Obiettivo dell’articolo è di esplorare le connessioni tra il neoconservatorismo e la politica americana nell’ultimo mezzo secolo. Il focus più specifico su Irving Kristol e Norman Podhoretz consente di gettare luce su una fase cruciale della storia statunitense: i cambiamenti culturali e sociali che polarizzarono la nazione negli anni Sessanta. Una delle più durature eredità di quel decennio fu l’emergere degli intellettuali neoconservatori, che passarono all’offensiva nel dibattito pubblico. Essi denunciarono le proporzioni elefantiache delle burocrazie e dei programmi (...) governativi. Tuttavia, non rinnegarono il principio dell’elitismo e della tecnocrazia; il loro obiettivo, piuttosto, era di fornire una base per ripensare alle modalità in cui le élite avrebbero potuto plasmare e controllare i sentimenti patriottici delle masse. (shrink)

From its inception with the first number of the magazine of opinion National Review and up to the advent of the Presidency of Richard Nixon the early American conservative movement struggled with the rising tide of civil rights protest and reform. This article examines the correspondence and published primary sources penned by leading members of the American conservative movement so as to offer a comprehensive, chronologically ordered assessment of the evolution of the views on racial inequality offered by the key (...) constituent ideological subcommunities within the American conservative movement: the traditionalists gathered around the pages of National Review, the “neoliberals” led by Milton Friedman y Friedrich von Hayek, the Southern, white conservatives and, lastly, the neoconservatives, which headed by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz articulated much of such views in a manner palatable to a significant segment of the American political mainstream. (shrink)

In considering the lodestars of American neoconservative thought-among them Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, James Q. Wilson, and Francis Fukuyama-Antti Lepistö makes a compelling case for the centrality of their conception of "the common man" in accounting for the enduring power and influence of their thought. Lepistö locates the roots of this conception in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. Subsequently, the neoconservatives weaponized the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and David Hume to denounce postwar liberal elites, educational authorities, and (...) social reformers-ultimately giving rise to a defining force in American politics: the "common sense" of "the common man.". (shrink)

Il saggio presenta il dibattito statunitense sulla new class quale categoria politica che ha fatto da perno all’ascesa del neoconservatorismo, alla scrittura pubblica del discorso dei neoconservatori – in particolare Daniel P. Moynihan e Irving Kristol – e alla loro strategia volta ad aggredire le fondamenta scientifiche e politiche dell’ordine liberal del capitalismo americano che fra anni Sessanta e Settanta non trovava più nella middle class la parola pubblica che aveva messo a riposo il conflitto sociale e politico (...) degli anni Trenta alimentando il consenso del secondo dopoguerra. Nel discorso neoconservatore, anche in dialogo con il neoliberalismo, new class individuava un «nemico ideologico» che andava disciplinato in favore del capitalismo ovvero educato al rispetto dell’autorità – della società e del suo fondamento morale, del mercato e delle sue gerarchie – che i movimenti sociali stavano contestando. (shrink)

Karl R. Popper: The open society and its enemies -- Ralf Dahrendorf: Liberty and civil society -- Raymond Plant: Social welfare without class warfare -- Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol: The moral imagination -- Raymond Aron: The opium of the intellectuals -- Friedrich A. Hayek: The constitution of liberty -- Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and pluralism -- Michael J. Oakeshott: The conservative disposition -- Leo Strauss: Relativism and the crisis of modernity -- Edmund Burke: Liberty and duty -- James (...) Madison vs. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Two views of self-government -- Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America -- Winston S. Churchill: The English-Speaking Peoples and the Free World -- Limited and accountable Government -- Two kinds of rationalism -- Liberty as conversation. (shrink)

A discussion of influential New York Jewish intellectuals, including: Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe, Leslie Fiedler, Daniel Bell, Harold Rosenberg, Saul Bellow, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz.

When Journeys Through Philosophy first appeared in 1977, it quickly established a reputation as one of the most complete and versatile introductory philosophy textbooks for the beginning student. Combining carefully chosen selections from the original works of many eminent philosophers with invaluable commentaries designed to illuminate the ideas of these great minds, and an extensive section on how one should read philosophy, the editors have answered the instructional needs of students and teachers alike. The revised edition contains selections by Denis (...) Diderot, Kierkegaard, Irving Kristol, Paul Kurtz, George Moore, William Paley, Jean-Paul Sarte, and John Wisdom, in addition to many of the excerpts from classical and contemporary thinkers found in the earlier edition. The highly acclaimed section on how to read philosophy is complemented by the addition of new introductions. Journeys Through Philosophy is surely destined to become the introductory philosophy textbook for our times. (shrink)

My central concern in this paper is with the implications of Marxist-Leninist ideology for Western defense policy and for United States strategic policy in particular. However, this is an extremely complex issue, and consideration of it will lead me to examine the ways in which ideas are related to interests, interests to strategy, and strategy to actions. I I begin with an important observation: Americans in general, and for various reasons, have not taken Marxism-Leninism seriously for a long time. This (...) is true even of many experts who consider the Soviet challenge to be very serious, affecting our very survival as a free society. At the risk of oversimplification, I would claim that many quite well-informed Americans, hardened to the realities of the Soviet “empire” and its activities, have come around to the view that Marxist-Leninist ideology has simply degenerated into a rigid system of enforced belief administered by authorities who have no particular commitment to it other than to employ it in order to remain in power. In this regard, “Marxism” is deemed “dead,” surviving only in the publicity offices of formal establishments as a means of maintaining their authority. Marxism-Leninism is thought to be no different from the moribund “divine right of kings,” which undergirded the monarchical establishments of 17th Century Europe. Oddly enough, the “socialism-is-dead” theme is today found in the writings of such prominent American neo-conservatives as Irving Kristol, George Gilder, and many others. It is also echoed in Europe in the writings of such eminent philosophers as Leszek Kolakowski of Poland and Paul Johnson of England. (shrink)

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States for his first term and the conservative revolution that was slowly developing in the United States finally emerged in full-throated roar. Who provoked the conservative revolution? Shadia Drury provides a fascinating answer to the question as she looks at the work of Leo Strauss, a seemingly reclusive German Jewish emigré and scholar, who was one of the most influential individuals in the conservative movement, a man widely seen as the (...) godfather of the Republican party’s failed “Contract With America.” Among his students were individuals such as Alan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Strauss influenced the work of Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and William Kristol, as well as Chief Justice Clarence Thomas and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Drury delves deeply into Strauss’s work at the University of Chicago where he taught his students that, if they truly loved America, they must save her from her fateful enchantment with liberalism. Leo Strauss and the American Right is a fascinating piece of work that anyone interested in understanding our current political situation will want to read. (shrink)

Sidney Hook is considered by many to be America's most influential philosopher today. An earlier defender of Marxism, he became its most persistent critic, especially of its totalitarian and revolutionary manifestations. A student of John Dewey's pragmatism, Sidney Hook has written extensively about most of the live moral, social and political issues of the day. He has known and debated many of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Max Eastman, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Jacques Maritain, Mortimer Adler, (...) Robert Hutchins, Paul Tillich, Noam Chomsky, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Throughout his career, which spans a half a century, Sidney Hook has been a stalwart defender of the social democratic philosophy of freedom. At a time when secular humanism has been under heavy criticism from the New Right, he stands out as the leading philosophical representative of the position. Virtually all of the essays in this volume were written especially for it. The list of contributors includes Irving Kristol, Antony Flew, Nathan Glazer, Lewis Feuer, Daniel Bell, Richard Rorty, Ernest Nagel, Edward Shils, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ernest van den Haag, and others, all of whom testified that their thinking has been profoundly influenced by Sidney Hook's wisdom and insight. These original essays are wide-ranging in scope, but all are focused on Hook's philosophy or on subjects in which he has shown an abiding interest: socialism, democracy, equality, quotas, higher education, academic freedom, humanism, liberal education, natural and human rights, and pragmatism. The book also contains a complete up-to-date bibliography of the writings of Sidney Hook. (shrink)

I defend the coherence of Theistic Evolutionism, though I do not present any direct argument for either theism or (broadly Darwinian) evolution. I distinguish between evolution as a scientific theory, however well established, and evolutionism as a religion or ideology. I argue that the confusion between the two senses of evolutionism is bad for both biology and religion, and conclude by suggesting that, in Irving Kristol's words, 'our goal should be to have biology and evolution taught in a (...) way that points to what we don't know as well as what we know'. (shrink)

An impressive book whose purpose is to "relate the outstanding events of contemporary life and thought to the accumulated wisdom of the past." Forming part of the series The Great Books of the Western World, its contributors are among the most qualified in their fields: Alfred Kazin, George Gamow, Irving Kristol, Karl Ubell, and James Collins, not to mention the editors themselves. Five parts make up the book: in Part I, The Great Debate of the Year: "Does America's (...) best hope for the future lie in political conservatism?", Barry Goldwater speaks for the affirmative and Jacob Javits for the negative; Part II, The Editors' Review of the Year, analyzes three problems as yet unsolved: the divided world, automation, and television; Part III, the largest portion of the work, reviews the contemporary scene in literature, physical science and technology, social sciences and law, biology and medicine, and philosophy and religion ; Part IV offers four important additions to the Great Books Library: M. Luther's The Freedom of a Christian, R. H. Tawney's The Acquisitive Society, Max Planck's The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics, and James Joyce's The Dead; finally, Part V gives a bibliography of significant books published in the last ten years.--V. G. P., S. J. (shrink)

This collection of 18 papers, most of which were originally presented at a 1976 University of Kansas Symposium, is intended to meet the growing demand for "serious analysis" of a host of "micro-moral" issues, such as corporate bribes to foreign officials, abuses in advertising, conflicts of interest, etc., as well as the "macro-moral" issue of the compatibility of "free enterprise" and "social justice." Six of the 19 authors teach philosophy and they are joined by academic colleagues in business-oriented disciplines, lawyers (...) with government experience, a labor leader, and a social critic. The opener by DeGeorge effectively introduces the remaining topics and attacks the position that ethics is irrelevant to business affairs. His co-editor then sounds a triumphant theme we hear again in the strident pieces of Irving Kristol and John Hospers--viz., that American Capitalism is hale and hearty, under attack by well-meaning but unrealistic critics who fail to see the justice of the Invisible Hand. Michael Harrington, the lone socialist represented gently suggests an alternative to "corporate collectivism" and tries to unmask the myth of a free enterprise society. (shrink)

For more than six decades, and for thousands of students, Introduction to Logic has been the gold standard in introductory logic texts. In this 15th Edition, Carl Cohen and Victor Rodych update Irving M. Copi's classic text, improving on its many strengths and introducing new and helpful material that will greatly assist both students and instructors.

Introduction to Logic is a proven textbook that has been honed through the collaborative efforts of many scholars over the last five decades. Its scrupulous attention to detail and precision in exposition and explanation is matched by the greatest accuracy in all associated detail. In addition, it continues to capture student interest through its personalized human setting and current examples. The 14th Edition of Introduction to Logic, written by Copi, Cohen & McMahon, is dedicated to the many thousands of students (...) and their teachers - at hundreds of universities in the United States and around the world - who have used its fundamental methods and techniques of correct reasoning in their everyday lives. (shrink)

The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg's magnum opus-a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, and the birth of Judaism's next era.

In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results, he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In (...) his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a "partial" summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love--like any subject of that magnitude--resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging ; ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and "trying to get a little further." This book continues his trailblazing explorations. (shrink)

There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, increased skill in defining one's terms, enlarged capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to analyze them critically. But the greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every aspect of human affairs.

As today's battles rage between those who march under the banner of liberty and those who unfurl the flag of equality, even an engaged partisan might be forgiven for occasionally wondering whether the game is, after all, worth the candle. For one thing, neither party simply rejects the other's principle – properly understood. Egalitarians routinely emphasize that their concern for equality is, also, a concern for true liberty; thus Michael Walzer, writing “In Defense of Equality,” finds it “worth stressing that (...) equality as I have described it does not stand alone, but is closely related to the idea of liberty.” 1 Libertarians tend to be less enthusiastic in their embrace of equality, but almost all endorse some form of equality or other – for example, equality of political rights or equality before the law. It would seem, then, that the differences between egalitarians and libertarians are really over the meaning and scope of equality and liberty, and that putting the issue as one of equality vs. liberty may be misleading. More important, one can wonder whether either the egalitarian or the libertarian combination of the principles of liberty and equality is worthy of support. What society has exalted personal liberty, has taken rights more seriously, than ours? Yet who can easily dismiss Solzhenitsyn's charge that our worship of freedom has resulted in “destructive and irresponsible freedom” being granted “boundless scope,” leaving us defenseless against “the corrosion of evil”? 2 The cause of liberty against tyranny surely continues to command our support; but what conclusion ought we to draw from the facts that liberty in absentia seems so markedly more attractive than liberty in practice, and that the qualities manifested in the struggle for liberty seem so superior to those that come to the fore once liberty is secured? (shrink)

Our paper serves as an introduction to a budding field: the philosophy of mind-wandering. We begin with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated or stimulus-independent. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto centre stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations that researchers must overcome to move forward. Specifically, the standard definitions do not account for (i) the dynamics of mind wandering, (ii) task-unrelated thought that does not qualify as mind-wandering, (...) and (iii) the ways that mind-wandering can be task-related. We then survey three philosophical accounts that improve upon the current psychological definitions. We first present our account of mind-wandering as “unguided thinking”. Next we review Thomas Metzinger’s view that mind-wandering can be defined as thought lacking meta-awareness and cognitive agency, as well as Peter Carruthers’s and Fabian Dorsch’s definitions of mind-wandering as disunified thinking. We argue that these latter views are inadequate, and we show that our definition of mind-wandering as unguided thinking is not only conceptually and phenomenologically precise but also can be operationalized in a principled way for empirical research. (shrink)

In this book Irving Zeitlin re-examines the work of this important philosopher and considers how we should assess Nietzsche's claims today.

... Press for their editorial perspicacity, to the National Institutes of Health for the partial financial support they gave me while I was writing some of the chapters, and to Donald Michie for suggesting the title Good Thinking.

Irving H. Buchen projects the future of public education for the next 25 years as he identifies and examines the major drivers of change, profiles all the critical educational constituencies, and offers a number of common sense solutions to current and subsequent problems.

This reissue, first published in 1971, provides a brief historical account of the Theory of Logical Types; and describes the problems that gave rise to it, its various different formulations, the difficulties connected with each, and the criticisms that have been directed against it. Professor Copi seeks to make the subject accessible to the non-specialist and yet provide a sufficiently rigorous exposition for the serious student to see exactly what the theory is and how it works.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.