ABSTRACT
Ideas are the core of Stanley Hoffmann whole approach to the study of political reality, and, despite a kind of congenital skepticism that can sometimes seem gloomily pessimistic; he is committed to ideals, to maintaining a belief in the possibility of progress and reform. In Gulliver’s Troubles, Primacy or World Order, Dead Ends, and countless essays, Stanley always sought to identify how American ideas, ideals and historical experience at home and abroad color US behavior in the world arena. If Stanley’s perspective has made him an energetic interlocutor in the often wrenching policy conflicts between America and France, his devotion to the study of political culture and history has helped produce impressive scholarship on French ideas, ideals, passions and leadership. Leadership and choice, so denigrated by prevailing theories, must be studied, if the errors of recent American scholarly parochialism are to be corrected, as Miles Kahler indicates.
