[In a] general sense Yvor Winters is one of the philosophical critics, and his work may be taken to illustrate both the difficulties and the dangers of the critical search for order. Now … [with In Defense of Reason] we have his three books within one cover, the occasion seems at last to have arrived for something like a summation of what we owe him. I do not pretend to anything so ambitious; what I have to offer are only some preparatory notes toward such an eventual and complete analysis, which we hope will soon assign Winters his just place.

Since he describes himself as a "moralistic critic" (a term he admits needs considerable definition), the questions I have to ask fall naturally under three headings: (1) the moral theory that is advanced or implied in support of his judgments; (2) the literary or aesthetic theory that derives from the moral...