The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel & the Postwar American Right PDF
Preview The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel & the Postwar American Right
THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL MEANING The Search for Historical presents the American conservative movement of the 1950s against a background of ideas with which it has been only rarely identified. Gottfried demonstrates that, despite fre¬ quent attacks in conservative writings, Hegelian concepts shaped the historical attitudes and cultural judgments of prom¬ inent postwar conservatives. In a sustained analysis, he examines the Hegelian/histori- cist thinking ofsuch conservative intellectu¬ als as Will Herberg, Karl Wittfogel, Eric Voegelin, Frank Meyer, and James Burn¬ ham. Gottfried argues that in their concern with personal freedom as a political and ontological value, these preeminent conser¬ vative intellectuals denounced Hegel and ascribed their own Hegelian ideas to less olfensive sources. Though these thinkers made strenuous efforts to distance themselves from Hege¬ lian philosophy as a component of Marx¬ ism, Gottfried probes behind their stated beliefs to uncover the Hegelian source of their thinking. Herberg, Wittfogel, Meyer, and Burnham, for example, all moved to the Right after they had disavowed a Marxist-Leninist ideology based on Hege¬ lian assumptions about history. Gottfried shows, however, that their historical think¬ ing was never entirely Marxist, even when they were Communists. He reveals an explicitly Hegelian component in their outlook that survived their break with revolutionary socialism. It is also significant, Gottfried argues, that all these men studied philosophy Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive. rg/details/searchforhistoriOOOOgott 0 i I (■ W' ■ T I tolT*- si-;* ' r S»' ? ^ i* THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL MEANING I I • */■'/ LK. THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL MEANING Hegel and the Postwar American Right Paul Edward Gottfried IN - I • Ul NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS DEKALB, ILLINOIS 1986 Copyright © 1986 by the Northern Illinois University Press Published by the Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, Illinois 60115-2854 Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved Designed byjo Aerne Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gottfried, Paul. The search for historical meaning. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Conservatism—United States— History—20th century. 2. Lhrited States—Intellectual life—20th century. 3. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. 4. United States—Politics and government—1945- I. Title. E743.G66 1986 148 86-5279 ISBN 0-87580-114-5
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