devoid of reflection may exist, although it would not exist in such a way as to preclude reflection in some remote temporal development. Auxier holds that mythic consciousness endures as human culture is increasingly refined and is never far from the basis of human thinking. He holds that most human thinking is communal, embodied, and active, while individual thinking is most often a pathology of symbolic consciousness. Auxier opposes both old-style humanism and every form of individualism. The individual is not the inevitable and crowning jewel of cultural development, contrary to the views of Cassirer, Dewey and other classical liberals. Rather, the active, embodied community is the primary achievement of cultural activity. Auxier does not accept views of Western superiority or triumphalism as defensible philosophically. He holds that valuable life and fully human development is evident in traditional human life and that the individualism of the Western world is a tragic development. Here his views accord with those of Whitehead and Josiah Royce. Auxier writes widely on popular culture and defends the aesthetic and philosophical importance of so-called “low culture,” such as jazz, blues and rock music, popular television and cinema, and best-selling fiction. He uses the vehicle of popular culture to explain and illustrate his more formal philosophical views, especially regarding aesthetics, ethics, and politics. Auxier sees popular culture as continuous with high culture and generally to be preferred over high culture as livelier and more important to the community as a whole. Ethics and political philosophy In ethics and political philosophy, Auxier is a personalist. Following primarily the views of Royce, Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Given that all human experience comes in the personal form, it is unproblematic to reason upon the assumption of the existence and value of persons. He does not assert that the impersonal does not exist or that person is the only value in the universe, only that all moral reasoning relevant to forming a moral philosophy is in fact conditioned by its source in the personal form of experience. Auxier holds that communities are persons in a more concrete and more enduring sense that are biological individuals. Individuals draw their personalities from the active nurture of their communities, but also come to transcend that activity and grow in directions not determined by the various agencies and institutions of their community of origin. The highest value of