When Empathy Fails: Some Problematic “Progressives” and Expertise

The Progressives were surrounded by, and typically claimed to be acting on, expert knowledge, knowledge closely associated with the new social sciences, especially sociology, which did not clearly distinguish itself from reformism until the twenties. They were also deeply motivated by unusual views of their fellow humans. Each of these presents historiographical challenges.  They appear differently and in some incompatible ways within different disciplinary perspectives, mirroring the different ways in which historical material is treated within various disciplines and between disciplines and different subfields of history. Underlying this is a more basic problem of historical method: these are people who, try as we might and despite their proximity in time, are difficult to empathize with or present as normal. Aspects of their views and actions which we find intelligible are combined with aspects that are quite alien, or strangely heartless, such as rabid eugenicism, condemnation of ordinary pleasures, etc.

I explore these differences, and the more general problem of historical empathy, by reference to several problematic subjects, and discuss why they are problems: Virginia Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College and a prominent academic who was a student of sociologist Franklin Giddings; Crystal Eastman, an activist who contributed to the Pittsburgh survey, a groundbreaking sociological study; and in less depth some of their contemporaries elsewhere, such as Karl Pearson and the Webbs. In this case, they might be normalized in different ways: feminist history might emphasizes the limited availability of roles and exclusion from academic opportunities and the effect on personal strategies; a science studies approach might emphasize the technology that generated ideas about poverty; an intellectual or disciplinary history might explain the underlying social theory and ideas about knowledge itself. These perspectives and others serve to make their expressed views, and the manner in which they combined them, less alien.