Life on the Mississippi

Philosophy and Public Policy By Sidney Hook Southern Illinois University, 288 pp., $17.50 At 78, Sidney Hook, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at New York University and Senior Research Fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, ought to be seen for what he is: a national resource, a kind of philosophical Mississippi. For fifty years, from his lair in wildest academe there has poured a flood of books and essays on vexed public issues as well as topics of professional concern. His conception of philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom has not of late been very fashionable in the academy. But it has had the virtue of making his thought accessible to a popular audience. Like me and others who had the good fortune to attend his classes, members of that audience could be inoculated against infectious totalitarianism by a real pro: a principled champion of democratic institutions, a formidable and fair-minded critic of those who weaken them, and a resourceful organizer who, for example, almost single-handedly spoiled a Soviet propaganda show staged at the Waldorf in 1949.

This latest volume by Hook collects pieces that have appeared in a variety of publications, spanning the period from 1945 to 1979. They are grouped under four heads: “Philosophy and Public Policy,” “Freedom and Rights,” “Heroes and Anti-Heroes,” and “Religion and Culture.” To my mind, the essay in the first section which displays his powers to best advantage is “Law and Anarchy,” which appeared in 1971, at the end of a decade when laws and lawful procedures were flouted by mobs on street and campus, and learned apologists for them popped up all over the landscape. Hook’s dissection of William O. Douglas’s book Points of Rebellion—“one of the most bizarre writings ever penned by a member of the judiciary”— will give every connoisseur of polemics pleasure.

JW

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Jeanne Wacker

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Philosophy and Public Policy By Sidney Hook Southern Illinois University, 288 pp., $17.50 At 78, Sidney Hook, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at New York University and Senior Research Fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, ought to be seen for what he is: a national resource, a kind of philosophical Mississippi. For fifty years, from his lair in wildest academe there has poured a flood of books and essays on vexed public issues as well as topics of professional concern. His conception of philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom has not of late been very fashionable in the academy. But it has had the virtue of making his thought accessible to a popular audience. Like me and others who had the good fortune to attend his classes, members of that audience could be inoculated against infectious totalitarianism by a real pro: a principled champion of democratic institutions, a formidable and fair-minded critic of those who weaken them, and a resourceful organizer who, for example, almost single-handedly spoiled a Soviet propaganda show staged at the Waldorf in 1949.

This latest volume by Hook collects pieces that have appeared in a variety of publications, spanning the period from 1945 to 1979. They are grouped under four heads: “Philosophy and Public Policy,” “Freedom and Rights,” “Heroes and Anti-Heroes,” and “Religion and Culture.” To my mind, the essay in the first section which displays his powers to best advantage is “Law and Anarchy,” which appeared in 1971, at the end of a decade when laws and lawful procedures were flouted by mobs on street and campus, and learned apologists for them popped up all over the landscape. Hook’s dissection of William O. Douglas’s book Points of Rebellion—“one of the most bizarre writings ever penned by a member of the judiciary”— will give every connoisseur of polemics pleasure.