Historical Memory and the “Forgotten Man”

William Graham Sumner, originator of the phrase “the Forgotten Man,” has himself to a great extent become a forgotten man. Already during his lifetime, critics tended to view his ideas and ideals as at best passé. This essay argues for his ongoing relevance in two ways. First, the common labeling of Sumner as a “Spencerian” is misleading as a matter of history, but it may nevertheless open new perspectives on their era and ours if we appreciate the open-ended concept of science that they shared. Second, Sumner was a self-described conservative whose understanding of the term shifted over time, and was no less plastic than our own muddled definitions. However, in the economic spin that Sumner gave his conception we can see the roots of perhaps the dominant strain of modern American conservatism. But in the cases of both Spencerianism and conservatism, we must, to reach an adequate appreciation of Sumner and a self-understanding of ourselves as his heirs, begin to approach his thought and that of his contemporaries with the same non-Whiggish engagement that historians of early modern and Enlightenment thought have pioneered.