Abstract

A work likely to attract readers more by the seriousness of the author’s central theme and purpose than by his detailed analyses and arguments. His theme is the contest between reason and the passions; in the more technical version Neu sometimes prefers this becomes the question whether or not judgments are intrinsic to the structure of passions and emotions. His purpose is to follow this and ancillary issues through a study of Hume, Spinoza and Freud. The book ends with a useful summary and three appendices that extend the diagnosis of Hume offered in chapter 1. Throughout Neu is quite appropriately concerned with the influence disparate philosophical theories have, or ought to have, on actual therapeutic practices. Not only does he trace modern-day behaviorism and psychoanalysis back to their roots in Hume and Spinoza, respectively; he also argues for the conceptual inferiority of the Humean position to its Spinozist rival: the latter, but not the former, enables one to see that "reason has a place in our efforts to control and to live actively our emotional lives".