Search results for ""Author Edward Shils""

"Tradition", by esteemed sociologist Edward Shils, was the first book to fully explore the history, significance, and future of tradition as a whole. Intent on questioning the meaning of the antitraditionalist impulse in today's society, Shils argues here that the tendency to distrust and rebel against tradition is at the heart of tradition itself; only through suspicion and defiance does tradition actually move forward. Revealing the importance of tradition to social and political institutions, technology, science, literature, religion, and scholarship, "Tradition" remains the definitive work on this vital element of our society.

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Edward Shils's attempt to work out a macrosociological theory which does justice both to the spiritual and intellectual dispositions and powers of the mind and to the reality of the larger society is an enterprise that has spanned several decades. In his steps toward the development of this theory he has not proceeded deductively; rather he has worked from his own concrete observations of Western, Asian, and African societies. Thus, despite the inevitable abstractness of marcrosociological theory, the papers in this volume—which have been published separately since the Second World War—have a quality of vivid substantiality that makes the theoretical statements they present easier to comprehend. Professor Shils has attempted to develop a theory that has a place for more than those parts of society that are generated from the biological nature of human beings and those parts that are engendered by the desires of individuals, acting for themselves or for groups and categories of individuals, to maintain and increase their power over other human beings and to secure material goods and services for themselves. He has argued that there are constituents of society in which human beings seek and cultivate connections with objects that transcend those needed to satisfy biological necessity and the desire for material objects and power over others. This third stratum of social existence, he concludes, cannot be reduced to the other two and cannot be disregarded in any serious attempt to understand the function of any society. Thus Edward Shils, without disregarding its many valuable achievements, has nevertheless parted ways with much of modern sociology. For this collection of papers the author has written an introductory intellectual autobiography that places each essay in the setting of the development of his thought and that connects it with his other writings.

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Throughout his long career, Edward Shils brought a wide knowledge of academic institutions to discussions about higher education. "The Calling of Education" features Shils's most incisive writing on this topic from the last 25 years of his life. The first essay, "The Academic Ethic," articulates the unique ethical demands of the academic profession and directs special attention to the integration of teaching and research. Other pieces, including Shils's renowned Jefferson lectures, focus on perennial issues in higher learning: the meaning of academic freedom, the connection between universities and the state, and the criteria for appointing individuals to academic positions. Edward Shils understood the university as a great symphonic conductor comprehends the value of each instrument and section, both separately and in co-operation. "The Calling of Education" offers Shils's insightful perspective on problems that are no less pressing than when he first confronted them.

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Ranging widely across many disciplines, this collection of essays demonstrates a distaste for intellectuals who "run with the intellectual mob", and a deep respect for those who maintain their integrity under great pressure. The collection includes an affectionate treatment of Leo Szilard, the physicist whose involvement with the development of the atomic bomb led him to work towards addressing its social consequences; a discussion of the educational philosophy of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University of Chicago's fifth, and most controversial, president; an account of the Polish emigre Leopold Labedz's outspoken resistance to communism, and an essay on Indian writer Nirad Chaudhuri. Many of these essays have appeared in "The American Scholar", edited by Joseph Epstein, who introduces this volume with his own portrait of Edward Shils.

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