That we are in for a portentious rendering of great issues in philosophy is signaled at the outset [of Santaroga Barrier] by the name of the hero, Dr. Gilbert Dasein. Dasein in German means "being there" and is the key concept of existential thinking in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers, whose own name figures in the drug with which the townsmen of Santaroga infuse their beer, cheese, and other foods.

Karl Jaspers … is associated with a number of critics of modern society who together have built what is probably the most influential social theory of our day: the theory of mass society…. [They] are concerned less with the general conditions of freedom in society than with the freedom of those persons who possess the intelligence to cultivate a sense of the individual self over and above the dim self-awareness of mass man. The criticism of mass society brought...