by Richard Hofstadter
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Helpful in making sense of the U.S.A., 2008-12-02
Most other reviewers have pointed out how relevant this book still is, more than forty years after it was published. Hofstadter's most important contribution is that he identifies and gives a name to a major feature of the American character. Parts of the book are dry and long-winded and can be slow going. Other than the discussion of evangelical Christian sects, Hofstadter focuses on the intellectual in society, with less attention to popular or mass attitudes and behavior. He makes some very perceptive remarks about Americans' tendency to indulge in group hatreds and about the motivations behind McCarthy's hunt for Communists, which turned up few real Communists. I would have liked him to explore the issue of mass attitudes and behavior further. Also, he doesn't speculate much on the reasons or causes of anti-intellectualism, other than referring to the rough conditions of frontier life as the U.S. was expanding westward--can this be the only reason? This is very worthwhile reading for those who want to understand American attitudes in politics, education, and religion.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 The Contemplative Life, 2008-10-03
Largeness of mind (my definition of intellect) is very rare. Hofstadter deplored the narrowing of the American mind that resulted not just from the democritization of the university (and knowledge) but from the reformulation of its mission to suit American interests. The life of the mind suffers when the only nonpartisan value existent is market value. Knowledges that produce wealth are the ones that are held in highest esteem. Knowledges that produce no measurable material gain are considered irrelevant. By making market value the only standard in American life, the economic becomes the only horizon for Americans.
Since we have very few homegrown philosophies other than utilitarianism and pragmatism, most Americans see "thought" as a European import and a threat to our national sovereignty and security.
Actually there is one other standard in American life besides market value: egalitarianism. Most Americans have to work for a living and it is the perceived connection between the life of the mind and a life of leisure that invites scorn from the hard working sectors. But anti-intellectualism does not really serve the working class because its the intellectuals who are engaged in the serious social thought that might actually improve the lives of the under represented and under privileged. Most people cannot even imagine an alternative to current social and economic arrangements (that are held in place by the real elites of this nation, the corporate elites, who also have government on their side) because they have not been educated but indoctrinated into a certain way of life that they are told is "unpatriotic" to criticize. This is not freedom.
Most (thankfully, not all) "thinking" that we see on television, cable, and the internet is simply partisan bickering. Media is an ideologue-o-sphere.
The university is not much better. It is under pressure to corporatize and to mainstream and to treat students like clients. Problems within the university are not all to be blamed on the market, some of the problems are internal, but a university credential (especially in the humanities) has ceased to really mean much. I met very few large minded thinkers at the university. Largeness of mind is not really something that is valued at the university. Its certainly not what is taught there. Knowledge has become politicized and (many, not all) research projects so specialized that teaching and learning are no longer seen as edifying but as narrow and trivial pursuits. Professionalization, ie initiation into fraternities of shared interests (and the crafting of partisan knowledges and partisan knowledge communities), and not learning itself, is what goes on behind once-hallowed walls. The mission of the university used to be to provide a setting for the cultivation of the contemplative life, now its just another institution with its eye on self-preservation and the bottom line.
One of the leading thinkers on matters of educaion in our time, Gerald Graff, suggests that we "teach the conflicts" in American life. But I think this simply reifies the notion that there are not really large shared interests only self-interest and special interest groups with arguments to make and causes to promote and this is what the profession has become. But this approach does not promote broad-mindedness. A moment ago I mentioned one type of intellectual who works to promote true economic egalitarianism, and there are others who work to promote other forms of egalitarianism (ie gender, racial, ethnic, queer). In this country intellectuals do social work, so anti-intellectualism does not make much sense in many respects and it is this misunderstanding of intellectual work that leads to mistrust of it. This is important work and this is noble work but it is political work and political work that much of the nation, the culturally conservative, does not believe should be education's end. As a social progressive, I think this work needs to be done but leveling the playing field and promoting fair play and tolerance for all members of society--the realization of democratic principles--should not be seen as the singular end of education.
The body politic, focused as it is on the economic, must be liberated from the self-interest that has stood in the way of true democracy.
But the political project, as important as it is, is not the only project. There is also the life project of the individual, and the cultivation of a broad-mindedness that fosters not just the collective but the individual good as well.
It is very difficult to say exactly what it is that intellectuals do because they are engaged in many different kinds of projects (in the arts and sciences), but what the best ones do is open up new public and personal horizons. Cultivating the contemplative life does not mean indulging in useless vanity projects (although there is plenty of that in academia) but in enlarging the reach of the mind and our definiton of the possible.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Old Friend, 2008-08-06
Last time I read this book I was travelling by plane from Charleston W. Va to Knoxville TN, in fall of 1968. The book was so fascinating that I read most of it non stop during the ride and waiting to change plans at a small mountain airport. The book suited my mood and my contemplations of society at that time. Unfortunately, I left the book on the plane when I arrived at my destination. I made mental note to buy it back, but never did, until reding another recent book on a kindred theme. On re-reading, I noticed that very little has changed, both in my mindset and in the surrounding society. The book did not lose its taste nor actuality. Highly recommended
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Beam me up Scotty, 2008-07-28
Hofstadter's book was published in 1963, a period when I was a timid third grader, hands crossed, attending a Catholic school in suburban Detroit. As I fast forward to today, thinking back at the state of intellectualism in the days of Camelot, besieged as it was by the ever present threat of nuclear attack, a spirit of intellectual discovery from the the depths of the seas to farthest reaches of space enthralled America's collective imagination; I cannot help but liken the state of today's critical thought to that of a dark age, where so many of our educator scholars sit at their cubicles, cafe expresso in hand, dispassionately perusing internet articles foretelling the end of world. It would be so easy to pass off everything wrong to the ignoramus leadership of George W. Bush, and naively come to the conclusion that reason and enlightenment will automatically resume itself with his all too welcomed departure; and while we all hope that such a scenario will play itself out in this way, the history of anti-intellectualism in America reveals a tradition of an effiminate aristocracy of old, wholly contrary to egalitarian notions of a practical eduction. One need not look further than the America's primary and secondary schools throughout the last half of nineteeth and early twentieth century to support Hofstadter's assertions. Where else in the developed world are teachers paid less on a per capita basis than in the United States. Is it any small wonder that with such abysmal pay persons who are attracted to the field frequently neither prodigiously read or write? How can someone who has not mastered their craft, whatever that might me, be able to serve in the role of mentor in an area for which they have limited proclivities. It is not at all unusual for today's teacher to have little if any time to read literature for pleasure due to all of the bureaucratic responsibilities foisted on them professionally. We have somehow devolved to the point that teachers have become robots, whose role increasingly that of feeding children at a trough for an almighty test. When will we be allowed to scholars and deal with the real issues vexing this generation of young people?
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
anti-intellectualism in american life, 2008-03-15
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life I found this book shocking as to the lack of education in the late 1800's to 1930's. I also found it difficult to read due to small print & depth of subject. I had to read several paragraphs over. It was referenced on
"The Today Show" in connection with Susaan Jacobys "The Age of American Unreason." I decided to read the oldest book 1st & have not yet read Jacobys'
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