AMERICA THROUGH FOREIGN EYES
HICKS, GRANVILLE
America Thought For Eyes •THAT WAS AMERICA. Edited by Oscar Handlin. Harvard Unioerrfty Press. 602 pp. $6.00. Reviewed By GRANVILLE MICKS ^HE TEARS SINCE THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND WORLD E...
...Fear, as Mr...
...when is violence justified...
...Peter Demons, a Russian business man with radical sympathies, wrote as shrewdly as any muckraker on the growth of monopoly...
...others we muffed...
...Handiln sails "The Bifrden of Maturity," wooan sree* the growing realicatioii that Aistfriea was at last faring some of the proeteme of the older nations, In his introduction to that section, Handlin writes, "Could a mature nation accept the burdens of maturity and apply under suh pressures the ideate and aspirations of its youth...
...what is more important, they have survived victory...
...Handlin has brought together the impressions and opinions of forty Europeans who visited America between 1750 and 1940...
...HANDLIN'S QUETION still cannot be answered with a ringing affirmative, but the evidence of the war and the years since the war does not warrant pessimism...
...It is what we have always known, of course, this record of the American dream, which was realized in part but only in part, but we see what was happening with unusual vividness through these foreign eyes, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but always curious and keen...
...So at one point she meets the objection that "to will freedom" is a hollow formula...
...Standing at the peak of our power, we still represent, however imperfectly, the "new principles" of which Crevecoeur wrote...
...The way she deals with this is typical of the explanations one 'finds in this book...
...Others believe that the virtue lies in us as a people...
...Being" in Vacuum THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY...
...The emphasis on the ainfctfailtjr of man's condition Is an importlffT4r*sV and one we should certainly face...
...But there were faults to be found: the hardships, the bad manners, tl\e absence of culture...
...The structure, vague and confusing, admits her interesting and lucid bits that can be independent of the mysticism...
...they all felt that America was different, and, as time went on, visitors wondered more rather than less at the marvels of the new country...
...questioning ana contesting of the means to the end, to make sure that freedom is not defeated by the very means, and that the ends are confronted by the absolute end of freedom itself...
...She gives us many exiunpl**, but tha conditions set forth are artificial and thin, and we are bade on trie verbal level of "freedom" shd "bsmg/*' Oal> one example presents a real 'pfgtMft* we must fs*e~iriolenee and ta* fiWiat Union...
...But to build an ethks on it rsqatrss jbWst than tha poetic use of such words m' "being" and "freedom.'' Charles Farrow is working oa his first novel...
...We have our national shortcomings, and we have our problems, some of them problems of the world we are part of, some of them peculiarly ours...
...Some of them were wise enough to take advantage of...
...too often he will only be led in circles...
...that he realizes that men are the supreme end, yet he is forced to treat them as means, as instruments or obstacles...
...Reviewed by CHARLES PER ROW THE FACT OF MAN'S CONDITION is that each one of us must die...
...And there are two long discussions that are for the most part clear, penetrating, and insightful...
...LIKE IT OR NOT...
...Our ideals not only have survived attack...
...Handlin says, is one of the great dangers...
...I speak advisedly of our good fortune...
...what should be sacrificed...
...I. F. Benjamin saw the evils of unfettered competition...
...She givss the "concrete content for action" for science and technics...
...There must be permanent tension, she tells us, constant...
...By Simone de Beauvoir...
...Thanks to what the continent gave us,-we have reached a position of unique power without exhausting our physical and spiritual resources in the- struggle...
...Madame de Beauvoir uses Sartre's dictum that "man is a being who makes himself a lack of being in order that thera might be being...
...Without concern for the denotations of the "being" in this statement, she goes on with poetic and mystic fhterweavings of "existence," "freedom," "transcendence," "willing," "indefinite movements," "indefinite unity," and so forth...
...I do not believe that Mskfani* de Beauvolr's book oa states Heat squarely any of the problems It raises,1 that it offers any way, or rnothadi or concrete content for action as It claims to do...
...Certainly an ethics built on these assumptions should prove exciting...
...he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions...
...Men feel this, yet there have always been philosophers who have tried to mask it...
...Often the visitors were more acutely aware of historical sreoasser than the natives, and in the last leetiflfi of She book, which Mr...
...The American," wrote Crevecoeur, "is a new man...
...But only if he realizes and assumes his failures, accepts the ambiguity of* his condition,, and the responsibility for his acts, can he realize the freedom that he does not have...
...This, then, is the moment for selfknowledge, the moment at which Mr...
...It is still possible that we may lose everything, but it is also possible for us to win a greater victory for ourselves and for tilt world...
...Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Cofnmager have already worked in this field, to excellent effect, but Mr...
...In some quarters there is a tendency, which can be understood but not condoned, to conclude that our well-being is evidence of special virtue...
...Most of the selections have never before been published in this country, and many of them Handlin has translated into English for the first time...
...Her treatment of artists and writers is fragmentary and inconclusive, but there is no mistaking the sub-man, serious man, nihilist, adventurer, and passionate man...
...The first deals with the types of failures possible for men who do not succeed in willing themselves as freedom...
...It is too much to ask a reader to discover her meanings for these key words...
...who acts upon new principles...
...Man determines his own values by his actions and the ends he sets up...
...because we are better...
...Philosophical Library, New York...
...For that matter, the talk of the Communists, always belittling this country and ignoring Russia's faults, makes chauvinism seem a virtue...
...Overbearing pride is another...
...THAT WAS AMERICA is a book to help us achieve the necessary perspective...
...But granting that we are responsible for our acts and values, and that our condition is ambiguous, and that there must be failure in every success, how will the ethics of ambiguity operate in the face of this...
...Thus man is responsible for his acts, and ends, and even for his failure...
...The first thing wc must be assured of is that violence and dictatorship are imminent, and one must not retreat from it, deny it, or assume it lightly...
...They also noted, at the very outset, how those resources were being wasted...
...Handlin presents a whole series of nineteenth century pilgrims to testify to the miracles of American expansion, the incredible growth of industry, the prodigious development of the great cities...
...But between arrogance on the one hand and defeatism on the other, there is firm ground on which we can take our stand...
...Handlin has for the most part drawn upon unfamiliar sources...
...Granville Hicks, well-known writer an* critic, it the author of "Small Town...
...Certain persons insist that our national greatness is the product of some single formula, some truth that was uniquely revealed to the founding fathers...
...Handlin and his forty foreigners can help us...
...That burst that was to make America and American ideals the dominant factor in the fate of the Western world...
...Merchants, missionaries, musicians, diplomats, scientists— all kinds of travelers furnish grist for his mill...
...Many of them felt that this boundless opportunity was having a revolutionary effect on the people who had settled here...
...For one who believes that "without crime, and tyranny there could be no libera* tion of man," where, among alt' those variables can justification for any violence whatsoever not be found?, Bvert to a man exceptionally honest Wttft himself, of what help can the "method* , proposed, or the "conditions" sett forth, offer...
...So Chauvinism develops, and when we contrast the United States with the other great power of the world, the Soviet Union, it is hard not to be chauvinistic...
...V EVIDENTLY THE AUTHOR is aware that this sort of criticism is leveled at existentialism...
...A French colonial administrator, lfaretu de Smint-Mery, deplored the eUsaate, the we**** and much else, and another FiettcJuaaa, a royalist exile named de Montietun, could discover nothing to salt him: "a scowling sky, a hostile climate, and humid lands, to say nothing of the somber solitude, of the bad manners and gross customs, of the religious fanaticism, of the unbearable democracy of the great mass of white inhabitants, of the comic pride of the wealthy classes, of the lack of good taste and good tone...
...To these questions tha author says that one can only ttroporiV a method and find out* uaitef what conditions the acts of men ate valid...
...The existentialism of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir claims to face this condition of man, the "tragic ambiguity," and in this book Madame de Beauvoir attempts to build an ethics upon it...
...Thitr is a possible view of man, and on the basis of it one can follow some of this book, and with profit...
...Thus we see from another angle the ambiguity, this time, of the ethics...
...Men get in the way of the willing of freedom for men, some musT be sacrificed...
...Revelant to these types is the treatment of oppression...
...Reviewed By GRANVILLE MICKS ^HE TEARS SINCE THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND WORLD E WAR have brought to most Americans ari acute sense of their good * fortune...
...Even the reader familiar with existential ontology will not discover an adequate transition from the ontology to the directives for action that it calls for, For example, how one makes himself a lack of being, or casts himself ' into the world...
...More than ever we need to see clearly what we are and what we are not...
...It is here, and not in the ontological discussions, that one begins to And, for ethics, the meaning of man's tragic ambiguity...
...Coming from all over the globe, we as a people found in America great opportunities...
...We know one form—the Nazi occupation— is still vivid to her, but hat account manages to be moving without ranting and raving, nor does it descend to cleverness and epigrams...
...There is always failure, for he is an object, and in servitude, • and he dies he is not a god, he cannot escape his condition...
...The oppressed may have to become oppressors In turn, unless we are to stand by Insensitive to evil while waiting for the all too gradual change for the better...
...Copyright 1948...
...each is of sovereign importance, yet of insignificance in the totality...
...WHAT 18 TO BE DONE practically: what iB good, bad...
...But not all this book is on a mystic plane...
...But of course it is not one...
...The result is mystical jargon and confusion...
...but in comparison with other countries, we are very well off indeed...
...The ttftfrttt oi her tteatnies* of this is that violence cannot Ita eon* demited or"justlnsd without confront* ing it with tha ends in mind, the rotation of these ends to the absolute end of freedom, the economy of wasteful* ness of the violence, and the necessity' of it in view of other non-violent or less violent means...
...3.00...
...Count Vay de Vaya und Luskod recorded the misery he encountered in the homes of Pittsburgh's steel workers...
...But unfortunately for the ethics there seems to be a fascination with ontology which dominates the book...
...how do we choose between freedoms, between ends...
...that man is both free and in servitude each is an object to all others, even though all others are an object to him...
...we have what we have, and therefore we must deserve it...
...Many, though by no means all, of the earlier visitors quarreled with America's ideals, but those who came in the late nineteenth century were more likely to take exception when they found that the ideals were not being realized...
...The early visitors, those who came in the eighteenth century or at the beginning of the nineteenth, were overwhelmingly impressed by the vast natural resources of this land...
...We are at the moment the luckiest people in the world, with » a land that has not been devastated by war, with a standard of living that is beyond the dreams of most Europeans, and with a degree of individual liberty that is equally unparalleled...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 28
