Abstract

The scope and length of this anthology make it one of the best recent introductions to Continental thought for the English-speaking reader. Despite the editor's efforts to compass a century and a half of European thought under the somewhat inflated title of a "search for being," each of the fourteen contributors is allowed enough space to show that no single problem or quest concretely typifies European philosophical activity in our time. If one overlooks the dramatic cutting and pasting required by the attempt to give an existential flavor to the thinkers, one finds the merit of the book to be precisely the inclusion of authors whose interests are in important respects quite divergent from those of the existentialists. There are new, long translations from Schelling, Ravaisson, Lachelier, Simmel, Husserl, and Heidegger. There is a selected bibliography.--W. H. C.