Dear Mr. Wieck (Details anzeigen)^e:

I have finished reading the book by R. M. Weaver (Details anzeigen)^f „Ideas have consequences (Details anzeigen)^g“ (I could not do it quicker because of the regular time I felt I had to dedicate every day to the „Systematic Theology“).

I am deeply impressed by the fact that such a book should appear in this country under the auspices of the Chicago Press. This shows to me more than everything else the change of temper during the 14 years I am in America (Details anzeigen)^h. Most of the criticism of our period given by the authors in the straight line of Burke (Details anzeigen)ⁱ (the writer of the most quoted book), Nietzsche (Details anzeigen)^j, Spengler (Details anzeigen)^k, George (Details anzeigen)^l, Peguy (Details anzeigen)^m and the group of Religious Socialists in Germany (Details anzeigen)ⁿ after the first world-war to which I myself belonged. Except the emphasis on the American scene and the references to the present world situation there is hardly a point of criticism which has not been made by those mentioned. „From nominalism to pragmatism“, a history of decay – – that is the common subject of this whole literature (compare Max Horkheimer (Details anzeigen)^o's book „Eclipse of Reason (Details anzeigen)^p“, (1947, Oxford University Press.)

Weaver (Details anzeigen)^q's book, however, is more brilliantly written, more daring and radical than most of those with German background (except of course Nietzsche (Details anzeigen)^r). I want to express my special thanks to the Chicago Press that it published and supports such a book which according to the still prevailing mood in this country is certainly highly popular. It will shock, and since the philosophical shock is the beginning of wisdom it will be very wholesome for the „spoiled children“ in this country who are so excellently described by the author.

My criticism is, of course, directed against the last chapters which are supposed to give a statement of the positive elements left to us to build on them. Actually these chapters extend the criticism to many new points and do not give any indication of where to look for truth. When the author names private property as the last pillar, not yet broken, he adds that property in high capitalism which is merely a commodity yo[u] buy in order to sell, and often completely anonymous, is as much a distortion of the meaning of property as logical positivism is a distortion of the meaning of language.| In this he follows the criticism of Marx (Details anzeigen)^s and the Religious Socialists but [d]oes not show a ground for reconstruction. It seems to me that he looks back – as the strongly criticized Romantics did – to the medieval synthesis of Christianity and ancient humanism. But he does not show how anything similar to that period can be born out of the ruins of the present world which he describes so excellently.