Ruth Nanda Anshen (1900–2003) was an American philosopher, author, and editor. Anshen was also the editor of several books and worked with such distinguished authors as Erich Fromm, Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead, Jonas Salk, and Thomas Mann.
Born to Jewish Russian immigrants in Lynn, Massachusetts, Anshen studied at Boston University under the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead.
Anshen was the author of several books, including Freedom: It’s Meaning (1940,) The Anatomy of Evil (1985,) Biography of An Idea (1986,) Morals Equals Manners (1992,) and The Mystery of Consciousness: A Prescription for Human Survival (1994.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ruth Nanda Anshen
Man alone, during his brief existence on this earth, is free to examine, to know, to criticize, and to create. In this freedom lies his superiority over the forces that pervade his outward life. He is that unique organism in terms of matter and energy, space and time, which is urged to conscious purpose. Reason is his characteristic and indistinguishing principle. But man is only man—and free—when he considers himself as a total being in whom the unmediated whole of feeling and thought is not severed and who impugns any form of atomization as artificial, mischievous, and predatory.
—Ruth Nanda Anshen
Topics: Mankind, Man
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