Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography

by John A. Hall

Overview

Ernest Gellner (1925–95) was a multilingual polymath and a public intellectual who set the agenda in the study of nationalism and the sociology of Islam. Having grown up in Paris, Prague, and England, he was also one of the last great Jewish thinkers from Central Europe to experience directly the impact of the Holocaust. His intellectual trajectory differed from that of similar thinkers, both in producing a highly integrated philosophy of modernity and in combining a respect for nationalism with an appreciation of the power of modern science. Gellner was a fierce opponent, in private as well as in public, of such contemporaries as Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. As this definitive biography shows, he was passionate in the defense of reason against every form of relativism—a battle that his intellectual inheritors continue to this day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844678457
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	06/10/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

John A. Hall is the James McGill Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at McGill University in Montreal. His books include Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, Powers and Liberties, Liberalism, Coercion and Consent, International Orders, and (with Charles Lindholm) Is America Breaking Apart? He taught at the Central European University in the early 1990s, when Gellner had returned to Prague, and gained an appreciation at that time of his background in Central Europe.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Malign Fates 1

2 A New Start 32

3 Moving Into Position 74

4 Concepts and Society 102

5 Gellner's Philosophy 131

6 Components of a Career 168

7 Knowledge and Illusion 207

8 The Shape of History 244

9 The Sociology of Islam 275

10 A General Theory of Nationalism 307

11 Cambridge and Prague 343

Epilogue 377

Index 383

Editorial Reviews

The cumulative effect is monumental—and a monument does seem overdue.”—Scott McLemee, National

“Gellner has been brought back to life—alongside his combative ideas and his maverick approach to intellectual combat—in a sympathetic but by no means reverential biography by his former pupil John A. Hall.”—Wall Street Journal

“Few books have more successfully combined the study of personal life and intellectual development in the turbulent setting of the twentieth century.”—Eric Hobsbawn, Observer Books of the Year

“John A. Hall concludes his account of Ernest Gellner by observing that his outlook on the world was austere. “But therein lies its attraction,” he goes on. “Not much real comfort for our woes is on offer; the consolations peddled in the market are indeed worthless. What Gellner offered was something more mature and demanding: cold intellectual honesty.” Brief personal impressions are rarely conclusive, especially when recalled after many years; but that Gellner was an exceptionally honest thinker is beyond reasonable doubt.”—John Gray, New Republic

“Outstanding.”—Stefan Collini, London Review of Books

“The theory of nationalism itself was Gellner’s life. John A. Hall’s admirable biography helps us to see how this is so, by providing essential biographical information and locating Gellner’s arguments within those of his interlocutors, friendly and otherwise ... Hall, more than learned enough to follow Gellner’s very broad references, is also patient with his categorical opinions.”—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

This is a fascinating biography of one of the seminal and most interesting thinkers of the later twentieth century … John Hall has done a great deal to make clear the complex background and underlying motives of this remarkable man and thinker.

Charles Taylor

Ernest Gellner was a great twentieth-century intellectual, and John Hall’s fine biography conveys a vivid sense of the man and of the extraordinary range of his ideas, while commenting with great intelligence upon them. A must read.

Michael Mann

Gellner has been brought back to life—alongside his combative ideas and his maverick approach to intellectual combat—in a sympathetic but by no means reverential biography by his former pupil John A. Hall.

Wall Street Journal