. Taken to its extreme, without God, there was no purpose, with the possible exception of humanitarianism, but that was threatened by the social Darwinians and the argument that only the fittest survive. Thus, the reference to reason, might have been this transition between the Platonic-Christian notion of universal and eternal reason, as embodied by the Good and God, and the non-transcendent notion of reason that employed rational end-means coordination for humanitarian benefit.
I was struck by the presence of so many not currently well-known thinkers who led the move toward a this-worldly-based belief system. These included Jacob Moleschott (1827-1893) who saw energy as a quality of matter, and who viewed life as matter in motion. Ludwig Buchner (1824-1899) cast religion aside completely in favor of materialist science (interestingly, he apparently tied Pythagorist and Plato to Brahmic thought), expressing confidence that science alone could watch out and care for humankind as “scientific humanitarianism.” He took Moleschott’s “No matter without force and no force without matter” and said that force - the source of all movement - was within matter, not above, located in some non-material realm. John Tyndall (1826-1893), a successor to Faraday, linked matter and activity, and said that matter creates life and that life was about the conservation of energy.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) focused on the non-divine, historical Jesus. In taking that Christian icon down a notch, he replaced the gospel of Jesus with the gospel of science, especially Darwinism, and reputedly turning this into a sort of a nature worship. The human task was to “ennoble nature” and invest it with attributes of divinity. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1915) wrote similarly with his monism where evolution was the manifestation of the cosmos’s creative force and the evolution of the world soul, and nature contemplation was the contemplation of the All. Matter for him was alive with its attributes, and governed by desire/dislike, lust/antipathy, attraction and repulsion.
Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893) said that the “universal empire of causality” forbade “the erection of any crucial barrier between the human and physical sciences.” The self’s task was to know universal laws and to submit to them. Taine also argued for a science of culture in which people are seen as products of their past - he was Lamarckian not Darwinian, though Darwin walked a fuzzy line here - and, thus, character was modifiable and those modifications were inheritable. That view was taken to an extreme by Taine’s follower, Gustave LeBon (1841-1931), whose, The Crowd dismissed the sheer irrationality of mass behavior, likening it to a massive electro-magnetic field.
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), known for his work in physics, saw human behavior strictly in environmental determinism terms. Humans were formed from the outside. There is, thus, no self. There is only perpetual adaptation to what the environment dictated. Knowledge for humans was pretty much left to adaptive utility. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1913) echoed Mach by saying that mind’s role was in service of adaptive success, but he took a step further in this line of thought by arguing that knowledge had a non-utilitarian function by making humans feel better. God, immortality and free will are the big three in these “useful fictions.”
Parallelling Schopenhauer, Eduard Von Hartmann (1842-1906) talked about “the unconscious Will,” but unlike Schopenhauer, he saw it as teleological - the emergence of the conscious from the unconscious, with the former eventually overcoming the Will’s relentless striving. The only relief for Hartmann was the suspension of desire via the emancipation of the intellect (consciousness) from the Will, and the merger, via selflessness, into the great cosmic web. Whereas the unconscious was both Will and Reason, for Hartmann, consciousness was Reason’s (the Idea) precedence over the Will, and a return to the original state of non-willing, nothingness and a state of quiescence (Nirvana).
The book covers other facets of European thought, but these thinkers that occupy a key transition between philosophical religion and science-based philosophical modes of thinking interested me most.
March 8, 2024
(2023)
Kniha v 3 vetách
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Ako ma kniha zmenila?
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2017 - No, čo k tejto knihe povedať. Určite stojí zato, aby bola čitaná. A nie raz, nie dvakrát, možno aj viac ako trikrát. Najprv aspoň s googlom, nech si človek všetky tie mená vygoogli a zistí, kto je kto. Druhykrát, aby konečne pochopil, o čom sa vlastne hovorí. Tretí raz, aby si to vedel zasadiť do súvislostí a potom aspoň raz, aby vedel celú knihu rozanalyzovať a pochopiť ju ako celok. Ja som ledva splnil ten prvý krok. Obsahovo kniha plná neskutočných informácii od biológie cez sociológiu až po samotnú filozofiu a podstatu náboženstva. Klobúk dole pred autorom a aj predtým, ktorý zvládne všetky vyššie spomenuté kroky už pri prvom prečítaní.
Kniha v 3 vetách
1.
2.
3.
Dojmy
Ako ma kniha zmenila?
3 najlepšie citácie
1.
2.
3.
Zhrnutie+poznámky
2017 - No, čo k tejto knihe povedať. Určite stojí zato, aby bola čitaná. A nie raz, nie dvakrát, možno aj viac ako trikrát. Najprv aspoň s googlom, nech si človek všetky tie mená vygoogli a zistí, kto je kto. Druhykrát, aby konečne pochopil, o čom sa vlastne hovorí. Tretí raz, aby si to vedel zasadiť do súvislostí a potom aspoň raz, aby vedel celú knihu rozanalyzovať a pochopiť ju ako celok. Ja som ledva splnil ten prvý krok. Obsahovo kniha plná neskutočných informácii od biológie cez sociológiu až po samotnú filozofiu a podstatu náboženstva. Klobúk dole pred autorom a aj predtým, ktorý zvládne všetky vyššie spomenuté kroky už pri prvom prečítaní.
December 9, 2008
Lays out a whole array of ideas and influential thinkers whose achievements continue to have an impact on our time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews