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The Western Canon Mailing List
Moderator: Paul John Barnette Jr.
Activation Date: March 8, 1997
Current Date:  April 23, 1997
Current Membership: 38
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        Thanks for the kind words.

        On Veblen's personal history,  I have more data.  He was born
ten years after his Norwegian immigrant parents arrived in the USA. 
He spoke Norwegian before he spoke English, which for all his life he
spoke with a strong accent.

         His row with the Chancellor of the U of C occurred when his
first wife complained to that worthy of Veblen's repeated
infidelities; she later divorced him.  He remarried, the infidelities
to that wife continued; she was herself a divorcee, but his behavior
induced in her a nervous collapse, and she died in 1920.

         Among my reference works is the Encyclopedia Britannica on
CD-ROM. Among the goodies that comes with that is Britannica Outline;
it is continously updated, and current material ix copyright 1997.  BO
says "Veblen sought to apply Darwin's evolutionism to the study of
modern economic life.  The industrial system, he wrote, required men
to be diligent, efficient, and cooperative, while those who ruled the
business world were concerned with making money and displaying their
wealth; their outlook was a survival from a predatory barbarian past.
Veblen examined with obvcious relish the "modern survivals of prowess"
in the amusements, fashions, sports, religion, and aesthetic taste of
the ruling class."

        Concluding, it says" The scholarly analysis of modern
industrial society owes much more to Veblen's German contemporary Max
Weber, whose ideas are more complex than his.  Even his closest
associates have found his anthropolical and historical approach too
sweeping to satisfy their scientific requirements,  although they have
admired his vast learning and his original insights."

 I       
 The text of The Theory on the WWW does not include the sub-title An
Economic Study of Institutions;  it also does not include the Preface,
which begins "It is the purpose  of this inquiry to discuss the place
and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern
life...".

        I have the 1990 edition of Great Books of the Western World.
In the Biographical Note on Veblen says "The term 'leisure' he uses in
several senses, although mainly as applied to those who do not have to
do subsistent work in order to earn a living.  It amounts  to a study
of consumerism, although that word was not in use in 1899."

       Of the 102 Great Ideas, Veblen's book discusses  61 0f then,
according to the Author-to-Idea Index in the 1990 edition of the GB.

        This reply is already long enough, and AOL keeps pushing me to
get off the line.

                                            Ken Martindale


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