Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage [Paperback]

Jacques Barzun (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1981

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 381 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 2 edition (June 15, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226038599
• ISBN-13: 978-0226038599
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,223,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Marx, Karl
  • #37 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( W ) > Wagner, Richard

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, Thought-Provoking Book, March 23, 2002

By 

David R. Owen (Morgantown, WV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (Paperback)

I picked up "Darwin, Marx, Wagner" at a used book store while in the middle of Barzun's latest tome "Dawn to Decadence." In "Darwin" a much younger Barzun argues with passion against the arrogant materialism prevalent at the turn of the century. "Nature is a sieve, and it works"--this is Barzun's pithy summary of Darwin, Marx and Wagner. For Darwin the sieve is kill-or-be-killed survival of the fittest, and "it works": humanity is the pinnacle of evolution (and not just the human species, but the most powerful of humanity). For Marx the sieve is an inevitable class struggle, which "works" when it produces a utopia for the working class. For Wagner the sieve will sift out all previous art forms in favor of his own pure self-important music drama. Read this book and consider the philosophical implications of realistic materialism and its cruel might-makes-right vision of progress--in science, politics and art.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Influence of philsophers of late 1800s on the 20th century, December 23, 2001

By 

ALEX R. THOMAS - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (Paperback)

A brilliant book by an erudite, terse writer. A study of the changes wrought by three significant individuals of the latter half of the 1800s that have had a profound effect, good and bad, from the time of their writings through today. This is not light reading. One should be armed with an encyclopedia and a dictionary on this venture. To fully appreciate it be prepared to read the book again.

Alex R. Thomas Ph.D.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The intellectual origins of 20th century mechanized killing, March 26, 2010

By 

Anthony P. Arrott (New England, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Darwin - Marx - Wagner - Critique Of A Heritage (Hardcover)

The best exposition on the fundamental fallacy of the prevailing mechanistic secularism that so dominates the over-confident thought and unskillful actions of today's unbelievers. If this book had been written after Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot had finished their murderous careers, the subtitle might have been: 'The intellectual origins of 20th century mechanized killing'.

Two excerpts of note:

'Some obviously feared that if natural selection were discarded evolution would be endangered. They thought the two theories inseparable and foresaw a rebirth of superstition. But dropping natural selection leaves the evidence for evolution untouched. It was not even a question of dropping natural selection, for natural selection is an observed fact. It was a question of seeing --as Darwin came to see-- that selection occurs after the useful change has come into being... '

'Now Comte [father of the prevailing positivist realistic materialism that so destructively dominated the 20th century] from time to time recognised that although ethics must take account of the sciences below it, right down to physics, yet the facts of ethics are not themselves reducible to mere chemical and physical formulas. But his passion for order and system betrayed him into that prevailing fallacy of reducing the complex to the simple absolutely.'