The Alternative Thought In American Progressive Era: A Case Of Randolph Bourne

The late nineteenth and the early twentieth century was one of the most impressive periods in American history. It was called “progressive era” because a series of problems made by the rapid development of economic and urbanization in several decades after the civil war broke out together at this time arouse all the classes,especially the middle class to rethink and reform the American society. This thesis chooses a middle-class intellectual Randolph Bourne in progressive era as a case,taking the viewpoint of ideology to analyze the relationship between Randolph Bourne’s ideas and the mainstream ideas and the status of Bourne’s ideas in the history of American thought. This paper through Bourne’s ideas in the progressive era,on the one hand clarifies the social background under the progressive era. On the other hand, the thesis also explains how the undercurrents of thought in that era influenced the development of the American thought afterwards so that we can know the trend of the history of American thought.The progressive era had the same situation with the other social transformation eras in the history that is the huge changes in economic field and political field will influence the thought field. At the turn of the 20 th century American thought field began to suspect the laissez-faire which was the main idea in the past century, and hoped to found a new idea which adapt to the modern America to instead it.Consequently, John Dewey’s pragmatism philosophy gradually became the mainstream of the period which had the deep influence. Randolph Bourne as the student of John Dewey has been much influenced by Dewey should have been a strong pragmatism. However, Bourne had his own way and eventually he hold the totally different standpoint from Dewey’s on the America attend the war. The almost whole Americans agreed to attend the war made Bourne stand the opposite side of the patriotism to became the minorities, so did his ideas. Actually, Randolph Bourne’sthought about the radical youth, pragmatic education, the diversity of culture and the destruction of the war shown his forward-looking, radical, literary criticism and the feature of the disabled. Therefore, Bourne backed to people’s eyes again after the end of World War I, and even today he also got high affirmation made by the academic.From the view, studying the “forgotten prophet” in progressive era is quite necessary.Different from the past progressive era researches which focused on the mainstream ideas, this thesis selects a relatively new perspective that is Randolph Bourne’s ideas as the case of the non-mainstream ideas. The non-mainstream ideas as same as the mainstream ideas also influenced the trend of American thought.Theoretically, the intention of this thesis is to broaden the study realm of this subject.Practically, Randolph Bourne as a young intellectual during the social transformation era of America shown the responsibility and the sense of mission to shape the future culture has positive influence on Chinese youth today.