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Babbitt was born on August 2, 1865 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, the son of Augusta (Darling) and Edwin Dwight Babbitt, the grandson of a Congregational clergyman. He moved with his family over much of the United States while a young child. He was brought up from age 11 in Madisonville, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Irving entered Harvard College in 1885 and graduated in 1889. After two years, he went to study in France, at the École Pratique des Hautes-études linked to the Sorbonne. There he studied Pali literature and Buddhism, for a year. Then he took a master's degree at Harvard, including Sanskrit.
Irving took a post teaching classics at the College of Montana for two years. He moved away from a career as a classical scholar, taking a teaching position at Williams College in romance languages; just for one year, as it turned out. He then was offered in 1894 an instructor's position, again at Harvard, in French. He was to stay at Harvard, rising from the ranks to become a full professor of French literature in 1912. He is credited with introducing the study of comparative literature there.
It was in the early 1890s that he first allied himself with Paul Elmer More in developing the core doctrines that were to constitute New Humanism. In 1895 he gave a lecture "What is Humanism?", which announced his attack on Rousseau. At the time Babbitt had switched out of classics; he would later clarify his position on the contemporary textual and philological scholarship demanded in that area, in the Germanic tradition, as a finite task, which he was unhappy to see placed above teaching based on 'eternal' content. His ideas, and More's, were characteristically written as short pieces or essays,and later gathered into books. Babbitt's "Literature and the American College" (1908) caused a stir, but it was assembled from writings already circulated.
Irving continued to publish in the same vein, often derogatory of figures from the French literature that was his avowed specialism. He also singled out Francis Bacon, and denounced 'naturalism' and utilitarianism. He met with increasing controversy down the years: those provoked into announcing their opposition included R. P. Blackmur, Oscar Cargill, Ernest Hemingway, Harold Laski, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Joel Elias Spingarn, Allen Tate, and Edmund Wilson. In the case of Mencken, at least, Babbitt gave as good as he got; he branded Mencken's writing as "intellectual vaudeville", a criticism with which posterity has had some sympathy.
Irving had an early influence on T. S. Eliot, a student of his at Harvard. Eliot in his 1926 essay "The Humanism of Irving Babbitt", a review of "Democracy and Leadership", had become equivocal, finding Babbitt's humanism too secular; his position "vis-à-vis" religion is still debated.
The identifiable figures of the New Humanist movement, besides Babbitt and More, were mostly influenced by Babbitt on a personal level and included G. R. Elliott (1883-1963), Norman Foerster (1887-1972), Frank Jewett Mather (1868-1953), Robert Shafer (1889-1956) and Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881-1926). Of these, Sherman moved away early, and Foerster, a star figure, later reconsidered and veered towards the New Criticism.
More peripherally, Yvor Winters and the Great Books movement are supposed to have taken something from New Humanism. Followers at a distance include Milton Hindus, Russell Kirk, Nathan Pusey, Peter Viereck, Richard M. Weaver and George Will. Some relationship has been traced between Babbitt and Gordon Keith Chalmers, Walter Lippmann, Louis Mercier, Austin Warren; claims in cases where such influence are not acknowledged are not easy to sustain, and Babbitt was known to advise against public tributes.
From a position of high prominence in the 1920s, having the effective but questionable support of "The Bookman", New Humanism experienced a rapid drop from fashionable status after Babbitt died in 1933. By the 1940s it was being pronounced nearly extinct. A revival in interest was seen in the 1980s, and Babbitt is often name-checked in discussions on cultural conservatism.
The position of "Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature" was endowed by Harvard University in 1960. The National Humanities Institute runs an "Irving Babbitt Project". He died on July 15, 1933.
Babbitt was among the first literary critics to gain a wide audience by publishing essays in such mass-circulation periodicals as the Atlantic Monthly and the Nation.
Several of these essays are included in his first book, Literature and the American College: Essays in Defense of the Humanities, which was published in 1908.
In 1924, Babbitt published Democracy and Leadership. The book deals with his political views from his humanistic outlook. In it, he discussed and criticized political theories which derives from naturalism. Babbitt criticized two sides of naturalistic thought-mechanistic or utilitarian side, propagated by Francis Bacon and the sentimental side, represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Babbitt attacked both for giving too much importance to forces of nature and unrestrained human passion and impulses; while ignoring the fundamental importance of individual conscience and moral character. He rejected historical deterministic theories from Saint Augustine to Bossuet. He stated high moral character as the most important quality of leadership in a democratic society. He warned against the dangers of unchecked majoritarianism in democracies.
A vigorous teacher, lecturer, and essayist, Babbitt was the unrestrained foe of Romanticism and its offshoots, Realism and Naturalism; instead, he championed the classical virtues of restraint and moderation.
His humanism implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions. Babbitt is regarded as a major influence over American cultural and political conservatism.
He was a cultural critic in the tradition of Matthew Arnold and a consistent opponent of romanticism, as represented by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politically he can, without serious distortion, be called a follower of Aristotle and Edmund Burke. He was an advocate of classical humanism but also offered an ecumenical defense of religion. His humanism implied a broad knowledge of various moral and religious traditions.
Quotations:
"Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn."
"Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards."
"Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills; so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama."
"For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual."
"A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses."
Irving married one of his former students, Dora May Drew, in 1900, and the couple produced two children.
