If we wish to discuss mysticism and society in their mutual relationship there is one astonishing fact which should be pointed out from the outset. In the infinite welter of literature on mysticism which, especially during the last two generations, has taken on quite extraordinary proportions, the problem of mysticism and society has received but scanty attention. The way of the mystic in trying to attain his goal of union or communion with God or however we may define his goal, the peculiar spiritual universe in which he lives, the intricacies of mystical theology, which has the formulation of mystical experience in a conceptural framework and the establishment of an acceptable connection between these experiences and traditional forms of theology—all these have been discussed in full detail. Even the history of such developments in different systems and religions has always aroused the interest of the historian. The social context of mysticism and its implications, however, have, as far as I am aware, only a marginal place in these discussions.

It is customary to view the development of the Western economies as a straight line, leading from scarcity in the 19th century to affluence and abundance in the 20th. This interpretation neglects the dialectical reversal that took place and is taking place within a continuous development. The relative affluence and abundance of the Western economies is indeed the result of the economic system with all its institutions and its value-attitudes which emerged during and after the Industrial Revolution in the West. At the same time, this affluence was accompanied by a change in the character of its institutions, and especially also by a change in the underlying value-attitudes and in the style of life which it prescribes. The development was and is a truly dialectical one: the economics and psychology of scarcity and its institutions brought about an economics and psychology of affluence which is, in some respects, the antithesis of the economics and psychology of scarcity. This antithesis begins to undermine the institutional, psychological, and moral bases of the original system. A dialectical reversal is under way which shakes the foundations of our economic and moral order.

In this article dialectic is taken to mean that way of considering the development of thought and reality theorized by Hegel and later reconsidered and discussed by Marx; even today the dialectic concept of reality is an important theme in modern Marxism. As for Marx, some people hold that he turned the Hegelian concept of dialectic back to front, shifting its accent and basis from the Idea to real and concrete man, seen in his social relations; but there is no doubt that, thanks to this reversal, or rather thanks to a varied and complex attitude to dialectic (in some ways more positive and more directly fruitful than the Hegelian logical instrument, in others more polemical and detached), Marx never abandoned his determination to preserve its validity even in a context more or less radically different from Hegel's. Although, within the sphere of modern Marxism, beside the more orthodox school of thought that makes the dialectic concept of reality one of its doctrinal bastions, there is also the school that attempts to limit its doctrine to the field of historical reality and the world of man, relinquishing every pretension to a more generalized metaphysical perspective; one must not forget that even the latter does not believe it possible to form an adequate concept of the development of history without any reference to the dialectic concept; whether the whole of reality or only history are considered, it does not seem possible to leave the dialectic theory of development out of a consideration of either point of view.

This paper deals with the problem of value in the psychoanalytic theory of human nature and culture. In particular, it is concerned with this problem in the theory as it was expounded by Freud. First, I shall show how the problem of value is an integral part of the therapeutic situation which Freud encountered. In regard to Freud's own assessment of the problem, I shall point out some difficulties of a cognitive and a moral nature for which his theory must, but cannot, account. In the second part of the paper I shall show how the problem of value is an indispensable component of Freud's overall theory of man and culture, what may be called his “general theory.” This part will be concerned with its peculiar normative and scientific status. I shall try to show how descriptive and prescriptive ethics are (1) confused in Freud's theory and (2) that it is a confusion that cannot be avoided if the theory is to serve the purpose that Freud seemed to believe it must serve, namely, as a science not only of what man is but also of what man ought not to be.

Weber's famous “Protestant Ethic” thesis—the thesis published originally by him as “ Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft in Sozialpolitik, in 1901-02 (Vol. XX) and reprinted in his Gesammelte Aufsätze für Religionssoziologie, in 1920—which has allegedly attributed the rise of modern, as distinct from pre-modern, types of capitalism to the influence of Protestantism and especially of Calvinism, has provided—probably more than any other single specific thesis in the social sciences—a continuous focus of scientific controversy.

Material reality, constantly variable and constantly in movement, dialectic in its nature, is reflected in the sciences which at specific stages of their development possess an univocal form: the results of knowledge are expressed in a language which uses terminology and symbolism, its ideas and its statements have a precise and definite sense.

Our society in the Far West is evolving toward a consumers’ society. The differences between social classes tend to be erased by affluence and by ways of life that are becoming more and more common to those on the highest as well as the lowest level of the social scale. Thus the idea itself of social class is tending to disappear. On the other hand, a new differentiation is emerging which is based on culture and the form that culture takes in a society nourished by the means of mass communication. We may suppose that in the society of 1990 human groups will be differentiated according to the tastes and aptitudes of each of their members.

“What essential things are happening to us in the foundations of our existence, now that science has become our passion?” The modern sensibility is still greatly disturbed by this question of Heidegger's. We realize well enough the great value of science and the benefits obtainable from industry and medicine. Yet there remains in our hearts a certain disquiet. What indeed are science and technology doing to us at the roots?

In the intellectual history of the West and the East the words “experience” and “dialectic” have been used in various senses. Their respective roles in knowledge have been differently conceived—depending invariably on the meanings given to the words “knowledge” and “experience.” The problem of the mutual relationship between experience and dialectic is at bottom that of the relation between experience and reason. Reason can be understood in a static sense and a dynamic sense. It may stand for that human capacity which apprehends formal logical relations between certain propositions and deduces conclusions from given premises. Or it may refer to that dynamic effort of the human mind to articulate, to grapple with and render intelligible the immediately felt experience. In this latter sense reason is involved in a dialectical and dramatic process which aims at recapturing, as it were, the felt unity and totality of experience. That is why underlying the diverse uses of “dialectic” one can discern in the concept a common flavor which is a unique combination of the rational and the dramatic, the intellectual and the imaginative, the discursive and the non-discursive. Failure to understand the proper relation between experience and dialectic has given rise either to “insoluble paradoxes” or to grandiose, “metaphysical,” over-all solutions which are hardly convincing. In this paper I intend to bring out, what seems to me, the proper way of understanding their relation through a critical consideration of the dialectics of the famous Mādhyamika dialectician Nāgārjuna, of ancient India, interspersed with incidental remarks on some Western dialecticians.

No problem is more crucial in the history of the Old World than that of the relationship between opposite shores of the Mediterranean. We should like to approach it from a particular though historically central viewpoint: namely, from the connection existing between Canaan and the Aegean basin, or, in other words, between a Semitic Orient or Levant which the Greeks called Phoenicia, and a Europe which was the Occident, the region of Sunset, to the Near-Eastern Semites.

The twentieth century has seen the appearance, one after the other, of interrelated sciences which go beyond the confines of specific scientific disciplines. For example, there is biochemistry, physical chemistry, and bionics. Within the humanities the science of stylistics also provides an example of a discipline closely related to other ones. In studying the synonymy of the means of expression (the word synonymy here being used in the broadest sense of the word) and above all synonymy in literary language, stylistics occupies a position midway between the theory of literature and linguistics. It is impossible to conceive of a theory of translation which would not take into account stylistics. The translator's role is not to create a new work, with everything that literary creation implies, that is to say, the indissoluble fusion of subject, ideas, esthetics, and images. The translator only recreates an already existing work, making use of processes which belong to another linguistic system. He transcribes the original into another system of signs which are determined by another historical, cultural, and literary context, and especially by another linguistic structure. The object of a theory of translation is not to develop rules and formulas for translators, but to systematize the most general aspects of the translator's work, to distinguish those aspects which lend themselves to analysis.

Did the Crusades pave the way for the lively flow of Mediterranean trade so characteristic of the later Middle Ages? Or were the Crusades themselves made possible by the meteoric rise of international commerce in the eleventh century, which was accompanied by a similar increase in maritime trafic and naval power, subsequently providing the indispensable supply lines for the Christian warriors? If so, what do we know about the objects, scope and organization of that trade?

We have hesitated in choosing this title because it is identical with that of Bergson's masterly work. Bergson was perhaps the most eminent philosopher to build his philosophical views in part on the basis of biological evolutionism. The biological knowledge which was available in Bergson's time is however now out of date. Our present understanding of evolution is rather different from his. This is as it should be. Science is cumulative knowledge. A scientist works to make the knowledge whith which he started obsolete. In a very real sense he works to make his own work obsolete as well. In so far as a philosophy has science as one of its components, or supports, philosophy must be rethought, reconstructed, and reformulated from the vantage point of each generation. If all conclusions based on scientific knowledge of a half century ago were still valid, this could only mean that the study of the evolution of life is no longer profitable. Such however is not the case.

My purpose in this paper is to consider the reaction of certain literary artists to the ways in which language is used by philosophers. Such an investigation is I think worthwhile for the light it throws both upon the nature of philosophical thinking itself and upon the preoccupations of certain workers. In particular it makes us enquire what it is about philosophical thinking which can be exploited imaginatively.

André Lalande's classic Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie thus criticises the term “dialectics”:

“This word has been interpreted in so many different ways that it can be employed usefully only when the precise meaning attributed to it is specified. Even with this reservation there is yet reason to be on guard against the inappropriate association which might thus arise.”

We have been going through a period in the philosophy of science in which it has been dominated by the theory of the dematerialization of matter. From Eddington in 1927 to Hanson in the present day, this theory, in one formulation or another, has been maintained. Its adherents suppose that matter upon examination can be resolved into mental constructs of every description, from organized sets of sense impressions to mathematical equations. The idealists are so dazzled by the conditions under which the mental recognition of the extra-mental world occurs that they end by doubting the genuineness of the extra-mental world. But there are reasons to suspect that the idealistic interpretation is not the correct one, and I shall attempt here to present (though not to prove) the counter position. The materialist considers the extra-mental world genuine, but, as we shall see, it is not simply the case of an old materialism confronted with new evidence by the idealists. There is evidence for a new materialism as well. Thus what we have perhaps is an ancient controversy under fresh guises, a new idealism confronted by a new materialism.

“Growth is the result of instability, development is the result of instability:” with this simple statement the great economist François Perroux announced one of the greatest revolutions to have taken place in the science of economics since Quesnay and Adam Smith founded the discipline that dominates our present civilization.

Until now the history of the first contacts between China and Europe in modern times has been studied principally from a Politica! Point of view or from an economic and commercial one, as well as from its religious aspects. The cultural aspects and more particularly the philosophical consequences of these contacts have hardly been touched upon except by Chinese scholars with little knowledge of European sources, or inversely by European historians who have not made sufficient use of Chinese sources. For about fifteen years I have devoted two or three of my courses at the Collège de France to studying the Chinese thinkers of the Ch'ing period, and this has led me to touch upon certain questions which the introduction of European ideas in China by Jesuit missionaries at this time poses. Occupied with other research in recent years, I have not followed at close hand the many studies which have been devoted to these questions by Chinese and Japanese scholars, notably by Professors Fang Ho of Taipei, Saeki Yoshiro of Hiroshima, and Goto Sueo of Tokyo, and I am not familiar with the recent Marxist interpretations, those of Hiu Wai-lu, of Kwan Fong, or the recent ideas of Fong Yiu-lan or the other collaborators of the Pekinese magazine “Philosophic Studies” (Tcho-hiu yen-kiou). I must apologize for using documentation which is not up-to-date or not according to the fashions of the day and which at any rate is very incomplete, for I am not a specialist in this subject. I would especially like to address myself to the Chinese reactions to the first Sino-European contacts rather than the European reactions, which—in Europe at least— are better known and which still more so are outside my field of competence.

Is there a specific form of dialectic reason as distinct from reason in the strict classical sense? It is very doubtful, and dialectic reason is very probably a myth. I will not discuss this point here. But there is no doubt that dialectic aspects of conscience do exist; they exist not only in the conscience of the scholar, but in conscience in general which, according to Gonseth, is always open, ever ready to revize itself, to doubt its provisional principles, to abandon the positions it had taken up.

The word “alienation” is today one of those fashionable and hence suspect words. It is very often used and therefore misused; it is an ambiguous and therefore obscure word; moreover it gives rise to the defensive reactions of those who believe that what it represents is dangerous in practice and who are interested in maintaining a situation which, according to them, is worthwhile defending. These reactions stem from different ways of reasoning and practical attitudes; starting with those who consider that it is necessary to fight against all obscure and ambiguous words and ending with those who oppose the pessimism of “ the philosophy of despair.” There are therefore, among the opposers, all those who believe in the traditions of neo-positivism and in the postulate of the semantic analysis of terms. There are some catholics and even—astonishing as it may seem—some Marxists who, historically speaking, are those who are most responsible for the actual popularity, not only of the term “alienation” itself, but also for the theoretic concepts connected with it.