Social Philosophy in Britain and America .sx By DOROTHY EMMET .sx I should like to start this talk by asking what is meant by " Social " ?sx An unkind critic looking at the programmes of the Social Philosophy Section might suggest it seems to mean any topic of interest bearing on contemporary society ; while in a recent talk to this Section the term was used to mean something like a coherent body of thought about society related to a definite social programme .sx I am prepared to defend the eclectic character of the Section's programme against an exclusively monolithic view of what social philosophy must be ; though I think that these various topics of social interest need to be treated not just descriptively , but in ways which produce criticism and reflection of a reasonably general kind if we are to call them a form of social philosophy .sx The view that we need a social philosophy related to a social purpose was developed by contrasting our " malaise " and lack of direction in this country with the conviction and sense of direction seen in Communist countries .sx But I am not at all sure that the answer is that we should produce something else of the same kind in democratic terms .sx My difficulty about the notion of " social purpose " is that if we think of this in the singular and particularize , it would mean that the whole national effort would have to be directed to a gigantic programme .sx This may be possible in wartime , and it may be possible when a collective economy is being built up as in the Communist countries , but does it not suggest a great deal more regimenting and pressure than we believe right in democratic countries ?sx On the other hand , if we do not use the term to mean a single specific programme , the notion of social purpose turns into something we put vaguely in phrases such as " achieving social " , or " persons in " , or , even more vaguely , " living the good " .sx I do not want to say that these notions are just vacuous , but I do not think they can be cashed in terms of a single programme , nor that we are all likely to agree on the phrase we should use , nor that we should all be thinking about it most of the time .sx If we are asked what the policy of this country should be directed towards , we could say , e.g. , to the maintenance of world peace ; to working towards a multi-racial Commonwealth ; to educational expansion at various levels ; to maintaining the social services ; and presumably to maintaining the level of production to pay for all this .sx In this way , we may hope to maintain a tolerable way of living together , so that people can pursue a number of purposes they themselves think worth while in their own work and private lives .sx But does this add up to a " social philosophy " in the comprehensive sense geared to a single Social Purpose ?sx And if not , is this a sign that we are growing up , or is it due to the difficulty of seeing general ideas relevant to this pragmatic stage of our development ?sx I turn now to America , where I think the notion of social philosophy is more congenial , perhaps because the Americans may be a more ideological nation than we are .sx Edward Shils and Daniel Bell both write about the " End of " , but not very convincingly .sx What they really mean is the end of the appeal of communist ideas to the intellectuals .sx I believe that we can still see pervasive influences of certain kinds of ideology in American thinking .sx First of all there is the liberal individualism of the Founding Fathers .sx I found it genuinely moving to stand inside the Lincoln Monument in Washington and read the passages from the Gettysburg address on the wall , " Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation , conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created " .sx Of course one can be cynical about it , and instance discrimination against all sorts of people .sx But nevertheless it is there to disturb consciences , and it is an ideology which found its way into the Constitution , and so can give a backing of legitimacy to people struggling against certain kinds of discrimination , for instance in the struggle over integration in the Southern States .sx I was interested to find recently , in teaching an undergraduate course in political theory in an American university , how much Locke seemed to them to talk obvious sense .sx I doubt whether this would be true of our students here .sx But these American undergraduates talked easily about natural rights , and produced Lockean notions of checks and balances and aversion to strong government as self-evidently sensible .sx I think this political ideology produces a real problem for thinking realistically about their contemporary political philosophy .sx For it does not deal adequately with the very great power of the President , especially in foreign relations , and with all the trends making for strong government at the centre .sx In spite of the official political philosophy of " checks and balances " we also hear demands for " a strong lead " from the President , and this demand is all the more apparent when the Administration is not giving it , as was thought to be the case with the recent Eisenhower Administration .sx So there seems to be a need to re-think the official political philosophy in terms of the realities of power and the demands for strong government .sx A second dominant ideology is the Dewey philosophy of experimental problem-solving .sx This assumed a union of intelligence and goodwill , so that democratic social ends could be taken for granted and attention concentrated on means of achieving them .sx This was an explicit pragmatic democratic philosophy of an older generation , but now it is taking the form of a positivist political science which holds that ends cannot be rationally discussed , while scientific ingenuity can be devoted to working out efficient means of getting whatever it is that you happen to want .sx This is the ideological background of a good deal of their political sociology .sx The muck-raking investigations of an older generation have been replaced by studies of the dynamics of pressure groups .sx There are also writings about politics as " a science of " , taking for granted that people want power and trying to show how they " manipulate " beliefs and symbols in order to get it .sx C. Wright Mills writes best sellers partly in this vein , but also with a note of passionate idealism running through them .sx I find it difficult to see just how the idealism and the tough power politics note are brought together in his thinking .sx Reinhold Niebuhr continues his well-known attack on complacencies over problems of power , and on the simplifications both of cynicism and idealism .sx He seems to me to be gaining in stature all the time and to have become a political analyst of practical importance .sx Turning from political to social criticism , there is the extensive literature on " pressures to " , of which Whyte's Organization Man and Reisman's Lonely Crowd are the best-known examples .sx These illustrate how quickly a trend of criticism can catch on .sx People , at any rate those represented by the more intellectual weeklies and by conversation in Eastern cities , are getting highly sophisticated about this notion of conformity , and they crack jokes about " peer " .sx But I do not think that we know the answer to the problem underneath this literature , namely , the distinction between the kinds of pressures that are necessary and right if people are to learn to live together and get trained to do things well , and the kinds of pressures which make people conventional and afraid of adventuring .sx The notion that one can live without need for any kind of conformity is shown up even by the Beats , who set out to be non-conformist , and then find themselves becoming a fashion , pursued by social success , and even get opportunities to read their poetry at $300 a time .sx And of course they also establish their own particular conventions of unconventionality .sx These seem to me to be some of the trends in what one might call social philosophy in a rather vague sense in contemporary America .sx How does the new Kennedy Administration look against this background ?sx It may well catch a national mood which is prepared for tough-minded energy along with idealism .sx I heard Professor J. K. Galbraith address a campaign meeting of students of Columbia University , in which he said that the important distinction of outlook as he saw it nowadays was not so much between liberals and conservatives as between " the complacent and the " .sx People who call themselves liberals or conservatives could be found on both sides .sx He then gave a masterly satire of the last Administration as examples of the " complacent" , and he looked forward to Kennedy and those associated with him as people who would be " concerned " in the sense of deeply and compassionately aware that there are problems , international , social and domestic , which need to be met .sx Perhaps this does not add up to a social philosophy .sx But I could not help being impressed in America by the energy and interest in social ideas .sx The appeal of a person like Galbraith himself is symptomatic .sx A book like his The Affluent Society , for all the criticisms that economists and others can make of it , is perhaps more influential than anything of the kind which is being written here .sx Do we want intelligently-written books on particular social trends , rather than a monolithic social philosophy ?sx If we like to call recognizing the need for intelligence and goodwill in achieving tolerable ways of living together a social philosophy , well and good .sx But this needs to go beyond generalities to particular studies of particular social trends , presented in a readable form .sx The energy , concern and intelligence to do this kind of thing are more in evidence in America than over here .sx This does not mean that these fires are not burning over here , but they are damped down .sx The test whether damped fires are really alight is to see whether they can burn up when poked .sx But I doubt whether we want them to be burning out in a continual conflagration of propaganda for social ideologies .sx Peaks of Medical History .sx By LORD COHEN OF BIRKENHEAD .sx The history of medicine runs parallel to the history of Man .sx It takes its roots in pre-history when man , coping with hostile forces , felt a primal sympathy for his fellow man and sought to relieve his suffering .sx Since then the practice of medicine has reflected the philosophy of its time though earlier ideas have often tended to persist despite their scientific disproof .sx Though we tend to associate great discoveries in medicine with one man , as I indeed shall often do in this lecture , we must not accept blindly Carlyle's dictum that " history is biography " but recognise that many have added bricks to the building before it presents [SIC] as a completed edifice .sx The earliest records of medicine date back over 6,000 years .sx They stem from the valley of the Nile where may yet be seen the royal tomb of Zoser designed by a physician of his reign , Imhotep , who was later deified and associated with the famous temple of Edfu .sx Contemporaneously , or possibly a little later , there developed a great Sumerian civilisation but our records of this are incomplete .sx Yet there are recorded , in the famous code Hammurabi ( 1948-1905 B.C. ) , Babylonian laws relating to medical practice .sx It is however from the Egyptian papyri , especially of Edwin Smith and Ebers found at Thebes and dating from about the sixteenth century B.C. that we find the first records of the practice of medicine .sx These papyri show that the Egyptians shared with the most primitive medical folklore the concept of animism viz .sx that disease is caused by the evil influence of enemy , demon , god or even animal and that this evil spirit might be warded off by amulets , propitiated by sacrifice , and expelled by incantations .sx