Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience

191, [1] pages. A reading list. Index of major issues discussed. Ex-library with the usual library markings. Tape marks on dust jacket, which has wear, soiling, and is in a plastic sleeve. Seven authorities explore the most crucial issue of our time. These authorities are: John H. Herz, David R. Inglis, Kenneth W. Thompson, Erich Fromm, Paul Ramsey, Roger L. Shinn and the editor. Derived from a Kirkus review: Dr. Bennett, Dean of Union Theological Seminary in New York, has brought together six authorities, added his own contribution to the subject, and given the inquiring reader a valuable collection of incisive pieces surveying various aspects of the nuclear arms struggle. David Inglis presents in The Nature of Nuclear War, a graphic picture of what a nuclear attack would bring in terms of death and destruction and extended genetic disaster. Kenneth Thompson weighs the ethical aspects, warning that alleviation could well be impossible if we assume that disaster could never strike. John Bennett's views on Moral are somewhat at odds with Paul Ramsey in The Case for Making thus challenging the reader's opinion. Erich Fromm explores the position with considerable trepidation, while Roger Shinn gives us a hold on a newly refurbished faith in Faith and the Perilous Future The section International Politics and the Nuclear Dilemma by John Herz is challenging. This includes one of the scarcer, and quite insightful, essays by Fromm. Erich Fromm is one of the contributors: "Erich Seligmann Fromm (March 23, 1900 March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.Fromm's best known work, Escape from Freedom, focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control upon reaching a freedom that was thought to be an individual s true desire. Fromm s critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. In Escape from Freedom, he found favor with the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society: What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy. Noam Chomsky discusses Erich Fromm's theory of alienation. The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book The Sane Society, published in 1955, which argued in favor of a humanistic and democratic socialism. Building primarily upon the early works of Karl Marx, Fromm sought to reemphasize the ideal of freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing and that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Marx and his humanist messages to the US and Western European public. In the early 1960s, Fromm published two books dealing with Marxist thought (Marx's Concept of Man and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud). In 1965, working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between Marxist humanists, Fromm published a series of articles entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. In 1. …