An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World

Of the dozens of books and hundreds of articles that Harry Elmer Barnes wrote in his long and productive lifetime, this is in many ways his masterpiece. Though Barnes was skilled in such diverse disciplines as sociology, literature, political science, economics, and criminology, it was as historian that his genius was most evident. And nowhere was that genius more on display than in the nearly 1,400 pages of his intellectual and cultural history.

The history was originally published as a single volume in 1937, and a second edition was issued in 1941. The present three-volume edition is a revised and enlarged one, brought out in 1965. Specialists from many of the natural and social sciences, arts, and humanities served as contributing authors in order to bring the work up to date and to correct it in light of their latest research.

Unlike his other great survey—History of Western Civilization—Barnes here concentrates not on the traditional political, economic, and diplomatic aspects of history, but rather on far wider territory. By intellectual and cultural, Barnes means the important ideas and developments in the fields of philosophy, art, literature, music, medicine, science, law, and religion.

Part of the Barnes genius is the way he relates and ties together ideas from all of these fields through his theory of historical development. For Barnes is no mere recorder of facts, figures, names, and dates (though there are plenty of each in all three volumes). He explains, reveals, expounds, speculates, recaptures, traces, and shapes in always relevant and eloquent language. There is sense and meaning to history as written by Harry Elmer Barnes. In addition, he is not afraid to write with purpose, as if it mattered (as indeed it does). He is not afraid to state opinion, when to refrain from doing so could result in confusion and loss of meaning. The important thing is that Barnes’ opinions are always carefully reasoned ones.

An especially worthwhile factor in this history is the space and detail it gives to the contributions of the Arabs and other Semitic peoples to Western Civilization. This is often a deleted chapter in so many “world” histories.

Volume One covers the period from the earliest times through the Middle Ages and contains fascinating discussions of primitive thought and culture, Greek and Roman intellectual life, culture in the Dark Ages (there was some), the medieval synthesis (with sections on “Abelard and the Enthronement of Logic” and “The Ascendancy of Aristotle in Medieval Thought”), and medieval science from Bacon to Copernicus.

Volume Two covers the years from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century. Its important sections include: “The Humanist Temper,” “Political Theory Under the Spell of Humanism,” and the pertinent, “Hangover of Medieval Intellectual Interests in Modern Times.” Other sections are: “Intellectual Effects of the Expansion of Europe”—“Intellectual and Cultural Trends Encouraging and Accompanying the Progress in Scientific Research”—“The Growth of Tolerance and The Case for Freethought”—“The Struggle for Civil Liberties”—“The Course of Deism”—“The Secularization of Ethics”—“The Age of Rationalism”—and “Ideas of Progress and Growth.”

Volume Three covers the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The whole of it is important, but especially the parts on “Outstanding Achievements of the 19th Century”—“19th Century Philosophy”—“Literature: Romanticism & Realism”—“The Triumph of Romantic Ideals in Music”—“Developments in Psychology Since 1900” (by Richard D. Walk)—and “Progress in the Social Sciences.” This volume also contains the index to the entire study.

Barnes is probably best known to most libertarians for his path-breaking work in historical revisionism of both world wars. Although the present work does not include such topics specifically, the final chapter, “A Glimpse of the Future,” does contain some typically Barnesian insights on the world view of his revisionism. Here Barnes deals with such subjects as the human quest for mastery, cultural lag as an obstacle to human well-being, Orwell’s 1984 and the Cold War system, and theories of why civilizations perish.

Barnes’ three volumes are filled with discussions of people and their ideas, since in reality the two are not separated. And, whether he is discussing Aristotle or Aquinas, Bach or Beethoven, Caesar or Chekhov, Zeno or Zola, Barnes always breathes life into both the ideas and the person.

Libertarian students often ask for the names of respected scholars outside libertarian ranks who have enough productive competence to offer useful material to the libertarian. Near the top of the list should be the “learned crusader”—Harry Elmer Barnes.

Reviewed by William Danks / Intellectual History (3 Volumes, 1,381 Pages) / BFL Price $10.50