Sidney hook biography

He was opposed to a unilateral withdrawal of U. Hook was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in [ 16 ] and ended his career in the s and s as a fellow of the conservative Hoover Institution in StanfordCalifornia. Hook was a lifelong sidney hook biography. He married Carrie Katz inwith whom he had one son. The couple separated in She was a Communist Party member who was a "Fosterite" i.

Foster amidst Party factionalism in the last s. She went on to work at the Labor Defense Council. Hook's memoir, Out of Steprecounts his life, his activism for a number of educational causes, his controversies with other intellectuals such as Noam Chomskyand his recollections of Mortimer J. At a meeting of its executive council in DenverColorado he was selected for inclusion in their Pantheon of Skeptics.

The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism. Sidney Hook's book The Hero in History was a noticeable sidney hook biography in the studies devoted to the role of the herothe Great Man in history and the influence of people of significant accomplishments.

Hook opposed all forms of determinism and argued, as had William Jamesthat humans play a creative role in constructing the social world and to transforming their natural environment. Neither humanity nor its universe is determined or finished. For Hook this conviction was crucial. He argued that when a society is at the crossroads of choosing the direction of further development, an individual can play a dramatic role and even become an independent power on whom the choice of the historical pathway depends.

In his book, Hook provided a great number of examples of the influence of great people, and the examples are mostly associated with various crucial moments in history, such as revolutions and crises. Some scholars have critically responded because, as one of them claims, "he does not take into account that an individual's greatest influence can be revealed not so much in the period of the old regime's collapse, but in the formation period of a new one.

Hook introduced a theoretical division of historic personalities and especially leaders into the eventful man and the event-making man, depending on their influences on the historical process. Hook attached great importance to accidents and contingencies in history, [ 29 ] thus opposing, among others, Herbert Fisher[ 30 ] who made attempts to present history as "waves" of emergencies.

InHook published an essay titled "The Ethics of Controversy" in which he set down ten ground rules for democratic discourse within a democracy. Hook's papers at Stanford [ 36 ] include the following articles:. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects.

Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. Stanford, CaliforniaUS. Background [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Marxist [ edit ]. Anti-communist [ edit ]. The award "recognizes national distinction by a single scholar in each of three endeavors — scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education. In his remarks, Reagan said:.

Sidney Hook stands as one of the most eminent intellectual forces of our time. His commitment to rational thought and civil discourse has made him an eloquent spokesman for fair play in public life. His devotion to freedom made him one of the first to warn the intellectual world of its moral obligations and personal stake in the struggle between freedom and totalitarianism.

A man of truth, a man of action, Sidney Hook's life and work make him one of America's greatest scholars, patriots, and lovers of liberty. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism. New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards.

This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats. The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:.

Jump to: navigationsearch. Previous Siddha. Next Sidney Lanier. Retrieved May 25, Shapiro ed. Retrieved May 30, ISBN Social Evolution and History September 30, He served as the head of the Department of Philosophy of nyu from toduring which time he founded the New York University Institute of Philosophy. Hook's main concerns as a philosopher lay in the areas of social and political thought in which he defended, against opponents of the Right and Left, a socialist form of political democracy.

His philosophy in this connection may be summarized by his comment that "Orthodoxy is not only fatal to honest thinking; it invited the abandonment of the revolutionary standpoint which was central to Marx's life and thought. Best known for his staunch defense of academic and political freedom and his stand against any form of totalitarianism, Hook was one of the organizers of the Committee for Cultural Freedom.

In he was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sidney hook biography: Sidney Hook was an American

In the Phi Beta Kappa Society established the Sidney Hook Memorial Award, a monetary prize that recognizes national distinction by a single scholar in scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education. The Metaphysics of Pragmatism was published in Kurtz ed. Sidney Hook gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia.

Hook, Sidney gale. More From encyclopedia. About this article Sidney Hook All Sources. Updated Aug 13 About encyclopedia. Sidman, Joyce —. Sidman, Joyce Sidlow, Edward I. Sidlin, Murray. Sidlaw Hills. Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Sidhwa, Bapsi —. Sidhwa, Bapsi. Sidgwick, Nevil Vincent. Sidgwick, Henry — The all-male teaching faculty, for the most part, knew little about methods of teaching, brooked no contradiction from students, and were even impatient of questions.

Instruction was not geared to broadening the interests and liberalizing the minds of the students but to the passing of examinations, especially the Regents' tests. I do not recall a single class that ended on a problem whose resolution we were moved, or ever urged, to think about. The teaching was not only authoritarian but conducted in a spirit of hostility, aimed at detecting an unprepared student and correcting him if he was out of line with respect to even trivial details.

The result was that for many students, among them the best, outwitting the teacher became more challenging than mastering the lesson. Additional penalties were included for the refusal to perform military duty. Over the next few months around went to prison under the Espionage Act. Criticised as unconstitutional, the act resulted in the imprisonment of many of the anti-war movement.

This included the arrest of left-wing political figures such as Eugene V. Soon after the outbreak of war Hook and the rest of his class was asked to write an essay entitled "Love of Country". His opening sentence was: "Love of country is often deterimental and derogatory of the process and advancement of civilization. Buttrick, was furious and ordered him from the class.

Hook was also in trouble with his history teacher, Mr. Grimshaw, when he claimed that The Lusitania had been sidney hook biography munitions of war. According to Hook he "dashed over to my desk, stood over me with bared fist" and shouted, "I dare you to repeat that lying piece of German propaganda! Hook was also a supporter of the Russian Revolution.

He did not agree with the closing down of the Consit and the banning of the opposition parties but as he explained: "The first doubts began to emerge only after the Russian October Revolution, when the voices of Menshevik and Anarchist protest reached us, but only faintly. These voices and our doubts were drowned out by the thunder of the counterrevolutionary armies of Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich, and the remarkable propaganda of the Bolsheviks, whose mastery of all the media of modern communication has remained unsurpassed from that day to this.

His main lecturer was Harry Overstreet who had been influenced by the teaching of John Dewey. Nor was he highly regarded by fanatical young Socialists, to whom he was a mere social reformer whose ineffectual programs made more difficult the radicalization of the working class. Hook was impressed by the character of Overstreet. Hook recorded in his autobiography, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century : "Harry Overstreet was a man of an extraordinarily sweet and generous disposition.

He had genuine dramatic talent that enabled him to personalize the situations and problems out of which the conflict of "sidney hook biography" values developed. During his sabbatical year, he had worked anonymously as an unskilled laborer in a Midwest factory and was one of the first persons who tried to come to grips with a problem that only decades later became central in discussions of social philosophy.

This was the nature of work in any industrial society and the difficulties of achieving self-fulfillment in tending the assembly lines of mass production. Unfortunately he could not do justice to his own insights, but instead entertained us with autobiographical tidbits and vivid accounts of his own family life and the difficulties of growing up.

Overstreet was strongly opposed to the policies of A. Mitchell Palmerthe recently appointed as attorney general. Palmer became convinced that Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government. His view was reinforced by the discovery of thirty-eight bombs sent to leading politicians and the Italian anarchist who blew himself up outside Palmer's Washington home.

Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations. Hook later recalled how Harry Overstreet reacted to what became known as the Red Scare : "Overstreet would flare up with an eloquent outburst of denunciation at some particularly outrageous act of oppression.

This was especially hazardous during the days of the Palmer raids and subsequent deportations. There were few organized protests against these brutal highhanded measures that crassly violated the key provisions of the Bill of Rights. The general public reacted to the excesses as if they were a passing heat wave. In the postwar hysteria of the time, it seemed as if the public either supported these measures or, more likely, was indifferent to them.

Mitchell Palmer claimed that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government. On 7th November,the second anniversary of the Russian Revolutionover 10, suspected communists and anarchists were arrested. Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed revolution but large number of these suspects were held without trial for a long time.

The vast majority were eventually released but Emma GoldmanAlexander BerkmanMollie Steimerand other people, were deported to Russia. Hook pointed out in his autobiography: "The general public reacted to the excesses as if they were a passing heat wave. One case that moved me profoundly was that of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Goldman and Berkman had been unjustly convicted on the flimsiest evidence of conspiring to prevent young men from registering for the draft.

What they had done was merely to express their opposition to conscription, which they had every right to do. After a caricature of a trial, they were sentenced to two years in jail, heavily fined, and ordered deported to Russia, from which they had emigrated as children, at the expiration of their sentence. The case against these truly noble idealists, whose chief failing was an incurable naivete, should have been thrown out of court.

The day the S. Buford sailed with them and others on board was one of the darkest days of my life. Several days after the Buford left port, Professor Overstreet, in a large lecture section, made an impassioned reference to the Buford as the Ark of Liberty on the high seas. A hush fell over the class. Suddenly a student known to us for his right wing sentiments rushed from the room.

In the atmosphere of the moment, we were convinced that he was reporting Overstreet's subversive utterance to someone in authority. Hook was also deeply influenced by the teaching of Morris Cohen. Cohen of the College of the City of New York, sidney hook biography he taught courses in philosophy from to By conventional pedagogical standards, he would not be considered a great or even a good teacher, for he inspired only a few of his students to undertake careers in philosophy and overawed the rest.

Nonetheless his prowess as a teacher became legendary and his ideas a force in the intellectual community. Yet his classroom techniques would never have won him tenure in any public school system, and he himself confessed he was a failure in his early efforts as an elementary and secondary schoolteacher, because he could not even control his classes.

Sidney Hook explained how Cohen used the Socratic method in his teaching: "During the years I studied with Morris Cohen, he used it with devastating results in the classroom. If a problem was being considered, Cohen would deny it was a genuine problem. When he restated the problem, every answer to it was rejected as vague or confused or ill informed if not contrary to fact, or as leading to absurd consequences when it was not viciously circular, question-begging, or downright self-contradictory.

The students' answers, to be sure, were almost always what Cohen said they were while he dispatched them with a rapier or sledgehammer - and usually with a wit that delighted those who were not being impaled or crushed at the moment. Cohen enjoyed all this immensely, too. There was no animus in this ruthless abortion of error, of stereotyped responses, and of the cliches and bromides that untutored minds brought to the perennial problems of philosophy, and although the students soon felt that whatever they said would be rejected, they consoled themselves with the awareness that almost everyone was in the same boat.

When they were not bleeding, they enjoyed watching others bleed. Occasionally Cohen would let up on a student who had the guts and gumption to answer back. If, ignoring the laughter of his fellows, he insisted on his point in the face of Cohen's mounting impatience, that student was subsequently treated more gingerly.

Sidney hook biography: Sidney Hook (December 20,

Or when Cohen had the answer to a moot point - an answer he was holding in reserve to trot out after he had gone through the class, beheading one student response after another - he would occasionally skip the student who he suspected might supply the answer. Some of us who felt the call of philosophy and had avidly read Cohen's published articles could sometimes anticipate what he had in mind.

He let us alone in class, but we had our egos properly pinched in private sessions with him. Hook admitted that Cohen was often cruel to students: "Looking back on those days and years, I am shocked at the insensitivity and actual cruelty of Cohen's teaching method, and even more shocked at my indifference to its true character when I was his student.

I was among those who spread the word, in speech and writing, about his inspiring teaching and helped make him a legendary figure who was judged and admired for his reputation rather than his actual classroom performance. Only when I myself became a teacher did I realize that the virtues of his method could be achieved without the browbeating, sarcasm, and absence of simple courtesy that marked his dialectical interrogations.

It is true that he inspired me as well as others. He was the first teacher to command my profound intellectual respect and the first to greet my opposition to America's entry into the war and my questioning with anything other than the ferocious antipathy of my high school and City College teachers. Toughened as I was as a street brawler and political activist, I thoroughly enjoyed our give and take - although I almost always took more than I gave.

Sidney hook biography: Sidney Hook was a leading interpreter

Yet he needlessly hurt too many others in what was for him a form of theater. His religion, his accent, and his irascibility denied him an opportunity to teach in the graduate school of a great university. That is where he really belonged and where the challenge of mature minds would have enabled him to fulfill what he professed was his overwhelming desire-to pursue systematic philosophy.

He compensated for the bitterness and deprivation of his lot by playing God in the classroom. While at university Hook became a devoted follower of John Dewey. I had enrolled in an elective course in social philosophy with Professor Harry Overstreet, who was a great admirer of Dewey's and spoke of him with awe and bated breath. The text of the course was Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophywhich we read closely.

Before I graduated, and in connection with courses in education, I read some of Dewey's Democracy and Education and was much impressed with its philosophy of education, without grasping at that time its general significance What did impress me about Reconstruction in Philosophyand later other writings of Dewey, was the brilliant application of the principles of historical materialism, as I understood them then as an avowed young Marxist, to philosophical thought, especially Greek thought.

Most Marxist writers, including Marx and Engels themselves, made pronouncements about the influence of the mode of economic production on the development of cultural and philosophical systems of thought, but Dewey, without regarding himself as a Marxist or invoking its approach, tried to show in detail how social stratification and class struggles got expressed in the metaphysical dualism of the time and in the dominant conceptions of matter and form, body and soul, theory and practice, truth, reason, and experience.

However, even at that time I was not an orthodox Marxist. Although politically sympathetic to all of the social revolutionary programs of Marxism, and in complete agreement with Dewey's commitment to far-reaching social reforms, I had a much more traditional view of philosophy as an autonomous discipline concerned with perennial problems whose solution was the goal of philosophical inquiry and knowledge In that period he was indisputably the intellectual leader of the liberal community in the United States, and even his academic colleagues at Columbia and elsewhere who did not share his philosophical persuasion acknowledged his eminence as a kind of intellectual tribune of progressive causes.

Although he was impressed by Dewey's writing he had doubts about his teaching style: "A student wandering into a class given by John Dewey at Columbia University and not sidney hook biography who was delivering the lecture would have found him singularly unimpressive, but to those of us enrolled in his courses, he was already a national institution with an international reputation - indeed the only professional philosopher whose occasional pronouncements on public and political affairs made news As a teacher Dewey seemed to me to violate his own pedagogical principles.

He made no attempt to motivate or arouse the interest of his auditors, to relate problems to their own experiences, to use graphic, concrete illustrations in order to give point to abstract and abstruse positions. He rarely provoked a lively participation and response from students, in the absence of which it is difficult to determine whether genuine learning or even comprehension has taken place.

Dewey presupposed that he was talking to colleagues and paid his students the supreme intellectual compliment of treating them as his professional equals. Indeed, if the background and preparation of his students were anywhere near what he assumed, he would have been completely justified in his indifference to pedagogical methods. For on the graduate level students are or should be considered junior colleagues, but when they are not, especially when they have not been required to master the introductory courses, a teacher has an obligation to communicate effectively.

Dewey never talked down to his classes, but it would have helped had he made it easier to listen. The drug scene was still many years in the future, and although many carried vicious pocket knives honed to razor-sharp thinness, the switchblade had not yet come into use. Half of the class seemed genuinely dull or backward, half were quick-witted but restless and undisciplined.

Although most were native-born, their use of English was extremely primitive The students feared their parents and the truant officer more than their teacher, and came up with all sorts of original ailments and domestic calamities to win freedom from classroom attendance. They were safe so long as the teacher did not report excessive absence.

Hook did not find it too difficult to control his students: "The times today are so different that no instructive comparison can be drawn between the school scene then and now. Physical punishment of the boys was permitted for severe infractions of discipline, but I never heard of physical assaults against teachers on school premises. The family structures were intact, and there was no punishment more fearful to the students than a threat to summon their parents to school.

Because the very dull and the very disruptive were removed from the ordinary classes, there was little interference with the educational process, and although I had no difficulty in keeping my opportunity class orderly, I believe I was able to teach them something, too. This was rendered easier by the fact that the class consisted of boys who, for the most part, had not reached full pubescence.

Moreover, a rumor resulting from some misunderstood remarks of mine, which I did not contradict began to circulate that I was an amateur pugilist, and this impressed them. Hook adopted the sidney hook biography methods of teaching that was promoted by John Dewey. To do this I had to disregard the syllabus for the grade. Capitalizing on the boys' passion for baseball, I taught them percentage, so that they could determine the standing of the clubs and the batting averages of the players, as well as American geography.

They learned a great deal about the colorful historical figures of the past and present I followed progressive methods, not out of principle but because they actually worked. I was unorthodox even in my untimely progressivism. There were some skills that could only be acquired by drill, and one couldn't always make a game of them.

I was not above resorting to external rewards for persistence in drill exercises. He also studied for his Ph. He was the soul of kindness and decency in all things to everyone, the only great man whose stature did not diminish as one came closer to him. In fact it was difficult to remain in his presence for long without feeling uncomfortable He was too kind, kind to a fault There was an air of abstraction about Dewey that made his sensitivity to others surprising.

It was as if he had an intuitive sense of a person's authentic, unspoken need. Anyone who thought he was a softie, however, would be brought up short. He had the canniness of a Vermont farmer and a dry wit that was always signaled by a chuckle and a grin that would light up his face. Hook was awarded a fellowship by the Guggenheim Foundation for research on post-Hegelian philosophy.

He sailed for Germany in June Hook was shocked by the level of anti-Semitism and nationalism in Weimar Germany : "The phenomenon of anti-Semitish was not what impressed me most. It was rather the pervasiveness and the intensity of the spirit of nationalism, not only among all political groups including the Communists, but among all elements of the population I came in contact with.

Only some segments of the Social Democrats were free of this nationalist spirit. It was, for many, more of an aggrieved and defensive nationalism than of a chauvinistic kind. The Germans, I was told again and again, had been deceived by Wilson's Fourteen Points with their call for no annexations and no reparations. Whether out of ignorance or naivete, many seemed to believe that it was not because of a shattering military defeat that Germany had sued for peace, but because of the promise of those Fourteen Points.

Every provision of Wilson's declaration had been violated by the Treaty of Versailles, which also contained-mention of this would always rouse an audience to fury-the humiliating clause that Germany bore sole guilt for the war. Among the many mistakes the civilian leaders of the Weimar Republic made, the most disastrous was signing the treaty.

They should have insisted that the German generals who had lost the war acknowledge it formally before the eyes of the world. Failing that, it would have been better if they had not put their names to it at all. While in Germany he became friends with Karl Korsch : "Politically, the most interesting of the individuals I got to know was Karl Korsch.

A leaflet advertising one of his public lectures, distributed at a tavern, provoked my curiosity. He was a man of dynamic enthusiasm and dedicated to the proposition that both Social Democratic and Communist orthodoxy had betrayed the essence of scientific Marxism. He himself had participated in the Communist uprising in Thuringia while he was teaching at the university there, had fled when it was defeated, and after a general amnesty coolly reappeared to take up his post.

The upshot of the resulting scandal was an arrangement with the local government, according to which he would be paid his salary on condition that he did not teach. His emphasis upon the element of activity in Marx's theory of knowledge and the indispensability of judgments of value and practice contra Rudolf Hilferding's and Karl Kautsky's views were directly in line with my own pragmatic interpretation of Marx and the synthesis I was then trying to establish between Dewey and Marx.

Korsch was at home in English, and after we exchanged reprints of some of our published writings, we became very friendly. Sidney Hook also met with Eduard Bernstein who talked about Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling : "Because of my Guggenheim project, I made several efforts to arrange a meeting with Eduard Bernstein, the famous revisionist of Marx, then living in retirement.

His figure and outlook, in the perspective of the fifty years after Marx's death, had grown enormously. I was put off several times, and when I finally met him, I realized why. He was suffering from advanced arteriosclerosis and was attended by a nurse. He seemed at first reluctant to talk about his reminiscences of Marx, but at the outset of our talk, to my chagrin, was eager to describe his first day at school, about which he had very vivid memories.

I kept reverting to various episodes of Marx's life and to some of Marx's literary remains, which Engels had entrusted to Bernstein. His manner was benign and friendly. Only twice did he lose his composure and burst out with a stormy lucidity. The first time was when I mentioned Edward Aveling with whom Eleanor Marx, Marx's youngest daughter, had been enamored, and who had been the cause of her suicide.

Bernstein rose from his chair with flushed face and agitated tone and voice and denounced him as an arch scoundrel. I did not, however, get a very coherent account of Aveling's infamy. In Hook visited the Soviet Union : "Although I became aware of definite shortcomings and lacks in Soviet life, I was completely oblivious at the time to the systematic repressions that were then going on against noncommunist sidneys hook biography and altogether ignorant of the liquidation of the so-called kulaks that had already begun that summer.

I was not even curious enough to probe and pry, possibly for fear of what I would discover. To be sure, most of the politically knowledgable persons I met were Communists of varying degrees of fanaticism. Although the deadly purges of the Communist ranks had not yet begun, I was aware that followers of Trotsky were having a hard time of it. Adolf Joffe's letter of suicide - he was a leading partisan of Trotsky - protesting his treatment and that of others at the hands of the Party bureaucracy had moved me deeply, and Trotsky's expulsion from the Soviet Union while I was in Germany was still fresh in my mind.

What accounted for my failure to discover the truth and even to search for it with the zeal with which I would have pursued reports of gross injustice committed elsewhere? Several things. First, I had come to the Soviet Union with the faith of someone already committed to the Socialist ideal and convinced that the Soviet Union was genuinely dedicated to its realization.

This conviction had been nurtured and strengthened by the Soviet Union's peace policy, its enlightened social legislation all along the line, and despite its doctrinal orthodoxy, which I never shared, its declared educational theory and practice. John Dewey had visited the Soviet Union the previous year. Hook shared his views on the Soviet education system: "My teacher, John Dewey, who had visited Russia inhad declared its educational system to be the most enlightened in the world and closest to his own ideals.

Actually, although I was as impressed as Dewey was by the pronouncements of Soviet educators, I was never taken in by the claims that Soviet educational practices lived up to them on a large scale. On the basis of what I was told by the Russian families I got to know, I became convinced that Dewey in and George Counts, whom I met that summer inwere being shown specially selected classes and schools that were not representative at all.

Nonetheless, Dewey's report of the state and, above all, the promise of Soviet culture as a consequence of a revolution The real reason was that, in attaching themselves to the organizations influenced by the Communist Party, they felt they were identifying with the Soviet Union - the country that was showing the world the face of the future: a planned society, in which, allegedly, there was no unemployment, no human want in consequence of the production of plenty, and in which, allegedly, the workers of arm and brain controlled their own destinies The Socialists, it was claimed, lacked the verve and fire required for the total expropriation of the bourgeoisie, for the destruction of its state apparatus, and for the transformation of existing educational, legal, and political institutions from top to bottom.

Hook explained in his autobiography: "I had endorsed the Communist Party electoral ticket Inthe depression was close to its nadir. The outlook seemed economically hopeless, and despair pervaded all social circles.