Father & Son

RIGHT & WRONG by Paul Weiss and Jonathan Weiss. 210 pages. Basic Books. $4.95.

Like a pair of Oxford dons, an American father and son sit down for several hours of vigorous tape-recorded discussions of ethics. Occasionally the exchange gets rough ("I think what you said is outrageous." "Why, that's crazy! That's absurd"). But the vehemence only testifies to the fact that the men involved think and feel deeply. They respond to each other from positions of strength and conviction. Paul Weiss, 66, is Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale, founder and longtime editor of the Review of Metaphysics; he ranks among the leading speculative philosophers in the U.S. His son Jonathan, 28, is a pragmatic attorney and social activist who has earned a reputation as defender of the rights of juveniles and welfare recipients in Washington and New York. Together, father and son prove that the much decried generation gap can be bridged by the application of intelligence and reason.

Spawned by years of previous debate and discussion, the dialogue between the two men tests their ideas about the essence of individual responsibility, duty and conflict within the family, the functions and malfunctions of the state, man's relationship to all of humanity, the meaning and nonmeaning of the universe, the legal undergirding that supports society and culture.

To Obey or Not. In a heated colloquy about the many variables in the child-parent relationship, Paul insists that when two parents disagree about a child's desires, the youngster's obligation is to the parent who opposes him. Jonathan disagrees: "Once you say go against what you want to do, that's everything. You have no principle related to right and wrong." But the older man is not really that dogmatic; he has already explained that though a young child cannot be expected to make the ethical decisions his son calls principle, an older child has the responsibility of choice: "When the father is mistaken, should the child obey? Yes, if he's a child, he must obey; if he is an adolescent, he should obey; but if he's a college student, he ought not to obey."

Moving to a larger theme, Paul argues that man's contributions "are not to the cosmos as a whole but just to that delimited portion of it within which he lives." Not so, says Jonathan. "I would say that everything I do is done within the context of humanity and also within the context of the cosmos. Humanity and civilization are good for the cosmos."

Paul sees no warrant for assuming, as his son does, that "the universe starts from some particular point and moves in a definite direction, or that man is contributing to that movement." The universe, he says, is the brute force of nature. "It has no direction or purpose. Direction and purpose derive from men who reflect upon what they have been doing and what they want to attain."

Elsewhere Paul offers an articulate philosopher's ringing definition of happiness and the satisfactions to be derived from human ambition: Happiness, he says, means that "a man should have on balance more pleasure than pain, that he should have an opportunity to realize the powers of his body and his mind, that he should exercise his will in freedom, that his emotions should come to controlled expression, that he should exhibit himself in creative works, and that he should participate in the betterment of civilization."

Alternatives. In the thrust and parry of ideas, in the intense examination of human behavior and aspiration, the dialogue between father and son illuminates the alternatives that confront human beings at every turn. Ethical choice among alternatives, the Weisses agree, propels the individual toward self-fulfillment, while honoring the social contract that protects the freedom and welfare of all others.

Agreeing far more than they disagree, the Weisses invariably arrive at their humanistic, democratic conclusions via different routes. Trained in the adversary tactics of the law, Jonathan attacks an issue head on, testing limits and examining strategies of action. As a contemporary metaphysician, Paul attempts to fuse knowledge into a system of belief: "The task of the philosopher is not to develop an entirely new set of ideas but to clarify what we think we already know." Philosophy, in other words, does not invent a world; it tries to understand and to explain the one it inherits.

Right & Wrong could have profited from ruthless editing. Still, the intellectual quality of the two men is a marvel of felicity. What other father-son team could or would have attempted this book? Its only precedent may be De Magistro (On Teaching), a dialogue recorded in A.D. 389 between St. Augustine and his brilliant 15-year-old illegitimate son, Adeodatus.

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