Great Ideas Today, 1973

480 Pages·1973·45.88 MB·English

The
Great Ideas
Today
1973
Helen Hemingway Benton, Publisher
Encyclopcedia Britannica, Inc,
Chicago • London • Toronto • Geneva • Sydney • Tokyo • Manila • Johannesburg • Seoul

The Great Ideas Today 1973
© 1973 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Copyright under International Copyright Union. All rights reserved
under Pan American and Universal Copyright Conventions
by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
"The Silent Slain" In Archibald MacLci^ll is reprinted l)\ permission
of Houghton Mifflin Company.
lu Defense of Socrates l)v Xcnophon is reprinted bv permission of
the publishers and Ihe I.ocb Classical I,ibrar\. K. C. Marchant,
translator. Xencjphon, Mertiorahilia. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Liii\crsily Press. ^
" Ihc Se{()n(l Coming" bv William Huller ^'eals is reprinted with
permission of .Maduillan Publishing (o.. Inc.. from Collected Poems
\)\ William Butler ^eals, copyright 1921 b\ I h e .Macmiilan Companv
rA.e n Ve.w eWd.i t t\ 9 ',}<:2 S obns. Bertha Ceoigie Veats; and wiih piimiNsion ot
Printed in the U.S.A. Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 61-65561
International Standard Book Number: 0-85229-286-4
Distributed to the trade by Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York, Washington
EDITORS IN CHIEF
Robert M. Hutchins Mortimer J. Adier
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
John Van Doren
Consulting Editor Otto Bird
Contributing Editor William Gorman
Assistant Editor John Deely
Editorial Assistant Cindy L. Moeckel
ART DIRECTOR
Will Gallagher
Associate Art Director Cynthia Peterson
Picture Editor Catherine Judge
Layout Artists Mark Cowans
NinaOToole
PRODUCTION MANAGER
J.Thomas Beatty
Production Coordinator Barbara W. Cleary
Copy Editor Cheryl Trobiani
ENCYCLOP/EDIA BRITANNICA, INC.
Chairman of the Board Robert P. Gwinn
President Charles E. Swanson
Vice-President/Editorial Charles Van Doren
Contents
PART ONE The Hero and the Heroic Ideal: A Symposium
Introduction
The Hero and the Heroic Ideal
in Great Books of the Western World 5
We Must Have Heroes S. /_. A. Marshall 45
No More Heroes Ron Dorfman 37
Heroism and Fortitude Josef Pieper
Heroes in Black and White Joy Gould Boyum 5570
The Hero as a World Figure Sidney Hook 63
Heroes for an Ordinary World Chaim Potok 70
PART TWO Review of the Arts and Sciences
The Widening Gyre:
Philosophy in the Twentieth Century W. T. Jones 78
The Anatonny of Justice in Taxation
Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven, Jr. 130
A Fresh Look at Copernicus Owen Gingerich 154
PART THREE The Review of a Great Book
180
The Canterbury Tales Mark Van Doren
PART FOUR A Special Feature
232
The Idea of Freedom— Part Two Charles Van Doren
PART FIVE Additions to the Great Books Library
In Defense of Socrates Xenophon 302
The Song of Roland 314
Religio Medici Sir Thomas Browne 372
424
She Stoops to Conquer Oliver Goldsmith
A NOTE ON REFERENCE STYLE
In the following pages, passages in Great Books of the Western
World are referred to by the initials 'GBWW,' followed by volume,
page number, and page section. Thus, 'GBWW, Vol. .S9, p. 210b'
refers to page 210 in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, which
is Volume 39 in Great Books of the Western World. The small letter
'b' indicates the page section. In books printed in single column,
'a' and 'b' refer to the upper and lower halves of the page. In books
printed in double column, 'a' and 'b' refer to the upper and lower
halves of the left colunm, 'c' and 'd' to the upper and lower halves
of the right colunni. For example, 'Vol. 53, p. 210b' refers to the
lower half of page 210, since Volume 53, James's Principles of Psy-
choloii^y, is printed in single column. On the other hand, 'Vol. 7.
p. 210b' refers to the lower left quarter of the page, since Volume 7,
Plato's Dialogues, is printed in double column.
Gateway to the Great Books is referred to by the initials GGB,'
followed by volume and page number. Thus, 'GGB, Vol. 10. pp. 39-
57' refers to pages 39 through 57 of V^olume 10 of Gateway to the
Great Books, whidi is James's essay, "The Will to Believe."
The Great Ideas Today is referred to by the initials 'GIT,' fol-
lowed by t he year and page number. Thus 'GIT 1968. p. 510' refers
to page 510 of the 1908 edition of The Great Ideas Today.
1
PART ONE
The Hero and
the Heroic Ideal
A Symposium
Introduction
Each year for a number of years the editors of The Great Ideas Today
have presented a symposium in which eminent persons undertake to
discuss an idea that is of current interest. Each time this has been done,
four or five such persons have been invited to contribute to the discussion.
Usually they have been persons of very different backgrounds, with ex-
tremely divergent views of the subject at hand, whose comments have
reflected these disparities, sometimes to good effect and sometimes not.
The editors have therefore thought it proper to bring a measure of unity
to the proceedings by adding a sort of coda or appendix in which they
recall the ways in which the idea being considered is treated in the great
books, and what the tradition with respect to it is.
This year the editors have reversed their usual procedure. In arranging
a symposium on the hero and the heroic ideal, they have not begun by
inviting comments on the subject, nor have they gone on to add the
customary discussion of relevant material from the great books at the end.
Instead, they have prepared a summary of this material at the outset, and
have submittecj it to the contributors for their use, as background, in
preparing their comments. For this reason, the summary — or editorial
essay, as perhaps it should be called — has been made considerably longer
than usual. Based upon a draft submitted by our consulting editor, Otto
Bird, the essay undertakes to review the great books tradition concerning
the hero and the heroic ideal in an effort to suggest just what tradition it
is that we are talking about when we use those terms, which we hope other
readers will understand in the same way. The assumption in preparing
such a review was that the contributors, having it before them, would not
feel obliged to cover the same ground themselves (except where they
thought that our report was inadequate or mistaken), and would thus be
free to concentrate upon contemporary aspects of the subject. On that
same assumption, it was felt that their comments could be shorter than
the comments have been in previous years, with the result that it has been
possible to include a somewhat greater number of contributors than we
have had in the past: there are six this \ear, rather than four or five.
That there was and is some reason to consider the idea of heroism and
the figure of the hero as they may appear in, or may be al)seui from, the
conlemijorary world will seem obvious to some readers of The Great Ideas
Today, perhaps not obvious at all to others. .Among the latter are likely
to be those who will not have thought that there is anything timely to say
about human characteristics that they regard as permanent. And in defer-
ence to these readers, it may be acknowledged that there is a conventional
regard for heroes and heroism nowadays — at least as they are discussed by
the media or in popular literature, or in everyone's casual conversation —
which is probably as strong as it ever was, and which implies that we are
dealing with a fixed and familiar aspect of human affairs.
Nevertheless, it is from a sense of the opposite — a sense that the hero
and the heroic ideal are no longer evident or even conceivable in the
world as we know it, or are no longer evident or conceivable as they used
to be — that the editors have proposed the subject for consideration. How
such a sense could have developed may be easy enough to understand for
anyone who regards the low estate of various roles — the military, for one
— that the hero has traditionally seemed able to fdl, either within society
or outside it. Further recognition may come after reading the editorial
summary with which the symposium begins. This simimary is not organ-
ized in h istorical terms and does not attempt more than to suggest the
current status of the idea of heroism — that is left to the contributors — but
it records what may be thought of as a decline, or at any rate a profound
change (perhaps several profound changes), in the force of the idea and
in the extent of its acceptance since ancient times. Of course that is itself
a well-worked theme. One has only to compare tlie Odyssey with James
Joyce's Ulysses to see how great the difference is, and how well at least one
modern writer has understood it. Still a further grasp of the matter may
be derived from other contemporary witnesses who have remarked the fact
that heroism does not fare — does not, indeed, regard itself — in the modern
world as it once did. Thus Mr. Norman Mailer observed recently that the
astronauts, who performed prodigies of skill and strength and even intel-
ligence in g etting to the moon, were all the same disappointing as heroes
— did not seem to wish to be heroes, and if they had wished, did not seem
to know how. The same thing was noted many years ago with respect to
Charles A. Lindbergh, who was hopelessly incompetent in the heroic role
that a frenzied public, inspired by his solitary flight across the Atlantic,
attempted to force upon him. And examples of this sort could be multi-
plied indefinitely.
With such considerations in mind, the editors of The Great Ideas
Today have solicited comments from a variety of contributors, asking
them to regard the occasion as one on which they should "address them-
selves to the question whether the idea of the hero is any longer \'ial)le in
the modern world, and if they think it is viable ... to suggest what form
it can credibly take." It seemed wise to allow each contributor to put this
question to himself in particidar terms if he liked. If he felt especially
qualified to consider whether the hero can exist in the army of today,
given the complex, remote, highly technical character of its mission, he
was free to do tliat. If he were competent to suggest whether heioes can
be iina^iiiccl ainoiii; ihc leaders of (onteniporary nation states, except as
creatures ot proixij^anda, he could do that instead. If he wished to confine
himself to deciding whether there can be heroes in commercialized sports,
he could also do that. Those who could sensibly discuss the lack of heroes
in contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama, were not required to speak
of other human enterprises. On the other hand, those who wished to
consider whether heroism is possible at all in our psychoanalytical age,
given what we know or think we know about subconscious motivations,
were free to discuss human endeavors generally.
While not all of those who responded to our invitation accepted the
assignment on quite these terms, and while, even if they had, they could
not Iiave dealt with every aspect of the subject, the symposium covers a
considerable range. On the one hand is the defense of heroism ofTered by
S. L. A. Nfarshall, brigadier general, USA (retired), who speaks as a
dedicated soldier. At perhaps the opposite extreme is the sharp criticism
of the heroic ideal provided l^y Ron Dorfman, editor of the Chicago
Journalism Review, who writes as a journalist who must contend with the
pretenses and deceptions of men in public life. Alternatively, we have the
philosophical and even theological implications of the heroic life con-
sidered by J osef Pieper, the author of Leisure, the Basis of Culture, and
other works; and, as distinct from that, we have a discussion of the ways
in which heroes are currently portrayed in films l)y Joy Gould Boyum, the
film critic of the Wall Street Journal, who specializes in the study of this
form of popular art. And whereas Professor Sidney Hook imdertakes to
suggest the heroic possibilities of contemporary power figures on the world
stage, (>haim Potok, the novelist, reflects upon the common stuff out of
which all men, and thus even heroes, are made.
In the opinion of the editors, these several discussions of heroism and
the heroic ideal are better differentiated than has been the case with
symposiums in the past, and yet there is at the same time, if not quite a
unity, at least a measure of common understanding that seems to run
through them all — the result, as we like to think, of the fact that each
contributor had our editorial summary before him to start with. However
this may be, we hope that readers of this year's Great Ideas Today, who
themselves should begin by reading the summary before going on to what
the contrilnitors have to say, will find their connnents moie than usually
interesting, and that the symjiosium as a whole will seem both fresh and
substantial in its consideration of the subject.