PHILOSOPHY IN THE MASS AGE

A Canadian professor of philosophy creates a book out of his stimulating radio lectures over the CBC during the past few years. Moral philosophy--in fact morality itself---juxtaposed against an increasingly pragmatist, amoral North American society, is the central concern. Working within the two great tendencies of thought, pre-destination and freedom of the will, the historical factors which work against a formalized morality and which undermine contemporary society, are examined briefly but succinctly. Marxism and its possible uses in the Far East illuminate the argument that it may be the East rather than the West which moves toward a societal morality. The need for this kind of morality is sounded again and again through the book. So is the shameful lack of it in America. A conclusion that we may be at the dawn of a new moral-cultural level will leave the occasional reader comforted possibly, but not convinced.