Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Social media Miscellaneous Other Irving Babbitt (August 2, 1865 – July 15, 1933) was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 and 1930.

He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

At this point, he moved away from a career as a classical scholar, taking a teaching position at Williams College in romance languages — just for one year, as it turned out.

[3] The position of Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature was endowed by Harvard University in 1960 and awarded to its first recipient, Harry Levin.

It was in the early 1890s that he first allied himself with Paul Elmer More in developing the core doctrines that were to constitute what he called the "New Humanism".

Babbitt's Literature and the American College, although assembled from writings already circulated, caused a stir when published in 1908.

[5] Babbitt's political views are in the tradition of classical liberalism,[citation needed] from Aristotle and Edmund Burke.

"[6] He met with increasing criticism down the years: those provoked into announcing their opposition included R. P. Blackmur, Oscar Cargill, Ernest Hemingway, Harold Laski, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Joel Elias Spingarn, Allen Tate, and Edmund Wilson.

[citation needed] The identifiable figures of the New Humanist movement, besides Babbitt and More, were mostly influenced by Babbitt on a personal level and included G. R. Elliott (1883-1963), Norman Foerster (1887-1972), Frank Jewett Mather (1868-1953), Robert Shafer (1889-1956) and Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926).

[citation needed] More peripherally, Yvor Winters and the Great Books movement are supposed to have taken something from New Humanism.

Scholars influenced by Babbitt include Milton Hindus, Russell Kirk, Nathan Pusey, Peter Viereck, Richard M. Weaver, Claes G. Ryn, and George Will.

[citation needed] From a position of high prominence in the 1920s, having the effective but questionable support of The Bookman, New Humanism experienced a drop from fashionable status after Babbitt died in 1933 and modernist and progressive currents became increasingly dominant in American intellectual, cultural and political life.

By the 1940s its enemies pronounced it nearly extinct, but Babbitt continued to exercise a partly hidden influence, and a marked revival of interest was seen in the 1980s and ensuing decades.