Why would you think you would be edited for posting a differing opinion?
Remember, we are conservatives and we firmly believe in free speech. I must admit that I did have to look up Horace Kallen, and found this.
He did say one thing that I agree with...
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Horace M. Kallen was born in Berenstadt, Silesia, Germany, in 1882 and immigrated to Boston with his family at the age of five. He was the son of Jacob David Kallen, a Hebrew scholar and Orthodox rabbi, and the former Esther Glazier. Kallen had six sisters (Ida, Dora, Mildred, Deborah, Frances, and Miriam) and one brother (Leo).
Kallen attended Harvard University and graduated in 1903. He went to Princeton where he taught English from 1903 until 1905 at which time he was dismissed for being an avowed unbeliever. Originally interested in writing novels and poetry, he became more interested in philosophy and the philosophical implications of the arts and the social sciences. He has credited George Santayana, William James, Edwin Holt, Canning Schiller, Barrett Wendell and Solomon Schechter as those who were most influential in the development of his philosophical ideas. Although he refused to be tied to a specific philosophical school, he can be most closely identified with the broad pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey and F.C.S. Schiller.
After studying philosophy at Oxford University and University de Paris La Sorbonne, he returned to Harvard and received his Ph.D. in 1908. He taught philosophy at Harvard and logic at Clark College (1910) until he received an instructorship at the University of Wisconsin in 1911. He continued in this post until 1918 at which time he was forced to resign because of his support of the rights of pacifists in the heat of World War I. This incident increased his belief in the necessity of intellectual freedom and the right to speak out on controversial issues.
Dr. Kallen's association with the New School for Social Research marks the longest and most productive period of his life. In 1919, together with James Harvey Robison, Charles A. Beard, Thorstien Veblen, Alvin Johnson and Robert Bruerre, he founded the New School for Social Research in New York City. The institution was founded as a kind of refugee camp for America's intellectuals and academics during a period in the wake of World War I when academic and intellectual freedom were severely threatened. As the last of the original founders, Dr. Kallen taught his last course in the fall of 1973. While at the New School he also taught courses at Harvard, Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University and Claremont College (California).
Horace Kallen was the author of more than 30 books as well as numerous pamphlets and articles. He was active in liberal, educational and Zionist movements. He wrote on consumerism and environmental control long before they became major topics. He was an outstanding leader in the adult education movement in America.
He was close to casting aside his Jewish identity when "Barrett Wendell, professor of English literature at Harvard, showed how the Old Testament had affected the Puritan mind and traced the role of Hebraic tradition in the development of the American character."[1] So he turned Zionist in 1902. He argued strongly for 60 years that the Jewish people needed a homeland in Palestine to protect them against persecution and to enhance their Jewish cultural heritage.
Dr. Kallen was an active member of the Jewish community working in and with such organizations as the American Jewish Congress, the American Association for Jewish Education, of which he was vice-president, and YIVO-Institute for Jewish Research. He served on many government committees, including the Presidential Commission on Higher Education and the New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations (1961). Also, he was active in such organizations as the International League for the Rights of Man and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
His philosophy has been characterized as Hebraism, aesthetic pragmatism, humanism, cultural pluralism, and cooperative individualism. A major precept of his philosophy was: "I have a right to believe what you believe is wrong. If in your eyes I am wrong, yet I have that right to be wrong, and that right is unalienable." [sic]2
Kallen's concept of cultural pluralism affirmed that each ethnic and cultural group in the United States had a unique contribution to make to the variety and richness of American culture and, thus provided a rationale for those Jews who wish to preserve their Jewish cultural identity in the American melting pot.
Dr. Kallen's more well-known writing include, The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy (1918); Zionism and World Politics (1921); Judaism at Bay (1932); Individualism: An American Way of Life (1933); The Decline and Rise of the Consumer (1936); Art and Freedom (2 vol. 1942); The Education of Free Men (1949); Of Them Which Say They Are Jews (1954, edited by Judah Pilch, a collection of Kallen's essays on the Jewish struggle for survival; Utopians at Bay (1958) on his impressions of Israel; and Liberty, Laughter and Tears (1968). |
