27 Facts About Sidney Hook

Sidney Hook was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics.

Sidney Hook was born on December 20,1902, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jennie and Isaac Hook, Austrian Jewish immigrants.

Sidney Hook became a supporter of the Socialist Party of America during the Debs era when he was in high school.

In 1926, Sidney Hook became a professor of philosophy at New York University and was head of the Department of Philosophy from 1948 to 1969.

In 1931, Sidney Hook began teaching at the New School for Social Research through 1936, after which he taught night school there until the 1960s.

At the beginning of his career, Sidney Hook was a prominent expert on Karl Marx's philosophy and was himself a Marxist.

Sidney Hook attended the lectures of Karl Korsch in Berlin in 1928 and conducted research at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in the summer of 1929.

However, Sidney Hook broke completely with the Comintern in 1933, holding its policies responsible for the triumph of Nazism in Germany.

Sidney Hook accused Joseph Stalin of putting "the needs of the Russian state" over the needs of the international revolution.

However, Sidney Hook remained active in some of the causes of the Marxist left during the Great Depression.

Sidney Hook debated the meaning of Marxism with radical Max Eastman in a series of public exchanges.

Eastman, like Sidney Hook, had studied under John Dewey at Columbia University.

In 1939, Sidney Hook formed the Committee for Cultural Freedom, a short-lived organization that set the stage for his postwar politics by opposing "totalitarianism" on the left and right.

On February 6,1953, Hook discussed "The Threat to Academic Freedom" with Victor Riesel and others in the evening on WEVD radio.

Sidney Hook was opposed to a unilateral withdrawal of US forces from the Vietnam War and defended California Governor Ronald Reagan's removal of Angela Davis from her professorship at UCLA because of her leadership role in the Communist Party USA.

Sidney Hook was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965 and ended his career in the 1970s and 1980s as a fellow of the conservative Hoover Institution in Stanford, California.

Sidney Hook married Carrie Katz in 1924, with whom he had one son.

Sidney Hook went on to work at the Labor Defense Council.

In 1935, Sidney Hook married Ann Zinken, with whom he had two children.

Sidney Hook died age 86 on July 12,1989, in Stanford, California.

In October 2002, a conference marking the centennial of Sidney Hook's birth was organized by Matthew Cotter and Robert Talisse and held at the City University of New York Graduate Center in Manhattan.

Sidney Hook's book The Hero in History was a noticeable event in the studies devoted to the role of the hero, the Great Man in history and the influence of people of significant accomplishments.

Sidney Hook opposed all forms of determinism and argued, as had William James, that humans play a creative role in constructing the social world and to transforming their natural environment.

Sidney Hook argued that when a society is at the crossroads of choosing the direction of further development, an individual can play a dramatic role and even become an independent power on whom the choice of the historical pathway depends.

Sidney Hook introduced a theoretical division of historic personalities and especially leaders into the eventful man and the event-making man, depending on their influences on the historical process.

Sidney Hook attached great importance to accidents and contingencies in history, thus opposing, among others, Herbert Fisher, who made attempts to present history as "waves" of emergencies.

In 1954, Sidney Hook published an essay titled "The Ethics of Controversy" in which he set down ten ground rules for democratic discourse within a democracy.