The Rhetoric of Reaction

Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy

Albert O. Hirschman

    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 Hirschman has 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 Gambetta, Times Higher Education Supplement

    Events, and the example of a thinker like Hirschman, 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 Hawthorn, New Republic

    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 Wolfe, Contemporary Sociology

    A brilliant and beautifully written book. It is breathtakingly simple, yet deep with implications...Hirschman provides a kind of Reader's Guide to Reactionary Culture.
       --Stephen Holmes, University of Chicago

    It is a marvelously intelligent and original and provocative volume, marked by Hirschman'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

  • Cover: The Rhetoric of Reaction

Albert O. Hirschman is Professor of Social Science, Emeritus, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, following a career of prestigious appointments, honors, and awards. Perhaps the most widely known and admired of his many books are Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Harvard) and The Passions and the Interests (Princeton).