Volume 19, Number 9 · November 30, 1972
Trilling, Roszak, & Goodman
By J.M. Cameron
Mind in the Modern World
by Lionel Trilling
Viking, 48 pp., $.95 (to be published in January) (paper)
Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society
by Theodore Roszak
Doubleday, 492 pp., $10.00
Little Prayers and Finite Experience
by Paul Goodman
Harper & Row, 124 pp., $5.95
Professor Trilling has made good and graceful use of his invitation to give the first annual Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. He has no difficulty in showing that Jefferson took for granted that men in their political associations were equal in their rationality. He also shows that such a view is warm and optimistic in the confidence it has in the speculative powers of the mind and in its ability to judge social policy and to understand the natural world. He notes that many of the educated have lost this high confidence; and that among the causes of this loss are not only the social and political vicissitudes through which the world has passed since Jefferson's day but also the astonishing performances of 'the wild ranging intellect of man' in bringing about a kind of self-stultification of mind.
Review, 4348 words
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