The Paul Gottfried Project, a Rundown
Biography | Festschrift | Selected Essays
I am engaged in what will likely be a multi-year project in which I will produce a trilogy of books related to the life and contributions of Paul Gottfried.
I will be sharing interesting tidbits and discoveries from his correspondence, personal writings, and photo albums as I organize them. The internal politics of the Conservative Movement itself is fascinating. Most of this will be behind a paywall; here is the archive for these posts.
As you can see in the above image, they include:
A full biography of Paul with special emphasis on his intellectual developments and contributions.
A formal festschrift organized in honor of his work. I have 24 participants across three different sections of essays (the list of participants is here).
A collection of his best essays from over the decades that constitute a sort of Paul Gottfried Reader.
I am honored that Paul is helping and cooperating with me in the production of these works. Paul has been a controversial figure in the conservative movement and yet there is so much of my own view of the political developments of our time that were influenced by his careful and nuanced mind.
As will be flushed out in the biography, Paul himself both became more right wing as the Conservative Movement became more leftwing and he had a unique ability to translate the trends of academia in the 60s and 70s into a vision of the coming twenty-first century that has proven to be remarkably perceptive.
Paul has seen that the rhetoric that swarmed the West after the Second World War could only have resulted in our Woke totalitarianism we see today. More than most in the conservative movement at large, Paul called balderdash on the prospects of a Conservatism that would emphasize universal values and transcendent political morality. He understood that such framing of political problems could only result in a bolstered and strengthened Leftwing in America.
This project will get into the weeds of Gottfried’s own mind, his own witness to the world he once loved being deconstructed before his very eyes. Gottfried is not an optimist; he sees clearly the tragic sense of history and the ability of American rightists to accurately interpret our age will be bolstered by better understanding the life and contributions of Paul Edward Gottfried.
This seems like a great project. But isn't a festschrift supposed to be compiled in secret, so the honoree can be surprised with the finished product on a special occasion like their birthday?