The Intellectuals and the Flag

The Intellectuals and the Flag PDF Author: Todd Gitlin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231510357
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
"The tragedy of the left is that, having achieved an unprecedented victory in helping stop an appalling war, it then proceeded to commit suicide." So writes Todd Gitlin about the aftermath of the Vietnam War in this collection of writings that calls upon intellectuals on the left to once again engage American public life and resist the trappings of knee-jerk negativism, intellectual fads, and political orthodoxy. Gitlin argues for a renewed sense of patriotism based on the ideals of sacrifice, tough-minded criticism, and a willingness to look anew at the global role of the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. Merely criticizing and resisting the Bush administration will not do—the left must also imagine and propose an America reformed. Where then can the left turn? Gitlin celebrates the work of three prominent postwar intellectuals: David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, and Irving Howe. Their ambitious, assertive, and clearly written works serve as models for an intellectual engagement that forcefully addresses social issues and remains affirmative and comprehensive. Sharing many of the qualities of these thinkers' works, Todd Gitlin's blunt, frank analysis of the current state of the left and his willingness to challenge orthodoxies pave the way for a revival in leftist thought and a new liberal patriotism.

The Intellectuals and the Flag

The Intellectuals and the Flag PDF Author: Todd Gitlin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231510357
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The tragedy of the left is that, having achieved an unprecedented victory in helping stop an appalling war, it then proceeded to commit suicide." So writes Todd Gitlin about the aftermath of the Vietnam War in this collection of writings that calls upon intellectuals on the left to once again engage American public life and resist the trappings of knee-jerk negativism, intellectual fads, and political orthodoxy. Gitlin argues for a renewed sense of patriotism based on the ideals of sacrifice, tough-minded criticism, and a willingness to look anew at the global role of the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. Merely criticizing and resisting the Bush administration will not do—the left must also imagine and propose an America reformed. Where then can the left turn? Gitlin celebrates the work of three prominent postwar intellectuals: David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, and Irving Howe. Their ambitious, assertive, and clearly written works serve as models for an intellectual engagement that forcefully addresses social issues and remains affirmative and comprehensive. Sharing many of the qualities of these thinkers' works, Todd Gitlin's blunt, frank analysis of the current state of the left and his willingness to challenge orthodoxies pave the way for a revival in leftist thought and a new liberal patriotism.

Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals

Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals PDF Author: Peter Viereck
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351491024
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
In this classic volume, written at the height of the Cold War, with a new preface of 2006, Peter Viereck, one of the foremost intellectual spokesmen of modern conservatism, examines the differing responses of American and European intellectuals to the twin threats of Nazism and Soviet communism. In so doing, he seeks to formulate a humanistic conservatism with which to counter the danger of totalitarian thought in the areas of politics, ethics, and art.The glory of the intellectuals was the firm moral stance they took against Nazism at a time when appeasement was the preferred path of many politicians; their shame lay in their failure to recognize the brutality of Stalinism to the extent of becoming apologists for or accomplices of its tyranny. In Viereck's view, this failure is rooted in an abandonment of humane values that he sees as a legacy of nineteenth-century romanticism and certain strands of modernist thought and aesthetics.Among his targets are literary obscurantism as personified by Ezra Pound, the academicization of literary culture, the rigidity of adversarial avant-gardism, and the failure of many writers and cultural institutions to conserve the very heritage their political freedom and security depend on. Viereck represents their attitude in a series of satirical dialogues with Gaylord Babbitt, son of Sinclair Lewis' embodiment of conservative philistinism. Babbitt Junior is as unreflective as his father, but the objects of his credulity are the received ideas of liberal progressivism and avant-garde mandarinism. Ultimately, Viereck's critique stands as a timely rebuke to the extremism of both left and right.

The Intellectuals and Socialism

The Intellectuals and Socialism PDF Author: Friedrich a Hayek
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258977924
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

The Decline of the Intellectual

The Decline of the Intellectual PDF Author: Thomas Molnar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351483994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In perhaps his most famous book, The Decline of the Intellectual, Thomas Molnar launches into a fundamental critique of the intellectual class. He sees it as a group that had lost its way, collapsing a sense of vision into political activism, social engineering, and culture manipulation, and abandoning the writing, philosophizing, and scholarship that had occupied their predecessors. Universities began to produce factory-like, faceless citizens, as the job market became the arbiter of education and culture. Today's professors are recruited from this group of job seekers, and hence, have a shared indifference toward learning.Molnar likens present-day intellectuals to the earlier Marxists who elaborated their Utopian model in the Communist party. The campus intellectuals' objective is to transform the university into a replica and a laboratory of the ideal society. Colleges and universities thus become sources of propaganda of various political, financial, cultural, and ideological trends, not only among students, but professors as well. The thirty years separating editions have done nothing to weaken such a critical appraisal.In his new introduction, Molnar writes that the decline of intellectuals has extended outside of the campus to the arts, the public discourse, and the robotization caused by technology. On the initial publication of this work, Frank S. Meyer wrote in Modern Age, Thomas Molnar's book is not only true; it is intellectually exciting and it will remain a necessary handbook for anyone interested in the decisive problem of the 20th century. The Decline of the Intellectual is essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, educators, and university officials. It is the basis of present-day critiques of the academic world.

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40

Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920-40 PDF Author: Ludmila Stern
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134238673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Despite the appalling record of the Soviet Union on human rights questions, many western intellectuals with otherwise impeccable liberal credentials were strong supporters the Soviet Union in the interwar period. This book explores how this seemingly impossible situation came about. Focusing in particular on the work of various official and semi-official bodies, including Comintern, the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers' Union, this book shows how cultural propaganda was always a high priority for the Soviet Union, and how successful this cultural propaganda was in seducing so many Western thinkers.

Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970

Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 PDF Author: Richard H. King
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 9780801880667
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
To study this transition from universalism to cultural particularism, Richard King focuses on the arguments of major thinkers, movements, and traditions of thought, attempting to construct a map of the ideological positions that were staked out and an intellectual history of this transition.

Political Pilgrims

Political Pilgrims PDF Author: Paul Hollander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351498797
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 627

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Book Description
Why did so many distinguished Western Intellectuals from G.B. Shaw to J.P. Sartre, and. closer to home, from Edmund Wilson to Susan Sontag admire various communist systems, often in their most repressive historical phases? How could Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba appear at one time as both successful modernizing societies and the fulfillments of the boldest dreams of social justice? Why, at the same time, had these intellectuals so mercilessly judged and rejected their own Western, liberal cultures? What Impulses and beliefs prompted them to seek the realization of their ideals in distant, poorly known lands? How do their journeys fit into long-standing Western traditions of looking for new meaning In the non-Western world?These are some of the questions Paul Hollander sought to answer In his massive study that covers much of our century. His success is attested by the fact that the phrase "political pilgrim" has become a part of intellectual discourse. Even in the post-communist era the questions raised by this book remain relevant as many Western, and especially American intellectuals seek to come to terms with a world which offers few models of secular fulfillment and has tarnished the reputation of political Utopias. His new and lengthy introduction updates the pilgrimages and examines current attempts to find substitutes for the emotional and political energy that used to be invested in them.

No Respect

No Respect PDF Author: Andrew Ross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135200491
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The intellectual and the popular: Irving Howe and John Waters, Susan Sontag and Ethel Rosenberg, Dwight MacDonald and Bill Cosby, Amiri Baraka and Mick Jagger, Andrea Dworkin and Grace Jones, Andy Warhol and Lenny Bruce. All feature in Andrew Ross's lively history and critique of modern American culture. Andrew Ross examines how and why the cultural authority of modern intellectuals is bound up with the changing face of popular taste in America. He argues that the making of "taste" is hardly an aesthetic activity, but rather an exercise in cultural power, policing and carefully redefining social relations between classes.

The Intellectual as Stranger

The Intellectual as Stranger PDF Author: Dick Pels
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134625979
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
The Intellectual as Stranger explores the historical association between images of the intellectual and those of the stranger, or the outsider to society. Using detailed case-studies, Pels examines the ambiguous strangerhood of political intellectuals such as Marx, Durkheim, Sorel, Freyer and Hendrik de Man.

New Public Spheres

New Public Spheres PDF Author: Dr Christiane Timmerman
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472407725
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The public sphere provides a domain of social life in which public opinion is expressed by means of rational discourse and debate. Habermas linked its historical development to the coffee houses and journals in England, Parisian salons and German reading clubs. He described it as a bourgeois public sphere, where private people come together and where they turn from a politically disempowered bourgeoisie into an effective political agent - the public intellectual. With communication networks being diversified and expanded over time, the worldwide web has put pressure on traditional public spheres. These new informal and horizontal networks shaped by the internet create new contexts in which an anonymous and dispersed public may gather in political e-communities to reflect critically on societal issues. These de-centered modes of communication and influence-seeking change the role of the (traditional) public intellectual and - at first sight - seem to make their contributions less influential. What processes, therefore, influence changes within public spheres and how can intellectuals assert authority within them? Should we speak of different types of intellectuals, according to the different modes of public intellectual engagement? This ground-breaking volume gives a multi-disciplinary account of the way in which public intellectuals have constructed their role and position in the public sphere in the past, and how they try to voice public concerns and achieve authority again within those fragmented public spheres today.