''Two Cheers for Democracy'' is the second collection of essays by
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...
, published in 1951, and incorporating material from 1936 onwards. The humorous title is not directly connected with the essays themselves and, according to the preface, was suggested to him by one of his "younger friends... as a joke."
Reflecting Forster's increasing politicisation in the 1930s, particularly in the first section entitled 'The Second Darkness', the collection contains versions of his anti-Nazi broadcasts of 1940, as well as his defence of individualism as "a liberal who has found liberalism crumbling beneath him" in the face of the rise of
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...
.
Themes
The collection was arranged thematically, not chronologically, with the political first section followed by a second, more cultural part, '
What I Believe
"What I Believe" is the title of a 1938 essay espousing humanism by E. M. Forster.
Forster's essay
E. M. Forster says that he does not believe in creeds; but there are so many around that one has to formulate a creed of one’s own in self-defe ...
', containing Forster's reflection on art in general, as well as on particular artists ranging from
John Skelton to
Syed Ross Masood
Syed Sir Ross Masood bin Mahmood Khan (15 February 1889 – 30 July 1937), was the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University starting in 1929.
Early life and career
Ross Masood was the son of Syed Mahmood. His grandfather was Sir Sye ...
.
Part One saw Forster struggling to articulate his quiet liberalism, and his concern for the individual, in the face not only of continental totalitarianism, but also of both right-wing xenophobia and left-wing extremism at home. The book's title comes from the end of the sixth paragraph of "What I Believe" (http://spichtinger.net/otexts/believe.html). Seen widely as out-of-step and ineffective at the time, his writings have perhaps worn better than many of their more strident counterparts--
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...
for example praising him a half-century later for the honesty of his concrete efforts to weigh up the competing ethical claims of public and private spheres, country and friends.
In Part Two, Forster both enunciated and exemplified his belief in the arts and culture as an (inner) ordering principle in life - providing it with a celebratory sense of meaning. As he himself put it,
[E. M. Forster, ''Two Cheers for Democracy'' (1965) p. 11] ”I have found by experience that the arts act as an antidote against our present troubles, and also as a support to our common humanity.”
See also
References
External links
''Two Cheers for Democracy''
{{E. M. Forster
Books by E. M. Forster