The Making of Men by Paul Weiss

Abstract

272 BOOK REVIEWS Five of the authors discuss the individual from different aspects: Bhattacharyya , the metaphysical; Murti, the religious; Desgupta, the ethical; Saksena, the social; and Chand, the institutional aspect. These present a well-rounded approach to the problem of individualism so prominent in the West today. In the limits of so brief a review, all essays could not be treated individually . All are informative and important. The book is highly recommended as a doorway to more extensive reading in Indian thought. La Salle CoUege Philadelphia, Pa. E. RussELL NAuGHTON The Making of Men. By PAUL WEISS. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. Pp. 152 with index. $4.95. In this book, which is a series of reflective glances at the educative process in the twentieth century in the United States, the author, a philosopher, offers philosophical evaluations of the various ingredients which comprise the present-day system of schooling young men from early grades to college. The book is more evaluative than descriptive. Moreover, it is not argumentative nor even insistently persuasive; the style is simple didactic and the content represents the matured judgments of the long-trained philosopher and educator, expressing with a certain finality the wisdoms which years of thoughtful experience have refined. Therefore, the book's impact does not derive from the power of its syllogisms but from the character and authority of the man who is presenting in it the best results of his years of involvement. As must be expected, the man whose making interests Paul Weiss is the civilized, cultivated, perceptive, virtuous man; he is concerned with the educational process insofar as it is ordained to the formation of wise, urbane, creative, humane and sensitive human beings. Several touchstones are consistently applied to gauge the worth of all the educational ingredients at each stage of the process. To be truly educative, the materials offered to the developing skills, talents and mind of the growing person must be challenging enough to stir interest but not so difficult that they frustrate, nourishing in a way which satisfies the appetite and still whets it for more. At every stage, the growing individual must be treated as he is at that stage, the child as child, the youth as youth, the young man as young man, each with his proper needs and aspirations, which are different from those of an adult and not merely those of an adult-scaled-down-tosize , but each qualitatively appropriate. While the mind is taught, the spirit BOOK REVIEWS 273 must also be formed, in the childhood by stories, in teen-age by heroes, in youth by the records of great men and events in history. Techniques and procedures are not part of the properly educative process; they are appropriately taught in vocational institutions. True education prepares the mind to grasp and assimilate final goods, the goods which make life worth living, and men truly men. These materials are the materials which embody universal principles and values, as opposed to those which are particular and technical: philosophy, for example, as opposed to forestry, chemistry and physics as opposed to engineering, biology as opposed to medicine, art as opposed to craft. Inevitably the author is designing his criteria with an eye to his key evaluation, his ultimate evaluation of the genuine good life and the genuinely fulfilled man. This is, of course, not only the heart question of the book but one of the heart questions of the whole history of philosophy. Whoever in any compelling way answers this question, which is also a great question in theology, religion and politics, will be called greatest of the great, and therefore it cannot be expected that Paul Weiss, although he is wise, will have finally located the key to the mystery. He examines the claims of pleasure, knowledge, wealth, power, fame and security; he estimates the contributions of engineers and other producing people, politicians and other organizing people, humanitarians and other serving people, scholars and other thinking people; he beautifully balances the values of each and the limitations inherent in each and acknowledges that none of them is the answer to the ultimate good life and happy man. But then he must provide his...