Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and PragmatistUniversity of Michigan Press, 2005 - 269 pages One of the most controversial figures in the history of American philosophy, Sidney Hook was "an intellectual street fighter" and "probably the greatest polemicist" of the twentieth century (Edward Shils). Widely known as a Cold War liberal and an intellectual progenitor of neoconservativism, Hook began life as a feisty radical. This now-classic intellectual biography reconstructs Hook's youthful project of fusing American pragmatism and Marxism to create a distinctive approach to philosophy and a politics of revolutionary democratic socialism, carefully charting his interaction with intellectuals such as John Dewey and Max Eastman and his relationship to the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the American Workers Party, and other political currents. "A very detailed, and fascinating account of Hook's formative years . . . [a] first-rate contribution to the history of American leftist intellectual life." "Fascinating . . . well researched and packed with information." "Succeeds in establishing the young Hook as a dedicated revolutionary Marxist." "A brilliant, lucid portrait of a scholar, adversarial by temperament, who turned his extraordinary powers of analysis and polemic successively against capitalism, Stalinism, and the New Left." "The best study of Hook's thought. . . . Supersedes all earlier treatments." "A major contribution to our understanding of Hook and the American Marxist tradition. . . . Extremely insightful." "Persuasive. . . . Discovers not just a brilliant interpreter of Marx and the Russian Revolution, but a remarkable advocate and practitioner of the Americanization of Marxism." "Phelps's effort to uncover, explore, and analyze Hook's forgotten leftism must be judged an unqualified success." "Penetrating, closely argued, and lucid. . . . An important contribution to the history of American radicalism in the 1930s." One of the most controversial figures in the history of American philosophy, Sidney Hook was "an intellectual street fighter," who began his career as a brilliant Marxist thinker and "probably the greatest polemicist of [the 20th] century" (Edward Shils) before breaking with the Communist Party in the late 1930s. Turning in his later years to an allegiance with American conservatives including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Hook is now widely known as an intellectual father of the neoconservative movement. |
Contents
Revolution and Philosophy 190230 | 16 |
Communism and Pragmatism 193033 | 52 |
Marxism Democracy Science 193336 90 00 | 90 |
Twilight of Revolution 193638 | 140 |
The Constraints of Cultural Freedom 193873 | 198 |
The Marxism of Sidney Hook | 234 |
Pragmatism and Its Critics | 244 |
Appendix on Sources | 258 |