Richard Hofstadter

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Richard Hofstadter (born August 6, 1916 in Buffalo , New York , † October 24, 1970 ) was an American historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University . He was one of the leading intellectuals of the American post-war era.

life and work

Hofstadter was the son of the Krakow Jew Emil Hofstadter, who worked as a furrier in Buffalo , and a Lutheran German-American whose ancestors had emigrated from Hessen-Darmstadt after 1848. He grew up in the ethnically heterogeneous society of Buffalo, was baptized in a Lutheran church and sang in a choir of this denominational community. He began his studies at the University of Buffalo , where he developed an interest in journalism and philosophy and was influenced by the historian Charles Beard . Hofstadter received his Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1937 and continued his studies in New York City , initially briefly and unsuccessfully law at the New York Law School , then history at Columbia University, where he briefly studied like many young intellectuals of the time Joined Communist Party and earned a Master of Arts degree in 1938. In 1942 he completed his academic training there with a PhD . From 1942 to 1946 he taught at the University of Maryland and then returned to Columbia University, where he worked academically until his death.

Hofstadter's work Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (1944), which emerged from his dissertation , is considered to be fundamental in the study of social Darwinism and is still the most cited publication in this area. Hofstadter established the term “social Darwinism”, which was used only very sporadically and in a slightly different form, as the term used in historical research today. He presented social Darwinism as the theoretical basis of laissez-faire capitalism, personified, among other things, in the person of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie , who, according to Hofstadter, represented social Darwinist positions.

In the general public, influential ideas such as the paranoid style in American politics developed in essayistic magazines that were aimed at a broad readership. His works also include The Age of Reform (1955) and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), both of which were popular science oriented and both of which won the Pulitzer Prize . He was also awarded the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1963 for anti-intellectualism in American Life . In 1956 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1957 to the American Philosophical Society .

Hofstadter died of leukemia at the age of 54 . His estate is in the State University of New York in Buffalo .

Fonts

Books

  • Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1944.
  • The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1948.
  • The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR Knopf, New York 1955.
  • with C. DeWitt Hardy: The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States. Columbia University Press, New York 1952.
  • with Walter P. Metzger : The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States. Columbia University Press, New York 1955.
  • with Daniel Aaron , William Miller: The United States: The History of a Republic. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1957.
  • 2nd expanded edition published as The American Republic. 2 volumes. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1959.
  • 3rd, expanded edition, published as The United States. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1972.
  • Anti-intellectualism in American Life. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1963.
  • The Progressive Movement, 1900-1915. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1963.
  • with Daniel Aaron, William Miller: The Structure of American History. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1964.
  • The Paranoid Style in American Politics , and Other Essays. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1965.
  • The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1968.
  • The Idea of ​​a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840. University of California Press, Berkeley 1969.
  • with Michael Wallace (Ed.): American Violence: A Documentary History. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1970.
  • America at 1750: A Social Portrait. 1971.

Essays

  • The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War. In: The American Historical Review. Volume 44, 1938, No. 1, pp. 50-55.
  • William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist. In: The New England Quarterly. Volume 14, 1941, No. 3, pp. 457-477.
  • Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition. In: Journal of the History of Ideas. Volume 2, 1941, No. 4, pp. 391-400.
  • William Leggett, Spokesman of Jacksonian Democracy. In: Political Science Quarterly. Volume 58, 1943, No. 4, pp. 581-594.
  • UB Phillips and The Plantation Legend. In: The Journal of Negro History. Volume 29, 1944, No. 2, pp. 109-124.
  • Beard and the Constitution: The History of an Idea. In: American Quarterly. Volume 2, 1950, No. 3, pp. 195-213.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David S. Brown: Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London 2006, ISBN 0-226-07640-7 , p. 7 ; Sam Tanenhaus: The Education of Richard Hofstadter. In: The New York Times , August 6, 2006; Thomas Bender: Hofstadter, Richard (1916–1970), historian, writer, and critic. In: American National Biography , January 1999, online February 2000, doi : 10.1093 / anb / 9780198606697.article.1400287 .
  2. ^ Geoffrey M. Hodgson : Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: A Contribution to the History of the Term. In: Journal of Historical Sociology. Volume 17, 2004 ( PDF ).
  3. ^ Richard Hofstadter: Social Darwinism in American Thought. P. 45.
  4. ↑ Sam Tanenhaus: The Education of Richard Hofstadter. In: The New York Times , August 6, 2006.
  5. ^ Member History: Richard Hofstadter. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 2, 2018.
  6. ↑ Sam Tanenhaus: The Education of Richard Hofstadter. In: The New York Times , August 6, 2006.
  7. ^ Finding Aid for the Richard Hofstadter Papers, circa 1918-2006. State University of New York at Buffalo.
personal data
SURNAME Hofstadter, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo , New York
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1970