Louis Hartz

Louis Hartz (April 8, 1919 – January 20, 1986)

Hartz graduated in 1940, spent a year traveling abroad on a fellowship, and returned to Harvard as a teaching fellow in 1942. He earned his doctorate in 1946 and became a full professor of government in 1956. Hartz was known at Harvard for his talented and charismatic teaching. He retired in 1974 because of ill health.[1]

The Liberal Tradition in America

Hartz is best known for his classic book The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), which presented a view of the United States’s past that sought to explain its conspicuous absence of ideologies. Hartz argued that American political development occurs within the context of an enduring, underlying

• its lack of a
  feudal past^[1]
  (and which would account for the absence of a struggle to overcome a conservative internal order);
• its vast resources and open space;
• the liberal values of the original settlers, who represented only a narrow middle-class slice of European society.

Hartz led a normal life until a sudden unexplained emotional disturbance changed his entire personality in 1971. He refused all medical help. He divorced in 1972, rejected all his friends, and feuded intensely with students, faculty and administrators. In 1974 he resigned from Harvard, but his scholarly skills and interests continued to remain strong. Hartz spent his last years living in London, New Delhi, New York City, then Istanbul, where he died of an epileptic seizure in January 1986.^[1][3]

Legacy

In 1956, the

The Canadian context of Hartz's fragment thesis was disseminated and elaborated upon by Gad Horowitz, in the latter’s essay "Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation" (1966). Horowitz's use and interpretation of Hartz has been influential in Canadian political theory, and was still being actively debated well into the 21st century.

In Australia, Hartz's fragment thesis "received respectful attention, but ... did not win assent or committed followers", according to historian

• Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania 1776-1860. 1948. Harvard University Press.
• The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution. 1955. Harcourt, Brace.
  ISBN 978-0-15-651269-5
• The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. 1964. Harcourt, Brace & World. (edited).
  OCLC 254767
• A Synthesis of World History, (Zurich, 1984).[7]
• The Necessity of Choice: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought. Edited with an introduction by Paul Roazen. 1990.
  ISBN 978-0-88738-326-7

• “John M. Harlan in Kentucky, 1855–1877”. Filson Club History Quarterly. 14 (1), January 1940. Archived from the original on May 2, 2012. Retrieved November 30, 2011.
• “Otis and Anti-Slavery Doctrine.” 1939. The New England Quarterly 12(4): 745-747.
• “Seth Luther: The Story of a Working-Class Rebel.” 1940. New England Quarterly 13(3): 401-418.
• “Goals for Political Science: A Discussion.” 1951. American Political Science Review 45(4): 1001-1005.
• “American Political Thought and the American Revolution.” 1952. American Political Science Review 46(2): 321-342.
• “The Reactionary Enlightenment: Southern Political Thought before the Civil War.” 1952. Western Political Quarterly 5(1): 31-50.
• “The Whig Tradition in America and Europe.” 1952. American Political Science Review 46(4): 989-1002.
• “The Coming of Age of America.” 1957. American Political Science Review 51(2): 474-483.
• “Conflicts within the Idea of the Liberal Tradition.” 1963. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5(3): 279-284.
• “American Historiography and Comparative Analysis: Further Reflections.” 1963. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5(4): 365-377.
• “The Nature of Revolution.” 2005 [1968]. Society 42(4): 54-61.

References