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Bertrand Russell and Preventive War
by Ray Perkins, Jr.
Philosophy / Plymouth State College
Plymouth, NH 03264-1600, USA

Many commentators have claimed that Bertrand Russell advocated preventive war against the Soviet Union in the 1945-48 period in order to force the Soviets into world government and thus prevent a future war of total nuclear annihilation. Russell has been faulted not only for advocating an inherently morally repugnant policy but, also, for a time denying that he ever held such a view.

In what follows I wish to examine the record in order to determine just what Russell did advocate with regard to Russia during the period in question. We shall find that the record is reasonably clear: Russell did publicly espouse a form of preventive war in the early post-World War II years, although it was a policy rather less bellicose than what is usually attributed to him. As regards Russell's denials, we shall see that they were not the distortions of the record that his critics have claimed. But his later avowals are inaccurate regarding important details and invite speculation that Russell may have wanted to disguise a portion of the record despite his claim in his autobiography to have finally set it straight.

A. THE POLICY

Let us distinguish several senses in which one could be said to advocate a preventive war against Russia. In the simplest, most straightforward sense, there is the unconditional advocation of preventive war:

PWu: We (the West) ought to wage war against the Soviets (now or in the immediate future).

But there is also a conditional advocation in which the waging of war is conditioned upon certain Soviet behaviour. In particular Russell wanted the Soviets to agree to world government and/or to the internationalization of atomic energy. Russell's hope, in the early years after World War I I, was that the US, with a nuclear monopoly, could effectively threaten the Soviets with war in order to get them to agree. Russell's advocation takes the form:

PWc: We ought to wage war against the Soviets unless they agree, under threat of war, to international controls.

It is highly relevant to the moral implications of PWc whether the advocate of the policy believes that the threat of war will be effective. Thus, we can further distinguish:
 

PWc1: We ought to wage war against the Soviets unless they agree, under threat of war, to international controls; and they will probably agree.

PWc2: We ought to wage war against the Soviets unless they agree, under threat of war, to internationalize controls; and they will probably not agree.

I claim that PWc1 is Russell's public position from 1945 to 1947. Russell made more than a dozen public statements in speeches and articles concerning Russia and war in the 1945-48 period, but in none does he advocate PWu, or even PWc2, as did the us Department of Defense, for example, from 1946 to 1950. During those years the Pentagon hatched various secret plans such as BROILER and TROJAN featuring "bolt-out-of-the-blue" surprise nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union.l

It is important to see the main moral difference between PWc1 and the other formulations of preventive war policy. And that difference is just this: one who advocates PWc1, unlike one who advocates PWc2 or PWu, does not advocate a policy which he or she believes will directly result in war.2 As we shall see, this is a feature of Russell's position which, despite his repeated affirmations in the early post-war period and later, has been largely ignored by his critics.

There is a surprising amount of misunderstanding concerning Russell's policy. Many have failed to grasp its conditional nature. Thus, I. F. Stone, writing about Russell's views at this time, sarcastically paraphrases Russell's advice as: "why not drop one more bomb on Russia before it is too late, and make them consent to world government and save mankind from what's coming?"3 What Russell actually advocated in the 1947 speech to which Stone refers is best put in Russell's own words:

If the whole world outside of Russia were to insist upon international control of atomic energy to the point of going to war on this issue, it is highly probable that the Soviet government would give way on this issue. If it did not, then if the issue were forced in the next year or two, only one side would have atomic bombs, and the war might be so short as not to involve utter ruin.4

Again, in an address at about the same time to the Royal Empire Society he said:

I should like to see as soon as possible as close a union as possible of these countries who think it worth while to avoid atomic war. I think you could get so powerful an alliance that you could turn to Russia and say, "It is open to you to join this alliance if you will agree to the terms; if you will not join us we shall go to war with you." I am inclined to think that Russia would acquiesce; if not, provided this is done soon, the world might survive the resulting war and emerge with a single government such as the world needs.5

Russell was obviously advocating a risky, and some might say, morally dubious policy. But it is a different and less morally problematic policy from the one that Stone caricatures.

Similarly, Alan Ryan, correctly pointing out Russell's consequentialist moral posture, completely ignores the fact that Russell apparently believed that his policy would not require war. He tells us that Russell's advocacy"... varied in tone but never in content. The content always included the probability of war. The tone varied according to whether Russell thought it would be a long war or a short one."6 This is not true.

Douglas Lackey, in an otherwise astute piece on Russell's writings on the nuclear arms race, describes one of Russell's earliest formulations of his preventive war policy-his 20 October 1945 Cavalcade article-as "a fairly straightforward call for preventive nuclear war".7 What Lackey means here is really unconditional preventive nuclear war. He explains:

True, the launching of the war is to be proceeded by an ultimatum, but the ultimatum demands the abrogation of national sovereignty by the Soviet Union. Under such conditions, the distinction between a conditional call for preventive war and an unconditioned call for preventive war virtually dissolves. (Ibid.)

This is a coarse interpretation. The ultimatum would require the Soviet Union to join a democratic world confederation and thereby relinquish some of its national sovereignty. But the relinquishment of sovereignty here pertains only to the (alleged) right of nations to acquire armaments and make war. The right to practise one's preferred form of government, including socialism, would not be denied.8 It seems that acquiescence to this sort of control, however undesirable, is to be distinguished from defeat in a nuclear war. Moreover, although Lackey correctly points out that Russell did not at this time have his facts straight on the winnability of a nuclear war against Russia, he, like Ryan, ignores the fact that Russell apparently did not think that what he was advocating would involve war (p. 247). Although it is true that Russell does not speculate on the likelihood of Soviet acquiescence in the Cavalcade article, he is at least· moderately optimistic in several other statements made at the time.9

Russell's views underwent modification in 1948. Owing to international events in early 1948 (specifically, the Czech Communist coup and the continued Russian refusal to accept the Baruch Plan for internationalizing atomic energy), Russell apparently began to have doubts about the Soviet response to threats, and in a piece for the New Leader (March 6), he advocates the threat but adds that he ventures "no opinion" on the question of whether the Soviets will comply.10 This, I believe, is the closest that Russell came to a public statement advocating preventive war against the Soviets in the sense of PWc2.

But in a private letter written in May 1948 to Walter Marseille he says, after endorsing PWc, "Communism must be wiped out, and world government must be established ... I do not think the Russians will yield without war."11 This is clearly the doctrine we have called PWc2. While theoretically distinct from PWu -- a doctrine which Russell never espoused -- it is nonetheless a harsh and morally offensive, if not indefensible, doctrine. This, I believe, is his only expression-public or private -- of PWc2.

Russell claimed to have forgotten about this letter until Marseille published it, to Russell's surprise, six years later. As I shall suggest in the next section, Russell's embarrassment concerning his Marseille letter and its harsh recommendation may have caused him to obscure the record regarding its content in his later years.

Some of Russell's critics, however, have unfairly cited two of his 1948 public statements as proof that he did advocate war against the Soviet Union at the time. One is a June article in a Swedish publication; the other is a speech at Westminster School in November. But a close reading of these statements makes it difficult to construe either one as an advocation of preventive war in any recognizable sense of the term. I want briefly to examine each because they, especially the Westminster School talk, have been taken to give an unduly bellicose interpretation of Russell's public position in 1948, and because they indicate a direction away from preventive war that Russell's thinking was taking as the events of that year unfolded.

In the Swedish publication Dagens Nyheter (June), he says that he doubts that the Soviets would agree to join a world alliance with an international inspectorate to control armaments. But he does not urge that Russia be given an ultimatum. Rather he merely says that Russia should be invited to join the alliance, but if she refuses inspection" which", he says, "is all too likely"-war would probably eventually occur: "Even were a precarious peace preserved for a time, one must -- recalling the earlier history of human folly -- expect that sooner or later war would break out. If it did, we should have a truly great cause to fight for: that of world government...."12

The phrase "all too likely" is, perhaps, sufficiently ambiguous to allow that Russell did not believe that Soviet refusal was more probable than not. (I might properly say that I refuse to play Russian roulette on the grounds that it's "all too likely" that I'd blow my brains out, without thereby implying that I thought the probability of the event was greater than .5.) But I think most people would say that although his proposal lacks the moral harshness of either PWu or PWc2. it is still morally disturbing to the extent that it advocates something which is thought to have a significantly high chance of resulting in an event which is to be expected "sooner or later" to lead to war. Of course, Russell thought that war was a likely eventual result of any course of action (short of capitulation to the Soviets) which did not include world government. And he says regarding it, "... it can not be achieved until the Soviet leadership has been either defeated in war or so daunted by the situation as to submit to international inspection ... " (ibid.). But he doesn't rule out the second alternative. Moreover, in the article he specifically recommends, as a first step for the immediate future, that the West "must prevent an immediate war by so strengthening west European defences that Russia would be reluctant to attack." The implication here is that any war which broke out would not be initiated by the West.

In a little-known paper published in September of 1948 (presumably written after the onset of the Berlin crisis in the last week of June), Russell is perhaps even more pessimistic than in the Swedish article, saying that he thinks it "improbable" that world government can be brought about "except by force", i.e. war. But he does not advocate war, nor does he advocate an ultimatum or using a Western coalition to bully the Russians into submission. The article is concerned merely to make the point that should war occur, there would be a reasonable- chance that a victorious Western alliance could bring about world government. But he clearly states that world government by consent is the path to be preferred and supported, adding:

Nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties, we must hope that a gradual approach to international government may become possible without another world war.... So long as there is not actual war, we must continue to seek ways of diminishing the likelihood of war....13

Similarly, in Russell's November 1948 talk at the Westminster School in London, there is no mention of an ultimatum; rather, he advocates that the West strengthen defences to show the Russians that "they can't make war successfully."14 But in the question-and-answer period after his talk, Russell seems, as some critics have noted, to be advocating immediate war with Russia:

As he saw it there were three alternatives if the present aggressive Russian policy was persisted in: (a) War with Russia before she has the atomic bombs, ending fairly swiftly and inevitably in a Western victory; (b) war with Russia after she has the atomic bombs, ending again in Western victory, but after frightful carnage, destruction and suffering; (c) submission.... This third alternative seemed to him so utterly unthinkable that it could be dismissed; and as between the other two the choice to him, at least, seemed dear. (Ibid., p. 43. Russell's emphasis)

About one week later he claimed that press reports of his talk were inaccurate, and he denied that he had urged immediate war against the USSR.15 Five years later he referred again to the "slanderous" reports of the talk which he attributed to a single reporter and which he said were largely responsible for the lingering but false view "that I supported a preventive atom war against Russia."16

Strictly speaking, however, Russell was at most calling for preventive war conditionally. This, I take it, is the point of his emphasis on the conditional phrase "if the present aggressive Russian policy was persisted in". We must remember that at this time the international situation was extremely tense. The Soviets had managed a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February, and the Berlin Crisis and airlift were in their fifth month. Many in the West fully expected that war would break out. But the immediate crisis soon passed. For that reason the conditional of his disjunctive syllogism was not fulfilled, and his alternatives were, therefore, non-starters. Indeed, the crisis passed in September 1949, about the same time that the West learned that the Russians had exploded an atomic bomb. No longer could one reasonably believe in a short, easily winnable war with the Soviets.17

Moreover, it is important to realize that Russell's "three alternatives" comment was made in response to the question: "If there is another war what would be the chances of survival of this country?" In this context, Russell's answer looks.less like a recommendation for immediate war than merely a hypothetical comparative evaluation to the effect that a small victorious war against Stalin sooner would be preferable to either a large one later or to submission. Hardly a morally outrageous claim. Indeed, he had already made his recommendation, and it was about how to prevent a war:

The question is whether there is to be war or whether there is not; and there is only one course of action open to us. That is to strengthen the Western Alliance morally and physically as much and as quickly as possible, and hope it may become obvious to the Russians that they can't make war successfully. ("Atomic Energy and the Problems of Europe", p. 43)

This certainly makes it look like Russell is advocating merely a defensive posture, and that any subsequent war would be a defensive response to Russian aggression, not a preventive or pre-emptive strike by the West, as he later insisted.18

However, in the next paragraph he says that the world ought to hope to achieve world government backed by a unified armed force because it is the "only ... way to ensure" peace. But he adds:

There is singularly little hope of establishing such a force by international agreement; the voluntary sacrifice by nations of a large part of their sovereignty is extremely unlikely.... The Western Alliance with the United States and the Commonwealth will have the nucleus for such a force. It must impose itself upon the whole world, and remain powerful, uniquely so, until the world has been educated into a unified sanity. (Ibid., p. 41)

This passage puts a different light on Russell's "defensive posture" recommendation. That is, by expanding and exhibiting its military strength, the West might not merely discourage Soviet aggression now. They might also eventually use this "nucleus" to impose on the world, and the Soviets, an international confederation. Thus, what Russell may have had in mind here is something like PWc:, where the threat or ultimatum is implied rather than overtly stated.

But is his intention more like PWc1 or PWc2? The answer, I think, depends on whether Russell thought the required imposition by the West would involve war. What does he mean by saying that the West must "impose itself upon the whole world"? Obviously military conquest is a possible interpretation. But Russell may have meant to suggest no more than an acceleration of the Truman Doctrine with "containment" plus an overwhelming global military presence to persuade the other side of the «wisdom" of Western hegemony. Indeed, one could view the post-World War II era culminating in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the more or less successful global "imposition" of the West, although one not requiring military conquest. If this is what Russell had in mind then his advice looks more like PWc1 than PWc2, although to call it "preventive war" seems excessive.

There are two reasons for thinking that Russell believed the "imposition" achievable without war. First, Russell says that one of the factors making the current situation so dangerous was Stalin's ignorance of the . effects of nuclear weapons, but he adds "even though the ultimate downfall of the dictatorship is certain" (ibid, p. 39). This suggests that Russell thought that the Soviet system, owing to its own dynamic, was bound to change for the better. If so, there was reason to hope that a unified world could eventually be brought about peacefully, provided the dangers of the immediate future could be met and war averred.

Second, he mentions the "implacable" nature of Marxist dogma in the current impasse between capitalism and communism, and he says "Against this kind of creed only superior force could prevail" (p. 42). But he immediately adds in the next paragraph, "It would· be necessary to start re-educating the Russians", and he goes on to give examples of how this might be done: "You could begin in the schools .... If a few intelligent Russians were shown round the world ... ", the effects of Communist propaganda could be undone and "within, say, thirty years, the whole of Russia could be completely re-educated." In other words, Russell thought the road to peace achievable without war, provided the Russians could be re-educated, a possibility which he seems to admit, albeit one requiring a protracted period of several decades.

These reasons, especially the. second, make it reasonable to believe that Russell's use of the term "imposition" intended merely a Western display of force together with a programme of Western propaganda. In short, it seems like a prescription for reform via something like the Cold War. Indeed, Russell's suggestions seem to anticipate by several years the cultural, educational and scientific exchange programmes begun under Khrushchev and Eisenhower in the mid-1950s. If one thinks of the evolution of Soviet reform from Khrushchev to Gorbachev as a process of successful Westernized, democratic, capitalistic re-education, Russell's estimate of thirty years was remarkably accurate.

This optimism about a non-bellicose "imposition" is stated rather less obliquely in an article which appeared nine months later (after the Soviets ended the Berlin blockade, but before the West had learned of the Soviet Bomb):

If it can be made obvious to the Russians that the west is more powerful than they are, it is to be expected that they will change profoundly and become very much more amenable.19

Let us sum up our conclusions regarding Russell's preventive war policies. In 1945-47 his public position was PWc1, i.e. the waging of war was conditioned on Soviet rejection of an ultimatum to internationalize the means of war, although he said that he thought they would comply. In early 1948, owing to crises in Europe and the Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan, he developed doubts about whether the Soviets would acquiesce to an overt threat, and he ceased advocating anything that could fairly be called preventive war. His public views at this time .underwent modification throughout 1948 in response to international events. They either: (i) advocate the ultimatum but venture no opinion on ,Soviet acquiescence (March, The New Leader), or (ii) drop the ultimatum but predict war as an eventual outcome of an "all too likely" Soviet refusal to internationalize controls while counselling a defensive posture for the near future Gune, Dagens Nyheter), or (iii) assert war as a more probable, but not more desirable, path to world government, while advocating avoidance of war (September, The New Leader), or (iv) predict war if Soviet behaviour did not change, but offer hope of a protracted non-bellicose "imposition" of Western values on the Soviet system leading eventually to a global "unified sanity" and world government (November, Westminster School talk). None of these views is tantamount to the advocation of preventive war in the sense of either PWu or PWc2, although his March article comes close to PWc2. In one private letter in May of 1948, however, he unequivocally advocates PWc2.

B. RUSSELL'S DENIALS AND AVOWALS

Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of Russell's preventive war phase has to do with his seemingly contradictory series of denials and later avowals. Russell's main denials occur in 1948, 1951 and 1953· These denials have proved to be especially troubling for Russell because they have been taken by some of his critics as evidence of a long-term cover-up.20 What we shall find is that Russell's denials were essentially correct at the time they were made, provided one keeps in mind the important distinctions and related senses of "preventive war". A more serious problem, as we shall see, concerns the accuracy of Russell's later avowals and his later descriptions of his earlier views.

The 1948 denial occurred eight days after unfavourable press reports of his November 20 Westminster School talk.21 In that denial he is concerned to deny press reports that he "urged immediate war with Russia", i.e. he seems to be denying what we have called PWu. Although portions of that speech were not unambiguous, I think we have to say that he was correct-he did not urge immediate war with Russia-even if we decide that he was urging war in some conditional sense.

Two decades later, however, he was affirming that he had, in 1948, advocated (a version of) preventive war on two occasions. Writing in his 1969 autobiography, Russell refers to two 1948 statements which he says that he had, for a while, simply forgotten about. One of these statements he describes as '''a speech that I did not know was to be the subject of dissection by the press" (Auto. 3: 18). This speech is pretty dearly the Westminster School talk. The other is definitely his 1948 letter to Walter Marseille. The trouble is that Russell describes these statements in his autobiography as PWc1. He says:

... I suggested that the remedy might be the threat of immediate war by the United States on Russia for the purpose of forcing nuclear disarmament upon her.... My chief defence of the view I held in 1948 was that I thought Russia very likely to yield to the demands of the West. (Auto. 3: 18)

The school talk can perhaps (by a significant semantic stretch) be cast as PWc1, but not the Marseille letter. That was clearly PWc2. Russell of course did hold the view he describes in his autobiography. But it was in 1945-47, not 1948. Curiously, there is no mention of the pre-1948 statements. 22

In his autobiography Russell tells us that he was first reminded of his earlier preventive war (PWc1) statements when Walter Marseille requested permission to publish Russell's 1948 letter some years later (1954):

... I said, as I usually do, without consideration of the contents, that if he wished he might publish it. He did so. And to my surprise I learned of my earlier suggestion. I had, also, entirely forgotten that it occurred in the abovementioned speech. (Auto. 3: 18)

The record makes it difficult to accept Russell's claim that he simply forgot that he once advocated preventive war (he says "the threat of immediate war") against the Soviets until he (re-) read his Marseille letter in 1954. The reason is that only one year earlier he had written a letter to the editor of the New York Nation trying to set the record straight on his earlier views regarding war with Russia. He begins with what seems to be a blanket denial: "The story that I supported a preventive atom war against Russia is a Communist invention."23 But it is clear from the contents of his letter that he is not denying ever having held PWc1.

Indeed, in that 1953 Nation letter, he refers to a "slanderous" press report of his 1948 Westminster School talk and a "long letter of refutation" that his lawyer induced the New Statesman to publish in 1951 as the result of the editor's 18 November 1950 statement that "After the last war .,. [Russell] decided that it would be both good morals and good politics to start dropping bombs on Moscow." Russell says in the final paragraph of the 1951 letter:

I will admit that at one time I had hopes of a shorter road to general peace. At the time of the Baruch proposal for internationalizing atomic energy [1946-47], I thought it possible that the Russians might be induced by threats to agree to this proposal and thereby to save the world from the atomic armaments race upon which it is now embarked. But this hope proved vain. After the Berlin blockade and the rape of Czechoslovakia [mid-1948] I stated emphatically, what I still hold, that the Russians ought to be informed that the West would not tolerate further aggressions of this sort. My statements were mis-reported and misunderstood, and men with whom I might have co-operated chose, instead, to regard me as an enemy.24

And he concludes the 1953 denial with: "I shall be glad if you can make its contents known to anybody who still believes the slanderous report."

So Russell's 1951 denial, and the 1953 Nation letter of denial referring to it, are not denials that he ever advocated preventive war in the sense of PWc1. Rather, they are, evidently, denials that he advocated what we have called PWu. Indeed, they are admissions that he did hold PWc1 "at the time of the Baruch proposal" (1946-47), although he chooses not to describe that view as "preventive war" 'in either letter. But they are also denials that he continued to advocate that view after the 1948 crises in Czechoslovakia and Berlin (i.e. roughly after July). This is actually a fairly accurate summary of the record. 25 Note, however, that it does contradict his autobiography regarding when he gave up PWc1.

Thus, Ronald Clark and others who have charged Russell with falsely denying the record in 1953 are mistaken. The trouble is, however, that Russell himself, in his later years, seems to acknowledge the charge as true. In his autobiography he regrets that, owing to a "fault of my memory", he had "hotly denied" (prior to the reappearance of his Marseille letter in 1954) that he had ever held PWc1 (Auto. 3: 18). He gives essentially the same account in a 1959 letter to The Listener attempting to explain his 1953 denial:

Although it may seem incredible, I believed this statement [the 1953 denial] to be entirely correct at the time when I made it. I had, in fact, completely forgotten that I had ever thought a policy of threat involving possible war desirable.26

But, for the reasons already given, it's difficult to believe that Russell had "completely forgotten" about his PWc1 views in his 1953 denial. After all, in that letter he refers to the 1951 letter, which explicitly admits to having held PWc1 in 1946-47.

How are we "to explain this perplexing state of affairs? I believe the most likely explanation is that Russell was a victim of both faulty memory and a desire to draw attention away from the (PWc2 ) contents of the Marseille letter. It's implausible that simply Russell forgot about his advocation of PWc1: he had reiterated that position too many times in the early post-war period and referred to it too recently. But he probably did forget about his Marseille letter. It was, after all, only a single letter in an immense private correspondence. When confronted with it in 1954 his response was essentially to plead guilty to lesser "crimes" --that of having briefly held the less offensive version (PWc1) and of having made erroneous denials of the fact due to a "fault of memory".

This tack would require some modest modification of the record: his usage of «preventive war" would have to be expanded to include PWc1; the Marseille letter would have to be assimilated to the more benign doctrine of the 1945-47 period; and, to give credibility to the faulty memory claim, it would be necessary to "recall" only one or two instances of the advocation.

We have already seen that in his autobiography Russell admits to only two instances. We have also seen that he inaccurately describes the Marseille letter as PWc1. This could have been an understandable slip by a man well into his nineties. But even when the letter was first published in 1954 in the Saturday Review, on the same page containing his 1948 PWc2 recommendation, he explains his earlier state of mind: «I thought at the time that perhaps the Russians could be compelled to accept the offer [the Baruch Plan] by the threat of war in the event of their continued refusal."27 Here, without asserting a literal falsehood, Russell manages to cast the Marseille letter within the framework of PWc1.

That Russell did, in the post-1954 era, expand the sense of "preventive war" to include the less problematic version is evidenced by an exchange with John Freeman in a BBC interview in 1959:

FREEMAN: Is it true ... that in recent years you advocated that a preventive war might be made against ... Soviet Russia?

RUSSELL: It's entirely true, and I don't repent of it.... [N]ot that I advocated a nuclear war, but I did think that great pressure should be put upon Russia to accept the Baruch proposal, and I did think that if they continued to refuse it might be necessary actually to go to war.... [T]he odds were the Russians would have given way.28

Here Russell includes PWc1 within the intension of "preventive war" while clearly recognizing a distinction between the more and less justifiable senses, i.e. between PWc1 and PWu.29

By means of such semantic adjustment, Russell's earlier (pre-1954) denials would be false (since they would be reconstrued as denying having held PWc1.) But if such "errors" arose from a "faulty memory", they would be forgivable. Moreover, he could point out (and did), that PWc1 was not an undefensible position at the time.

If this reconstruction of Russell's denial and avowal phase is correct, the questions must be asked: "Why did he do it? Why not simply tell the. story as it was, viz. that his denials were not false: he had not urged war with Russia, i.e. he had not advocated PWu?" The answer lies, I believe, with the Marseille letter. To tell the full story would be to call attention to its morally offensive nature. True, it wasn't PWu, but most people would probably see it as morally tantamount to PWu; close enough, anyway, to make his earlier denials seem less than truthful. Worse, the letter had the potential of casting doubt on the sincerity of his pre-1948 public statements: he was publicly advocating PWc1 but many might say that he secretly believed, or even hoped, that what he advocated would result in war.

We must remember that when the Marseille letter was brought to Russell's attention, he had long since moved away from his preventive war views. Stalin was dead and nuclear war had become unthinkable owing to the possession of the H-bomb by both sides. He was, by then, in the vanguard of the movement in the West to defuse the Cold War, abolish nuclear weapons, and create a rapprochement with the Communist bloc. To have told the full story of his preventive war phase would have jeopardized the effectiveness. of his role as a leader in the world peace movement, a role which continued to grow in size and importance until his death in 1970.

Still, many will be disappointed that Russell did not point these things out himself in his autobiography-his last chance to have set the record straight. There he says of his earlier denials: "It is shameful to deny one's own words. One can only defend or retract them" (Auto. 3: 18).

What Russell might have said is what the record shows: in 1945-47 he consistently advocated the policy described in his autobiography and which we have designated as PWc1. But 1948 brought an increasing pessimism about the likelihood of Soviet acquiescence to an ultimatum, although early in that year, in a private letter, he proposed PWc2, and in a portion of a public talk several months after the Communist Czechoslovakian coup and in the midst of the Berlin Crisis, he seemed to speak in favour of war with the Soviets before they got the bomb. It is these words which he needed to "defend or retract" -- or clarify.

What Russell might have said, but didn't, is that he had, in at least his private letter, underestimated the chances of a fourth alternative among a little war now, a big war later, and submission -- viz. peaceful coexistence. This alternative was one which he unequivocally supported soon after the Soviets achieved nuclear capability and Stalin had left the international scene.

Remarkably, this option had not really been overlooked by Russell. Indeed, like so many post-World War II developments (e.g. the Baruch proposal, the H-bomb, the nuclear arms race), it, too, was suggested as a less "utopian" option in his 1945 Cavalcade article. None of Russell's commentators has noted this feature of the piece, which does contain more than a plan for world government with (coerced) Soviet cooperation. Toward the end of the article, after he outlines his Confederation proposal, he says:

I am afraid that what I have been suggesting, in the form in which I have suggested it, is Utopian, since it would involve the voluntary surrender of absolute sovereignty on the part of the United States.

What is perhaps possible is something less desirable and less effective, but still capable of making world wars less probable. The United States might retain for the present its monopoly of the atomic bomb, but undertake to protect. against aggression any Powers willing to enter into an alliance with it and to abstain from manufacturing their own atomic bombs. In this way, without surrender of sovereignty, the United States could become the leader in a bloc which would be jointly irresistible.

...

In this way America could in all likelihood secure both her own peace and the peace of the world at a cost immeasurably less than that of another war.30

Thus Russell anticipated the NATO alliance four years before its inception. But he not only anticipated NATO, he also envisioned (at Westminster School), what few could have done before the advent of Gorbachev, the possibility of genuine Soviet reform without war with the West. Yet he insisted that an alliance of Western nations could never by itself ensure world peace in the long term, although it could serve as a nucleus for a world government that could. For a while he did publicly advocate issuing an ultimatum to the Soviets to speed up the journey to world government. But he can, and did, claim as his defence that his advocation lasted only as long as his optimism that the Soviets would acquiesce and war could be avoided.

_______________

Notes:

1 M. Kaku and D. Axelrod, To Win A Nuclear War: the Pentagon's Secret War Plans (Boston: South End P., 1987), Chaps. 1 and 2.

2 In a televised interview with John Freeman published in The Listener, 61 (19 March 1959): 505, Russell claimed that he was prepared to go to war if the Soviets had not given in: "... you can't threaten unless you're prepared to have your bluff called."

3 I. F. Stone, "Bertrand Russell as a Moral Force in World Politics", Russell n.s. 1 (1981): 17-18. Compare Kingsley Martin's remark in the New Statesman (18 Nov. 1950): "After the last war ... [Russell] decided that it would be both good morals and good politics to start dropping bombs on Moscow."

4 Published as "International Government", New Commonwealth, 9 (Jan. 1948): 77- 80. Emphasis added.

5 Given 3 December 1947. Published in United Empire, 39 (Jan.-Feb. 1948): 18-21. Emphasis added.

6 Alan Ryan, Bertrand Russell: a Political Life (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988), p. 179.

7 Douglas Lackey, "Russell's Contribution to the Study of Nuclear Weapons Policy", Russell, n.s. 4 (1984): 246.

8 Russell did not explicitly say this in the Cavalcade piece, but he did in other places, e.g. in "The Prevention of War", Dagens Nyheter, 1 June 1948, p. 3.

On the question of unconditional preventive war (i.e. PWu) in 1945, Russell's rejection was unambiguous. In a letter to Gamel Brenan (1 Sept.) he says: "There is one thing, and one only, which could save the world, and that is a thing which I should not dream of advocating. It is that America should make war on Russia during the next two years, and establish a world empire by means of the atomic bomb." (Emphasis added; quoted from Clark, p. 518.)

There is, of course, paradox and paradox, in the sense that some paradoxes are simply contradictions. The slogan popularized during World War I, “the war to end all wars”, was vicious in this latter sense: the Allies who put forward this notion had no intent of ending war. Rather they wanted to appeal to those among the public who were not persuaded by the usual patriotic slogans.

-- Did [Bertrand] Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War Against the USSR?, by David Blitz

Lackey also unfairly complains that. although Russell says that after a Soviet refusal "the conditions for a justifiable war, which I enumerated a moment ago, would all be fulfilled", he provides no such enumeration in the article. Not so. He clearly states that a world government may resort to war when: (1) a state refuses to join and can not be persuaded, (2) the war would be winnable and not completely exhausting, (3) the world government is democratic, and (4) the purpose of the war is to establish a system in which wars are less likely than the present one.

9 For example, in "Peace or Atomisation", Cavalcade, 7, no. 396 (6 Oct. 1945): 9; also .in "How to Avoid the Atomic War", Common Sense, 14, no. 9 (Oct. 1945): 5. Indeed, in a speech before the House of Lords, 28 November 1945 -- reprinted in Has Man a Future? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), p. 23 -- he expresses optimism for Russian compliance without the threat of war: "I can not really doubt that if ... [the case for internationalizing controls on atomic energy] were put to them in a convincing manner they would see it."

10 "The Future of Mankind", The New Leader, 31, no. 10 (6 March 1948): 8-9. Actually, by late 1947 Russell was already expressing doubts about Soviet compliance. In a letter to Einstein, 24 November 1947, he says: "I think the only hope of peace (and that a slender one) lies in frightening Russia" (see Clark, p. 522).

11 Saturday Review, 16 Oct. 1954. Reprinted in BRA 2: II.

12 "The Prevention of War", Dagens Nyheter, 1 June 1948, p. 4 (ts. of English trans.).

13 "World Government", The New Leader, 31, no. 36 (4 Sept. 1948): 8.

14 "Atomic Energy and the Problems of Europe", The Nineteenth Century and After, London, 145 (Jan. 1949): 41.

15 The Observer, 28 Nov. 1948; p. 3. Also in the London Times, 30 Nov., p. 5.

16 "Bertrand Russell and 'Preventive War''', The Nation, 177 (17 Oct. 1953): 320.

17 Not that Russell immediately adopted nuclear pacificism or ceased his intense dislike for the Soviet Union. These features of Russell's post-World War II thinking did not emerge until the death of Stalin and the advent of the Soviet H-bomb. Indeed, he still maintained that war was preferable to "the extension of the Kremlin's power over the whole world". (See his "Is a Third World War Inevitable?", World Horizon, London, 1, no. 3 [March 1950J: 6-9.) But it's a mistake to say that Russell continued to advocate preventive war as some scholars have claimed. (See Clark, pp. 526-7. See also Stephen Hayhurst, "Russell's Anti-Communist Rhetoric before and after Stalin's Death", Russell, n.s. II [1991]: 71).

18 In the face of hostile press reports of his school talk, he said in a letter to The Observer (28 Nov. 1948), p. 3: "I did not, as has been reported, urge immediate war with Russia. I did urge that the democracies should be prepared to use force if necessary, and that their readiness to do so should be made perfectly clear to Russia [which] ... can be halted in their attempts to dominate Europe and Asia only by determined and combined resistance· by every means in the democracies' power -- not excluding military means, if Russia continues to refuse all compromise."

19 "Ten Years Since the War Began", The New Leader, 32; no. 36 (3 Sept. 1949): 6. He adds that since the Russians may soon have the Bomb, the West should use its temporary advantage to "insist -- even to the point of war, if necessary -- on the measures that are necessary to make the world less dangerous", i.e. world government.

This suggests a temporary return to the earlier doctrine of preventive war, i.e. PWc1, given -his expressed optimism about Soviet amenability. The advent of the Russian Bomb, however, would make a full-blown recrudescence of that pre-1948 doctrine untenable.

20 See Clark, p. 530. Cf Ryan, p. 180.

21 Among those press reports were: "Fight Before Russia Finds Atom Bomb", The Observer, 21 Nov. 1948, p. 1; and "Earl Russell Calls for Atom War", Daily Worker, London, 22 Nov. 1948.

22 More curiously still, he does not even mention a 1947 article to which he had already publicly referred in a letter to The Listener of 28 May 1959, p. 937. In that letter he cites not only the Marseille letter, but also a piece he did for Alfred Kohlberg's publication, Plain Talk ("The Prevention of Atomic War", Feb. 1947, pp. 13-16), as examples of his preventive war phase. The article unequivocally advocates PWc1.

23 "Bertrand Russell and 'Preventive War''', The Nation, 177 (17 Oct. 1953): 320.

24 "Lord Russell and the Atom Bomb", The New Statesman, n.s. 41 (21 April 1951): 449-50.

The Editor has brought to my attention a 1962 letter to Russell by the reporter present at the Westminster School speech in November 1948. The reporter, J. P. Jordi, faults Russell, unfairly I think, for failing to mention the School talk, rather than the Marseille letter, as the source of the "threat of preventive war" statement attributed to him. If the above analysis is correct, the reporter's interpretation of Russell's speech was inaccurate.

25 Russell's statement is accurate provided that we ignore the fact that some of Russell's preventive war statements were reprinted in several publications and reappeared under different tides after mid-1948, e.g. his March New Leader piece (''The Future of Mankind").

26 The Listener, 61 (28 May 1959): 937.

27 "1948 Russell vs. 1954 Russell", The Saturday Review, 37, no. 42 (16 Oct. 1954): 25.

28 Interview on 4 March 1959, published in The Listener, 61 (19 March 1959): 505. Emphasis added. Here, however, in a letter to The Listener on 28 May 1959 ("Bertrand Russell's Television Broadcast"), p. 937, he mistakenly gives the date of the reappearance of the Marseille letter as 1958 rather than 1954. Perhaps this was because he had recently replied to Marseille's reprinting of extracts from the letter in "Not War, Not Peace", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 14 (April 1958); Russell's reply, "An Answer to Mr. Marseille", is in the same issue, pp. 144-6.

29 But apparently Russell did not always, after 1954, use the term "advocate war" to include PWc1. In 1962 Russell wrote to a reporter: "I should be in your debt if you could contribute towards putting the lie to the fiction that I have advocated war' against the Soviet Union." Clark takes this as proof of continued cover-up. But a more reasonable explanation is that Russell simply lapsed back into his pre-1954 usage whereby "advocate war" means proposing PWu. Thus, in the above quote, Russell is merely denying (truthfully) that he ever advocated PWu.

30 "Humanity's Last Chance", Cavalcade, 7, no. 398 (20 Oct. 1945): 9.

[admin]

The Ethics of War
by "The Honorable" Bertrand Russell, F.C.S.
The International Journal of Ethics
January, 1915

THE question whether war is ever justified, and if so under what circumstances, is one which has been forcing itself upon the attention of all thoughtful men. On this question I find myself in the somewhat painful position of holding that no single one of the combatants is justified in the present war, while not taking the extreme Tolstoyan view that war is under all circumstances a crime. Opinions on such a subject as war are the outcome of feeling rather than of thought: given a man's emotional temperament, his convictions, both on war in general, and on any particular war which may occur during his lifetime, can be predicted with tolerable certainty. The arguments used will be mere reinforcements to convictions otherwise reached. The fundamental facts in this as in all ethical questions are feelings; all that thought can do is to clarify and systematize the expression of those feelings, and it is such clarifying and systematizing of my own feelings that I wish to attempt in the present article.

I.

The question of the rights and wrongs of a particular war is generally considered from a juridical or quasi-juridical standpoint: so and so broke such and such a treaty, crossed such and such a frontier, committed such and such technically unfriendly acts, and therefore by the rules it is permissible to kill as many of his nation as modern armaments render possible. There is a certain unreality, a certain lack of imaginative grasp about this way of viewing matters. It has the advantage, always dearly prized by lazy men, of substituting a formula, at once ambiguous and easily applied, for the vital realization of the consequences of acts. The juridical point of view is in fact an illegitimate transference, to the relations of States, of principles properly applicable to the relation of individuals within a State. Within a State, private war is forbidden, and the disputes of private citizens are settled, not by their own force, but by the force of the police, which, being overwhelming, very seldom needs to be explicitly displayed. It is necessary that there should be rules according to which the police decide who is to be considered in the right in a private dispute. These rules constitute law. The chief gain derived from the law and the police is the abolition of private wars, and this gain is independent of the question whether the law as it stands is the best possible. It is therefore in the public interest that the man who goes against the law should be considered in the wrong, not because of the excellence of the law, but because of the importance of avoiding the resort to force as between individuals within the State.

In the interrelation of States nothing of the same sort exists. There is, it is true, a body of conventions called "international law," and there are innumerable treaties between High Contracting Powers. But the conventions and the treaties differ from anything that could properly be called law by the absence of sanction: there is no police force able or willing to enforce their observance. It follows from this that every nation concludes multitudes of diver- gent and incompatible treaties, and that, in spite of the high language one sometimes hears, the main purpose of the treaties is in actual fact to afford the sort of pretext which is considered respectable for engaging in war with another Power. A Power is considered unscrupulous when it goes to war without previously providing itself with such a pretext — unless indeed its opponent is a small country, in which case it is only to be blamed if that small country happens to be under the protection of some other Great Power. England and Russia may partition Persia immediately after guaranteeing its integrity an independence, because no other Great Power has a recognized interest in Persia, and Persia is one of those small States in regard to which treaty obligations are not considered binding. France and Spain, under a similar guarantee as to Morocco, must not partition it without first compensating Germany, because it is recognized that, until such compensation has been offered and accepted, Germany, though not Morocco, has a legitimate interest in the preservation of that country. All Great Powers having guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, England has a recognized right to resent its violation — a right which is exercised when it is believed to be to England's interest, and waived when England's interest is not thought to be involved. A treaty is therefore not to be regarded as a contract having the same kind of binding force as belongs to private contracts; it is to be regarded merely as a means of giving notice to rival powers that certain acts may, if the national interest so demand, form one of those reasons for war which are recognized as legitimate. If the faithful observance of treaties were a frequent occurrence, like the observance of contracts the breach of a treaty might be a real and not merely a formal ground for war, since it would tend to weaken the practice of deciding disputes by agreement rather than by armed force. In the absence of such a practice, however, appeal to treaties is only to be regarded as part of the diplomatic machinery. A nation whose diplomacy has been skilfully conducted will always, when it belies that its interests demand war, be able to find some treaty or agreement bringing its intervention within the rules of the diplomatic game. It is obvious, however, that, so long as treaties are only observed when it is convenient to do so, the rules of the diplomatic game have nothing to do with the question whether embarking or participating in a war will or will not be for the good of mankind, and it is this question which has to be decided in considering whether a war is justified or not.

II.

It is necessary, in regard to any war, to consider, not its paper justification in past agreements, but its real justification in the balance of good which it is to bring to mankind. At the beginning of a war each nation, under the influence of what is called patriotism, believes that its own victory is both certain and of great importance to mankind. The praiseworthiness of this belief has become an accepted maxim of common sense: even when war is actually in progress it is held to be natural and right that a citizen of an enemy country should regard the victory of his side as assured and highly desirable. By concentrating attention upon the supposed advantages of the victory of our own side, we become more or less blind to the evils inseparable from war and equally certain whichever side may ultimately prove victorious. Yet so long as these are not fully realized, it is impossible to judge justly whether a war is or is not likely to be beneficial to the human race. Although the theme is trite, it is necessary therefore briefly to remind ourselves what the evils of war really are.

To begin with the most obvious evil: large numbers of young men, the most courageous and the most physically fit in their respective nations, are killed, bringing great sorrow to their friends, loss to the community, and gain only to themselves. Many others are maimed for life, some go mad, and others become nervous wrecks, mere useless and helpless derelicts. Of those who survive many will be brutalized and morally degraded by the fierce business of killing, which, however much it may be the soldier's duty, must shock and often destroy the more humane instincts. As every truthful record of war shows, fear and hate let loose the wild beast in a not inconsiderable proportion of combatants, leading to strange cruelties, which must be faced, but not dwelt upon if sanity is to be preserved.

Of the evils of war to the non-combatant population in the regions where fighting occurs, the recent misfortunes of Belgium have afforded an example upon which it is not necessary to enlarge. It is necessary, however, to point out that the misfortunes of Belgium do not, as is commonly believed in England, afford a reason in favor of war. Hatred, by a tragic delusion, perpetuates the very evils from which it springs. The sufferings of Belgium are attributed to the Germans and not to war; and thus the very horrors of the war are used to stimulate the desire to increase their area and intensity. Even assuming the utmost humanity compatible with the conduct of military operations, it cannot be doubted that, if the troops of the Allies penetrate into the industrial regions of Germany, the German population will have to suffer a great part of the misfortunes which Germany has inflicted upon Belgium. To men under the influence of hate this thought is a cause of rejoicing, but to men in whom humane feeling is not extinct it shows that our sympathy with Belgium should make us hate war rather than Germany.

The evils which war produces outside the area of military operations are perhaps even more serious, for though less intense they are far more widespread. Passing by the anxiety and sorrow of those whose sons or husbands or brothers are at the front, the extent and consequences of the economic injury inflicted by war are much greater than is usually realized. It is common to speak of economic evils as merely material, and of desire for economic progress as grovelling and uninspired. This view is perhaps natural in well-to-do people, to whom economic progress means setting up a motor car or taking holidays in Scotland instead of at the seaside. But with regard to the poorer classes of society, economic progress is the first condition of many spiritual goods and even often of life itself. An overcrowded family, living in a slum in conditions of filth and immorality, where half the children die from ignorance of hygiene and bad sanitation, and the remainder grow up stunted and ignorant — such a family can hardly make progress mentally or spiritually, except through an improvement in its economic condition. And without going to the very bottom of the social scale, economic progress is essential to the possibility of good education, of a tolerable existence for women, and of that breadth and freedom of outlook upon which any solid and national advance must be based. It is not the most oppressed or the most ill-used who make an effective plea for social justice, for some reorganization of society which shall give less to the idler and more to the common man. Throughout the Napoleonic wars, while the landowners of England continually increased their rent-rolls, the mass of the wage-earning population sank into greater and greater destitution. It was only afterwards, during the long peace, that a less unjust distribution began to be possible. It cannot be doubted that the desire on the part of the rich to distract men's minds from the claims of social justice has been more or less unconsciously one of the motives leading to war in modern Europe. Everywhere the well-to-do and the political parties which represent their interests have been the chief agents in stirring up international hatred and in persuading the working man that his real enemy is the foreigner. Thus war, and the fear of war, has a double effect in retarding social progress: it diminishes the resources available for improving the condition of the wage- earning classes, and it distracts men's minds from the need and possibility of general improvement by persuading them that the way to better themselves is to injure their comrades in some other country. It is as a protest against this delusion that international socialism has arisen, and whatever may be thought of socialism as an economic doctrine, its internationalism makes it the sanest force in modern politics, and the only body which has preserved some degree of judgment and humanity in the present chaos.

Of all the evils of war the greatest, in my opinion, is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict, where, if once the blindness of atavistic instincts and the sinister influence of anti-social interests, such as those of armaments with their subservient press, could be overcome, it would be seen that there is a real consonance of interest and essential identity of human nature, and every reason to replace hatred by love. Mr. Norman Angell has well shown how unreal, as applied to the conflicts of civilized States, is the whole vocabulary of international conflict, how illusory are the gains supposed to be obtained by victory, and how fallacious are the injuries which nations, in times of peace, are supposed to inflict upon each other in economic competition. The importance of this thesis lies, not so much in its direct economic application, as in the hope which it affords for the liberation of better spiritual impulses in the relations of different communities. To love our enemies, however desirable, is not easy; and therefore it is well to realize that the enmity springs only from blindness, not from any inexorable physical necessity.

III.

Are there any wars which achieve so much for the good of mankind as to outweigh all the evils we have been considering? I think there have been such wars in the past, but they are not wars of the sort with which our diplomatists are concerned, for which our armies and navies have been prepared, and which are exemplified by the present conflict. For purposes of classification we may roughly distinguish four kinds of wars, though of course in any given case a war is not likely to be quite clearly of any one of the four kinds. With this proviso we may distinguish: (1) Wars of Colonization; (2) Wars of Principle; (3) Wars of Self-defence; (4) Wars of Prestige. Of these four kinds I should say that the first and second are fairly often justified; the third seldom, except against an adversary of inferior civilization; and the fourth, which is the sort to which the present war belongs, never. Let us consider these four kinds of war in succession.

By a "war of colonization" I mean a war whose purpose is to drive out the whole population of some territory and replace it by an invading population of a different race. Ancient wars were very largely of this kind, of which we have a good example in the Book of Joshua. In modern times the conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maories, and other aborigines in temperate regions, have been of this kind. Such wars are totally devoid of technical justification, and are apt to be more ruthless than any other war. Nevertheless, if we are to judge by results, we cannot regret that such wars have taken place. They have the merit, often quite fallaciously claimed for all wars, of leading in the main to the survival of the fittest, and it is chiefly through such wars that the civilized portion of the world has been extended from the neighborhood of the Mediterranean to the greater part of the earth's surface. The eighteenth century, which liked to praise the virtues of the savage and contrast them with the gilded corruption of courts, nevertheless had no scruple in thrusting the noble savage out from his North American hunting grounds. And we cannot at this date bring ourselves to condemn the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization. In order that such wars may be justified, it is necessary that there should be a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives. It is necessary also that the climate should be one in which the invading race can flourish. When these conditions are satisfied the conquest becomes justified, though actual fighting against the dispossessed inhabitants ought, of course, to be avoided as far as is compatible with colonizing. Many humane people will object in theory to the justification of this form of robbery, but I do not think that any practical or effective objection is likely to be made.

Such wars, however, belong now to the past. The regions where the white men can live are all allotted, either to white races or to yellow races to whom the white man is not clearly superior, and whom, in any case, he is not strong enough to expel. Apart from small punitive expeditions, wars of colonization, in the true sense, are no longer possible. What are nowadays called colonial wars do not aim at the complete occupation of a country by a conquering race; they aim only at securing certain governmental and trading advantages. They belong, in fact, rather with what I call wars of prestige, than with wars of colonization in the old sense. There are, it is true, a few rare exceptions. The Greeks in the second Balkan war conducted a war of colonization against the Bulgarians; throughout a certain territory which they intended to occupy, they killed all the men, and carried off all the women. But in such cases, the only possible justification fails, since there is no evidence of superior civilization on the side of the conquerors.

In spite, however, of the fact that wars of colonization belong to the past, men's feelings and beliefs about war are still those appropriate to the extinct conditions which rendered such wars possible. When the present war began, many people in England imagined that if the Allies were victorious Germany would cease to exist: Germany was to be "destroyed" or "smashed," and since these phrases sounded vigorous and cheering, people failed to see that they were totally devoid of meaning. There are some seventy million Germans; with great good fortune, we might, in a successful war, succeed in killing two millions of them. There would then still be sixty-eight million Germans, and in a few years the loss of population due to the war would be made good. Germany is not merely a State, but a nation, bound together by a common language, common traditions, and common ideals. What- ever the outcome of the war, this nation will still exist at the end of it, and its strength cannot be permanently impaired. But imagination in what pertains to war is still dominated by Homer and the Old Testament; men who cannot see that circumstances have changed since those works were composed are called "practical" men and are said to be free from illusions. Those, on the other hand, who have some understanding of the modern world, and some capacity for freeing their minds from the influence of phrases, are called dreamy idealists, Utopians, traitors, and friends of every country but their own. If the facts were understood, wars amongst civilized nations would cease, owing to their inherent absurdity. Men's passions always lag behind their political organizations, and facts which leave no outlet for passions are not readily admitted. In order that hatred, pride and violence may find an outlet, men unconsciously blind themselves to the plainest facts of politics and economics, and modern war continues to be waged with the phrases and theories invented by simpler men in a simpler age.

IV.

The second type of war which may sometimes be justified is what may be called "the war of principle." To this kind belong the wars of Protestant and Catholic, and the English and American civil wars. In such cases, each side, or at least one side, is honestly convinced that the progress of mankind depends upon the adoption of certain beliefs — beliefs which, through blindness or natural depravity, mankind will not regard as reasonable, except when presented at the point of the bayonet. Such wars may be justified: for example, a nation practising religious toleration may be justified in resisting a persecuting nation holding a different creed. On this ground we might justify the resistance of the Dutch to the English and French combined in the time of Charles II. But wars of principle are much less often justified than is believed by those in whose age they occur. It is very rarely that a principle of genuine value to mankind can only be propagated by military force: as a rule, it is the bad part of men's principles, not the good part, which makes it necessary to fight for their defence. And for this reason the bad part rather than the good rises to prominence during the progress of the war of principle. A nation undertaking a war in defence of religious toleration would be almost certain to persecute those of its citizens who did not believe in religious toleration. A war on behalf of democracy, if it is long and fierce, is sure to end in the exclusion from all share of power of those who do not support the war. Mr. George Trevelyan in an eloquent passage describes the defeat which, as the ultimate outcome of our civil war, overtook alike the ideals of the Roundheads and the ideals of the Cavaliers. "And this was the curse of the victors, not to die, but to live, and almost to lose their awful faith in God, when they saw the Restoration, not of the old gaiety that was too gay for them and the old loyalty that was too loyal for them, but of corruption and selfishness that had neither country nor king. The sound of the Roundhead cannon has long ago died away, but still the silence of the garden is heavy with unalterable fate, brooding over besiegers and besieged, in such haste to destroy each other and permit only the vile to survive."1 [George M. Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse, and other Essays literary and pedestrian, London, 1913, pp. 26-27.] This common doom of opposite ideals is the usual, though not the invariable, penalty of supporting ideals by force. While it may therefore be conceded that such wars are not invariably to be condemned, we must nevertheless scrutinize very skeptically the claim of any particular war to be justified on the ground of the victory which it brings to some important principle.

There are some who maintain that the present war is a war in defence of democracy. I do not know whether this view is adopted by the Tsar, and for the sake of the stability of the Alliance I sincerely hope that it is not. I do not, however, desire to dispute the proposition that democracy in the western nations would suffer from the victory of Germany. What I do wish to dispute is the belief not infrequently entertained in England that if the Allies are victorious democracy can be forced upon a reluctant Germany as part of the conditions of peace. Men who think thus have lost sight of the spirit of democracy in worship of the letter. The Germans have the form of government which they desire, and therefore any other form, imposed by alien victors, would be less in harmony with the spirit of democracy, however much it might conform to the letter. Men do right to desire strongly the victory of ideals which they believe to be important, but it is almost always a sign of yielding to undue impatience when men believe that what is valuable in their ideals can be furthered by the substitution of force for peaceful persuasion. To advocate democracy by war is only to repeat, on a vaster scale and with far more tragic results, the error of those who have sought it hitherto by the assassin's knife and the bomb of the anarchist.

V.

The next kind of war to be considered is the war of self-defence. This kind of war is almost universally admitted to be justifiable, and is condemned only by Christ and Tolstoy. The justification of wars of self-defence is very convenient, since so far as I know there has never yet been a war which was not one of self-defence. Every strategist assures us that the true defence is offence; every great nation believes that its own overwhelming strength is the only possible guarantee of the world's peace and can only be secured by the defeat of other nations. In the present war, Servia is defending itself against the brutal aggression of Austria-Hungary; Austria-Hungary is defending itself against the disruptive revolutionary agitation which Servia is believed to have fomented; Russia is defending Slavdom against the menace of Teutonic aggression; Germany is defending Teutonic civilization against the encroachments of the Slav; France is defending itself against a repetition of 1870; and England, which sought only the preservation of the status quo, is defending itself against a prospective menace to its maritime supremacy. The claim of each side to be fighting in self-defence appears to the other side mere wanton hypocrisy, because in each case the other side believes that self-defence is only to be achieved by conquest. So long as the principle of self-defence is recognized as affording always a sufficient justification for war, this tragic conflict of irresistible claims remains unavoidable. In certain cases, where there is a clash of differing civilizations, a war of self-defence may be justified on the same grounds as a war of principle. I think, however, that, even as a matter of practical politics, the principle of non-resistance contains an immense measure of wisdom if only men would have the courage to carry it out. The evils suffered during a hostile invasion are suffered because resistance is offered: the Duchy of Luxemburg, which was not in a position to offer resistance, has escaped the fate of the other regions occupied by hostile troops. What one civilized nation can achieve against another by means of conquest is very much less than is commonly supposed. It is said, both here and in Germany, that each side is fighting for its existence ; but when this phrase is scrutinized, it is found to cover a great deal of confusion of thought induced by unreasoning panic. We cannot destroy Germany even by a complete military victory, nor conversely, could Germany destroy England even if our Navy were sunk and London occupied by the Prussians. English civilization, the English language, English manufactures would still exist, and as a matter of practical politics it would be totally impossible for Germany to establish a tyranny in this country. If the Germans, instead of being resisted by force of arms, had been passively permitted to establish themselves wherever they pleased, the halo of glory and courage surrounding the brutality of military success would have been absent, and public opinion in Germany itself would have rendered any oppression impossible. The history of our own dealings with our colonies affords abundant examples to show that under such circumstances the refusal of self-government is not possible. In a word, it is the means of repelling hostile aggression which make hostile aggression disastrous and which generate the fear by which hostile nations come to think aggression justified. As between civilized nations, therefore, non-resistance would seem not only a distant religious ideal, but the course of practical wisdom. Only pride and fear stand in the way of its adoption. But the pride of military glory might be overcome by a nobler pride, and the fear might be overcome by a clearer realization of the solidity and indestructibility of a modern civilized nation.

VI.

The last kind of war we have to consider is what I have called "the war of prestige." Prestige is seldom more than one element in the causes of a war, but it is often a very important element. In the present war, until the war had actually broken out, it was almost the only thing involved, although as soon as the war began other and much more important matters came to be at stake. The initial question between Austria and Russia was almost wholly one of prestige. The lives of Balkan peasants could not have been much affected for good or evil by the participation or non-participation of Austrian officials in the trial of supposed Servian accomplices in the Sarajevo murders. This important question, which is the one on which the war is being fought, concerns what is called the hegemony of the Balkans, and this is entirely a question of prestige. Men desire the sense of triumph, and fear the sense of humiliation which they would have in yielding to the demands of another nation. Rather than forego the triumph, rather than endure the humiliation, they are willing to inflict upon the world all those disasters which it is now suffering and all that exhaustion and impoverishment which it must long continue to suffer. The willingness to inflict and endure such evils is almost universally praised; it is called high-spirited, worthy of a great nation, showing fidelity to ancestral traditions. The slightest sign of reasonableness is attributed to fear, and received with shame on the one side and with derision on the other. In private life exactly the same state of opinion existed so long as duelling was practised, and exists still in those countries in which this custom still survives. It is now recognized, at any rate in the Anglo-Saxon world, that the so called "honor" which made duelling appear inevitable was a folly and a delusion. It is perhaps not too much to hope that the day may come when the honor of nations, like that of individuals, will be no longer measured by their willingness to inflict slaughter. It can hardly be hoped, however, that such a change will be brought about while the affairs of nations are left in the keeping of diplomatists whose status is bound up with the diplomatic or, military triumph of the countries from which they come, and whose manner of life renders them unusually ignorant of all the political and economic facts of real importance and of all the changes of opinions and organization which make the present world different from that of the eighteenth century. If any real progress is to be made in introducing sanity into international relations, it is vital that these relations should be in the hands of men less aloof and less aristocratic, more in touch with common life, and more emancipated from the prejudices of a bygone age. It is necessary also that popular education, instead of inflaming the hatred of foreigners and representing even the tiniest triumph as worthy of even the greatest sacrifices, should aim rather at producing some sense of the solidarity of mankind and of the paltriness of those objects to which diplomatists, often secretly, think fit to pledge the manhood and heroism of nations.

The objects for which men have fought in the past, whether just or unjust, are no longer to be achieved by wars amongst civilized nations. A great weight of tradition, of financial interests, of political insincerity, is bound up with the anachronism of international hostility. It is, however, perhaps not chimerical to hope that the present war, which has shocked the conscience of mankind more than any war in previous history, may produce a revulsion against antiquated methods, and may lead the exhausted nations to insist upon that brotherhood and co-operation which their rulers have hitherto denied them. There is no reason whatever against the settlement of all disputes by a Council of the Powers deliberating in public. Nothing stands in its way except the pride of rulers who wish to remain uncontrolled by anything higher than their own will. When this great tragedy has worked itself out to its disastrous conclusion, when the passions of hate and self-assertion have given place to compassion with the universal misery, the nations will perhaps realize that they have fought in blindness and delusion, and that the way of mercy is the way of happiness for all.

Bertrand Russell.
Trinity College, Cambridge.  

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William Crookes
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 4/22/20


William Crookes

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) was an English physicist and chemist, and an early member of the Theosophical Society. His professional work centered on spectroscopy, vacuum tubes, cathode rays, radioactivity, and invention of the radiometer. He was knighted in 1897, and was president of the Royal Society.

According to Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett:

Crooks, Sir William, 1832-1919. English physicist and scientist of note; Member of the Royal Society. He achieved some remarkable results with experiments in "Radiant Matter." He was one of the "highest minds" whom the Adept Founders of the TS had hoped to interest in Theosophy. He became a member of the TS and One of the five councilors of the Society. HPB states (LBS, pp 224-5) that he was teaching a very occult doctrine and the the Mahatmas intended to help him. See ML index; SH index.[1]

Sir William Crookes and his wife joined The Theosophical Society in London on December 15, 1883, together with Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1890 he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and in the 1890s joined the Society for Psychical Research. Later, he joined the Ghost Club, a paranormal research organization, of which he was president from 1907 to 1912.



Spiritualism


Katie King, Florence Cook and Sir William Crookes

Prof. Crookes' younger brother Philip died prematurely in 1867 at age 21, which may have contributed to his interest in spiritualism. In 1870 Crookes stated that science had a duty to study the phenomena associated with spiritualism in an impartial way.

He studied mediums such as Kate Fox, Florence Cook, and others, and witnessed many phenomena, including the appearance of ghostly characters, such as Katie King. His report on this research in 1874, concluded that these phenomena could not be explained as conjuring, and that further research would be useful. Most scientists were convinced that spiritualism was fraudulent, and Crookes' final report so outraged the scientific establishment "that there was talk of depriving him of his Fellowship of the Royal Society." Crookes then became much more cautious and didn't discuss his views publicly until 1898, when he felt his position was secure. From that time until his death in 1919, letters and interviews show that Crookes was a believer in spiritualism.[2]

Theosophists on Crookes

H. P. Blavatsky said about him:

Crookes has been giving ideas that are not quite orthodox about me. He says: “Oh, the old lady is getting old and is falling into her dotage. She used to know something, but now she has given out everything and knows nothing.” I am very glad he thinks so, because he would otherwise have bothered me out of my life. I made him ring the two astral bells himself. Just the last time I touched him myself. He had his hand in the glass that stood there and they produced two distinct astral bells, and therefore he knows this thing which he can do also, but he wanted me to give him the key to it. I said: “If you behave yourself, I will,” but he did not behave himself, and so he did not get it. And on that he was made to believe . . . that I was a poor medium.[3]

Master K.H. wrote:

So the great Mr. Crookes has placed one foot across the threshold for the sake of reading the Society's papers? Well and wisely done, and really brave of him. Heretofore he was bold enough to take a similar step and loyal enough to truth to disappoint his colleagues by making his facts public. When he was seeing his invaluable paper smothered in the "Sections" and the whole Royal Society trying to cough him down, metaphorically if not actually . . . he little thought how perfect a revenge Karma had in store for him. Let him know that its cornucopia is not yet emptied, and that Western Science has still three additional states of matter to discover. But he should not wait for us to condense ourselves up to the stethescopic standard as his Katy did; for we men are subject to laws of molecular affinity and polaric attraction which that sweet simulacrum was not hampered with. We have no favourites, break no rules. If Mr. Crookes would penetrate Arcana beyond the corridors the tools of modern science have already excavated, let him — Try. He tried and found the Radiometer; tried again, and found Radiant matter; may try again and find the "Kama-rupa" of matter — its fifth state. But to find it's Manas he would have to pledge himself stronger to secrecy than he seems inclined to. You know our motto, and that its practical application has erased the word "impossible" from the occultist's vocabulary. If he wearies not of trying, he may discover that that most noble of all facts, his true SELF. But he will have to penetrate many strata before he comes to It. And to begin with let him rid himself of the maya that any man living can set up "claims" upon Adepts. He may create irresistible attractions and compel their attention, but they will be spiritual, not mental or intellectual.[4]

See also

• Radiant Matter
• Phlogiston

Resources

The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 38 articles by or about Crookes.

• Hannon, Ralph H. "Crookes, William" Theosophical Encyclopedia (Quezon City, Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 2006), 178-180. Link is to Theosophy World.
• William Crookes Natal Horoscope at Khaldea.

Notes

1. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 219.
2. See William Crookes in Wikipedia.
3. Michael Gomes (transcriber), The Secret Doctrine Commentaries (The Hague: I.S.I.S. foundation, 2010), 261-262.
4. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 111 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 374.

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Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/22/20


Eduard von Hartmann
von Hartmann in 1885
Born: 23 February 1842, Berlin, Prussia
Died: 5 June 1906 (aged 64), Berlin, German Empire
Alma mater: University of Rostock
Era: 19th-century philosophy
Region: Western philosophy
School: Continental philosophy; Post-Kantian philosophy; Transcendental realism[1]; Metaphysical voluntarism; Post-Schopenhauerian pessimism; Pantheism
Main interests: Aesthetics Epistemology Metaphysics Psychology
Notable ideas: Theory of the Unconscious (Reason and Will are irreducible to each other); Pessimistic interpretation of the "best possible world" theory
Influences: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling,[2] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Carl Gustav Carus[3]
Influenced: Rudolf Steiner, Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Hans Vaihinger, Arthur Drews


von Hartmann's grave in Berlin

Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann (23 February 1842 – 5 June 1906) was a German philosopher, author of Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869).

Biography

Hartmann was born in Berlin, the son of Prussian Major General Robert von Hartmann and was educated with the intention of him pursuing a military career. In 1858 he entered the Guards Artillery Regiment of the Prussian Army and attended the United Artillery and Engineering School. He achieved the rank of first lieutenant but took leave from the army in 1865 due to a chronic knee problem. After some hesitation between pursuing music or philosophy, he decided to make the latter his profession, and in 1867 obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Rostock. In 1868 he formally resigned from the army.[4] After the great success of his first work Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869)—the publication of which led to Hartmann being embroiled in the pessimism controversy in Germany[5][6]—he rejected professorships offered to him by the universities of Leipzig, Göttingen and Berlin. He subsequently returned to Berlin.[7] For many years, he lived a retired life of study as an independent scholar,[8] doing most of his work in bed, while suffering great pain.[9]

Hartmann married Agnes Taubert (1844–1877) on 3 July 1872 in Charlottenburg. After her death, he married Alma Lorenz (1854-1931) on 4 November 1878 in Bremen. The marriages produced six children.[10]

He died at Gross-Lichterfelde[7] in 1906 and is buried in an honorary grave in the Columbiadamm Cemetery in Berlin.

Philosophy

His reputation as a philosopher was established by his first book, Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869; 10th ed. 1890). This success was largely due to the originality of its title, the diversity of its contents (von Hartmann professing to obtain his speculative results by the methods of inductive science, and making plentiful use of concrete illustrations), its fashionable pessimism and the vigour and lucidity of its style. The conception of the Unconscious, by which von Hartmann describes his ultimate metaphysical principle is, fundamentally, not as paradoxical as it sounds, being merely a new and mysterious designation for the Absolute of German metaphysicians.[7]

In philosophy, the Absolute is "the sum of all being, actual and potential". In monistic idealism, it serves as a concept for the "unconditioned reality which is either the spiritual ground of all being or the whole of things considered as a spiritual unity.

The concept of "the absolute" was introduced in modern philosophy, notably by Hegel, for "the sum of all being, actual and potential". For Hegel, states the philosophy scholar Martin Heidegger, the Absolute is "the spirit, that which is present to itself in the certainty of unconditional self-knowing". According to Hegel, states Frederick Copleston – a historian of philosophy, "Logic studies the Absolute 'in itself'; the philosophy of Nature studies the Absolute 'for itself'; and the philosophy of Spirit studies the Absolute 'in and for itself'. The concept is also found in the works of F.W.J. Schelling, and was anticipated by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In English philosophy, F. H. Bradley has distinguished the concept of Absolute from God, while Josiah Royce, the founder of American idealism school of philosophy, has equated them.

-- Absolute (philosophy), by Wikipedia

The Unconscious is both Will and Reason (the latter concept also interpreted as Idea) and the absolute all-embracing ground of all existence). Von Hartmann thus combines pantheism with panlogism in a manner adumbrated by Schelling in his positive philosophy. Nevertheless, Will and not Reason is the primary aspect of the Unconscious, whose melancholy career is determined by the primacy of the Will and the latency of the Reason. Will is void of reason when it passes from potentiality to actual willing.[7] The original state of the Unconscious is one of potentiality, in which, by pure chance, the Will begins to strive. In the transition state, called that of the empty Will, there is no definite end. Acting on its own, the Will creates absolute misery.[8]

To avoid the unhappiness of aimless desire, the Will realizes the ideas already potentially present and the Unconscious becomes actual. The existence of the universe is the result, then, of the illogical Will, but its characteristics and laws are all due to the Idea or Reason and are, therefore, logical.[8] It is the best of all possible worlds, which contains the promise of the redemption of the Unconscious from actual existence by the exercise of Reason in partnership with the Will in the consciousness of the enlightened pessimist.[7]

The history of the world is that given by natural science, and particular emphasis is laid upon the Darwinian theory of evolution. Humanity developed from the animal, and with the appearance of the first human being the deliverance of the world is in sight, for only in the human being does consciousness reach such height and complexity as to act independently of the Will. As consciousness develops, there is a constantly growing recognition of the fact that deliverance must lie in a return to the original state of non-willing, which means the non-existence of all individuals and the potentiality of the Unconscious.[8] When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence.[7]

Von Hartmann called his philosophy a transcendental realism, because in it he professed to reach by means of induction from the broadest possible basis of experience a knowledge of that which lies beyond experience. A certain portion of consciousness, namely perception, begins, changes and ends without our consent and often in direct opposition to our desires. Perception, then, cannot be adequately explained from the ego alone, and the existence of things outside experience must be posited. Moreover, since they act upon consciousness and do so in different ways at different times, they must have those qualities assigned to them which would make such action possible. Causality is thus made the link that connects the subjective world of ideas with the objective world of things.[8]

An examination of the rest of experience, especially such phenomena as instinct, voluntary motion, sexual love, artistic production and the like, makes it evident that Will and Idea, unconscious but teleological, are everywhere operative, and that the underlying force is one and not many. This thing-in-itself may be called the Unconscious. It has two equally original attributes, namely, Will and Idea (or Reason).[8]

The Unconscious appears as a combination of the metaphysics of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel with that of Arthur Schopenhauer.[7] In von Hartmann's view, Hegel and Schopenhauer were both wrong in making Idea or Reason subordinate to Will or Will subordinate to Idea or Reason; on the contrary, neither can act alone, and neither is the result of the other. The Will's lack of logic causes the existence of the "that" (German: Daß) of the world; the Idea or Reason, though not conscious, is logical, and determines the essence, the "what" (German: Was). The endless and vain striving of the Will necessitates the great preponderance of suffering in the universe, which could not well be more wretched than it is. Nevertheless, it must be characterized as the best possible world, for both nature and history are constantly developing in the manner best adapted to the ending of the world; and by means of increasing consciousness the idea, instead of prolonging suffering to eternity, provides a refuge from the evils of existence in non-existence.[8]

Von Hartmann is a pessimist, for no other view of life recognizes that evil necessarily belongs to existence and can cease only with existence itself. But he is not an unmitigated pessimist.[8] The individual's happiness is indeed unattainable either here and now or hereafter and in the future, but he does not despair of ultimately releasing the Unconscious from its sufferings. He differs from Schopenhauer in making salvation collective by the negation of the will to live depend on a collective social effort and not on individualistic asceticism. The conception of a redemption of the Unconscious also supplies the ultimate basis of von Hartmann's ethics. We must provisionally affirm life and devote ourselves to social evolution, instead of striving after a happiness which is impossible; in so doing we shall find that morality renders life less unhappy than it would otherwise be. Suicide, and all other forms of selfishness, are highly reprehensible. His realism enables him to maintain the reality of Time, and so of the process of the world's redemption.[7]

The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana.[8]

The relation between philosophy and religion lies in their common recognition of an underlying unity, which transcends all the apparent differences and divisions due to individual phenomena. Many changes must take place in the existing religions before they will be suited to modern conditions, and the resulting religion of the future will be a concrete monism.[8]

Von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious has been the subject of many different estimates, but is regarded as having less intrinsic than historical value. Its influence upon other thinkers was especially marked during the years following its first appearance, but by the early 20th century that influence had much decreased.[8] However, there are some grounds for considering it as providing the connection of thought between Schopenhauer's philosophy of the 'Will' and Sigmund Freud's psychology of the 'unconscious'. In a sense his thought creates the bridge between the Post-Kantian views of Will (in particular Schopenhauer's) and the Zürich school of psychology.[11]

Reception

Rudolf Steiner, referring to Hartmann's Critical Establishment of Transcendental Realism (Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus, 2nd Edition Berlin, 1875) gave his opinion, in the preface to his own book Truth and Knowledge (1892), that Hartmann's world-view was "the most significant philosophical work of our time".[12]

Carl Jung wrote in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), that he had read von Hartmann "assiduously".[13]

Philipp Mainländer dedicated an essay to the philosophy of Von Hartmann. He did not consider him to be a genuine philosopher, because he did not start his philosophy with an epistemological research, despite the warnings of Kant and Schopenhauer. The criticism has been described as an attack abounding in clean hits but marred by bitter sarcasm,[14] such as "is the coitus a sacrifice the individual makes? You must be -– I repeat it -– a very strangely organized being"[Note 1], and for denying Schopenhauer's deduction that the will is thing in itself: "you also have the sad honor, to stand at the same level as those who have misunderstood Copernicus and still confidently believe that the sun turns around the earth."[Note 2]

Friedrich Nietzsche offers a scathing criticism of von Hartmann, calling his philosophy "unconscious irony" and "roguery", in the second of his Untimely Meditations, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.[15]

British film-maker and author Edouard d'Araille provides a modern-day appraisal of the philosophy of von Hartmann in his introductory essay to the 2001 Edition (3 Volumes) of The Philosophy of the Unconscious. He evaluates von Hartmann as the vital link between the vitalism of Arthur Schopenhauer and the psychology of the Unconscious of Sigmund Freud.[16]

Works

Von Hartmann's numerous works extend to more than 12,000 pages. They may be classified into:

Systematic

• Das Ding an sich und seine Beschaffenheit ("The thing in itself and its nature", 1871)
• Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie ("Fundamental problems of epistemology", 1889)
• Kategorienlehre ("Doctrine of the Categories", 1896)
• Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewußtseins ("Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness", 1879)
• Die Philosophie des Schönen ("'The Philosophy of the Beautiful", 1887)
• Die Religion des Geistes ("The Religion of the Spirit"; 1882)
• Philosophie des Unbewussten ("Philosophy of the Unconscious", 3 vols., which now include his, originally anonymous, self-criticism, Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie, and its refutation, Eng. trans. by William Chatterton Coupland, 1884)
• System der Philosophie im Grundriss, ("Plan for a System of Philosophy", 8 vols, 1907–09: posthumous)
• Beiträge zur Naturphilosophie ("Contributions to Natural Philosophy", 1876)

Historical and critical

• Das religiöse Bewusstsein der Menschheit (The Religious Consciousness of Mankind in the Stages of Its Development; 1881)
• Geschichte der Metaphysik (2 vols.)
• Kants Erkenntnistheorie
• Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus (Critical Grounds of Transcendental Realism)
• Uber die dialektische Methode
• Lotzes Philosophie (1888) (a study on Hermann Lotze)
• Zur Geschichte und Begründung des Pessimismus (1880)
• Neukantianismus, Schopenhauerismus, Hegelianismus
• Geschichte der deutschen Ästhetik und Kant
• Die Krisis des Christentums in der modernen Theologie (The Crisis of Christianity in Modern Theology; 1880)
• Philosophische Fragen der Gegenwart
• Ethische Studien
• Aesthetik (1886–87)
• Moderne Psychologie
• Das Christentum des neuen Testaments
• Die Weltanschauung der modernen Physik
• Wahrheit und Irrthum im Darwinismus (1875)
• Zur Reform des höheren Schulwesens (1875)

Popular

• Aphorismen über das Drama (1870)
• Shakespeares Romeo und Juliet (1875)
• Soziale Kernfragen (The Fundamental Social Questions; 1894)
• Moderne Probleme
• Tagesfragen
• Zwei Jahrzehnte deutscher Politik und die gegenwärtige Weltlage (1888)
• Das Judentum in Gegenwart und Zukunft (Judaism in the Present and the Future; 1885)
• Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums und die Religion der Zukunft (1874)
• Gesammelte Studien
• Der Spiritismus (1885)
• Die Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus (The Ghost Theory in Spiritism; 1891)
• Zur Zeitgeschichte

His select works were published in 10 volumes.

Notes

1. "Ist der Beischlaf ein Opfer, das das Individuum bringt? Sie müssen – ich wiederhole es – ein ganz sonderbar organisirtes Wesen sein."
2. "Sie haben auch den traurigen Ruhm, auf gleicher Stufe mit Jenen zu stehen, welche Copernicus nicht begriffen haben und nach wie vor zuversichtlich glauben, daß sich die Sonne um die Erde drehe."

References

1. Beiser, Frederick C., Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 147.
2. Beiser, Frederick C., Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 129.
3. Jung, C. G. ([1959] 1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, Volume 9, Part 1, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01833-2, par. 259: "Although various philosophers, among them Leibniz, Kant, and Schelling, had already pointed very clearly to the problem of the dark side of the psyche, it was a physician who felt impelled, from his scientific and medical experience, to point to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche. This was C. G. Carus, the authority whom Eduard von Hartmann followed."
4. Darnoi, Dennis N. Kenedy (6 December 2012). The Unconscious and Eduard von Hartmann: A Historico-Critical Monograph. Springer. ISBN 9789401195683.
5. After Hegel. Princeton University Press. 7 September 2014. doi:10.23943/princeton/9780691163093.003.0006. ISBN 9780691163093.
6. Beiser, Frederick C. (1 May 2016). Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768715.001.0001. ISBN 9780198768715.
7. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
8. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Grace Neal Dolson (1920). "Hartmann, Karl Robert Edouard von" . In Rines, George Edwin (ed.). Encyclopedia Americana.
9. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard von" . New International Encyclopedia(1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
10. "Digitale Sammlungen / Gothaisches genealogisches... [284]". digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
11. 'Philosopher of the Unconscious' by Edouard d'Araille (Introduction to Vol. 1 of The Philosophy of the Unconscious [2006 Ed./LTMI])
12. Rudolf Steiner, Truth and Knowledge, Introduction to The Philosophy of Freedom, 1892 [1]
13. Carl Jung (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Random House. p. 101. ISBN 0-679-72395-1.
14. Tsanoff, Radoslav (1931). The Nature of Evil. p. 356.
15. Friedrich Nietzsche (1874). Untimely Meditations. E. W. Fritzsch.Wikisource:On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
16. Karl Robert (2001). The Philosophy of the Unconscious (3 volumes). Living Time Media International. p. ?. ISBN 978-1905820481.

External links

• Works by Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann at Project Gutenberg

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The Death of a Peer, or, Lord Lyttelton's Ghost
by Katherine Langrish
March 4, 2013


Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton

“Sir,” said Dr Johnson to his friend Dr Adams, “it is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day.”

He was speaking of the mysterious circumstances attending the death of Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, known - in true Georgette Heyer fashion - as ‘the wicked Lord Lyttelton’, born 30 January 1744, and died, as we shall see, on the night of the 27th November 1779.

Born with every advantage, Lyttelton was educated at Eton and Oxford, a charming and talented boy: too charming and talented for his own good, perhaps, for he became a notorious rake. He fought duels, and ‘excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery everywhere’. He married to pay his gambling debts and then ran off to Paris with a barmaid; he entered the House of Commons in 1768 as MP for Bewdley, but was unseated for bribery the following year; he disappeared again to the Continent; but when his father died in 1774 he returned and took his seat in the Lords where, to secure his support, ministers bought him over with a lucrative sinecure – something which would pay him money and for which he would have to do little or no work – the ancient post of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent.

Four years later, however, on the 25th November 1779, (possibly disappointed by his failure to obtain another sinecure and become a Keeper of the Privy Seals) Lyttelton changed sides and denounced Government and Court in a vitriolic speech. Horace Walpole comments ‘Lyttelton … has turned against the Court.' Regarding his existing sinecure, Lyttelton said, ‘Perhaps I may not keep it long.’

He was correct. By midnight on November 27th, he was dead.

On the night before his speech – the night of Wednesday 24th November – Lyttelton saw a ghost which told him he would die within three days. Between the Wednesday and the Friday, he mentioned this to various friends and acquaintances: Rowan Hamilton, and one Captain Ascough, who told a lady, who told another lady named Mrs Thrale who wrote it down in her diary on Sunday 28th November, the morning after Lyttelton’s midnight death:

Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at Drury Lane on Friday night. “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?” “Very strangely indeed! Not with the play, though, but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who warned him that he will die in three days. I have thought of nothing else since.”

Horace Walpole, writing to a friend on Monday November 29th, says:

Lord Lyttelton is dead suddenly. …The story is given out, that he looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that he had gone to his house in Epsom… with a caravan of nymphs; and on Saturday had retired before supper to take rhubarb; returned, supped heartily, went into the next room and died in an instant.

Within a short time, however, Walpole has picked up on the gossip around town: Lyttleton had claimed to have seen a robin – or some other bird – which changed into a woman and delivered him a death warning. By December 11th Walpole writes with dry humour to another friend that ghost stories are back in fashion!

Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should despair of getting access to his lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin red-breast.

The ‘nymphs’ to whom Walpole refers in his first letter were the three Misses Amphlett; residing with their ‘chaperon’ Mrs Flood at Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. A few months later, in February 1780, Lord Westcote, Lyttelton’s uncle, questioned them, and wrote:

On November 25th, at breakfast in Hill Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he had had an extraordinary DREAM.

He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed to a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.

He ‘did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs Dawson, when a robin red-breast flew into her room.’ On the morning of Saturday [the 27th] he told the same ladies that he was very well and believed he should ‘BILK THE GHOST’. On that day – Saturday – he …went to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died without a groan’ as his servant was disengaging him from his waistcoat.

There was no inquest.

And there's a postscript: on the fatal night, 27th November 1779, Mr Miles Peter Andrews, a friend of Lyttelton’s who was staying at Dartford, was woken when his bed-curtains were pulled open and he was confronted by Lord Lyttelton ‘in his robe de chambre and nightcap’. Suspecting a practical joke, Andrews rang the bell for his servant, and on turning back found Lord Lyttelton gone. The house and garden were searched in vain, and about four in the afternoon of the next day, a friend arrived with news of Lyttelton’s death. The event was recorded in the next number of the Scots Magazine, December 1779.

But let us return to Dr Johnson, with whom we began, speaking of the mysterious affair with his friend Dr Adams. Johnson was famously afraid of death. He continues, “I heard it with my own ears from his uncle Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I am willing to believe it.”

Dr Adams replies (doubtless alluding to the Scriptures), “You have evidence enough – good evidence, which needs no support.”

“I like to have more!” Dr Johnson growls.

[admin]

Agenda 21
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/2/20

-- Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living, Published in partnership by IUCN (The World Conservation Union); UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme); WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), Project director, David A. Munro; senior consultant and writer, Robert Prescott-Allen; final text edited by David A. Munro and Martin W. Holdgate, October, 1991

-- Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, by United Nations

Agenda 21
Cover of the first edition (paperback)
Author: United Nations (1992)
Country: United States
Language: English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: United Nations
Publication date: 23 April 1992 (28 years ago)
Media type: Print (Paperback), HTML, PDF
Pages: 300 pp
ISBN 978-92-1-100509-7

Agenda 21[1] is a non-binding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development.[2] It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. It is an action agenda for the UN, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels.

The "21" in Agenda 21 refers to the original target year of 2021 where they were hoping to achieve their development goals by then. It has been affirmed and had a few modifications at subsequent UN conferences. Since it found 2021 was an overly optimistic date, its new timeline is targeting 2030. Its aim is to achieve global sustainable development. One major objective of the Agenda 21 initiative is that every local government should draw its own local Agenda 21. Since 2015, Sustainable Development Goals or also known as the Millennium Development Goals are included in the newer Agenda 2030.

Structure

Agenda 21 is a 351-page document divided into 40 chapters that have been grouped into 4 sections:

• Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions is directed toward combating poverty, especially in developing countries, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, achieving a more sustainable population, and sustainable settlement in decision making.
• Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources for Development includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity (biodiversity), control of pollution and the management of biotechnology, and radioactive wastes.
• Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups includes the roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, business and industry, and workers; and strengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their communities, and farmers.
• Section IV: Means of Implementation includes science, technology transfer, education, international institutions, and financial mechanisms.[3]

Development and evolution

The full text of Agenda 21 was made public at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janeiro on 13 June 1992, where 178 governments voted to adopt the program. The final text was the result of drafting, consultation, and negotiation, beginning in 1989 and culminating at the two-week conference.

Rio+5 (1997)

In 1997, the UN General Assembly held a special session to appraise the status of Agenda 21 (Rio +5). The Assembly recognized progress as "uneven" and identified key trends, including increasing globalization, widening inequalities in income, and continued deterioration of the global environment. A new General Assembly Resolution (S-19/2) promised further action.

Rio+10 (2002)

Main article: World Summit on Sustainable Development

The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, agreed to at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002), affirmed UN commitment to "full implementation" of Agenda 21, alongside achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and other international agreements.

Agenda 21 for culture (2002)

Main article: Agenda 21 for culture

The first World Public Meeting on Culture, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2002, came up with the idea to establish guidelines for local cultural policies, something comparable to what Agenda 21 was for the environment.[4] They are to be included in various subsections of Agenda 21 and will be carried out through a wide range of sub-programs beginning with G8 countries.

Rio+20 (2012)

Main article: United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

In 2012, at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development the attending members reaffirmed their commitment to Agenda 21 in their outcome document called "The Future We Want". Leaders from 180 nations participated.

Sustainable Development Summit (2015)

Main article: Sustainable Development Goals

Agenda 2030, also known as the Sustainable Development Goals, was a set of goals decided upon at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015.[5] It takes all of the goals set by Agenda 21 and re-asserts them as the basis for sustainable development, saying, "We reaffirm all the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development…”[6] Adding onto those goals from the original Rio document, a total of 17 goals have been agreed on, revolving around the same concepts of Agenda 21; people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership.[7]

Implementation

The Commission on Sustainable Development acts as a high-level forum on sustainable development and has acted as preparatory committee for summits and sessions on the implementation of Agenda 21. The UN Division for Sustainable Development acts as the secretariat to the Commission and works "within the context of" Agenda 21.

Implementation by member states remains voluntary, and its adoption has varied.

Local level

See also: International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives

The implementation of Agenda 21 was intended to involve action at international, national, regional and local levels. Some national and state governments have legislated or advised that local authorities take steps to implement the plan locally, as recommended in Chapter 28 of the document. These programs are often known as "Local Agenda 21" or "LA21".[8] For example, in the Philippines, the plan is "Philippines Agenda 21" (PA21). The group, ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, formed in 1990; today its members come from over 1,000 cities, towns, and counties in 88 countries and is widely regarded as a paragon of Agenda 21 implementation.[9]

Europe turned out to be the continent where LA21 was best accepted and most implemented.[10] In Sweden, for example, all local governments have implemented a Local Agenda 21 initiative.[11]

Regional levels

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development monitors and evaluates progress, nation by nation, towards the adoption of Agenda 21, and makes these reports available to the public on its website.[12]

Australia

Australia is a signatory to Agenda 21 and 88 of its municipalities subscribe to ICLEI, an organization that promotes Agenda 21 globally. Australia's membership is second only to that of the United States.[13]

Africa

In Africa, national support for Agenda 21 is strong and most countries are signatories. But support is often closely tied to environmental challenges specific to each country; for example, in 2002 Sam Nujoma, who was then President of Namibia, spoke about the importance of adhering to Agenda 21 at the 2002 Earth Summit, noting that as a semi-arid country, Namibia sets a lot of store in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).[14] Furthermore, there is little mention of Agenda 21 at the local level in indigenous media. Only major municipalities in sub-Saharan African countries are members of ICLEI. Agenda 21 participation in North African countries mirrors that of Middle Eastern countries, with most countries being signatories but little to no adoption on the local-government level. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa generally have poorly documented Agenda 21 status reports. By contrast, South Africa's participation in Agenda 21 mirrors that of modern Europe, with 21 city members of ICLEI and support of Agenda 21 by national-level government.

North America

United States

The national focal point in the United States is the Division Chief for Sustainable Development and Multilateral Affairs, Office of Environmental Policy, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State.[15] A June 2012 poll of 1,300 United States voters by the American Planning Association found that 9% supported Agenda 21, 6% opposed it, and 85% thought they didn't have enough information to form an opinion.[16]

Support

The United States is a signatory country to Agenda 21, but because Agenda 21 is a legally non-binding statement of intent and not a treaty, the United States Senate did not hold a formal debate or vote on it. It is therefore not considered to be law under Article Six of the United States Constitution. President George H. W. Bush was one of the 178 heads of government who signed the final text of the agreement at the Earth Summit in 1992,[17][18] and in the same year Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Eliot Engel and William Broomfield spoke in support of United States House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 353, supporting implementation of Agenda 21 in the United States.[16][19] Created by a 1993 Executive Order, the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) is explicitly charged with recommending a national action plan for sustainable development to the President. The PCSD is composed of leaders from government and industry, as well as from environmental, labor and civil rights organizations. The PCSD submitted its report, "Sustainable America: A New Consensus", to the President in early 1996. In the absence of a multi-sectoral consensus on how to achieve sustainable development in the United States, the PCSD was conceived to formulate recommendations for the implementation of Agenda 21.

In the United States, over 528 cities are members of ICLEI, an international sustainability organization that helps to implement the Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21 concepts across the world. The United States has nearly half of the ICLEI's global membership of 1,200 cities promoting sustainable development at a local level.[13] The United States also has one of the most comprehensively documented Agenda 21 status reports.[20] In response to the opposition, Don Knapp, U.S. spokesman for the ICLEI, has said "Sustainable development is not a top-down conspiracy from the U.N., but a bottom-up push from local governments".[16]

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry successfully lobbied against an anti-sustainable development bill in 2012, arguing "It would be bad for business" as it could drive away corporations that have embraced sustainable development.[16]

Opposition

Anti-Agenda 21 theories have circulated in the U.S. Some Tea Party movement activists and others promoted the notion that Agenda 21 was part of a UN plot to deny property rights, undermine U.S. sovereignty, or force citizens to move to cities.[21][22][9][16][23] Activists believed that the non-binding UN resolution was "the linchpin in a plot to subjugate humanity under an eco-totalitarian regime."[22] The conspiracy had its roots in anti-environmentalist ideology and opposition to land-use regulation.[23]

[Vandana Shiva] So we are talking of the old oil economy trying to maintain itself now through another raw material, the green planet. The only reason corn and soy has been planted for biofuel in this country is the subsidies make it profitable. I think the big crisis of our times is our minds have been manipulated to give power to illusions. We shifted to measuring growth, not in terms of how life is enriched, but in terms of how life is destroyed.

-- Planet of the Humans, directed by Jeff Gibbs

Agenda 21 fears have played a role in opposition to local government's efforts to promote resource and land conservation, build bike lanes, and construct hubs for public transportation.[21] The non-profit group ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability USA – was targeted by anti-Agenda 21 activists.[21] In 2012 Glenn Beck co-wrote a dystopian novel titled Agenda 21 based in part on concepts discussed in the UN plan.[24][25][26] In the same year, fears of Agenda 21 "went mainstream" when the Republican National Committee adopted a platform resolution stated that "We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty."[27][22]

Several state and local governments have considered or passed motions and legislation opposing Agenda 21.[9][16][22] Most such bills failed, "either dying in committee, getting defeated on the statehouse floor or – in the case of Missouri's 2013 bill – getting vetoed by the governor."[22] In Texas, for example, broadly worded legislation that would prohibit any governmental entity from accepting from or granting money to any "nongovernmental or intergovernmental organization accredited by the United Nations to implement a policy that originated in the Agenda 21 plan" was defeated because it could have cut off funding for groups such as 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Texas Wildlife Association.[22] In Arizona, a similarly sweeping bill was introduced in the Arizona State Legislature seeking to mandate that the state could not "adopt or implement the creed, doctrine, or principles or any tenet" of Agenda 21 and to prohibit the state "implementing programs of, expending any sum of money for, being a member of, receiving funding from, contracting services from, or giving financial or other forms of aid to" an array of sustainability organizations.[22] The bill, which was opposed by the state chamber of commerce and the mayor of Phoenix, was defeated in 2012.[22] Alabama was one state that did adopt an anti-Agenda 21 resolution, unanimously passing in 2012 a measure to block "any future effort to 'deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to 'Agenda 21.'"[22]

Europe

The Agenda 21 status of European countries is generally well-documented.

France

France, whose national government, along with 14 cities, is a signatory, promotes nationwide programs in support of the goals of Agenda 21.[citation needed]

Baltic nations

Baltic nations formed the Baltic 21 coalition as a regional expression of Agenda 21.[28]

See also

• Agenda 2030
• Ecologically sustainable development
• EarthCheck
• Education for sustainable development
• Global Map
• Glocalization
• ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA
• International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives
• Man and the Biosphere Programme
• National Strategy for a Sustainable America
• Think globally, act locally
• Waste management

References

1. "Agenda 21 text (pdf)" (PDF). unep.org.
2. "What is Agenda 21?". ICLEIUSA. Archived from the original on 12 December 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
3. "Agenda 21" (PDF). sustainabledevelopment.un.org.
4. "Culture 21 – Agenda 21 for culture". http://www.agenda21culture.net. Archived from the original on 25 December 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
5. "United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 .:. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform". sustainabledevelopment.un.org. Archived from the original on 11 December 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
6. "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development .:. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform". sustainabledevelopment.un.org. Archived from the original on 5 December 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
7. "Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015". http://www.un.org. Archived from the original on 10 November 2015. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
8. Manchester Metropolitan University Archived 22 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine
9. Kaufman, Leslie; Kate Zernike (3 February 2012). "Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 August 2012.
10. Smardon, Richard (2008). "A comparison of Local Agenda 21 implementation in North American, European and Indian cities". Management of Environmental Quality. 19 (1): 118–137. doi:10.1108/14777830810840408. Archived from the original on 11 June 2015. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
11. Jörby, Sofie (2002). "Local Agenda 21 in four Swedish Municipalities: a tool towards sustainability". Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. 45 (2): 219–244. doi:10.1080/09640560220116314.
12. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. "Areas of Work – National Information by Country or Organization". United Nations. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
13. ICLEI. "ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability: Global Members". Archived from the original on 25 July 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
14. "Namibian president calls for implementation of Agenda 21". Xinhua News Agency. 2 September 2002. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
15. "United States of America". Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. United Nations. Archived from the original on 22 October 2013.
16. "Tea Party Activists Fight Agenda 21, Seeing Threatening U.N. Plot". Huffington Post. 15 October 2012. Archived from the original on 18 October 2012. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
17. "Senators attack sustainable development, Agenda 21". The Courier-Journal. 20 February 2013. Archived from the originalon 12 October 2013.
18. "Secret agenda at city hall?". Wyoming Tribune Eagle. 4 November 2012.
19. Arnie Rosner (3 March 2012). "Agenda 21 Nancy Pelosi .mp4". Archived from the original on 23 March 2018. Retrieved 27 April 2018 – via YouTube.
20. "Agenda 21 – United States". http://www.un.org. Archived from the original on 8 October 2017. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
21. Kaufman, Leslie; Kate Zernike (4 February 2012). "Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013.
22. Greg Harman, Agenda 21: a conspiracy theory puts sustainability in the crosshairs Archived 26 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian (24 June 2015).
23. Hinkes-Jones, Llewellyn (29 August 2012). "The Anti-Environmentalist Roots of the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory". Archived from the original on 1 October 2012. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
24. "Agenda 21 By Glenn Beck, Harriet Parke". USA Today. 2012. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012.
25. Cypher, Sarah (19 November 2012). "I got duped by Glenn Beck!". Salon.com. Archived from the original on 16 January 2015.
26. "Best Sellers". The New York Times. 9 December 2012. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016.
27. Jamison, Peter (30 August 2012). "Fears of Agenda 21 go mainstream in the Republican Party platform". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on 3 November 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
28. "Sustainable Development - Baltic 2030 - cbss.org". cbss.org. Archived from the original on 15 November 2017. Retrieved 27 April 2018.

Bibliography

• Lenz, Ryan (Spring 2012). "Antigovernment Conspiracy Theorists Rail Against UN's Agenda 21 Program". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center (145).
• Earth Summit 2012

External links

• "Agenda 21 text (pdf)" (PDF). unep.org.
• United Nations Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform

[admin]

Steven Clark Rockefeller
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/5/20

-- Planet of the Humans, written, produced and directed by Jeff Gibbs
-- Review: [Untitled] Reviewed Work: Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue, by Steven C. Rockefeller, John C. Elder, by Leslie A. Muray
-- Rockefeller Brothers Fund, by Wikipedia
-- Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue, Edited by Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder
-- Is There a Buddhist Philosophy of Nature? in Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryúken Williams, eds. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1997, by Malcolm David Eckel
-- William Rockefeller, by Answers.com
-- Bureau of Social Hygiene, by The Rockefeller Foundation Digital History
-- Rockefeller Foundation, by Wikipedia

Steven Clark Rockefeller
Born: April 19, 1936 (age 84), United States
Alma mater: Princeton University; Union Theological Seminary; Columbia University
Occupation: Professor emeritus at Middlebury College
Spouse(s): Anne-Marie Rasmussen (divorced); Barbara Bellows (m. 1991)
Children 4
Parent(s): Nelson Rockefeller; Mary Clark

Steven Clark Rockefeller (born April 19, 1936) is a fourth-generation member of the Rockefeller family, and a former dean of Middlebury College. He is the oldest living member of the family who still carries the Rockefeller name, and has been the oldest living Rockefeller since his Uncle David Rockefeller died (at the age of 101) in March 2017.

Rockefeller is a philanthropist who focuses on education, Planned Parenthood, human rights and environmental causes. He is a trustee of the Asian Cultural Council and an advisory trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He has also served as a director of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Biography

He is the second-oldest son of former United States Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and his first wife, Mary Rockefeller.

Rockefeller attended prestigious Deerfield Academy and received his A.B. degree from Princeton University, where he was president of The Ivy Club and also received the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize. Subsequently, he obtained an M.Div. degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and a Ph.D. degree in philosophy of religion from Columbia University. He is a professor emeritus of Religion at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont where he previously served as college dean and chairman of the religion department.[1]

In 1959, he married Anne-Marie Rasmussen in Søgne, Norway; Anne-Marie was a former employee in the Rockefeller household. The couple had three children before divorcing. Steven Rockefeller remarried and had one child before the marriage ended in divorce. He then wed Barbara Bellows on May 11, 1991.

In 1976, he began an intensive study of Zen Buddhism, making frequent week-long visits to the Zen Center in Rochester, where he was a trustee.

He coordinated the drafting of the Earth Charter for the Earth Charter Commission and Earth Council. In 2005, he moderated the international launch of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) (2005–14) in its headquarters in New York, launched by UNESCO and attended by Nane Annan, the wife of Secretary General Kofi Annan.[2] He is Co-Chair of Earth Charter International Council and has written numerous essays on the Earth Charter, available at the Earth Charter website.[3]

Publications

He has edited or written three books:

• The Christ and the Bodhisattva (SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies). Edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., and Steven C. Rockefeller. State University of New York Press (1987)
• Rockefeller, Steven C. John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism. Columbia University Press (1991)
• Spirit and Nature -- Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue: An Interfaith Dialogue. Edited by Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder. Beacon Press (1992).

Further reading

• Rasmussen, Anne-Marie. There Was Once a Time of Islands, Illusions, and Rockefellers. New York and London: Harcourt Brace, 1975.

References

1. "Trustees: Steven C. Rockefeller". Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Archived from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
2. "International Launch of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)" (Press release). UNESCO. 2005-03-01. Archived from the original on 2005-09-29. Retrieved 2010-01-25.
3. "The Earth Charter Initiative-Website". Earth Charter Initiative, dates?

External links

• The Cousins A 1984 New York Times profile of prominent members of the fourth-generation Rockefellers. (requires subscription)
• Steven C. Rockefeller - Rockefeller Brothers Fund website

******************************

Open Letter to the [Middlebury] President and Trustees
by Steven C. Rockefeller
The Middlebury Campus: Middlebury College's only student-run newspaper
October 12, 2015 / October 21, 2015

For five decades Middlebury College has been an outstanding leader in promoting environmental studies and international studies and in adopting sustainable operating procedures. Laurie Patton has shared with me her commitment as the College’s new president to build on and extend this admirable record of leadership. Toward this end, she would like to work in partnership with trustees, student groups, and concerned faculty and staff in an effort to identify next steps. This is a sound approach that all in the College community can support. Regarding next steps, this letter highlights one especially significant opportunity. We are at a pivotal moment in the national and international debate over the urgent need for a transition to a clean energy economy. Middlebury has the ability to influence the outcome of this critical debate by taking a public stand with a commitment to join the growing fossil fuel divestment movement. A decision by the College to divest should be viewed primarily as an act of moral and educational leadership at a time when industrial-technological civilization has lost its way and must reinvent itself.

I write this letter as a former Middlebury faculty member who taught at the College for close to three decades, served as dean of the college in the Olin Robison administration, and chaired the College’s Environmental Council during the mid-1990s. My courses included the study of environmental ethics, global ethics, and religion and ecology. I also write as a trustee and former chair of the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), an international grant making foundation that has joined the fossil fuel divestment movement as part of an effort to align its investment policy with its mission and program goals. The Divest Middlebury campaign has set forth a compelling argument, and I write in support of the students who are leading this important initiative.

Scientists working in the field of climate change have turned on the alarm bells. Human development practices, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are altering the conditions on Earth that have made possible the development of civilization over the past ten thousand years. If humanity does not act with all deliberate speed and reduce its global greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, the consensus among scientists is that the ecological, economic and social damage and disruption could be catastrophic and irreversible. The most vulnerable are the hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, but no one’s life will be unaffected. Already the negative effects of climate change are being felt by communities around the world. In addition, human development patterns have caused a tragic decline in the planet’s biodiversity and natural beauty, and ongoing global warming will accelerate this process.

Since action on climate change is about preventing immense harm and promoting the common good, it is first and foremost a fundamental moral issue. With the risk of dangerous consequences growing with every day of delayed action, it is also an extraordinarily urgent moral challenge. In a recent declaration, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican in Rome stated the matter succinctly: “Human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its mitigation is a moral and religious imperative.” A growing chorus of religious leaders, including Pope Francis, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the Dalai Lama, fully support this view. The new Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis on the environment, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home,” and the Pope’s addresses before Congress and the United Nations clearly and forcefully highlight the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the environmental crisis and climate change. In response to the initiative of Pope Francis, 333 Rabbis have signed a “Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis.”

This year could be a turning point when the world community forms the necessary global partnership and commits to the collaborative action needed to reduce and eliminate carbon pollution. In December heads of state from the 193 governments that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in Paris to finalize a long delayed, legally binding climate change agreement. The goal of the negotiations is to elicit commitments that will cumulatively prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era. Achieving an effective and equitable agreement in Paris is fundamental to protecting Earth’s ecological integrity, promoting human rights, and fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations. However, again and again governments controlled by short term economic and political interests have failed to address the problem of global warming. Building pressure from civil society, including from leaders in science, religion, education and philanthropy, can make a critical difference.

With the demand for change growing, governments are searching for a way forward. China and the United States, the two largest carbon polluters, have together made meaningful commitments, and many other nations have joined them. However, the commitments made to date fall far short of the reduction in emissions needed. At a special summit meeting on sustainable development this past September, the United Nations issued a path breaking declaration on “Transforming Our World” that adopts seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets, which envision the full integration of the environmental, economic and social dimensions of the sustainable development agenda. The SDGs call for radical change, and if governments are serious about achieving the SDGs, a strong UNFCCC agreement is mandatory. By joining the divestment movement, Middlebury College can help to send that message and register its concern that governments be held accountable for fulfilling their obligations under the agreement and expand their commitments in the future as necessary.

The divestment movement has grown dramatically over the past year. A recent study, which was commissioned by the Wallace Global Fund, has found that 436 institutions have made a commitment to divest from fossil fuel companies, representing $2.6 trillion of investments—a fifty-fold increase. These institutions include the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and two of the largest pension funds as well as foundations, colleges, universities, NGOs and religious institutions. Recognizing the significance of these developments, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, has called for more institutions to divest from fossil fuels and invest in clean energy as a way to build momentum going into the Paris climate change meeting. (Clarification regarding the $2.6 trillion of investments is needed, because in some cases the institutions involved are limiting their divestment to coal or to coal and tar sands oil or to some but not all fossil fuels companies.)

College and University trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that their institution has the financial resources to fulfill its educational mission, and they are rightly concerned to maximize returns on endowment investments and minimize risk. In pursuing its commitment to divest from fossil fuels, the RBF [Rockefeller Brothers Fund] has adopted a phased approach, eliminating investments in coal and tar sands first followed by a gradual elimination of all fossil fuels in a fiscally responsible manner. The goal of the RBF is to be completely divested of fossil fuels by the end of 2017. The Fund’s trustees have not found it necessary to alter their long standing commitment to preserve the purchasing power of the endowment. Middlebury should be able to divest from fossil fuels over several years without suffering reduced investment returns. Moreover, divesting could produce higher returns, because the fossil fuel energy sector is facing complex problems and risks. In addition to the precipitous collapse in the price of oil over the past year, which has caused some firms significant loses in market value, the big oil companies face the long term problem of stranded assets. Preventing global warming from exceeding two degrees Celsius will require leaving most of the known coal, oil, and gas reserves in the ground. In short, the transition to a clean energy economy will in all likelihood make fossil fuels a high risk investment. Many financial institutions are following this situation closely, and the Carbon Tracker Initiative is providing investors with the tools to measure economic risk associated with fossil fuels.

It is also important to recognize that renewable energy is rapidly becoming competitive with fossil fuels on cost and that corporations are coming to the realization that cutting their carbon footprint through improved efficiency and a shift to renewables is both possible and profitable. There is a global coalition of corporations that have committed to the long term goal of operating entirely with renewable energy. The New York Times reports that among the companies that have recently joined the coalition are Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks, and Walmart. The transition away from fossil fuels to renewables is underway in spite of efforts by the big oil companies to prevent it and deny it. The only question is whether the transition will happen fast enough to prevent global warming from pushing the biosphere over tipping points that involve high risk. In a September Op-Ed, the president of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, announced that his global industrial manufacturing company has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030, and reflecting on the challenge and opportunity before the business community he writes: “We have the technologies, we have the business incentive, and we have the responsibility. Now all we need is the commitment.” A decision by Middlebury’s board to divest will reinforce this message to corporate leaders, many of whom are listening with a new level of concern for the future of the planet, the global economy, and their companies.

Some argue that it is hypocritical for an institution like Middlebury to divest when the college and American society at large continue to be dependent on fossil fuels in so many ways. Is it hypocritical for someone who is addicted to cigarettes but knows that smoking is harmful and cancer causing to divest from all tobacco company stocks? Divesting is a way to help all of us wake up to the real dangers created by our addiction to fossil fuels and make the change to a cleaner, safer, more secure world.

When the RBF board and its investment committee, which includes both trustees and outside experts, began to consider joining the divestment movement, they were working with a highly skilled and successful investment manager. However, given the way its operations were structured, the investment manager concluded that it could not accomplish the goals that the RBF had set for divestment. Consequently the Fund was forced to change investment managers. Making the change has been a demanding process, but it has worked out well and the Fund now has investment managers with the expertise and flexibility that it requires. In short, there are very good alternatives, if Middlebury finds itself contending with the same kind of problem that faced the RBF.

Apart from major educational issues, as a general rule, it is not the responsibility of a college board of trustees to consider taking an official position on the many issues under debate on campus, and only under exceptional circumstances when there are very compelling moral reasons to do so should a board use divestment to support a protest movement. However, climate change is not just one environmental issue among many others or just a political issue. It is one of the defining issues of our time, and the choices made in response to the challenge will profoundly affect the lives of all Middlebury students and the future of life on Earth.

Middlebury College is a highly respected leader internationally in the field of education and a decision by its president and board of trustees to join the expanding fossil fuel divestment movement will be an act of responsible global citizenship consistent with its mission. It will have a significant impact, inspiring other institutions to support the transition to a clean energy economy and contributing to the outcome we all hope for in Paris.

Steven C. Rockefeller
Professor Emeritus of Religion
Middlebury College

Steven C. Rockefeller has had a career as a scholar and teacher, an environmental conservationist, and a philanthropist. His research, writing, and teaching have been focused on the fields of religion, philosophy and ethics. He has had a special interest in the transition to a sustainable future and the development of a relational spirituality and a global ethic for building a just, sustainable and peaceful world community.

Professor Rockefeller is professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College, Vermont, where he taught from 1970 to 1998 and also served as dean of the college and chair of the religion department. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University in 1958, his master of divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 1963, and his doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Columbia University in 1973. He is the author of John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (Columbia, 1991; Peking University, 2009) and Democratic Equality, Economic Inequality, and the Earth Charter (Earth Charter International, 2015). He is the co-editor of two books of essays, The Christ and the Bodhisattva (SUNY, 1987) and Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue (Beacon, 1992). His other publications include over fifty essays that appear in a variety of books and journals.

Professor Rockefeller and Professor John Elder organized and directed at Middlebury College in 1990 the Spirit and Nature Symposium that included the Dalai Lama and was filmed by Bill Moyers for public television. In the mid-1990s, Professor Rockefeller chaired the Middlebury College Environmental Council. Under his leadership, the Council prepared and submitted to the College president “Pathways to a Green Campus” (1995), a comprehensive environmental report on the state of the college with 22 recommendations. Professor Rockefeller served as president of the Demeter Fund, which created the Charlotte Park and Wildlife Refuge in Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. He is the founding president of the Otter Creek Child Care Center in Middlebury, Vermont.

For over thirty years Professor Rockefeller has served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an international foundation with grantmaking programs in democratic practice, sustainable development, and peacebuilding. From 1998 to 2006 he chaired the RBF board of trustees. Among the other boards and commissions on which he has served are the National Commission on the Environment (organized by the World Wildlife Fund), the National Audubon Society, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Council of the UN mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Over the past two decades, Professor Rockefeller has been actively involved in the Earth Charter Initiative, which in and through extensive worldwide, cross cultural dialogue has endeavored to identify and articulate shared values that provide an ethical foundation for the emerging global community. From 1997 to 2000, he chaired the Earth Charter international drafting committee for the Earth Charter Commission. A final version of the Earth Charter—a declaration of global interdependence and universal responsibility with fundamental principles for creating a just, sustainable and peaceful world—was launched by the Earth Charter Commission at the Peace Palace in The Hague in 2000. From 2000 to 2010, Professor Rockefeller served as co-chair of the Earth Charter International (ECI) Council. The ECI Secretariat is based at the University for Peace in Costa Rica and has affiliates in 73 different countries. The Earth Charter has been translated into over 40 languages and endorsed by over 5,000 organizations globally, including UNESCO and the World Conservation Congress of IUCN.

Professor Rockefeller lives with his wife, Professor Barbara Bellows Rockefeller, in Pound Ridge, New York.

[admin]

Asian Cultural Council
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/5/20

Professor Rockefeller and Professor John Elder organized and directed at Middlebury College in 1990 the Spirit and Nature Symposium that included the Dalai Lama and was filmed by Bill Moyers for public television. In the mid-1990s, Professor Rockefeller chaired the Middlebury College Environmental Council. Under his leadership, the Council prepared and submitted to the College president “Pathways to a Green Campus” (1995), a comprehensive environmental report on the state of the college with 22 recommendations. Professor Rockefeller served as president of the Demeter Fund, which created the Charlotte Park and Wildlife Refuge in Vermont overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. He is the founding president of the Otter Creek Child Care Center in Middlebury, Vermont.

For over thirty years Professor Rockefeller has served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an international foundation with grantmaking programs in democratic practice, sustainable development, and peacebuilding. From 1998 to 2006 he chaired the RBF board of trustees. Among the other boards and commissions on which he has served are the National Commission on the Environment (organized by the World Wildlife Fund), the National Audubon Society, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Council of the UN mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Over the past two decades, Professor Rockefeller has been actively involved in the Earth Charter Initiative, which in and through extensive worldwide, cross cultural dialogue has endeavored to identify and articulate shared values that provide an ethical foundation for the emerging global community. From 1997 to 2000, he chaired the Earth Charter international drafting committee for the Earth Charter Commission. A final version of the Earth Charter—a declaration of global interdependence and universal responsibility with fundamental principles for creating a just, sustainable and peaceful world—was launched by the Earth Charter Commission at the Peace Palace in The Hague in 2000. From 2000 to 2010, Professor Rockefeller served as co-chair of the Earth Charter International (ECI) Council. The ECI Secretariat is based at the University for Peace in Costa Rica and has affiliates in 73 different countries. The Earth Charter has been translated into over 40 languages and endorsed by over 5,000 organizations globally, including UNESCO and the World Conservation Congress of IUCN.

-- Open Letter to the [Middlebury] President and Trustees, by Steven C. Rockefeller

Asian Cultural Council

Geographic purview of the ACC
Abbreviation: ACC
Formation: 1980 (1963 - 1979 as Asian Cultural Program of the JDR 3rd Fund)
Type: 501(c)(3) Non-profit
Purpose: Cultural exchange
Headquarters: New York City
Location: New York City; Hong Kong; Manila; Taipei; Tokyo
Region served: USA and Asia
Official language: English
Chairman: Wendy O'Neill
Website http://www.asianculturalcouncil.org

The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) (traditional Chinese: 亞洲文化協會; simplified Chinese: 亚洲文化协会; pinyin: Yàzhōu Wénhuà Xiéhuì; Cantonese Yale: Ajāu Màhnfa Hipwúi; Japanese: アジアン・カルチュラル・カウンシル; Korean: 아시아 문화 협회) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing international cultural exchange between Asia and the U.S. and between the countries of Asia through the arts. [1] Founded by John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1963, ACC has invested over $100 million in grants to artists and arts professionals representing 16 fields and 26 countries through over 6,000 exchanges.[2]Annually, ACC supports $1.4 million in grants for individuals and organizations.[3]

ACC awards fellowship grants to artists and scholars and project grants for organizations in three categories of cross-cultural exchange: Asia-to-U.S., U.S.-to-Asia, and intra-Asia. The programming of each grant is customized to the goals of the grant recipient.

ACC is both a grantmaking and grantseeking organization. It is supported by funding from individuals, foundations, and corporations including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Newman’s Own Foundation and The Starr Foundation.

Billy Hitchcock [Mellon] wasn't the only figure in the Mellon clan who rubbed shoulders with the espionage community. A number of Mellons served in the OSS, notably David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London (whose father-in-law, Andrew Mellon, was treasury secretary during the Depression). After the war certain influential members of the Mellon family maintained close ties with the CIA. Mellon family foundations have been used repeatedly as conduits for Agency funds. Furthermore, Richard Helms was a frequent weekend guest of the Mellon patriarchs in Pittsburgh during his tenure as CIA director (1966-1973).

-- Acid Dreams, The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, And Beyond, by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain

Background: Ford Foundation and the CIA

By the late 1950s the Ford Foundation possessed over $3 billion in assets. The leaders of the Foundation were in total agreement with Washington's post-WWII projection of world power. A noted scholar of the period writes: "At times it seemed as if the Ford Foundation was simply an extension of government in the area of international cultural propaganda. The foundation had a record of close involvement in covert actions in Europe, working closely with Marshall Plan and CIA officials on specific projects" (Ibid, p.139). This is graphically illustrated by the naming of Richard Bissell as President of the Foundation in 1952. In his two years in office Bissell met often with the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, and other CIA officials in a "mutual search" for new ideas. In 1954 Bissell left Ford to become a special assistant to Allen Dulles in January 1954 (Ibid, p. 139). Under Bissell, the Ford Foundation (FF) was the "vanguard of Cold War thinking".

One of the FF first Cold War projects was the establishment of a publishing house, Inter-cultural Publications, and the publication of a magazine Perspectives in Europe in four languages. The FF purpose according to Bissell was not "so much to defeat the leftist intellectuals in dialectical combat (sic) as to lure them away from their positions" (Ibid, p. 140). The board of directors of the publishing house was completely dominated by cultural Cold Warriors....

Another journal Der Monat funded by the Confidential Fund of the U.S. military and run by Melvin Lasky was taken over by the FF, to provide it with the appearance of independence (Ibid, p. 140).

In 1954 the new president of the FF was John McCloy. He epitomized imperial power. Prior to becoming president of the FF he had been Assistant Secretary of War, president of the World Bank, High Commissioner of occupied Germany, chairman of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, Wall Street attorney for the big seven oil companies and director of numerous corporations. As High Commissioner in Germany, McCloy had provided cover for scores of CIA agents (Ibid, p. 141).

McCloy integrated the FF with CIA operations. He created an administrative unit within the FF specifically to deal with the CIA. McCloy headed a three person consultation committee with the CIA to facilitate the use of the FF for a cover and conduit of funds. With these structural linkages the FF was one of those organizations the CIA was able to mobilize for political warfare against the anti-imperialist and pro-communist left. Numerous CIA "fronts" received major FF grants. Numerous supposedly "independent" CIA sponsored cultural organizations, human rights groups, artists and intellectuals received CIA/FF grants. One of the biggest donations of the FF was to the CIA-organized Congress for Cultural Freedom which received $7 million by the early 1960s. Numerous CIA operatives secured employment in the FF and continued close collaboration with the Agency (Ibid, p. 143).

-- The Ford Foundation and the CIA, by James Petras

Once ambitious to become Secretary of State in a Republican administration, Henry R. Luce penned a famous article in Life magazine in 1941, called "The American Century", which defined the role of American foreign policy for the remainder of the 20th century (and perhaps beyond).

An ardent anti-Soviet, he once demanded John Kennedy invade Cuba, later to remark to his editors that if he did not, his corporation would act like Hearst during the Spanish–American War. The publisher would advance his concepts of US dominance of the "American Century" through his periodicals with the ideals shared and guided by members of his social circle, John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and his brother, director of the CIA, Allen Dulles.

-- Henry Luce, by Wikipedia

Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong is a five-star hotel located on Connaught Road in Central, Hong Kong, owned and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group....

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group (MOHG; Chinese: 文華東方酒店), a member of the Jardine Matheson Group, is an international hotel investment and management group with luxury hotels, resorts and residences in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

-- Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, by Wikipedia

Jardine Matheson Holdings Limited (also known as Jardines) is a British conglomerate incorporated in Bermuda and headquartered in Hong Kong, with its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and secondary listings on the Singapore Exchange and Bermuda Stock Exchange. The majority of its business interests are in Asia, and its subsidiaries include Jardine Pacific, Jardine Motors, Jardine Lloyd Thompson, Hongkong Land, Jardine Strategic Holdings, Dairy Farm, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Jardine Cycle & Carriage and Astra International. It sponsors the Jardine Scholarship.

Jardines was one of the original Hong Kong trading houses or Hongs that date back to Imperial China and, as of December 2010, 41 percent of the company's profits were still earned in China. The company is controlled by the Keswick family, who are descendants of co-founder William Jardine's older sister, Jean Johnstone.

-- Jardine Matheson, by Wikipedia

In the 1920s, the U.S. threw its weight behind Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang Party was fighting the Communists and several other warlords for control of China. The U.S. was competing with the other colonial nations for control of China, which had a cheap labor force and represented billions in profits for U.S. corporations and investors. The problem was that the Kuomintang supported itself through the opium trade. It's well documented in the diplomatic cables between the U.S. government and its representatives in China. Historians Kinder and Walker said the Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, "clearly knew about the ties between Chiang and opium dealers."

Anslinger knew that Shanghai was "the prime producer and exporter to the illicit world drug markets," through a syndicate controlled by Du Yue-sheng, a crime lord who facilitated Chiang's bloody ascent to power in 1927. As early as 1932, Anslinger knew that Chiang's finance minister was Du's protector. He'd had evidence since 1929 that American t'ongs were receiving Kuomintang narcotics and distributing it to the Mafia. Middlemen worked with opium merchants, gangsters like Du, Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria, and Dr. Lansing Ling, "who supplied narcotics to Chinese officials traveling abroad." In 1938 Chiang Kai-shek appointed Dr. Ling head of his Narcotic Control Department.

In October 1934, the Treasury attache in Shanghai "submitted reports implicating Chiang Kai-shek in the heroin trade to North America." In 1935 the attache reported that the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai was "acting as agent for Chiang Kaishek in arranging for the preparation and shipment of the stuff to the United States."

These reports reached Anslinger's desk, so he knew which KMT officials and trade missions were delivering dope to American t'ongs and which American Mafia drug rings were buying it. He knew the t'ongs were kicking back a percentage of the profits to finance Chiang's regime.

After Japanese forces seized Shanghai in August 1937, Anslinger was even less willing to deal honestly with the situation. By then Du was sitting on Shanghai's Municipal Board with William J. Keswick, a director of the Jardine Matheson Shipping Company. Through Keswick, Du found sanctuary in Hong Kong, where he was welcomed by a cabal of free-trading British colonialists whose shipping and banking companies earned huge revenues by allowing Du to push his drugs on the hapless Chinese. The revenues were truly immense: according to Colonel Joseph Stilwell, the U.S. military attache in China, in 1935 there were "eight million Chinese heroin and morphine addicts and another 72 million Chinese opium addicts."

Anslinger tried to minimize the problem by lying and saying that Americans were not affected. But the final decisions were made by his bosses in Washington, and from their national security perspective, the profits enabled the Kuomintang to purchase $31 million worth of fighter planes from arms dealer William Pawley to fight the Communists, and that trumped any moral dilemmas about trading with the Japanese or getting Americans addicted.

It's all documented. Check the sources I cite in my books. Plus, U.S. Congressmen and Senators in the China Lobby were profiting from the guns for drugs business too. They got kickbacks in the form of campaign funds and in exchange, they looked away as long as Anslinger told them the dope stayed overseas. After 1949, the China Lobby manipulated public hearings and Anslinger cooked the books to make sure that the Peoples Republic was blamed for all narcotics coming out of the Far East. Everyone made money and after 1949 the operation was run out of Taiwan, with CIA assistance.

-- The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, by Douglas Valentine

The Keswick family (pronounced with a silent "w", "Kezzick") are a business dynasty of Scottish origin associated with the Far East since 1855 and in particular the conglomerate Jardine Matheson.

As tai-pans of Jardine Matheson & Company, the Keswick family have at some time been closely associated with the ownership or management of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company Ltd., the Canton Insurance Office Ltd, (now the HSBC Insurance Co), The Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company Limited, Star Ferry, Hong Kong Tramway, the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Co Ltd, and the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Co Ltd.

The Hon. William Keswick (1834–1912)

The founder of the dynasty, he was born in 1834, in Dumfriesshire in the Scottish Lowlands. His grandmother, Jean Jardine Johnstone was an older sister of Dr. William Jardine, the founder of Jardine Matheson & Company. His father Thomas Keswick had married Margaret Johnstone, Jardine's niece and daughter of Jean, and entered the Jardine business. The company operated as opium traders and had a major influence in the First and Second Opium Wars although the company stopped this trading in 1870 to pursue a broad range of other trading interests including shipping, railways, textiles and property development.

William arrived in China and Hong Kong in 1855, the first of five generations of the Keswick family to be associated with Jardines. He established a Jardine Matheson office in Yokohama, Japan in 1859. He returned to Hong Kong to become a partner of the firm in 1862. He became managing partner (Taipan) from 1874 to 1886. He left Hong Kong in 1886 to work with Matheson & Co. in London as a senior director responsible only to Sir Robert Jardine (1825–1905), a son of David Jardine, William Jardine's older brother and the head of Mathesons in London.

-- Keswick family, by Wikipedia

Originally called The Mandarin, the hotel was built on the former site of the colonial Queen's Building on the waterfront in Central Hong Kong. From the onset, the concept was to create a hotel firmly rooted in Eastern culture, providing gracious service to a standard generally experienced only in the Asia–Pacific region. The original cost of construction totalled HKD 42 million, while the interior design amounted to even 50% more at HKD 66 million, sparing no luxury or detail. John Howarth of Leigh & Orange architectural firm was hired to design the building while the interior was entrusted to Don Ashton, a Hollywood Art Director for such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Indiscreet, and Billy Budd. The Mandarin officially opened for business in October 1963, and at 26 storeys, it was the tallest building in Hong Kong. In addition to its record-setting height, the hotel was the first in Hong Kong to have direct dial phones and the first in Asia to include a bath in every guestroom. The hotel quickly drew recognition for its service and elegance, and back in 1967 was listed by Fortune magazine as one of eleven great hotels in the world.

-- Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, by Wikipedia

Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok is a five-star hotel in Bangkok owned in part and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Located on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, the original structure was the first hotel built in Thailand when it opened as The Oriental in 1876. Today, the hotel is one of two flagship properties of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.

Germaine Krull

At the end of the war a six-person partnership each contributed US$250 to buy the hotel, badly run down from its wartime service. The partnership consisted of Germaine Krull (1897–1985), Prince Bhanu, General Chai Prateepasen, Pote Sarasin (prominent businessman and lawyer) and John Webster and Jim Thompson, two Americans who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and who had stayed on in Thailand. Krull took the position of manager in 1947, despite no prior experience in the hotel field. Born in Germany, she had been best known as a photographer during the 1920s before service in the Pacific as a war correspondent for Agence France Presse. The hotel's restoration and restocking offered Thompson an opportunity to put to use his architectural and artistic abilities.

The hotel reopened for business on 12 June 1947. Krull turned out to be a natural hotelier and during her reign restored the hotel to its position as the premier hotel in Thailand. Thompson soon left the partnership over a plan to build a new wing, though he stayed on in residence at the hotel for some time. To compete with popular clubs and a new local bar called Chez Eve, Krull established the Bamboo Bar, which soon became one of the leading bars in Bangkok.[6]

In 1958 the ten-storey Garden Wing was built. It featured the city’s first elevator and was home to the Le Normandie Restaurant.[2] In 1967, fearful that Thailand would fall to the communists, Krull sold her share to Italthai which at the time was well on its way to becoming one of the country’s most significant mercantile groups eventually totally some 60 companies involved in almost all aspects of the Thai economy....

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok

-- Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, Wikipedia

Cornelius Vander Starr also known as Neil Starr or C. V. Starr (October 15, 1892 – December 20, 1968) was an American businessman and operative of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, who was best known for founding, in 1919, C.V. Starr & Co. (later known as Starr Companies) in Shanghai, China. Starr's "hand-picked successor" was Maurice Greenberg, who took a lead role in forming AIG as a Starr subsidiary. AIG grew from an initial market value of $300 million to $180 billion, becoming the largest insurance company in the world.

-- Cornelius Vander Starr, by Wikipedia

ACC is headquartered in New York City with regional offices and affiliate foundations in Hong Kong (ACC Hong Kong Foundation est. 2015), Manila (ACC Philippines Foundation est. 2000), Taipei (ACC Taiwan Foundation est. 1995) and Tokyo (ACC Japan Foundation est. 2018).

History

The Asian Cultural Program of the JDR 3rd Fund (1963-1980)

The JDR 3rd Fund was incorporated in 1963 as a private non-profit by John D. Rockefeller 3rd "to stimulate, encourage, promote, and support activities important to human welfare." [4] The Asian Cultural Program of the JDR 3rd Fund—precursor to the Asian Cultural Council—was established to promote cultural exchange in the arts between the United States and Asia. ACC’s founding director, Porter McCray, was the former director of circulating exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[5]Through the 1960s, the Asian Cultural Program of the JDR 3rd Fund made 80 to 100 grants annually to artists, scholars, students and institutions. Richard S. Lanier succeeded Porter McCray as director in 1975. [6]

Archives concerning the JDR 3rd Fund, the Asian Cultural Program, and the Asian Cultural Council can be found at the Rockefeller Archive Center. [7]

The Asian Cultural Council (1980-)

Following the death of John D. Rockefeller 3rd in 1978, the Asian Cultural Program became the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) and was established as a publicly supported operating foundation. Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller 3rd, became ACC’s first Chairman and Elizabeth J. McCormack, Director of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Office, became Vice President. Subsequent directors were Ralph Samuelson (1991-2008) and Jennifer P. Goodale (2008-2013), and ACC's current Executive Director is Miho Walsh.

Leadership

• Chairman: Wendy O’Neill
• Executive Director: Miho Walsh[8]
• ACC Hong Kong Foundation Limited Chairman: Hans Michael Jebsen
• ACC Taiwan Foundation Chairman: Douglas Tong Hsu
• ACC Japan Foundation Chairman: Kazuko Aso
• ACC Philippines Foundation Inc. Chairman: Ernest L. Escaler

Programs


ACC Grantee, Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami at Versailles Sept. 2010

ACC provides grants for individual fellowships, projects and organizations, graduate studies, and travel. They support activities that involve cultural immersion; cross-cultural engagement; and relationship building, collaboration, or exchange of best practices among arts professionals.[9]In addition to funding, it is common for grantees to receive mentoring and personal introductions, and access to an international network of alumni.

ACC provides grants from Asia to the U.S., U.S. to Asia, and intra-Asia. Regions include: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and United States of America.

Fields include: Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Arts Administration, Arts Criticism, Conservation, Crafts, Curation, Dance, Ethnomusicology, Film/Video/Photography, Literature, Museum Studies, Music, Theater and Visual Art.

In addition to grants, ACC organizes public programs to facilitate understanding and dialogue around cultural exchange. This includes forums, convenings, and officially established programs such as the East-West Dialogues and Cultural Conversations. In 2000 and 2003, ACC organized Forums on Arts and Culture in the Mekong Region with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 2017, the ACC Forum: Making the Case for Cultural Exchange through funding by the Henry Luce Foundation.

The East-West Dialogues is an annual lecture series engaging leaders from the arts and cultural fields in Asia and the West. It was established in 2013 through an endowment gift from Tsuneko and Shoji Sadao. Speakers have included author Pico Iyer, writer and editor Ian Buruma, American theater director Peter Sellars, Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, and president of Japan Society of Boston Peter Grilli.

Cultural Conversations is an in-house lecture series that features ACC alumni and their work. Conversations have been led by alumni such as wooden boat builder Douglas Brooks (ACC multiple grants 2008-2017), Shiro Nakane and the Japan Society (ACC multiple grants 1964-2015), artist Oscar Oiwa (ACC 2001), shamisen performer Hidejiro Honjo (ACC 2016), Taiwanese choreographer Cheng Tsung-Lung (ACC 2011), [10], composer Matt Welch (ACC 2016), and scholar Urmila Mohan (ACC 2018).[11]

Program Timeline

Below is a list of ACC programs. Those established through an initial donation, grant, or endowment have funding individuals or organizations noted in parentheses.

1983: ACC Japan-United States Program (Seiji Tsutsumi and the Seibu Saison group)

• Ford Foundation Fellowship Program for individuals documenting and preserving the traditional arts of Asia (Ford Foundation)
• Starr Foundation Visual Arts Program for artists and art specialists from Asia to travel to the United States (Starr Foundation)

1984: Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowships for American art history students conducting dissertation research in Asia (Samuel H. Kress Foundation)

1985: The Humanities Fellowship Program for American scholars and students carrying out research in Asia (National Endowment for the Humanities)

1986: The Hong Kong Arts Program—now called the China, Hong Kong and Macau Program—for artists, students and scholars from Hong Kong to research, study and create work in the United States (Asian Oceanic Group, British American Tobacco Company (Hong Kong) Limited and the Lee Hysan Foundation)

1987: The Asian Art and Religion Fellowship Program for American scholars, specialists and artists to undertake research and projects in Asia involving the intersection or religion and the arts (Laurance S. Rockefeller Jr.)

1993: The Indonesian Museum Development Program—organized in collaboration with the Nusantara Jaya Foundation and the Indonesia Directorate of Museums—for Indonesian museum professionals to intern in the United States and to help with museum workshop programs in Indonesia (Ford Foundation)

1994:

• The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fellowship Fund Committee was organized in Japan to establish an endowment honoring the memory of the late Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller
• ACC Residency Program in Asia for American scholars, artists, and professionals to research, teach, and partake in residencies in Asia (Freeman Foundation)

1995:

• ACC’s Taiwan Fellowship Program for the exchange of artists, scholars, and specialists between Taiwan and the United States, as well as Taiwan and other countries in Asia (Sino-American Foundation, now the ACC Taiwan Foundation)
• China On-Site Seminar Program for the exchange of American and Chinese art history students (Henry Luce Foundation)
• Ock Rang Cultural Foundation Fellowship Program for cultural exchange between Korea and the U.S. and Korea and other countries in Asia

1997:

• The Cambodian Artists Mentorship Program to support performing arts training programs at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh (Rockefeller Foundation)
• The Indonesia Cultural Management Assistance Project to support the management of cultural institutions in Indonesia (Ford Foundation)

2000:

• The Philippines Fellowship Program for the exchange of artists, scholars, and specialists between the Philippines and the U.S., and the Philippines and other countries in Asia (ACC Philippines Foundation)

2001: The Mekong Region Fellowship Program to assist individual artists, scholars, and specialists from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and China’s Yunnan Province to undertake research, training and creative projects in the United States or Asia (Rockefeller Foundation)

2005: The Mandarin Oriental Fellowship to support the preservation of indigenous arts, cultures, and traditions of Asia (Mandarin Oriental Foundation)

2007: American Artists and Museum Professionals Program (Henry Luce Foundation)

2008: The Starr Foundation Performing Arts Program for individuals and institutions working in the contemporary performing arts in Asia to travel to the United States (The Starr Foundation)

2011: Arts in Action Program to support arts communities in need of assistance for rebuilding after natural disasters (Mikimoto)

2012: The Elizabeth J. McCormack Fund was established as an endowment to support the general operations of ACC

2019: The ACC/BCAF Contemporary Arts Fellowship Program for exchange of artists from China and the United States (Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation)

John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award

The John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award is given to individuals from Asia or the U.S. who have made significant contributions to the international understanding, practice, or study of the visual or performing arts of Asia.[12]

Past awardees

• 1970: Richard Bartholomew, New Delhi, India
• 1986: John M. Rosenfield, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Fine Arts, Harvard University
• 1987: José Maceda, Chairman, Department of Music, Research College of Music, University of the Philippines
• 1988: James R. Brandon, Professor, Department of Drama and Theatre, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
• 1990: Sherman E. Lee, Former Director, The Cleveland Museum of Art
• 1991: Chou Wen-chung, Director, Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange, Columbia University
• 1992: Kapila Vatsyayan, Director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi
• 1993: Donald Richie, Film critic and writer, Tokyo
• 1995: Setsu Asakura, Stage designer, Tokyo
• 1996: Ma Chengyuan, Director, Shanghai Museum
• 1997: Beate Gordon, Arts consultant and writer, New York
• 1998: Nguyen Van Huy, Director, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Hanoi
• 1999: Proeung Chhieng, Dean, Faculty of Choreographic Arts, Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh
• 2000: Ellen Stewart, Founder and Artistic Director, La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, New York
• 2002: Yang Meiqi, Founder, Guangdong Modern Dance Company, Guangzhou
• 2003: Judy Mitoma, Director, Center for Intercultural Performance, University of California, Los Angeles
• 2005: Mella Jaarsma, Nindityo Adipurnomo, Founders, Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta
• 2006: Lin Hwai-min, Artistic Director, Cloud Gate Dance Theater, Taipei
• 2007: Nestor O. Jardin, President, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila
• 2008: Ratan Thiyam, Founder and Director, Chorus Repertory Theatre, Manipur
• 2010: Samina Quraeshi, Writer, Artist, Designer, Shepard/Quraeshi Associates, Inc., Boston
• 2013: Amna Kusumo, Director, Yayasan Kelola, Jakarta
• 2013: Pichet Klunchun, Choreographer and Dancer, Phichet Klunchun Dance Company, Thailand
• 2013: Chinary Ung, Composer, Composers Institute in Asia; University of California, San Diego
• 2015: Duk-Hyung Yoo, President, Seoul Institute of the Arts, Seoul
• 2017: Shen Wei, Founder, Shen Wei Dance Arts
• 2019: Kengo Kuma, Architect, Kengo Kuma & Associates

Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Award

The Asian Cultural Council established the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Award in 2009 in honor of its first Chairman, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller 3rd. The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Award honors the generosity of the enlightened individuals who believe ACC’s mission of furthering international dialogue, understanding, and respect between Asia and the U.S. through the transformative experience of cultural exchange.

Past awardees

• 2009: Dr. Deanna Ruth Tak Yung Rudgard, OBE, Non-executive Director, Hysan Development Company Limited
• 2012: Seiji Tsutsumi, President, The Saison Foundation
• 2018: Hans Michael Jebsen, Chairman, Jebsen & Co. Ltd., ACCHK Chairman
• 2019: Elizabeth J. McCormack, Chairman Emeritus, Asian Cultural Council

Artistic Advisory Council


ACC Grantee, American film and theater director and writer Julie Taymor

• Yael Buencamino (Philippines)
• Cai Guo-Qiang, Visual Art (ACC 1995 & 2006, China/U.S.)
• Tiffany Chung, Visual Art (ACC 2015, U.S./Vietnam)
• Patrick Flores, Museum Studies (ACC 2009, Philippines)
• Oscar Ho, Visual Art (ACC 1992, Hong Kong)
• David Henry Hwang, Theater (ACC 2012, U.S.)
• Jin Xing, Dance (ACC 1988, China)
• Kengo Kuma, Architecture (ACC 1985, Japan)
• Dinh Q. Le, Visual Art (ACC 2004, Vietnam/U.S.)
• Barbara London, Film, Video, and Photography (ACC 1995 & 1997, U.S.)
• Fumihiko Maki, Architecture (ACC 1976, Japan)
• Meredith Monk, Theater (ACC 1997 & 2000, U.S.)
• Kohei Nawa, Visual Art (ACC 2004, Japan)
• Jan Leeroy New, Visual Art (ACC 2015, Philippines)
• Viet Thanh Nguyen, Film, Video, and Photography (ACC 2010, U.S.)
• Ong Keng Sen, Theater (ACC 1993, Singapore)
• Mallika Sarabhai, Arts General (ACC 2002, India)
• Sheu Fang-Yi, Dance (ACC 2006, Taiwan)
• Louisa So Yuk Wa, Theater (ACC 2008, Hong Kong)
• Julie Taymor, Theater (ACC 1980, U.S.)
• Tran Luong, Visual Art (ACC 1998 & 2008, Vietnam)
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Film, Video, and Photography (ACC 2004, Thailand)
• Robert Wilson, Theater (ACC 1981 & 2004, U.S.)

References

1. https://www.guidestar.org/profile/13-3018822
2. http://artasiapacific.com/News/AsianCul ... Recipients
3. https://www.asianculturalcouncil.org/ou ... tions-news
4. https://rockarch.org/collections/rockor ... s.php#jdr3
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/nyre ... hical-note
6. https://www.asianculturalcouncil.org/ab ... ur-history
7. https://rockarch.org/collections/rockor ... s.php#jdr3
8. http://www.impactmania.com/article/asia ... -exchange/
9. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news ... nge-grants https://iscp-nyc.org/sponsor/acc-asian-cultural-council
10. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/arts ... Position=1
11. https://www.asianculturalcouncil.org/bl ... mila-mohan
12. https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014 ... Position=1

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Rockefeller Brothers Fund
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/5/20

Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Motto: Philanthropy for an Interdependent World
Formation: 28 December 1940; 79 years ago
Founder: John, Nelson, Winthrop, Laurance, and David Rockefeller
Headquarters: New York, New York
Products: Grant-making
Key people: Stephen B. Heintz
Endowment: $870 million (2017)[1]
Website www.rbf.org

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) is a philanthropic foundation created and run by members of the Rockefeller family. It was founded in New York City in 1940 as the primary philanthropic vehicle for the five third-generation Rockefeller brothers: John D. Rockefeller III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop and David. It is distinct from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefellers are an industrial, political, and banking family that made one of the world's largest fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Fund's stated mission is to "advance social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world."[2] The current president of RBF is Stephen Heintz, who was appointed to the post in 2000.[3] Valerie Rockefeller serves as RBF's chairwoman. She succeeded Richard Rockefeller, the fifth child of David Rockefeller, who served as RBF's chairman until 2013.[4]

History

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was established in 1940 by the five sons of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The five Rockefeller brothers served as the Fund's first five trustees. In 1951, the Fund grew substantially when it received a $58 million endowment from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.[5]

As the RBF's founding generation passed on, new family members joined the board, moving the Fund's giving further to the political left.[6] In 1999, the Fund merged with the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation.[5]

In November 2006, David Rockefeller pledged $225 million to the Fund that would create the David Rockefeller Global Development Fund after his death.[7]

In September 2014, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it planned to divest its assets from fossil fuels.[8] On disinvesting from fossil fuels, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Stephen Heintz, said: "We see this as both a moral imperative and an economic opportunity" (30 September 2014).[9]

The Rockefeller Family Fund and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are independent, distinct institutions.[10]

Special Studies Project

Main article: Special Studies Project

From 1956 to 1960, the Fund financed a study conceived by its then president, Nelson Rockefeller, to analyze the challenges facing the United States. Henry Kissinger was recruited to direct the project. Seven panels were constituted that looked at issues including military strategy, foreign policy, international economic strategy, governmental reorganization, and the nuclear arms race.[11]

The military subpanel's report was rush-released about two months after the USSR launched Sputnik in October 1957.[12] Rockefeller urged the Republican Party to adopt the finding of the Special Studies Project as its platform. The findings of the project formed the framework of Nelson Rockefeller's 1960 presidential election platform.[13] The project was published in its entirety in 1961 as Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports. The archival study papers are stored in the Rockefeller Archive Center at the family estate.[14]

Presidents

• Nelson Rockefeller (1956-1958)
• Laurance Rockefeller (1958-1968)
• Dana S. Creel (1968-1975)
• William M. Dietel (1975-1987)
• Colin G. Campbell (1987-2000)
• Stephen B. Heintz (2001–present)

Further reading

• Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
• Nielsen, Waldemar, The Big Foundations, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
• Rockefeller, David, Memoirs, New York: Random House, 2002.

References

1. "Endowment Summary". Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
2. "About The Fund". Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
3. Nauffts, Mitch (5 November 2000). "Stephen B. Heintz: A Conversation With the President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund". Philanthropy News Digest. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
4. "New Leadership at the Fund". RBF.org. 29 July 2013. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
5. Jump up to:a b Ciger, Joseph Charles. Philanthropists and Foundation Globalization. Transaction Publishers. p. 101. ISBN 9781412806732.
6. Horowitz, David; Laskin, Jacob. The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America's Future. Crown Publishing Group. p. 45. ISBN 9780307716477.
7. "David Rockefeller Pledges $225 Million to Family Fund (Update1)". bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2 October 2015.
8. Iyengar, Rishi (22 September 2014). "The Rockefellers Are Pulling Their Charity Fund Out of Fossil Fuels". Time. Retrieved 3 December 2015.
9. Cited in Tim Flannery, Atmosphere of Hope. Solutions to the Climate Crisis, Penguin Books, 2015, pages 117 (ISBN 9780141981048). Opening quote for the chapter ten entitles "Divestment and the carbon bubble".
10. Kaiser, David; Wasserman, Lee (8 December 2016). "The Rockefeller Family Fund vs. Exxon". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 27 February 2018. Although the boards of the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are still led by members of the family, they are independent, distinct institutions. In these articles we are speaking only for the Rockefeller Family Fund
11. Ferguson, Niall (2015). Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist. Penguin. ISBN 9780698195691.
12. Rushed release of military subpanel's report - see Cary Reich, The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958, New York: Doubleday, 1996. (pp.650-667)
13. Andrew III, John (Summer 1998). "Cracks in the Consensus: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project and Eisenhower's America". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 28: 535–552. JSTOR 27551900.
14. Rockefeller Archive Center

External links

• Official website

[admin]

Aspen Institute
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 5/5/20


The Aspen Institute
Formation: 1949; 71 years ago
Type: Research institute, think tank
Headquarters: 2300 N Street, NW, Suite 700
Location: Washington, D.C.
President & CEO: Daniel R. Porterfield
Revenue (2017): $141.378 million[1]
Expenses (2017): $134.993 million[1]
Website: AspenInstitute.org

The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit think tank founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.[2] The organization is a nonpartisan forum for values-based leadership and the exchange of ideas. The Institute and its international partners promote the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and nonideological setting through regular seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives. The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado (its original home), and near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at the Wye River in Maryland. It has partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Paris, Lyon, Tokyo, New Delhi, Prague, Bucharest, Mexico City, and Kiev, as well as leadership initiatives in the United States and on the African continent, India, and Central America.

The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations. Its board of trustees includes leaders from politics, government, business and academia who also contribute to its support.

History

The Institute was largely the creation of Walter Paepcke, a Chicago businessman who had become inspired by the Great Books program of Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago.[3] In 1945, Paepcke visited Bauhaus artist and architect Herbert Bayer, AIA, who had designed and built a Bauhaus-inspired minimalist home outside the decaying former mining town of Aspen, in the Roaring Fork Valley. Paepcke and Bayer envisioned a place where artists, leaders, thinkers, and musicians could gather. Shortly thereafter, while passing through Aspen on a hunting expedition, oil industry maverick Robert O. Anderson (soon to be founder and CEO of Atlantic Richfield) met with Bayer and shared in Paepcke's and Bayer's vision. In 1949, Paepcke organized a 20-day international celebration for the 200th birthday of German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The celebration attracted over 2,000 attendees, including Albert Schweitzer, José Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Rubinstein.[4]


Doerr-Hosier Center at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado

In 1949, Paepcke founded the Aspen Institute; and later the Aspen Music Festival and eventually (with Bayer and Anderson) the International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA).[5] Paepcke sought a forum "where the human spirit can flourish", especially amid the whirlwind and chaos of modernization. He hoped that the Institute could help business leaders recapture what he called "eternal verities": the values that guided them intellectually, ethically, and spiritually as they led their companies. Inspired by philosopher Mortimer Adler's Great Books seminar at the University of Chicago, Paepcke worked with Anderson to create the Aspen Institute Executive Seminar.[6] In 1951, the Institute sponsored a national photography conference attended by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Berenice Abbott, and other notables. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Institute added organizations, programs, and conferences, including the Aspen Center for Physics, the Aspen Strategy Group, Communications and Society Program and other programs that concentrated on education, communications, justice, Asian thought, science, technology, the environment, and international affairs.

In 1979, through a donation by Corning Glass industrialist and philanthropist Arthur A. Houghton Jr. the Institute acquired a 1,000-acre (4 km²) campus on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, known today as the Wye River Conference Centers.[7]

In 1996, the first Socrates Program seminar was hosted.

In 2005, it held the first Aspen Ideas Festival, featuring leading minds from around the world sharing and speaking on global issues. The Institute, along with The Atlantic, hosts the festival annually. It has trained philanthropists such as Carrie Morgridge.[8]

Since 2013,[9] the Aspen Institute together with U.S. magazine The Atlantic and Bloomberg Philanthropies has participated in organizing the annual CityLab event, a summit dedicated to develop strategies for the challenges of urbanization in today's cities.[10]

Walter Isaacson was the president and CEO of Aspen Institute from 2003 to June 2018. Isaacson announced in March 2017 that he would step down as president and CEO at the end of the year.[11] On November 30, 2017, Daniel Porterfield was announced as his successor. Porterfield succeeded Isaacson on June 1, 2018.[12]

References

1. "Annual Report 2017" (PDF). Aspen Institute. 31 December 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
2. "About the Aspen Institute". aspeninstitute.org. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
3. "About - The Aspen Institute". Retrieved 18 October 2016.
4. "Elizabeth Paepcke, 91, a Force In Turning Aspen Into a Resort". The New York Times. 18 June 1994. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
5. "Herbert Bayer, 85, a designer and artist of Bauhaus School". The New York Times. 1 October 1985. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
6. "ASPEN: A 4TH DECADE FOR ANCESTOR...OF A GROWING BUSINESS BREED". The New York Times. 31 August 1981. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
7. "Cuban boy moves to Md. Shore". The Baltimore Sun. 26 April 2000. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
8. Davidson, Joanne (June 17, 2015). "Need a few million dollars, 10,000 digital whiteboards or a shipment of sheep hearts? Don't ask for them". The Denver Post. Retrieved August 15, 2016.
9. "CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
10. "CityLab 2016". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
11. "Walter Isaacson to leave Aspen Institute, become Tulane professor". NOLA.com. Retrieved 2017-05-30.
12. Platts, Barbara. "Daniel R. Porterfield named Aspen Institute's next president and CEO". Retrieved 2017-11-30.

External links

• Official website