HOOK, SIDNEY

HOOK, SIDNEY (1902–1989), U.S. philosopher. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Hook received his B.A. from the City College of New York and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he was a student of John Dewey. Hook began to teach at New York University in 1927. He served as the head of the Department of Philosophy of NYU from 1948 to 1969,   during which time he founded the New York University Institute of Philosophy. He was president of the American Philosophical Society, Eastern Division, 1959. From 1973 to 1989 he was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Hook's main concerns as a philosopher lay in the areas of social and political thought in which he defended, against opponents of the Right and Left, a socialist form of political democracy. His philosophy in this connection may be summarized by his comment that "Orthodoxy is not only fatal to honest thinking; it invited the abandonment of the revolutionary standpoint which was central to Marx's life and thought." Besides his theoretical interests, Hook was active on the political level, both in the formation of and participation in organizations directed against the spread of Communist influence in the United States. Best known for his staunch defense of academic and political freedom and his stand against any form of totalitarianism, Hook was one of the organizers of the Committee for Cultural Freedom. In 1985 he was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1991 the Phi Beta Kappa Society established the Sidney Hook Memorial Award, a monetary prize that recognizes national distinction by a single scholar in scholarship, undergraduate teaching, and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education. A prolific writer, some of Hook's main books are Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (1933), Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy (1940), The Hero in History (1943), Education for Modern Man (1946), The Quest for Being (1961), The Paradoxes of Freedom (1962), Religion in a Free Society (1967), Academic Freedom and Academic Anarchy (1970), Heresy, Yes–Conspiracy, No (1973), Philosophy and Public Policy (1980), Marxism and Beyond (1983), Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century (his autobiography, 1987), and Convictions (1990). The Metaphysics of Pragmatism was published in 1996. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. Phelps, Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (1997); B. Levine, Sidney Hook: A Checklist of Writings (1989); P. Kurtz (ed.), Sidney Hook: Philosopher of Democracy and Humanism (1983). (Avrum Stroll / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)