Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals
Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals

Author: Peter Viereck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1351491024

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this classic volume, written at the height of the Cold War, with a new preface of 2006, Peter Viereck, one of the foremost intellectual spokesmen of modern conservatism, examines the differing responses of American and European intellectuals to the twin threats of Nazism and Soviet communism. In so doing, he seeks to formulate a humanistic conservatism with which to counter the danger of totalitarian thought in the areas of politics, ethics, and art.The glory of the intellectuals was the firm moral stance they took against Nazism at a time when appeasement was the preferred path of many politicians; their shame lay in their failure to recognize the brutality of Stalinism to the extent of becoming apologists for or accomplices of its tyranny. In Viereck's view, this failure is rooted in an abandonment of humane values that he sees as a legacy of nineteenth-century romanticism and certain strands of modernist thought and aesthetics.Among his targets are literary obscurantism as personified by Ezra Pound, the academicization of literary culture, the rigidity of adversarial avant-gardism, and the failure of many writers and cultural institutions to conserve the very heritage their political freedom and security depend on. Viereck represents their attitude in a series of satirical dialogues with Gaylord Babbitt, son of Sinclair Lewis' embodiment of conservative philistinism. Babbitt Junior is as unreflective as his father, but the objects of his credulity are the received ideas of liberal progressivism and avant-garde mandarinism. Ultimately, Viereck's critique stands as a timely rebuke to the extremism of both left and right.

Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals
Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals

Author: Peter Viereck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1351491016

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this classic volume, written at the height of the Cold War, with a new preface of 2006, Peter Viereck, one of the foremost intellectual spokesmen of modern conservatism, examines the differing responses of American and European intellectuals to the twin threats of Nazism and Soviet communism. In so doing, he seeks to formulate a humanistic conservatism with which to counter the danger of totalitarian thought in the areas of politics, ethics, and art.The glory of the intellectuals was the firm moral stance they took against Nazism at a time when appeasement was the preferred path of many politicians; their shame lay in their failure to recognize the brutality of Stalinism to the extent of becoming apologists for or accomplices of its tyranny. In Viereck's view, this failure is rooted in an abandonment of humane values that he sees as a legacy of nineteenth-century romanticism and certain strands of modernist thought and aesthetics.Among his targets are literary obscurantism as personified by Ezra Pound, the academicization of literary culture, the rigidity of adversarial avant-gardism, and the failure of many writers and cultural institutions to conserve the very heritage their political freedom and security depend on. Viereck represents their attitude in a series of satirical dialogues with Gaylord Babbitt, son of Sinclair Lewis' embodiment of conservative philistinism. Babbitt Junior is as unreflective as his father, but the objects of his credulity are the received ideas of liberal progressivism and avant-garde mandarinism. Ultimately, Viereck's critique stands as a timely rebuke to the extremism of both left and right.

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945

Author: George H. Nash

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-03-28

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1684516080

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

First published in 1976, George H. Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the book's thirtieth anniversary, includes a new preface and conclusion by the author and will continue to instruct anyone interested in how today’s conservative movement was born.

Conservatism Revisited
Conservatism Revisited

Author: Peter Viereck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1351526456

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Peter Viereck, poet and historian, is one of the principle theoreticians of conservatism in modern American political thought. In this classic work, Viereck undertakes a penetrating and unorthodox analysis of that quintessential conservative, Prince Metternich, and offers evidence that cultural and political conservatism may perhaps be best adapted to sustain a free and reasonable society.According to Viereck's definition, conservatism is not the enemy of economic reform or social progress, nor is it the oppressive instrument of the privileged few. Although conservatism has been attacked from the left and often discredited by exploitation from the right, it remains the historic name for a point of view vital to contemporary society and culture. Divided into three parts, the book opens with a survey of conservatism in its cultural context of classicism and humanism. Rejecting the blind alley of reaction, Viereck calls for a discriminating set of principles that include preservation through reform, self-expression through self-restraint, a fruitful nostalgia for the permanent beneath the flux, and a preference for historical continuity over violent rupture.Viereck locates our idea of Western political unity in Metternich's Concert of Europe whose goal was a cosmopolitan Europe united in peace. This ideal was opposed by both the violent nationalism that resulted in Nazism and the socialist internationalism that became a tool of Soviet Russian expansionism. While not ignoring the extremely negative aspects of Metternich's legacy, Viereck focuses on his attempts to tame the bellicosity of European nationalism and his little-known efforts to reform and modernize the Hapsburg Empire.

Strict Wildness
Strict Wildness

Author: Peter Viereck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1351487868

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought "not common sense but inspired, electric common sense." This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, exemplifies this quality. Its main theme is suggested in Viereck's coined phrase "strict wildness," which suggests a balance between restraint (which by itself is staid and rigid) and passion (which by itself is incoherent). Frost called free verse tennis without the net. Viereck calls dead mechanical form "net without the tennis." Strict wildness, then, is spontaneity of feeling within strict organic form.The book explores questions of modernism and poetic craft with respect to American poetry. It discusses the controversy over Ezra Pound's politics and its relation to his poetics, as well as the nearly forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay. Viereck offers more general views on poetics, including the fruitful tensions between form and content, and the impact of modern technology on poetic expression. He also discusses history and politics, and contains essays on McCarthyism, the Cold War, political conformity of the Left and Right, and discusses issues of historiography and culture that define Viereck's highly individual, often critical brand of conservatism. In treating representative trends and figures in conservative thought, Viereck insists on clear awareness of what exists to conserve, what ought to be conserved, and why it should be conserved.In their range and originality, the writings brought together in Strict Wildness constitute an ideal introduction to Peter Viereck's literary and political thought and how they come together. It will be of interest to literary scholars, intellectual historians, and social scientists. The introduction allows the reader to grasp a clear sense of the context and background of Viereck's works.

Social Philosophy of Vivekananda and Indian Nationalism
Social Philosophy of Vivekananda and Indian Nationalism

Author: Sebastian Velassery

Publisher: Brown Walker Press

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1599426188

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Among the galaxy of scholars, Swami Vivekananda stands out as a majestic tower of light who has given a new tempo to the building up of a new sense of nationalism in modern India. The uniqueness of Vivekananda was his endeavour to translate every ounce of Vedanta into a social living and was never a cold theoretician or an abstract metaphysician. He was aware that India's life is governed by her sovereign sense of the infnite and inclusiveness which nourished her national life and India has been a spiritual strength for her people, implanting the seeds that have continuously sprouted and flowered in her art, literature, religion, philosophy, science and politics. It is a civilization that should be seen, not as a closed system or as a finished product, but as a dynamic and unfolding process. Whatever the differences, India's spiritual heritage should be recognized as the focal point and to be appropriated in the conception of a new resurgent India. Regrettably, what we had been glorifying as the central value of this culture and civilization is disorientated today due to the brutal exhibition of barbarous instincts which were exhibited through the rivalry between religious groups. What is being experienced is the loss of inherited values and our inability in reinventing new values. By virtue of its characteristic pluralism and its continuously evolving synthesis, India represents a nation which is continuously unfolding its civilizational potentialities. In making of such an Indian ethos, the foundational ideal which has been the basis of Indian culture and civilization is the concept of Dharma and Vivekananda was able to comprehend and articulate the relation between morality (dharma) and human affairs which are the concerns of practical Vedanta.

Pragmatic Conservatism
Pragmatic Conservatism

Author: Robert J. Lacey

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-08-05

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1137592958

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to show how three twentieth-century thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives—Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck—carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to American democracy. Pragmatic conservatives posit that people, sinful by nature, require guidance from traditions that embody enduring truths wrought by past experience. Yet they also welcome incremental reform driven by established elites, judiciously departing from precedent when necessary. Mindful that truth is never absolute, they eschew ideology and caution against both bold political enterprises and stubborn apologies for the status quo. The book concludes by contrasting this more nuanced brand of conservatism with the radical version that emerged in the wake of the post-war Buckley revolution.