Rediscovering the “Inner Check” – - Eric Adler

Irving Babbitt was one of the founding fathers of the New Humanism, an informal movement that attracted widespread attention in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Allen Mendenhall’s essay gives us a sense of why his output—despite its challenges—continues to deserve a wide readership today.

David Babbitt says he saw an affirmation of the inner check in traditions as disparate as Greek philosophy, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity.

He says people must engage their “human self” to affirm those impulses conducive to respectful and civilized life and to quash those that are selfish and destructive.

The checks and balances key to the US Constitution are a kind of governmental corollary to a person's frein vital.

In Democracy and Leadership, Irving Babbitt proves supportive of certain Christian, Buddhist, and even Islamic conceptions of faith.

He argued that ethical and religious life do not stand and fall with Church authority; they have an experiential foundation.

He wrote that he did not consider the New Humanism to be inimical to faith; it was an attempt to restate and recover moral-spiritual insights.