Sleeper is a New Testament scholar, and half of the book is concerned with building the subtitle's "Biblical Foundations for Social Ethics." This part of the project is pursued with care, freshness, and originality. The part of the book dealing with race relations and the Christian is a term-paper type survey of what current thinkers are thinking on race and the Christian conscience. There are a few attempts to integrate these chapters with the biblical scholarship, and, where these attempts occur, (...) they are generally successful--the only threads of unity between the various parts of the book. It is a shame that Sleeper's strengths as a biblical scholar are burried in this primer for white Christians.--S. O. H. (shrink)

It is not always clear whose side Frankel is on in the current debate over university reform, but that is perhaps the hidden strength of the book. For, although the rational orderliness with which he proceeds seems to indicate that he leans toward the establishment, he nonetheless, in the process, does manage occasionally to dig out the legitimacy of much of the radical position. Although his topic is the university in general, it is evident that in the back of his (...) mind is Columbia 1968. Although his sympathies are with the old order he manages with some reservations to catch a glimpse of what students are pushing for, especially in terms of the university's commitment to its immediate neighborhood, and student representation on board and faculty committees. Not that Frankel is for such representation, but he concedes that it is perhaps time to do a little experimenting in that direction.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Capital "H" Humanism is the moving spirit behind this book, complete with its quaint, crusading anti-supernaturalism. What starts out as a propagandistic apologia for this "movement" manages to come up with some solid essays on various aspects of ethics and ethical theory. There is a star studded cast including H. J. Blackham, Marvin Farber, Hebert Feigl, Rollo Handy, Sidney Hook, A. H. Maslow, Ernest Nagel, Carl Rogers, and B. F. Skinner covering topics dealing with ethics and religion; the good life (...) ; law, the individual, and social organization; justice and society; and death. Many of the essays are reprinted from The Humanist. Some of them over-simplify the problems of philosophical ethics. Although there are some strong and interesting essays, the usefulness of the book is limited by its effort to advocate the Humanist position.--S. O. H. (shrink)

As "dialogue" tends to suggest an implicit dispute between the parties involved, this book is mistitled. What we see here is the co-operation of the resources of psychology and theology in the common quest for a unified theory of man. However, although they are co-operative, the two fields do maintain their identity throughout the studies. Very often the attempt is made to find the differences and to show the relation between theological and psychological theories of man. As with the other (...) volumes of this series, all the contributors are associated with the Chicago Divinity School, either as alumni or as faculty. The entries cover such topics as sin, Freud and Tillich, various aspects of the dynamics of knowing and of faith, dream and myth, Jung, Pastoral counseling, group therapy.--S. O. H. (shrink)

"What is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking." Thus Heidegger sets the tone for these 1951 lectures indicating that he has in mind a special and lofty notion of thinking--a notion that can be understood only by following the master as he demonstrates how to think by showing what it is, after all, that calls for thinking. Heidegger sees thinking and Being as inextricably related, each the key to the other. Thinking is "relatedness (...) to Being." Furthermore, "only when man speaks does he think." Thus we must learn to listen, really listen, if we are to know what thinking is. Nietzsche looms as an important figure in this discussion, and the key to the understanding of Nietzsche, says Heidegger, is the concept of revenge. For Nietzsche, the bridge to the highest hope for man is his deliverance from revenge. Heidegger interprets this to mean that because revenge tries to affect the past and thus cannot understand time as a passing away, it is only through deliverance from revenge that man can be in proper orientation to time and thus to Being. The awkward translation of the title, Was Heisst Denken?, is justified by the text because Heidegger closely examines the German wording of the question--an examination which involves philosophical discussion of the notions of calling and naming. The latter sections of the book are an exhaustive--or should I say exhausting--exegesis of Parmenides' fragment 6: χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ'ἒον ἔμμεναι. The translation starts out as the traditional "One should both say and think that Being is," and ends up through Heidegger's characteristic brand of creative etymology, as "useful is the letting-lie-before-us, so taking-to-heart, too: beings in being." That is, in order to think, we should allow things to be as they are, pay attention to what they are, and know that we are related to them.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Parker obviously has a warm fondness and a deep empathetic understanding of this period of history, and they are offered to the reader in every carefully worked sentence. In a narrative style that presents the human dimension as well as the central ideas of the Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Parker imaginatively reconstructs the phenomenological, empirical, and the homely rationale for their theories. He depicts the Presocratics as organized around the question "What is the universe made of?" and Socrates around (...) "What is Truth, Justice, Goodness?" There is a chapter giving a profile of Athens and Sparta. The three chapters on Plato cover the theory of forms, the Republic, and the Laws. The four chapters on Aristotle, besides the biographical inclusions, cover a scheme of his works, his view of nature, The Ethics, The Politics, and his lasting impact on the rest of intellectual history. The book ends with a brief treatment of Hellenism and a conclusion that takes its cue from the awe and excitement of Keats in On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. Altogether it is a simplified yet sympathetic, thoughtful, and sensitive introduction.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This is a very useful collection of important, standard, primary sources. Two-thirds of volume one is taken up with Plato and Aristotle with the rest of the volume evenly divided among the Presocratics, Hellenistic philosophers and Medieval philosophers. Four of the Platonic dialogues are complete. Second edition changes in the first volume include: changes in translators and new entries. In both volumes Kaufmann's prefaces are very brief and mainly biographical. He consistently ties in information about each thinker's contemporaries. The second (...) volume has readings from Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Almost half the second volume is taken up with Hume and Kant. The second edition changes in volume II are: expansion of Spinoza's Ethics, Locke's Essay, Berkeley's Principles; and additions of Descartes' correspondence with Princess Elizabeth, and a short Leibniz essay translated especially for this volume by M. Furth. The selections are adequately long and representational. The volumes contain double columns, no index, no bibliographies, no "Study Guides," just solid and important reading.--S. O. H. (shrink)

In sound, clear, and relentless argumentation Neville makes the case for God as being-itself. God as being-itself is indeterminate. Neville explores several theories that opt for the determinacy of being-itself and exposes the weaknesses of each. As indeterminate, being-itself is the ontological unity of the various determinations of being, and as such transcends them. This transcendent, indeterminate being-itself effects the unity of the determinations of being by creating them ex nihilo. The book spends some time exploring the structure of the (...) distinction between God and the created world, concluding that that distinction is itself determinate and created. God is not only transcendent for Neville, he is also present. He has some conditional features. However, the emphasis is overwhelmingly on transcendence. Neville rejects Hartshorne and insists that God is not conditioned by the determinations of being. Part II of the book is largely methodological, showing the move from "methodological dialectic" to "constitutive dialectic" in order to demonstrate how knowledge of this God is possible. The third part is an effort to connect religious experience with the constructs of Part I. Neville has one of those welcome styles in which the book offers a running commentary on itself: where it has been, where it is, where it is going, and how its success or failure might be judged. This is an important book, but more for its thoroughness and clarity than for its originality.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Each group of selections in this text book is preceded by about ten pages of commentary by Harrington. These commentaries can be read either before the selections as a preparation setting forth the issues, or after the selections as an elucidation, isolating the selection's central concerns. All the selections, with the exception of Kierkegaard's, are from twentieth century thinkers. The contributors include Tillich, Herberg, G. E. Wright, Bultmann, D. M. Bailie, J. J. C. Smart, Wisdom, Hare, Sartre, Barth and Vahanian. (...) The book is divided into three main parts. The first part is basically doctrinal, exploring Biblical themes and contemporary views of revelation, God, man, Jesus, crucifixion, resurrection, and incarnation. The second part deals with aspects of the philosophy of religion including the connection between philosophy and theology, religious language, the existence of God, theistic proofs, and epistemological considerations. The third part, under the heading of "Challenges to Contemporary Man," is a potpourri of theological glamor issues including Existentialism and the death of God. Very often Harrington's commentary provides the reader with the classical aspects of the problem which the contemporary contributer is dealing with. There is a topically organized bibliography of suggested reading. There is no index.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to describe the interaction between the individual and his society. Miller claims that society gets its creative thrusts forward from the minds of its single individuals. Also each individual depends on feedback from his society in order to discover how his quest for the ideal self is going. The work includes a short history of the concept of individualism. There is a distinction drawn between the "open society" which provides the conditions necessary for the individual (...) to become himself and the "closed society" which stifles individual development. The author is aware that some philosophies can overstress the importance of the individual, as he is critical of some individualistic thinkers, e.g., Kierkegaard, because they neglect what he calls the social component of the self. Miller holds the view that work is important for self-actualization, but fails to mention the effect of automation and the crisis of leisure on a society dependent on this kind of self-actualization.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This is a remarkably crisp and lucid comparison between Bultmann and Jaspers organized around the former's concept of Christian faith and the latter's notion of philosophical faith. Many of the issues arise from an actual dialogue between the two men over a period of years. Long's book develops some of the two men's difficulties with and misunderstandings of each other. The two men display similarities in their rejection of positivism and system-building and in their recognition of risk and commitment in (...) man's coming to know himself and his relation to the transcendent. But they also have important differences, the most significant and representative of which concerns whether or not to accept any one tradition as being central, authoritative, or exclusively helpful in the quest for self-understanding. For Jaspers, who rejects the centrality of Jesus, every tradition, whether authoritative or kerygmatic, is relative and ambiguous with no particular claim on man. In accepting one particular manifestation of truth as definitive, says Jaspers, theology has turned what is by nature incomprehensible into an object of understanding. Long traces these similarities and differences through chapters on revelation, language, science, and reason. Long's thorough grasp of the issues and the clarity and simplicity of his presentation place the usefulness and importance of this book beyond the topic of Bultmann and Jaspers. With a meta-critical perspective, Long opens up the border between Philosophy and Theology on the Existentialist front in perhaps a more promising way than similar attempts to open it up on the front of linguistic analysis.--S. O. H. (shrink)

These lectures, given at the University of Chicago and slated to be the Nobel lectures at Harvard before Tillich's death, are a compromise between the technical style of the Systematic Theology and the sermon style of his more popular books, although they are closer to the latter. They are eminently readable and filled with those rich insights that only the reflection of a mature mind can produce. The first chapter is a narrative, autobiographical account of Tillich's years as a young (...) man in which he acknowledges his intellectual debts and influences. The last three chapters are suggestions for absolutes found in his search--absolutes in knowledge, ethics, and religion respectively. These include the logical structure of the mind, categories, and polarities; the unconditional character of the moral imperative, agape; being-itself, and the holy. The book contains an inspired introduction to the Credo Perspectives series by Ruth Anshen as well as her short prologue to this particular volume. The twenty-six full-page drawings by Saul Steinberg are a significant bonus. They parallel and often interpret the text, and the text, in its turn, often reveals the drawings in a clearer light.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This book first appeared in 1950 with a second edition in 1956. Kaufmann devotes much time to discussing secondary sources, "rival interpretations," as well as Nietzsche himself and the context of his thought. This third edition represents an expansion as well as a revision of the second. The third edition takes into account work published on Nietzsche since 1956 including new editions and translations of Nietzsche's own work. The impact of these new translations and editions is also discussed. Previously unpublished (...) letters are discussed, with one letter actually reproduced in facsimile. In the expansion Kaufmann did not include anything that would duplicate his own recent publications with the exception that he has substituted his own recent translations of Nietzsche. The bibliography, which did not appear in the second edition, and the index are expanded. There is a new twenty-eight page appendix on the "supressed" [[sic]] manuscripts in which Kaufmann discusses and pans some recent German editions of Nietzsche's works. Finally, there are numerous small additions and revisions in this third edition of a standard work.--S. O. H. (shrink)

In an effort to give a "personal account of the impact of Whitehead on one reader" and to promote the enthusiasm of others who have not yet discovered Whitehead, Jordan takes off to give his readers an aerial view of the Whiteheadian panorama, flying high enough to avoid becoming entangled in the Whiteheadian word thicket below. This is not to say that Jordan ignores Whiteheadian terminology. On the contrary he has enhanced Whitehead's famous mute appeal for an imaginative leap with (...) a string of ingenious metaphors which serve well to explicate Whitehead's key technical terms and concepts. The result is actually more of a commentary and exposition than is advertised in the introduction. The final chapters come closer to the autobiographical emphasis promised in the introduction. There Jordan makes some general observations on Whitehead's language, his method, and the place of reason in his thought. He affirms the importance and modern relevance of Whitehead as a whole in spite of some misgivings about Whitehead's theism in an age of justifiable skepticism. The importance of the book is its metaphors and images. At last someone has made a responsible effort to explicate Whitehead in everyday terms. Obviously this involves distortions, but the book has no pretensions about its authority and is coupled with an invitation to read Whitehead himself and his more technical commentators. There are no footnotes.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Reprinted from the winter, 1966 issue of Religion in Life this little book contains essays by Nels Ferré, Charles Hartshorne, John Dillenberger, James C. Livingston, and Joseph Haroutunian. Ferré's article explores the strengths and weaknesses of Tillich's attitude toward the transcendent. He holds that much of Tillich's quarrel with traditionalistic theology was really a quarrel with substance metaphysics. Hartshorne examines Tillich's language especially his ascribing nontheological meaning to theological terms. Hartshorne insists that where terms like 'shepherd' and 'father' are obviously (...) symbolic, terms like 'absolute', 'relative', 'infinite', 'finite', 'contingent', 'necessary', 'omnipotent', etc. have no useful symbolic meaning but can only be understood literally. In this light he explores Tillich refusal to assert the "existence" of God. Dillenberger uses the fact that Tillich sees religion as the ultimate concern that "informs the heart of a culture" to show that for Tillich, theology cannot be done in isolation; there can only be theology of culture. Therefore, much of Tillich's work can be seen as building a theory of culture. Livingston writes on Tillich's christology and historical research. Haroutunian ends the book with a discussion of Tillich's dealings with the questions of being, finitude, and anxiety.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This book is a preliminary treatment investigating how quantum physics' view of the world is related to the central concepts and doctrines of the western philosophical tradition. Recognizing the analogy between the subject-object distinction in philosophy and the instrument-system distinction in physics, Petersen sees that the problems of description in quantum theory and in philosophy have a profound kinship and suggests that quantal description and the concept of complementarity might play an important role in the solution of those problems. A (...) principal focus in this study thus becomes the idea of correspondence, through which physicists sought to establish the relation between quantum and classical physics. Petersen's approach is largely historical, beginning with an account of the development of ontological philosophy that dwells largely on Berkeley, Locke, Hume, and Kant in order to get at the point of contact between epistemology and ontology. Then comes a short history of atomism and an account of the correspondence idea in quantum physics. Finally he uses his historical accounts in a discussion of the relation of quantum physics to traditional philosophy. There is a summary in Danish at the end.--S. O. H. (shrink)

What starts out as a run-of-the-mill denunciation of mechanism and behaviorism in the physical and social sciences ends up with some exciting, if sketchy, suggestions for new conceptions of man and his world. The key words for Bertalanffy's psychology are symbolism and system. The former delimits what is uniquely human in human behavior; the latter replaces man as stimulus-response robot with man as "active personality system." After discussing the advantages and drawbacks of man's propensity for the symbolic construction of reality, (...) the author turns his attention to the systems approach to an understanding of man. He warns against the common error of identifying cybernetics with general systems theory. The cybernated system, he feels, is still basically mechanistic, distinguishing itself only by the addition of a feed-back loop to make it self-regulative. It is still closed with respect to the introduction of matter or energy from outside the system, even though it is open to the introduction of information from outside. That is, no matter how complex the cybernetic system, it "can always be resolved into feedback circuits" and thought of in terms of "linear causality." The regulative behavior of general systems, on the other hand, is determined by goal-directed, dynamic interaction between many forces and variables in an open system. Bertalanffy points out that "no comprehensive theory of systems exists today." However, as a model the approach has many advantages, such as obviating the need for the "ghost in the machine" and suggesting some solutions to the mind-body problem. The book, originally the Heinz Werner Lectures at Clark University, is a provocative introduction to systems theory, and the bibliography is especially useful in suggesting further steps in the exploration of this exciting idea.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Between two reasonably priced paper covers, in print of adequate size, we have an extensive and unified collection of primary sources displaying the continuity and periodic adjustment of the ideals and practical considerations of democracy. Between Pericles and the present Sherover finds four basic periods: The Classical Heritage, The Democratic Revolutions, The Priority of Freedom, and Contemporary Groundings. The editor introduces each section with a clear and simply stated digest of each thinker's basic ideas and how the thinkers compare with (...) each other. These introductions contain no novel interpretations and will give the student a running start on the readings that follow them. The introductions are also important transitions whose historical perspective gives the book its continuity. The volume might have been strengthened by allowing some of those who have fundamentally challenged the democratic tradition to speak for themselves.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This is not a book on religious language, not an analysis or suggestion about the "logic" of God-talk. It is one of those homiletical efforts to make God relevant. But, as such it is a notch above most. Its images are fairly vivid, and its language is urbane and fresh, although occasionally new phrases are coined without sufficient development or rationale to reveal what they mean. Its approach, then, is theological not philosophical, compelled as it is to cover Christian motifs--sin, (...) salvation, resurrection, eternal life, etc. One of the frequent themes is the rejection of the medieval propositional approach to God and the rejection of the "half-baked existentialist" conceptual approach. Rather, Moore sees the discovery and understanding of God in terms of a radically loving, Christ-powered life-style.--S. O. H. (shrink)

These readings in the philosophy of education are designed to allow issues to emerge and to allow students to see how they arise, how they can be dealt with, and how a philosophy of education might be built. Of course no gathering of disparate works can deliver on that kind of editorial promise. However, this company of contributors is distinguished, and most of their entries provocative and interesting. The first section is designed to show what is special about our age (...) and what must be taken into account in order to think critically about modern issues in education. In this section Talcott Parsons, Cassirer, Melvin Seeman, Wm. H. Whyte, Marcuse, Jung, Sartre, and D. Bell talk about specialization, alienation, organization man, one-dimensional man, anxiety about values, and the knowledge explosion. This is the most "with-it" section and paints a fair portrait of our times. The last three sections are more conventional and more philosophical. There is a section on methodology which finds D. J. O'Conner, Dewey, and Whitehead discussing the nature of philosophy and which closes with Buber's opening pages from I and Thou. The last two sections have contributions by Plato, St. Augustine, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Dewey, Polanyi, and Maritain among others. These sections deal with questions of learning and with some "isms". All the sections have critical bibliographies which are enlightened, useful, and up-to-date. There is a glossary of technical terms. On the whole this is a strong anthology. Each of the four sections is sufficiently unified to provide a helpful context for the readings within it.--S. O. H. (shrink)

The bulk of this work is a responsible and well documented exposition of Whitehead's major themes with emphasis on how they contribute to his theory of perception and how his developing theory of perception contributes to them. Although Schmidt divides Whitehead's development into three parts, the important part of the project, and obviously his favorite, is the elucidation of Whitehead's "mature theory of perception" and the demonstration that it provides a foundation for the cosmological system and his philosophy of science. (...) Throughout, Whitehead is presented as an empiricist, although not in the usual sense. Perception and immediate experience are his starting point, but "perception" is used in a more basic, generic sense than is customary. It includes conception as well as sense-presentation. Schmidt pays prolonged and welcome attention to presentational immediacy, causal efficacy, and symbolic reference. The book contains some useful expansions of underdeveloped Whiteheadian doctrines, elucidations of Whiteheadian obscurities, and a number of interpretive distinctions, all of which serve to make it a useful new commentary as well as a proposal of an important thesis.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Cobb's stated purpose in this book is to inquire into what is distinctive about Christianity and into its claim to finality. Hence half the book is taken up with the explication of other "structures of existence" which antedated or which have paralleled "Christian Existence." For Cobb, the term existence refers to how a subject relates itself to itself and what it is in and for itself. Cobb traces the move from the primitive self, which is not yet conscious of itself (...) as a self, across the threshold to "axial" man who breaks with the primitive mythic age by exhibiting a "seat of existence" or center of consciousness which involves a new role for rationality and which for the first time subordinates the unconscious to the conscious. The particular structures of axial existence which Cobb explores are Buddhist Existence, Homeric Existence, Socratic Existence, and Prophetic Existence. In contradistinction to these, Christian existence emerges as the crossing of a new threshold: it is spiritual existence expressing itself in love. Cobb's efforts to fulfill the second purpose of the book are half-hearted and unconvincing, a fact perhaps consistent with the book's objectivity: it is not Christian apologetics. Cobb's well known Whiteheadianism is only subtly and incidentally evident in this work, although occasionally it is used directly to expand and enrich certain explanations. The print in the book is annoyingly small.--S. O. H. (shrink)

These essays were delivered at the Fourth East-West Philosophers conference at the University of Hawaii in 1964. Because the audience was of various traditions, most of the papers contain instruction in rudiments as well as points of more technical interest. The oriental speakers especially take pains not to spring their special terminology on the western listener. The book systematically and thoroughly works through the themes of the individual in Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and western metaphysics, methodology, religion, and ethics. Social, political, (...) and legal thought and practice are also covered. Some of the papers are followed by transcripts of questions and answers. These are often very helpful and revealing as they focus the issues and require the speaker to be specific in summarizing his points. Altogether there are thirty-three contributors, only a minority of whom are westerners. These include: Charles Moore, Wm. E. Hocking, H. E. McCarthy, John Smith, W. H. Werkmeister, E. W. Strong, R. Polin, and R. McKeon. Again and again both East and West stressed the interconnection and interdependence of the individual and the universal, the individual and the community. There is an appendix containing the conference's public lectures, which were given by S. M. McMurrin, C. Regamey, and D. T. Suzuki. The book and the conference end with Moore citing highlights and provocative points from virtually all the lectures. This provides a useful summary and synthesis of what would otherwise be an overwhelming deluge of intellection. There are notes on contributors and an index.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This introduction to quantum mechanics requires little previous knowledge of physics. The book consists of three separate projects completed with varying degrees of success. The first chapters discuss classical physics with special attention to the concepts of matter and light. The middle chapters are devoted to quantum physics itself and how it developed from, and accounted for, problematic phenomena of earlier physics. Detailed, although not heavily mathematical, attention is given to the key experiments of quantum physics. These chapters go on (...) to discuss the so-called elementary particles, conservation laws, "strangeness," spin, various field theories, and other topics of current research. The final chapters are devoted to the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. This section, focused mainly on causality and free will, is superficial and disappointing--of more interest to ethics and theology than to the philosophy of science. The philosophical remarks which were made parenthetically in the first two sections of the book were more provocative and might well have been expanded in this section. If this last section were eliminated, the first section abbreviated, and the book released in paperback, the book would be a better buy as informative introduction to quantum mechanics. There are many diagrams, tables, illustrations, and photographs, as well as a glossary of technical terms and a critical bibliography.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Where is the old Marcuse? Is he too tired to be explicit, to reason, to give a rationale for what he is contending? Why has he written this?--this which is just another protest lost in the shouting and the printing scattered all over stop signs, subway walls, placards, newspapers, magazines, and in books. Perhaps the importance of the book is its perseverance at a time when we are exhausted, worn out by protest's apparent sterility on the one hand and its (...) kiss-of-death fashionability on the other. Many places in this book are obscure because they are poorly written and poorly edited. Marcuse walks the line between being original enough to be provocative and irresponsible enough to be dismissed. The book is a fascinating interplay between sense and nonsense, penetrating insight and polemical overstatement, between creative originality and banal sloganism, between brilliant interpretive social commentary and abject confusion. Marcuse does succeed in letting the reader know that there is something wrong with our society and that many of the values that we have taken for granted must be rethought, but this is not Marcuse at his best, and the net force of the book is to leave the reader bewildered with this, another indication that these are bewildering times.--S. O. H. (shrink)

In a style that is as straight-forward as it is dry, Banner introduces philosophy's fundamental and recurring ethical questions. As the subtitle might imply, he makes no distinction between ethics and morality. The opening chapter explores the context of ethical inquiry, or "The Realm of Morals," discussing questions of virtue and responsibility, reflection and choice, as distinct dimensions of human experience. The author's existentialist bias is evident in what he chooses to discuss in the introductory chapters, but he keeps it (...) in check in the exposition which follows them. The second chapter is methodological, showing the problems preliminary to systematic ethical inquiry and to individual moral reflection. The rest of the book is taken up with summaries of the ethical positions of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bentham, Mill, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. In a short epilogue, Banner makes an effort to recapitulate the main themes that run through these thinkers. These concern the distinction between the good and the right, and deal with the relation of the individual to the community and its regulative officials. Greater effort is made to contrast the thinkers here in the epilogue than in the exposition. As an introduction the book does the job, but it is not inspired.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Reiser declares that what the modern world needs is a new system of thought, a new world-view that will integrate the "mystical participation of an earlier age" with the "hard core of scientific objectivity." And so he proceeds to build one, drawing on diverse attempts of East and West to decipher the mysteries of the universe. The result is a "Hindu-Pythagoras-Stoic-Bruno-Spinoza-Einstein world-view" that is intriguing if not entirely palatable. His treatments of such topics as space-time, field forces, the double-helix, relativity, (...) and the Heisenberg principle are clear but sketchy. In fact, many of his entries for discussion, although impeccably up-to-date and relevant, are too brief to give a strong account of themselves, even though they seem to serve adequately to support his over-all project of synthesizing modern scientific breakthroughs with ancient insights. Physics, chemistry, biology, music, cybernetics, mathematics, astrophysics, psychology, and history of religions all find themselves with interrelating contributions to make to Reiser's gestalt of Cosmic Humanism.—S. O. H. (shrink)

Responsible efforts by theologians to deal with the problem of language have been too few. Perhaps frightened by growling and unyielding logical positivists, theologians, with a few notable exceptions, have been generally reluctant to do the linguistic housecleaning necessary to keep up with the philosophical Joneses. However, the tempest of logical positivism has pretty well past, and theologians are beginning to poke their heads out and to clear away some of the linguistic debris. Although Macquarrie is not deluded into "thinking (...) that the retreat from an iconoclastic positivism leads automatically to a situation in which analysis makes a constructive contribution to the problems of theology," he does see five findings of the methodology of analysis that make for a more hospitable environment for reflections on theological discourse: The recognition of a multiplicity of languages. The distrust of reductionism that sanctions one single kind of language. The recognition of a diversity of meaning. The recognition of the efficacious use of indirect language. Recognition of the importance of the context of the situation out of which language arises. Macquarrie's intent is to explore the characteristics, the "logic," of uniquely theological language, and to see how such a language manifests the three characteristics of a discourse-situation in any language: expression, representation, communication. The situation out of which theological language grows and the key to its logic is the human discovery of human finitude and the encounter with Being precipitated by the discovery of the possibility of nonbeing. Macquarrie's debt to Heidegger is heavy and acknowledged. He discusses at length mythology, symbolism, analogy, empirical language, and the Heideggerian language of existence and being, as modes and types of theological language. One of the strengths of the book is Macquarrie's willingness to put his analytical method to work in a hermeneutical exercise examining some ancient and modern examples of theological discourse. Macquarrie announces at the end what had been implicit throughout: that the language of existence and being is the basic logic of theology. "Heidegger's attempt to move from existential into ontological language is most important and, if one accepts it, it constitutes a kind of paradigm or prototype for the language of theology."—S. O. H. (shrink)

This series of character sketches is disappointing to the reader expecting an interpretive historical document. The bulk of the book is taken up with reflections about the author's mother, who died when Svetlana was only six, her mother's family, her brothers, and her sweethearts. Many readers are naturally interested in the figure of Stalin, but he is treated directly only in small and scattered portions of the book with much of the information repeated. It becomes evident that the author knew (...) her father primarily through his impact on the people she loved. Consequently, the figure of Stalin emerges as somewhat enigmatic and mysterious, a combination god and devil. It is apparent that she did not really know him very well, see him very often, or think about him very much. The book is not really about Stalin at all. It is an enjoyable combination of behind-the-scenes gossip, and engrossing narrative fragments.—S. O. H. (shrink)

Yarnold is motivated by the thesis that theology must interpret science. It does so presumably for the benefit of the religious community, being careful that the formulations emanating from such an interpretation are "true to the facts of biblical and Christian experience." Yarnold's main focus is the distinction between time and eternity, or between the temporal world and the eternal world. The book is a valiant attempt to explore post-Newtonian concepts of space and time and space-time, and to relate them (...) to the traditional theological notion of eternity. After exploring our biological and physical awareness of time and relating that awareness with the law of entropy and after exploring some biblical concepts of time, Yarnold reaches the formula that we in the temporal world experience successiveness, while God in the eternal realm experiences everything all at once. "The space-time continuum may be regarded as a valid representation of the external world as apprehended by Deity." Unfortunately, when he is through investigating the dynamism of modern science, he continues to cling to a basically static and traditional theology which seems to ignore that dynamism.—S. O. H. (shrink)

Zollinger wants to show that Bohr's principle of complementarity is applicable to human social interaction as well as to the sub-atomic realm. He therefore spends much time laying the foundations of his thesis, explaining the principle in its microphysical context. The human socio-political matrix is not merely analogous to the microphysical realm, for Zollinger, but is an evolutionary extension of it. Both are subject to complementarity in differing degrees of complexity. From a discussion of the tiny organism, he moves through (...) an account of primitive societies to a short review of the history of civilization to the present era. He toys with themes like male and female complementarity as a factor in human evolution. He describes the emergence of male characteristics from subordination to dominance, with the "new male" breaking the matriarchal order to build "the revolutionary rational order of dynamic political masculinity." His historical and anthropological accounts are on the whole superficial and stated in generalities that are long on speculation and short on research. Throughout, the book is plagued by obscurities caused by clumsy phrasing, private jargon, questions raised but not dealt with, and non sequiturs. Toward the end of the book, as he gets into the modern era, Zollinger finds himself in more familiar territory, and what he has to say is more solid than at the beginning. He suggests ways in which modern political man might better take into account the interdependency of the disparate elements of his society and integrate them into a whole of superior order. This is perhaps an important point, but here, as in other places in the book, the connection with Bohr is contrived, and Zollinger's model seems more properly to be Hegelian Aufhebung than Bohr's complementarity.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This book explains the notational system NUSAP (Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment, Pedigree) and applies it to several examples from the environmental sciences.

Extended antipaternalism means the use of antipaternalist arguments to defend activities that harm (consenting) others. As an example, a smoker’s right to smoke is often invoked in defence of the activities of tobacco companies. It can, however, be shown that antipaternalism in the proper sense does not imply such extended antipaternalism. We may therefore approve of Mill’s antipaternalist principle (namely, that the only reason to interfere with someone’s behaviour is to protect others from harm) without accepting activities that harm (consenting) (...) others. This has immediate consequences for the ethics of public health. An antipaternalist need not refrain from interfering with activities such as the marketing of tobacco or heroin, boxing promotion, driving with unbelted passengers, or buying sex from “voluntary” prostitutes. (shrink)

Unless the title is a McLuhanesque play on words--which Finkelstein would never allow himself--the book is mistitled, for Finkelstein dwells almost exclusively on what he considers to be the nonsense of McLuhan. Writing with all the venom of an anti-smut campaigner whose moral principles are threatened because they are too weak and too inflexible, Finkelstein wages his polemics against McLuhan in an effort to discredit him and expose him as a false prophet. What nettles Finkelstein most is that McLuhan, a (...) professor--a guardian of truth and goodness--should be so irresponsible as to fail to denunciate T.V. commercials, Madison avenue mind-manipulators, T.V.'s causing the atrophy of the ability to read and think, and the other bogeymen of humanist dogma. How dare McLuhan, the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at a great University, challenge the foundations of the humanities themselves? Finkelstein is at least thorough in his refusal to come to grips with what is valid in McLuhan: he does us the service of pointing out the errors in McLuhan's reading of history, in his dictum that the medium is the message, in his suggestion that media are extensions of man, and in his advocacy of media involvement. The final and the least weak chapter draws a parallel between McLuhan and Marx, showing how McLuhanism can lead to a world totalitarian monolith. We should pay Finkelstein the courtesy, however, of pointing out that there is a sense in which his criticisms, if not always valid, are at least important to keep in mind while seeking to understand McLuhan without being seduced by him.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Both the essays in this short book have appeared before, but separately and both in German. Voegelin shows how certain modern intellectual movements whether political, philosophical, scientific, right or left share characteristics with ancient gnosticism in that they are salvation-oriented formulas designed to dominate and control being by conceptually reconstructing it into a manageable, man-centered packet. The gnosis is the knowledge of the particular method of altering being. Voegelin isolates two major prerequisites for the construction and marketing of such formulas: (...) 1) The prohibition of questioning, and 2) the elimination from the formula of the essential features of being that would tend to expose the program as foolish. He picks on Nietzsche and Marx as the "intellectual swindlers" indulging in 1, and cites Moore's Utopia, Hobbe's Leviathan and Hegel's construct of history as demonstrating 2. The book is generally intriguing with occasional worthy aphoristic insights. It can be read in one enjoyable sitting.--S. O. H. (shrink)

In 1963-1964 the Carnegie Corporation awarded Grinnell College a grant to support new interdisciplinary programs. One of these was the "Interdisciplinary Seminar on Order." Scholars came from all over the country to lead discussions and read papers on some aspect of order as it related to their field. Various philosophers, historians, political scientists, psychologists, and people in religion, philosophy, and literature all took part. Philosophers show up under several of the book's headings. Paul Weiss has a short paper on some (...) paradoxes relating to order. Feibleman speaks on disorder. Ernan McMullin kicks off the history of science section discussing cosmic order in Plato and Aristotle. Monroe Beardsley has a paper on order and disorder in art. Hartshorne discusses, among other things, the reality of chance in his essay on order and chaos in the section on Religion and Ethics. Voegelin and Toynbee are naturals in this volume. They comprise the whole section on history. Among the twenty-two other contributors are Talcott Parsons and J. M. Kitagawa on world religions. There is an enterprising introduction by Kuntz in which he brings an historical approach to the problem of order. Somehow, in the process, he manages to tie in most of the other papers.--S. O. H. (shrink)

This volume of the Chicago series contains exercises in Religionswissenschaft which the book is at pains to distinguish from the so-called Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. After an introductory essay by Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade deservedly has the lead article, finding some familiar Religionswissenschaft themes in modern France's fascination with Teilhard, Levy-Straus, and the magazine Planète. Kitagawa's essay says a few things about Religionswissenschaft as a discipline, describing some things that all religions have in common and then briefly tracing three types of religious (...) experience which in some sense correspond to the historical development of man's religions. Many of the essays look into particular eastern or ancient religions. There is an essay by T. J. J. Altizer who combines his death-of-God rhetoric with a history of religions approach to talk about Christianity's internal incompatibilities. Tillich, in this his last public lecture, discusses the significance of Religionswissenschaft for the theologian. Most of the essays deal in some way with the hermeneutical problems of the discipline.--S. O. H. (shrink)

The Pegram Lectures at Brookhaven National Laboratory are designed to provide a forum to consider the question of the interaction among science, the humanities, and society at large. Just before Maurois was to deliver these lectures in 1967 he became fatally ill. However, the manuscript had been prepared and was delivered by Jacques Barzun. These lectures along with prefatory remarks by Barzun and E. Morot-Sir of the French Embassy comprise Illusions. There are three lectures by Maurois. The first begins by (...) cataloguing various everyday illusions, mostly optical. It discusses dreams, the difference between illusion and hallucination, the role of interpretation of reality in the creation of illusion, and the distinction between who we are as opposed to whom we play. In short it reminds us that, for various reasons, we do not see the world as it is. The second lecture shows how science tries to correct our distorted pictures of reality. Science is largely successful in this effort, says Maurois, although inasmuch as men need to interpret what science discovers, the door is still open for illusion. Moreover, inasmuch as scientists are men, science is not above producing some illusions of its own. The third and perhaps the most contrived lecture explores the world of willful illusions: the fine arts. Here Maurois suggests some differences and similarities between art and science, and explores the technological interaction between the two. He concludes that illusion will always be with us and that in fact it is "the stuff of which our life is made."-S. O. H. (shrink)

This book is a primer of contemporary philosophy of religion. It introduces in non-technical simplicity the four basic philosophical options which can inform a modern religious posture. The options are: process philosophy, phenomenology, language analysis, and existentialism. There is an introductory essay by the editor which describes the attitudes of Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and Tillich toward philosophy and its relation to theology. Hartshorne's essay on process philosophy sets forth the bare bones of his bipolar theism and presents his case that (...) it is necessary for the creatures to contribute to the enrichment of God. The phenomenology article is written by Quentin Lauer, S.J. He deals briefly with Husserl's methodology and its applicability to the investigation of "religious consciousness." He describes four styles of phenomenology of religion represented by James, Van der Leeuw, Otto, and Scheler. He also discusses briefly Teilhard de Chardin. In the next essay, Frederick Ferré uses Socrates as his point of departure for showing the relevance of language analysis for policing religious discourse, both theistic and christological. He is skeptical, however, as to whether language analysis can be considered a resource for Christian thought. He points out that because it is in the Socratic tradition it can better serve as a midwife. John Macquarrie contributes the chapter on existentialism, showing its anthropocentrism and its reluctance to develop a doctrine of God. All the essays, originally the Alden-Tuthill lectures at Chicago Theological Seminary, raise provocative, important, and basic questions. They would serve well as an introductory text or as a catalyst for class discussion.—S. O. H. (shrink)