Anti-Intellectualism in American Life Paperback – February 12, 1966

Professor Hofstadter sets the standard for the dissection of many facets of U.S. history. Here he tells the tale of the intertwining factors of American culture and politics that lead to prevalent anti-intellectualism. Although published in 1963, this remains the definitive work on the distrust of elites and experts and is sadly relevant to the present day. Hofstadter writes with a storyteller's style that does not skip or gloss over details but invites the reader to enjoy the experience of learning. He also often displays a wry sense of humor. If you want to understand why those most qualified to address issues -- whether they be foreign policy, law, running government, social sciences, etc. -- are often considered suspect sources of information while talking heads with no knowledge but loud voices are embraced, this book explains the framework for that culture. Personally, I found the writing so smooth and the subject so engrossing I could hardly take breaks between devouring the book.

Hofstadter combines both painstaking detail and sweeping themes. I cannot imagine even the most learned people not learning new details about American history and the forces that have shaped our nation. Hofstadter's analysis is very persuasive -- analytical but with passion and new insights. Even events or people from American history that one knows about, one will be shown new perspectives. For example, one might not have considered how American democratic principles can encourage anti-intellectualism. Or how our economic system and intelligentsia themselves can sometimes encourage expertise and other times discourage it. It shouldn't need to be said that a Pulitzer Prize winning book is a must read, but I'll say it anyway.

First, let me say what this book is not. It's not a book that can be understood only by deep and brilliant minds. The style is clear and readable, and anyone who can read and understand a newspaper editorial can understand what is said here. It's not a peevish rant about how everyone below a certain IQ level, or everyone of a certain political persuasion, or everyone who goes to church, must be mentally dull. The author goes out of his way to be fair and even-handed to all points of view, perhaps especially those with which he doesn't agree.

Finally, even though it was published when John F. Kennedy was President, it is decidedly not out of date. In fact, anyone reading it will be amazed how the problems described here, from 50, 150, or even 200 years ago, may still crop up today.

What is an intellectual? It is not necessarily someone with a genius-level IQ, or someone who speaks 5 languages, or even necessarily someone who discovers a new theory in physics.

An intellectual is simply someone who takes the same pleasure in the exercise of his or her mind, in exploring ideas, as healthy and physically fit people do when they're out throwing a Frisbee or playing touch football. The pleasure is in the activity itself.

Imagine a small child trying to see how many blocks she can stack up on top of each other before they fall. On the one hand, the child is playing--that is, doing something for no reason but that she enjoys it. On the other hand, she is perfectly serious and focused on her goal. If the stack of blocks falls down, she simply tries again.

The intellectual is the person who shows this combination of play and seriousness towards ideas. To use the analogy of blocks again, the intellectual takes each block and turns it over to look at it from all sides, stacks the blocks up, arranges them in various shapes, and so forth.

Of course this activity can have a serious purpose--e.g., thinking through the ethics of cloning--but to be a specifically intellectual pursuit, it must be done out of the love of the activity itself.

America has often had a love-hate relationship with intellectualism, and still does today. Ironically, one of the ages that prized the intellect most was the Puritan era, because Puritans valued a learned ministry; after all, it was they who founded Harvard. Later, many of the Founding Fathers, such as Jefferson and Franklin, had wide intellectual interests, from philosophy, to science and the arts. Up to the middle of the 19th century, even many businessmen were cultured and well-educated--indeed, the goal of that day was to make one's fortune in trade and then retire at a relatively early age to a life of culture and philanthropy.

Despite these notable periods of favor for the intellectual, it is equally true that something about American civilization has often worked against intellectualism. Part of it was that America, which began as pioneer settlements, always had to be very practical. Another aspect was the idea that cultured and educated elites were undemocratic--resentment of "the elites" didn't begin with today's Tea Party but was always an undercurrent of American life. A third aspect was that Americans tended to see the past as something dark and backward to be improved upon and then abandoned by American know-how and self-reliance.

In politics, the Jeffersonian philosopher type went out with the age of Andrew Jackson. For the rest of the 19th century, intellectuals were mostly ineffectual reform types, criticizing from the sidelines, in magazine articles; they were not consulted in public life again until the turn of the 20th century. Their favor was high during the age of Wilson, perhaps even higher with Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Brain Trust," only to come under suspicion once more during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s.

In business, the shift from trade to railroad building and, later, manufacturing, left the businessman less leisure for intellectual pursuits, nor was he particularly interested in having men work for him who were preoccupied with theory and speculation--enough education to read, write, and handle business math was satisfactory. In religion, the scholarly minister was replaced by the barely literate circuit rider, who rode the mountains and forests for miles to preach in log cabins to backwoods settlers. Later, it was felt that too much education might undermine religious faith, and we had the spectacle of the Scopes trial. Meanwhile, practical businessmen of that day didn't care to know about theological ideas so much as the idea of religion as a "power source" that could be turned on at will.

Even literature and the arts suffered. America, unlike Europe, had no ruins of the Parthenon or medieval castles, nor did it have the same traditions of civilization. Artists and writers could certainly portray what they found here and did, but there was still a tension between merely celebrating this new land and achieving the critical distance with which the intellectual examines everything.

Even education itself was not without its challenges. If you think that "the good old days" of education, when every child had 3 years of foreign language, 3 years of math, 3 years of science, and 2 years of U.S. history, lasted continuously until a couple of decades ago, read chapters 13 and 14 of this book, and they will startle you. In the name of progressive educational theories, traditional education underwent such radical changes beginning in 1910, culminating in the "life adjustment" movement of the 1940s and 1950s, that the U.S. Navy found that many of its World War II recruits required remedial math, and the president of Yale wrote, in 1954, about a high school graduate who seemed intelligent enough to attend Yale but whose high school transcript showed mostly electives in subjects like school choir, social adjustment, etc., with just a smattering of English, history, and the more traditional academic subjects.

Hofstadter's final chapter addresses the tension between intellectuals who are willing to apply their knowledge and abilities to the service of institutions, including government and industry and those, on the other hand, who fear that they will "sell out" and be co-opted by conventional norms if they cooperate too much with society. Hofstadter was optimistic that it was possible for intellectuals to adopt a balanced outlook, cooperating with society and using their talents for its benefit, while always remaining independent-minded enough to apply their own original thinking to society's problems and not simply go along with the crowd.

Hofstadter's untimely death from leukemia at 55, in 1970, certainly deprived America of one of her foremost thinkers. This book, one of about 6 major works that he wrote, is around 450 pages, arranged in chapters of about 30 pages apiece, with notes at the end of each chapter. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand how the world's most advanced society can sometimes seem, at the same time, to contain knuckleheads and dunces--some, unfortunately, in positions of power. Again, this is not new--the only question is how we will respond and what kind of society we wish to have.

Recent political development in this country, in which gossip, hearsay, "alternative facts," wishful thinking, invective, and shaming the intellectual class have become (again) coin of the realm at the highest levels of government all remind us that this is an enduring (though thankfully not always dominant) theme in our culture. Richard Hofstadter's 1964 masterwork thus points backward to the formation of these themes in American history, and points to the present and future with concern. People who worry about such things should definitely read this book, and the fact that it's now over 50 years old is of little consequence because of the way it helps us understand trends and events.