Sidney Hook

Background

Sidney Hook was born on December 20, 1902 in New York City. Son of Isaac and Jennie (Halpern) Hook.

Education

Born and educated in Brooklyn, N.Y., he studied at City College and with John Dewey at Columbia, graduating with a doctorate in 1927.

Career

He began teaching at New York University and from 1931 also at the New School for Social Research. After his retirement in 1972, he became senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.Senior Research Fellow, Hoover institution, Stanford. 1973-1989.

As an educator, he regarded the object of learning as the development of a critical intelligence. He rejected attempts to introduce external political criteria, such as admission quotas, in institutions of higher learning and insisted on academic freedom.

Achievements

• He was the chief organizer of a number of activities among intellectuals, including the Committee for Cultural Freedom. He also organized the Conference on Methods in Philosophy and Science, the Conference on Scientific Spirit and Democractic Faith, and University Centers for Rational Alternatives. He was president of the American Philosophical Society (1959).

Works

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  • The Hero in History: Study in Limitation and Possibility

    (Considered by some the most controversial American philos...)

  • The Paradoxes of Freedom

    (One of America's most influential social philosophers off...)

  • Philosophy and Public Policy

    ( Like John Dewey, his mentor and friend, Sidney Hook sha...)

  • Marxism and Beyond

    (To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield tit...)

  • The Quest for Being, and Other Studies in Naturalism and Humanism

    (Philosophy, Naturalism, Humanism, Essays)

  • Marx and the Marxists: The Ambiguous Legacy (The Anvil series)

    (2011 Reprint of 1955 Edition. Full facsimile of the origi...)

  • Education & the taming of power

    (Book by Hook, Sidney)

  • Revolution Reform and Social Justice: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Marxism

    (Book by Hook, Sidney)

  • PRAGMATISM AND THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

    (1960 Antioch Press. Article at pp. 5-26 in one complete i...)

  • Towards Understanding Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation by Sidney Hook (20-May-2002) Hardcover
  • From Hegel To Marx Studies in the Intell
  • Heresy, Yes, Conspiracy, No!
  • Common Sense and the Fifth Amendment
  • Political Power and Personal Freedom; Critical Studies in Democracy, Communism, and Civil Rights
  • Academic freedom and academic anarchy
  • Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy: An Address by Professor of Philosophy Sidney Hook, New York University, Delivered on June 20, 1968
  • Education and the Taming of Power by Hook Sidney (1977-04-01) Hardcover
  • Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life
  • Revolution, Reform, and Social Justice; Studies in the Theory and
  • Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century
  • Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century by Sidney Hook (1-Jun-1988) Paperback
  • Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century
  • From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx
  • From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx (Morningside Book) by Hook Sidney (1994-06-30) Paperback
  • From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx (Morningside Book) by Hook, Sidney Columbia University edition (1994) Paperback
  • The Paradoxes of Freedom
  • The Paradoxes of Freedom (Great Books in Philosophy) by Hook, Sidney (1987) Paperback
  • The Paradoxes of Freedom (Great Books in Philosophy) Paperback September 1, 1987
  • [(The Paradoxes of Freedom * * )] [Author: Sidney Hook] [Jan-1984]

Religion

Hook has been described as a secular humanist. He was critical of religion, feeling that evidence for the existence of God is inadequate. He therefore objected to the effort to use theological premises to derive ethical conclusions.

Politics

He was often called a neoconservative thinker — a conservative committed to democratic socialism. His early reading of Karl Marx led him to try to reinterpret Marx in pragmatic terms. Indeed he was one of the first scholars in the United States to subject Marx’s thought to serious scholarship. Hook was a strong opponent of Stalinism and, criticizing totalitarian expressions of Marxism, was politically active in stemming the influence of communism in America. He was passionately committed to democracy, which he saw as based in the ethical principle of equality, and opposed all forms of authoritarianism and absolutism.

Views

An activistic intellectual, Sidney Hook struggled to do justice to both the professional demands of his university commitment and the political demands of his commitment to ‘the socialist dream’. The political commitment had emerged first. At a time when the American system was •hired in deep depression, Marxism appeared to he a promising alternative.

Hook considered himself to have been a ‘fellow traveller' until the Moscow treason trials of 1936-1937 revealed to him (he unethical terror at the heart of the Soviet experiment. Thereafter, his position became that pf a ‘communism without dogmas', which turned •nto ‘democratic socialism’. Eventually, he would call himself a ‘social democrat’ and insist upon Political democracy above all with ‘more or less’ socialism or capitalism depending on the situation.

His university orientation was fixed by his discovery of the pragmatism of John Dewey, which began in his undergraduate work and was completed by his studying under Dewey at Columbia.

Dewey wrote an introductory word commending Hook’s first book (1927), and seems to have regarded the younger man as his ’ntellectual heir apparent. In any case they became a kind of social action team with Hook attempting to relieve the great man of some of the tedium of scholarly work while arranging for his Participation in various political projects which had engaged the interests of the younger man. In one of these endeavours, for example, Dewey joined a commission to investigate the Moscow trials, including a trip to Mexico to interview Trotsky.

Initially, Hook saw Dewey as a philosopher who was applying ‘the principles of historical materialism’ to philosophy in a brilliant manner.

However that may be, what Dewey gave Hook intellectually was a framework allowing Hook to defend the principles of democratic liberalism and naturalism against attack from whatever quarter. The initial attacks came from the Stalinist left although, to be sure, the vigour of Hook’s counterattack would often leave one in doubt concerning the difference between offence and defence. Hook’s inner sense was that his ‘polemical exchanges’ always came ‘in response to criticism or in defense of the causes' to which he was committed.

The particular issues would change with the times. After fighting the cultural cold war against the Communists, during the McCarthy years he opposed the Senator while arguing that intellectuals had an obligation to testify before Congressional committees. With respect to university education he became embroiled ‘for almost twenty years’ in ‘vigorous educational and political controversy’ with Hutchins and Adler over the great books and classical, versus progressive, educational ideals.

In the 1960s and early 1970s he criticized university administrators for their ineptitude in controlling student disturbances.

Throughout, he said that his energies were called forth by such disputes against his repeated resolves to devote himself ‘to the sweet uses of technical philosophy’. In fact, his early writing was more concerned with these uses, whether pragmatistic or Marxist, than his later work. Upon retirement he promised himself that he would turn to ‘a systematic exposition and defense of the thought of John Dewey', but the issues and problems of ‘the last forty years’ remained ‘still as topical and compelling’ as ever.

Approaching his eighty-fourth year he felt ‘just as much embattled’ as the day he ‘first discovered injustice and unnecessary cruelty in the world’.

His position of pragmatic naturalism coupled the appreciation of science to that of political democracy. ‘All human knowledge is scientific knowledge’. The logic and ethics of scientific method are applicable to all human affairs, including ‘normative social inquiry’.

It is not only possible to determine the best means to achieve ‘given ends’, but also to determine what are the best ends. A corollary to this approach was

an ‘open minded atheism', joined, however, to the proviso that freedom of religious belief is integral to ‘any morally acceptable schedule of human rights'. A depth note to all of this is his belief (1975) that the incompossibility of goods, requiring that some be sacrificed, introduces a genuine, inescapable tragedy between betrayal of the greater good and the ideal of justice.

Personality

He was recognized internationally as an outstanding American intellectual and was a leading representative of the pragmatic tradition in American thought, applying pragmatic intelligence to ethical, social, and political issues and applying historical theory to American philosophy. This involved the experimental testing of his ideas by observing their results in behavior.

Interests

• Social philosophy.

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  John Dewey and Bertrand Russell.

Connections

Married Carrie Katz, March 31, 1924. 1 son, John Bertrand. Married Ann Zinken, May 25, 1935 (deceased January 1995).

Children: Ernest Benjamin, Susan Annual.

Father:

Isaac Hook

Mother:

Jennie (Halpern) Hook

Spouse:

Carrie Katz

Spouse:

Ann Zinken

child:

Ernest Benjamin Hook

child:

Susan Annual Hook

References

• Sidney Hook and the contemporary world: essays on the pragmatic intelligence.
  1968
• Knowledge and freedom in Sidney Hook