The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 6: The War Years, 1940-1946

Planning and Religion. A review of The Judgement of the Nations, by Christopher Dawson; and Diagnosis of Our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist, by Karl Mannheim

Theology, 46 (May 1943) 102-06

To review together Mr. Christopher Dawson’s The Judgement of the Nationsand Dr. Karl Mannheim’s Diagnosis of Our Timewould be unjustifiable were it possible to do justice to either in less than an essay of the old quarterly size. For to discuss either at all adequately would be to discuss also, not necessarily the whole of each author’s past work but the development of certain dominant ideas throughout that work. Otherwise, one is obliged to assume an acquaintance with Dr. Mannheim’s previous book, Man and Society, and with at least two earlier books by Mr. Dawson, Religion and the Modern Stateand Beyond Politics. ² Some of Dr. Mannheim’s ideas have, I suspect, obtained currency among persons who either have not read Man and Societyor have not wholly digested that massive and difficult work; I wish that there was more evidence that Mr. Dawson’s two books, which contain some of the wisest and most penetrating criticism that has been made of contemporary politics, culture and religion, had been read at all. The two books under review occupy a somewhat similar position in their authors’ works. They consist of closely related essays, written at various times during the war; some of Mr. Dawson’s have appeared, in the same or an earlier form, in The Dublin Review; Dr. Mannheim’s – which he subtitles “wartime essays of a sociologist” – were composed primarily for discussion in private groups. Both volumes were evidently constructed, as all work of profound and conscientious thinking at the present time must be, under considerable difficulty; they are certainly as important as any books on social problems which have appeared during these last three years.

Neither considerations of space nor the foregoing parallel, however, is sufficient to justify considering the books together. But if we find a point upon which they converge, and consider the differences and similarities in their approach, the result – when we have to do with two writers both of great distinction, engaged in different special studies and possessing different backgrounds – may be of some profit. As the questions with which they are concerned are closely related, and the authors are quite aware of each other’s work, the point of convergence is not difficult to find. Mr. Dawson says: “Is it possible to develop a planned culture which will be free? Or does cultural planning necessarily involve a totalitarian state? . . . This is the question that Dr. Mannheim deals with in the final chapters of his book, Man and Society” (81). He proceeds, in the next page or two, to discuss Mannheim’s solution, and finds two difficulties:

First, that a social science such as he desiderates hardly exists as yet, though we can see its beginnings.

Secondly, that the remoulding of human nature is a task that far transcends politics, and that if the State is entrusted with this task it will inevitably destroy human freedom in a more fundamental way than even the totalitarian states have yet attempted to do.

Those states do, however, show us the risks of a wholesale planning which sacrifices the liberties and spiritual values of the older type of culture for the sake of power and immediate success. The planning of culture cannot be taken in a dictatorial spirit, like a rearmament plan. Since it is a much higher and more difficult task than any economic organization, it demands greater resources of powers of knowledge and understanding. It must, in fact, be undertaken in a...