Philosophy Delineated Anew

Sir: Cheers for your Essay on philosophy [Jan. 7]. I read it as a challenge to philosophers: who else can bring about the new emergence of which you speak? Philosophy has made the mistake of accepting too straightforwardly the scientific model. This has not fulfilled the philosophic need; man still tries to understand himself and the world in ways that escape positive science. The task of philosophy is delineated anew.

Louis C. MARTIN, M.D. Omaha

Sir: Your Essay, carefully clipped out and neatly inserted into a few professors' mailboxes, is serving as a brilliant explanation of why Philosophy 203 (readings with Ayer, Ryle, Moore, Austin, etc.) will be the last philosophy course for a great many disappointed students.

W. H. EARLE II Princeton, N.J.

Sir: Your Essay was much needed, but to attempt a discussion of contemporary philosophy without mentioning Ayn Rand and objectivism is like discussing instant photography without mentioning Land and Polaroid.

OAKLEY K. DAVIDSON Clarendon Hills, Ill.

Sir: From your Essay I have absorbed more real philosophy than I acquired during my years at Balliol.

SAM HIRST Canterbury, England

Sir: Philosophy is not, as you suggest, invented. It is always the product of its own history and the men who grow from and then add to that history. Philosophy remakes men, and sometimes those men become philosophers.

WILLIAM S. ABERNATHY New York City

Sir: Your remarks on contemporary thought are the best defense for Thomism I have seen in a long time. Paradoxically, we still must look to a "medieval man" for solutions to the key 20th-century problems. In Thomism we find perfect solutions to the nature of the world, man, God, the after life, and moral norms that contemporary man, if he wishes to be meaningful to himself, must consider.

(THE REV.) RICHARD P. DESHARNAIS Philosophy Department King's College Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Sir: If, as you claim, today's "shadows are deep," it is time not to "address the heavens," but to address mere men possessed by "philosophical" visions and patriotic slogans, to demand that men analyze what they are arguing about and perhaps dying for. Those bits of language that pit man against man may cover broad areas of agreement. We don't need more answers. We need better questions!

STEPHEN J. NOREN Professor of Philosophy Goddard College Plainfield, Vt.

Man of the Year

Sir: Hats off to TIME for another Man-of-the-Year masterpiece [Jan. 7]. The war will be long, but there's no doubt about the outcome. The French lost because they were fighting to save a colony; the Americans will win because they are fighting to save a democracy.

IVAN SASSOON Calcutta

Sir: No one, except perhaps the bearded befuddleniks, can seriously fault your choice. At least Westmoreland is a good symbol for the real Men of the Year who are dying in Viet Nam.

R. T. FROTHINGHAM Bloomington, Ind.

Sir: As a student, it is almost mandatory for me to take a stand on U.S. policy in Viet Nam. Neutrality is taboo on most campuses. Our men are fighting to preserve the freedom we here seem to take for granted. To students who participate in antiwar demonstrations: I dare you to take a deeper look at the reasons that your brothers are fighting for our country, and then tell me that you have the right to burn your draft cards.

DOLLY WEINER Pennsylvania State University Abington, Pa.

Sir: I am dismayed at your choice. The militaristic stance you are glorifying will only lead to an increasing lack of respect for the U.S. in the eyes of the world and will erode the fundamental morality upon which this nation was built.

ROBERT E. LERNER Assistant Professor of History Western Reserve University Cleveland

Sir: Westmoreland's rise is gratifying but not surprising to those who knew him "when." The general as a teen-ager was popular with and enjoyed the respect of not only his contemporaries but also his contemporaries' parents. When he chose a military career, the consensus was, "He will be a general some day." Westmoreland excelled in almost everything he attempted. There was one notable exception --he could never spell. During our high school career, he demonstrated that ingenuity can overcome handicaps. He desperately wanted a good grade on an English composition, which he rarely got because he was usually marked down for faulty spelling. He accomplished it. His composition took the form of exchanges of letters between two poorly educated mountaineers, neither of whom could spell!

BEN H. BROWN JR. , U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Jamaica, N.Y.

Lynd & the Nouvelle Gauche

Sir: Your story on Professor Lynd [Jan. 7] was disgraceful. You slandered his knowledge of history, neglected to mention his civil rights activity, and suggested it was fitting that he be splattered with red paint. You evidently see any independent action or critique of the present order through pink-colored glasses. That's understandable from the Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan; you should know better. (THE REV.) CHARLES W. PATTERSON New York City

Sir: Last summer I attended a Yale-dominated peace rally at which Lynd was a principal speaker. From him I heard only an emotional, illogical, maudlin, onesided tearjerker condemning U.S. Marines as killers of women and children, topped off by a hypocritical justification of Viet Cong killing based on the idea that the V.C. kill only civilian "officials." I didn't dislike Lynd; I pitied him.

ROBERT GERARD Madison, Conn.

Whimper Theology

Sir: The. Evangelical theologians [Jan. 7] decry the lack of interest in theology. Christianity was never meant to be a majority opinion. Any attempt to make it so is an accommodation to that brand of theology that reflects a morbid collective self-pity. There is a popular theological attempt to get rid of the bogey of hell and squeeze everybody into some kind of eternal barroom where all the drinks are on the house. This is the age of "whimper theology."

(THE REV.) JOHN P. WOODS .Westminster Presbyterian Church Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Groans from the Group

Sir: The scientific objective and the presumed value of the Washington University project on sexual response [Jan. 7] can be debated--though marriage counselors are unanimous in minimizing technique and emphasizing romance and spontaneity in meaningful sexual relations. What seems to me indisputable is the poor taste of TIME in printing this story.

R. A. MACKENZIE, M.D. Asbury Park, N.J.

Sir: Please spare us any more of these Masters-pieces.

JOHN B. VAN OGTROP, M.D. Aruba, Netherlands Antilles

Sir: What Masters has discovered in the '50s and '60s about postorgasmic sleep in women was common knowledge among "the Group" in my high school in 1938. If 50-year-old Masters had done a little earlier research outside his lab, he would have discovered this by himself.

MRS. BORIS N. DUBSON Lebanon, Ill.

Sir: As a father of two college students who read TIME, I would like to say that you have finally reached the bottom in the pail of filth. The person who chose this subject must get his kicks reading the Marquis de Sade.

GEORGE S. SHRUBSALL Fort Wayne, Ind. "

Sir: The letters [Jan. 14] on your story confirm my opinion that most Americans are prudish and childish. Dr. Masters may come upon some fact that will reduce the number of divorces caused by infidelity and frigidity.

FRANK M. TREU New York City

Sir: Your story was on all counts worthy to be printed. The letters were the usual response of small-minded puritans who hope, by avoiding all facts they dislike, to make the world all sweet and clean.

JOSEPH E. SOMMESE ANDREW F. TULLY III The Bronx, N.Y.

Sir: My congratulations for presenting a worthwhile article in good taste and. most important, based on solid responsibility.

L. BERGER New York City

Sharpening the Quill

Sir: I grant the right to strike for better work conditions, but great disproportion exists when an essential working force like the Transport Workers Union can flout a court order, rob the labor movement of its dignity, and create hardship for New York City's populace [Jan. 14]. It is time for the union to curb its unrestrained economic appetite as well as its vituperative chief spokesman; otherwise T.W.U. may join Him at the end of the long White House leash!

WILLIAM J. HALL III, M.D. Marblehead, Mass.

Sir: I pity the people who elected John Lindsay. I remember no other politician who so quickly made such an ass of himself. If the people who protested the loudest about the strike had had relatives in the fight for higher wages, would they be so against the strike? Good for Michael Quill and his cause.

LOUISE IRENE DRIBEN Mountainside, N.J.

Sir: If anyone is a common ordinary coward and ass, it is Michael J. Quill.

LANNY SIMS New York City

Narciso Complex

Sir: I read with avid interest your report on the Philippine presidential inauguration [Jan. 7]. However, it was annoying to see the lines about "Francisco" Ramos, Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He is my father, and his first name is Narciso.

GLORIA RAMOS DA RODDA Annapolis, Md.

"Bring on the Blue Devils!"

Sir: Regarding your remark [Jan. 7] about our high-quality but as yet little-noticed basketball team: the school is not quite as tiny as TIME seems to think; last year we had more than 1,000 male students. In any case, we have a new yell for the team--"Bring on the Blue Devils!"

JACK KINTNER Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma, Wash.

Sir: Who says Pacific Lutheran has a good claim to the No. 1 ranking as a basketball power? We at Western Washington State College have a better claim. It took us one five-minute overtime period to do it, but we beat the Lutherans 66-58 in the Evergreen Conference Tip-Off Tournament just before Christmas.

DARRELL MINTZ ALEC McDOUGALL Bellingham, Wash.

Hope for the Hopeless

Sir: It was gratifying to read your excellent article on training schools [Jan. 7]. These schools have provided hope for thousands of adolescents for whom the situation was once hopeless. In 1958, after failing the 10th grade for the second time, I attended the Richard Hokes Boys School near Cleveland. This June, I will become an alumnus of another educational institution--Yale University.

ALEX FULLER, '66 Yale University New Haven, Conn.

The Very Active Rangers

Sir: It is not true that the Texas Rangers were abolished in 1935 [Jan. 7]. They were placed under the Department of Public Safety, and have continued very active in crime control. In a recent two-year period, the 62 Rangers investigated 4,649 felonies, were responsible for 1,772 convictions that led to penalties totaling 10,771 years, plus 24 life sentences and three death penalties. They traveled 4,637,469 miles by car, and spent 1,018 hours on horseback.

HOMER GARRISON JR. Director, Texas Department of Public

Safety

Chief, Texas Rangers Austin, Tex.

>> TIME should have been more vigilante.

Reviewing Malcolm Lowry

Sir: Thank you from my heart for the marvelous review of my late husband's Selected Letters and Under the Volcano [Dec. 31]. There have been excellent reviews, but I consider yours among the most perceptive, and written with the most force and power.

MARGERIE LOWRY Los Angeles

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