The Destiny of Western Man
By $3.00 REYNAL & HITCHCOCK
THE task that a university teacher of philosophy sets himself in these pages is a formidable one: to show by pure reason, without in any way assuming the thing to be proved, that the democratic system of life and of morality is inherently superior to the totalitarian and hence preferable for all men in all times. This attempt to put a solid underpinning of formal logic and psychology under what most of us devoutly believe on a basis of traditionary and experiential values involves him in a historical survey of ethics from Plato to Nietzsche and in an intricate defense of intellect versus will as the supreme guide to the good life. That the argument wou ld at every point stand up under what is now called semantic examination, it is permissible to doubt. For one thing, we may comb these twelve long chapters in vain for any adequate recognition that (except in connection with the concrete facts and measurable quantities of science) human thinking is wishful thinking. We who are committed to democratic individualism and to Christian sympathy should still be as passionately committed to them (and against their opposites) if we could be shown that they have not, intellectually speaking, a leg to stand on. The ultimate justification of the book is probably its considerable number of searching topical aperçus by the way; tor example, its analysis of the evasions resorted to by totalitarian philosophers to avoid a categorical assertion that the state is a living organism with purposes other than those of its component individuals and sometimes even inimical to them.
The book is the first winner of a biennial award of $2500 instituted by its publisher for ‘ the best non fiction book-length manuscript submitted by a member of an American college or university staff.’ W. F.