Abstract

Insofar as it has been developed out of a doctoral dissertation, this study manifests both the virtues consequent upon such a birth, and—just as expectedly—the defects. The virtues are found in its careful organization and concern with documentation; the defects are but excesses of the virtues: an all too sober style coupled with some lack of speculative content—this leading to repetition rather than explication. Still, the work had not been intended as a speculative exercise but as an essay in intellectual history, and was, in embryo, a history dissertation. In this regard, no fault can be found with Lipton’s careful tracing of the confused political and academic currents that swept modern Germany.