The New York Intellectuals were a group of Jewish American writers and literary critics based in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 but were also firmly anti-Stalinist

Anti-Stalinist left

The anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule...

. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...

 with Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 and Socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 while rejecting Soviet Communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 as a workable or acceptable political model.

Overview

Writers often identified as members of this group include Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

, William Barrett

William Barrett

William Barrett may refer to:*William Barrett *William Barrett *William Barrett , American philosopher and critic*William A. Barrett , American politician and a member of the Democratic Party...

, Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus at Harvard University, best known for his seminal contributions to the study of post-industrialism...

, Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

, Marshall Berman

Marshall Berman

Marshall Berman is an American philosopher and Marxist Humanist writer. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaching Political Philosophy and Urbanism.-Biography:An alumnus of...

, Richard Chase

Richard Chase

Richard Trenton Chase was a United States serial killer who killed six people in the span of a month in Sacramento, California...

, Nathan Glazer

Nathan Glazer

Nathan Glazer is an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley and for several decades at Harvard University...

, Clement Greenberg

Clement Greenberg

Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...

, Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...

, Sidney Hook

Sidney Hook

Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...

, Irving Howe

Irving Howe

Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...

, Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin

Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....

, Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...

, Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy (author)

Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...

, Dwight Macdonald

Dwight Macdonald

Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...

, William Phillips

William Phillips (editor)

William Phillips was an American editor, writer, and public intellectual, who co-founded the Partisan Review. Together with co-editor Philip Rahv, Phillips made the Partisan Review into one of the foremost journals of politics, literature, and the arts, particularly from the 1930s through the 1950s...

, Norman Podhoretz

Norman Podhoretz

Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...

, Philip Rahv

Philip Rahv

Philip Rahv was an American literary critic and essayist.-Life:...

, Harold Rosenberg

Harold Rosenberg

Harold Rosenberg was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. The term was first employed in Rosenberg's essay "American Action Painters" published in the December 1952 issue of...

, Isaac Rosenfeld

Isaac Rosenfeld

Isaac Rosenfeld was a Jewish-American writer who became a prominent member of the New York literary elite...

, Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer from Brooklyn, New York.-Biography:Schwartz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, Harry and Rose, both Romanian Jews, separated when Schwartz was nine, and their divorce had a profound effect on him. Later, in 1930,...

, Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

, Harvey Swados

Harvey Swados

Harvey Swados was an American social critic and author of novels, short stories, essays and journalism.-Family and Early Life:...

, Diana Trilling

Diana Trilling

Diana Trilling was an American literary critic and author, one of the New York Intellectuals. Born Diana Rubin, she married the literary and cultural critic Lionel Trilling in 1929....

, Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...

, Michael Walzer

Michael Walzer

Michael Walzer is a prominent American political philosopher and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he is co-editor of Dissent, an intellectual magazine that he has been affiliated with since his years as an undergraduate at...

, and Robert Warshow

Robert Warshow

Robert Warshow was an American author, a critic and essayist, who wrote about film and popular culture for Commentary magazine and The Partisan Review in the mid-20th century...

.

Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 ("Harvard of the Proletariat"), New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 and Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in the 1930s, and associated with the left-wing political journals the Partisan Review

Partisan Review

Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...

, Commentary

Commentary (magazine)

Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...

, and Dissent

Dissent (magazine)

Dissent is a quarterly magazine focusing on politics and culture edited by Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin. The magazine is published for the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc by the University of Pennsylvania Press....

. Writer Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Lemann

Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is dean and Henry R. Luce professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.Lemann is from New Orleans and he graduated from Harvard University in 1976, but has never attended a school of journalism. He is a journalist, editor, and author...

 has described these intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...

".

Some, including Kristol, Hook, and Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of Neoconservatism

Neoconservatism

Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....

.

External links

• Lives of the New York intellectuals by Robert Fulford in The Globe & Mail
• The Failure of the New York Intellectuals by Daniel Silliman in Comment
  Comment
  A comment is generally a verbal or written remark often related to an added piece of information, or an observation or statement. These are usually marked with an abbreviation, such as "obs." or "N.B."...
  
  
• Arguing the World, the PBS
  Public Broadcasting Service
  The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
  
  documentary