Introduction

All sides agree that the changes in intellectual attitudes in the last decade have been unusually great. ¹ A new generation of intellectuals has grown up not only with a somewhat different ideological coloration, but also, and more significantly, with a focus on a new set of problems and purposes. These new concerns and objectives, like the altered life style that goes with them, are for the most part alien both to the old left and to the old right. Though the new style of thought is more remarkable for the intensity of its social criticism than the specificity of its proposals, it does offer a few fresh proposals and a somewhat different conception of what issues are worth fighting about.