Rahm Emanuel and 19th Century German Philosophy

"[Rahm Emanuel] loved philosophy, especially the nineteenth-century German thinkers, but, Adams said, 'he wasn’t an academic.” His papers were 'good, not outstanding. They showed an involvement in the material, but nothing you’d put in an anthology. He was not a stellar writer, and he’s not a great speaker. He’s very effective one on one.' Adams is one of the school’s few conservative professors, and he remembered getting into philosophical discussions with his advisee, trying to temper Emanuel’s infatuation with Hegel by showing how much Hegel had actually been influenced by Goethe—'The fact that nature is not going to be mastered, whatever the system, and that these man-made systems ultimately fail.' He would also try to explain the appeal of Ronald Reagan. Adams said, 'I can remember his voice: ‘Mr. Adams, you can’t possibly believe that!’”

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