"“Postwar” is first-rate political, economic, and social history. The only sections that are unworthy of the author’s talents are the brief ventures into intellectual history, and the proverbial British prudishness about abstract ideas may have something to do with this. As a reference to the philosopher Jacques Derrida as “the literary critic Jacques Derrida” suggests, Judt has no patience for Continental thought, whose prominence, such as it was, he tends to attribute to a combination of fashionableness and ambition."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandEssayists from EnglandJews from the United KingdomUniversity of Cambridge facultyEducators from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Louis Menand, "From the Ashes", New Yorker (2005)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tony_Judt
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt (2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history.
129 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Tony Judt →
Related Quotes
"Some people, myself included, advocated foreign intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo while opposing our adventure in Ira…"
"My concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining …"
"What, then, is to be done? We have to begin with the state: as the incarnation of collective interests, collective pu…"
"I was brought up on English food. But not fish and chips, spotted dick, toad in the hole, Yorkshire pud, or other del…"
"We don’t live in a world of fixed historical laws that says the—as you describe it—liberal state was born at a partic…"
"What’s missing from public conversation and public policy conversation is precisely a sort of moral underpinning, a s…"
"One of the very few things that I know I believe strongly is that we must learn how to make a better world out of usa…"
"Where does that leave me? Trying, as usual, to square general truths with particular circumstances. That’s the differ…"
"God knows I can think of enough things that I did wrong both personally and as part of my cohort. But I never abandon…"
"It is the liberals, then, who count. They are, as it might be, the canaries in the sulphurous mineshaft of modern dem…"