Morton White
ORIGINAL
SIN~
NATURAL
LAW~
AND POLITICS*
1.
Credo and Non-credo.
Some years ago, when writing
my book
Social Thought in America,
I reported on the declining
reputation of American liberal thinkers like Dewey and Holmes, not
realizing that I was noting a tendency that would swell into an effort
to discredit totally the ideas of the most distinguished Americans of
the present century. I still consider my criticism of Dewey and Holmes
to be just, but the current intellectual atmosphere makes it plain
that for all my reservations I have more in common with them than
with most of their contemporary detractors.
Social Thought in
America
is not the work of an empiricist turned transcendentalist,
nor do I look back on it as the product of a temporary aberration.
But recent events have brought the liberal outlook under a very dif–
ferent kind of attack. It should be said, therefore, that my book is
in no sense to be identified with the more recent revivals of religious,
conservative, and obscurantist thinking which have attempted to dis–
credit and seriously lower the reputation of liberalism and secularism
in social, political, and moral affairs.
/ To underline this I will consider the views of two distinguished
critics of the liberal tradition: Reinhold Niebuhr, the most demo–
cratic and courageous opponent of secular liberalism ori the American
scene, and Walter Lippmann, who has bemoaned the disappearance
of "The Public Philosophy" in a vein distinctly antithetical to the
outlook of Dewey and Holmes. In criticizing Lippmann and Niebuhr
I mean to align myself spiritually with Dewey and Holmes, even
*
This is an abridgement of a new preface and epilogue to a paperback edition
of
Social Thought in America: The Revolt against Formalism,
to be issued by
Beacon Press.
