American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

MacLeish asked Oppenheimer what he thought of the essay. Robert’s reply revealed the evolution of his own political views. He thought MacLeish’s description of the “present state of affairs” was masterful. But he was troubled by MacLeish’s prescription—a call for a “redeclaration of the revolution of the individual.” This familiar exhortation to Jeffersonian individualism seemed somehow inadequate and not very fresh. “Man is both an end and an instrument,” Oppenheimer wrote. He reminded MacLeish of the “profound part that culture and society play in the very definition of human values, human salvation and liberation.” Therefore, “I think that what is needed is something far subtler than the emancipation of the individual from society; it involves, with an awareness that the past one hundred and fifty years have rendered progressively more acute, the basic dependence of man on his fellows.”