Cultural Ideological Directions in fin-de-siecle America
Cultural Ideological Directions in fin-de-siecle America

Summary/Abstract: To reflect on the membership and the size of groups and movements that have driven social change is to realize that reform is surely one of the major collective activities in America. As Robert H. Walker stated in “Reform and the American Character”, cultural values show themselves most directly in the arguments used by reformers to persuade their contemporaries. Three explicit arguments overshadow all others: the appeals to higher law, to reason and to a sense of the practical. The first is attributable to the religious influence visible everywhere during the century of colonial origins; the second is associated with the great Age of Reason that fueled the arguments for independence; the third allies itself to the romantic/ transcendental/ pragmatic chain of ideas (Walker, 377).

• Details
• Contents