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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 1963)


When one thinks of Othello and Shylock one can only remember their somber fates; in both cases, I believe, their unhappy destinies were in some measure a result of their foreignness; or, in other words, Venice did not fulfill for them its promise of being a society in which mean could live as men, not as whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Venetians and foreigners. To understand why Shakespeare has thus presented Venice, we must for a moment consider what it meant to enlightened men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

France today is undergoing a period of institutional crisis which is having important effects on its Parliament and on its political parties. A study of this crisis is of particular interest at this time, since it provides a specific illustration of a problem that is beginning to emerge for all of the Western democracies.

The challenge of insecurity is not only personal and economic, but cultural. For no society which meets in some measure the expectations of its intellectuals need to be asked to deliver its cultural promises on such an utopian scale as the Spanish Americans demand. And it is perhaps, as an answer to the actual denials of their environment that one can account for what may be called the spiritually nouveau riche character of Spanish American cultural speculation.

It is commonly assumed that the Soviet leaders’ claim that their people enjoy ‘freedom’ is mere hypocrisy. This essay contends that the Russian claim is in fact meaningful. This meaning will be demonstrated by its application in the area of occupational choice in Russia, an area of very great significance for the meaning of freedom.

The contemporary period in Church history has been repeatedly described as an era of ecumenicity...Yet, side by side with this development of a new ecumencial sprit htere has occurred a resurgence of denominationalism which has been marked by a renewed emphasis on the historical heritage and peculiar theological position of each denomination in question.

A spate of books, with the common characteristic of a layman’s approach to peace, is voicing the public’s anxiety for the future of mankind in the nuclear age. But the authors are laymen only in the sense of da Cusa’s Idiota: they distrust the professional diplomat and the disarmament expert...The pitfall of this approach became apparent right from the start, when atomic scientists vainly tried to put their chain reaction into political chains.

In 1932 the famous book, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, by A. A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, accused management of larger corporations of exercising power without responsibility. They had power because competition did not constrain them in concentrated markets, and they were irresponsible because the owners no longer had any control over them...Means has become more convinced of the danger to society stemming from the management of large corporations.

Review of Schutz, Alfred. Collected Papers: I. The Problem of Social Reality. Edited and intro by Maurice Natanson, preface by H. L. Van Breda.The Hague: 1962. Martinus Nijhoff. 361 pp.

Review of book by G. A. Lipsky. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press (Published under the auspices of the American University). 1962. 376 pp.

Review of book by Stanislaw Ossowski. Neuwied am Rhein: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag. 1962. 300 pp.

Review of book by Adam B. Ulam. New York: Random House. 1960. 307 pp.

Review of books by Josef Korbel and Edward Taborsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1959. 258 pp.

Review of book by Walter F. Murphy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1962. 308 pp.


Review of book by Cyril Sofer. Chicago, Ill.: Quadrangle Books, 1962.

Review of book by Sidney Weintraub. Philadelphia, PA: The Chilton Company 1961. 100 pp.

Review of book by George A. Lundberg. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. 2nd ed. 1961. 155 pp.

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