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in their social schemes, the Utopians on the Right (the archaists, in
Toynbee's phrase) are ever inclined to assume a fixed human nature
that is innately evil, an assumption which has always served as one
of the principal justifications of man's inhumanity to man.
It
is
the permanent alibi of those unconcerned With .justice. Futurism
and archaism are a pair of alternative reactions produced by the
schism in the soul of the members of a disintegrating society. Insofar
as the American intellectuals are abandoning futurism in favor of
archaism they are once more choosing an easy alternative and engag–
ing themselves in a pursuit of Utopia that will again end in frustration
and disillusion.
ISAAC ROSENFELD
The reason I cannot accept any of the current religious
philosophies is that they are all crazy in one very basic respect–
their denial of nature and attempt to push man out of nature.
It
may be that I have not read enough theology to find the exception.
But the theologians I have read-Kierkegaard, Berdyaev, Niebuhr,
Maritain-all agree in claiming man's true nature,
his
essential be–
ing, his humanity, his freedom or whatever else they choose to call
it, to lie outside historical time and the world of nature. Miguel de
Unamuno with his longing for immortality "in this flesh and in these
bones" may have been a real exception, but his Catholicism makes
me doubt it. Moreover, as there cannot be revealed religion without
the supernatural, all such religions m':!st regard man's occupancy of
nature as something of a comedown or at best a temporary con–
dition, as though he were only slumming in this world. I call this
crazy. This longing to clear out is not represented metaphorically as
an extension, say, of the desire to find a new apartment or visit
foreign countries, but literally-as though there really were some–
place else to go. One might as well say of fish that their real life
lies in a realm outside water.
I am a naturalist. This doesn't mean much, for in modern
philosophy the term covers too many positions to stand for anything
very definite. But it presents at least one issue clearly: there is no
realm outside nature and everything must be found within this world.
