ABSTRACT
The heritage from classical antiquity is also present in the souls of young people even before historical studies make them aware of its origin. Paul Elmer More is no more attentive than Irving Babbitt to the philosophical bases and affiliations of historical culture. Plato has only limited critical awareness of the close involvement of his social philosophy in specifically Greek circumstances and historical events. The indissoluble unity of philosophical self-knowledge and concrete experience can be illustrated by examples relevant to humanists of Babbitt's persuasion. The study of history becomes therefore a study in self-knowledge, a discovery of one's own self running parallel with the discovery of epochs in history. Babbitt's collected works can be described as a twentieth century phenomenology of the mind, offering self-knowledge, history and philosophy in one. The central purpose of criticizing and supplementing Babbitt's epistemological ideas is to demonstrate that experience has a conceptual ally in genuinely philosophical reason.
