Speech and Society

George Allen Morgan had a uniquely broad knowledge of Rosenstock-Huessy’s writings; his insights into that corpus are contained in this scholarly primer of Rosenstock-Huessy’s thought.

Morgan met Rosenstock-Huessy at Harvard in 1934. He had just completed his doctorate in philosophy under Alfred North Whitehead and was preparing his classic work, What Nietzsche Means; the younger man would later play a major role in the genesis of Rosenstock-Huessy’s The Christian Future. After WWII, Morgan spent 23 years as a career foreign service officer and diplomat; in his retirement, he spent fifteen years making notes on all of Rosenstock-Huessy’s many books and articles, and this compact and beautifully written volume is the result.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, entitled “Fundamentals,” begins with the elements of Rosenstock-Huessy’s “speech-thinking”: the grammatical method and the cross of reality. The second, “Historical Perspectives,” addresses Rosenstock-Huessy’s view of pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian history. The third, “Selected Aphorisms”, contains a magnificent collection of them. An early edition of Lise van der Molen’s bibliography is also included. (Speech and Society is out of print.)

Hardbound, 220 pages.