THE
PHILOSOPHICAL BATTLEFIELD
255
gripped the rest of the world. With a few exceptions, the philosophers
had come to tell the philosophers of other countries what for years
they had been telling the philosophers of their own countries. The
organizers of the Congress had indeed talked about the problems of
men. The President of the Congress, Professor Pos, in his opening
address had proclaimed the necessity of a new era of philosophy,
a scientific this-worldly approach to living problems.
As
the congress
developed, however, the participants shied nervously away-and par–
ticularly Professor Pos- from any issue which required the Congress
to take a position. And they did their best to blanket discussion of
the overriding problem of our age and culture-the nature of political
freedom and of the threats to its existence. The hosts of the Con–
gress, however, had planned without their guests from the other sides
of the Iron Curtain.
Here was a striking manifestation of what Hegel would have
called the power of the
Zeitgeist.
Most of the participants conceived
the role of the philosopher as a spectator of all time and existence.
Philosophy for them was a contemplative musing on human destiny,
bound,
if
at all, only by the limitations of nature, not of history. Few
of them were interested even in the Aristotelian conception of politics
as the institutional basis of the good life. The metaphysics of time
concerned them more than its urgencies. But none the less they were
caught up by the great social and political forces of our time. Here
and there isolated papers were read of genuine intellectual distinction,
especially in the field of logic and the philosophy of science. In private
conversation, however, few of the participants concealed their feeling
that the proceedings were mostly tedious in the extreme. The Congress
came to life only on the few occasions when the central issues- of the
day were raised.
The world has a way of breaking down the doors we lock
against it. And in this instance the world of social and political
struggle broke down not only the protective doors of doctrine but
also the door of organization.
The Congress called itself international; in fact, it was pre–
dominantly European. Two delegates appeared from Asia via the
United States, and two from South America. Nor was even the whole
of Europe represented. The Soviet Union had been cordially invited
to send its philosophers. The request was repeated several times but
