More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
From the vantage point of the present essay, this accusation seems a bit unfair, for capitalism was precisely expected and supposed to repress certain human drives and proclivities and to fashion a less multifaceted, less unpredictable, and more “one-dimensional” human personality.
In sum, capitalism was supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon to be denounced as its worst feature.
In all of these explicit or implicit critiques of capitalism there was little recognition that, to an earlier age, the world of the “full human personality,” replete with diverse passions, appeared as a menace that needed to be exorcized to the greatest possible extent.
I conclude that both critics and defenders of capitalism could improve upon their arguments through knowledge of the episode in intellectual history that has been recounted here. This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of the debate.
