President Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary today opened the three-day Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion at the Seminary with a call to the 60 delegates to help bolster democracy by formulating a clearly-stated integration of the totality of our experience.”
Prof. Finkelstein read messages from President Roosevelt expressing the hope that “the meeting will be fruitful of wise counsels to bring into accord the various schools of thought whose representatives find unity in common devotion to democratic institutions” and from Governor Lehman urging the development of “a clearly enunciated American philosophy of life.”
“We must not allow Western civilization, already destroyed in a large part of Europe, to suffer any further disintegrations,” said Dr. Finkelstein. “The leading totalitarian systems have developed pseudo-philosophies. We cannot expect democratic scholarship to produce any philosophy which might compare in uniformity with the various forms of totalitarian belief.”
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