SOURCE: "Carl Becker Revisited: Irony and Progress in History," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XLVIII, No. 2, April-June, 1987, pp. 307-23.

In the following essay, Nelson sees Becker's irony as a response to the impossibility of entirely accepting or rejecting the idea of social progress.

Carl Becker's lifelong commitment to ambiguity has not served to make him an influential figure among contemporary historians. It has, however, made him one of the more controversial figures within the Guild. Some historians commend him for this quality. They find his writing to be intentionally paradoxical, full of contraries and oppositions, overturned cliches and circular reasoning, designed to "add 'another dimension of thought' to the initiated" [Milton Klein, "Detachment and the Writing of American History: the Dilemma of Carl Becker" in Perspectives on Early American History, ed. Alden T. Vaughn and George A. Billias]. Others condemn him for slipping into logical...