THE EXAMINED LIFE
Lahr, Anthea
THE EXAMINED LIFE ethics dead and alive, by Barrows Dunham. Alfred A. Knopf. 214 pp. $6.95. reviewed by Anthea Lahr "Grandfathers cannot be pessimists." Barrows Dunham is obviously a grandfather....
...I don't know why the fear of losing it all should so outweigh the hope of having it all...
...Who cannot objectively say that the Nazi gas ovens were evil...
...Dunham ends Ethics Dead and Alive with the image of even the darkest hours having some sort of light...
...In the last few years we have seen commitment lead to violence, and now, under a Republican Administration, to apathy and hopelessness...
...Our concept of evil matures...
...Unlike the rest of the animal world, man can make decisions on grounds other than satisfying immediate needs...
...We are victims of our environment which is "radically evil [in that] it maintains the wealth and power of a few at the cost of poverty, starvation, weakness among multitudes...
...Nevertheless, morality requires commitment, and asks us to have some confidence in our moral knowledge...
...In fact, for him, they seem to be of increasing importance...
...He has little sympathy for the people who say that "good" and "bad" cannot be proved...
...For Dunham ethics are very much alive...
...It is refreshing to read a book with such faith in the future and in the intrinsic sensitivity of man...
...Yet here we are, staring into the stars...
...He quotes a girl at her high school commencement: "General Motors wants crewcuts, punctuality, and respectful conformity...
...There are nights, to be sure, darkling enough...
...But one may not, I think, stand silent or abstain...
...Ethics differ from culture to culture, generation to generation, but they cannot be avoided: "Non-decision is presumably the life of vegetables...
...If we all thought of each other as ends to be properly revered, there would be no exploitation to maintain our own privileges...
...Uncle Sam wants patriotic cannon fodder...
...There will probably never be an ideal society which has no exploited class...
...This is a dangerous intellectual game which gives a license to those in power to decide what is right...
...There are already the joys we have in friendship, love, and the beauties of art...
...Although Dunham is aware of the terrific threat of destruction hanging over us, he nonetheless sees the possibility of wealth and leisure becoming universally available: "Given abundance of goods and services—all these supplied with ever decreasing hours of work—one would expect to be extremely free: not free from want merely—indeed, no longer free from anything—but free to love, to give, to grow, to make up one's mind, untouched and untouchable by penalty or bribe...
...And our generation is good...
...It is in fact a human obligation to make decisions on ethical grounds: "One may well be discouraged...
...Lahr is a free lance critic...
...A world like this deserves contempt...
...But perhaps, even so, it will be well if skepticism, creeping back, softens from time to time our commitment with hesitation and our knowledge with doubt...
...After reading this book, it would almost be an insult to Dunham not to have some hope in the future...
...Revolutions too often only change the faces at the top: "after victory, [when] the promises are to be honored, they will be honored only so far as suits the convenience of the new ruling class...
...Future generations will be able to judge more clearly the effects of our wars and inhumanities...
...His book sparkles with optimism...
...Of course commitment is needed to keep consciences awake, but too much vehemence breeds an intolerance that defeats the purpose of the commitment...
...There would be joy in the attainment...
...Dunham is insistent that application of ethics is a practical means of making choices and directing one's life...
...We can now see the horrors of brutal punishments and the incarceration of lunatics...
...Fundamentally ethics mean treating every human being "as worth doing things for, and hence that no one is to be used as means merely...
...Only goodness in our generation can counter the decadence of the society we are inheriting...
...Ms...
...Dunham, with his flair for equipoise, writes: "On the whole, I suppose, the aloof do mankind less harm but also less good than the committed, the skeptics than the convinced...
...But as we nervously cling to what we have because it is so tenuous, so susceptible to the whims of power, we look away from the harm we do others...
...there can be joy even in the struggle...
Vol. 36 • April 1972 • No. 4
