 Hook sought to apply the pragmatic interpretation of ethics to diverse areas of social action including issues of educational policy, cultural freedom and societal change. Hook’s application of normative ethical judgments to contemporary social and political issues led to an apparent shift in his political allegiances. In his earliest writing through the 1930s, Hook overtly embraced Marxism understood as an application of scientific method for the resolution of the problematic situation of capitalist societies. Hook’s interpretation Marxism, however, eventually led him to his becoming a leading advocate of anti-communist policy, both in foreign affairs and domestic institutions. In the later phase of his career, after his reaction to the programs of the “New Left” in the 1960s, Hook’s approach could be understood as a form of conservative liberalism. Hook’s initial stress upon freedom of inquiry in education practice was augmented by his emphasis upon the continuity in the curriculum of Western humanistic cultural traditions. Similarly, Hook’s initial support for social democracy was augmented by his opposition to the totalitarian potential that had emerged within socialist and radical movements in contemporary history. Accordingly, in Hook’s final phase as a public philosopher, his writings were identified with the neoconservative movement.