The Well-Proportioned Man

Argentina played host last week to some 200 scholars and savants from 19 countries. They met in lovely Mendoza, in the foothills of the Andes, to ponder the philosophy of modern man.

Dr. Ireneo Fernando Cruz, realistic rector of the budding University of Cuyo, had organized the Congress of Philosophy. Object: to boost the prestige of Argentina and its government, on which all Argentine universities depend for handouts.

The first replies to the invitations, which went to most of the Who's Who of Western Hemisphere philosophers, were anything but favorable. All Cuban and most Mexican philosophers declined. So did nine members of the American Philosophical Association, pointing out that academic freedom was nonexistent under President Juan Peron. All told, just three U.S. philosophers and half a dozen U.S. lighter-weights accepted.

But Dr. Cruz had more than verbal persuasion to work with. Peron's government had granted 600,000 pesos for expenses, and impecunious professors could thus be offered a handsome junket with all expenses paid, plus 25 pesos a day for spending money and a bonus of 2,000 pesos for reading a paper. That did the trick, and brought in many of Europe's and Latin America's philosophical bigwigs.

Dr. Cruz staged one plenary session in a mountain glen, with snow-capped peaks as a background. For other sessions, he ran wires from the flag-festooned auditorium of the Teatro Independencia to amplifiers in the main plaza. As a result, most of mystified Mendoza heard an overpowering discussion of existentialism.

For the windup, Dr. Cruz produced none other than Juan Domingo Peron, six times a doctor honoris causa (Argentina has six universities). Arriving by special train with wife Evita, Pero led a motor caravan to the auditorium, through thousands of cheering descamisados. There, in a 70-minute speech, he managed to touch on Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Spinoza. As for himself, he said he was between Hegel and Marx--against both "immoral individualism" and the "insectification of the individual," in favor of what he called "justicialism."

"What we have to search for," Pero concluded, "is the well-proportioned man." The implication was obvious: let the world take a good look at the well-proportioned Peronista.

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