Thinking with History

This work draws together a series of essays that reveal the changing place of history in 19th- and 20th-century cultures. In most intellectual and artistic fields, Carl Schorske argues, 20th-century Europeans and Americans have come to do their thinking without history. Modern art, modern architecture, modern music, modern science - all have defined themselves not as emerging from or even reacting against the past, but as detached from it in a new autonomous cultural space. This is in stark contrast to the historicism of the 19th century, he argues, when ideas about the past pervaded most fields of thought from philosophy and politics to art, music and literature. However, Schorske also shows that the 19th century's attachment to thinking with history and the modernist way of thinking without history are more than just antitheses. They are different ways of trying to address the problems of modernity, to give shape and meaning to European civilization in the era of industrial capitalism and mass politics. Schorske begins by reflecting in his own vocation as it was shaped by the historical changes he has seen sweep across political and academic culture.
Then he offers a European sam