Modern Temper: A Study And A Confession [Paperback]

Joseph Wood Krutch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1956

Krutch's incisive examination of the dilemmas faced by modern man has proved remarkably prophetic. This book stands as an unflinchingly honest examination of the major moral questions of our era.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (September 14, 1956)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156617579
• ISBN-13: 978-0156617574
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #578,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A prophetic work, February 29, 2000

By 

Tyler Smith (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modern Temper: A Study And A Confession (Paperback)

Written in the pivotal year 1929, Krutch captured in this series of essays the sense of foreboding that led into the nightmare decade and a half spanning the Depression '30s and the conclusion of World War II. His essential theme is that "the modern temper," one of questioning and skepticism, had led Man to a frightening crossroads where the old myths of the past -- religion, dramatic tragedy, devotion to family -- no longer worked, yet the technology and psychological insights that had remorselessly torn these values apart offered no consolation other than the promise of more objective knowledge.

Man was left instead, Krutch felt, with what is best described as the existential dilemma, although of course he didn't use this term. He saw Man as struggling to come to terms with the paradox of expanding knowledge. That is to say, the more we understand, the more it becomes clear that the universe of which we are only a tiny part spins according to its own laws, with no regard for Man's deep and abiding need for spiritual sustenance. Yet once Man has released the genie of technology and of skepticism, it is difficult to return to the old myths, in which Man was always placed at the center of the moral and spiritual universe.

This is a bleak book, yet it does much to explain the blind adherence to ideology that characterized the disastrous fascist, totalitarian movements of the 1930s. In this regard, a good companion read (and one that reaches a very different set of conclusions) is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The sea of faith was once at the full, October 29, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modern Temper: A Study And A Confession (Paperback)

Krutch defines the modern temper in terms of the loss of a sense of the meaningfulness of life, and centrality of Man. The Darwinian revolution , the Copernician revolution the Freudian Revolution have made Mankind see itself as no longer the Center of all, with clear knowledge of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong. This picture of the modern Temper has its forbears, one might even say one can say it in the Bible itself, in Koheleth's 'vanity of vanities all is vanity'. Though Krutch defines the Modern Era in distinction to the Victorian Age that sense of certainties lost and gone is also present in it, as Arnold's great poem , "Dover Beach" indicates.
Clearly the First World War was also a great historical watershed which for many broke the sense of Mankind's inevitable progress, and ultimate Goodness.
Today we still struggle with the dilemnas and paradoxes Krutch ably outlines in this work.
One caveat. In his last chapter he speaks about the force of a new primitive collective which will come and take over from the old , apparently, worn- out , too lost- in- thought great power the United States. He hints strongly that that will be Russia.
We are well more than half a century from the time Krutch wrote this still in many ways relevant work. The Soviet Union has disintegrated. The United States, for all its problems and difficulties, remains the most vibrant large society in the world.
On another level many of the dilemnas Krutch saw arising from the triumph of materialism and science have intensified with Man's increasing inventiveness and capacity for creation. We now have powers of creation undreamed sixty or seventy years ago. And they too raise questions about our ultimate meaning and understanding.
This is a truly thought- provoking , elegantly and clearly written work. I recommend it highly.
One more point. I do not think that Krutch foresaw the way precisely the dilemnas he indicated would lead to a new varied quest for 'spirtituality' and religion at all levels.
This again is a sure indication of how human beings are far better at diagnosis than at prognosis.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modernism vs retro-Victorian 'useful fiction', April 12, 2003

By 

Daniel J. Hamlow (Narita, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modern Temper: A Study And A Confession (Paperback)

In his book The Modern Temper, Joseph W. Krutch defined the title concept to mean the angst-ridden state of mind exhibited by people in the 1910's and 1920's who wanted to return to the simpler ways of Victorian certainties and principles, such as the concept of man radicaly differentiated from animals, the existence of universal moral truths, and the certain existence of God. Unfortunately for them, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution hit the Victorian fan, thus beginning the gradual unravelling of God, absolutes, and other Victorian principles. William James himself added fuel to the fire by espousing pragmatism as a method to actively find out a belief system that fits in with people's experiences.

The situation of people exhibiting that modern temper was akin to an adult nostalgically looking back to at his simple childhood, a world of poetry, mythology, and religion that was upset by the world of science. The ideal world was replaced by the world of Nature. The anthropomorphic God and human needs and feelings were ousted by Nature. Yet, there was a need to crawl back into the womb, as "the myth, having once been established, persists long after the assumptions upon which it was made have been destroyed, because, being born of desire, it is far more satisfactory than any fact".

The failure of the laboratory and hence of science underlined this dilemma. The scientific method came to be applied in fields such as history, philosophy, and anthropology, so why not lay out the human soul on the dissection table and start hacking away? However, science was used to seek out a light, such as ultraviolet or infrared, that man, limited in sight by the visible spectrum, was unable to see. Mankind thus lost its faith in its findings to discover that sought-for moral world.

The implications for love were likewise devastating. Formerly the thing that brought man closest to the divine state or the highest level possible, depending on how man saw himself, the value of love became a hormonal thing. Sex replaced love by demystifying and desanctifying it, increasing its accessibility.

The long-term implications of the modern temper and the yearning of returning to the pre-Darwinian womb hints at the collapse of the American Empire. Krutch mentioned how philosophical debates sapped the vitality of Greece to the point that it was conquered by the Romans, who after building an empire yielding enormous riches and comforts, suffered the same fate under philosophically innocent barbarians.

Metaphysics, which operated outside the realm of observable and objective reality, established certitudes such as ethics, whose realization caused a blooming of the human spirit. Yet science and applied Darwinism knocked down those certitudes like nine-pins, causing that human spirit to wilt as man realized the dissonance between the idealized world of his childhood and the harsh unrelenting world of Nature. The solution was to create the beneficent "fiction," transforming life to an art. All one has to do is to assume the existence of some moral order "and ... construct in his imagination a world where they actually do." And if the foundations of that fiction can be destroyed by science or the physical world, so what? One protects his world by erecting a Great Wall between it and the physical world. The trouble is twofold. One is the lack of ultimate conviction belied by any self-created world. The other is the believer's self-deceptive slide away from reality.

The advent of postmodernists and their struggles against premodernists and modernists in America seems to be that same debate that will make us soft and while we are busy arguing, the underbelly of our empire will be slit open by another country in the vitality stage. The question is who? A very thought-provoking book on the conflict between modernism and absolutism.