Edward Shils

The Order of Learning considers the problems facing higher education by focusing on main underlying factors: the relationship of higher education to government, academic freedom, and the responsibilities of the academic profession, among others. Edward Shils argues that higher education has a central role in society, and that distractions, such as pressures from government, disinterest of students and faculty in education, and involvement of institutions of higher learning in social questions, have damaged higher education by deflecting it from its commitment to teaching, learning, and research. Shils believes that the modern university must be steadfast in its commitment to the pursuit of truth, the education of students, and the provision of research. Universities should not be all things to all people. On one hand, the academic community must understand the essential mission of the university and resist distractions. On the other, government must provide the necessary support to higher education, even when the immediate "pay-off" is not self-evident. This book provides a refreshing new perspective precisely by taking a traditional stance on the role of higher education in modern society. It includes carefully researched and elegantly written essays on many of the central issues facing education today. This work will be of great interest to educators and students alike, as well as those interested in the future of higher education in the United States.

Essays on the Contemporary University

The Order of Learning

Peter Davison

Rolf Meyersohn

Media

Uses of Literacy

Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation-by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators-so wildly directed against the "enemy." Mr. Shils's examination of a recurring American characteristic is as timely as ever. "Brief...lucid... brilliant."-American Political Science Review. "A fine, sophisticated analysis of American social metabolism."-New Republic. "An excitingly lucid and intelligent work on a subject of staggering importance...the social preconditions of political democracy."-Social Forces.

The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies

The Torment of Secrecy

Carmen Blacker

Portraits of twelve outstanding women who lived and worked in Cambridge before women were admitted to the University.

Twelve Portraits

Cambridge Women

Edward Shils was one of the giants of sociological theory in the period after World War II. In this autobiography, written three years before his death in 1995, Shils reflects on the remarkable range of his life's work and activities, including founding and editing the journal "Minerva", being a central figure in the Congress of Cultural Freedom, serving as a founding member of the editorial board of "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists", and being a member of the International Council on the Future of the University. Shils recognizes that a unity of concern runs through his many theoretical writings and activities. Early in his life, the concern was expressed as understanding the character of consensus. During the last fifteen years of his life, he refined his understanding of consensus through investigation of the nature of "collective self-consciousness." That concern was the structure and character of the moral order of a society, and, in particular, liberal, democratic society. Accompanying the autobiography are two unpublished essays, "Society, Collective Self-Consciousness and Collective Self-Consciousnesses" and "Collective Self-Consciousness and Rational Choice," two areas of intellectual concern discussed in the autobiography. The book contains fascinating discussion of many of the people Shils knew throughout his illustrious career: Robert Park, Louis Wirth, Talcott Parsons, Karl Mannheim, Michael Polanyi, Audrey Richards, Karl Popper, Robert Merton, and many others. They represent Shils' final formulations on the character of society and its moral order. As such, it is a most important contribution both to the history of the social sciences in the twentieth century and to sociological theory.

The History of My Pursuit of a Few Ideas

A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography

Tradition, by esteemed sociologist Edward Shils, was the first book to fully explore the history, significance, and future of tradition as a whole. Intent on questioning the meaning of the antitraditionalist impulse in today's society, Shils argues here that the tendency to distrust and rebel against tradition is at the heart of tradition itself; only through suspicion and defiance does tradition actually move forward. Revealing the importance of tradition to social and political institutions, technology, science, literature, religion, and scholarship, Tradition remains the definitive work on this vital element of our society. "Shils is a man of fabled learning, whose mind purrs powerfully like the moth at dusk. I hesitate to use the word conservative of him because it misses the central concern of his work, which is not conservatism, but the conservation of those human resources and achievements which are richest, and matter most."—David A. Martin, Times Literary Supplement "Tradition is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject that encompasses the totality of tradition in all its multifaceted variables and functions. . . . It is a landmark analytical and theoretical sociological study that not only fills a need but also provides a basic model and impetus for further research."—H. Leon Abrams Jr., Sociology

Tradition

Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation—by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators—so wildly directed against the "enemy." Mr. Shils's examination of a recurring American characteristic is as timely as ever. "Brief...lucid... brilliant."—American Political Science Review. "A fine, sophisticated analysis of American social metabolism."—New Republic. "An excitingly lucid and intelligent work on a subject of staggering importance...the social preconditions of political democracy."—Social Forces.

The Background and Consequences of American Secruity Policies

A discussion of sociological theory includes examinations of the organization of mass society, the influence of the intellectual community on social structures, and the self-image of society

The Constitution of Society

Max Weber

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Edward Shils

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