Edward Shils

Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Name: Edward Albert Shils
Birth: July 1 1910(1910-07-01) Springfield, Massachusetts
Death: January 23 1995 (aged 84) Chicago
School/tradition:
Main interests
sociology, social philosophy
Notable ideas
Role of intellectuals in society
Influences	Influenced
Max Weber, Louis Wirth, Talcott Parsons	Talcott Parsons, Saul Bellow, Joseph Epstein, Jerzy Zubrzycki

Edward Albert Shils (July 1, 1910 – January 23, 1995) was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and an influential sociologist. He was known for his research on the role of intellectuals and their relations to power and public policy. His work was honored in 1983 when he was awarded the Balzan Prize. In 1979, he was selected by the National Council on the Humanities to give the Jefferson Lecture, the highest award given by the U.S. federal government for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Life

Edward Shils was born on July 1, 1910 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he went to high school. While still in high school he became fascinated by the works of German sociologist Max Weber, an interest that continued throughout his career.

His undergraduate degree, awarded from the University of Pennsylvania in 1931, was in French literature. He worked as a social worker prior to beginning his career in sociology at the University of Chicago.

Shils was "a Jewish agnostic, raised in Quaker Philadelphia, matured in Baptist Chicago, and committed to secular reason," a private person whose interests took him around the world many times over.

He married historian Irene Coltman in England in December, 1951. They had one son, Adam. Shils later divorced Irene.

Shils had a fraught relationship with Saul Bellow, a colleague at the University of Chicago who also served on the Committee on Social Thought. Shils served as his "mentor, character model and editor" and figures prominently in many of Bellow's novels, including Mr. Sammler's Planet (Artur Sammler), Humboldt's Gift (Professor Durnwald), and Ravelstein (Rakhmiel Kogon). Artur Sammler and Professor Durnwald are both described glowingly, but in Ravelstein the Shils character is treated with "animosity [that] reaches lethal proportions" following a falling out between the two.

Edward Shils died on January 23, 1995 at his home in Chicago, at the age of 84. He was survived by his son and daughter-in-law, Adam and Carrie Shils of Chicago; a grandson, Sam Shils; and a nephew, Edward Benjamin Shils, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania

Work

Shils came to the attention of Louis Wirth, a distinguished sociologist at the University of Chicago, who hired him as a research assistant. Thereafter, Shils became recognized as an outstanding teacher in the field of sociology. His knowledge of the literatures of numerous cultures and fields was deemed to be impressive. He taught sociology, social philosophy, social thought, and other subjects although he did not have a formal degree in those fields.

He served with the British Army and the United States Office of Strategic Services during World War II. This experience, which included interrogating German prisoners-of-war, informed his interest in "the primary group," the lowest body in organized society, and the idea of the social function of tradition. While his contemporaries regarded tradition as irrational inheritance from the more primitive past, Shils saw in tradition the basis for continuity of both rational and irrational thought. In his dismay at the rejection of tradition by the focus on freedom, progress, and rationality which led to the degeneration of Western Liberalism into individualism, he found in the scientific community a group of intellectuals he could admire. His interactions with scientists involved in development of atomic bombs in World War II, led to the launching of the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences with dual missions:

One mission was to urge fellow scientists to help shape national and international policy. A second mission was to help the public understand what the bombings meant for humanity. His work was honored in 1983 when he was awarded the Balzan Prize.

Shils was the founder and editor of Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, the world's leading journal of the social, administrative, political, and economic problems of science and scholarship. He also was a co-founder of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Considered an "academic of renown in his own time," after his death, Shils was lauded by numerous colleagues for his scholarship: "He was a scholar of the highest eminence. ... He made great contributions to all the humanistic sciences" (Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, former professor of Greek at Oxford University). According to The Times Higher Education Supplement:

He is essentially an intellectual's intellectual and scarcely a single corner of the Western cultural tradition has not benefited from the illumination afforded by his penetrating and often pungent attention.

He was known as a formidable force in the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, and an exacting dissertation advisor:

If you wrote a dissertation under Edward, you were sent to the south of England, thence to Sumatra and back, but when you were done, you really knew everything about your subject. Many a student must have left his apartment, heart weighted down with a list of another thirty tomes he would have to plough through and head spinning from having discovered that, to take the next logical step in his studies, he would have to learn Polish.

His students learned many things from Shils, including how best to peel an orange:

One begins by cutting off both ends of the orange. One then cuts roughly six segments in the jacket. Then one strips away, easily enough, the jacket segments. ... Like the Shils method for writing a dissertation, it appears at first the long way round, but the reward comes in the satisfaction one feels at project's end.

A large photo of Shils hangs in the Shils Reading Room at the University of Chicago's Social Science Research Building, a reminder of his many years of service to that educational institution, fittingly present where subsequent generations of scholars can at least glimpse the vast knowledge he had gained through his reading.

Major Works

• Toward a General Theory of Action. with Talcott Parsons. Harvard University Press, 1951.
• The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policies. The Free Press, 1956.
• The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation. Mouton, 1961.
• Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory. with Talcott Parsons, Kaspar D. Naegele, and Jesse R. Pitts. The Free Press, 1961.
• The Constitution of Society. University of Chicago Press, 1972.
• The Intellectuals and the Powers, and Other Essays (Selected Papers Volume 1). University of Chicago Press, 1972.
• Center and Periphery: Essays in Macro-sociology (Selected Papers Volume 2). University of Chicago Press, 1975.
• The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning (Selected Papers Volume 3). University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1981.
• The Calling of Education: "The Academic Ethic" and Other Essays on Higher Education. The University of Chicago Press, 1997.
• The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society. Liberty Fund Inc., 1997.
• Order of Learning: Essays on the Contemporary University. Transaction Publishers, 1997.
• Portraits: A Gallery of Intellectuals. Joseph Epstein (ed.). University of Chicago Press, 1997.
• A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: The History of My Pursuit of a Few Ideas. Transaction Publishers, 2006.

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Adair-Toteff, Christopher, and Stephen Turner (eds.). The Calling of Social Thought: Rediscovering the work of Edward Shils. Manchester University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1526120052
• Ben-David, Joseph, and Terry N. Clark. Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils. University of Chicago Press, 1977. ISBN 978-0226042220

External links

All links retrieved

• Obituary: Edward Shils, Committee on Social Thought, Sociology Chicago Chronicle, February 2, 1995.
• In memoriam: Edward Shils, 1910-1995 by H.R. Trevor-Roper, The New Criterion.
• Editor's Notes re Shils University of Chicago Magazine, June 1997.
• Edward Shils International Balzan Prize Foundation.
• Remembering Edward Shils by Joseph Epstein, Commentary, October, 2019 .
• The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought The University of Chicago.

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