Recorded 15 August 1952
Transcribed by Margaret Burgess from a tape in the CBC Radio Archives of a panel discussion on the closing evening of the annual Couchiching Conference, held at Geneva Park, Ontario, in August 1952. Dated by internal evidence. The purpose of the conference was to discuss “how [the participants] as Canadians can contribute to the defence of human values,” and the subject of this concluding session of the conference was, “What are the human values we wish to defend?” Participating in the panel along with Frye were E.F. Carpenter, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and a particular colleague of Marshall McLuhan’s, and Lawrence E. Lynch, professor of philosophy at St. Michael’s College. The chair of the discussion was Joseph McCulley, warden of Hart House.
MCCULLEY: This evening, ladies and gentlemen, we are coming to the culmination of our week’s discussions. We have had a week of extremely fruitful discussions on military defence and economic assistance, and we’ve now come to what seems to me to be basic and fundamental to the discussions that we have been pursuing during this whole week: that is, the question, What are the human values we wish to defend? * * * I’m going to begin the discussion by asking each of the three members of the panel if he will make a brief statement outlining what is his general position and what in his judgment are the values that we wish to defend. I’m first of all going to call upon Dr. Carpenter. Dr. Carpenter was born in the United States and educated at the universities of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Cornell. He served overseas as a captain in the United States marine corp. * * * He is now assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. Mr. Carpenter, I wonder if you can give us your ideas as to what are the human values we wish to defend.
[Carpenter takes an aggressive tone, declaring that, as a social scientist on a panel with a Protestant clergyman and a Catholic philosopher, he feels called upon to dispute the notion “that acceptance of one of their creeds is indispensable to the recognition and attainment of worthy ideals.”1 On the contrary, he declares, secular science is itself a religion, offering “ideals that are fresher and more convincing than those worn threadbare by ritual and dogma.” As an anthropologist studying different cultures, Carpenter has found that human history shows a general evolution towards greater self-realization, the emergence of the ego, and the development of the individual as a unique yet social being. So “those values which I would consider worthy of defence are those which promote self-realization, which allow unlimited growth of man as a social being, and these would not only involve freedoms of speech and worship, but the freedom to produce sufficient food for nourishment, the freedom to establish social relationships on a level of equality, in short, the freedom to live life to its fullest.”]
MCCULLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Carpenter. I’m now going to call on Professor Lynch of St. Michael’s College, assistant professor of philosophy in that institution. Dr. Lynch was educated at St. Michael’s College, and had his M.A. and Ph.D. degree in philosophy from St. Michael’s and the University of Toronto. During the war he served with the United States Navy, Washington, Pearl Harbor, and Japan. * * * I rather suspect that Mr. Lynch’s point of view on this matter of values may differ somewhat from that of Mr. Carpenter.
[Lynch begins by remarking that the question of values is a moral question, which is treated in a different way from a scientific question. He then suggests that the central value, in social life at least, should be justice, or giving a person his due. He adds that “in interpreting the meaning of justice, I would insist that giving man his due would mean attributing to him and making it possible for him to fulfil and to develop all the capacities that he has. But as a dependent being I would insist too that part of that justice was a duty upon man to satisfy a justice towards God, upon whom he is dependent. Consequently, in brief I would suggest these values in addition to or in explication of justice: religion, humility, freedom, and equality.” To him the religious tradition is not static or outmoded, but has expressed itself in different ways throughout history as mankind seeks to embody the needs of the spirit.]
MCCULLEY: Thank you, Mr. Lynch. I’m now going to call on the third member of our panel, Professor H. Northrop Frye of Victoria College in the University of Toronto, professor of English in that institution and extremely well known for his recent book Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. [A brief summary of Frye’s life follows.] I wonder, Professor Frye, if you can give us some indication of your thinking on this subject of the values we wish to defend.
FRYE: Mr. Chairman, I accept both the facts of tradition and of evolution, but evolution always strikes me as a rather slow conception to introduce into historical and political problems. It’s too much like Mark Twain’s effort to descend a mountain by sitting on a glacier and waiting for it to carry him into town.2 I feel that the evolution of man today is a much less immediate and urgent problem than the revolution of man, and I should give that twist also to what Mr. Lynch has said about tradition. Ever since about two hundred years ago, for a variety of reasons, and for better or worse, man has embarked upon a program of revolution. In the centre of that revolutionary program I see democracy. That seems to me to be the one genuine revolution of our time, and Communism seems to me the most important counter-revolutionary movement of our time. Therefore, one cannot identify democracy with a form of government like republic or monarchy. It is a process, and a process which, I should say, following the terms of the French Revolution, is a pursuit of liberty, equality, and fraternity. If you pursue liberty and forget about equality you get laissez-faire, which ends in a most abominable tyranny. If you pursue equality and forget about liberty, you get a totalitarian state, which also ends up in an abominable tyranny. And consequently, the central revolutionary process of our time pursues simultaneously liberty and equality. By liberty I mean, of course, the mature, responsible activity of an adult citizen of a modern democratic state. I do not mean simply the sterile or narcotic liberty of doing as one likes. And when I say equality I mean that the Communist ideal of a classless society consisting entirely of workers is also a democratic ideal, and that if democracy fails to meet the challenge of Communism in its hope for equality it will fail in its attempt to transform the world. And by fraternity I mean the essential respect of man for man which makes the other two points of view work, and in particular I should like to see it, at least in reference to this discussion, as a kind of working alliance of a religious and a secular point of view. I believe that, without the infinite perspective on man’s life that religion gives, man goes mad with claustrophobia and does all sorts of insensate things, but I also believe that the self-critical publican will always get much further than the self-righteous Pharisee. And so I am willing to be charitable about Mr. Carpenter’s self-realization. I just wonder if it wouldn’t look a little provincial in this one world of ours in which there are hundreds of millions of, say, Hindus and Buddhists, who believe that the end of man is the annihilation of the self.
[Lynch agrees with Frye that religion and science work together. He asks Carpenter what he means by the general term “science”—to which Carpenter replies that it is “a technique for creating, altering, shaping, and expanding knowledge”—and then asks him what insights it gives into the nature of man.]
CARPENTER: Let me limit myself to the field of anthropology where I’m perhaps least ignorant. I believe that employing the comparative approach we can contribute much to the understanding of the nature of human nature. In fact, I’m naive enough to think that the comparative approach has offered more in that field than any other technique now being employed. By the comparative approach I simply mean going out and studying in great detail different societies, different institutions, seeing how they operate, and comparing them with our own and with other societies and so on. There’s more to it than that but, in briefest outline, that would be the technique employed.
FRYE: I wonder if one of the most important things to be compared wouldn’t be the conceptions of the nature of the self? In connection with this conception of self-realization?
CARPENTER: Yes, I think it would be. In fact, it’s a field in which I’m now actively engaged. I can think of nothing quite so exciting as a comparison, a cross-cultural study, of self-definition, or, the self, as seen by a scientist, in different societies. And I’m sure that we would find one thing. In fact, I’m almost positive of this: that the self does differ from one society to another, that human nature does differ from one group to another, that it’s not merely a common denominator which is cast in a different language and different colours, but that there are basic and real differences here.
[Lynch and Carpenter then engage in a discussion of the degree to which people in different cultures differ. Lynch argues that “within the differences they’re very much alike, and for the purposes of values in this discussion, it seems to me that those are the points—the points of similarity—which will enable us to assess the values that are common to different societies, and perhaps come to a notion of the self that Mr. Frye is concerned with.”]
CARPENTER: Is that directed to me or to you?
LYNCH: Well, I was hoping perhaps Mr. Frye would go on with his notion of the self as he originally intimated it would be.
FRYE: I’m not sure that I have any very clear notion of the self, particularly not when I’m trying to relate it to a social process, because an individual with a multiple personality is in much less lamentable a state than the world is today, but … I see the process as one emerging from a vast conflict of selves, that is, an enormous interchange of opinion and of ideas. Very much bigger forms of realization arise there than simply the individual self-realization. I think the whole conception of the self as individual might be one of the things which is most lacking in democratic philosophy. That is, we assume the existence of an individual as the basis of our political thought. That might be an abstraction. It might be an untenable one.
LYNCH: I gather, then, that you are insisting that man in addition to being an individual is a social being, and consequently that perhaps the study of his social needs might shed some light on his personality?
FRYE: Not only that, but I believe that society is something much more than simply an aggregate of individuals. I think that society is a larger human being.
MCCULLEY: Mr. Carpenter?
[Carpenter returns to the question of whether science and religion are in conflict, asking Lynch to comment on the commonly held belief that the Thomist dialectic will crush opposing arguments. Lynch again points out the different spheres addressed by different subjects, and the different degrees of certitude attainable within them.]
FRYE: There’s another question too, and that is the question of the authority of the truths involved. That is, there are certain sciences in which the authority of the truth involved is verifiable. It’s easy to attain. There are other sciences in which it is more difficult and more elusive, and in my own field there are the arts, which are very much more difficult still, and nobody knows what the source of authority in the arts is. And yet it’s there and it has to be there.
MCCULLEY: I think that we’ve now explored some of the differences that exist in these three positions. I’m beginning to wonder if in spite of these differences that have been expressed there are some values on which, within those differences or perhaps in spite of those differences, we can agree at this particular juncture in history? I wonder if any of the members of the panel would care to …
FRYE: At the risk of being obvious, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that one of the things we’re agreed on is the propriety, shall we say, of holding discussions like this among people with differing points of view and without losing any of our respect for one another because we do differ in points of view. I’d suggest that that’s perhaps a central one.
[Lynch and Carpenter agree on the value of freedom, including in this concept both circumstances that allow one to develop, and freedom of worship.]
FRYE: Yes, I agree with that too. I think we’re all agreed on the desirability of freedom. I think that there are certain vulgar perversions of the idea which are very important too. That is, most people when they say they want freedom usually want merely to be left alone, and that I should call a bourgeois conception of freedom—the theory that freedom consists in not doing anything in particular about anything. And then there is the totalitarian view of freedom which is, of course, a glad and eager acceptance of slavery. And then there is the dictatorial view of freedom which is really a desire for mastery—the sort of freedom that Milton’s Satan has, where he says, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n.”3 And those conceptions are all around us. They are all being used today with the name of freedom.
LYNCH: Yes, I should agree whole-heartedly with that, and it seems that what you are intimating, Mr. Frye, is that there is a certain responsibility that goes with the gift of freedom, let us say. Would that be what you have in mind?
FRYE: Yes, certainly responsibility, and responsibilities in the modern state of very specific kinds. In other words, I don’t think that there is an antithesis between freedom and necessity.
MCCULLEY: Would you attempt to define some of those responsibilities at all, Mr. Frye?
Frye: An intelligent awareness of what is going on in one’s society, a participation—political action within the law—and the disinterested pursuit of truth by the scientist and philosopher, of beauty by the artist, and of life itself: those are things which all involve responsibilities.
LYNCH: Yes, the remark that you made of freedom within the context of necessity strikes me as a notion which is very much forgotten at the moment. To me, a society that is chaotic and anarchic makes freedom quite impossible. To take a simple example in the physical order, if there were no laws of nature, let us say, or no physical laws governing the floor here tonight and the chairs, I doubt very much that you’d feel free to sit down or walk, not knowing what was going to happen. So also in a society you need a certain fabric, and a kind of predictable structure—not that it’s a static structure at all, but something that you can hang on to. I think that’s perhaps what you have in mind by a kind of necessity, that you have a framework, and then within that framework you can be free.
FRYE: Yes. To take an analogy, when a painter is painting a picture every brush stroke is free because it is compelled. That is to say, he is free because every brush stroke he makes goes in the right place. The man who can play the piano is free because he can play the right notes. He is not free to play the wrong ones.
LYNCH: Perhaps we could generalize on that and say that freedom requires virtue. Would that be a fair statement of it? Virtue as developed habits that help you to work easily and well. If you work well you’re not particularly necessitated in what you do and yet you do it in a regular, orderly way.
FRYE: I suppose so. I don’t know quite where the pursuit of virtue would take me in this case. I prefer not to go further than discipline.
[The discussion ends with Carpenter and Lynch discussing differences of culture, and Lynch answering Carpenter’s charge that Catholicism is as rigid, as untenable, and as dogmatic as Communism.]
MCCULLEY: Gentlemen, I don’t wish the panel to monopolize this discussion, although we could follow this particular avenue of thought, I think, a little further. I think perhaps we might at this time get a few questions from the audience.
[The first question has to do with the fact that the Korean war is in progress.]
S.B. EAST, ISLINGTON, ADDRESSING A QUESTION TO THE WHOLE PANEL: I think we’re well aware, Mr. Chairman, that the Department of National Defence is very interested in this conference. They have seen fit to send Colonel Clark, officer commanding Camp Borden, to this gathering. Along with him, other army men, representatives of the navy. It is a hope, I suspect, that from this gathering there will go out such a wave of enthusiasm for the ideals of the Western world that we’ll find that the recruiting offices of the Canadian nation are crowded throughout next week. I would therefore like each of the panel in turn to address themselves to the question of what they’d say to Johnnie Canuck, as to why he should get in this thing, and get over there to Korea, and defend the values of the Western world. Thank you.
CARPENTER: I think we’re all honoured to have the Canadian military men here tonight. I wonder if the American general staff is quite as interested. They probably are wondering now, don’t these Canadians understand what they’re supposed to do? Other than that I have nothing to say. I would have no contribution or no comment or no thought on why any Canadian should enter the armed forces.
FRYE: It seems to me that the very essence of the democratic way of life is that it does not wind up with any such appeal to anybody. It is a broad, tolerant, and charitable way of life in which people seem to enjoy themselves while they’re living, and if the Canadian soldier does not enjoy himself in living in Canada, then there is perhaps no reason why he should go to fight, but if he does love his country, if there are reasons why he loves his country, he doesn’t need to be told in any dialectical terms or in terms of any ideology why he should defend himself and his home.
[Lynch points out that he and Carpenter are both Americans and thus perhaps should not comment, but that no person should be forced to act in defence of values such as freedom: “the very forcing would be a denial of the values.”]
GAR MARCOS, Toronto: I should like to ask the panel, Mr. Chairman, to clarify if these moral values are relative or absolute.
MCCULLEY: Which one of you will take that one, gentlemen? [laughter] Frye signals madly to Mr. Lynch. All right, Mr. Lynch.
[Lynch explains that in morals the only absolutes are very general principles such as that you should do good and avoid evil. The positive law that develops within a certain culture is an expression of those ideals, relative to the time and place in which it is expressed.]
MCCULLEY: Thank you, Mr. Lynch, but I am not going to let Mr. Frye duck that question just as easily as he did. Mr. Frye, I wonder if you’d care to make any comment on it?
FRYE: I don’t think there’s very much to add to Mr. Lynch’s very fine and very coherent statement, which is a statement of a trained philosopher, and I’m not that, certainly. I should say that there are two points of view from which one could consider absolutes and relatives. One is secular and the other religious, and in the secular context the values are relative and the only absolute that one has to go on is existential. It simply is founded on the fact of man as being alive and as moving toward certain things. From a religious point of view religion, that is to say, my religion, consists of an infinite revelation directed towards a finite mind, and that is certainly a combination of absolute truth and a perennially finite and relative understanding of that truth.
HELEN TUCKER, FROM PORT CREDIT: I’m not employed by the CBC, but I am zealous for the standing of this institute in explaining values to the listeners on the air. I’m wondering if anyone is still listening because of certain terms involved in trying to explain our freedom. Now, if they’re as hard to express as this, I’m afraid nobody’s going to fight for them very hard. For instance, we seem to have such an expression as an antithesis between freedom and responsibility [sic] and I don’t think many of us here would follow that awfully well. We’ve had such words used as “analogy” when “an example” might suit the meaning. We have another expression such as “freedom within the context of necessity,” and that last one that Mr. Frye pulled out was absolutely unintelligible to an average university graduate, I think (I’m one). I find that I’m not getting very much understanding about the defence of values in the words or the vocabulary that you gentlemen are using. Could you clarify those? [enthusiastic applause]
FRYE: I would call Miss Tucker’s attention to the fact of the central principle in the arts, which any critic of the arts has to deal with, and that is, that the simple is the opposite of the commonplace. It is very easy to think up a commonplace cliché. Simplicity is the last secret of the arts, and it is attainable only by a long and concentrated discipline. It is not attainable when one is trying to think out, as we are trying to do tonight, our own mental stock of ideas. That is all [more applause].
[The tape is cut off here, though the discussion apparently continued.]