JOURNALISM AND JOACHIM'S CHILDREN

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U.S. today, is there enough unity about fundamentals to make for a sensible and fruitful debate on public policies? Are the limits of debate and the final standards of policy clearly and generally understood? To clarify such fundamentals is the duty of the intellectuals, especially the philosophers.

How true is the cliché that this is a time of "growing intellectual confusion"? A short look back—only a hundred years—indicates that, like most clichés, it is all too true. The intellectual climate of the U.S. mid-19th century ranged between the utterly orthodox Longfellow, moralist poet of the man in the street, and the unorthodox Emerson, philosopher of the man in the lecture hall. Their common ground, however, was hard and firm; the author of "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal," could salute the author of "The moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates to the circumference." Today the idea of an objective, unchanging moral law is hotly denied by many social scientists, defended by other intellectuals and by a lot of non-intellectuals. The resulting confusion, the lack of a common ground, may explain why the man in the street today has no poet and the popular lecture hall no philosopher.

So intellectual confusion has been growing. Why? Is there what an Irishman might call a pattern of chaos?

THE LIMITS OF POLITICS

One fascinating explanation of the modern intellectual crisis is contained in a recent book* by Political Scientist Eric Voegelin of Louisiana State University. His account, written in somewhat technical language, is an intellectual detective story, a quest through the history of Western thought for the culprits responsible for contemporary confusion. Here is a loose, truncated synopsis of his story:

All societies tend to think of themselves as small-scale models of the universe, and of their political institutions as representing the highest truth. To societies before or outside the stream of Western thought that begins with Plato, this tendency has no limit; whatever the ruler wants cannot conceivably conflict with the order of the cosmos; what the ruler says is truth must necessarily be in conformity with the highest truth known to the society. Typical of this kind of absolutism was the Mongol law, "God is high above all, and on earth, Genghis Khan is the only Lord." Genghis' grandson, Kuyuk Khan, was sincerely puzzled by protests from the King of France and the Pope, who complained that he did wrong to massacre Christians and to demand their submission. How could he do wrong when there were no limits on his actions? The Khan told the King and the Pope that his Christian victims were the aggressors, not because they attacked him but because they refused to submit to him. His logic has the ring of Chinese Communist General Wu telling the U.N. that his government cannot possibly be an aggressor in Korea because it is, by definition, peace-loving. Said the Khan:

By the virtue of God,

From the rising of the sun to its setting,

All realms have been granted to us.

Without the Order of God,

How could anyone do anything?

Now, you ought to say from a sincere heart:

"We shall be your subjects;

We shall give unto you our strength ..."

And if you do not observe the Order of God,

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