Aspects of .American Life

...present security over future aspiration, etc...

...There is a need for "perspective" and "re-appraisal," tired words, offering perpetually sound advice...

...In a world where America's performance is so significant, the temper of our character and society has crucial relevance...

...By emphasizing a "shift of values" rather than an adjustment to a new society, Kluckhohn sees that, in a real sense, Americans are choosing their new values and not simply passively or fearfully accepting them...

...Perhaps the business of the intellectual, and not simply the professional philosopher, is not only to diagnose the national malady, but to search for that small element in the cure for which they are historically and personally responsible...

...Clyde Kluckhohn...

...The question is not simply academic...

...it has been directed against a natural environment of unparalleled abundance...

...I do not suggest that a burst of philosophic energy would effect direct changes in America, but I would insist that it would be a necessary concomitant of any change...

...in May 1957, at which papers on various aspects of American life were discussed by a host of experts and intellectual celebrities...

...Contra those who aver that our difficulties stem from the intractable relativity of our values, there is abundant evidence that Americans today hold to abstract values and principles more strongly than ever...

...If only for the wealth of excerpted materials and extensive bibliography (but also for its clarity and sensibility) this piece is essential...

...Morison has edited the proceedings of that Conference into a book, The American Style, which now must be included with The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man as indispensable literature on the subject...

...The papers discussed at Dedham were not those familiar 20-page collections of most-favored sentences which one often finds at intellectual conclaves...

...For those who designate "change" and "action" as our national adjectives, Rostow and Potter offer this clarification: American change and activity has occurred within a uniquely successful historical enterprise...

...Like William H. Whyte, Kluckhohn organizes these changes around the syndrome of a declining Protestant ethic: group values replacing personal values...

...The question which our whole history now poses is whether America can face the precarious difficulties and unprecedented ambiguities of our international position: whether we are capable of making decisions and innovating changes whose possible consequences include failure: whether there is anything in our heritage to convince us that history includes tragedy as well as triumph...

...Indeed, as Kaplin points out, it is precisely our addiction to abstract principle which constitutes our immorality...

...Kaplin, who recognizes this, has offered a theory of revivified pragmatism...

...Papers were presented by Abraham Kaplin...

...George F. Kennan...

...among many distinguished discussants were Richard M. Bissell Jr., Richard Hofstadter, Elting E. Morison, David Potter and David Riesman...

...There is a possibility, Kluckhohn insists, I think too optimistically, that a new and more genuine individuality is emerging in America today...

...Reviewed by Jacob Cohen Department of History, Yale University By now the momentous transformations in American character and social structure which have taken place in the 20th century have been amply documented, analyzed, excoriated, burlesqued and mourned by myriad hipster novelists, social scientists, unregenerate exurbanites, misorganized business moguls and ad-men in gray turtleneck sweaters...

...One brief criticism: There is not sufficient recognition in these pieces that at one level the changes in America reflect a failure of our public philosophy...

...Henry A. Murray's dialogue on individuality between a social scientist, a romantic and a romantic social scientist bristles with insights, and is more dramatic for not resolving the problems which its clash of intellectual temperaments raises...

...In 72 intensely researched pages anthropologist Kluckhohn presents a superior digest of the copious literature dealing with "shifts of American values in the past generation...

...From this profusion of fact, cliche, nostalgia and self-congratulation we have gained the gross impression that there have indeed been recent alterations in the American style, although the degree of that alteration, its causes and its specific constituents, remains vague...

...The most notable result of this project, which benefited from the money and advice of the Carnegie Corporation, was a conference held in Dedham, Massachusetts...

...On other occasions Kluckhohn has taught us that an implicit philosophy lurks in the most unphilosophic cultures, and that our intellectuals articulate the projected image of our civilization...

...W. W. Rostow provides an extended, rather too simple, interpretation of America's domestic and international history and George Kennan, in a discussion of the manner in which administrative organization strait-jackets the conduct of American foreign policy, demonstrates those qualities of mind for which he is so widely admired (even as Richard Bissell Jr.'s extended critique of his paper indicates those areas where Kennan ought to be criticized...

...Our intellectuals have stopped posing fundamental questions, and hence have no answers for them...

...Three years ago, the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologv, which conducts research on foreign areas, launched a project "explicitly focussed on a fundamental re-examination of American society and institutions...

...We are content when the external contour, the distant purpose of our policy, jibes with some abstract platitude, and we abdicate the responsibility to infuse the thousand small decisions which implement that policy with our complete moral attention...

...J. Robert Oppenheimer and W. W. Rostow...

...Conformity" is not the word for it: the social sciences presuppose conformity and shouldn't be so surprised to find it...

...Midst such glitter permit me to summarize three nuggets, representative of many, which I feel replace current confusion with clarity: Against the Tocquevilleniks who insist that American character has remained basically the same since Andrew Jackson's day, Kluckhohn has amassed impressive evidence to indicate that a fundamental shift in American values has occurred in America since 1920, and that, as our smug fathers suggest, this shift roughly follows generational lines...

...Henn A. Murray...

...The impetus derived from belonging to a going, and almost inalterably, successful national concern, has made Americans seem more venturesome than they really are...

...And Kluckhohn demonstrates that contrary to a current conceit, heterogeneity and not its opposite is becoming the organizing principle of American culture, and there is more tolerance in America than ever before...

...In 110 pages, philosopher Abraham Kaplin not only trenchantly dissects America's ethical deportment but also presents the outlines of a comprehensive political theory which underscores the contributions which a new fusion of pure pragmatism and tough positivism can make to contemporary discussion...

...His suggestions, and others, need to be confronted...