Book Review: United State: Men of Ideas
| Date | 01 December 1965 |
| Author | Ramsay Cook |
| Published date | 01 December 1965 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206502000422 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
550
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
thirties
for
whom
Lasch
has
much
sympathy, put
it,
"Pragmatism
has
been
wrongly
called
the
philosophy
of
the practical man.
It
represents
rather
the
anti-intellectualism
of
the
American
intellectual".
The
book
is
not
uniformly
interesting.
The
chapters
on
Jane
Addams
and
Lincoln
Steffens
are
superb;
those
on
Randolph
Bourne
and
Mabel
Dodge
Luhan,
while
amusing,
seem
a
slightly
wasted
effort.
The
final
chapter,
which
deals
in
a
sweep
with
the
intellectuals
whose
origins
are
in
the thirties,
is
a
tour
de
force
in
which
Lasch's genera-
tion
gets
in its
licks
against
its
immediate
elders.
Still,
this
chapter
seems
to
exhibit
the
weakness
of
the
entire
book-a
certain
lack
of
discrimination.
Is the
social
thought
of
Arthur
Schlesinger
Jr.
and
Norman
Mailer
really
worthy
of
the
same
serious
consideration
as
that
of Reinhold
Neibuhr
and
Dwight
Macdonald?
The
chapter has
some
wonderful
polemical
passages
on
the
Kennedy
administration
whose
cultural
tone
was "the tone
of
Broadway
sophistication
with
an
admixture
of
Hollywood",
and
the
contemporary
intellectual
who
has
become
part
of
the
American
establishment,
"a
privileged
class, fully
integrated
into
the
social
organism".
Lasch's
criticisms
of
the
end
product
of
the
"new
radicalism"
is
devastating
and
it
reflects
the
concern which
many
American
thinkers
are
expressing
in
the
aftermath
of
the
Kennedy
honeymoon.
Lasch
is
very hostile
to
the
pseudo-realism
of
the
Schlesingers,
but
he
seems
no
more
willing
to
commit himself
to
the
utopianism
of
the
New
Left.
Yet
his
own
alternative
is
less
than
clear.
At
the
point
of
making
his
own
values
explicit
he
wraps himself
in
his
historian's
toga
denying
any
ambition
to
write another
Trahison
des
clercs.
But
there
is
a
pas-
sion
so
plain
in
that
last
chapter
that
it
is
obvious
that
Lasch
will
have
a
good
deal
more
to
say
about
the
role
of
the
intellectual
in
American
life.
University
of
Toronto
RAMSAY
COOK
MEN
OF
IDEAS.
A
Sociologist's
View.
By Lewis
A.
Coser.
1965.
(New
York:
Free
Press.
Galt:
Collier-Macmillan.
xviii,
374pp.
$7.70)
Not
too
many
decades
ago
one
of
the
leading
preoccupations
of
intellectuals
was
the
question
of
why
democracies seemed
to
suspect
intellect
and
favour
mediocrity. Today,
at
least
in
the
United
States,
many
intellectuals
are
worried
about
the
way
their
fellows
are
being
absorbed into
the
cultural
and
political
establishment.
Alienation
has
been
replaced
by
integration.
Professor
Coser's
book
is
only
the
most
recent
expression
of
a
concern
manifested
by
Stuart
Hughes,
Richard
Hofstadter,
Christopher
Lasch
and
others.
Coser
offers
a
sociologist's
assessment
of
the
role
of
the
intellectual
in
western
society
since
the
eighteenth
century.
There
is
little
that
is
new in
the
historical
sections
and
a
great
deal
that
is
mere
summary
of
familiar
sources. The
final section,
which
examines contemporary
America,
is
the
most
interesting,
though
even
here
the author
relies
on
books
and
articles
that
will
be
familiar
to
most
readers.
Apart
from
some
rather
jarring
phrases,
it
is
difficult
to
see
what
is
especially
"sociological"
about
the
approach.
Dwight
Macdonald's definition
of
a
To continue reading
Request your trial