Tantalus: Or, The Future of Man

The myth of Tantalus tells of a man punished in the underworld, forever reaching for fruit and water that recede whenever he draws near. F.C.S. Schiller appropriated this ancient image to diagnose a distinctly modern affliction: humanity poised at the threshold of boundless knowledge, yet perpetually starved of the wisdom to use it.Written in the anxious aftermath of the Great War, this philosophic essay argues that civilization has not merely failed to progress, but actively arrested its own biological and moral evolution. We have built towers of scientific achievement while our ethical capacities wither on the vine. The gods of progress have given us fire, but we remain too childish to hold it without burning ourselves.Schiller, an Oxford philosopher and pioneering pragmatist, does not despair entirely. He proposes that intellectual and cultural cultivation might yet lead humanity toward a more enlightened existence, if we dare to confront the gap between what we can do and what we should do. The oracle that opens the book poses the eternal question: given all we know, what will we choose?