Democracy and Leadership / Edition 1

by Irving Babbitt, Russell Kirk

Overview

Irving Babbitt was a leader of the intellectual movement called American Humanism, or the New Humanism, and a distinguished professor of French literature at Harvard. Democracy and Leadership, first published in 1924, is his only directly political book, and in it he applies the principles of humanism to the civil social order.

Babbitt offers a compelling critique of unchecked majoritarianism and addresses the great problem of how to discover leaders with standards.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780913966556
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/01/1979
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Russell Kirk 11 Prefatory Note 21 Introduction 23 1. The Types of Political Thinking 49
2. Rousseau and the Idyllic Imagination 93
3. Burke and the Moral Imagination 121
4. Democracy and Imperialism 141
5. Europe and Asia 183
6. True and False Liberals 211
7. Democracy and Standards 265 Appendix A: Theories of the Will 345 Appendix B: Absolute Sovereignty 361 Bibliography 367 Index 377

Editorial Reviews

 . . . one of the few truly important works of political thought.

—Russell Kirk

From the Publisher