Sidney Hook is arguably America's most controversial intellectual. After beginning his career as this nation's foremost Marxist scholar, he became in the late 1930s the leading anticommunist intellectual and defender of freedom against all forms of totalitarianism. This volume collects twenty-five of Hook's most incisive essays in political philosophy. Clustered into five main sections, the essays discuss pragmatism and naturalism, Marx and Marxism, Democratic theory and practice, and the defence of a free society. In an insightful introduction, editors Talisse and Tempio argue that underlying the wide range of subjects covered by Hook was his unwavering commitment to the "method of intelligence," which contends that any proposal, whether scientific, moral, or political, must be treated as a hypothesis to be confirmed or unconfirmed by the experimental evidence and deliberation of an unfettered community of inquiry. The editors place this methodology at the core of all of Hook's philosophical and political work. This excellent collection makes a superb introduction to the thought of a leading intellectual who for too long has been neglected by mainstream American philosophy.
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Robert B. Talisse is assistant professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of ON DEWEY and coeditor of DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY.
Robert Tempio is an independent scholar and works in the editorial division of Oxford University Press in New York City.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
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This review is from: Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy, and Freedom: The Essential Essays (Hardcover)
Sidney Hook was a preeminent philosopher from the 30's to the 80's, but his essays - from defences of secular humanism and the scientific method, to discourses on the problem with the idea of natural rights - sound like they could've been penned yesterday. This book is probably the best single collection of essays spanning Hook's career and diversity of interest. The first set of essays is on Deweyan pragmatism. Here we have classics like "Naturalism and First Principles", arguing that first principles are not as sacroasanct as philosophers think, "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life" and "The Place of Reason in an Age of Conflict" - both of which are refreshing reads in an age of absolutism, be it pacifism, Christian fundamentalism or any other trendy -ism floating around. Hook remins us that values can, do, and always will conflict. The place of philosophy is not to naively pretend that a 'system' can eradicate them, but to deal with ithe fact that no theory can. The next section is "Studies in Marxism" and while I can't say that there are any notable highlights here (as I'm nothing of a Marxist or sympathizer) one has to admire how Hook took a pragmatic view of Marxism and if anything, made a "historicist" doctrine a bit more feasible. The next two sections are on Democratic (1) theory and (2) practice. They include classics like "The Democratic Way of Life", "Are There Limits to Freedom of Expression" (where Hook pragmatically answers yes), "Conflicts in Ways of Belief", and for all you that thought Hook was a conservative, "A Critique of Conservatism". In an age where 'democracy' has been taken to mean everything from "freedom" to "equality" to "economic justice" to "fairness", Hook reminds us that democracy is a process and while they may achieve these things, they are synonymous with none of them. Respect for democracy as a process does not mean any particular results - it just means majioritarian representation (which in most cases is a good thing). The last section is "In Defense of a Free Society" which includes such notable essays as "Human Rights and Social Justice", "In Defense of the Cold War" and "The Intellectual in America". All in all, this is a great book. Whether you are just being introduced to Hook, increasing your knowledge of this wonderful thinker, need a brush up, or an expert, this book is an intellectual treat. A gadfly of our time, Hook had the eye of a hawk, the pen of a true intellectual, and the polemics of a champion.
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Were the phrase not so encrusted with misleading associations, I should call my philosophy "dialectical materialism"; materialism, because its explanations make no appeal to entities or processes which are not empirically verifiable by scientific method or logically inferrible from experienced data; dialectical, because it holds (a) that there is an implied temporal reference in every description or generalization, (b) that the processes of discovery and interpretation-as distinct from the validity of their results-cannot be completely dissociated from the socio-historical culture of the age, and (c) that under certain conditions, human thinking, construed as meaningful selective behavior and not as a passive reflection or image of the external scene, plays a creative role in the world. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
uncivil disobedience, freely given consent Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Soviet Union, New York, John Dewey, Constituent Assembly, Karl Marx, William James, Professor Cohen, Bertrand Russell, Boston Tea Party, Judge Wyzanski, Communist International, John Brown, New Left, Professor Dewey, Paris Commune, Los Angeles, Professor Brinton, Selected Works, Soviet Russia, Charles Peirce, Columbia University, Critique of Conservatism, Third International, Collected Works New!
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Were the phrase not so encrusted with misleading associations, I should call my philosophy "dialectical materialism"; materialism, because its explanations make no appeal to entities or processes which are not empirically verifiable by scientific method or logically inferrible from experienced data; dialectical, because it holds (a) that there is an implied temporal reference in every description or generalization, (b) that the processes of discovery and interpretation-as distinct from the validity of their results-cannot be completely dissociated from the socio-historical culture of the age, and (c) that under certain conditions, human thinking, construed as meaningful selective behavior and not as a passive reflection or image of the external scene, plays a creative role in the world. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
uncivil disobedience, freely given consent Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Soviet Union, New York, John Dewey, Constituent Assembly, Karl Marx, William James, Professor Cohen, Bertrand Russell, Boston Tea Party, Judge Wyzanski, Communist International, John Brown, New Left, Professor Dewey, Paris Commune, Los Angeles, Professor Brinton, Selected Works, Soviet Russia, Charles Peirce, Columbia University, Critique of Conservatism, Third International, Collected Works New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 37
books:
See all 37 books this book cites
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books
cite this book:
- The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions) by Robert Blaisdell on page 113, page 183, and page 191
- Marxism and Beyond by Sidney Hook on page 375, and page 414
- John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939/Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and Essays, Vol. 13 by John Dewey in Front Matter (1), and Front Matter (2)
- Selected Works. by Vladimir Ilich Lenin on page 201, and page 295
- Philosophy in Experience: American Philosophy in Transition (American Philosophy Series) by Richard E. Hart in Front Matter
See all 37 books this book cites
- Sidney Hook Reconsidered by Matthew J. Cotter on page 126, and Back Matter
- Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics by Robert Talisse in Back Matter
- Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics by Robert Talisse in Back Matter
- When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Liberalism in Post-War America by Kevin Mattson in Back Matter
- Pragmatism, Old And New: Selected Writings by Susan Haack on page 535
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