Arthur L. Herman | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1956 (age 68–69) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Minnesota (BA) Johns Hopkins University (MA,PhD) University of Edinburgh |
| Occupation | Philosophy professor |
| Known for | How the Scots Invented the Modern World (2001) |
| Spouse | Beth Marla Warshofsky |
Arthur L. Herman (born 1956) is an Americanpopular historian. He is a senior fellow atHudson Institute.[1]
Herman's father Arthur L. Herman, a scholar ofSanskrit, was a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Herman received his B.A. from theUniversity of Minnesota and M.A. and Ph.D. in history fromJohns Hopkins University. He spent a semester abroad atThe University of Edinburgh inScotland.[1] His 1984 dissertation research dealt with the political thought of early-17th-century French Huguenots.[2]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Herman taught atSewanee: The University of the South,George Mason University,Georgetown andThe Catholic University of America. He was the founder and coordinator of the Western Heritage Program in theSmithsonian's Campus on the Mall lecture series.[3][4]
His 2001 book on theScottish Enlightenment,How the Scots Invented the Modern World, was aNew York Times bestseller.
In 2008, he added to his body of workGandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.[5]
In 1987, Herman married Beth Marla Warshofsky.[6] He lives inWashington, D.C.[7]
Herman generally employs theGreat Man perspective in his work, which is 19th-century historical methodology attributing human events and their outcomes to the singular efforts of great men that has been refined and qualified by such modern thinkers asSidney Hook.
He did not join the ranks of the so-calleddeclinists after examining the works ofFriedrich Nietzsche,Michel Foucault,Henry Adams,Brooks Adams,Oswald Spengler, andArnold Toynbee, who expressed pessimism about the fate of the West, and remains cautiously optimistic about the future of the Western civilization.[8][9]
He argues that after passing through the critical era of rapid geopolitical changes in the 20th century driven by an "ideological fervor to transform humanity and create a more perfect world order", the world finally entered in the 21st century into an era of relative stability "defined by the balance-of-power geopolitics."[10]
Herman advocates embracing the U.S. history in its entirety, including theAmerican Civil War, rather than sanitizing it after the fact: "America is a country where the process of conflict and reconciliation, combined with the passage of time, brings out and embeds the qualities that make the United States one people and one community."[11]
