A Rebel to His Last Breath: Joseph McCabe and Rationalism - Hardcover

Bill Cooke

4.33

6 ratings by Goodreads

9781573928786: A Rebel to His Last Breath: Joseph McCabe and Rationalism

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157392878X ISBN 13: 9781573928786

Publisher: Prometheus, 2001

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

This is the first biography of Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), a former Catholic preist who became one of the best-known champions and a prolific popularizer of freethought and rationalism in the first half of the 20th century. McCabe's encyclopedic curiosity, rigorous scholarship, and above all his unswerving intellectual honesty led him through a tumultuous career of public lecturing and debating, and an incredible output of over 200 books. He tackled the most controversial issues of the modern era: evolution, biblical errancy, belief in God, immorality, spiritualism, capitalism vs. socialism, women's rights, and many other topics. Much of his writing was published in the form of the "Little Blue Books" by E. Haldeman-Julius, who declared McCabe to be "the world's greatest scholar."
Today in our postmodern period, where Enlightenment values are being questioned and irrationalism in many guises has become fashionable, McCabe's gift for rational inquiry, respect for scientific evidence, and lucid, no-nonsense prose are both relevant and welcome.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Author:

What most impresses about McCabe and his writings, and what Dr. Cooke highlights, is the relentless intellectual honesty of the man, his mien of speaking straight from the shoulder, of telling you exactly what he thinks about what he considers important whether you agree with him or not. People don't know what to do with such men and often end up ignoring them. Such a fate of "internal exile" has befallen McCabe much to our loss. Yet he deserves to be revisited, not only because of his bracing and refreshing character, but because he devoted his life to a cause more imperative than ever.

That cause is the promotion of public enlightenment, a contemporary version of the 18th century Enlightenment. As Dr. Cooke's book makes so clear, McCabe saw that the tremendous, ever-accelerating development of science was forcing on humanity a pervasive and fundamental reconstruction of all human culture. For McCabe, true enlightenment meant not only keeping abreast of the latest scientific discoveries and technological developments but, above all, fearlessly and honestly facing the revisions they demand in basic beliefs and institutions, particularly in economics, politics, morality, and religion.

As the growth of science or simply knowledge, as McCabe preferred to call it, touches us ever more deeply and intimately down to the genetic structure of our being, so resistance to it grows apace. ...The author argues cogently that what McCabe courageously stood for in his time is more relevant and needed today than ever, that McCabe's struggle for genuine public enlightenment is our struggle. A REBEL TO HIS LAST BREATH is a worthy contribution to that struggle. -- John R. Burr, Ph.D., from the foreword

From the Inside Flap:

A REBEL TO HIS LAST BREATH is the first biography of Joseph McCabe (1867-1955), a former Catholic priest who became one of the best-known champions and a prolific popularizer of freethought and rationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. McCabe's encyclopedic curiosity, rigorous scholarship, and unswerving intellectual honesty led him through a tumultuous career of public lecturing and debating, and an incredible output of more than two hundred books. He tackled the most controversial issues of the modern era: evolution, biblical errancy, belief in God, immortality, spiritualism, capitalism versus socialism, women's rights, and many other topics. Much of his writing was published by E. Haldeman-Julius, an American rationalist publisher who declared McCabe to be "the world's greatest scholar."

Joseph McCabe was a rebel against all lies, deceit, and humbug, even when they came from his friends. Always true to himself, he often alienated even those closest to him with his fierce intellectual honesty. What he said and wrote on issues of philosophy, religion, gender, and science during the first half of the twentieth century still rings true to rationalists in the twenty-first century.

Contrary to contemporary academic writing, much of which contrives a strained neutrality, author Bill Cooke pulls no punches in his criticism of academic pretensions and postmodernist posturing. Writing, as McCabe did, in a style that appeals to both the specialist and the nonspecialist reader, Cooke has created a biography that is, in fact, a continuation of McCabe's own unique mix of reason and rebellion.

A REBEL TO HIS LAST BREATH is more than a biographical sketch of an extraordinary man; it is an inquiry into the relevance of rationalism at the beginning of a new millennium. In today's postmodern world, when Enlightenment values are being questioned and irrationalism in its many guises has become fashionable, McCabe's gift for rational inquiry, respect for scientific evidence, and lucid, no-nonsense prose are both relevant and welcome.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.