The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics

by Christopher Lasch

Overview

"A major and challenging work. . . . Provocative, and certain to be controversial. . . . Will add important new dimension to the continuing debate on the decline of liberalism." —William Julius Wilson, New York Times Book Review

Can we continue to believe in progress? In this sobering analysis of the Western human condition, Christopher Lasch seeks the answer in a history of the struggle between two ideas: one is the idea of progress - an idea driven by the conviction that human desire is insatiable and requires ever larger production forces. Opposing this materialist view is the idea that condemns a boundless appetite for more and better goods and distrusts "improvements" that only feed desire. Tracing the opposition to the idea of progress from Rousseau through Montesquieu to Carlyle, Max Weber and G.D.H. Cole, Lasch finds much that is desirable in a turn toward moral conservatism, toward a lower-middle-class culture that features egalitarianism, workmanship and loyalty, and recognizes the danger of resentment of the material goods of others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393307955
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/1991
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	592
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Christopher Lasch (1932–1994), professor of history at the University of Rochester, wrote, among many other works, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics and the best-selling Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.

Editorial Reviews

"Christopher Lasch has written a great book about the most important things. As a major contribution to public discourse, The True and Only Heaven will be at the center of discussion for years to come."

Robert Bellah

"Powerful and moving. . . . A magisterial synthesis."

San Francisco Chronicle - Michael Stern

A profound and intellectually honest work of breathtaking historical scope that could easily set the terms of political debate in a post-cold-war world in which the ideologies of right and left seem totally exhausted. . . . A cleareyed study of our usable past.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Christopher Lasch has written a great book about the most important things. As a major contribution to public discourse, The True and Only Heaven will be at the center of discussion for years to come.--Robert Bellah, coauthor of Habits of the Heart

Powerful and moving. . . . A magisterial synthesis.--Michael Stern "San Francisco Chronicle"

From the Publisher

The thrust of Lasch's polemic is that progressives mistakenly cling to a faith in progress, i.e., the belief that a steady, indefinite rise in living standards is possible. The world's diminishing resources and America's shrinking middle class effectively doom the idea of such progress, he suggests. Lasch identifies a constellation of thinkers--Carlyle, Emerson, William James, Reinhold Neibuhr, syndicalist Georges Sorel, American populists--who were skeptical of material progress and its presumed benefits. He links their views to the ``petty-bourgeois sensibility'' of the lower-middle class, said to be rooted in family, neighborhood, respect for workmanship, loyalty, thrift, self-denial and a recognition of human limits. As self-appointed champion of lower-middle-class values, Lasch is less cogent than in his jeremiad, The Culture of Narcissism. He uses liberals as a whipping-post to advance his debatable thesis, accusing them of unrealistic optimism and a shallow secularism. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Lasch ( The Culture of Narcissism , LJ 11/15/78) condemns those on both the right and left who continue to believe in progress, i.e., the idea that the American economy can continue to grow indefinitely and lead the way to ``the true and only heaven'' (Hawthorne's phrase) of increasing wealth and ever-higher standards of living. Instead, he argues, we must recognize the environmental limits to economic growth and begin lowering our expectations. (He believes the middle class is already on the verge of extinction.) Lasch analyzes the thought of those who have dissented from the idea of progress and warned of human limitations--Emerson, William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King--and concludes that the solution is a conservative morality that accepts limits but ``asserts the goodness of life in the face of limits.'' Recommended for academic and large public library collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/90.-- Jeffrey R. Herold , Bucyrus P.L., Ohio

Library Journal