IDEOLOGIES: The Consolations of Philosophy

While individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.

—Aristotle.

Last week, 700 professional philosophers from 25 countries assembled in Amsterdam to amass what truth they could. The occasion was the tenth International Congress of Philosophy, which met in the fern-draped auditorium of Amsterdam University. Its theme: Man, Mankind and (driving home the point) Humanity.

The sages heard discussions of such topics as the Problem of the Person in Hinayana Buddhism, the Trivialization of Mathematical Logic, Entic Parallelism, and a Practical Philosophy of Cosmic Energy. Then Czechoslovakia’s Arnost Kolman (who spent 30 years at Moscow University) rose to read a paper innocently entitled: “The Tasks of Contemporary Philosophy in the Struggle for the New Humanism.”

Down with the Abdomen. All non-Marxist philosophies, said Kolman, are “fascist and imperialist.” Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism is “a variety of sly apology for capitalism.” (Fortunately there were no existentialists in the house.) The U.S., he continued, is trying to subject the world to economic bondage. “The world must fight the parasitical rapacious principle, the symbol of which is the abdomen, the worst enemy of the constructive principle, the symbols of which are human hands and brain.”

Kolman sat down amid icy silence.

Up rose Britain’s lean, aging (76) Philosopher-Mathematician Bertrand Russell. “When you go back to Prague,” he rasped, “tell your employers that the next time we have an international congress of philosophy we’d prefer that they send someone not so crude.” Looking like an indignant owl, New York University’s Sidney Hook turned his brisk Brooklyn accent against Kolman: “You talk about economic democracy [in Russia]. You mean economic equality. But there is an equality in freedom and equality in slavery.”

Kolman broke in: “You have freedom of the press, but it’s only on paper.”

“That,” said Hook quietly, “is where it belongs.” He continued: “Your ideas provide the philosophical premise for a purge . . .”

To show that Soviet countries do not purge all those who disagree with Communism, Kolman pointed to Charles University’s Jan B. Kozak, an avowed but browbeaten non-Marxist who had come to Amsterdam as an “innocent front” for Czechoslovakia’s Marxist delegation. As Kolman spoke, the old professor turned his face away.

Ladislav Rieger, a member of the Communist “action committee” which had taken over the Czech universities, con tinued the battle for the “new humanism.” When he finished, Germany’s Walter Brugger remarked: “I see no difference between the Marxist philosophy and the philosophy of Naziism.” A hurt, weary look appeared on Rieger’s face. “Always the same confusion,” he sighed.

“General Diffuseness.” Deeply distressed was the congress’ chairman, Amsterdam’s shaggy-haired Hugo Pos. After two years in Buchenwald he had dropped his absent-minded-professor manner and set forth on a crusade for “scientific” philosophy which he thought would give the world a new, better life. “The discussions,” Pos sighed last week, “revealed the general diffuseness of postwar thinking.”

How much truth the philosophers had amassed was perhaps best revealed by a little man who rose from the back rows and asked permission to speak. After several minutes his learned listeners still understood nothing of his polysyllabic lecture. At length he went to the blackboard and drew a series of complicated equations (which Expert Russell later pronounced nonsense). Then the little man smiled and said softly: “And this, gentlemen, solves the problem of the world.”

Then he tripped down from the platform and was never heard of again. What he wrote on the blackboard was erased and nobody had copied it down.*

*He was probably the same little man who awoke after a surgical operation, convinced that while under ether he had discovered the Final Solution to the central problem of existence. Unfortunately, the formula stubbornly eluded him. So he had himself put under ether a second time while stenographers stood by to record his revelation. It turned out to be a simple declarative sentence: “The entire universe is permeated with a strong odor of turpentine.”