Selective, Yes. Humanism, Maybe

I direct and limit my comment to the second count of Professor Berger’s critique (I hope I am right in naming it so, and not “indictment”) of American conservatism: “a paradox (not to say a flaw) in its moral stance.” This paradox or flaw he identifies as “selective humanism.”

1. I hate to begin with a quibble, but I seem to sniff in Prof. Berger’s statement of this charge a trace of what in my logic-teaching days I used to call “the fallacy of composition and division”—that is, an equivocation between the collective and distributive meaning of a noun. Does he find the moral defect in conservative doctrine, as “its moral stance” would suggest? That is where he locates “the theoretical paradox” of American conservatism, but he offers no comparable analysis in the moral instance (though in a moment I shall do so). Or is it then his intent that many, most or all individual American conservatives exhibit the defect in their attitude and conduct?

JB

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James Burnham

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I direct and limit my comment to the second count of Professor Berger’s critique (I hope I am right in naming it so, and not “indictment”) of American conservatism: “a paradox (not to say a flaw) in its moral stance.” This paradox or flaw he identifies as “selective humanism.”

1. I hate to begin with a quibble, but I seem to sniff in Prof. Berger’s statement of this charge a trace of what in my logic-teaching days I used to call “the fallacy of composition and division”—that is, an equivocation between the collective and distributive meaning of a noun. Does he find the moral defect in conservative doctrine, as “its moral stance” would suggest? That is where he locates “the theoretical paradox” of American conservatism, but he offers no comparable analysis in the moral instance (though in a moment I shall do so). Or is it then his intent that many, most or all individual American conservatives exhibit the defect in their attitude and conduct?