Suchergebnisse

Address before the National conference on higher education, Chicago, Ill., Mar., 1960.

After marshalling the arguments of Lippmann's `public philosophy' & Davenport's contentions that conformity has eliminated the possibility of US ability to achieve 'a spiritual or philosophical consensus', Berle disagrees with the pessimism of both. He suggests that the US 'has a higher factor of agreement on the elements of philosophical principles' than any other mass nation. The corporate form in industry & commerce has enforced conformity & looked upon the exercise of the rights & permission of personality as a threat to org & the ideal of the org man. This conformity is even more dangerous than the outright threats to civil rights. 'The great American corporations need a great deal more non-conformity than they are now getting.' Using a dualism deriving from Hegel's discussion of the philosophy of right, the author states: 'The developed personality, the non-conformist, the man perhaps at war with current thinking, is precisely the individual most needed when frontiers of accepted concepts have to be extended.' It is time that the intellectual world defends personality & resultant controversiality for utilitarian as well as idealistic reasons. 'It is time the conformist world recognizes in the controversialist the guarantee of its fruitfulness & its growth.' AAAPSS.