Leonard Nelson

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Leonard Nelson 1882–1927, German philosopher. On the faculty of the Univ. of Göttingen from 1909, he was interested in the use of critical method to establish a scientific foundation for philosophy and in the systematic development of philosophical ethics. Nelson viewed Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as a treatise on method, and he further developed the thought of Jakob Friedrich Fries, the only post-Kantian who had adopted that approach. Nelson's work in the area of ethics proceeded from a faith in systematic, critical reasoning, on which the values of his system are based. His concern with ethical standards and the question of how human freedom could be reconciled with natural necessity led him to practical undertakings, including the formation of his own political organization and his own school for political education. Among his works that have been translated are Socratic Method and Critical Philosophy (1949), System of Ethics (1956), Critique of Practical Reason (1970), and Progress and Regress in Philosophy: From Hume and Kant to Hegel and Fries (1970).

Boys in the Band, The (1968), a play by Mart Crowley. [Theatre Four, 1,000 perf.] Michael ( Kenneth Nelson) is holding a birthday party for his friend Harold ( Leonard Frey), and since both men and all their friends are homosexuals no one is surprised when Michael's present to Harold is a fling with a handsome male hustler, Cowboy ( Robert La Tourneaux). Drink loosens tongues, and exchanges quickly become bitchy. But the carefully controlled viciousness is shattered by the unwanted arrival of Michael's old school roommate, the heterosexual Alan ( Peter White). Realizing the true situation, Alan turns hostile and belligerent, spoiling the evening for Michael. Hurt and a little baffled, Michael tells the last guest, “I don't understand any of it. I never did.” The play was one of the earliest of a rash of works centering on homosexuality, and it managed to find acceptance and popularity with a mainstream audience. While gay groups later dismissed the drama as a negative, melodramatic view of homosexual life style, an Off‐Off‐Broadway revival in 1996 was popular enough to move to Off Broadway for an extended run.