Abstract

American historians have found that within the passionate reform movements that inundated America from the 1890's to 1917, there was a corresponding intellectual movement away from the rigid and abstract formal logic that had characterized nineteenth century thought. This social thought, stressing the limits of the rational and defining itself in opposition to metaphysics, a priori reasoning, and absolute truth, defined the ideology of the progressive era. Herbert Croly (1869-1930) is commonly referred to as one of the leading progressive minds. His book The Promise of American Life (1909) is consistently cited, by historians, as a representative expression of progressive thought. Using this source and a number of his other writings, this thesis suggests that Herbert Croly's thought was, in fact, at variance with progressive currents. This thesis argues that Croly's idealist political philosophy was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant's conception of individual freedom and Josiah Royce's idea of community. Croly then, rejected the trend toward the relative and experiential nature of truth and ethics, the strictly empirical nature of social knowledge, and process being exalted over the ideal