The Worth of Life Is at Stake
Alfred North Whitehead, writing in 1939:
Today we are witnessing a relapse into barbarism. The tendency touches every country. But it is centered in Europe. And in Europe Germany is the main seat of the vicious explosion. The general character is overemphasis on the notion of nationality, producing the ideal of the totalitarian state. The activity, derivative from this debased notion, is the determination to exterminate international factors which exhibit human nature as greater than any state-system. The Jews are the first example of this refusal to worship the state. But religions, arts, and sciences will come next, until mankind are reduced to mean little creatures subservient to the god–state, embodied in some god-man. The worth of life is at stake.
“An Appeal to Sanity,” republished in Essays in Science and Philosophy, pp. 66f
Ordinarily I don’t comment on these commonplace entries, but I can’t resist wondering here how ANW might have written this if he were writing today.