Unless our norms represent an order of values that is not merely
a product of subjective individual feelings, there is no conceivable
reason for the practical worth they may seem to have demonstrated. Here is the "great divide" in social philosophy. If values
have no objective status, claims of right are meaningless, or possess
only the meaning of conventions to be changed at will. Dictatorial
power, as Hobbes saw, must dispose of all ultimacy in human
rights by some such argument. A reality in the values that dignify
the human individual as an end in himself, is a conception which
cannot be tolerated by any power that would reduce him to the
status of a mere means. CLIFFORD BARRETTSUGGESTED READINGS
| ADAMS G. P., Idealism and the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 1919. | |
| BARRETT CLIFFORD (ed.), Contemporary Idealism in America. Macmillan, 1932. | |
| BLANSHARD BRAND, The Nature of Thought. 2 vols. Macmillan, 1940. | |
| CREIGHTON J. E., Studies in Speculative Philosophy. Macmillan, 1925. | |
| CUNNINGHAM G. W., The Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy. Century, 1933. | |
| HOCKING W. E., The Meaning of God in Human Experience. Yale University Press, 1912. | |
| HOERNLÉ R. F. A., Idealism as a Philosophy. Doubleday, 1927. | |
| MUIRHEAD J. H., The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy. Allen & Unwin, 1931. Pt. iii. | |
| ROYCE JOSIAH, The World and the Individual. 2 vols. Macmillan, 1912. | |
| URBAN W. M., The Intelligible World. Macmillan, 1929. |
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