Anthony Rausch is an American who is working at Hirosaki University as a full professor and social scientist. He wrote an article on Eric Hoffer in July, 2023 entitled: Longshoreman Philosopher: Where is Eric Hoffer Now?
It seems that Rausch is also a Google Scholar. I think that means he is an expert at utilizing Google search engines to highlight related articles, as he seems to have done in much of his article to give examples of other professors, writers, thinkers, and amateurs who quote Hoffer for their research papers and for their websites with Hofferian quotes.
Rausch’s article is over 20 pages long, so I excised it severely, using only what interests me. I am just using direct quotes from it to highlight how a thinker like Rausch may offer some new point of view about Hoffer. I am an amateur Hofferian scholar, but it is good to know what smart academics like Rausch regard Hoffer, and I try to give them credit for insights that are theirs, not mine.
I will spot-quote Rausch article and offer commentary where appropriate.
Rausch (R after this): “
Longshoreman Philosopher: Where is Eric Hoffer Now?
- July 2023
DOI:10.32388/6MD7H1
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Authors:
Abstract
By most accounts, Eric Hoffer was a significant philosopher of his time and place—in his personal profile and life story; in his reading, thinking and writing; and in the recognition of his work. He led a long and highly interesting life, is the author of at least nine books, and enjoyed attention as a prominent social analyst and critic. The question of this paper is: where is Eric Hoffer now? What does his body of work—if we determine that we can refer to his writing and speaking as a cohesive body of work—speak to today? How are his name, his fame, and his words used today?”
My response: Right away in the Abstract Rausch mentions several new points about Hoffer. He refers to him as a significant philosopher, not as America’s greatest philosopher. I agree that Hoffer was a significant American philosopher and is perhaps one of its greatest philosophers.
He did lead a long and interesting life.
He was a prominent social critic, and Rausch is correct in characterizing Hoffer as a prominent analyst of American culture.
Yes, amateur philosopher Hoffer did leave behind a body of work, which likely is cohesive.
R: “Open Peer Review on Qeios
Longshoreman Philosopher: Where is Eric Hoffer Now?
Anthony Rausch1
1 Hirosaki University
Funding: No specific funding was received for this work.
Potential competing interests: No potential competing interests to declare.
Abstract
By most accounts, Eric Hoffer was a significant philosopher of his time and place—in his personal profile and life story;
in his reading, thinking and writing; and in the recognition of his work. He led a long and highly interesting life, is the
author of at least nine books, and enjoyed attention as a prominent social analyst and critic. The question of this paper
is: where is Eric Hoffer now? What does his body of work—if we determine that we can refer to his writing and speaking
as a cohesive body of work—speak to today? How are his name, his fame, and his words used today?
Anthony Rausch
Hirosaki University
Introduction
Eric Hoffer was a significant philosopher of his time and place. He was well-known for his unusual life, his personal profile,
and his life story. He made a name for himself through his reading, thinking, and writing in both books and newspaper
columns as well as in interviews. And there was recognition of his work even after his death, as biographies have been
written and he has a presence in research and online. That said, given the trajectory of his life, his work and his fame,
where is Eric Hoffer now? What does his body of work—if we determine that we can refer to his writing and speaking as a
cohesive body of work—speak to today? How are his name, his fame, and his words used today?
Eric Hoffer: the man and his work
There have been two biographies of Eric Hoffer: American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer, written by Tom
Shachtman and published in 2011, and Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, written by Tom Bethell and published
in 2012. For our purposes here, the story begins with Hoffer’s birth in 1898 in New York. As a child, he suffered from loss
of sight, with his vision returning as a teenager. It is said that this experience prompted him to read as much as he could,
out of fear of losing his sight again. Through his life, he was a wanderer—a vagrant, but one that read and wrote while
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working at odd jobs. He was a migrant worker with a library card, a gold prospector who read Montaigne, a longshoreman . . .”
My response: Rausch asks where is Hoffer now, and I would assume that he is now forgotten or ignored for the most part, and that is a shame, and a loss for American philosophy and moral education.
R: “who filled 130-plus notebooks that now fill 23 meters of shelf space at the Hoover Institution Archives. Still, given that
Hoffer’s life is characterized by complexity and contradiction, little of what has been offered about the man has been
verified. Indeed, Bethell expressed doubt about the account of early life offered by Hoffer (Bethell, 2013).”
My response: Hoffer’s life is characterized by complexity in that he was secretive and enigmatic. He likely was an illegal Jewish immigrant from Bavaria that covered up his real past to avoid being deported from the country he loved. He did try to serve his country in war time, he was so patriotic and pro-American.
He was not a hypocrite (Some critics imply that he is an ungrateful hypocrite who took advantage of the high wages, great benefits and plenty of leisure time provided him by a Marxist Union, all the time that he was betraying and badmouthing that Leftist cause, with his pro-capitalism and pro-American individualism.). If one is a thoughtful, sane, moral moderate as Hoffer was, he might just be identifying the paradoxes at work and presenting themselves to him in reality, and he seems contradictory because he is struggling to unpack what is true, false or crazy in contradictory phenomena which life has put before him, and some contradictions are actual, sane, moral and true. That is what an ontological moderate asserts, a kind of metaphysics of the Buddhist Middle Way, from a Western standpoint.
We cannot expect all union members, especially today in 2024 when the woke Democratic Party has abandoned blue collar workers—union and non-union alike—to be socialist and progressive in their values. Most union members are conservative in their cultural values, even if they were often traditionally more liberal in their political or economic stances taken, than were employers, managers and small business owners.
In his life existentially (He was an individualist and conservative yet a loyal union member in a collectivist labor union quite radical, even Communist.) he was a living contradiction: a blue-collar intellectual and a longshoreman-philosopher. He was an amateur thinker competing with professional thinkers.
Hoffer was always complex, and that is because he is a moderate or advocate of the middle way as a moral standard. He is for the workingman, but not Communism. He is pro-capitalist, but he was one of the masses, was for the masses, and never thought he was any better or smarter than any worker alongside himself.
He was a moderate conservative, no fascist or jingoist.
I have come up with the suggestion that he is an implicit moral egoist He thought that if each of the masses could develop his talents or at least through work and action make money and thus find a solid sense of personal worth and meaning, then this life of purpose would make him contented and not suitable for being groomed to live life inside a mass movement.
Hoffer did not like Communism or fascism or any sacred or secular holy cause because they offer the masses only lives of subjugation to an elite as frustrated, discontented, selfless, altruistic serfs, enslaved, oppressed, abused, and exploited by the elite running the dispensation erected around them.
Only in unique America could the masses as moral egoists and individualists experience via hard work and action the liberty, opportunity, and affluence to lead lives of fulfillment and veridical self-esteem while running the country. He would not have approved of where Harry Bridges and his ilk would have led America should they totally have had their way, and he was right to be leery of them. They did help the working poor, but their political solutions were totalitarian in outcome. There is no brotherhood other than a brotherhood of misery as slaves once the masses are in chains once more.
R: “Hoffer gained public attention with his first book in 1951, titled The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass
Movements. In it Hoffer analyzes revolutionary parties, nationalistic movements and religious crusades, summarizing his
ideas as follows: “A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of
actions” (Hoffer, 1966). The worked was praised by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as a brilliant and original
inquiry into the nature of mass movements that makes genuine contribution to social thought (Hoffer, 1966). Hoffer is
known as well for holding strong opinions on the major issues of his time. He argued that social discontent plaguing Asia
at the time originated in a craving for pride, rather than corruption in government, communist agitation or colonial
oppression and exploitation (Hoffer, 1954; 1963). That aside, his feelings about the Vietnam War were complex: he
objected the idea that the war was necessary for peace but was critical of the antiwar movement as well. Furthermore, he
was continually skeptical of American interventionism as foreign policy, which laid the basis for his book The Temper of
Our Time (Hoffer, 1967). Following on this were more books which considered such diverse themes as the meaning of
civilization and the nature of humankind, the meaning of life for individuals as they pursue happiness against debilitating
feelings of self-doubt, as well as questions about automation, the environment, and learning. Hoffer has also received
numerous awards and accolades: an honorary doctorate degree from both Stonehill College and Michigan Technological
University in 1971, the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, a bust by sculptor
Jonathan Hirschfeld in Oklahoma in 1978, and a San Francisco waterfront work of art dubbed Skygate that came with a
dedication speech by Eric Sevareid.
There have, of course, been many summaries and appraisals of Hoffer’s life and writing, both at the book level and in
shorter forms. Historian and social analyst Tom Shachtman is credited in American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric
Hoffer with offering one of the most detailed examinations of Hoffer’s life and work while Tom Bethell, author of Eric
Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, is praised for being able to balance sympathy with many of Hoffer’s conservative
opinions while still offering a thoughtful, objective and highly readable portrait of the man.”
R: “ Daniel Flynn (2012), in a review
of Bethell’s work, characterized Hoffer’s life, and work, as a mix of confusing contradictions and crystal clear thinking. He
was an anti-communist thinker and writer who served loyally in a union that was led by the Communist activist Harry
Bridges. He was an ordinary working man who loved America fiercely who became a self-taught writer and fierce social
critic, eventually finding a sinecure at the University of California-Berkeley, the West Coast-epicenter of all Hoffer railed
against in the 1960s. Despite, or perhaps due to, the confusion and contradiction of his own life, Hoffer thought deeply
about what made us happy, offering that the tension of doubt and praise is a key element: self-doubt is an inherent part of
our humanness, but that the praise we earn through our actions enables us to reconcile this doubt and move toward a
meaningful life (Dirda, 2012).”
My response: Daniel J Flynn is an author and columnist, describing Hoffer’s life and work as a mixture of confused contradictions and crystal-clear thinking. I believe there is some truth to that but likely truth is multi-faceted, and it may seem like the thinker is confused and self-contradictory, and Hoffer may have been such at times, but, mostly, he had a very keen, analytical mind, and he wrote clearly and concisely about complicated reality.
Hoffer was a professor (sorta) and a laborer, a staunch anti-Communist—and unrecognized as a staunch anti-Fascist—yet he worked in radical labor union. I urge each of the masses to lead hybrid life: she could be half-pianist and composer and yet a young woman with 3 children who sells Mary Kay. The clash between these different roles enriches the view and originality of the creative person, a standard Hofferian recommendation.
Flynn nicely reveals that Hoffer had his self-doubts—Who doesn’t?—but that praise can alleviate the burden of such self-criticism and the self can endure to lead a meaningful, and I would hope and suggest, a maverized life.
I also encourage each agent to love the self while maverizing, so that the self learns to objectively criticize the self, while praising the self, not much worrying about criticism or praise from the public, though that input should always be welcomed, if not always heeded and implemented.
R: “As for his works, there are at least eight and as many as 12 books that he either authored outright or consist of his
quotations and writing that was carried in the press. As above, his first and most notable work was The True Believer:
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Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, published in 1951. This was followed by The Passionate State of Mind, and
Other Aphorisms, a collection of timeless aphorisms on mankind that was published in 1955. The Ordeal of Change,
published in 1963, consisted of essays on the duality and essentiality of change in the progress of humankind and
civilization throughout history. In 1967 came The Temper of Our Time, which included essays on automation, the black
revolution, the return to nature movement, intellectualism versus the nature of learning, and a range of other social issues,
and in 1969, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, which was part diary and part a glimpse into Hoffer’s thought
process and life patterns. The 1970s brought publication of First Things, Last Things in 1971, which outlined a large-scale
view of the trajectory of civilization, highlighting at various points the unique and transformative characteristics that
constitute humankind. Reflections on the Human Condition, published in 1973, is similar to The Passionate State of Mind,
in that it is largely a collection of aphorisms. In Our Time, published in 1976, offered 32 themes over 90 pages on such
topics as “Dull Work,” “New Schools,” “A Learning Society,” “The Trend Toward Anarchy,” and “A Country That Cannot
Change.” Before the Sabbath is Hoffer’s final written work, published in 1979, in which he reflects on history, democracy,
love, and, apropos to his situation, aging. The Syndicated News Articles, published in the late 1960s, presented some of
the weekly news columns that appeared in hundreds of newspapers across the country when Hoffer was at the height of
his popularity in the 1960s. Finally, published in 1983 is Truth Imagined, a book of Hoffer’s reminiscences of his life. Hoffer
was also very good in a discussion format, revealed in a twelve-part television interview titled Conversations with Eric
Hoffer in 1963, and a 1967 interview titled Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind and a 1969 interview titled The
Savage Heart: A Conversation with Eric Hoffer, both conducted by Eric Sevareid of CBS News.
Flynn (2012) contrasted Hoffer’s life with his writing: whereas his life was highly mysterious, if not perplexing, his writing
didn’t give much space for interpretation: it was clear, efficient, and offered up his ideas without tedious hedges or
qualifiers. Although his writing was based on voluminous reading, his style tended to short paragraphs in short sections in
short books, all of which portrayed a weariness of academics and intellectuals who tried to change society through
complex arguments and long-winded monographs. That said, most saw his work as reactive, in trains of thought that
either built on or contradicted observations and assertions of earlier thinkers and writers. He was accused of thinking that
was imprecise, exaggerated, cynical, and used ad hominem argument on the one hand, all while seen as bringing
originality rather than conventionality and insight more than solution on the other. Still, Dirda (2012) notes that The True
Believer has become a modern classic, a work which is periodically rediscovered as time and events continue on, but also
a book which received much attention in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Thus, given the
noteworthy trajectory of his life and works, it is worth considering the question of this paper: what happened to Eric
Hoffer? How has time treated the man and his works? In what sense is the work of Eric Hoffer being used today?”
My response: Though some of his detractors saw Hoffer as imprecise, exaggerated, cynical, and using ad hominem argument, his writing was very clear and concise, so how is he imprecise? He did speculate with grand imaginings, so perhaps he did social science without the scientific research and statistical analysis of his observation, so is this what they meant when referring to his imprecision?
I believe he was truthful and realistic, not exaggerative, though he would write and speak with flair and sweeping statements at times, but then he moderately would qualify, provide context, and then fine tune his general impressions, and that is a moderate though pattern and communication style which I too employ, and may count for readers misunderstanding us, and our being accused of being confusing, self-contradicting and exaggerative.
He was a bit pessimistic about humans and their condition: he did not think people were born good, or that they easily led a moral life, or that they could easily overcome their propensity to lie and deceive themselves. For the shallow-thinking optimist about human nature and human behavior, such an approach might seem cynical and bleak, when it is mostly realistic.
If he was, and I think he was a rational egoist, then his morality that selfishness or sensible self-interest might strike an altruist and collectivist as cynical. None could be further from the truth: he wanted to help people lead better lives.
In The True Believer I saw how careful he was in laying out the thinking, motives, and patterns of thought which he could see at work in the minds of some very nasty people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Where he ad hominem attacks anyone, it may seem, the target were intellectuals, but, even there, he is not anti-intellectual, he is anti-allowing intellectuals to indulge their addiction to gathering all power unto themselves so they can subjugate and direct the masses.
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