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Carl Lotus Becker (September 7, 1873 – April 10, 1945) was an American historian.

Life

He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1893 as an undergraduate, and while there, he gradually gained an interest in studying history. Remaining for graduate work, Becker studied under Frederick Jackson Turner, who became his doctoral adviser there. Becker received his Ph.D. in 1907. He was John Wendell Anderson Professor of History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1917 to 1941.

He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923. Becker died in Ithaca, New York. Cornell has recognized his work as an educator by naming one of its five new residential colleges the Carl Becker House.

Writing

Becker is best known for The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), four lectures on The Enlightenment delivered at Yale University. His assertion that philosophies, in the "Age of Reason," relied far more upon Christian assumptions than they cared to admit, has been influential, but has also been much attacked, notably by Peter Gay. Interest in the book is partly explained by this passage (p. 47):

In the thirteenth century the key words would no doubt be God, sin, grace, salvation, heaven and the like; in the nineteenth century, matter, fact, matter-of-fact, evolution, progress; in the twentieth century, relativity, process, adjustment, function, complex. In the eighteenth century the words without which no enlightened person could reach a restful conclusion were nature, natural law, first cause, reason, sentiment, humanity, perfectibility....

This isolation of vocabularies of the epoch chimes with much later work, even if the rest of the book is essayistic in approach. Certain scholars consequently classify Becker as a "relativist." This "relativism" was more akin to "pragmatism" ("pragmatic relativism") as well as Saussurean linguistics and diachrony. Johnson Kent Wright writes:

Becker wrote as a principled liberal.... Yet in some respects The Heavenly City presents an almost uncanny anticipation of the "postmodern" reading of the eighteenth century.

— "The Pre-Postmodernism of Carl Becker", p. 162, in Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (2001), Daniel Gordon editor

Political views

Interviewed for the pamphlet Writers Take Sides: Letters about the War in Spain from 418 American Authors Becker supported the Spanish Republicans. He also stated his opposition to dictatorship in general.

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In addition, Becker attempted to sustain, rather than relativize, John Dewey's "effective freedom" and "negative freedom" in polities that attempted to advance both, usually under the rubric of a Progressive Era variant of proto-Crocean social liberalism. The dreaded "proto-" derives from Becker's arguments for social liberalism prior to the 1922 publication of his first (in a series) of reviews on Crocean philosophy. Dewey advocated for social democracy in Europe prior to the 1920s, but Becker's perspectives on this Progressive Era endorsement as well as variegated notions of market socialism during this period remain subjects of scholarly inquiry. These contentions presaged fascist exploitation of Crocean philosophy and the eponymous philosopher's condemnation of the same. Becker did address the multivalent consequences of "free trade" ideas in history. After the First Red Scare, Becker began to study conflicts over natural rights philosophy in United States history. In his 1922 The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, Becker concluded that debates over establishing "authority" in "essential natural rights," while crucial for the "emotional inspiration" and "justification" of the "Founding," nevertheless had been rendered " 'meaningless' " by attempts to enumerate seemingly countless natural rights ("What were they? Was there any sure way of finding out?") and by the " 'harsh realities of the modern world' "--the "trend of action," "trenchant scientific criticism," and "temporary hypotheses" inherent in nationalism, industrialism, and an "aggressive imperialism."

Becker continued this criticism of reviving an eighteenth-century natural rights philosophy in his 1932 The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, but both implicitly and explicitly indicated that such ideas were immanent in polities past, present, and future. Becker subsequently turned to examining enumerated natural rights as civil liberties within the changes and continuities that underpinned the Atlantic history of his previous Progressive Era social liberalism and, at the end of the interwar period, his endorsement of a United States variant of social democracy. Alexander Jacobs contends that, in Becker's later writings, such as the 1941 New Liberties for Old and the 1945 "Political Freedom: American Style," Becker found " 'democracy' " to be the preferred mode of government if " 'traditional democratic ideology' " sought to "secure these values with a 'minimum of coercion.' " But Becker attempted to balance his history of civil liberties with the promotion of social welfare policy in government, the latter undermining his "post-progressive" disenchantment: “ 'what the common man needs is the opportunity to acquire by his own effort, in an occupation for which he is fitted, the economic security which is essential to decent and independent living.' ” Becker further identified four models of "collectivism" in government, endorsing the fourth, " 'what for lack of a better term we may call Social Democracy.' " He described the "social" in his U.S. variant of social democracy as " 'whatever restrictions of economic enterprise may be necessary for the economic welfare of the people as a whole.' "

Becker's Progressive Era social liberalism and his endorsement of "post-progressive" social democracy, twinning civil liberties and social welfare policy, faced challenges similar to that of Crocean philosophy. But his guarded criticism of U.S. engagement in the Second World War stemmed more from regrets over the First Red Scare and his qualified support for the Preparedness Movement than concerns about the exploitation of rational-critical dichotomies between, for instance, civil liberties and "free trade" in public as well as private sectors. In 1919, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., had held that one side of such a dichotomy could potentially impinge on the other in his "free trade in ideas" dissent for Abrams v. United States, which most pundits were familiar with. The ailing Becker, though, ironically believed that various manifestations of "the relativist philosophy with which he had previously been identified," and which a growing chorus of twenty-first century scholars argue his historical interpretations ultimately fell prey to, had facilitated "anti-intellectualism" and the rise of fascism. In one of his last major pieces of writing, he observed that " 'the anti-intellectual relativist trend of thought reaches a final, fantastic form: truth and morality turn out to be relative to the purposes of any egocentric somnambulist who can succeed, by a ruthless projection of his personality, in creating the power to impose his unrestrained will upon the world.' " Over sixty years later, in a final twist of irony, one of his posthumous critics offered the same argument about "totalitarian" figures pursuing "perfectionist ideas" in "positive liberty."

Works

• The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (1908)
• Kansas (1910)
• The Beginnings of the American People (1915)
• The Eve of the Revolution (1918)
• The United States: An Experiment in Democracy (1920)
• The Declaration of Independence—A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922, 1942)
• Our Great Experiment in Democracy (1924)
• The Spirit of '76 (with G.M. Clark and W.E. Dodd) (1926)
• Modern History (1931)
• Everyman His Own Historian (1931)
• The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932)
• Progress and Power (1936)
• Story of Civilization (with Frederic Duncalf) (1938)
• Modern Democracy (1941)
• New Liberties for Old (1941)
• Cornell University: Founders and the Founding (1943)
• How New Will the Better World Be?—A Discussion of Post-War Reconstruction (1944)
• Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life (1945)
• Freedom of Speech and Press
• "What are Historical Facts"

Quotes

• "The temperament, the objects and the methods of a Mussolini, a Hitler, a Stalin represent everything that I most profoundly despise".
• "Freedom and responsibility." This saying, from a 1943 lecture, has been frequently misquoted. When Cornell memorialized Becker by naming a residential college in his honor, the university commissioned a large stone placard to be affixed to the building's entryway reading "FREEDOM WITH RESPONSIBILITY".

References

1. Carl L. Becker, "Frederick Jackson Turner," in Everyman His Own Historian: Essays on History and Politics. (Quadrangle Books, 1966), pp. 191–232.
2. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
3. ^ "400 To 1 Against Franco" The Milwaukee Journal, May 17, 1938.
4. Destler, Chester (1970). "The Crocean Origin of Becker's Historical Relativism". History and Theory. 9 (3): 335–42.
5. White, Hayden (1971). "Croce and Becker: A Note on the Evidence of Influence". History and Theory. 10 (2): 222–27.
6. Eldridge, Michael (1998). Transforming Experience: John Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism (1st ed.). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. pp. 88–89. ISBN 9780826513076.
7. Ceaser, James (2012). "Progressivism and the Doctrine of Natural Rights". Social Philosophy & Policy. 29 (2): 177–95.
8. Jacobs, Alexander (2020). "The Post-Progressive Liberalism of Carl Becker". Intellectual History Review. 30 (4): 679–83.
9. Jacobs, Alexander (2020). "The Post-Progressive Liberalism of Carl Becker". Intellectual History Review. 30 (4): 685–86.
10. LaFeber, Walter (Fall 2011). "Carl Becker's Histories and the American Present" (PDF). Ezra: Cornell's Quarterly Magazine. 4 (1): 8–11.
11. Jacobs, Alexander (2020). "The Post-Progressive Liberalism of Carl Becker". Intellectual History Review. 30 (4): 685–86.
12. Bailyn, Bernard (2006). "The Search for Perfection: Atlantic Dimensions". Proceedings of the British Academy. 151: 139 and 157–158.
13. ^ http://www.metaezra.com/archive/2008/09/carl_becker_is_rolling_in_his.shtml

Further reading

• Breisach, Ernst. "Carl Becker" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 1 (1999) pp 85–86.
• Smith, Charlotte W. Carl Becker: On History & the Climate of Opinion (1956)
• Strout, CushingThe Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard (1958)
• Wilkins, Burleigh T.Carl Becker: A Biographical Study in American Intellectual History (1961)
• Wilson, Clyde N. Twentieth-Century American Historians (Gale: 1983, Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 17) pp 57–63
• Griffes, Milan. The Origin and Development of Carl Becker’s Historiography

External links

• Historiographical Blurb and JSTOR listing
• Works by Carl L. Becker at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Carl L. Becker at the Internet Archive
• The Origin and Development of Carl Becker’s Historiography

• 1945 deaths
• 1873 births
• Cornell University Department of History faculty
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Historians of the United States
• Writers from Waterloo, Iowa
• Presidents of the American Historical Association
• University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
• American historians