Men of Ideas

by Coser, Lewis A.

• ISBN13: 9780684833286
• ISBN10: 068483328X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-07-22
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

Lewis A. Coser takes readers from the coffeehouses of 18th-century London to the mass-culture industries of today in search of a definition for the intellectual.

Describing the settings where intellectuals thrive and exploring the nature and contributions of various well-known groups, he discusses the various roles intellectuals play in society and why they matter.

Author Biography

Lewis Coser was a German-American sociologist and the 66th president of the American Sociological Association. He earned his PhD in sociology at Columbia University and founded the sociology department at Brandeis University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Paperback Edition	xi	(4)
Preface to the Original Edition	xv
Part One. SETTINGS FOR INTELLECTUAL LIFE	3	(132)
1. Introduction	3	(8)
2. The French Rococo Salon	11	(8)
D'Holbach and Helvetius	16	(3)
3. Coffeehouses in Eighteenth-Century London	19	(8)
4. The Royal Society and the Rise of Modern Science	27	(10)
5. The Profession of Letters in Eighteenth-Century England	37	(14)
The Widening Reading Public	38	(3)
Booksellers and Authors	41	(3)
Circulating Libraries	44	(1)
The Commercialization of Literature	45	(6)
6. The Commercialization of Writing: Four Cases from Nineteenth-Century England	51	(20)
Walter Scott	54	(3)
William M. Thackeray	57	(4)
Charles Dickens	61	(4)
George Eliot	65	(6)
7. British Nineteenth-Century Reviews	71	(12)
8. Censorship	83	(16)
Political Censorship: Pre-Revolutionary France	84	(5)
Moral Censorship: The Victorian Era in America	89	(10)
9. The Political Sect: The Saint-Simonians	99	(12)
10. Literary Bohemia: The Early Years of Greenwich Village	111	(10)
11. The Little Magazine: The Masses and The Little Review	121	(14)
The Masses	123	(4)
The Little Review	127	(8)
Part Two. INTELLECTUALS AND THE HOUSE OF POWER	135	(112)
12. Introduction	135	(10)
Intellectuals in Power	136	(2)
Boring from Within	138	(2)
Legitimizing Power	140	(2)
Critics of Power	142	(1)
Salvation Abroad	143	(2)
13. Intellectuals in Power	145	(26)
The Jacobin Intellectuals or the Politics of Virtue	145	(12)
The Bolsheviks: Intellectuals as Professional Revolutionaries	157	(14)
14. Boring from Within	171	(18)
The Fabians: Intelligence Officers without an Army	171	(9)
The Brain Trust Courts Power	180	(9)
15. Legitimizing Power	189	(18)
Napoleon and the Ideologues	189	(8)
Gomulka and the Revisionists	197	(10)
16. Critics of Power	207	(20)
The Abolitionists	207	(8)
The Dreyfusards	215	(12)
17. Salvation Abroad	227	(20)
Rage for Order: The Philosophes' Love Affair with China and Russia	227	(6)
Riding the Wave of the Future in the Thirties	233	(14)
Part Three. THE INTELLECTUAL IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA	247	(116)
18. Introduction	247	(4)
Intellectual Types and Institutional Settings	249	(2)
19. The Scene and Prospect Before Us: Two Contrasting Perspectives	251	(12)
America as a Bureaucratized Mass Society: The Obsolescence of the Intellectual	252	(4)
America as a Pluralistic Society: Sanguine Prospects for Superior Culture	256	(7)
20. Unattached Intellectuals	263	(12)
21. Academic Intellectuals	275	(20)
The University Today	277	(3)
The University as a Setting for Intellectuals	280	(1)
Career Pressures and the Departmentalization of Knowledge	281	(2)
Time Pressures	283	(1)
Skill Versus Cultivation	284	(1)
The Consultant Role of Academic Men	285	(2)
Research Entrepreneurship	287	(2)
Bureaucratic Impediments	289	(2)
Prospects	291	(4)
22. Scientific Intellectuals	295	(20)
The Professional Role of the Scientist	296	(9)
The New Public Role of the Scientist	305	(6)
The Prospect for Scientific Intellectuals	311	(4)
23. Intellectuals in Washington	315	(10)
The Intellectual as a Civil Servant	315	(10)
The Intellectual as an Ad Hoc Bureaucrat	320	(5)
24. Intellectuals in the Mass-Culture Industries	325	(12)
The Movie Industry	327	(4)
The Weekly Mass-Circulation Magazines	331	(6)
25. Foundations as Gatekeepers of Contemporary Intellectual Life	337	(12)
26. Summing Up	349	(14)
Fragmentation and Diversification	349	(5)
Concentration and Absorption	354	(4)
Absorption, Alienation, or Detached Concern?	358	(5)
INDEX	363	(2)
Subject Index	365	(2)
Name Index	367