Cold War Prophecy and the Burdens of Comparative Thought

A Case for Revisiting Louis Hartz

Bibliographic Data

ID6355751
AuthorsGordon Arlen (0000-0002-3558-7070, University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume49
Issue4
Pages548-574
Publication date2017-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3497 • E-ISSN: 1744-1684
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/693849
OpenAlexW2747950838
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited42

This article revisits Louis Hartz's distinctive contribution to American political thought. Pushing against his reputation as an overly complacent consensus historian, I highlight Hartz's forceful critique of America's liberal blindness, a critique reaching back to the Founding and culminating in an engagement with the politics of his own Cold War moment. Alarmed by the rise of McCarthyism, Hartz warned against an intensifying Americanism at home and advised increasing contact with cultures abroad in the hopes of facilitating the sense of relativity engendered by the experience of seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The result, I argue, is a genre of prophetic liberalism, which compels Americans to transcend their liberal-absolutism-cum-isolationism, and which still affirms core enlightenment values. Hartz underscores the need for political theory's comparative vocation—one that alerts Americans to crucial blind spots within their national experience

Enlightenment · Epistemology · Foreign policy · Isolationism · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Politics of the United States · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Science Research and Education · Political Theory and Influence · Religious studies

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