Word: dusen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Modern Fallacy. Theologian Van Dusen bases his case on a fundamental disagreement with French Philosopher Rene Descartes (Cogito; ergo sum), the symbol of modern skepticism, who believed that each man must start alone and anew to find the truth. Descartes' assumption that each individual must find truth in his own way is one of the great modern fallacies, Van Dusen argues. On the contrary, the correct assumption is "that youth of 17 to 20 years of age is not competent to decide the essentials of his own education...
...Descartes' most disastrous bequest, says Van Dusen, was his distinction between thought and matter-a dualism which became in Kant the divorce between reality as revealed by faith, and reality as revealed through the senses. The result today is the frightening schism "between facts and values, between the realm of science and the realm of art and religion; more recently between the secular and the spiritual." (Ironically, says Van Dusen, both Descartes and Kant had been illumined by a firm faith in God as the ultimate truth. "The history of human thought knows no more pathetic paradox than...
Lavish Cafeteria. Against a "nearer background," Van Dusen follows the subsequent course of education in the U.S. Originally, he points out, "the church was the parent and sponsor of education. And religion was the keystone of the educational arch." But as the nation and its knowledge expanded, so did education. Courses and colleges multiplied, and education more and more became afflicted with the curse of specialization ("so stunting to large-mindedness, so fatal to comprehension of the whole truth, that is, the real truth"). And with specialization came secularization...
Queen of the Sciences. The only way to cure "civilization's sickness," says Van Dusen, is to restore to education the coherence it once knew. That means "the organic unity of truth, each several part being what it is by virtue of its place within the Whole . . . But, if truth is an organic whole, how does it come to be so?" ... To answer that, "we are being driven hard up against the question...
Does the U.S.'s traditional principle of separation of church and state stand in the way? Van Dusen's answer: no. "At the present hour, this cherished American principle is being refurbished and redefined to ends for which it was never intended. The Constitutional guarantees of 'freedom of religion' have lately been reinterpreted by no less august a body than the United States Supreme Court with meanings which were never foreseen by, and which, it may safely be suggested, would have outraged, the framers of the Constitution...