ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on attention to what seems to be weaknesses and inconsistencies in Irving Babbitt's relationship to modern aesthetics. The chief accomplishment of modern aesthetics is probably the notion of the creative imagination. Babbitt would have done well to consider more carefully what might be valid in Benedetto Croce's early aesthetics, that is, in quintessentially modern, post-classical aesthetics. If this modern tendency of thought contains any truth, it must be good that Croce systematized these insights, even though the complementary and indispensable ideas that Babbitt insists upon were neglected. The analysis of Babbitt's ethical doctrine in relation to problems of reality and knowledge has provided a working definition of the role of will. Babbitt's training in technical philosophy was too spotty to permit him to read Croce with full comprehension. The Over-Soul reveals an important parallel to and one likely source for Babbitt's idea of the higher self: the transcendental Self of German philosophy.
