Sidney Hook |
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| Full name | Sidney Hook |
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| Born | December 20, 1902 New York |
| Died | July 12, 1989 (aged 86) Stanford, California |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Pragmatism |
| Main interests | Politics, Education, Marxism, |
| Notable ideas | Communists and other conspirators could be barred from offices of public trust |
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Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.
A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was later known for his criticisms of totalitarianism, (fascism, and Marxism–Leninism). A pragmatic social democrat, Hook sometimes cooperated with conservatives, particularly in opposing Communism. After World War II, he argued that members of such groups as the Communist Party USA and other Leninist conspiracies could ethically be barred from holding offices of public trust because they called for violent overthrow of democratic governments.
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Born in Brooklyn to Jennie and Isaac Hook, who were Austrian-Jewish immigrants, Hook was a Socialist Party supporter during the Debs era when he was in high school. He earned his Bachelor's degree at the City College of New York in 1923, then his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1927, where he was a student of the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. Upon finishing his studies, Hook was hired by New York University, which employed him until his retirement in 1972. From 1948 to 1969 he was head of the Department of Philosophy.
At the beginning of his career, Hook achieved prominence as an expert on Karl Marx's philosophy and was himself a Marxist. He attended the lectures of Karl Korsch in Berlin in 1928 and did research at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in the summer of 1929.[1] At first, he wrote enthusiastically about the Soviet Union. In 1932 he supported the Communist Party's William Z. Foster when he ran for President of the United States. However, Hook broke completely with the Comintern in 1933, holding its policies responsible for the triumph of Nazism in Germany. He accused Joseph Stalin of putting "the needs of the Russian state" over the needs of the international revolution.[2]
Hook remained, however, active on the far Left during the Great Depression. In 1933, along with James Burnham, Hook helped to organize the American Workers Party led by the Dutch-born pacifist minister A.J. Muste.[3] Hook also debated the meaning of Marxism with radical Max Eastman (who, like Hook, had studied under John Dewey at Columbia University) in a series of public exchanges.[4] In the late 1930s, Hook assisted Leon Trotsky in his efforts to clear his name in a special Commission of Inquiry headed by Dewey, which investigated Stalinist charges made against Trotsky during the Moscow Trials.
The Great Purge prompted in Hook an increasing ambivalence toward Marxism. In 1939, Hook formed the Committee for Cultural Freedom, a short-lived organization that set the stage for his postwar politics by opposing "totalitarianism" on the left and right. By the time of the Cold War, Hook was a prominent anti-Communist, although he continued to consider himself both a democratic socialist and a secular humanist throughout his life.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hook helped found Americans for Intellectual Freedom, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom. These bodies—the CCF was most central—were, in part, funded by the Central Intelligence Agency through a variety of fronts, and sought to dissuade American Leftists from continuing to advocate cooperation with the Soviet Union as some had previously.[5]
In the 1960s, Hook was a frequent critic of the New Left. Hook was opposed to a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Vietnam War. He defended California Governor Ronald Reagan's removal of Angela Davis from her professorship at UCLA because of her leadership role in the Communist Party USA. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965.[6] He ended his career in the 1970s and 1980s as a fellow of the conservative Hoover Institution in Stanford, California.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Hook for the 1984 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[7] Hook's lecture was entitled "Education in Defense of a Free Society."[8][9]
On May 23, 1985 Hook was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
Hook's memoirs, Out of Step, recount his life, his activism for a number of educational causes, his controversies with other intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, and his recollections of Morris Cohen, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Mortimer J. Adler and Albert Einstein.[10]
In October 2002, a conference marking the centennial of Hook's birth was organized by Matthew Cotter and Robert Talisse and held at the City University of New York Graduate Center in Manhattan.
Hook married Carrie Katz in 1924, with whom he had one son, John Bertrand Hook. They separated in 1933.[11][12] Katz had studied at the Rand School in the early 1920s. There, she studied under Scott Nearing and came to write a chapter in his book The Law of Social Revoluion entitled "The Russian Revolution of 1917" (1926). Friends from the Rand School included Nerma Berman Oggins, wife of Cy Oggins. She was a Communist Party member who was a "Fosterite" (i.e., she supported William Z. Foster amidst Party factionalism in the last 1920s). She went on to work at the Labor Defense Council.[13]
In 1935, Hook married Ann Zinken, with whom he had two children: Ernest Benjamin Hook and Susan Ann Hook.[11]
Sidney Hook's book The Hero in History was a noticeable event in the studies devoted to the role of the hero and Great Man in history and influence of the outstanding persons.
Hook opposed all forms of determinism and argued (as William James did) that humans play a creative role in constructing social world and transforming the natural environment. Neither humanity nor its universe is determined, or finished. For Hook this conviction was crucial. He argues that when a society is at the crossroads choosing the direction of further development then an individual can turn to play a dramatic role and even become an independent power on whom depends the choice of the historical pathway.[14]
In his book Hook gives a great number of examples of the influence of great people and these examples are mostly associated with some crucial moments in history (revolutions, crises). This makes some scholars criticize him because
he does not take into account that an individual's greatest influence can be revealed not so much in the period of old regime's collapse, but in the formation period of a new one (according to our model it is the fourth phase – see below). Besides, he does not make clear the situation when alternatives appear either as the result of a crisis or as the result of Great Man's plan or intention without manifested crisis.[15]
Hook introduced a division of historic personalities and especially leaders into eventful man and event-making man depending on their influence on the historical process.[16] For example, he considers Lenin as an event-making man as in certain important respects he had changed the development direction not only of Russia but of the whole world in the 20th century.
Hook attaches great importance to accidents and contingencies in history[17] thus opposing, amongst others, Herbert Fisher[18] who made attempts to present history as ‘waves’ of emergencies following after another