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Convictions

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Sidney Hook was an outstanding philosopher who tried to fashion a synthesis of Marxism and Dewey's pragmatism. But his most important work was as a defender of the values of a free society against totalitarian ideologies.

This posthumous collection of essays contains Hook's reflections on a range of public policy questions, from an essay on euthanasia (which, while I do not agree with his conclusion, is a most moving account of his closeness to death) to a characteristically robust defence of the western enlightenment tradition against the educational obscurantists who would misunderstand it as 'eurocentric' and 'imperialist'. What shines through the book - especially in a gem of an essay in which he patiently explains to the pseudo-historian Howard Zinn why an imperfect liberal democracy has immeasurably great merits that are worth defending - is Hook's belief in the power of human reason applied to human affairs, tempered by his insistence on the necessity of constitutional government to protect us from the arbitrary power of totalitarian ideologies. A fine testament to a great man.

"Convictions" is a grab-bag of philosophical and polemical goodies. In it, Sidney Hook - secular humanist, pragmatist, and defender of the open society - writes on multiculturalism and its excesses in the academy, the right to die, McCarthyism, and what relativism is and is not (Hook is a relativist, just not the kind critics like to bash).

The funny thing is that while most of these essays were written before the 1980's (and some of them in the 1980's) many of the same issues are prevelant today, and Sidney Hook took "modern" stands on these issue before most of us did. Once again, he was ahead of his colleagues by a good many years. (In fact, he is the first open "right to die" champion I've seen!)

The "crowning moments" are these: a brilliant review of Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind (this is where he explains why what Bloom criticizes as relativism is really subjectivism - another thing entirely, as Hook calls himself an "objective relativist" and means it). The dialogue between Howard Zinn and Hook on whether America is democratic is a good one, but Zinn clearly overexaggerates or is blinded by ideology. Anyhow, Hook calls him out. The first, autobiographical essay on how and why hook lost faith early-on and remains a secular humanist (atheist) is a great one.

Through these essays, and through Hook's career in general, there is a remarkable tendency to hold views, not becuase of some deep philosophical conviction (say, "Multiculturalism is justified by the metaphysical philosophy of..." Rather, Hook is a pragmatist (in the true, not catch-phrase meaning of the worrd). He considers arguments, considers their consequences for social and individual interaction, and decides that way, never unwilling or -able to put practice over a principle (or vice versa) when the situation warrants Excellent read!