From approximately the beginning of the century to World War II, there was an intellectual interregnum that was extremely interesting less because of the lasting worth of its intellectual productions than because of the issues with which it grappled. Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Marx had revolutionized the consciousness of modern man. If Darwin was correct, we had evolved by change from monkeys, as William Jennings Bryan had put it during the Scopes trial. The theory of relativity had destroyed the concept of absolute space and time, psychoanalysis had stressed the irrational sources of human behavior, and Marx had challenged the economic and political order of the age. At the same time, we were moving from an aristocratic era to one in which mass man came to the fore, a change so poignantly staged in Renoir's Grand Illusion in the exchanges between von Stroheim and the French officer.
Thus, all our beliefs were being relativized. Anthropology argued that value systems were simply different and that there was no sense to the argument that one was better than another. In philosophy, the positivists "proved" that values were merely subjective preferences without any factual or natural foundation. In art, Dada attempted to destroy all existing aesthetic concepts. One of the most famous paintings of that school was that of a fur-lined urinal. Kafka introduced us to the novel of the absurd; individual fate was detached not merely from works but from grace as well.
These were among the varied circumstances that produced syndicalism, Leninism, fascism, and national socialisms--all of which were attempts to impose order and meaning through force. These new and noxious doctrines were rushing in to fill the vacuum produced by the breakdown of religion and traditional belief. As the Bolshevik Manuilski pointed out, power lay in the barrel of guns, not in votes or rational arguments.
Some intellectuals joyfully joined the new order. Others, some of whom are included in this month's Currents in Modern Thought section on Interpreters of an Uncertain Age, tried to support tradition and some of the older values. Oakeshott, for instance, placed great value on tradition and habit. There is certainly some virtue in this, although he failed to address what one is to do if the traditions and habits are bad. He was correct in believing that power should be distributed, but surely there are circumstances that justify radical change and revolution.
Sorokin produced massive evidence to support his thesis on social circulation but included little in his voluminous writings to account for it or to suggest what to do about contemporary excesses. Kolnai attacked psychoanalysis but threw the baby out with the bathwater. There are, after all, such things as irrational motivations.
We are still struggling with these problems, though we now discuss them in somewhat different terms. The tragedy is that we have failed to incorporate our intellectual achievements into our culture in a sophisticated way. Although I believe the evolution of the species will be explained naturally rather than theologically, that explanation will not likely rest on chance. Yet our biologists are still caught for the most part in their old beliefs. Einstein's relatively has nothing in common with anthropological relativism. Quantum theory is probabilistic, but it has undermined materialism and demonstrated the close interaction between observer and observed. Mind is
...
Read Full Article
|
