A characteristic weakness of modern rationalisms is to bargain away the breadth and inclusiveness of vision for precision, simplicity and control. On the one hand, some rejected the concerns of community, focused exclusively upon the single, and ultimately the private individual, attempted to endow this isolate with complete and arbitrary control over its life, and built a vision of human relations modeled upon unbridled competition.

On the other hand, for a century and a half Marxism presented itself as a utopian vision for the development of human society. After the modern style of clear, analytic insight it identified clearly the material components of reality; with ingenuity it developed a dialectical tool for manipulating the public forms which this could take; with hubris it claimed to explain thereby the whole of reality; and with cruel purpose it suppressed all that did not fit this pattern, namely, all that was private.

The effect was at first to raise the hopes of broad groups of people and to generate heroic sacrifice and self abnegation. In the end, however, as its limitations stifled personal initiative and suppressed creativity, the result was a system which repressed those who had much to contribute and rendered entire nations incapable not only of providing for their basic material needs, but of the hope which drives the present and opens to the future.

The joint-colloquium on public and private social inventions in modern society, the work of which is reflected in this volume is an effort to overcome extremes and to lay a foundation for a more humane 21st century. It grew out of a dozen years of cooperation between Polish scholars of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) and their confreres at the Catholic University of America (CUA), Washington. During that time some 75 Polish specialists from the full range of academic disciplines each spent a semester at Catholic University. There they were able to update their bibliographies and to assimilate the latest methods in their disciplines. What is more, they were able to do this in a cultural context which reflected not only the ideologies of public vs. private, with their emphasis on the material and upon technical controls, but the rich spiritual tradition of Western Civilization which gave birth to the creative dynamism of modern times. The program helped to lay a firm basis for the Polish breakthrough, which shook free from the confines of ideology and opened the breach through which the other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe poured during the remainder of 1989.

It was at the very conclusion of this cycle in 1989--the day following the first free election in fifty years for Poland and indeed in the whole of Eastern Europe--that this joint colloquium on the public and the private began. Its task was to examine the perennial human dilemma regarding the way in which humanity could be constituted of multiple individuals and yet achieve community in social life. It sought out ways in which self-conscious, free and responsible persons and peoples could build a public life capable of promoting the creative powers of its peoples, of caring for its weak and elderly, and of reaching out in union with others to construct a social life worthy of mankind for the impending century.

The work of the colloquium began with a statement of the problem which reached beyond the ideological totalizations of the public at the expense of the private or, vice versa, to the fundamental task which faces every age, namely, how to relate the person and the social whole. This was followed by more detailed studies of the issue in the three major areas of family and neighborhood, education and religion, and economics and politics.

In each field papers were presented by both Polish and American scholars analyzing the experience and the social inventions of the two peoples as they approached the issue from two very different political and economic experiences, while sharing at a deeper level the basic values of their common Christian heritage.

That the discussions were punctuated by the notices not only of solidarity's electoral triumph in Poland, but of the tragedy unfolding in Tienanmen Square gave sober warning of the radical seriousness of the historical process in which we are engaged. In the pattern of that week's combination of crucifixion and resurrection, each people must reconcile the public and private dimensions of life in a process which overcomes the destructive conflicts and leads to the celebration of life that is at once personal and deeply social.

In this light what is important is not to choose between the public and the private, as if a utopia could be constructed by choosing one and excluding the other. Indeed, the paper of Stephen Schneck probes deeply enough to show with Hannah Arendt how statism is not merely a problem of the East but a characteristic of all modern societies. The experience of this century is that such a road leads to catastrophe. Rather the task of life--and thus of universities--is to find how the two can be interwoven with the public or state to constitute a path of authentic human progress for the century to come.

This volume marks the opening of a new phase in this journey.