This is a very impressive book. In it, the author,
professor of history at MIT, evaluates the work of ten philosophers of
history, including Condorcet, Hegel, Comte, Marx, Spengler, and
Toynbee. Unlike most books of its kind, which are often disjointed
collections of essays on the thinkers examined, this is a carefully
constructed, critical evaluation of the men concerned as part of a whole
process of thought from about 1725 to about 1900. As such, it might be
regarded as a preliminary first volume to Stuart Hughes’ well-known
book, “”Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social
Thoughts, 1890-1930.” It seems to me, if anything, superior to Hughes’
excellent study.
The merits of Mazlish’s work rest on
his thorough knowledge of the writings concerned and the commentaries on
them, his clear exposition of ideas and the implication of these, and
his ability to fit each writer into the whole development of ideas on
the nature of society and the processes by which it changes. The value
of the book is much enhanced by the critical footnotes and the
concluding bibliography.
The only adverse comments that could
be made about this book are concerned with omissions. Throughout, and
especially in his discussion of Marx (i.e., p. 301), Mazlish does not
notice failures by these thinkers to recognize the role played by
weapons development and weapons control in historical change. And in
several places where he touches on the idea that each historic period
has its own distinctive way of looking at the world, the author makes no
use of recent work in cognitive studies. But these are hardly major
blemishes in author’s intentions so well.
