THE QUALITY OF LIBERAL THOUGHT
Lipman, Matthew
tions. In all this there must be some Mr. Berle, the picture of a growing corpora! e or governmental conscience way of protecting the individual: per- haps, says Berle, an appeal to a court is...
...As de 95 Winter 1955 DISSENT Tocqueville once observed, people have R way of finding superior wisdom in the person of their oppressor...
...But more important is the state spicuous by its absence...
...they must love liberty deeply...
...These limitations show up all...
...3.95 - Discussing the "dangerous freedom" guaranteed by our Constitution, the right of assembly...
...to Ameriean ideas on history, science, No bold strakes...
...4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 include, in cases where the stockholder or security bolder a p pears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting...
...Yet he stuck to the term “liberal”or grew into it, from his early socialismin the conservative hope that it represented a minimal condition for human association...
...23 authors, 52 stories, almost all newly translated...
...None of the vitality and economics...
...The Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1954...
...A yearly student subscription is $2.00...
...for public welfare or the equally The solution to this dilemma rests strange notion that corporate gifts power in our constitutional frame- of his theory of conscience...
...03-0380600, Qualified in Bronx County, Cert...
...Term Expires January 30...
...1. The names and addresses of the publisher...
...ing, apparrntly inhibited the flow of his But the section on American juris- thought...
...Clks...
...Human beings have probably derived as much happiness from accepting their lot as from efforts, so often tragically vain, to improve it...
...Managing editor, none...
...He distrusted thcir rigid insistence upon moral duties, the bland assumption of progress and betterment, the easy, casual faith in such vague, question-begging terms as “education” and “democracy...
...One could appeal, he knew, to the ancient traditions of liberalism, but one could not ignore the fact that those traditions were seriously compromised by their indulgent attitude-towards vicious economic practices carried on in the name of “political liberty,” and towards vicious political practices carried 0x1, in the name of “economic democracy...
...To Dewey’s passionate faith in reason used constructively, he oppoaed an equally passionate faith in its being used critically, and a resigned pessimism about its ever being used at sist after many more rigid doctrines had been quite thoroughly shattered by events...
...5. The average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the 12 months preceding the date shown above was: (This information i s required from daily, weekly, semiweekly, and triweekly newspapers only...
...New York 17, N. Y. 2. The owner is: Walter Coldwater, SO9 Fifth Avenue, New York 17...
...If Cohen lacks the substantiality and While this series of sketches of American thought was intended to be comprehensive, it was far from complete at thk time of Cohen’s death, and the result incisiveness of a Cassirer, it must also is lees thorough than could have been be admitted that, after all, he was not wished...
...Berle, the picture of a growing corpora...
...However vast the setting of Nature may be when compared with human experience, it 1s hard to see why we must impute to it some superordinate significance...
...Offices...
...Sntim 233) SHOWING' THE OWNERSHIP, -MAN: ACEMENT, AND CIRCULATION OF DISSENT, published Quarterly at New York, N. Y. for January 1, 1955...
...Nor can ently no overall solution of his own to advocate, nor did he wish to prevent others from trying to achieve what progress they could...
...The passionate reof equity within the corporate struc- gard for the individual personality ture would guarantee personal free- that this would imply seems most condom...
...He saw clearly enough the limitations of men like Brandeis and suffering, defeat, death, and destruction Holmes and Vcblen and Dewey, and at and provides some anodyne through times spoke of them in a way that others considered carping or contentious...
...Peirce, whose essays Cohen had once edited, had identified the same commitment as “radical...
...MAnnEw LIPMAN Books Received A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg...
...His liberalism then-somehow, cuclearly enough in American Thought, riously, more reminiscent of Jefferson but ao does his courageous veracity...
...A gov- Nothing has been said of the ernment run like a private business is author’s praise for the behavior of tyranny...
...Siming officer in a defense department, ply put, the beliefs in Mr...
...But Cohen was not prepared to risk upon any fad of an idea, any more than a scientist could risk upon any fad of a theory, the ideals and values which he felt to be crucial for a civilization with few values to spare, and in danger of losing those it possessed...
...Among the translaton: Charles Angoff, Saul Bellow, Alfred Kazin, Ludwig Lewisohn, Issac Rosenfeld...
...N. Y. 3. The known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: None...
...Hardly a positive, programmatic position, but nevertheless a hardy one which would continue to perPolit cally, Cohen thought of himself as a “liberal,)’ a term which he felt identified the commitment to scientific method...
...And if human existence must inevitably be so tragic, is it not paradoxical to reverence its sources...
...thinkers as Pound, Cardozo, Peirce, Whitehead, and C. I. Lewis...
...But we are also free to ask whether the forces beyond man’r control, to which he is necessarily subordinate, are to be equated with matters of ultimate concern-simply because they are beyond man’s control...
...Business manager Sworn to and subscribed before me this 18 day of October, 1954...
...BEN B. SELICMAN The Quality of Liberal Thought AMERICAN THOUGHT, Morris Raphael Cohen...
...Print please) NAME...
...Berle’s must all be aware that this is still a book are soft and so,gy, like a sandworld of people...
...Buriness manager, Stanley Plastrik, 509 Fifth Alenue...
...filed with N. Y. Co...
...Notice of Price Change Increased costs have made i t necessary for DISSENT to raise its subscription rates, effective January 1, 1955...
...But Cohen’s gift for most half the book, while political criticism, when trained on his own writthought receives a scant twenty pages...
...a private business run like corporations in international affairs or in the . recognition that unlimited to universities demonstrate the validity a government agency is “irresponsible his artless belief in business planning socialist bureaucracy...
...Unfortunately for wich gone bad...
...A yearly subscription is $2.50 (add 5012 for postage for Canada, or foreign countries...
...as $5.95...
...Only the growth is one to say of ideas that have no of conscience offers a hope for sanity...
...I am enclosing $2.50 (add 50c for Canada or foreign postage) to cover subscription cost...
...Nonetheless, Cohen's broad and tolerant attitude can serve as an antidote and a challenge...
...Elsewhere, reflecting on his prudence is more thorough and penetrat- own intellectual equipment, he had noted ing, and some Consideration is given his “lack of vigorous following through...
...He had appar- what is not within our power...
...than of anyone else-rested on the belief that one should liberate men from the manacles of superstition, and then let them choose to do with their freedom as they pleased, providing they in turn left one free to criticize their schemes and procedures...
...also the statements in the two paragraphs show the affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and condi...
...Lippincott...
...2.00 rate offered only to students...
...But what roots in ordinary sense, that are whose very mysticism betrays a feelwork is intolerable...
...8 Reg...
...tions under which stockholders and security fide owner...
...American philosophy and re- writine...
...and flare . . . cf Yet wniiic withal of a James tenacious or SantaclingWinter 1955 94 DISSENT ing to truth...
...editor, managing editors and business manager8 are: Publisher, Dissent Publishing Association, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, N. Y...
...Begin with the (Winter) (Spring) (Summer) (Fall) issue...
...With our narrow humanism and illiberal outlook, we neglect the cosmic eminence of the system of nature...
...Street...
...And so he was fearful and suspicious of the enormous State apparatus in which so many of his fellow liberals had placed their faith ; yet he gently advocated (with what misMen have much to learn from a renewed insistence upon the Stoic mesgivings or regret one cannot say) an sage, as Cohen presents it, that we must increasing extension of that apparatus firmly distinguish between what is and for the public welfare...
...1955...
...But no philosophy is “really humane, or avoids needless cruelty, unless it recognizes the inevitability of human wisely cultivated resignation...
...Signed) MICHAEL BOZZONE, Notary Public, State of New York, No...
...DISSENT 509 Fifth Ave., New York 17 Please send me DISSENT for one year...
...The first comprehensive ties the company in a cipacity trustees, other hold than stock that and of a securibona holders whc do not appear upon the books of anthology of Yiddish literature...
...Faced with incurable evils in an imperfect world, the human spirit must find some larger vision or perish...
...Especially enjoyable are the thumbnail profiles of such individual yana...
...Editor, Irvrng Howe, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, K. Y...
...After all, when people raise only those questions which they have decided in advance are answerable, they will have lost sight of many values which the problem-saving procedure was supposed to bring to realization...
...of mind that managers and govern- Berle is asking for is a kind and gentle ment officials will exhibit: they must garrison state...
...The human need to worship is fundamental...
...United States Code...
...5.00...
...A single copy of DISSENT now costs 75c...
...we dispense with the serenity that comes from seeing the human scene in its natural setting...
...e or governmental conscience way of protecting the individual: perhaps, says Berle, an appeal to a court is poorly drawn...
...about a period as brilliant as the ligion engage Cohen’s attention for al- Enlightenment...
...A DANGEROUS FREEDOM, by Bradford Smith...
...Men need rest from the strenuous life, escape from the depressing horrors of the human scene...
...If the term “liberal” had’ unfortunate connotations because of the abuses committed in its name, he knew that neither “liberalism” nor “socialism” nor “scientific inquiry” nor any other term could ever be kept from being seized upon and held aloft as the banner of someone’s stupidity...
...The personnel director of a large cor- wrapped in a mephitic ideology, and poration, a vice-president in charge of sales, a conscientious security officer ing of discomfort with the hard realiin a government agency, a contract- ties of 20th century capitalism...
...State) (Zone) (City) Winter 1955 96 DISSENT STATEMENT REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF AUGUST 24, i9i2, AS AMENDED-BY THE ACTS OF MARCH 3, 1933, AND JULY 2. 1946 ( T tle 39...
...Viking...
...Drawings by Ben Shahn...
...Cohen abhorred his countrymen’s absorption in immediate problems and short-range solutions, their elaborate justifications of expediency, their denial or ignorance of matters of ultimate import and concern...
...What Mr...
...Stanley Plastrik...
...The anomaly is more have a conscience about these things- frightening than Mars himself...
Vol. 2 • January 1955 • No. 1
