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Show Philosophy professor opens issues series According to Dr. Read, peace is an ideal; that which has no implications for practice, or, which is abstractly conceived. "Peace is a social condition. It is not to be defined negatively, as the absence of fighting, but positively as the harmonious co-existence of a multiplicity of interests, each adequately accommodated to the other," stated Dr. Read. "The central concern of philosophy is the rational selection of ends," stated Dr. Waldemer P. Read, professor emeritus of philosophy, in the first of a series of Great Issues Forum Wednesday night. "Since what we do works to determine what we are, the central question of practice becomes what kind of person, or persons, do I, or we wish to become," continued Dr. Read. A person must look at himself or analyze himself as to what his goal or pupose in life should be. Unless a person does this, his life really worth living, was one of the basic points brought out in Dr. Read's speech. What are the ends or goals for what we are working? "Are we going to permit mechanism, in other words, efficiency, ef-ficiency, in the faulty sense we have been talking, about drive out the creative life of person," said Dr. Read. He used Eric Fromm to illustrate his point. "Eric Fromm has argued, with justification in my opinion, that the drive toward mechanism so characteristic of our times is in fact a drive toward death." This drive toward automation reduces the place in the industrial-business process for human beings, which in turn eliminates their spontaneity and creativity, related Dr. Read. Rational thought is required to resolve the problem of ends in human life. Dr. Read explains "The ends of human life are not given, they are to be rationally formulated." for-mulated." "Parenthetically, it may be observed that one detail in the over-all problem of the proper end, or ends, of life is the question of the adequacy of the notion of 'poetry for poetry's sake, or, more generally, of 'art for art's sake,' stated Dr. Read. Turning to the political spectrum of the issue, Dr. Read stated "Mr. Nixon is an astute politician; his utterance may well be taken to reflect his appraisal of 'practical mindedness' of the American electorate." "He won many votes when he explained that the trouble we are having with the Negroes is the result of their having been promised too much than it would be "practical" to give them." "In effect, what he was saying when he won those votes was that if you-think we are going to lift the under-priviiedged out of their squalor and give them equality with the rest of us, then you have another thing coming. And he was probably right!" commented Dr. Read. |