John Patrick Diggins – författare

Barack Obama has called him "one of my favorite philosophers." John McCain wrote that he is "a paragon of clarity about the costs of a good war." Andrew Sullivan has said, "We need Niebuhr now more than ever." For a theologian who died in 1971, Reinhold Niebuhr is maintaining a remarkably high profile in the twenty-first century. In "Why Niebuhr Now?" acclaimed historian John Patrick Diggins tackles the complicated question of why, at a time of great uncertainty about America's proper role in the world, leading politicians and thinkers are turning to Niebuhr for answers. Diggins begins by clearly and carefully working through Niebuhr's theology, which focuses less on God's presence than his absence - and the ways that absence abets the all-too-human sin of pride. He then shows how that theology informed Niebuhr's worldview, leading him to be at the same time a strong opponent of fascism and communism and a leading advocate for humility and caution in foreign policy.Turning to the present, Diggins highlights what he argues is a misuse of Niebuhr's legacy on both the right and the left: while neoconservatives distort Niebuhr's arguments to support their call for an endless war on terror in the name of stopping evil, many liberal interventionists conveniently ignore Niebuhr's fundamental doubts about power. Ultimately, Niebuhr's greatest lesson is that, while it is our duty to struggle for good, we must be wary of hubris and acknowledge the limits of our understanding. The final work from a distinguished writer who spent his entire career reflecting on America's history and promise, "Why Niebuhr Now?" is a compact and perceptive book that will be the starting point for all future discussions of Niebuhr.

The Lost Soul of American Politics is a provocative new interpretation of American political thought from the Founding Fathers to the Neo-Conservatives. Reassessing the motives and intentions of such great political thinkers as Madison, Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emerson, John P. Diggins shows how these men struggled to create an alliance between the politics of self-interest and a religious sense of moral responsibility—a tension that still troubles us today.

In this critique of pragmatism and neopragmatism, an historian traces the attempts of thinkers from William James to Richard Rorty to find a response to the crisis of modernism. John Patrick Diggins analyzes the limitations of pragmatism from a historical perspective and asks whether America's one original contribution to the world of philosophy has actually fulfilled its promise.

Barack Obama has called him 'one of my favorite philosophers'. John McCain wrote that he is 'a paragon of clarity about the costs of a good war'. Andrew Sullivan has said, 'We need Niebuhr now more than ever'. For a theologian who died in 1971, Reinhold Niebuhr is maintaining a remarkably high profile in the twenty-first century. In "Why Niebuhr Now?" acclaimed historian John Patrick Diggins tackles the complicated question of why, at a time of great uncertainty about America's proper role in the world, leading politicians and thinkers are turning to Niebuhr for answers. Diggins begins by clearly and carefully working through Niebuhr's theology, which focuses less on God's presence than his absence - and the ways that absence abets the all-too-human sin of pride. He then shows how that theology informed Niebuhr's worldview, leading him to be at the same time a strong opponent of fascism and communism and a leading advocate for humility and caution in foreign policy.Turning to the present, Diggins highlights what he argues is a misuse of Niebuhr's legacy on both the right and the left: while neoconservatives distort Niebuhr's arguments to support their call for an endless war on terror in the name of stopping evil, many liberal interventionists conveniently ignore Niebuhr's fundamental doubts about power. Ultimately, Niebuhr's greatest lesson is that, while it is our duty to struggle for good, we must at the same time be wary of hubris, remembering the limits of our understanding. The final work from a distinguished writer who spent his entire career reflecting on America's history and promise, "Why Niebuhr Now?" is a compact and perceptive book that will be the starting point for all future discussions of Niebuhr.

In this provocative book, John Patrick Diggins, hailed by Alan Ryan in the New York Times as “one of the liveliest and most interesting of contemporary intellectual historians,” offers a sweeping reassessment of American history, emphasizing the foundational role of Abraham Lincoln’s moral and political theory. Distressed by the divisive impact of modern identity politics, Diggins argues persuasively that in the central tenets of Lincoln’s political faith--the redeeming value of labor and the rights to property and self-determination--we find the purest expression of the values that have united Americans and guided American history. With his characteristic breadth, Diggins ranges from James Madison to W. E. B. Du Bois to the movie Good Will Hunting in his examination of the often ambivalent ways in which Americans have imagined themselves and their nation. Convinced that contemporary historians have done America a grave disservice by emphasizing political divisions along the lines of class, race, and gender, Diggins points out that throughout American history there has been more that unites the American people than divides them.

Born in America, the American Left was nurtured by intellectuals and activists who read Jefferson and Whitman before they read Marx or Mao. One lesson this brilliant history teaches us is that the fury of radical innocence and wounded idealism so peculiar to American intellectual history springs from native soil. Nor is the American Left a single phenomenon but four surprising eruptions throughout the past century: The Lyrical Left, of the First World War years; the Old Left, driven by the legacy of World War I, the promise of socialism, and the Great Depression; the New Left of the 1960s, combining a revolt against the banalities of middle-class life with civil rights fervor and protest against the war in Vietnam; and now contemporary Academic Left, seeking both to question the traditional values of the West and to embrace the causes of women and minorities.

"Richly instructive. . . . With characteristic cogency and verve John Diggins has painted a memorable portrait of the United States at a triumphant moment in its history."—David M. Kennedy, Stanford University

Fired by Stanford and the University of Chicago but recommended by his peers to the presidency of the American Economic Association, Thorstein Veblen remains a baffling figure in American intellectual history. In part because he was an eccentric who shunned publicity, he has also been one of our most neglected. Veblen is known to the general public only as coiner of the term "conspicuous consumption," and to scholars primarily as one of many social critics of the reform-minded Progressive Era. This important critical biography--originally published as The Bard of Savagery and now appearing in paperback for the first time--attempts both to unravel the riddles that surround his reputation and to assess his varied and important contributions to modern social theory.

For more than half a century, the celebrated historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has been the guiding force of American liberalism, both intellectually and in practice. The author of many critically acclaimed books, Schlesinger vigorously defended FDR's New Deal policies in his earliest writings and later served as a close advisor to President John F. Kennedy. In this volume, twenty of today's most eminent historians join forces to explore Schlesinger's unique brand of liberalism--one that has steered clear of ideological extremism and social fragmentation, favoring instead pluralism and the pragmatic use of state power. By engaging the reader in various aspects of his career and intellectual pursuits, these essays offer an exhilarating journey through American political history, from the Jackson era to multiculturalism, while demonstrating historical writing at its best. The volume opens with essays on Schlesinger as a historian and a political participant, contributed by William E. Leuchtenburg, Hugh Thomas, George Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, and John Morton Blum. The influence of the Jackson era is explored by Robert Remini, Sean Wilentz, and Jean V. Matthews.In a section on modern liberalism and governance, such topics as the New Deal, the Great Society, and the fate of liberalism under the Carter administration are discussed by Alan Brinkley, Kathleen D. McCarthy, Fred Siegel, Leo P. Ribuffo, and Richard C. Wade. Betty Miller Unterberger and Ronald Steel comment on liberalism and the Cold War. Louis Menand and Eugene D. Genovese explore ideological controversies within liberalism, including pragmatic liberalism and relativism and multiculturalism. In the final section, George Cotkin, Neil Jumonville, and Sir Isaiah Berlin write on three figures whom Schlesinger greatly admired: William James, Henry Steel Commager, and Edmund Wilson. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mussolini, in the thousand guises he projected and the press picked up, fascinated Americans in the 1920s and the early '30s. John Diggins' analysis of America's reaction to an ideological phenomenon abroad reveals, he proposes, the darker side of American political values and assumptions. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mussolini, in the thousand guises he projected and the press picked up, fascinated Americans in the 1920s and the early '30s. John Diggins' analysis of America's reaction to an ideological phenomenon abroad reveals, he proposes, the darker side of American political values and assumptions. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

For more than half a century, the celebrated historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has been the guiding force of American liberalism, both intellectually and in practice. The author of many critically acclaimed books, Schlesinger vigorously defended FDR's New Deal policies in his earliest writings and later served as a close advisor to President John F. Kennedy. In this volume, twenty of today's most eminent historians join forces to explore Schlesinger's unique brand of liberalism--one that has steered clear of ideological extremism and social fragmentation, favoring instead pluralism and the pragmatic use of state power. By engaging the reader in various aspects of his career and intellectual pursuits, these essays offer an exhilarating journey through American political history, from the Jackson era to multiculturalism, while demonstrating historical writing at its best. The volume opens with essays on Schlesinger as a historian and a political participant, contributed by William E. Leuchtenburg, Hugh Thomas, George Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, and John Morton Blum. The influence of the Jackson era is explored by Robert Remini, Sean Wilentz, and Jean V. Matthews.In a section on modern liberalism and governance, such topics as the New Deal, the Great Society, and the fate of liberalism under the Carter administration are discussed by Alan Brinkley, Kathleen D. McCarthy, Fred Siegel, Leo P. Ribuffo, and Richard C. Wade. Betty Miller Unterberger and Ronald Steel comment on liberalism and the Cold War. Louis Menand and Eugene D. Genovese explore ideological controversies within liberalism, including pragmatic liberalism and relativism and multiculturalism. In the final section, George Cotkin, Neil Jumonville, and Sir Isaiah Berlin write on three figures whom Schlesinger greatly admired: William James, Henry Steel Commager, and Edmund Wilson. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.