Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Personal History
 Born into “History”
o Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. – social history
o Schlesinger’s father was part of the paradigm shift of social history
 Included Non-WASPS in history books p. 58
 Lead to women’s history and black history
 Liberal causes throughout upbringing
 Graduated from Harvard with PhD
o Thesis on Andrew Jackson turned into Pulitzer prize winning best seller
 WWII – intelligence officer
o Sense of patriotism his entire life
 Arthur Schlesinger as a chronicler of FDR
 Wrote editorials in Washington
 Accepted a position at Harvard
 John Kennedy Jr.
o Invited to work with the Kennedy administration
o What did he do at the White House?
 "[ JFK] liked Arthur Schlesinger, but he thought he was a little bit
of a nut sometimes. He thought he was sort of a gadfly and that he
was having a helluva good time in Washington. He didn’t do a
helluva lot, but he was good to have around." –RFK
 Wrote speeches
 1,000 Days after assassination
 (hagiography?)
 Writings on Vietnam
o Against the “New Left” and mass demonstrations
 Today
o Writes on the Huffington Post, mostly against President Bush

Selected Publications:

The Vital Center

 He felt he was exposing communism for what it really was.
 “Unsuspecting liberals” are drawn into the DEFENSE of communism!
 Debunk communism

The Disuniting of America

 Views ethnocentrism as a great danger
 “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.” Schlesinger’s
dream for the nation!
 Nationalism gives individual lives meaning. P.54
 History is a weapon p. 57 BUT
  “Honest history is the weapon of freedom” p.55
 Jews and Irish faced “gristle” but they made it! - generalizations
 Sex and love would end the disuniting of America

War and the American Presidency : foreign affairs don’t usually make people question the
presidency

 “Secular fanatics worshipped history as their means of salvation” Schlesinger

predicted the 21st century would be century of religious fanaticism 116
 “The oracle of history is often clouded and ambiguous”
 “Is history the source of policies or is it the source of arguments designed to
vindicate policies adopted for other reasons?” page. 123
 Schlesinger believes history stands or falls on its predictive ability.
 History teaches us we need to accept surprises and makes men wiser!
 But history is inscrutable especially in the short run
 Schlesinger makes the prediction that Iraq will end in the same way Vietnam did.
 History does not provide clairvoyance but insight
 “Possibilities of history are far richer and more various than the human intellect
is likely to conceive” p.141

Criticisms:
 Manichean history: Kennedy and Roosevelt are heroes while everyone is villains
o Steven Lawson University of South Florida
 In The Cycles of American History, he insisted that Reagan’s foreign policy
towards the USSR wouldn’t work and would prove counterproductive.

Comparisons/Influences:

Kant
 Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent
 Kant argued that republicanism would be dominant…by the 1990s it seemed
possible but unlikely because of racism, unrestrained capitalism, and other causes.

Herder
 “God acts upon the earth by means of superior, chosen men.”
o Two points: Similar to Schlesinger but Schlesinger doesn’t invoke God in
his writings.
 “Spirit of mankind lives immortally”- not mentioned by Schlesinger

Hegel
 History is teleological culminating in the German society he lived in
 Believed history was not used or useful by people
 Schlesinger believed FDR proved Hegel wrong by “using history with adroitness
and wisdom (p. 121)”
Ranke
 History as it really was- don’t pass judgments. "You have reckoned that history
ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future.
The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it
really was."
 There are no illusions: Schlesinger makes it clear he is liberal and he believes in
FDR and JFK. His narrative can not be separated from this fact.
 Ranke focused on states and kings in a similar way Schlesinger focuses on
presidents

Droysen
 Historians need invention and to infuse history with morality
 Schlesinger writes with a liberal bias which is his basis for morality

Nietzsche
 Useful history
 Schlesinger believes FDR and JFK can serve as examples
 He writes to influence public debate on issues

Spengler
 “All cultures follow the same cycles of growth and decline”
 Schlesinger believes in 20 year cycles of American history
 Conservative and liberal cycles
o The Cycles of American History

Carlyle
 “Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at
bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.”
 Schlesinger framed history with men like FDR and JFK has the heroes of
liberalism progressing America.

Macaulay
 History is getting better. Progressive history.
o Whigs are the pinnacle.
 Similarly FDR is the best in writings
o “I remain to this day a New Dealer, unreconstructed and unrepentant”
writes Schlesinger in A Life in the 20th Century
 However, Schlesinger also writes: “Man generally is entangled in insoluble
problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose
keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfillment.”
Question and Answer