In the year 1960, Eugen Weber wrote a very illuminating book that was a result of long hard research of synthesis.
The gist and the meaning of the book, is in its title. The title of the book was not easy to settle on. There were a lot of proposed titles for the book. Students of Eugen Weber at the University of California at Los Angeles were also roped in to suggest the title.
And so after much discussion and students coming with wide ranging title proposals, Eugen Weber was left with a difficult task of choosing. Choosing and choice in life are great times in our lives. The notion of choice and choosing presupposes the making of decisions.
Decisions are destiny paths. We are where we are because of the choices and decisions we have made in the course of our lives. To decide and make a choice is a great thing.
In this regard, what happened was that Eugen Weber having studied all the proposed titles, and having discussed it with his colleagues and peers in the profession of history he settled for Paths to the Present: Aspects of European Thought From Romanticism to Existentialism. That was the final verdict. We have that book now with that title. It is a great book.
Looking back and studying the breath and length of the book, perhaps one can be tempted to think that the title is much narrower. The themes covered in the book are universal not just European thought. Nevertheless there was a need of focus and narrowing down things. Food is very enjoyable when we eat them in bite sized chunks and not gallop them like horses do.
There is one particular path in the book that Eugen Weber touches that is the subject and title of this research blog post.
The path that has led to the Present was the Rococo period. The Rococo period is very much our own period, the modern times in character and dynamics.
I have done the hard work of going through Eugen Weber lecture series to try to extract and distill this theme, and let me tell you it was work that demanded long hours.
When the public lecture series on the Western Tradition was conceptualized and then planned, and executed, by and by along, I was appointed as the production editor. This was from the year 1986 to 1989.
Much of my work involved spending a lot of time at the University of California at Los Angeles Libraries, talking with the subject librarians there. I must tell you, UCLA has some of the best subject librarians. They are very knowledgeable. I formed a great relationship with the librarians that lasted a very long time. They care and they remain true to UCLA Library mission, which is: Creates a vibrant nexus of ideas, collections, expertise, and spaces in which users illuminate solutions for local and global challenges. We constantly evolve to advance UCLA’s research, education, and public service mission by empowering and inspiring communities of scholars and learners to discover, access, create, share, and preserve knowledge.
In that role as production editor for the Western Tradition I have also spent great time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, going through a mountain of historical artifacts with a fine brush to correspond with the subject being treated.
In this raw and clear audio below, you get to listen Eugen Weber himself expounding on the Rococo period, a period of sensual pleasure, the appreciation of the joy of sex without concern about morals and the generally the pursuit of happiness in its raw form. Raw happiness is raw pleasure unconcerned about morals, what Albert Ellis the great American psychologist was to later describe in his 1958 book Sex Without Guilt.
The audio program begins first by Eugen Weber offering a background to Rococo. That background is the age of Elightenment and modern philosophers like Voltaire befriending kings and queens for betterment of society.
This audio program is a gem of knowledge and help us to get to know our essence which lay in our history, our background, our ancestors. Highly beneficial program, short but punchy. The program educates as it entertains.
