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From the great rift that has emerged between the United States (US) and much of
the international community in a post-9/11 social and political landscape, a
disquieting thread of schisms concerning America's political ideologies, democratic
deliberation, communication and societal discourse, have seen the academy and
public intellectuals seed the conditions for the adoption of the general view that
the US is in decline. Establishing an edifying prism through which to engage with
these and other problematic issues such as the reformulation of America's global
role in the 21st century, Tobias Endler addresses the deep core of the matter by
connecting with leading political thinkers and America's luminary intellectuals to
consider America in the midst of an intellectual renaissance, and whether this might
appropriately be taken as postmortem or rebirth.
Recognizing the work and commitment of public intellectuals as fruitful avenues for
approaching and informing the foundations of democratic ideals, Endler argues
that, "deliberative democracy in the form of comprehensive public debate
represents the most promising way for America to (re-)constitute its identity in a
world that has changed since September 11, 2001" (p. 278). Enshrining the heart of
the Habermasian concept of lifeworld, the chapters woven together present an
intellectual trade of ideas representative of the contestation evident in American
culture across the map today by depicting the manner in which "America argues
with itself," "argues about itself," and how it "goes through a permanent process of
self-legitimization and -affirmation" (p. 276). This is an exercise exacerbated by the
exigency of the US reasserting its position within world politics and heightened by
rivaling interpretations of the universalistic ambitions of a pluralistic state in a
"hopelessly plural world" (p. 276). Endler introduces the reader to the reemergence
of pessimism regarding intellectual life within the US, and reveals the dangerous
point at which the country finds itself given the state of the US population's
indifferent disposition toward American intellectual thinking and what they have to
say to the (general) public. Eminent academics are shielded by the negative
repercussions as the providers of faulty prediction, factual error, or simplification
and sweeping statements that continue to devalue the credibility of these elite (p.
15). While the contention resonates that the reputation of intellectuals has been
decaying for some time, Endler reasons that as they are once again becoming widely
respected, their voices are also becoming positively engrained within US public
discourse.Book Reviews
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Endler's grounded methodological approach processes information acquired
though academics, journalists, think tankers, and active or former politicians,
however, the author considered engagement with the nation's most prominent
intellectuals necessary for tiering the analysis of each chapter so as to combine what
Endler refers to as the "content-level" with the "conceptual level" (p. 16). Drawing
on information acquired through interviews with notable academics such as Francis
Fukuyama, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, the author informs each chapter
using a representative sample of two to three "thinkers" clustered according to their
ideological orientation. In doing so, a robust debate is cultivated and thread
through the various chapters. Within the main body of this work, Endler places the
public intellectual within the context of American society, considering the extent to
which the public intellectual is a necessary component in keeping the democratic
debate alive. The university setting is depicted as an alienated landscape that has
simultaneously fallen under extreme pressure in the same way as political
institutions and businesses. The discussion related to these thinkers is employed to
exemplify the nature in which society can benefit from the posture of public
intellectuals, and serves to express how a particular relativity of knowledge exists
that now compels the intellectual to descend from the ivory tower. Endler's
examination hosts the reality of fragmentation existing within American political
streams. Noting that that US is "far from homogeneous," a number of intellectuals
and individuals alike have moved beyond their respective political classifications (p.
45). Focusing on the neoconservative movement, which Endler reasons, "grew out of
a contradiction," the author illustrates how intellectuals analyze politics, political
roles, and scenarios in which particular states define themselves along different
lines (p. 46).
A modality of the intellectual element toward the identification of the US by
neoconservatives within the context of the post-9/11 world is a sparkling feature of
this chapter. A nexus is achieved with the case of power, ideas, and ideals as
intentional designs of self-perception and the imagery constructed to allow a nation
to engage with the world while viewing itself as the harbinger of a liberal
democratic movement. The reader comes to face the locus of moderate
conservatives, referring to their role, in part, as a "balancing act" that uncovers the
importance of considering multiple prisms of interpretation and analysis of the US
and its role after 9/11 (p. 123). Zbigniew Brzezinski hammers the point in this regard
questioning whether America can conduct a foreign policy "that avoids the pitfalls
of a beleaguered mindset but still comports with America's historically novel status
as the world's paramount power" (p. 125; Brzezinski, 2005: p. xi). Endler considers
the status of superpower as a point of controversies and a self-awarded special
status in so much as the issue of status retains competing dimensions that are
ultimately dictated by the position from which the perception is cast. Probing a
weakened desire to hold on to an idealistically charged approach to American
exceptionalism, Endler facilitates another rich exchange between leading publicCEU Political Science Journal. Vol. 8, No. 3
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intellectuals, fitting these "thinkers" and their works together as a critical step in
maintaining a debate that others have effectively trumped through accusations of
"un-Americanism" on the part of several (i.e., the Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein
quarter), and for preserving these voices as features of necessity.
Endler has made a very interesting contribution to the fields of political science and
international relations, more specifically, for structurally approaching important
debates about American identity and foreign policy as applied to the world as well
as phenomena that are hotly contested and struggling within the borders of the US
itself. This work suggests a great deal of planning and clearly shows that the author
has mined an extensive range of intellectual minds and to considerable depths in
order to deliver a synthesis of analyses from the full political spectrum within the US
today. Endler convokes an appreciable field of secondary source material with
primary source material obtained through well-orchestrated qualitative
methodologies. This multidisciplinary work, while delivering evidence that supports
the central argument addresses a number of sub-questions that adds an interesting
dimension. The discussion and enlightening perspectives marshaled within this book
make it an attractive work to thinkers within and beyond the United States so as to
make it not only relevant to the discourses taking place in other societies, but also
renders the exploration within very much timely and a piece on which members of
academic and non-academic circles alike might easily fall in the future. Broadly
appealing to an interested public as much as it is to members of the academic
community, Endler's work is a reminder, not exclusively through its literary
accessibility, that the connection points between the public and scholarship should
not only be preserved, but also strengthened in order to reconsider the role of the
intellectual withinAmerican society today and tomorrow.