iViva Vivas!
McAdams, A. James
BOOK REVIEW i Viva Vivas.t Edited by Henry Regnery / Liberty Press / $7.95 A. James McAdams Eliseo Vivas, educator, philosopher, and literary critic, is celebrating his seventyfifth birthday...
...There are those--including this reviewer--who are inclined to think that its shortcomings are manifold...
...But it does treat serious issues which concern most people: taxes, energy, inflation, foreign policy, government regulation, education, welfare, the environment, and so on...
...Now this does not mean that the book deals with all of the issues...
...Above all, he has been a staunch and defiant defender of traditionalist values and standards of judgment, and a consistent and capable opponent of the liberal reformist and quasi-Marxist world views which currently infest the American landscape...
...BOOK REVIEW The Case Against the Reckless Congress Edited by Congresswoman Marjorie Holt / Green Hill / $1.95 Baron Von Kannon In the first of the three scheduled debates with Jimmy Carter, President Ford displayed a new eagerness to attack the Democratic Congress...
...BOOK REVIEW i Viva Vivas.t Edited by Henry Regnery / Liberty Press / $7.95 A. James McAdams Eliseo Vivas, educator, philosopher, and literary critic, is celebrating his seventyfifth birthday this year...
...His has been, without a doubt, a distinguished career...
...Ford is not the only person who would benefit from this book...
...In light of Vivas' great accomplishment, therefore, it is fitting that Henry Regnery and a host of well-known scholars, including Erich Heller, William Couch, Hugh Kenner, and A. James McAdams is a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley...
...He has taken values and modern culture seriously and, in doing so, has lived up to his own description of the truly humanist teacher, he who conceives "the fundamental problem today, yesterday and always to stave off the snarling beasts of barbarism that are always and everywhere on the alert to get out of their inward cages into which culture drives them...
...Lawrence: The Failure and Triumph of Art, and Contra Marcuse...
...In response to a question concerning the anti-Washington mood of the country, Ford insisted that the Democrats in Congress are Washington's major problem and he urged his own reelection in order to "check their excesses with my vetoes...
...For Vivas, and for most of the contributors to this Festsebrift, our only alternative to this outlook would be a blind and impotent positivism which would negate the very ethical purpose of the business of philosophy...
...While most of the essays are useful, three stand above the rest...
...Neglected are those topics which seem to fascinate the intellectualoids...
...To the extent that Vivas has succeeded in hindering the onslaught of today's barbarians, our debt to him is immense, i Viva Vivas...
...t is a difficult book to describe, because much like the works of the man it honors, it covers a vast array of subjects., the virtual gamut of the scholarly enterprise...
...If Mr...
...Whether ontological realism is a philosophically sound position is a matter of debate...
...Against the social theories of those grands simplificateurs who would champion science and psychology over culture and morality, Vivas has tendered the pursuit of the "sustaining intellectual and moral structures of civilization...
...t i Viva Vivas...
...Yet there is a strain of thought common to the essays in this collection, and that is their celebration of Vivas' insatiable"quest for certainty" and his uncompromising disdain for epistemological relativism...
...But even withstanding philosophical controversy, one cannot deny the enormous contributions which Vivas has made...
...Murray Krieger, have compiled the Festschrift, /Viva Vivas...
...It is filled with statistics, shocking examples of flagrant waste, cute examples of frivolous waste, voting records, and a set of what Republicans like to call "constructive alternatives" to the Democrats' proposals...
...He has been remarkably prolific, publishing widely on such diverse topics as ethics, literature, and the philosophy of aesthetics, and has received welldeserved acclaim for his seminal works, The Moral Life and the Ethioal Life, D.H...
...On the one hand the reader encounters personal impressions of Vivas, on the other an assortment of learned essays--a discourse on Schopenhauer, a critique of Kantian aesthetics, a Joycean analysis of language...
...And his philosophical tool in this quest has been that of ontological realism, that position which maintains that "values are real or antecedent to our discovery of them...
...Ford plans to continue his attack on Congress, he would do well to read The Case Against the Reckless Congress, a book of essays by nineteen conservative Republican Congressmen, covering a wide range of public policy questions...
...It is a useful source of information for political activists and others who want to understand a responsible conservative perspective on major political questions...
...32 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1976...
...Unlike other theorists, he has sought not to change the world, but rather to understand it...
...Congressman Jack Kemp's ideas on tax reform are imaginative and, as the Wall Street Journal has noted recently, deserve consideration...
...It is, in short, a book of useful campaign rhetoric...
...The book argues that many of America's problems were caused by reckless and foolish action (and occasional inaction) on the part of Congress...
...As one of America's leading conservative intellectuals, Vivas has taught at some of the finest colleges in the country, including the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin...
...He analyzes the defects of our current tax policy, and discusses his proposed Jobs Creation Act which is aimed Baron Von Kannon is publisher of The Alternative and Kapellmeister of the Saturday Evening Club...
...If we are to solve these problems, Congress must act to balance the budget, get the regulators off the backs of business, maintain a strong defense posture, allow the free market to operate, and--perhaps most important-allow citizens to make more decisions for themselves...
...It includes nothing about Daniel Schorr, for example, or the CIA, or the pardon of the Incumbent's Hated Predecessor...
...Values are peculiar kinds of facts which undergird the civilized society, and all of our acts, whether cultural, political, or artistic, are perforce subject to such standards...
Vol. 10 • November 1976 • No. 2
