The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
The Rhetoric of Reactionis a study of the reactionary's tool kit, identifying the standard objections to any and all proposals for reform...Hirschman's work changes how you see the world. It illuminates yesterday, today, and tomorrow... There can be no question about his most characteristic [book]:The Rhetoric of Reaction. The sustained attack on intransigence, the bias in favor of hope, the delight in paradox, the insistence on the creative power of doubt--all these prove a lot of people wrong. (Cass R. SunsteinNew York Review of Books2013-05-23)Events, and the example of a thinker likeHirschman, make it possible at least to hope that the finer side of the Enlightenment--that is, a skeptical but optimistic engagement with the world as it is, as distinct from blindingly overexcited visions of how it might be, if only progressives would stop interfering with it--could soon have its day. (Geoffrey HawthornNew Republic)Propelled by an ecumenical motive--to explain the 'massive, stubborn, and exasperating otherness of others', in this case conservative thinkers--and guided, as he himself muses, by 'an inbred urge toward symmetry',Albert Hirschmanhas written an enjoyable and profound book. He argues that a triplet of 'rhetorical' criticisms--perversity, futility, and jeopardy--'has been unfailingly leveled' by 'reactionaries' at each major progressive reform of the past 300 years--those T. H. Marshall identified with the advancement of civil, political and social rights of citizenship...Charmingly written, this book can benefit a diverse readership. (Diego GambettaTimes Higher Education Supplement)Albert Hirschman's gift to intellectual history is his capacity to subsume complex ideas under simple--indeed smaller than bumper-sticker-size--labels. Mention the word exit at any gathering of social scientists, and everyone will free-associate with the idea that complex organizations and processes renew themselves because people will leave for opportunities elsewhere instead of remaining and fighting for change. Likewise not only with voice and loyalty but also with passions and interests. There is no contemporary social scientist anywhere in the world who has said more (profound) things in fewer (elegant) words than Albert Hirschman. New candidates for inclusion in the Hirschmanian lexicon are perversity, futility, and jeopardy... Hirschman is a master of our art. (Alan WolfeContemporary Sociology)It is a marvelously intelligent and original and provocative volume, marked byHirschman's usual qualities of intellectual playfulness and deep commitment to liberal values... The reader has a sense of being in the presence of a brilliant mind and of a writer at the top of his form. (Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University)A brilliant and beautifully written book. It is breathtakingly simple, yet deep with implications...Hirschmanprovides a kind of Reader's Guide to Reactionary Culture. (Stephen Holmes, University of Chicago)