Autobiography by Bertrand Russell

I actually finished this book almost two months ago, but tackling the review for it was more difficult than I thought it would be. Partly because of the book’s length and scope, but also because it’s tricky to review an autobiography without simply summarising the author’s life. I think I’ve done well enough out of this one, for the most part.

Autobiography by Bertrand Russell

Mathematician, philosopher, social reformer, conscientious objector, writer, lecturer, anti-nuclear protestor — Bertrand Russell’s life is remarkably difficult to summarise in a few words, not least because it spanned nearly a century of constant political and social change. His grandfather was Lord John Russell, later the first Earl Russell, two-time Whig prime minister in the mid-nineteenth century and a son of one of the most well-connected aristocratic families in Britain. His parents, Lord and Lady Amberley, held radical views on atheism, birth control, and other moral values which were not far short of a scandal in the socially conservative late Victorian era. This mixture of orthodox and unorthodox influences formed the background of young Bertrand Russell’s life, and at times appeared to surface in the few scandals he managed to produce alongside his publications and lecture tours.

Russell’s parents died early in his childhood, and he and his older brother Frank were raised at their grandparents’ estate in Richmond Park. Like many well-to-do young men of his age, he was educated at home by a series of tutors, who encouraged his natural aptitude for the study of mathematics. Yet Russell also spent much of his adolescence fighting off depression, worries about his sexual desires and the loss of his religious faith, and suicidal thoughts — indeed, he admits that the thought of not being able to learn more mathematics was one of the few things that kept him from taking his own life. He passed the entrance examinations for Cambridge and began to work on mathematics at Trinity College, soon expanding his work into philosophy and eventually taking a philosophy fellowship at Trinity shortly after he graduated. The connections between mathematics, logic, and philosophy formed the basis of much of Russell’s work for the rest of his life, and his influence appears in the writings of later logicians, mathematicians, and philosophers such as Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Even after he became the third Earl Russell upon the death of his elder brother in the early 1930s, he carried on much as before, though he wryly notes in the autobiography that he found the title occasionally useful for securing hotel rooms. He published numerous essays, articles, and works of short fiction; worked on sweeping surveys of the history of social thought and Western philosophy; and maintained an exhausting lecture circuit. And in 1950, his contributions to ‘humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought’ were considered of sufficient merit to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Apart from his academic career, Russell became more and more involved in political and social causes as he grew older. He was an active participant in the markedly unpopular pacifist and conscientious objection movement during World War I, a cause that alienated him from formerly close friends and colleagues and eventually ended in a six-month stretch of imprisonment in 1918. He was interested in the mechanics of socialism and communism, though he became one of the more strident critics of the Soviet Union, something which did not endear him to other left-leaning associates like Sidney and Beatrice Webb. He was an advocate of women’s suffrage, contraception, sex education, and homosexuality and divorce law reform, all of which feature prominently in the pages of his autobiography — particularly in the sections in which he frankly and unashamedly describes the ups and downs of his various marriages (a total of four, of which three ended in separation and divorce) and occasional affairs with other women. After World War II, he became associated with the world government and nuclear disarmament movements. In 1957, at the age of 85, he served as the first president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and participated in marches and demonstrations for several years afterwards. Well into his 90s, he worked on his autobiography, and continued to write public letters and editorials almost up until the day of his death in early February 1970, at age 98.

Covering more than 700 pages, Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography is an expansive text that is as much a work of social history as it is an individual’s life story. Each chapter contains a selection of personal letters, notes, and short articles that round out the written recollections. Although Russell writes engagingly of his adventures and travels, and is willing to admit his own faults and failings in retrospect, he does not always come across as an easy person to know or to live with — as a friend and colleague, he could be warm and disapproving, generous and chill, caring and frustrating by turns. Yet the book quite clearly presents the human being behind the careful mathematician, introspective philosopher, and active elder statesman, a life lived fully and as best as anyone might be able to live. In the end, it is unsurprising that Russell would preface the account of his life by saying, ‘This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.‘

Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking by D.Q. McInerny

I consider myself a fairly logical person on the whole, more used to reasoning out solutions and situations than using any intuitive parts of my brain. I studied some simple logic in my mathematics classes in school, and I used to love doing those grid-style logic problems they sell in large thick puzzle books. Yet I never studied ‘formal’ logic, the kind that they teach entire university-level courses about. So when I came upon a very slim book titled Being Logical, it seemed a worthwhile purchase.

Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking by D.Q. McInerny

Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking explains the origins and basics of formal logical thinking, along with common fallacies and logical failings that people tend to fall into, knowingly or unknowingly. McInerny is able to explain the logic process without using the often-confusing symbol shorthand, and breaks down different arguments — conditional arguments, syllogisms, the difference between statements of fact and statements of value — into easily readable, bize-sized pieces. And yet it’s not at all dumbed down. I had to go back through more than a few of the short sections and reread them to make sure I understood the points, but because the sections were so short it wasn’t very difficult to keep my train of thought going even when the arguments were fairly complex.

By far the best part of the book, in my opinion, is the section nearest the end where McInery goes through the sources and forms of illogical thinking. He draws a very good distinction between an ‘argument’ and a ‘quarrel’ — they’re often used interchangeably, but in the logical context they couldn’t be more different. As he puts it, an argument is meant to ‘get at’ the truth, while a quarrel is intended to ‘get at’ other people. Nicely said, I think. He also covers other forms of illogical thinking and poor reasoning like begging the question (actually used in the right context!), creating a straw man, and the conspiracy theorist’s favourite reply: ‘You can’t disprove it, so therefore it’s proved to be true!’ That section also points out common tricks used by clever and unscrupulous debaters to conceal shoddy logic or distract the listener from a poorly laid-out argument. So all in all, Being Logical is more than able to pack in a crash course in logic and logical thinking into just over 125 pages. Now that I’ve finally managed to get around to reading it, I wish I’d read it sooner.

Dare to Be a Daniel by Tony Benn

Been quite a while since my last update — I’m finally back from travelling and I’m still attempting to sort out my research notes from the trip. I’ll start up my reviews once more, and possibly start adding more information about the various directions my research may be taking in the near future.

Dare to Be a Daniel by Tony Benn

Tony Benn is and was a prolific diarist — eight volumes in total, I believe. But a diary can only tell so much, and in this instance Dare to Be a Daniel is less of a diary and more of a series of collected thoughts on his life. Benn divides this particular book into three sections: one where he considers the values that have shaped his religious beliefs, one where he reminisces about his young life and his relationships with his family and his late wife Caroline, and one where he recounts some of his thoughts on political and social themes and connects them to the influence that his family had has on him through the years.

The first two parts of Dare to Be a Daniel are reflective, almost conversational in tone. He sticks to more of a memoir style, though it often has a pace that feels more like a transcript of something said to a live audience. The third section, a group of essays and speeches, have quite a different tone to them. It would be easy to gloss over the ideas he sets out by saying ‘Yes, well, he’s just an unreconstructed Old Labourite who never got over the entirety of the 1980s’. It is true that his particular political opinions come out very strongly in the text: anti-EU (though to be fair, not entirely anti-European), anti-New Labour, anti-WTO and IMF and multinational corporations…and so on, in much the same fashion. But he puts his views forward in such a way that only an exceptionally lazy critic could simply dismiss them offhand without actually wanting to get up and try to refute him point by point.

I suppose that those who do not happen to share Mr Benn’s personal political views are not likely to find Dare to Be a Daniel worthy of reading. That’s much the case for most any politician’s collected writings, really. But Mr Benn’s longstanding place in the history of postwar British politics makes him one of those individuals who ought to be read more widely, in my opinion.

In conclusion, a personal story about this book: When Dare to Be a Daniel first came out, I went to Hatchards during a book signing session to pick up a copy. As I was standing in the queue, Mr Benn was talking with a woman who was browsing nearby, both of them commenting on whatever Tony Blair had been up to most recently. He signed a book without entirely paying attention to it and handed it to his publicist. She looked down at it, blinked, and handed it back to him with an uncertain look on her face. It turned out that instead of signing the book ‘Tony Benn’, he had written ‘Tony Blair‘. Benn made a mock-horrified face at first, but soon started laughing at the mix-up — he even mentioned that he occasionally gets mail forwarded from Number 10 Downing Street that has been addressed to him as ‘Prime Minister Tony Benn’. (Readers of this post will be allowed to make up their own minds about whether that thought is cheering or terrifying.) That said, I collected my copy, got his signature, and carried off my prize. I do wonder what happened to that mis-signed book, though — if I’d had an ounce of sense at the time, I should’ve offered money for it on the spot. It would’ve been quite a collector’s item.

Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis by Simon Stow

As any good book reviewer ought to do, I will have to declare a prior interest in the author of the book I am about to review. I took several undergraduate classes in political philosophy from Simon Stow, and consider him to be one of the best professors I had during my undergraduate days. (Somewhere in my files, I still have the notes I took from his classes.) So when I saw that he’d published a book based on his dissertation, I thought it only appropriate to purchase a copy for myself and attempt to write a brief review of it.

Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis by Simon Stow

Most anyone who has made a serious study of the techniques of literary criticism will know that a number of long-established critics like to look at books through a decidedly political lens. Marxism, postmoderism, feminism, New Historicism — the list of these and other ‘isms’ is long and still growing, and often confusing for those who would prefer to simply read a book rather than try to look at the book with the help of a theory that is supposed to explain What It All Really Means. Yet in the past half-century or so, this political ‘turn’ in literary theory has been mirrored by a similar literary ‘turn’ in political theory, in which political philosophers examine certain works or styles of literature in an attempt to determine the effects that books and reading can have on the creation of political ideas. Political and social philosophers like Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum, Terry Eagleton, and Judith Butler have examined the relationship between books and readers, trying to develop theories that explain the proper or ideal role of literature in political thought.

The literary turn in political theory has produced some rather thought-provoking ideas. Martha Nussbaum, for instance, suggests that books like Charles Dickens’ Hard Times or E.M. Forster’s Maurice can help create a feeling of empathy and understanding for those who have been put at an economic, political, or social disadvantage by the current state of society, raising our political and social consciousness. Richard Rorty claims that reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire will help readers recognise cruelty when they see it, both in other people and in themselves. (He uses the seductively cruel paedophila of Humbert Humbert as a case in point: if readers of Lolita come to realise that they have started to accept Humbert’s claim that he was seduced by a prepubescent girl, would that sudden self-awareness make the readers more aware of their own capacity for cruelty or their ability to objectivise other people in the way that Humbert objectifies young Dolores Haze?) These and other ideas of the role of literature in political thought — and the thinkers who developed them — are the focus of Republic of Readers? The Literary Turn in Political Thought and Analysis.

Stow’s book looks at the literary turns in the political thought of Nussbaum, Rorty, Eagleton, and Butler, and attempts to identify the common strands in their competing arguments. He devotes a good portion of the book to picking apart the inconsistencies and problems with these arguments — not necessarily to say that these arguments are entirely wrong, but more to show that some of the underlying assumptions in these arguments are very subjective, more often based on how Rorty or Eagleton or Nussbaum or Butler thinks that a particular work of literature should be read than on how a reader might look at the text for the first time. Stow points out this and other problems with the different textual readings and their applications to political thought, and in doing so he attempts to separate — or perhaps even rescue — political philosophy from literary criticism.

One word of caution: It helps to have a good acquaintance with literary and political theory before delving into this book. I myself have only dabbled in the shallows of political philosophy and literary criticism, so a reader who is less than familiar with either the theorists or the texts mentioned would likely find this book somewhat rough going. (Having had the advantage of sitting through the author’s lectures in the past, I was able to follow his arguments better than I think I would have otherwise.) But for students of philosophy and literature who are interested in a review of the literary turn in political thought — one that avoids the shrillness all too frequently found in this discipline’s debate — Republic of Readers? provides a calm and measured study that does quite a bit to heighten readers’ awareness of the role that literature often may play in shaping how we look at the world.

Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

Vaguely buried under work here at the moment — a more complete update on InaDWriMo progress will follow once I’ve managed to clear a few things off my to-do list.

Wittgenstein’s Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow

For all that the title of this book begins with ‘Wittgenstein’, this book isn’t your typical philosophy book. It’s part philosophy, part biography, and part historical mystery. The focus of the book is an incident that allegedly took place at Cambridge University on 25 October 1946, when a philosophical discussion held in a set of college rooms turned into an open argument between two of the great twentieth-century philosophers — Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein. According to some versions of the story, an agitated Wittgenstein actually picked up a fireplace poker and brandished it, openly threatening Popper with it, only to throw the poker down and storm out of the room, bringing an end to the confrontation.

One of the more intriguing things about this incident is that almost none of the eyewitnesses to the argument (there were more than two dozen people present for the discussion, I believe) seem to agree about what actually happened. Did Wittgenstein really threaten Popper with the poker? Did he merely wave it about, using it to gesticulate and getting a little too excited? Did Popper exaggerate the story afterwards to make Wittgenstein seem mentally unbalanced? And what prompted the argument, anyway? In Wittgenstein’s Poker, Edmonds and Eidinow examine this incident and try to make sense of a mass of conflicting information to determine what might’ve transpired.

Wittgenstein’s Poker delves deep into the personal and professional histories of Popper and Wittgenstein to illuminate their similarities and differences, and it shows how the clash was really operating on several levels. The argument was a debate about philosophy, but it had its roots in the social backgrounds of Popper and Wittgenstein (the former came from a struggling middle-class family, while the latter was of aristocratic lineage) as well as similar experiences (both had fled Austria to escape the Nazis). And the fundamental differences between Popper and Wittgenstein’s philosophy would certainly have given them enough to argue about…but not, perhaps, to the point where fire-irons ought to have been involved. The various stories on what happened with the poker are part and parcel of this clash, and each of the accounts has something to say about why these two men would’ve reacted so strongly to each other during what was supposed to have been a scholarly, civilised discussion.

Before I read this book, my only knowledge of Wittgenstein and Popper was a generally vague sense of their philosophical writings — I was slightly more aware of Wittgenstein than Popper, but what I could have told you about either of them would’ve filled something very small. Edmonds and Eidinow have written one of those books that truly piques the reader’s curiosity (or at least it piqued mine) on in a subject that might’ve otherwise remained an odd anecdote in the history books. Wittgenstein’s Poker is one of those books that I keep coming back to whenever I’ve a need to remind myself that even odd anecdotes can have a deeper historical meaning.

The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick

I may actually make a post that isn’t a review one of these days, but at the moment I doubt that anyone wants to read my ramblings about the Liberal Democrats’ leadership race. So I’ll set that aside for now in favour of something a little less topical.

The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick

The Age of Enlightenment is a name commonly given to the philosophical and intellectual movements in Europe and in the American colonies during the eighteenth (and early seventeenth) century. A list of contributors to the ‘Enlightenment’ would have to include a remarkably diverse group of thinkers and writers who debated any number of philosophical, political, and social topics, many of whom disagreed vehemently with the writings of others. Whether it’s the pamphlets of Thomas Paine or the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot, Mary Wollstonecraft denouncing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s opinions on the education of women or Edmund Burke ‘reflecting’ on the French Revolution, Immanuel Kant’s critique of pure reason or the sheer prolific fury of just about anything written by Voltaire, the Enlightenment writers put their emphasis on reason, rational thought, scientific analysis, and the study of natural law in relation to the individual and society. The idea was to move away from irrationality and superstition (which some of these writers, though by no means all of them, attributed in part to the tyranny of organised religions) and towards a more unified framework for how the world operated. This intellectual framework helped form the basis for classical liberalism, democracy, and capitalistic thought — and by extension, formed the philosophical underpinnings of the American and French Revolutions.

The Portable Enlightenment Reader is a set of texts taken from the writings of the Enlightenment’s most notable philosophers, grouped by subject and topic and pulled together into a single volume. The texts chosen for this portable edition are, I’d have to say, a fairly good selection. All of the big names of the time period are there — Locke and Rousseau and Hume take up a decent amount of space, and the selections are usually long enough to provide a taste of the topic without taking up too much room. The idea in a book like this is to give the casual reader a sense of how each of these writers wrote and what they wrote about. For example, if you’ve ever wondered whether Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is worth reading, then the selection provided in the Portable Enlightenment Reader may give you a sense of whether you think you’d like to try to tackle his prose.

Not all of the selections are weighty philosophical treatises or explorations of history. There’s a downright smutty snippet from John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, a work of erotic fiction billed as the memoirs of a ‘woman of pleasure’ — indicative of the interest that the Enlightenment writers took in the definition, understanding, and pursuit of pleasure. There are some noteworthy perspectives on the early women’s rights movement, including a short passage written by Thomas Paine that reflects on the unfortunate state of women as he saw it. The tail end of the Enlightenment saw some consideration on the nature of the slave trade and the position of the ‘Negro race’ (as many writers called it) with respect to white Europeans. The book as a whole is meant for dabbling — a means of tempting the appetite, as it were. Now that I know where to start from, the Portable Enlightenment Reader has given me a solid basis for continuing my reading of the works of writers who helped shape Western thought at a crucial moment in Western history.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

Here follows my first attempt at reading and reviewing Foucault, completed earlier this year. Not a bad effort, I think, for a first attempt.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

Before the early 19th century, European ideas of crime and punishment tended to involve very public displays of the power of the monarch and the power of the state against the offending individual. Nowhere was this tendency more evident than in the spectacle of public executions. Those convicted of murder, piracy, counterfeiting, or other notable capital crimes would be taken to a public place for hanging or decapitation, and certain kinds of crimes warranted particularly gruesome punishments. In England, for instance, until 1790 the official punishment for women convicted of petty treason — a wife who killed her husband or a servant who killed her master or mistress — was burning at the stake. The mass hangings of convicts were public spectacles, with public processions, viewing stands set up for spectators and an almost festival-like atmosphere on the day. For those who did not receive the death penalty, the prisons that existed were more like enforced stays in squalid communal housing, with very little distinction drawn between the treatment given to first-time and habitual criminals, as well as those who were clearly mentally ill. And yet in a relatively short space of time, the horrific public executions and communal prisons gave way to quiet and concealed executions and the far more orderly and regimented system of modern prison life, a trend that continues into the present day. Social historians tend to point to the writings of progressive reformers who advocated a more dignified and humanitarian approach to the punishment of offenders. But a more in-depth look at the history of the prison provides an alternate viewpoint — one that has less to do with purely humanitarian concerns and far more to do with the desire to establish a greater sense of control over society and those who would consider violating its laws.

In Discipline and Punish, social theorist Michel Foucault directly confronts and challenges a number of existing ideas surrounding the prison reforms of the late 1700s and early 1800s, and even into the twentieth century. By looking at the evolution of justice systems (focusing primarily on France), he suggests that the shift away from public executions and towards the idea of incarceration and reform within prison walls was a means of reframing the image of the power of society over the individual. Public executions often had the effect of making a criminal into a public martyr, and the ballads and broadsides printed for the common people did less to condemn the crime and more to glorify the criminal. By shifting the focus of justice into the prison and out of the public eye, authorities would have more direct control over the lives of those who had violated the norms of society.

Foucault compares prisons to other collective corrective organisations — convents and monasteries, military barracks, schools (both the regular kind and those formed for charity children or juvenile offenders), lunatic asylums and hospitals, workhouses for the poor, and even the large factory complexes of the early Industrial Revolution — and finds the common threads of common discipline, constant surveillance, enforced work and education, and strict adherence to an internal hierarchy in all of these institutions. The idea of correction and reform has shifted society’s focus from the individual’s body (i.e., the brandings, tortures, and hangings carried out on offenders) to the individual’s mind and soul. This shift in focus, Foucault claims, has not had the reforming effect that the authorities would hope. Instead, it has actually encouraged and refined criminal activity and behaviours.

Discipline and Punish is a very dense text, and I had to look up a summary outline of the book more than once or twice as I read to be certain that I was following the premise of his argument. In the end, I think I managed to follow Foucault’s line of reasoning, though I know I would have to go back and read this over again in smaller fragments to get all of the nuances and points that he makes in the text. But as an analysis of the creation of the modern prison and its effects on the changing nature of crime and criminality in modern society, Discipline and Punish adds to the powerful argument that others have made as well — the prison system, as it stands, is not as successful at punishing crime and disciplining offenders as we might like to think. And it’s a bit refreshing, in a way, that Foucault doesn’t actually offer possible ’solutions’ to this quandary.

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman

I have to admit, I picked up this book because of its title. It sounded oddly provocative, and I wanted to see if it would be a polemic thinly disgused as a historical study. (It happens far more often than you might think, believe me.)

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman

The basic premise of Charles Freeman’s book might not go over so well with those of the Christian faith. He claims that the early Christian church played a pivotal role in stifling many of the intellectual traditions that had developed over the centuries, beginning with the ancient Greeks. The Greek gods seemed to operate at a distance from humanity, allowing the separation of faith and belief from reason and the scientific method. This degree of separation, and the Greeks’ attempts to make sense of it, gave rise to many crucial developments in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and other rigorously intellectual disciplines. But as Christianity grew from a small cult following into a greater religious (and later political) movement, the early Christian leaders did their best to paper over the cracks in their doctrine by stifling dissent and debate, imposing a religious orthodoxy that helped to crush the practice of free and open philosophical debate that had been inherited from the Greek world. The attempt to hammer out a comprehensive religious doctrine from a mishmash of conflicting sources is the central narrative of Freeman’s book, and it’s fairly clear that while he understands why events happened as they did, he isn’t entirely happy about it.

Truthfully, I almost don’t feel qualified to pass judgement on this book. There is a lot of information here, covering nearly a millennia of history (and ancient history, at that). What is more, my knowledge of Christianity and basic Christian doctrine is general at best — and decidedly based in a nonreligious perspective. I feel as if I don’t have enough background knowledge to go through and challenge some of the points Freeman has made in his book even if I wanted to. But I did find his historical work fairly convincing, particularly with regard to the development of Christianity from its roots as an offshoot of the variations on Judaism found during the Second Temple period. I was also pleasantly surprised by his organisation and writing style, and then when I started getting into the meat of the book the sheer amount of information crammed into the pages caught me and held me fast. Fortunately for other less-informed readers such as myself, Freeman has given his audience a slew of excellent footnotes to go through and form their own conclusions. I think I may have to do some further digging on my own.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

First, a bit of introduction to Penguin Books’ ‘Great Ideas’ series. Penguin selected twelve writers whose works span the ages of Western civilisation (from Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger to English journalist George Orwell), and printed special editions of each author’s best known work or a representative sample of the same. I’ve picked up a few of them, and here are my thoughts on one of the first volumes in the series.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

From around 160 to 180 CE, Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius spent much of his time engaged in military campaigns and skirmishes against various people on the edges of the Roman empire. While on these campaigns, he began to write down his thoughts on ways in which he could improve his life and his way of thinking. His Meditations are regarded as classic examples of Stoic philosophy and spirituality, with a focus on moderation and self-reliance. In modern times, the word ’stoic’ has taken on a somewhat negative quality — to be ’stoic’ is to be dour and joyless and fatalistic, possessed of a stiff upper-lip and a squared jaw and an immobile brow. But the Meditations present a far more agreeable face of Stoic philosophy, emphasising balance and inner peace and common sense…and a rather refreshing belief in the power of human reason.

It’s true that the Mediations repeat the same general ideas many times over, slightly reworded each time. Yet these reflections compiled over the course of many years, and each different way of looking at an idea is a reflection of Marcus Aurelius’s thoughts at the time. It makes more sense to read a few pages at a time, or a few thoughts at a time, and come back later and read a little more. The Meditations are a fine introduction to Stoic philosophy and to the works of one of the most enduring philosophers of Roman times, and in a slim and compact volume they’re nice and portable, perfect for picking up when you have a few moments to spare — much in the same way as Marcus Aurelius wrote them down.

The American Political Tradition and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

Doubling up on the reviews again, with two books by American historian and Columbia University professor Richard Hofstadter.

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It by Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter published The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It in 1948, combining twelve interlinked essays about the development of American history and politics from the early days of the Republic to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. He focused on key political figures in the context of their time — and in many ways used the book as an attempt to move away from the standard image of American history as a political tradition based on pure democratic ideals.

Looking over the book for reviewing purposes, I found myself wishing that I’d had this book when I was first examining aspects of American history in school. It is a nice compact introduction to some basic historical themes, ones that tend to be glossed over by standard history textbooks because of lack of space. Hofstadter does manage to avoid the temptation to be overly whiggish in his interpretation of how American politics has changed in the years since 1776. He stresses the effect of pragmatism on decision-making, doing his best to present a more realistic picture of different political climates and the men who came to exemplify their political eras. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover — Hofstadter does his best to put them into the context of their times instead of setting them apart (or ignoring them completely in favour of broader economic-based arguments about history). He doesn’t actively set out to deconstruct or destroy the various myths about the Founding Fathers or Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt. Rather, he carefully picks and teases them apart, separating individual strands of historical argument before setting them out as neatly as he can.

In general, I don’t think that The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It is meant to be read as a be-all, end-all history text. Certainly, it ignores the history of the American public in favour of a far more top-down approach to American political philosophies. But as far as introductory texts go, though it’s well-written and for the most part concise. Quite a lot of American history texts don’t even manage that much. A book worth examining, at any rate, and I’m glad I picked it up when I did.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

When I first read this book, it took me several weeks to figure out the best way to approach it with reviewing in mind. It’s no secret that Hofstadter’s book is meant to be controversial — it was controversial when it won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction, and many of the statements he makes in it have attracted supporters and detractors ever since. And while the very title might be enough to put some off reading it, I found it intriguing enough to pick it up and see if Hofstadter’s conclusions still hold true thirty years later.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life seeks to uncover the origins of some of the anti-intellectual attitudes that Hofstadter believed were severely damaging American society. He points to McCarthyism, to the Soviet Union’s advances in mathematics and science, to perjorative slang terms like ‘egghead’, and to the presidential victory of Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson as possible examples of an unconscious, pervasive anti-intellectual sentiment in American life. In searching for the roots of this anti-intellectualism, Hofstadter goes back to the earliest years of the American colonies, and traces a path through the decades — from the evangelical religious movements (the ‘Great Awakenings’, as they tend to be called) in the colonial times through the Jacksonian egalitarianism of the pre-Civil War years, from the rise of the business culture in the end of the 19th century through the progressive attitudes toward public education in the early years of the 20th century. And one of the conclusions he draws in his book is that current (for his day) expressions of intellectualism like the ‘beat’ culture appear to be a kind of twisted, angry response to mainstream America’s attempts to thwart its individual intellectuals at every turn.

This book falls into a category I’ve come to appreciate in the last few years — books whose arguments you might not wholly accept, but which you should read anyway. I’m not so certain I agree with some of Hofstadter’s arguments, but his historical exploration of the roots of anti-intellectualism was rather ground-breaking for his time. It turned quite a lot of conventionally received wisdom on its head, and in many ways the examples and arguments that Hofstadter puts forward are still points of debate in this day and age. I think it bears a second reading to see if my thoughts have changed since I last looked at it a few months ago, but I’ll certainly look forward to reading it over again.