'Eric Hoffer' (
July 25 1898 –
May 21 1983) was an American social
writer. He produced ten books and was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by
President of the United States Ronald Reagan. His first book, ''
The True Believer'', published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen.
[1] This book, which he considered his best, established his reputation. He remained a successful writer for most of his remaining years.
Life
Hoffer was born in
New York City, the son of
German immigrants. By the age of five, he could read in both
German and
English. When he was age seven, his mother fell down a flight of stairs with Eric in her arms. Hoffer went blind for unknown medical reasons but later in life he said he thought it might have been due to trauma. ("I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and for a time my memory")[Truth Imagined pg 1]. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was fifteen. Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, but Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading.
His mother had already died shortly after the fall down the flight of stairs (Eric carried a scar on his forehead from the fall), however, his father also died while he was still a young man - within a year after he regained his sight. The carpenter's union buried his dad and gave him a little over three hundred dollars. He was homeless, uneducated and unskilled. Seeking opportunity, and an occupation that would allow him to read constantly, Hoffer made his way across the country to
California. He arrived in 1920, and spent the next 10 years on skid row working odd jobs and reading the nearby libraries.
In 1931 he attempted suicide by drinking a solution of
oxalic acid, but this failed, as he could not bring himself to swallow the poison. The experience gave him a new determination to live adventurously. It was then he left skid row and become a migrant worker. Following the harvests up and down the coast of California, he had library cards for each town near the fields where he worked. It was also during these years, while sluicing for gold one winter, that he found the desire to write after reading Michael de Montaigne's Essays. His experiences as a migratory worker would later become the basis for "Truth Imagined," a belated autobiography (Belated because Margaret Anderson had asked him to write about himself prior to his first book,"The True Believer").
Hoffer attempted to enlist in the Armed forces in 1942, but was rejected due to a hernia. Fighting this setback he went to
San Francisco to work at the
Naval Shipyard in support the war effort in whatever way he could. Instead he was hired as a stevedore. It was there he felt at home and finally settled. He continued reading voraciously and soon began to write while earning a living loading and unloading ships. He continued working as a longshoreman until retirement at 65.
Despite his often strenuous daily work, he managed to read more books than many academics, and may well have been the best read person in modern times. Hoffer considered his best work to be "The True Believer." It was a landmark piece that explained the essence of human behavior related to social and mass movements (and also explains other unchanging traits of the human condition). His book, "The Ordeal of Change" is also a literary favorite. It's believed Hoffer saw what other philosophers couldn't because unlike the others, he was from the working class, and not from the cultural elite. Despite authoring ten books he continued to live a simple life.
In 1970 he set up an annual prize for literature at the University of California, Berkeley (known as The Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize). In short, his life spanned the breadth from a homeless uneducated indigent to a notable and world read philosopher honored by the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Longshoreman Philosopher wrote:
''The True Believer,''
''The Passionate State of Mind,''
''The Ordeal of Change,''
''The Temper of Our Time,''
''Working And Thinking On The Waterfront,''
''First Things, Last Things,''
''Reflections of the Human Condition,''
''In Our Time,''
''Before The Sabbath,''
''Between The Devil and the Dragon'' and,
''Truth Imagined.''
Hoffer's working class roots and "intellectuals"
Hoffer drew confidence and inspiration from his modest roots and
working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote:
:::My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight,
:::in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch.
:::Towns are too distracting.
Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the allegedly
anti-American academics of the West. He believed
academics craved power but were denied it in the
democratic countries of the West (though not in
totalitarian countries, which Hoffer understood to be an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence.
Though Hoffer did not identify with "
liberal intellectuals" and often criticized the radical ideology of many activists of the
New Left, it would be wrong to characterize Hoffer's thinking as "conservative". Rather, his structural approach to analyzing and understanding mass movements and their ideologies often led Hoffer to consistently nonideological positions. As he said, "my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree." When called an intellectual, he insisted that he was a longshoreman. He has since become known as the "longshoreman philosopher."
On the nature and origins of mass movements
Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of
self-esteem to psychological well-being. While most recent writers focus on the benefits of a positive self-esteem, Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of
Adolf Hitler and
Josef Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He discovered that
fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in ''The True Believer'', a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life.
The mass movements discussed in ''The True Believer'' include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of
Islam and
Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements which are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming
Paul, a fanatical Christian himself. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that he or she is part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities.
Hoffer's work was original, staking out new ground largely ignored by dominant academic trends of his time. In particular, Hoffer's work was completely non-
Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was confined to the Freudian paradigm. In avoiding the academic
mainstream, he managed to avoid the straitjacket of established thought. Many argue Hoffer's lack of a formal University education contributed to his independent thought, with his book remaining an insightful classic today. Hoffer appeared on Public Television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on
CBS with
Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views.
Other writings
Hoffer's insights into the consequences of a lack of self-esteem also informed his later writings. His 1963 book ''The Ordeal of Change'' discusses change and modernization in society. His 1971 book ''First Things, Last Things'' was a collection of essays published at a time in which young middle-class American youth were undergoing an increasing attraction to mass movements, whether political, religious, or subcultural, as well as a rapid increase in youth crime. In these and other books, Hoffer continued to build upon his earlier insights. In Hoffer's view, rapid change is not a positive thing for a society, and too rapid change can cause a regression in maturity for those who were brought up in a very different society than what that society has become. He noted that in the 1960s America had many young adults still living in extended adolescence. Seeking to explain the attraction of the New Left protest movements, he characterized them as the result of widespread affluence which, in his words, "is robbing a modern society of whatever it has left of puberty rites to routinize the attainment of manhood." He sees these puberty rites as essential for self-esteem, and notes that mass movements and juvenile mindsets tend to go together to the point that anyone, no matter what age, who joins a mass movement immediately begins to exhibit juvenile behavior. He further notes that the reason working class Americans did not by and large join in the 1960s protest movements and subcultures was they had entry into meaningful labor as an effective rite of passage out of adolescence, while both the very poor on welfare and the affluent are, in his words "prevented from having a share in the world's work and of proving their manhood by doing a man's work and getting a man's pay" and thus remained in a state of extended adolescence, lacking in necessary self-esteem, and prone to joining mass movements as a form of compensation. Hoffer suggested that this need for meaningful work as a rite of passage into adulthood could be fulfilled with a 2-year civilian national service program (not unlike the earlier programs during the Depression such as the
Civilian Conservation Corps), in which all young adults would do two years of work in fields such as
construction or
natural resources work. He writes: "The routinization of the passage from boyhood to manhood would contribute to the solution of many of our pressing problems. I cannot think of any other undertaking that would dovetail so many of our present difficulties into opportunities for growth."
Unpublished writings
Hoffer's papers, including 131 of the notebooks he carried in his pockets, were acquired in 2000 by the
Hoover Institution Archives. Because Hoffer cultivated an
aphoristic style, the unpublished notebooks (dated from
1949 to
1977) contain very significant work. Available for scholarly study since at least
2003, little of their contents has yet been published. A selection of fifty aphorisms, focusing on the development of unrealized human talents through the
creative process, appeared in the July 2005 issue of ''
Harper's Magazine''.
[2]
Bibliography
:1951 ''
The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements'' ISBN 0-06-050591-5
:1955 ''The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms'' ISBN 1-933435-09-7
:1963 ''The Ordeal Of Change'' ISBN 1-933435-10-0
:1967 ''The Temper Of Our Time''
:1969 ''Working And Thinking on The Waterfront; a journal, June 1958-May 1959''
:1971 ''First Things, Last Things''
:1973 ''Reflections on the Human Condition'' ISBN 1-933435-14-3
:1976 ''In Our Time''
:1979 ''Before the Sabbath''
:1982 ''Between the devil and the dragon : the best essays and aphorisms of Eric Hoffer'' ISBN 0-06-014984-1
:1983 ''Truth Imagined'' ISBN 1-933435-01-1
Books on Hoffer
★ ''Eric Hoffer; an American Odyssey'' Tomkins, Calvin, New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1968 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Part of Twayne's United States authors series
★ ''Hoffer's America'', Koerner, James D., La Salle, Ill., Library Press, 1973 ISBN 0-912050-45-4
★ ''Eric Hoffer'', Baker, James Thomas. Boston : Twayne, 1982 ISBN 0-8057-7359-2 Twayne's United States authors series
Broadcasts
Documentary on Eric Hoffer with Eric Sevareid, CBS,
November 14,
1967
Footnotes
1. "Hoffer, Eric." Encyclopædia Britannica, from Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite CD-ROM. Copyright © 1994-2002 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. May 30 2002.
2. Tom Bethell, "Sparks: Eric Hoffer and the art of the notebook," ''Harper's Magazine'', July 2005, pp. 73-77. See also idem, "The Longshoreman Philosopher", ''Hoover Digest'', 2003.
External links
★
The Eric Hoffer Award, home of the international literary and book prize
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The Eric Hoffer Resource, a fan site with links, quotations, and reviews
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Eric Hoffer Home Page, publisher for Eric Hoffer reprints
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makeoutcity.com: Categories > People > EricHoffer
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Thomas Sowell:
The legacy of Eric Hoffer
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Fabilli and Hoffer Essay Prize
★
The True Believer Revisited Tim Madigan in Philosophy''Now''
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Eric Hoffer Quotes - Searchable quotes, with source citations
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Eric Hoffer Quotes
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Eric Hoffer in Russia
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