In Answer to George P. Eliot and Robert Boyers

It is a pleasure to be commended by George P. Elliot,* whose style is quite as good when he praises as when he is finding fault. Elliot finds this fault in my Maratl Sade piece: I went too far, he claims, in my argument. (Later, he asks me to go further still. I shall.) Why, according to him, did I go too far? Because I said that no one to be respected can answer “yes” to these questions: Does God exist? Is human life perfectible? Now Elliot knows someone who says God exists and who is indeed to be respected: W. H. Auden. Elliot goes on: “There are people whom I respect who do not believe that God exists or that society is perfectible, but who can and do assert that the philosopher is better than the drug addict, the criminal, or the madman.” Maybe Elliot respects these people; he ought not to respect them as philosophers. They cannot defend the conviction they hold—this was the point of my article. As for Auden, of course I respect him, especially for his ...