Carl L. Becker


Carl Lotus Becker was an American historian.

Life

He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in 1893 as an undergraduate, and while there, he gradually gained an interest in studying history. Remaining for graduate work, Becker studied under Frederick Jackson Turner, who became his doctoral adviser there. Becker received his Ph.D. in 1907. He was John Wendell Anderson Professor of History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1917 to 1941.
He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923. Becker died in Ithaca, New York. Cornell has recognized his work as an educator by naming one of its five new residential colleges the Carl Becker House.

Writing

Becker is best known for The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, four lectures on The Enlightenment delivered at Yale University. His assertion that philosophies, in the "Age of Reason," relied far more upon Christian assumptions than they cared to admit, has been influential, but has also been much attacked, notably by Peter Gay. Interest in the book is partly explained by this passage :
This isolation of vocabularies of the epoch chimes with much later work, even if the rest of the book is essayistic in approach. Johnson Kent Wright writes:

Political views

Interviewed for the pamphlet Writers Take Sides: Letters about the War in Spain from 418 American Authors Becker supported the Spanish Republicans. He also stated his opposition to dictatorship in general.

Works