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Richard Hofstadter



Hofstadter broke new historiographical ground by exploring sociological structures (perhaps influenced by his friend C. Wright Mills) and by probing unconscious psychological motives, status anxieties, irrational hatreds, and finally paranoia as political motivators. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Hofstadter described American society as a whole as extremely provincial, harboring widespread fears of any ideas outside the mainstream. Hofstadter saw a direct lineage from the Salem witch trials in the 17th century down to the McCarthyism of his era. The title essay was first delivered as the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University in November 1963.

In other works, Hofstadter described American politics as essentially irrationally motivated. In The Idea of a Party System, Hofstadter described the origins of the first party system in America as being driven by an irrational fear that one of the two major parties hoped to destroy the republic. Hofstadter planned to write a major three-volume history of American politics, but at his death had only partially completed the first volume (later published as America in 1750).

As Brown (2006) shows, he had become more conservative in the wake of the radical sit-in and temporary closing of Columbia university in 1968. His friend David Herbert Donald recalled, "he was appalled by the growing radical, even revolutionary sentiment that he sensed among his colleagues and his students. He could never share their simplistic, moralistic approach."[5] But others noted that, during and after the events of '68, he invited his students in to talk with him about their political goals and strategies, and invited one of the radical students, Mike Wallace, to collaborate with him on a history of violence in the US. In the words of his student Eric Foner, Hofstadter and Wallace's American Violence: A Documentary History "utterly contradicted the consensus vision of a nation placidly evolving without serious disagreements." American Violence was the last book Hofstadter published before he died in 1970.

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Criticism

Conservative commentator George Will called Hofstadter "the iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension," who "dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders -- a 'paranoid style' of politics rooted in 'status anxiety,' etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension."[6]

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Published works

  • "The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War," The American Historical Review Vol. 44, No. 1 (Oct., 1938), pp. 50-55 full text in JSTOR
  • "William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist," The New England Quarterly> Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 457-477 online at JSTOR
  • "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), pp. 391-400 JSTOR
  • "William Leggett, Spokesman of Jacksonian Democracy," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 58, No. 4 (Dec., 1943), pp. 581-594 JSTOR
  • "U. B. Phillips and The Plantation Legend," The Journal of Negro History Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1944), pp. 109-124 JSTOR
  • Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944); 1992 edition with preface by Eric Foner
  • The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948). online edition
  • "Beard and the Constitution: The History of an Idea," American Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn, 1950), pp. 195-213 JSTOR
  • The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R (New York: Knopf, 1955). online edition
  • The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). (with Walter P. Metzger)
  • The United States: the History of a Republic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall, 1957), college textbook; several editions; coauthored with Daniel Aaron and William Miller
  • Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963).
  • The Progressive Movement, 1900-1915 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). edited excerpts
  • The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1965).
  • The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf, 1968).
  • The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
  • American Violence: A Documentary History. co-edited with Mike Wallace (1970)
  • America at 1750: A Social Portrait (1971)

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References

  • Alan Brinkley, "Richard Hofstadter's the Age of Reform: A Reconsideration," Reviews in American History Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 462-480 JSTOR
  • David S. Brown, Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (U. of Chicago Press, 2006) full-scale biography
  • Dane S. Claussen, Anti-Intellectualism in American Media," New York: Peter Lang Publishing (2004).
  • Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, “Richard Hofstadter: A Progress, ” in their The Hofstadter Aegis (Knopf, 1974), pp 300-367.
  • Eric Foner, "The Education of Richard Hofstadter." The Nation . Volume: 254. Issue: 17. May 4, 1992. pp 597+.
  • Jack Pole, "Richard Hofstadter," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed. "Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000" U of Missouri Press. (2000) pp 68-83
  • Harry N. Scheiber, "Review: A Keen Sense of History and the Need to Act: Reflections on Richard Hofstadter and the American Political Tradition' Reviews in American History Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 445-452 JSTOR
  • Jon Wiener, "America, Through A Glass Darkly." The Nation, Oct. 5, 2006.

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Notes

  1. ^ Foner 1992
  2. ^ Brown (2006) p. 30-37; Irwin G. Wylie, "Social Darwinism and the Businessmen", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959), pp. 629-35, showed that few businessmen believed in Social Darwinism. Robert C. Bannister. Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought. (1989). Sumner had given up Social Darwinism by the early 1880s, a point Hofstadter de-emphasized by citing posthumous editions of Sumner's essays.
  3. ^ Foner, 1992
  4. ^ quoted in Pole 2000 p. 73-74
  5. ^ quoted in Brown (2006) p. 180
  6. ^ Candidate on a High Horse, George Will, The Washington Post, April 15, 2008
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