Intolerable?

We stand constantly in the presence these days of a mode of argument that runs as follows: Proposition X, or Propositions X and Y, or Propositions X, Y and Z, if valid, would force certain conclusions that are intolerable. The propositions in question are, therefore, not valid; and the view of reality that has tended to make them seem plausible, or attractive, or unavoidable, must be a false view of reality. The task, therefore, becomes that of substituting for that false view of reality another view of reality which will yield up propositions whose tolerability we are entitled to take for granted because it does not lead to the conclusions declared intolerable. Nor do we require any criterion by which to evaluate this other view of reality than just that: we embrace it, and all the tacit premises and clear implications that go with it, because it assures us a means of escaping the intolerable.

X, Y and Z are, for this mode of argument, any variant of the following propositions: 1) The Soviet Union and World Communism must be destroyed because otherwise they will spread over the entire surface of the earth. 2) The great issue of our time is that between World Communism and the opposition to World Communism; thus, that between the Soviet Union and the United States. 3) The issues at stake between World Communism and the opposition to World Communism, between the Soviet Union and the United States, are absolute, uncompromisable, save in the short term and on the level of unwarranted optimism, so that an ultimate showdown is, off at the end, unavoidable. 4) World Communism and the Soviet Union are not going to change in such fashion as to make that showdown other than unavoidable; and we can change in such fashion as to make that showdown other than unavoidable only by ceasing to be all that we have any right to value in ourselves. 5) World Communism and the Soviet Union must, at all costs, be destroyed.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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We stand constantly in the presence these days of a mode of argument that runs as follows: Proposition X, or Propositions X and Y, or Propositions X, Y and Z, if valid, would force certain conclusions that are intolerable. The propositions in question are, therefore, not valid; and the view of reality that has tended to make them seem plausible, or attractive, or unavoidable, must be a false view of reality. The task, therefore, becomes that of substituting for that false view of reality another view of reality which will yield up propositions whose tolerability we are entitled to take for granted because it does not lead to the conclusions declared intolerable. Nor do we require any criterion by which to evaluate this other view of reality than just that: we embrace it, and all the tacit premises and clear implications that go with it, because it assures us a means of escaping the intolerable.

X, Y and Z are, for this mode of argument, any variant of the following propositions: 1) The Soviet Union and World Communism must be destroyed because otherwise they will spread over the entire surface of the earth. 2) The great issue of our time is that between World Communism and the opposition to World Communism; thus, that between the Soviet Union and the United States. 3) The issues at stake between World Communism and the opposition to World Communism, between the Soviet Union and the United States, are absolute, uncompromisable, save in the short term and on the level of unwarranted optimism, so that an ultimate showdown is, off at the end, unavoidable. 4) World Communism and the Soviet Union are not going to change in such fashion as to make that showdown other than unavoidable; and we can change in such fashion as to make that showdown other than unavoidable only by ceasing to be all that we have any right to value in ourselves. 5) World Communism and the Soviet Union must, at all costs, be destroyed.