Word: solzhenitsyns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...quickie sociologist is apt to tell us more of his own problems than of ours. Since Solzhenitsyn's life has been unhappily shaped by hard distinctions and persecuting dogma, he is understandably tempted to overvalue those weapons. He has become his own kind of hard dogmatist. He has brought with him the crusade that has cursed the older world. He seeks unity, virtue, morality, uniformity, dignity and - above all - "the right not to know." But these have very little to do with the mixed virtues - the virtues of compromise, decency, self-doubt, experiment - the meandering quest for community that...
Finally, I agree with Solzhenitsyn that the East should not model itself on the West. But that is not the issue in world politics today. The issue is whether the people of the Soviet Union, of China, of Cuba and of the other totalitarian countries can win the right to decide for themselves what model they wish to follow. Fundamentally, this is an issue of human rights, of freedom. In the struggle to win these rights, no voice has been more eloquent or effective than Alexander Solzhenitsyn...
...wholeheartedly agree with the moral and political values expressed in Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address. I share many of his political judgments as well. My disagreements with him are mainly philosophical. Commitment to freedom and a humane society does not require acceptance of a religious faith or subscription to any theological or metaphysical creed. Morality is logically independent of religion. To be sure, a free society is one that cherishes religious freedom, but this embraces not only a right to believe but a right to disbelieve...
...Solzhenitsyn speaks in the tradition of Dostoyevsky, who taught that if man did not worship God, he would worship the devil or himself in the form of Caesar. This is a dubious ground for the pluralistic beliefs essential to a democracy. Organized religions in the past have supported despotism, and some churchmen in our own time still...
...political life freedom conflicts with freedom; for example, the right to know may conflict with the right to privacy. That is why I agree with Solzhenitsyn that we cannot make an absolute of any specific good or freedom except the freedom of intelligence. Solzhenitsyn calls upon the West to stress obligations gather than rights. Our overriding obligation must be to "the moral obligation to be intelligent...