View source for Carl L. Becker

{{short description|American historian}}
{{For|other people named Carl Becker|Carl Becker (disambiguation)}}
[[File:Carl L Becker 1919.jpg|thumb|right|191px|Carl L. Becker, 1919]]
'''Carl Lotus Becker''' (September 7, 1873 – April 10, 1945) was an American historian who studied the [[American Revolution]] and the [[Age of Enlightenment]] in America and Europe.

==Life==
He was born in [[Waterloo, Iowa]]. He enrolled at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison|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.<ref>Carl L. Becker, "Frederick Jackson Turner," in ''Everyman His Own Historian: Essays on History and Politics''. (Quadrangle Books, 1966), pp. 191–232.</ref> Becker received his [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in 1907. Becker taught at Pennsylvania State College, [[Dartmouth College|Dartmouth]], and Minnesota. He was Professor of History at the [[University of Kansas]] from 1902 to 1916. He then became John Wendell Anderson Professor of History in the [[Cornell University Department of History|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 and a member of the [[American Philosophical Society]] in 1936.<ref name="AAAS">{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=May 29, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Carl+L.+Becker&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2023-06-02 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> Becker died in [[Ithaca, New York]]. Cornell has recognized his work as an educator by naming one of its five new [[residential college]]s the [[Cornell West Campus|Carl Becker House]].

==Writing==
Carl Becker's 1915 ''The Beginnings of the American People'' is often cited for a description of "colonial merchants" as "sunshine patriots." The "sunshine patriot" only appeared once in this book, and that in a quotation from [[Thomas Paine|Thomas Paine's]] first ''[[American Crisis]]'' essay, which concluded a series of parallelisms that in turn presaged the introduction of General [[George Washington]] to the narrative. In this particular passage, Becker attempted to illustrate the "profound disillusionment" of the early years of the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]], demonstrated by how "drudgery in obscure committee rooms was valued above declamation...the practical sense of Robert Morris counted for more than the finished oratory of Richard Henry Lee...when a febrile enthusiasm for liberty and the just rights of humanity seemed strangely transformed into the sordid spirit of the money-changer...[and finally] the times that tried men's souls, when 'the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot...shrinks from the service of his country, but he that stands...deserves the love of man and woman.' " The "sordid money-changer" was as guilty of an ebbing of revolutionary sentiments as "the sunshine patriot," but Becker did not explicitly define the latter as the former.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becker |first1=Carl Lotus |title=Beginnings of the American People |date=1915 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |page=254}}</ref>

===''The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers'' (1932)===
Becker is best known for ''The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers'' (1932), four lectures on [[Age of Enlightenment|The Enlightenment]] delivered at [[Yale University]]. According to [[Peter Gay]] in 1957: <blockquote> Its urbane and acidulous dissection of the philosophes has had great and lasting influence; few recent books on European intellectual history have been as widely read and as generously received. It is that rare work of scholarship that is also a work of literature--a masterpiece of persuasion that has done more to shape the current image of the enlightenment than any other book. Despite the skepticism of some professional historians, its witty formulations have been accepted by a generation of students and borrowed in textbook after textbook.<ref>Peter Gay, “Carl Becker’s Heavenly City.” ''Political Science Quarterly'' 72#2 (1957), pp. 182–99 [https://doi.org/10.2307/2145772 online]</ref></blockquote>

Becker's assertion that [[philosophy|philosophies]], in the "[[Age of Enlightenment|Age of Reason]]," relied far more upon [[Christianity|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.&nbsp;47):

{{Blockquote|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 [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussurean linguistics]] and [[Historical linguistics|diachrony]]. Johnson Kent Wright writes:

{{Blockquote|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}}

According to American historian and cultural critic [[Morris Berman]], ''The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers'' “has never been surpassed as an analysis of modernity.”<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/11/the-hula-hoop-theory-of-history/|title=The Hula Hoop Theory of History|first=Morris|last=Berman|date=January 11, 2013|website=CounterPunch.org}}</ref>

==Political views==
Interviewed for the pamphlet ''Writers Take Sides: Letters about the War in Spain from 418 American Authors'' Becker supported the  [[Second Spanish Republic|Spanish Republicans]].<ref name="mj">[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19380517&id=OLNQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RSIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5656,5316768&hl=en "400 To 1 Against Franco"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503080921/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19380517&id=OLNQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RSIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5656,5316768&hl=en |date=2016-05-03 }} ''[[The Milwaukee Journal]]'', May 17, 1938.</ref> He also stated his opposition to [[dictatorship]] in general.<ref name="mj" />

In 1910, Carl Becker assessed [[History of Kansas#Progressive era|Progressive Era Kansas]] [[Debates over Americanization|Americanization]], which included [[Alcohol laws of Kansas|state temperance amendments and legislation]], as an "individualism of conformity, not of revolt."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becker |first1=Carl |title="Kansas" in Essays in American History Dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner |date=1910 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |location=New York |page=93}}</ref> Becker added that this "individualism [also] means the ability of the individual to succeed," infusing early twentieth-century "Kansans" with "hair-triggered" vigilance that found "expression in the romantic devotion of people to the state, in a certain alert sensitiveness to criticism from outside."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becker |first1=Carl |title="Kansas" in Essays in American History Dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner |date=1910 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |location=New York |page=94}}</ref> In addition, Becker attempted to sustain, rather than relativize, [[John Dewey|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-[[Benedetto Croce|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 [[Benedetto Croce|Crocean philosophy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Roberts |first1=David D. |title=Historicism And Fascism In Modern Italy |date=2007 |publisher=University Of Toronto Press |location=Toronto, ON |isbn=9781442691834 |page=95}}</ref>

Dewey advocated for early-20th-century [[social democracy]] in Europe prior to the 1920s, but Becker's perspectives on the [[Progressive Era]] endorsement as well as variegated notions of [[market socialism]] during this period remain subjects of scholarly inquiry.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eldridge |first1=Michael |title=Transforming Experience: John Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism |date=1998 |publisher=Vanderbilt University Press |location=Nashville |isbn=9780826513076 |pages=88–89 |edition=1st}}</ref> For his part, Dewey's "negative freedom" did not exclude ideas on degrees of [[free market]]s (which [[Christian socialism|myriad]] [[Socialism|socialists]] chastised and chastise him for). These contentions presaged fascist exploitation of [[Benedetto Croce|Crocean philosophy]] and the eponymous philosopher's condemnation of the same. Becker did address the multivalent consequences of "free trade" ideas in history, but decidedly argued that these ideas ran counter to the aspirations of [[representative democracy]]. In his 1919 [[Marketplace of ideas|free trade in ideas]] dissent for ''[[Abrams v. United States]]'', at the height of the [[First Red Scare]], [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.]], held that a dichotomous understanding of [[Progressive Era]] "negative freedom," between [[civil liberties]] in society on the one hand, and degrees of "free trade" in private as well as public economic sectors on the other, could still potentially result in the latter branch shaping, and even subsuming, the former branch. After the Holmes dissent, Becker began to study conflicts over [[Natural rights and legal rights|natural rights philosophy]] in United States history. James Ceaser argues that Becker ultimately found "natural rights" to be "meaningless" in the "modern world."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ceaser |first1=James |title=Progressivism and the Doctrine of Natural Rights |journal=Social Philosophy & Policy |date=2012 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=177–95|doi=10.1017/S0265052511000239 |s2cid=144308032 }}</ref>

In his 1922 ''The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas'', for example, 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 [[Federalist No. 84|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." Given that Becker did not examine [[federalism]], he did not fully explicate the legal history of the [[Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Ninth Amendment]] in addressing the former dilemma.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becker |first1=Carl Lotus |title=The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas |date=1922 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace and Company |location=New York, NY |pages=113 and 278–279}}</ref>

Becker continued criticizing [[Natural rights and legal rights|natural rights philosophy]] revivals in his 1932 ''The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers'' but both implicitly and explicitly indicated that such ideas could not be effaced from polities past, present, and future.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jacobs |first1=Alexander |title=The Post-Progressive Liberalism of Carl Becker |journal=Intellectual History Review |date=2020 |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=679–83|doi=10.1080/17496977.2019.1656464 |s2cid=204524168}}</ref> 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 early-20th-century [[social democracy]]. Alexander Jacobs contends that in Becker's later writings, such as the 1936-41 essays collected in ''New Liberties for Old'' and the 1944-45 ''Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life'',  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 an analysis of [[welfare states]], the latter endeavor 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 (federal) statist "collectivism" and rejected "Socialism, Communism, [and] Fascism," yet endorsing "what for lack of a better term we may call Social Democracy." He described the "Social" in his U.S. variant of early-20th-century [[social democracy]] as "whatever restrictions of economic enterprise may be necessary for the economic welfare of the people as a whole." His role (if any) in the founding of the [[Liberal Party of New York]], a haven for social democrats in its early "left of left" years, remains a subject of scholarly inquiry.<ref name="The Post-Progressive Liberalism of">{{cite journal |last1=Carl Becker quoted in Jacobs |first1=Alexander |title=The Post-Progressive Liberalism of Carl Becker |journal=Intellectual History Review |date=2020 |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=685–86}}</ref>

Becker's Progressive-Era [[social liberalism]] and his endorsement of "post-progressive" [[social democracy]], advancing both [[civil liberties]] and the [[welfare state]] in the absence of Communism as well as myriad degrees of free markets, faced challenges similar to that of [[Benedetto Croce|Crocean philosophy]]. His guarded criticism of US engagement in the Second World War, however, stemmed more from regrets over the [[First Red Scare]] and his qualified support for the [[Preparedness Movement]] than from concerns about the exploitation of rational-critical dichotomies in notions of "negative freedom" as well as, in turn, the [[Progressive Era]] conceptual bifurcation of "negative freedom" and "effective freedom."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=LaFeber |first1=Walter |title=Carl Becker's Histories and the American Present |journal=Ezra: Cornell's Quarterly Magazine |date=Fall 2011 |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=8–11 |url=http://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/FALL11/ezra.pdf}}</ref>

In 1944, lectures delivered at the University of Michigan, published posthumously at the end of the following year, Becker proposed what has been described as a positive notion of public responsibility and provided a summation of his years of studying the history of civil liberties in the United States, including the [[Second Amendment to the United States Constitution|Second Amendment]]. "Take first the civil liberties," Becker averred, for "all of these (with the possible exception of the right to bear arms, which seems now advantageous chiefly to gangsters) are, in respect to the end contemplated, invaluable and should be preserved." That exception, though, would undoubtedly prove significant because "one may well ask whether they [additional civil liberties] are defined in the bill of rights with sufficient care to attain the end desired in the complex social conditions of the modern world."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Becker |first1=Carl Lotus |title=Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life |date=November 1945 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York, NY |page=88}}</ref>

In a dénouement to another aspect of his historiography, the ailing Becker distinguished his previous "pragmatic relativism" from a possible [[factual relativism|factual]] and [[relativism|epistemic]] "relativist philosophy with which he had previously been identified"---the same "relativist philosophy" that a growing chorus of twenty-first-century scholars speculate his historical interpretations ultimately fell prey to. Becker believed that particular "relativist trend" in scholarship would facilitate "anti-intellectualism" and sowed the seeds of [[Ffscism in North America|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."<ref name="The Post-Progressive Liberalism of"/> Over sixty years later, in a final twist of irony, one of his posthumous critics offered a countervailing argument for "totalitarian" figures pursuing "perfectionist ideas" within, rather than "relativizing," a conceptual category of "positive liberty."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bailyn |first1=Bernard |title=The Search for Perfection: Atlantic Dimensions |journal=Proceedings of the British Academy |date=2006 |volume=151 |pages=139 and 157–158}}</ref>

==Works==
* ''[https://archive.org/details/cu31924070683069 The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776]'' (1908)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/kansas__00beck Kansas]'' (1910)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/beginningsofamer00beckuoft The Beginnings of the American People]'' (1915)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/eveofrevolutionc00beckuoft The Eve of the Revolution]'' (1918)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/americaswaraimsp00beck America's war aims and peace program]'', editor (1918) 
* ''[https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesexpe00beckrich The United States: An Experiment in Democracy]'' (1920)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/cu31924019911670 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)
* ''[http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_history/clbecker.htm 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"
* ''Benjamin Franklin'', published in 1946, after Becker's death

==Quotes==
*"The temperament, the objects and the methods of a [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]], a [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]], a [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] represent everything that I most profoundly despise".<ref name="mj" />
*"Freedom and responsibility." This saying, from a 1943 lecture, has been frequently misquoted.<ref name="metaezra">{{Cite web|url=http://www.metaezra.com/archive/2008/09/carl_becker_is_rolling_in_his.shtml|title=MetaEzra -- Carl Becker is Rolling in His Grave|website=www.metaezra.com}}</ref>  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".<ref name="metaezra" />

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Bailyn, Bernard. “Becker, Andrews, and the Image of Colonial Origins.” ''New England Quarterly'' 29#4 (1956), pp.&nbsp;522–34, [https://doi.org/10.2307/362146 online].
* Breisach, Ernst. "Carl Becker" in Kelly Boyd, ed. ''Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 1'' (1999) pp 85–86.
* Brown, Robert E. ''Carl Becker on history and the American Revolution'' (1970) [https://archive.org/details/carlbeckeronhist00brow online]
* Cairns, John C. “Carl Becker: An American Liberal.” ''Journal of Politics'' 16#4 (1954), pp.&nbsp;623–44, [https://doi.org/10.2307/2126562 online].
* Gay, Peter. “Carl Becker’s Heavenly City.” ''Political Science Quarterly'' 72#2, (1957), pp.&nbsp;182–99, [https://doi.org/10.2307/2145772 online].
* Gershoy, Leo. "Carl Becker on Progress and Power" ''American Historical Review'' 55#1 (1949), pp.&nbsp;22–35. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1841085 online]
*Griffes, Milan. ''[https://www.academia.edu/9101433/The_Origin_and_Development_of_Carl_Beckers_Historiography The Origin and Development of Carl Becker’s Historiography]''
* Noble, David W. “Carl Becker: Science, Relativism, and the Dilemma of Diderot.” ''Ethics'' 67#4 (1957), pp.&nbsp;233–48, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2379654 online]
* Smith, Charlotte W. "Carl Becker: The Historian as a Literary Craftsman" ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 9#3 (1952), pp.&nbsp;291–316. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1916979 online]
* Smith, Charlotte W. ''Carl Becker: On History & the Climate of Opinion '' (1956) [https://archive.org/details/carlbeckeronhist00smit online]
* [[Cushing Strout|Strout, Cushing]]''The Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard'' (1958) [https://archive.org/details/pragmaticrevolti0000stro online]
*[[Burleigh Taylor Wilkins|Wilkins, Burleigh T.]] ''Carl Becker: A Biographical Study in American Intellectual History'' (1961) [https://archive.org/details/carlbeckerbiogra0000wilk online]
* Wilson, Clyde N. ''Twentieth-Century American Historians'' (Gale: 1983) pp 57–63
* Zagorin, Perez. “Carl Becker on History Professor Becker’s Two Histories: A Skeptical Fallacy.” ''American Historical Review'' 62#1 (1956), pp.&nbsp;1–11, [https://doi.org/10.2307/1848508 online].

===Primary sources===
* Kammen, Michael, ed. ''What is the good of history?" Selected letters of Carl L. Becker, 1900 -1945'' (Cornell UP, 1973) [https://archive.org/details/whatisgoodofhist00beck online]
* Snyder, Phil L. ''Detachment and the writing of history: essays and letters of Carl L. Becker'' (Cornell UP, 1958) [https://archive.org/details/detachmentwritin0000beck online]

==External links==
* Historiographical Blurb and JSTOR listing [https://web.archive.org/web/20080620174042/http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/02-TeachingResources/historiography/carl-becker.htm Carl Becker - The Historiography Page - Readings & Resources - R.A. Hatch - U. of Florida]
*  {{Gutenberg author|id=1111}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Carl Lotus Becker}}
* {{Librivox author |id=14387}}
*''[https://www.academia.edu/9101433/The_Origin_and_Development_of_Carl_Beckers_Historiography The Origin and Development of Carl Becker’s Historiography]''

{{American Historical Association presidents|state=uncollapsed}}
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[[Category:1945 deaths]]
[[Category:1873 births]]
[[Category:American anti-communists]]
[[Category:American social democrats]]
[[Category:Cornell University Department of History faculty]]
[[Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]
[[Category:Historians of the United States]]
[[Category:Writers from Waterloo, Iowa]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Historical Association]]
[[Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni]]
[[Category:Historians from Iowa]]
[[Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters]]
[[Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society]]
[[Category:Progressivism in the United States]]