In The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Ernst Cassirer argues that the distinguishing characteristic of man is his symbolizing activity. While the animal responds to signs and finds satisfaction in the manipulation and incorporation of physical objects, man also needs, and …
In New York City Robert Moses is the most prominent exponent of the credo that the end justifies the means; that he, “the great doer” always knows best; that the public should shut up, or in any event not be …
“Me kill Daddy-Wong-Wegs!” An idle conversation had lapsed comfortably into silence. Jessica was sitting in a state of summer-afternoon vacancy when the child’s voice and the mother’s quick reply aroused her. “Oh, no, darling, I wouldn’t do that.” The expressive …
In 1956 about two out of every three Americans lived in a metropolitan area. The greatest growth since 1950, however, was not in the central cities themselves, but in the surrounding country. Fully half of the increase occurred in territory …
WEEKEND IN DINLOCK, by Clancy Sigal. Houghton Mifflin Co. 197 pages, 1960. THE WAR IN ALGERIA, by Jules Roy. Grove Press. An Evergreen Target Book. 128 pages, 1961. Here are two books—neither very large—both fitting quite easily into the pocket …
The New Utopia The technicians claim that a general use of nuclear energy in industry could bring about a reduction of the work day to two or three hours. It is not easy to predict how men will use the …
This is the age of the White Jew. I have come to resent, if only because of their number, the hordes of outsiders who clamor fox admission to the clan. It is sad but true that this year everyone chooses …
After every close presidential election, the stage is set for an inquest: one can count on debates, congressional investigations, learned letters in The New York Times, elaborate outbursts of anal scholarship, all concerned with the poor old Electoral College. From …
You ask me about Messali Hadj and the MNA. This is an extremely complicated story and I hesitate to take any categoric position. It would seem that the French government recently thought of using the MNA and Messali as a …
David Carper derides the “fashionable fallacies” of those who “dissent against unions” but he has compiled a bulging anthology of his own. Consider his comments on union democracy. It is false, all false, he argues, that “unions are less democratic …
RESISTANCE, REBELLION, AND DEATH, by Albert Camus. Knopf. By comparison with the work of men like Koestler, Silone and Orwell, Albert Camus’ writing has always seemed to me somewhat grandiose and porous. He lacked Koestler’s capacity for sustained argument, Silone’s …
Latest, easiest and cheapest, since it is the least hazardous, intellectual fashion is to dissent against unions. From Victor Riesel to the upper reaches of the Ford Foundation, an orchestrated carping plucks on the anti-intellectualism of the unions, their bureaucratic …
THE ALIENATED VOTER, by Murray B. Levin. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Political poll-takers have asked the American people many questions in their years of investigation, but seldom have they tried to find out what the American people think about politics …
The 1960-61 recession has displayed two contradictory characteristics: it has been the mildest postwar recession when measured in terms of the cutbacks in output, capital investments and inventories, but the worst in terms of unemployment and business failures. The paradox …
