Review of Schorske, Thinking iwth history
Carl E. Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the passage to modernism, Princeton U. Press, 1998.
Reviewed by:
David D. Lee
When Carl Schorske published ze: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture in 1980 he challenged those invested in the record of our past to rethink history. By counterposing political and culture life Schorske clarified both their interdependence and the importance of studying them in concert. It was a message which found a receptive audience not only amongst intellectual and cultural historians, but also in newer fields such as the history of science and the history of psychology. Eighteen years later Schorske has released another collection of essays covering much of his academic career, though weighted toward the nineties. Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism is likely to generate much the same critical response as did his earlier work. It differs from the former in that the essays cover a wider range of material and chronology (though the focus continues to be nineteenth-century Europe). Thinking with history, Schorske tells us, is not the same thing as thinking about history: Thinking with history implies the employment of the materials of the past and the configurations in which we organize and comprehend them to orient ourselves in the living present.(3) It is dynamic, seeking to "dissolve static elements in a narrative pattern of change" of which we are a part. The result is a relativization of the past to the "flow of social time." This is quite different from writing about history as a static event, an artifact from a past culture. It is a development in historical theory paralleled (if not echoed) by others in modern European history and the history of science of late.
The book consists of one autobiographical, two theoretical, and ten historical essays. The former is of particular interest to those who have followed Schorske's work or are at all curious about the intellectual (and emotional) development of an important modern scholar. The effects of his early life in Westchester (NY), his work with the OSS during the war, McCarthyism, and the war in Vietnam upon his thought and work are all topics with which many can resonate. The essay focuses strongly on the construction of his personal and professional identity (in an Eriksonian sense). Early on Schorske identified "a loss of faith in history as progress" in western culture. This book is the product of that recognition and his struggle to come to terms with it.
Schorske neatly divides his essays in two: "Clio Ascendant: Historicist Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Europe" and "Clio Eclipsed: Toward Modernism in Vienna." This division helps to demonstrate his main point, that in the nineteenth century History was a meaningful and useful touchstone for much of western culture, but that the passage to modernism was marked, if not defined, either by a rejection of this use of the past or, more often, the construction of new movements completely outside the historical realm. In Part One, Schorske uses the city as metaphor for modernization. Voltaire and Spengler's ideas of the city, local and academic politics in Burckhardt's Basel, and the construction of Vienna's size: Ringstrasse each demonstrate Schorske's thesis that fin de siècle cities, more than any other cultural product, best exemplify western man's passage into modernity. Schorske also calls our attention to the varied forms of discourse with which intellectuals (not only historians) voiced their views. Their very form tells us how these figures saw their culture and their role in it. Completing Part One, two essays, one on the persistence of religious models in English political thought and the other on the significance of mythic metaphor in Wagner and Morris, speak to the continued importance and value of history in nineteenth-century Europe.
Part Two focuses on Vienna, Schorske's area of greatest expertise. The tension between the philosophical and religious origins of Austrian political culture forms the basis of several of these essays. Unified by liberal thought early in the century, the synthesis of Baroque and Enlightenment traditions gave way at the end of the century. Schorske writes, "The Baroque tradition of Grace, exalting the life of feeling and beauty, fed the sensitivity and sensuosity of fin-de-siècle aestheticism. The Enlightenment tradition of the Word nurtured the rigorous pursuit of ethics and truth." Using the construction of public space, Mahler's struggle for musical and personal identity, and Freud's life-long struggle with History, Schorske paints a bright and varied picture of Europe's rich and complex intellectual and cultural life.
Schorske remains a particularly important historian for those working in the history of science, and the history of psychology in particular. Three factors contribute to this: 1) Schorske is an intellectual and cultural historian who expertly balances the synchronic and diachronic. He is consequently perhaps the best example of a historian whose contributions, qua historian, are meaningful and valuable to those who practice diachronic historical work (historians of specific disciplines) rather than synchronic. 2) Schorske writes brilliantly. One should not underestimate the importance of excellent style. Like Freud, Schorske's lyric abilities can blind one to lapses or jumps in logic. This makes critical reading a formidable task, but certainly increases both the professional and non-professional appeal. 3) Schorske has long believed that "History can only exist in a symbiotic relationship with other disciplines."(16) Indicated as clearly in his personal history as in his historical contributions, Schorske possesses a profound sense of the importance of the psychological. Specifically, he understands the psychological nature of our "modern" selves and simultaneously recognizes the constructed nature of that understanding. Psychology as a discipline reflects not only a new way of understanding ourselves but itself represents a stage in our passage to modernism. As we enter the next century Schorske's book gives us pause to consider the fate of our discipline(s) during this century, their future progress, and the complex ways we shape both.