The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics

Christopher Lasch
4.37
367 ratings 50 reviews
Can we continue to believe in progress? In this sobering analysis of the Western human condition, Christopher Lasch seeks the answer in a history of the struggle between two ideas: one is the idea of progress - an idea driven by the conviction that human desire is insatiable and requires ever larger production forces. Opposing this materialist view is the idea that condemns a boundless appetite for more and better goods and distrusts "improvements" that only feed desire. Tracing the opposition to the idea of progress from Rousseau through Montesquieu to Carlyle, Max Weber and G.D.H. Cole, Lasch finds much that is desirable in a turn toward moral conservatism, toward a lower-middle-class culture that features egalitarianism, workmanship and loyalty, and recognizes the danger of resentment of the material goods of others.
Genres: PhilosophyPoliticsHistoryNonfictionSociologyCulturalCriticismAmerican HistoryPsychologyAmerican
592 Pages

Community Reviews:

5 star
199 (54%)
4 star
113 (31%)
3 star
46 (13%)
2 star
8 (2%)
1 star
1 (0%)

Readers also enjoyed

Other books by Christopher Lasch

Lists with this book

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
US Intellectual History
254 books78 voters
The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Heaven and Hell
935 books74 voters
Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America
Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra-Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the 21st Century
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
The Wake
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes
More Christ #98
61 books1 voters