404
GEORGE L1CHTHEIM
are told-are binding only upon those who accept them, but this
does not invalidate them, since it is their fate to be "subjective" and
"objective" at the same time. We are all conditioned by the culture
to which we belong, and there is no way of escaping from this
situation, for empirical research can never get beyond the point of
clarifying the origin of the norms we happen to call our own.
As
for the Hegelian idea that the nature of man, and the logic of history,
can be grasped by philosophical reflection, we are presumably too
wise to entertain such extravagant hopes. What remains when this
illusion has been discarded is the conventional procedure whereby
we treat our own moral values as though they possessed absolute
worth, though as good empiricists we are of course aware that such
intellectual and moral absolutism is illegitimate. In principle-so it
would seem-we have no business rating our civilization above that
of the Aztecs.
Is this a caricature of the reigning academic fashion? One would
like to think so, but there is evidence that some such muddled notion
does subtend the "pragmatic" solutions urged upon us by the spokes–
men of the new orthodoxy. Without attempting to go into the under–
lying philosophic questions-space forbids, and I have tried my hand
at it elsewhere-I propose to indicate the relevance of these con–
siderations to the choice between barbarism and Europeanization.
I am going to state dogmatically that no other alternative exists,
and that the proponents of cultural relativism are fooling themselves
if they imagine that what we and they call "civilization" can go on
existing
if
Europe goes under, or if America and Russia fail to
preserve the European inheritance. You will notice that I classify
the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. with reference to their cultural in–
heritance, not their current political structures and ideologies. I take
the view that, so far as those two are concerned, the Cold War has
ceased to represent a conflict between different civilizations, and has
become an ordinary political struggle over spheres of influence. This
fortunate development was made possible by the partial extrusion
of the Asiatic element from the Soviet system, consequent upon the
demise of Stalin and the weakening of the "Eurasian" aspect of
Soviet totalitarianism. The present regime in the U.S.S.R. remains
an autocratic police state, but it is no longer the mortal threat to
