Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Out of Revolution, December 2, 2003
By A Customer
Rosenstock-Huessy has described "Out of Revolution," his history of western man, as his favorite book. This book is an entirely fresh version of his landmark "Die europäischen Revolutionen," and was written after his immigration to the United States. It presents the reader with Rosenstock-Huessy's method of perceiving man, history, and society. He reweaves strands of the old disciplines of philosophy, theology, and history into an entirely new fabric.
In his introduction, Harold Berman writes:
"That this book - written six decades ago - is without any question an extraordinary book, a remarkable book, a fascinating book, has not saved it from relative obscurity. It is directed against conventional historiography, and for the most part the conventional historians have either ignored it or denounced it. ... I have no doubt that one day - perhaps soon - the academic historians will discover that Rosenstock-Huessy was also one of the great pioneers in a new and significant interpretation of the history of mankind.
'Out of Revolution' is history in the best sense of the word. Although it embodies original scholarship of the highest professional quality, it is written primarily for the amateur, the person of general education, who wants to know where we came from and whither we are headed. But it is also a theory of history: how history should be understood, how historians should write about it."
"Out of Revolution" has been reviewed by others:
The historian Page Smith considers this Rosenstock-Huessy's greatest work in English. He wrote in his book "The Historian and History" (Knopf 1964):
"Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was one of those Europeans who at the end of World War I decided that the war had made familiar categories of thought obsolete. He undertook, in a series of books and articles, to illuminate the relation between history and the human experience and to explicate the progress of man through history toward a common future. ... The revolutions of mankind, Huessy wrote, 'create new time-spans for our life on earth. They give man's soul a new relation between present, past, and future; and by doing so they give us time to start our life on earth all over again, with a new rhythm and a new faith.' This is the framework for Huessy's history of Europe and it may safely be said to be the first historical work written under the new dispensation. As such, it is of profound significance for contemporary history, but its very uniqueness has left it high and dry on the banks of academe. Nobody knew what to make of it because nobody had seen anything like it before."
Reinhold Niebuhr said of "Out of Revolution":
"Really a remarkable book, full of profound insights into the meaning of modern European history. I have not read a book in a long time which is so imaginative in relating the various economic, religious and political forces at play in modern history, to each other. Ordinary historical interpretations are pale and insipid in comparison with it."
Lewis Mumford wrote:
"Rosenstock-Huessy's is a powerful and original mind. What is most important in this philosopher's work is the understanding of the relevance of traditional values to a civilization still undergoing revolutionary transformations; and this contribution will gain rather than lose significance in the future."
"Out of Revolution" can also be ordered from Argo Books (www.argobooks.org), as can all the rest of Rosenstock-Huessy's English language works, including many of the lectures he gave on these topics. The lectures alone comprise more than 5000 pages of spontaneous comments he made to students from 1949 to 1968.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most underrated book of the century. A work of genius., November 17, 1998
'Our passions give life to the world.' That's the premiss upon which Rosenstock-Huessy begins his brilliant study of the 'total revolutions' of the last millenium. He may not always be right about the details or even his conclusions about the origins or meanings of the great revolutions, but he is always insightful, and he always takes you into areas which are worth exploring further. Rosenstock-Huessy knows that catastrophes are the cauldrons of creation, and while there have been critics and advocates of revolution aplenty, few have attempted to trace in such detail the alchemical processes of the great revolutions of the Western world. This is a masterpiece by a thinker who simply knows more about more things than any other twentieth century figure I have read. In addition to being a great historian and sociologist, he has a tremendous understanding of the human heart. His other books are also definitely worth checking out.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Book of the 20th Century, January 29, 2000
Eugen was a friend of mine and the teacher of my colleague--Page Smith--one of the great American historians. Eugen came to teach at UCSC after his retirement from Dartmouth. His book on the history of European culture is one of the relatively unknown treasures of modern letters. Eugen was clairvoyant in his unique ability to portray the national character of the major cultures of the West, on the theme of revolution. Although he was a scholar of profound learning, he never lost the passion of his personal voice, which infuses everything he wrote; how appropriate as one of the figures in the I-Thou circle of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. The book was born out of the agony of the trenches of the lst world war, at Verdun, where the curse over Europe was uttered in the 9th century at the Treaty of Verdun. Eugen gives us the integration of European culture in all of its unique individuality, from nation to nation. Absolutely essential reading for those in charge of the current European Commission and the Council of Europe and the Museum of Europe in Brussels.This is the book about the unified cultural heritage of Europe.
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by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
by Neil Postman
by Mr. Jacques Ellul
by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
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