If a dramatist had the power to convert philosophical ideas into real, flesh-and-blood people and attempted to create the walking ebodiments of modern philosophy - the result would be the Berkeley rebels.
These "activists" are so fully, literally, loyally, devastatingly the products of modern philosophy that someone should cry to all the university administrations and faculties: "Brothers, you asked for it!"
Mankind could not expect to remain unscathed after decades of exposure to the radiation of intellectual fission-debris, such as: "Reason is impotent to know things as they are -- reality is unknowable -- certainty is impossible -- knowledge is mere probability -- truth is that which works -- mind is a superstition -- logic is a social convention -- ethics is a matter of subjective commitment to an arbitrary postulate" -- and the consequent mutations are those contorted young creatures who scream, in chronic terror, that they know nothing and want to rule everything.
If that dramatist were writing a movie, he could justifiably entitle it "Mario Svio, Son of Immanuel Kant."
With rare and academically neglected exceptions, the philosophical "mainstream" that seeps into every cla**room, subject and brain in today's universities, is: epistemological agnosticism, avowed irrationalism, ethical subjectivism. Our age is witnessing the ultimate climax, the cashing-in on a long process of destruction, at the end of the road laid out by Kant.
Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach. In the name of reason, Pragmatism established a range-of-the-moment view as an enlightened perspective on life, context-dropping as a rule of epistemology, expediency as a principle of morality, and collective subjectivism as a substitute for metaphysics.
Logical Positivism carried it further and, in the name of reason, elevated the immemorial psycho-epistemological system -- by proclaiming that knowledge consists of linguistic manipulations. Taking this seriously, Linguistic an*lysis declared that the task of philosophy is, not to identify universal principles, but to tell people what they mean when they speak, which they are otherwise unable to know (which last, by that time, was true -- in philosophical circles). This was the final stroke of philosophy breaking its moorings and floating off, like a lighter-than-air balloon, losing any semblance of connection to reality, any relevance to the problems of man's existence.
No matter how cautiously the proponents of such theories skirted any reference to the relationship between theory and practice, no matter how coyly they struggled to treat philosophy as a parlor or cla**room game -- the fact remained that young people went to college for the purpose of acquiring theoretical knowledge to guide them in practical action. Philosophy teachers evaded questions about the application of their ideas to reality, by such means as declaring that "reality is a meaningless term," or by a**erting that philosophy has no purpose other than the amusement of manufacturing arbitrary "constructs," or by urging students to temper every theory with "common sense" -- the common sense they had spent countless hours trying to invalidate.
As a result, a student came out of a modern university with the following sediment left in his brain by his four to eight years of study: existence is an uncharted, unknowable jungle, fear and uncertainty are man's permanent state, skepticism is the mark of maturity, cynicism is the mark of realism and, above all, the hallmark of an intellectual is the denial of the intellect.
When and if academic commentators gave any thought to the practical results of their theories, they were predominantly united in claiming that uncertainty and skepticism are socially valuable traits which would lead to tolerance of differences, flexibility, social "adjustment" and willingness to compromise. Some went so far as to maintain explicitly that intellectual certainty is the mark of a dictatorial mentality, and that chronic doubt -- the absence of firm convictions, the lack of absolutes -- is the guarantee of a peaceful, "democratic" society.
They miscalculated.
It has been said that Kant's dichotomy led to two lines of Kantian philosophers, both accepting his basic premises, but choosing opposite sides: those who chose reason, abandoning reality -- and those who chose reality, abandoning reason. The first delivered the world to the second.
The collector of the Kantian rationalizers' efforts -- the receiver of the bankrupt shambles of sophistry, casuistry, sterility and abysmal triviality to which they had reduced philosophy -- was Existentialism.
Existentialism, in essence, consists of pointing to modern philosophy and declaring: "Since this is reason, to hell with it!"
In spite of the fact that the pragmatists-positivists-an*lysts had obliterated reason, the existentiallists accepted them as reason's advocates, held them up to the world as examples of rationality and proceeded to reject reason altogether, proclaiming its impotence, rebelling against its "failure," calling for a return to reality, to subjective values and mindless action. In the name of reality, they proclaimed the moral supremacy of "instincts," urges, feelings -- and the cognitive powers of stomachs, muscles, kidneys, hearts, blood. It was a rebellion of headless bodies.
The battle is not over. The philosophy departments of today's universities are the battleground of a struggle which, in fact, is only a family quarrel between the an*lysts and the existentialists. Their progeny are the activists of the student rebellion.
If these activists choose the policy of "doing and then reflecting on your doing" -- hasn't Pragmatism taught them that truth is to be judged by consequences? If they "seem unable to formulate or sustain a systematized political theory of society," yet shriek with moral righteousness that they propose to achieve their social goals by physical force -- hasn't Logical Positivism taught them that ethical propositions have no cognitive meaning and are merely a report on one's feelings or the equivalent of emotional ejaculations? If they are savagely blind to everything but the immediate moment -- hasn't Logical Positivism taught them that nothing else can be claimed with certainty to exist? and while the Linguistic an*lysts are busy demonstrating that "The cat is on the mat" does not mean that "the mat" is an attribute of "the cat," nor that "on-the-mat" is the genus to which "the cat" belongs, nor yet that "the-cat" equals "on-the-mat" -- is it any wonder that students storm the Berkeley campus with placards inscribed "Strike now, an*lyze later"?
On June 14, CBS televised a jumbled, incoherent, unintelligible -- and for these very reasons, authentic and significant -- documentary entitled "The Berkeley Story." There is a method in every kind of madness -- and for those acquainted with modern philosophy, that documentary was like a display of sideshow mirrors throwing off twisted reflections and random echoes of the carnage perpetrated in the academic torture-chambers of the mind.
"Our generation has no ideology," declared the first boy interviewed, in the tone of defiance and hatred once reserved for saying: "Down with Wall Street!" -- clearly projecting that the enemy now is not the Robber Barons," but the mind. The older generation, he explained scornfully, had "a neat little pill" to solve everthing, but the pill didn't work and they merely "got their hearts busted." "We don't believe in pills," he said.