BOOKS
A CASE STUDY IN ANTI-SECULARISM
THE MORAL LIFE AND THE ETHICAL LIFE.
By
Eliseo Vivtls. University
of Chicogo Press. $6.00.
Mr. Eliseo Vivas is a recent agonized convert to what San–
tayana calls the genteel tradition in philosophy-now once more fash–
ionable--which takes as the primary fact of moral experience the con–
sciousness of guilt or sin. In this book he offers some reasons for his
abandonment of any and all varieties of naturalism. He now passion–
ately affirms the view that values are not essentially related to human
experience but subsist outside or beyond it. Man's duty to be ethical–
to recognize the absolute validity of every human life--fIows from
his
duties to know God, whose existence is inferred from the order of nature,
and to realize himself as a person. Mr. Vivas also believes that "the
true destiny of man is not reached by the path of happiness but by the
path of salvation"-which consists in liberation from the burden of
natural anguish. Secularism, which aims at happiness not salvation, is
the most dreadful enemy of human civilization.
This is an
unusu~
book in various ways not the least peculiar of
which are its literary manners. These even transcend the latitude al–
lowed repentant sinners. I cannot recall any writing in philosophy which
suddenly interrupts its exposition with an irritated request to positivists,
pragmatists, 'empiricists'-aII opprobriously labeled as offspring of Thra–
symachus-not to read further. Although unsympathetic fellow-philoso–
phers are all children of God, some of them apparently are beyond re–
demption. Pragmatism is an "anti-human and barbaric" philosophy.
Stevenson's acute analysis of ethical discourse is called a rationalization
of the attitude of "crypto-Fascist." Dewey is guilty of "monstrous non–
sense" and James of "vicious nonsense." Naturalism "leads to frightful
practical consequences." Those who believe it fool themselves, but not
Mr. Vivas, in believing that they can "condemn morally the crimes
of AI Capone and of Goering." Indeed, were they not saved by a kindly
schizophrenia which prevents them from living according to their doc–
trines, they would act like AI Capone and Goering.
It would be hard to find anything comparable to this personal
tone outside the literature of dialectical materialism and some pages
