Education: Philosopher of Hope

At 84, William Ernest Hocking is—as he himself has said—something of a "solitary fighter" among philosophers. Since the death of his wife in 1955, he has lived in his farmhouse in Madison, N.H. with only a housekeeper to help him. A courtly man who is seldom without a pocketful of seed for the birds about his place, he works by himself from 8:30 each morning to 10 at night in a spacious stone library, takes time out only to do a little painting, putter about the grounds, play on his electric organ, or chop a stack of firewood. But out of this solitude has come a philosophy that offers a hopeful vision of the unity of the universe.

Last week Hocking tore himself away from his farm and journeyed to Manhattan to receive a prize that is highly coveted among scholars—the LeComte du Noüy Award, named after the late French biophysicist who tried so eloquently to reconcile the conflicts between science and religion. The award is given alternately in France and the U.S. each year for the book that most successfully points the way to "the greatest development of the spiritual thought of our epoch.'' The book Hocking won it for: The Coming World Civilization (Harper; $3.75).

"In the ripeness of years," says Hocking at the beginning of the book, "I am inclined to a moment of prophecy." What, he wants to know, will be the future roles of church and state, "our two institutional interpreters of total human nature''? In exploring that question, he not only pins down the basic-malady of what he calls modernity; he also suggests a cure in the form of a more positive search for a universal religion.

In the past three or four centuries, says Hocking, the world has been engaged in two great experiments. One is the "rejection" of "religion as a factor in political life." The other is the experiment in modernity which, "in begetting a secular science and secular arts, has also incidentally promoted a secular interpretation of state and law." As a result of this secularization, the state has been assigned tasks it cannot properly perform, for the state "depends for its vitality upon a motivation which it cannot by itself command."

The state's impotence, Hocking insists, is increasingly obvious. It cannot alone effectively deal with crime, for "only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt."

Nor can the state of and by itself protect legal rights. "There is no moral right to property, to liberty, to life itself, in the absence of good will. The dilemma of the state is that this condition, as a moral condition, cannot be legally administered." The power of the state must come from a law higher than itself. "It is clearly not the destiny of the secular state to render the functions of a religious community superfluous. On the contrary, with the advance of a technical civilization, a church in our broad sense . . . instead of tending to wither away, becomes increasingly necessary."