In an era of profound social change, when all aspects of national and international life are under scrutiny and review, it is vital that successes and failures in international scientific and educational relations be examined. The most dramatic success story in recent times may be the cooperative programs in agriculture that have led to the “green revolution.” The history of this remarkable effort can be measured against the criteria of the development of cooperative solutions to urgent “human species problems” and of building indigenous capacity through the training of leaders. If it is true that the core of international cultural relations is the purposeful exchange of knowledge and skills, especially knowledge and skills that can be used toward solving problems affecting the entire world, agricultural program can also be measured against this standard.

In 1934 Waldemar Gurian had the wriest of pleasures, when he was forced to recognize that his very pessimistic analysis of the National-Socialist movement was correct. He fled from Germany to Switzerland where he was soon joined by his wife and daughter. In the extremely straitened circumstances of an emigré, soon to receive official notification that he was a stateless person, he had to face simultaneously the tasks of earning a living and of carrying on his work as a Catholic writer who combined scholarship and publicism. He was a profound student of Bolshevism. But his study, personal experience and the progress of events emphasized that Europe then faced a more dangerous threat than Russian Bolshevism. The threat stemmed from the control of Germany by the National-Socialists, who skilfully exploited a moral crisis in Germany and all of Europe, to gain and, then systematically and totally, to consolidate power in Germany. The menace to Europe was all the more dire, because the Nazis had disguised their totalitarian movement in the mask of anti-Bolshevism and so the danger went unrecognized.

This essay examines the role of “critical spectatorship” in the writings of two distinguished European intellectuals, José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) and Raymond Aron (1905–1983). We begin the paper by commenting on the struggle between civilization and barbarism, a fundamental topic in their works. We then examine the rhetoric of going beyond the political left and right, which both Ortega and Aron used in their writings. Next, we turn to the concept of “critical spectatorship” that is central to their thought and comment on the similarities and differences between their forms of social and political criticism. We conclude by drawing a few conclusions on the relevance of Ortega's and Aron's ideas for us today.

Jogging along the road to a dinner party one evening, Balfour's sister said she thought that the coachman had taken a wrong turn. “Well, that is his business,” remarked the politician laconically, “not ours.” The lady was quite in order to speculate about the matter, but interference was forbidden. Likewise, academic philosophers and sociologists have a perfect right to speculate about politics, but they must not, as academics, interfere with the political process; that is the job of the practical politician. Balfour himself theorized about politics and about the nature of human society, and also took a hand in directing the course of political events; but he saw the two as quite distinct activities. “Knowledge,” he maintained, is seldom power. And a sociologist so coldly independent of the social forces among which he lived as thoroughly to understand them, would, in all probability, be as impotent to guide the evolution of a community as an astonomer to modify the orbit of a comet.

The philosopher is first and foremost a human being whose humanity must be served by his academic profession if it is not to be irremediably pretentious, farcical, and corrupt. This is the Voegelinian paradigm. The present essay argues that anybody who is seriously interested in understanding Eric Voegelin as he understood himself is obliged to come to grips with the issues evoked by the perspectives this statement suggests. It is further argued that several general consequences follow: (a) underlining the loving tension toward divine Reality in open existence as central; (b) abandoning doctrinal fixation of separating faith and reason as supernatural and natural, respectively; (c) discarding as egophany the arrogant pretense of autonomous reason as its originator in self-sufficient human speculators; and (d) constantly remembering that devotion to the discipline and conventions of inquiry and of society must ever defer to devotion to the truth of existence.

THE ARGUMENT from authority is at least as old as the twelfth century. At that time it was thought a very good argument. The modern age believes it has found some better ones, and likes to think of the argument from authority as a relic, curious, perhaps, but certainly extinct. It is not really so. The argument from authority has still its adherents today, and these adherents, to our great surprise, are proving themselves convincing.

Remorselessly, and apparently inevitably, as 1976 ticks away, the death toll in the tangled Irish Troubles creeps higher, faster this year than any time since 1972—the vintage year for blood and turmoil. Except for the threatened, no one any longer seems greatly to care. Murder must be peculiarly grisly or quite spectacular to warrant more than cursory coverage in any but Irish journals. The dramatic detonation of a mine under the British ambassador's Jaguar outside Dublin in July engendered, briefly, media interest. Ambassadors are not assassinated every day, but in Ulster ordinary people are—or nearly every day. There have been too many nowarning bombs in pubs to remember, too many sprawled bodies discovered by pedestrians to concern any but the devastated relatives. The Provisional IRA's self-imposed truce has eroded and again there are bombs in Belfast, land mines in South Armagh, snipers in Derry. The British army and especially the Ulster police have become prime targets. Yet the Republicans feud among themselves. The Loyalist paramilitaries still pursue a strategy of random assassination and thus have unleashed a vicious, seemingly irreversible, cycle of tit-for-tat murders. Politicians, warders, judges are targets of assassins of various faiths. And the violence has been exported. There are bombs in Manchester and Birmingham, assassins in Kensington and gunmen firing into restaurants in London's West End, explosions in the underground, firebombs in the shops. The Loyalist paramilitaries have carried their war into the Irish Republic with explosions in crowded streets. The elegant Gresham and Shelbourne hotels have been bombed in Dublin and lesser resort establishments hit elsewhere. The greatest single slaughter, twenty-six people killed, came in a Dublin street, not in Belfast or Derry. No one sees an end. Even the hope that mutual exhaustion might bring an end to violence has flickered out.

Scholars often assume Émile seeks to educate readers to become like Émile. However, I suggest that by calling upon his readers to act as judges, Rousseau's aim is not for readers to copy Émile, but to educate them to act as independent judges. The first section of this article argues that Émile's education fails to teach him this kind of judgment. He never learns to navigate the interdependent relationships created by property ownership or family life. Rather, as explored in the second section, Sophie's education offers a better style of judgment. The article concludes with a consideration of the reader's education as distinct from that of either Émile or Sophie. By emulating Sophie readers do not become like her. Rather, through comparing the characters and situations Rousseau presents in Émile and “Émile et Sophie,” readers learn to judge for themselves.

An Account of Newman's political thought must explain a paradox. Newman declared that the principal aim of his life was to combat religious liberalism; and however novel may have been his approach to many problems, no charge against the orthodoxy of his theological writings has ever been sustained. Yet Newman was considered dangerously liberal by many. A few years after Newman had been made a Cardinal, Lord Selborne, during an audience with Pope Leo XIII, chanced to mention the name of Newman. The Pope's face brightened. “It was not easy; no, it was not easy. They said he was too liberal; but I was determined to honour the Church by honouring Newman. I have always felt a deep veneration for him. I am proud that it has been given me to honour such a man.” In what sense could it be said of Newman that he was too liberal? A study of his political thinking will, I think, take one far toward an answer to the question.

While our subject is the very broad one of “History and Diplomacy,” I thought I would narrow it somewhat and attempt merely to describe something of the aspect in which diplomatic history presents itself to a diplomatist who has turned late in life to the study and writing of history.* In doing so, I hope that I have not taken too great a liberty with the subject our hosts had in mind.

The problem of pluralism in political life causes contemporary man much anguish. Many and varied, difficult and challenging are the peculiar problems posed by the hitherto unrivalled heterogeneity within present-day political life. These problems have to be lived daily by every man at the level of prudence. And they must be continually examined and sifted by social scientists and philosophers. The social scientist must pursue them with his empiriological or phenomena-minded analysis, that is, ananalysis that is primarily concerned with the controlled observation of the facts, and with the formulation of hypothetical generalizations based on presumed facts; the philosopher must pursue them with his ontological or being-minded analysis, that is, an analysis that is primarily concerned with the fundamental principles that must guide the resolution of the problems. Among contemporary philosophers who have grappled with these problems, Jacques Maritain, the distinguished Thomist philosopher, is surely one of the most discerning and illuminating. I wish to consider in this essay some of the main tenets in Maritain's positio vis-á-vis the problem of pluralism in political life, with particular attention to his views on the problem posed by religious pluralism.