John Patrick Diggins
Biographic Data
| ID | 368092 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Patrick Diggins |
| GIVEN NAMES | John Patrick |
| FAMILY NAME | Diggins |
| SIGNATURE | DIGGINS J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 120 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1965 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Liberal Persuasion: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the Challenge of the American Past
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 Schlesi…
Introduction. The Vital Historian
Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America
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 …
Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History
Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History John Patrick Diggins Men and ideas advance by parricide, by which the children kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs. Sir Isaiah Berlin1 I was supposed to wind up the study of mine, and become the Lovejoy of my generation—that's the silly talk of scholarly people. Saul Bellow2 To become "the Lovejoy," with the implication that each g…
What begins in religion ends in politics
John Adams and the Founding of the Republic
On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History
This is not a book about Abraham Lincoln, but a collection of historiographical essays. Lincoln is, however, frequently quoted as an authoritative interpreter of the nature of American society. Those who are familiar with the previous writings of John Patrick Diggins will not be surprised to learn that the essays present a polemical defense of liberal pluralism as a paradigm for understanding the history of the United States. At the core of the a…
Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class
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 soci…
Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy
Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy
Journal Article Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy. By John Patrick Diggins. (New York: Basic-Books, 1996. xviii, 334 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-465-01750-9.) Get access Mark C. Smith Mark C. Smith University of Texas, Austin, Texas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 84, Issue 3, December 1997, Pages 1108–1109, https://doi.org/10.2307/2953190 Published: 01 December 1997
Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy
Can the social historian get it right
America's Two Visitors: Tocqueville and Weber
A common assumption holds that the best and most reliable guide to an interpretation of America came from the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville and his great classic, Democracy in America. Max Weber never wrote a book on America; in fact, all his writings first appeared as articles in scholarly journals and were only later to find shape in the form of a book. But many of his: thoughts on America, some based on his trip to the U.S. in 1904, can be c…
The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority
Journal Article The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority. By John Patrick Diggins. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. xiv, 515 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-266-14878-5.) Get access Robert B. Westbrook Robert B. Westbrook University of Rochester, Rochester, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Pages 170–171…
The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority
For much of the 20th century, pragmatism has held the dominant point of view in American politics, law, education and social thought in general. After suffering a brief eclipse in the post-World War II period, pragmatism has experienced a revival, especially in literary theory and such areas as poststructuralism and deconstruction. In this critique of pragmatism and neopragmatism, the author traces the attempts of thinkers from William James to R…
Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual Development
Virtue, Corruption, and Self-Interest: Political Values in the Eighteenth Century
The Rise and Fall of the American Left.
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 …
Thorstein Veblen and the literature of the theory class
The Skeptic
Philosophy Without Foundations, Politics with Illusions
Of all the major figures in modern American intellectual history John Dewey must be the most intimidating to a biographer. There is, for a start, a peculiar disparity between Dewey's philosophical outlook toward and his philosophy itself. Although Dewey believed that if had meaning it was growth and continuous change, his own philosophy remained essentially changeless in the twentieth century after its first formulation in the late nineteenth cen…
The Rise and Fall of the American Left
Journal Article The Rise and Vail of the American Left. By John Patrick Diggins. (New York: Norton, 1992. 432 pp. $22.95, ISBN 0-393-03075-X.) Get access James Weinstein James Weinstein In These Times, Chicago, Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, September 1993, Page 723, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079985 Published: 01 September 1993
The Jameses: A Family Narrative
Power and Suspicion: The Perspectives of Reinhold Niebuhr
This essay seeks to bring Reinhold Niebuhr into the postructuralist dialogue in order to suggest that his writings are far more constructive about the human predicament. The essay begins by presenting eleven positions commonly taken by poststructuralists. It then examines similarities between Niebuhr and postructuralist thinkers in their interrogation of the Enlightenment to expose the illusions of reason and progress and in their exposure of the…
Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education
The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory
Journal Article The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory. By John P. Diggins. (New York: Seabury, 1978. xiii + 257 pp. Notes and index. $14.95.) Get access Frederic Cople Jaher Frederic Cople Jaher University of Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 65, Issue 3, December 1978, Pages 814–815, https://doi.org/10.2307/1901493 Published: 01 December…
The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism
Journal Article The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism. By John Patrick Diggins. (New York: Basic Books, 1984. xiii + 409 pp. Appendixes, notes, and index. $23.95.) Get access Robert E. Shalhope Robert E. Shalhope University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 72, Issue 2, September 1985, Pages 379–380, https:…
The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority
For much of the 20th century, pragmatism has held the dominant point of view in American politics, law, education and social thought in general. After suffering a brief eclipse in the post-World War II period, pragmatism has experienced a revival, especially in literary theory and such areas as poststructuralism and deconstruction. In this critique of pragmatism and neopragmatism, the author traces the attempts of thinkers from William James to R…
Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America
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 …
Ideology and Pragmatism: Philosophy or Passion
In "Politics, Ideology, And Belief Systems" Professor Sartori has undertaken the Sisyphean task of drawing up conceptual schemes to distinguish the political mentalities of the pragmatist and the ideologist. His "Hypothesis" poses the curious proposition that "ideology and pragmatisms qua 'political cultures' are related, respectively, to the 'cultural matrixes' rationalism and empiricism." (p. 402) When political scientists put forth hypotheses,…
Slavery, Race, and Equality: Jefferson and the Pathos of the Enlightenment
in 1785, referring to the privately printed Notes on the State of Virginia. cannot now say much about it, Adams continued, I think it will do its Author and his Country great Honour. The Passages upon slavery, are worth Diamonds. They will have more effect than Volumes written by Philosophers.' For almost two centuries American historians have ignored Adams' advice on the significance of the passages on slavery contained in Jefferson's random Not…
I. Knowledge and Sorrow: Louis Hartz's Quarrel with American History
In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. — Ecclesiastes
Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History
Journal Article Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History. By John P. Diggins. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975. xvii + 522 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $20.00.) Get access Stow Persons Stow Persons University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 3, December 1976, Pages 764–765, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887440 Published: …
Republicanism and Progressivism
THE MEN WHO CREATED CLASSICAL POLITICS WERE NOT PROFESSORS, observed R.G. Collingwood in 1942. They were men of the world and they lived among men of the world. Their interest in political life was not formed by reading I Today Collingwood's observation may have to be turned on its head. Now it is professors who try to establish the historical existence of classical political ideas by explicating academic treatises. However valid this methodology…
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
Journal Article Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed. By Robert A. Rosenstone. (New York: Knopf, 1975. xxvii + 430 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $15.00.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 1, June 1976, Pages 172–173, https://doi.org/10.2307/1909061 Publish…
Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy
Power and Suspicion: The Perspectives of Reinhold Niebuhr
This essay seeks to bring Reinhold Niebuhr into the postructuralist dialogue in order to suggest that his writings are far more constructive about the human predicament. The essay begins by presenting eleven positions commonly taken by poststructuralists. It then examines similarities between Niebuhr and postructuralist thinkers in their interrogation of the Enlightenment to expose the illusions of reason and progress and in their exposure of the…
From Pragmatism to Natural Law: Walter Lippmann's Quest for the Foundations of Legitimacy
When Walter Lippmann's Essays in The Public Philosophy appeared in 1955, it arrived on the American intellectual scene at a time when authors of various philosophical and ideological persuasion were making claims on the political soul of Western civilization. Two years earlier, at the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss wrote Natural Right and History to insist that the classical values of his beloved ancient world offered the best hope of saving …
The Misuses of Gramsci
Journal Article The Misuses of Gramsci Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and maintains a bemused interest in labor history because he comes from a San Francisco working-class background Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 1, June 1988, Pages 141–145, https://doi.org/10.2307/1889659 Published: 01…
The Oyster and the Pearl: The Problem of Contextualism in Intellectual History
In his recent survey of state of intellectual history in America, Robert Darnton perceived a methodological trend that has come almost to dominate current discourse in field. Contextualization is strongest feature in area of history of ideas that has made strongest progress during last decade: history of political thought.1 Darnton's observation would also seem to apply to recent anthology edited by Paul Conkin and John Higham, New Directions in …
America's Two Visitors: Tocqueville and Weber
A common assumption holds that the best and most reliable guide to an interpretation of America came from the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville and his great classic, Democracy in America. Max Weber never wrote a book on America; in fact, all his writings first appeared as articles in scholarly journals and were only later to find shape in the form of a book. But many of his: thoughts on America, some based on his trip to the U.S. in 1904, can be c…
The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority
Journal Article The Promise of Pragmatism: Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority. By John Patrick Diggins. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. xiv, 515 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-266-14878-5.) Get access Robert B. Westbrook Robert B. Westbrook University of Rochester, Rochester, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Pages 170–171…
Thorstein Veblen and the literature of the theory class
The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left
Journal Article The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left. Ed. by Lewis A. Coser and Irving Howe. (New York: Quadrangle, 1974. viii + 343 pp. Notes. $9.95.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 62, Issue 2, September 1975, Pages 477–479, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903367 Published: 01 September 19…
The Perils of Naturalism: Some Reflections on Daniel J. Boorstin's Approach to American History
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN STUDIES Association, reiterates advice of another esteemed guardian of American ideals when he asks fellow historians to disenthrall themselves from high-brow angst of European culture and return home to native grounds. capture full flavor of their society, William Dean Howells told writers to consider smiling aspects of life which are the more American; to recapture raw materials of our pa…
American Catholics and Italian Fascism
Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History
Arthur O. Lovejoy and the Challenge of Intellectual History John Patrick Diggins Men and ideas advance by parricide, by which the children kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs. Sir Isaiah Berlin1 I was supposed to wind up the study of mine, and become the Lovejoy of my generation—that's the silly talk of scholarly people. Saul Bellow2 To become "the Lovejoy," with the implication that each g…
The Rise and Fall of the American Left
Journal Article The Rise and Vail of the American Left. By John Patrick Diggins. (New York: Norton, 1992. 432 pp. $22.95, ISBN 0-393-03075-X.) Get access James Weinstein James Weinstein In These Times, Chicago, Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, September 1993, Page 723, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079985 Published: 01 September 1993
The Bard of Savagery; Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory
Fascists, Nazis and American Minds: Perceptions and Preconceptions
The Search for a New Hitler
Mussolini and America: Hero‐Worship, Charisma, and the “Vulgar Talent”
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn P. DigginsThe author is Lecturer in the Department of History at San Francisco State College
The American Writer, Fascism and the Liberation of Italy
well as political justice. The first nation to succumb to Fascism, Italy was the first to be liberated by the democracies. To many Americans, the Allied advance up through the Italian boot seemed a cleansing wind of the south which, matched by the partisans' vento del nord, would soon purge Italy of her Fascist past, redeem her liberal heritage and ultimately destroy the Thousand Year Reich beyond the Alps. The coming of victory could not help bu…
American Catholics and Italian Fascism
The Italo-American Anti-Fascist Opposition
Journal Article The Italo-American Anti-Fascist Opposition Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins assistant professor of history San Francisco State College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 54, Issue 3, December 1967, Pages 579–598, https://doi.org/10.2307/2937408 Published: 01 December 1967
Preachers, Pedagogues & Politicians: The Evolution Contreversy in North Carolina, 1920-1927
Wilderness and the American Mind
Journal Article Wilderness and the American Mind. By Roderick Nash. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. viii + 256 pp. Notes, note on sources, and index. $6.50.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins San Francisco State College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 55, Issue 1, June 1968, Pages 184–185, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894328 Published: 01 June 1968
Puritans nd Pragmatists: Eight Eminent Thinkers
Journal Article Puritans and Pragmatists: Eight Eminent American Thinkers. By Paul K. Conkin. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1968. viii + 495 pp. Reading guide and index. Cloth, $12.50; paper, $5.95.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 56, Issue 3, December 1969, Pages 645–647, https://doi.org/10.…
Ideology and Pragmatism: Philosophy or Passion
In "Politics, Ideology, And Belief Systems" Professor Sartori has undertaken the Sisyphean task of drawing up conceptual schemes to distinguish the political mentalities of the pragmatist and the ideologist. His "Hypothesis" poses the curious proposition that "ideology and pragmatisms qua 'political cultures' are related, respectively, to the 'cultural matrixes' rationalism and empiricism." (p. 402) When political scientists put forth hypotheses,…
The Perils of Naturalism: Some Reflections on Daniel J. Boorstin's Approach to American History
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN STUDIES Association, reiterates advice of another esteemed guardian of American ideals when he asks fellow historians to disenthrall themselves from high-brow angst of European culture and return home to native grounds. capture full flavor of their society, William Dean Howells told writers to consider smiling aspects of life which are the more American; to recapture raw materials of our pa…
Designing the Industrial State: The Intellectual Pursuit of Collectivism in America, 1880-1940
Journal Article Designing the Industrial State: The Intellectual Pursuit of Collectivism in America, 1880–1940. By James Gilbert. (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1972. ix + 335 pp. Notes, note on sources, and index. $10.00.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 59, Issue 4, March 1973, Pages 1016–1018, https://…
Socialism and American Development
The Terrors of Ideological Politics: Liberal Historians in a Conservative Mode
Visions of Chaos and Visions of Order: Dos Passos as Historian
T HROUGHOUT HIS ACTIVE LITERARY LIFE John Dos Passos was intrigued by the pull of history on the mind of modern man. As a youth at Harvard he felt the fascination of Froude, Gibbon, and Pater; and in student essays he held up Renaissance culture and agrarian Spain as norms against which America's worship of industrial progress might be questioned. During the first decade of his literary career, however, the demands of historical understanding did…
Fascists, Nazis and American Minds: Perceptions and Preconceptions
The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left
Journal Article The New Conservatives: A Critique from the Left. Ed. by Lewis A. Coser and Irving Howe. (New York: Quadrangle, 1974. viii + 343 pp. Notes. $9.95.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 62, Issue 2, September 1975, Pages 477–479, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903367 Published: 01 September 19…
Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History
Journal Article Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History. By John P. Diggins. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975. xvii + 522 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $20.00.) Get access Stow Persons Stow Persons University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 3, December 1976, Pages 764–765, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887440 Published: …
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed
Journal Article Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed. By Robert A. Rosenstone. (New York: Knopf, 1975. xxvii + 430 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $15.00.) Get access John P. Diggins John P. Diggins University of California, Irvine Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 1, June 1976, Pages 172–173, https://doi.org/10.2307/1909061 Publish…
Conservatism: The Impassioned Sentiment
Slavery, Race, and Equality: Jefferson and the Pathos of the Enlightenment
in 1785, referring to the privately printed Notes on the State of Virginia. cannot now say much about it, Adams continued, I think it will do its Author and his Country great Honour. The Passages upon slavery, are worth Diamonds. They will have more effect than Volumes written by Philosophers.' For almost two centuries American historians have ignored Adams' advice on the significance of the passages on slavery contained in Jefferson's random Not…
From Left to Right
History in a Kolko's Nest
Animism and the Origins of Alienation: The Anthropological Perspective of Thorstein Veblen
To Marxists familiar with his work Thorstein Veblen poses great question mark. His trenchant analysis of economic orthodoxy matched by his equally trenchant analysis of dialectical materialism; and if he sardonically critical of the capitalist ethic of individualism, he no less skeptical of the Marxist doctrine of class struggle.' Veblen remains an ideological enigma, man of the Left who easier to celebrate than to classify. Ever since he made hi…
The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory
Journal Article The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory. By John P. Diggins. (New York: Seabury, 1978. xiii + 257 pp. Notes and index. $14.95.) Get access Frederic Cople Jaher Frederic Cople Jaher University of Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 65, Issue 3, December 1978, Pages 814–815, https://doi.org/10.2307/1901493 Published: 01 December…
The Bard of Savagery; Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory
Political science (49 works) · History (38 works) · Law (36 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Philosophy (34 works) · History (30 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (27 works) · Philosophy (25 works) · Epistemology (18 works)