Freedom & Civilization
Freedom & Civilization or Freedom and Civilization is a 1944 book by the Polish scholar Bronisław Malinowski. It was based on Malinowski's lectures from his time at Yale University, and published posthumously by Roy Publishers, two years after Malinowski's death. Development The book has been written during Malinowski's sabbatical in the United States, which became interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. He became an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany, arguing that it posed to a threat to civilization, and he repeatedly urged American citizens to abandon their neutrality; as a result, his books became banned in Germany. Content Freedom & Civilization consists of his lectures, given to American listeners at Yale University, on the topics of freedom, collected and edited by his wife Valetta Swann. Antonia Wenkart summarized the book in a 1945 review for the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. She noted that Malinowski discusses freedom as a natural and desirable state of all living beings. As society becomes more complex, freedom becomes dependent upon the use or abuse of authority by the leaders of a given society. Edmund Leach, reviewing this work for Nature, called it Malinowski's "political testament". It has been described as an "anti-totalitarian" as