America's Socrates: Sidney Hook and American Higher Education
Item
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Title
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America's Socrates: Sidney Hook and American Higher Education
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:95aff7588f17:12040
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identifier
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12749
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Creator
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Cotter, Matthew J.,
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Contributor
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Martin J. Burke
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Educational philosophy | American history | Philosophy
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Abstract
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There was little that was uncontroversial about Sidney Hook (1902-1989), one of the foremost intellectuals, let alone philosophers, in America. He has long been regarded in contemporary intellectual circles and recent scholarship for his explication and philosophical analysis of German Idealism as a means toward understanding the roots of Communism, his superb expositions of John Dewey's pragmatism, his secular humanism, or for his almost militant anticommunism. This dissertation, however, examines a different dimension of his thought, namely the reception of his pragmatism as an educational philosophy. Ignored by most historians of American intellectual life, it was a comprehensive and systematic approach bent on clarifying and subsequently ameliorating the widespread cultural changes wrought by the Great Depression. From his post as chairperson at New York University's Washington Square College, he was among the first to eagerly and constructively press the range and import of Dewey's ideas to face the urgent educational problems facing higher education. When not engaged in matters related to the rise of European fascism or the famous Show Trials in the Soviet Union, Hook spent the bulk of his career introducing an entire generation of educators, administrators, and laymen to pragmatism's possibilities as a viable social philosophy. In so doing he initiated a lifelong debate with representatives of the St. John's Program over the nature, scope, content, and future of higher education. In so doing he recast the character of American Pragmatism.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
