Paul Gottfried

Paul Edward Gottfried
Born	1941
Era	Political philosophy
Region	Western Philosophers
School	Paleoconservatism
Main interests	Welfare state, Democratic pluralism

Paul Edward Gottfried (born 1941) is the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Career

He is the author of numerous books and articles in several languages on intellectual history, paleoconservatism, ancient historiography, and political theory. Gottfried has also been a close friend of important political and intellectual figures: Richard Nixon, Pat Buchanan, John Lukacs, Christopher Lasch, Robert Nisbet, and Murray Rothbard. He is now writing his memoirs that will deal with his "encounters" with these and other personalities. He is a critic of the neoconservatives within the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Gottfried contributes frequent articles on conservative politics and has written about Jews who are critical of Zionism.

Philosophy

Much of his historical-theoretical contributions have sought to demonstrate the obsolescence of inherited political and ideological distinctions. This theme runs through his recent trilogy, which traces the rise and expansion of the democratic managerial state. His third book-length attempt to define Conservatism in America addresses the rise of "value conservatism" in a highly critical fashion. In this work, he contends that tradition arises from the practices of inter-generational communities and has nothing to do with the hawking of privileged values by talk show hosts and journalists.

Gottfried has often portrayed culture and morality in contemporary Western societies as reflections of the reach of the current political administration. He has focused on the democratic welfare state as a force of change because of its power to recode social behavior and to break down communities. He focuses especially on social engineering occurring with popular consent, and the advance of democratic pluralism.

Gottfried's political columns have been generally critical of neoconservatives, whom he associates with "global democratic idolatry" and "irresponsible name-calling". Gottfried has also accused particular neoconservatives of having kept him in 1987 from a graduate professorship at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.. Moreover, he has made references to this ominous intervention in commentaries dealing with academic freedom. He has also voiced doubts about the possibility of maintaining free institutions with the "self-obliteration" of the bourgeois society that created them. He has made no secret of his cultural and social pessimism, a trait, he has observed, that has become more acute the more he reflects on the course of Western societies during his lifetime.

Selected publications

Books

• Conservative Millenarians: The Romantic Experience in Bavaria, Fordham University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-8232-0982-8
• The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right, Northern Illinois Univ Press, 1986 ISBN 0-87580-114-5
• The Conservative Movement, Twayne Pub 1988, with Thomas Fleming (second edition 1992) ISBN 0-8057-9724-6
• Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, Greenwood Press 1990, ISBN 0-313-27209-3
• After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Princeton University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-691-08982-5
• Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy, University of Missouri Press, 2002 ISBN 0-8262-1417-7
• The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium, University of Missouri Press, 2005 ISBN 0-8262-1597-1
• Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009 ISBN 0-2306-1479-5
• Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers, ISI Books, 2009

ISBN 1-933859-99-7

Articles

• “Anti-War Anti-Americanism? ”. Telos 114 (Winter 1999). New York: Telos Press.

See also

• Paleoconservatism
• Managerial state

External links

Selected articles

• Goldbergism: The Lowest (Terminal) Stage Of Conservatism, VDare.com, March 27, 2003.
• "How Russell Kirk (And The Right) Went Wrong", VDare.com.
• My Guy: Paul Gottfried on Patrick Buchanan, Policy Review, Summer 1995.
• "What’s In A Name? The Curious Case Of Neoconservative", VDare.com.

Column archives

• LewRockwell.com
• VDARE.com
• Taki's Magazine
• AlternativeRight.com
• Peter B. Gemma, "'Old Right' Intellectual Challenges NeoConservatives", January 13, 2008

Interviews

• 2007 Interview at the Property and Freedom Society
• Interview on Germans, Jews, Catholics, and Calvinists at the Idiots