The European Sisyphus

Stanley Hoffmannis C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1955. He has been chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard since its creation in 1969. Born in Vienna in 1928, Hoffmann lived and studied in France from 1929 to 1955. He has taught at the Institut d'Études Politiques of Paris, from which he graduated, and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. At Harvard, he teaches French intellectual and political history, the development of the modern state, U.S. foreign policy, the sociology of war, international politics, ethics and world affairs, and modern political ideologies. His many books include Contemporary Theory in International Relations (1960), The State of War (1965), Gulliver's Troubles (1968), Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s (1974), Primacy or World Order: American Foreign Policy Since the Cold War (1978), Duties Beyond Borders (1981), Dead Ends (1983), and Janus and Minerva: Essays in the Theory and Practice of International Politics (Westview, 1986). He is coauthor of In Search of France: The Fifth Republic at Twenty (1981), Living with Nuclear Weapons (1983), The Mitterand Experiment (1987), and the forthcoming Taming Cold Monsters (with Michael Joseph Smith). He also coedited Rousseau on International Relations (1991) and coedited and coauthored The New European Community (1991) and After the Cold War (1993). He contributed two autobiographical chapters to the book of essays in his honor coedited by Linda Miller and Michael J. Smith, Ideas and Ideals (Westview, 1993).