Sidney Hook

From Philosopedia

Hook, Sidney (20 December 1902—12 July 1989)

An exponent of classical American pragmatism, Dr. Hook studied philosophy at Columbia University with John Dewey, becoming one of Dewey's star students. After 1927 he taught in various capacities at New York University (1932-1972), eventually heading its philosophy department and founding its Institute of Philosophy. He also became president of the American Philosophical Association.

Politically active, Hook was the first American to be noted as a spokesperson for Marxism. Asked by Warren Allen Smith in the late 1980s about labels such as "Communistic Humanism" or "Naturalistic Humanism," Hook responded:

• Of the types of humanism you have described, I am a naturalistic humanist. However, I would modify the description as follows:

NATURALISTIC HUMANISM—

to the philosopher, a set of beliefs born of the modern scientific age and centered upon a faith in the supreme value and self-improvability of human personality; differs from theistic humanism by its rejection of any form of supernaturalism; from atheistic humanism by its avoidance of small-town, village exhibitionism, épater les bourgeois; and from communistic humanism by its opposition to any beliefs not founded upon freedom, the significance of the individual, and political democracy.

• My views are developed at greater length in my books Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life, The Quest for Being, and The Place of Religion in a Free Society, for example. Not all who call themselves naturalistic humanists really are, e.g., Corliss Lamont, a long time passionate apologist for Stalin’s despotism, defender of the Moscow Trial Fabrications, and who has remained unrepentant even after the Kremlin admitted Stalin’s infamies.

Hook’s disagreements with Corliss Lamont were political, not philosophic, and his views on anti-Communism were instrumental in guiding others to work against Soviet policies. Being a critic of Soviet Communism became something of a monomania for Hook, leading Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to observe that Hook “[let] anti-communism consume his life to the point that, like Aaron’s rod, it swallowed up nearly everything else.”

Antony Flew in the Encyclopedia of Unbelief calls Hook “an almost exact contemporary of Ernest Nagel” and notes that both were distinguished former pupils and lifelong admirers of John Dewey.

Of philosophers in the twentieth century who are major figures in the movement of a secular, naturalistic humanism, Sidney Hook is one of the first whom many would list. He was a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism.

In 1995, Edward S. Shapiro edited The Letters of Sidney Hook: Democracy, Communism, and the Cold War, stating that Hook was never a member of the Communist Party.

For Christopher Phelps in Young Sidney Hook, Marxist and Pragmatist (1997), Hook in his early days combined Karl Marx and John Dewey, “Americanizing Marxism.” Theodore Draper found some weaknesses in Phelps’s research, that, for example, the Communist Party had been sympathetic to Trotsky; according to Draper, the Communist Party always considered any sympathy with the Trotskyists to be counterrevolutionary.

For Richard Rorty, Hook and Dewey were philosophic giants. Both men

• loathed the Communists’ willingness to use ‘anti-fascism’ as an excuse for turning a blind eye toward the crimes of the bloodsoaked tyrant who then ruled Soviet Russia. Although both men distrusted Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he seemed to them not to go far enough, not to be sufficiently radical and experimental, they had no doubt that the alliance between the labor unions and the Democratic Party had helped to turn the country in the right direction.

Hook died just a few months too soon to witness what he had long hoped for, the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time of his death, he was associated with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.

Books written by Hook

• Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation (1933)
• From Hegel to Marx (1936)
• Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No (1953)
• political power and personal freedom (1954)
• Common Sense and the Fifth Amendment (1957)
• The Place of Religion in a Free Society (1968)
• Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy (1970)

- Hook agreed to be an honorary member of the Secular Humanist Society of New York

(See entries for Howard Fast and Corliss Lamont. A detailed interview about humanism, Marxism, and related matters is found in Free Inquiry (Summer, 1988).)

{CE; CL; EU, Antony Flew; HM2; HNS; HNS2; PK; Richard Rorty, “Remembering John Dewey and Sidney Hook, Free Inquiry, Winter 1995-1996; SHD; TYD; WAS, 20 March 1989}