The Power Of Barzun

AFTER a trip to the United States 80 years ago, the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga commented on the naïve scientism that he saw in the intellectual life of the country: “The anti-metaphysical attitude of mind automatically includes an antihistorical one.” Our greatest antidote to this increasingly brutal and vulgar tendency has been Jacques Barzun, who turns 100 in November and will be feted at Columbia University, where he was educated and which he nobly served as professor of history for over 40 years and as provost and dean of arts and sciences for 12 years.

Born near Paris in 1907, Barzun emigrated to the U.S. in 1920. He never lost touch with the French language, history, and cultural affairs, but he became a committed American citizen with a strong civic sense and involved himself with his nation’s possibilities, prospects, and problems as well as those of Columbia and the American university generally, on whose affairs he has been a valuable commentator. He also took a strong interest in American K-12 public education, which he believes has declined from a unique and effective system in the 1920s to a confused and ineffective one today, largely through the vast influence of another Columbia figure, the very anti-metaphysical and antihistorical John Dewey.

About the Author

M.D. Aeschliman

M.D. Aeschliman is professor emeritus of education at Boston University and author of The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism (3rd English-language ed., Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2019 and French-language rev. ed., Paris: Pierre Téqui, 2020).

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AFTER a trip to the United States 80 years ago, the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga commented on the naïve scientism that he saw in the intellectual life of the country: “The anti-metaphysical attitude of mind automatically includes an antihistorical one.” Our greatest antidote to this increasingly brutal and vulgar tendency has been Jacques Barzun, who turns 100 in November and will be feted at Columbia University, where he was educated and which he nobly served as professor of history for over 40 years and as provost and dean of arts and sciences for 12 years.

Born near Paris in 1907, Barzun emigrated to the U.S. in 1920. He never lost touch with the French language, history, and cultural affairs, but he became a committed American citizen with a strong civic sense and involved himself with his nation’s possibilities, prospects, and problems as well as those of Columbia and the American university generally, on whose affairs he has been a valuable commentator. He also took a strong interest in American K-12 public education, which he believes has declined from a unique and effective system in the 1920s to a confused and ineffective one today, largely through the vast influence of another Columbia figure, the very anti-metaphysical and antihistorical John Dewey.

About the Author

M.D. Aeschliman

M.D. Aeschliman is professor emeritus of education at Boston University and author of The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism (3rd English-language ed., Seattle: Discovery Institute, 2019 and French-language rev. ed., Paris: Pierre Téqui, 2020).