National Book Award Non Fiction Winner
The Measure of Man
by Joseph Wood Krutch
Summary
A philosophical broadside against behaviorism, mechanistic science, and the reduction of human beings to statistical or biological units. Krutch defends the reality of consciousness, free will, and moral judgment, arguing that modern thought has surrendered too much ground to determinism. Written in a humanist essayistic mode, the book extends the cultural pessimism of his earlier "The Modern Temper" into the postwar age of mass society and the bomb.
”
Historical Context & Significance
A "defense of the soul" in the Atomic Age; Krutch's win reflected the 1950s intellectual anxiety about whether technology was beginning to outpace human morality.