Rousseau and Romanticism

Irving Babbitt's 1919 masterwork stands as one of the most provocative sustained arguments in American literary criticism. Babbitt, founding figure of the New Humanists, turns his considerable analytical powers toward Rousseau and the Romantic movement he spawned, asking a question that still resonates: what happens when the individual declares war on restraint? The book traces how Rousseau's revolutionary rejection of classical moderation and Christian humility gave birth to an aesthetic and moral philosophy that would transform literature, politics, and culture. Babbitt saw in Romanticism a dangerous elevation of impulse over discipline, nature over artifice, the self over community. His target was not merely aesthetic preferences but the philosophical foundations of modern individualism itself. For readers willing to engage with a demanding but bracing intellect, this book remains a landmark of conservative cultural criticism, a clarion call for balance against the seductions of unchecked self-expression.