![]() ![]() By the 1970s, Hoffer was definitely not “cool.”Īs a philosopher, not merely a writer, Hoffer is supremely original. This lamentable cultural situation made Hoffer’s moral, heuristic teaching a thing of the past. This was an unprecedented move on the part of affected, academic intellectuals. Philosophical reflection in the second half of the twentieth century no longer demanded that reason make sense of man in the cosmos. ![]() Ironically, because he lived late into the twentieth century, a time that saw an explosion of professional possibilities for the chattering class, Hoffer found himself in the difficult position of remaining a solitary thinker. Positivism has infected all aspects of human life in postmodernism and reduced man to his bodily, mundane function in the world. In the absence of these staple qualities, philosophical reflection falls prey to stale, uninspired positivism. His books embody that indispensable quality that informs the thought of all great thinkers: intuition and perspicuity about the essences that inform human reality. Philosophical reflection is a vital activity that props man up to truth, regardless of where this may deliver us, for truth cannot be corralled. ![]() Rhetoric, radical skepticism, and intellectual game-playing, Hoffer asserts, defeat the point of philosophical reflection. ![]() Hoffer asks concrete and pressing questions that seek life-affirming answers. He is a philosopher in the classical sense of the word. The American philosopher, Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), is a rare thinker. ![]()
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