Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Piety and Playfulness Forbidden

It is sometimes difficult to keep in mind that America was founded and organised by intellectuals. For about a century, Puritan regard for scholarship and classical education dominated the colonial ethos. Community leaders were primarily Oxford and Cambridge graduates who shared a vision of not just a theologically learned church but also a culturally and scientifically learned population. Remarkably, only six years after the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Harvard College had been established. Shortly thereafter its degrees were considered to be equivalent to those in England by their former Oxbridge colleagues.

Hofstadter gives Christianity its due in promoting the incipient American intellect. But he also documents convincingly how, as American Christianity evolved, it smothered not just the germ of intellect but the reputation of thought itself. The result has been a more or less permanent national aversion to intellectual tradition in favour of professional commercialism and the cultivation of manipulative intelligence. This aversion is demonstrated repeatedly from the mid-eighteenth century First Great Awakening to the revivalist rallies of Donald Trump. It is expressed persistently as a suspicion of reflective thought and resentment of those who practice it.

Hofstadter‘s key distinction is that between intellect and intelligence. “Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole. Intelligence can be praised as a quality in animals; intellect, being a unique manifestation of human dignity, is both praised and assailed as a quality in men.” This distinction seems to capture exactly my own experience of the American mind in business and academia. And it allows Hofstadter to conduct a profoundly revealing analysis of American society. One has only to watch Trump in action and his audiences’ reactions to know Hofstadter has had a profound insight.

The term ‘intellectual’ originates in fin de siècle France and refers originally to the academic and literary defenders of Emil Dreyfus against his anti-Semitic accusers. So from its beginning the term has had a liberal or leftist political connotation. And it still does. A conservative thinker like William F. Buckley would never have been referred to as an ‘intellectual’, but most likely as a ‘conservative commentator.’ Throughout the 20th century the term is used as one of opprobrium by right wing politicians, usually Republican, and evangelical Christians to suggest unAmerican, godless, and socially disruptive patterns of thought.

And this intended slander is probably fairly accurate. Intellectuals can appear to be unAmerican in the sense that their attitude toward knowledge and learning tends to be more vocational (in the religious sense) and elitist rather than commercial and egalitarian. They are also likely to question the historical validity and meaning of doctrinal religion. And because they are usually not constrained by the thought-limits imposed by faith or commercial necessity, they will not infrequently appear to stir up various simmering social pots. Hofstadter identifies two characteristics which are typical of his idea of an intellectual: piety and playfulness. Piety demands a level of serious reverence and humility about one’s intellectual endeavours. Playfulness implies the urge to go beyond the solution to problems, in fact to search for the problems which solutions cause. Both are somewhat seditious traits in American culture.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, despite its obvious refinement and nuance in its historical interpretation, is of course a product of its time. Originally published in 1963, much of it documents the effects of and the emergence from the intellectual persecution of the McCarthy era in the 1950’s. But even the frequent references to McCarthy’s tactics provide important insights that are relevant to understanding today’s political situation. For example, it is clear in Hofstadter’s analysis that the focus of the Senator’s efforts was not a grand Communist conspiracy, but the intellectual establishment itself. Communism was a tool not a target of his (and Richard Nixon’s) Congressional activities. Just as religion has been a perennial tool not a social objective of American politicians throughout the country’s history.

In light of Hofstadter’s analysis, political events today become much more comprehensible. For example, it is not simply Obama’s race against which Americans reacted in their last elections; it is just as likely to be an unfortunate legacy of his intellect. Americans never have had much tolerance for reflective thought in their leaders. Trump as the antithesis of the intellectual leader gives them respite. They love his hip-shooting, banal inanities and gaffes. They want his ignorant, often patently incompetent political appointments. They admire his intractability on factual matters like climate change and international tariffs. It is both comforting and terrifying to realise how consistent American culture has been since the Revolution.

Where Hofstadter got it wrong was in thinking, like many of us, that anti-intellectualism was in decline in America, that Richard Nixon was a fallen star along with the entire constellation of evangelical Republicans, that the American educational system would re-orient itself to promote greater intellectual competence rather than trade skills. Nevertheless, even his mistaken presumptions about the future are enlightening. I certainly feel less confused about American culture and politics than I did last week..

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