Crisis, History and the Image of Man

Extract

In his address at the 200th convocation of the University of Chicago, June 11, 1940, President Hutchins invited American youth to reexamine the principles which make life worth living.

This enterprise is most urgently necessary in removing the intellectual unpreparedness of the nation. Far worse than the military and economic deficiencies in equipment and armament are the spiritual dissensions among the various groups of our time. In the universal conflict those nations will prevail whose unity results from spontaneous and free devotion to values which are recognized as worth living and dying for. We can reintegrate the nation, when we succeed in breaking the continuous secularization which, parallel to the rapid industrialization after the Civil War, is undermining the ethos of American life. The ethos which made this commonwealth great, was the fighting spirit of enlightenment. The backbone of the political principles of the Constitution, is the spirit of the Christian Law of Nature; that means political freedom as the fullfilment of the rules of the Almighty. This unity between the three spheres: nature, man and God was discarded by the process of secularization. The ethics of enlightenment shifted to the demand for universal comfort and for good living. The attitude of a boundless optimism prevailed which considered history an unending process of perfection. It was thought that this state of continuous improvement would result from the scientific organization of social and political institutions; their progress would eliminate eventually what the less scientific past had ascribed to the finiteness and sinfulness of man.