Foundations of Democracy ed. by F. Ernest Johnson, and: Unity and Difference in American Life ed. by R. M. MacIver

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 247 Foundations of Democracy. By F. ERNEST JoHNSON, ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947. Pp. 288, with index. $2.00. Unity and Difference in American Life. By R. M. MAciVER, ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947. Pp. 168, with index. $2.00. The volumes under review are products of the contemporary American concern for national unity. Though manifest in some form during most of our history as a nation, such a concern has assumed new and critical significance as greater international responsibilities have been thrust upon the United States. Movements in " intercultural education " and " intergroup relations " have grown considerably. Typical of some educational efforts in this regard are the addresses and courses offered by the Institute for Religious and Social Studies founded at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America through a gift from Lucius N. Littauer. The present collections include addresses given before the Institute during 1944 and 1945. They are as the third group in the Religion and Civilization Series. Unity and Difference in American Life follows two volumes in this series which have presented discussions of intergroup antagonisms and conflicts. Though the editor in a foreword promises that the contributors will show how group differences are related to national unity, few take up this theme directly and-undoubtedly because of the popular level of presentationmost seem content to survey existing prejudices and to urge their elimination . E. Franklin Frazier's analysis of the racial issue may be singled out as a clear and compact summary of the esssential character of interracial relations and of the growth of militancy among Negroes. In contrast to the dominantly descriptive emphasis in this book is the concern for doctrine in Foundations of Democracy, which social philosophers are likely to find more interesting, if chiefly as a handbook of current notions on the subject. Historical and philosophical discussions of democratic origins make up approximately the first half of the work, while the second half comprises attempted applications of democratic principles to economic, educational, and religious matters. The range of views presented is wide, with liberal Protestantism predominating, but with representation of Jewish, Catholic, and secularist philosophers. Since the interpretations are so varied, perhaps the critical comments offered here will have most worth and the contents of the books will be noted sufficiently if attention is directed toward certain central issues raised rather than toward a separate examination of each contribution. National unity, as the term is used in most current literature of this kind, refers to the unity of the American nation-state. In a theoretical discussion it would be important to distinguish between the unity of the nation and the unity of the state, since these are actually two different social 248 BOOK REVIEWS groups. Their identification in the modem world has been the result of nationalism, a sentiment which tends to exalt the nation-state as the supreme value. Unity achieved principally through the cultivation of nationalism is thus founded upon a myth which has brought disaster to those people who have been its conscious ardent champions. Carried to its logical conclusion, it is a conception in which persons and groups are regarded ultimately as segments of a monolithic state, without any autonomy except that granted by the state. This is as true of nationalism in a democratic country as in any other, when democracy is linked with the absolutism of majorities, though the tendency to substantialize and hypostatize the state has been carried farthest under contemporary dictatorships. A proper realistic view, .on the other hand, recognizes in the state, as in any social group, a unity of relation, real indeed but accidental (predicamentally ), distinguishable from its members but not separate from them. True unity is attained through the right ordering of all the social goods by the state, though these goods are not produced but presupposed by it, and protected, enhanced, and distributed through its agency. Seen in their relation to the state, persons and groups are parts of the whole, since their actions must be ordered to the common good, but they can never be wholly contained in the fabric of the state. The person always remains primary, the common good essentially subsidiary-in other...