#russell jacoby

[howieabel]

"Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. … The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying." - Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia (1975), p. 1.

[redshift-13]

The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming.

-Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect

[thedailykopter]

At best radicals and leftists envision a modified society with bigger pieces of pie for more customers. They turn utilitarian, liberal and celebratory. The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist. _The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound._ **We are witnessing not simply the defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.**

Russell Jacoby, "The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy"

[thedarksideoflight89]

Fukuyama stated a verity that many refuse to acknowledge. Today socialists and leftists do not dream of a future qualitatively different from the present. To put it differently, radicalism no longer believes in itself. Once upon a time leftists acted as if they could fundamentally reorganize society. Intellectually, the belief fed off a utopian vision of a different society; psychologically, it rested on self-confidence about one's place in history; politically, it depended on the real prospects.    Today the vision has faltered, the self-confidence drained away, the possibilities dimmed. Almost everywhere the left contracts, not simply politically but, perhaps more decisively, intellectually. To avoid contemplating the defeat and its implications, the left now largely speaks the language of liberalism—the idiom of pluralism and rights. At the same time, liberals, divested of a left wing, suffer from waning determination and imagination.    At best radicals and leftists envision a modified society with bigger pieces of pie for more customers. They turn utilitarian, liberal and celebratory. The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound. We are witnessing not simply the defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.

Russell Jacoby. “The End of the End of the End of Ideology.”The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy.

[blunderbussmag]

The message of the beats was their lives, which were not enclosed by thickets of snobbishness or set off in urban bohemias, but publicly paraded with missionary zeal. 'And it's happening all over the country, to everyone; a sort of revolution of the soul.' Suffused by populism, the message or the constantly moving messengers proved irresistible to youth.

Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals

[the-3rd-man]

Conservatives complain relentlessly that they do not get a fair shake in the university, and they want parity—that is, more conservatives on faculties. Conservatives are lonely on American campuses as well as beleaguered and misunderstood. News that tenured poets vote Democratic or that Kerry received far more money from professors than Bush pains them.They want America’s faculties to reflect America’s political composition. Of course, they do not address such imbalances in the police force, Pentagon, FBI,CIA and other government outfits where the stakes seem far higher and where, presumably, followers of Michael Moore are in short supply. If life were a big game of Monopoly, one might suggest a trade to these conservatives: You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want.

Russell Jacoby, "The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives," The Nation, 4 April 2006. 

[scrapscribe-blog]

Ultimately, it is not only the larger public that loses when intellectuals turn inward to fetishize their profundity, but intellectuals themselves. Their work turns arid, their arguments thin, their souls parched. In the life of the mind, as in life itself, vitality requires resisting the lure of the familiar and the safe.

Russell Jacoby