ABSTRACT
The title of Professor Irving Louis Horowitz’s book is worthy of attention. This is so because the term of preference, indeed the term of fashion in academic writing, is “de-construction.” The ideological roots of conservatism are partially located, says Horowitz, in the attempt to reconcile two opposed attitudes toward life: the heroic and the moral, the former associated with self-expression, the latter with self-denial. Some conservatives such as the Southern Agrarians might object to the Nietzschean cast he gives to the heroic and the moral and then his attribution of the opposition between the two to conservatism. Practitioners of all social sciences must become aware of the normative element in their work; they must also put aside the smug pretense of being value-free. Perhaps recognition of the normative aspect at the heart of science will guard against the seductions of political action. Horowitz’s book should encourage self-restraint among ideologues of both the left and the right.
