Lewis Samuel Feuer (December 7, 1912 – November 24, 2002) was an American sociologist. Initially a committed

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

, he became a neo-conservative.

Life

Feuer was born in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, grew up on the Lower East Side, and attended DeWitt Clinton High school. He graduated from City College with distinction in 1931, and was awarded a Ph. D. at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1935. for a dissertation in philosophy entitled "The philosophical analysis of space and time", supervised by

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...

. While at Harvard, Feuer joined Paul and Alan Sweezy in founding the Harvard Teachers Union. This represents one obvious example of his persistent involvement in radical politics throughout the 1930s. During World War II, he served as a liaison between the American and French Armies on

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, where he was demoted for attempting to organize the indentured Indochinese and Indonesian coolie laborers who were being used to build an airstrip for the Free French forces. After World War II he taught at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...

and the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

, where he early witnessed some of the student unrest about which he was to write. He constantly challenged the leaders of the student movement and appeared in a widely publicized debate with student leader Mario Savio. He left Berkeley to go to the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. His last teaching position was as University Professor at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, and was Professor Emeritus at the time of his death in 2002. Feuer visited the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

during one of the first academic exchanges in the period after Stalin's death, often referred to as " the Thaw" and was expelled for challenging Soviet orthodoxies regarding Marxist thought. His experiences at Berkeley, where he challenged left wing student movements and professors who ceded to their demands, led Feuer to reject left wing, radical politics and he wrote continuously after this period about the corrupting influences of ideology on thought, the dangers of totalitarianism in the modern world and the role of the United States as a bulwark against tyranny and authoritarianism in the modern world. His edited collection, ''Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy'' (1959) is one of the most widely used readers on Marxian thought ever published. Politically, he was closely allied with the philosophical anti-communism of

Sidney Hook Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth ...

. His work ranged across a wide range of fields such as Marxist and neo-Marxist thought, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of science, sociological theory, ideology and intellectuals, the history of ideas, the

sociology of generations Theory of generations (or sociology of generations) is a theory posed by Karl Mannheim in his 1928 essay,Das Problem der Generationen" and translated into English in 1952 as "The Problem of Generations." This essay has been described as "the mos ...

, the history and sociology of Jews and Judaism, and philosophy. He was one of the earliest interpreters of the relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy and produced many studies of the psychoanalytic dimensions of ideology and intellectual life. His extensive knowledge of the more arcane intricacies of Marx's life and a deep love of the fictional character of

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...

were the basis for a novel entitled ''The Case of the Revolutionists Daughter: Sherlock Holmes Meets Karl Marx'' (1983). The novel can be read as a critique of Marx's personal moral failings, which call into question his philosophy and politics. After rejecting Marxism, Feuer reportedly adopted the mantra, "For Hegel, I would not give a bagel."

Works

*''Spinoza and the Rise Of Liberalism'' (1951) *''Psychoanalysis and Ethics'' (1955) *''Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels: political and philosophical writings'' (1959), editor *''The Scientific Intellectual: the psychological and sociological origins of modern science'' (1963) *''The Conflict of Generations: the character and significance of student movements'' (1969) *''Marx and the Intellectuals: a set of post-ideological essays'' (1969) *''Einstein and the Generations of Science'' (1974) *''Ideology and the Ideologists'' (1975) *''The Case of the Revolutionist's Daughter: Sherlock Holmes Meets Karl Marx'' (1983) *''Imperialism and the Anti-imperialist Mind'' (1986) *''Varieties of Scientific Experience: emotive aims in scientific hypotheses'' (1995)

Notes

External links

''New York Times'' obituaryLewis S. Feuer papers, Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections, Brandeis University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feuer, Lewis Samuel 1912 births 2002 deaths City College of New York alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni American sociologists Vassar College faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty DeWitt Clinton High School alumni Spinoza scholars Neoconservatism

Life

Works

Further reading

Notes

External links