NEW BOOKS

There are two points on which Duncan-Jones seems definitely mistaken.

He says (pp. 61-2) "the requirement—that self-love should be enlightened
by knowledge and good judgment—he seems entirely to have overlooked."
On the contrary, Butler uses the ignorance of man as a reason for trusting
conscience rather than self-love; he devotes Sermon XV to the question,
and his express remarks on it are frequent (e.g. "there are numberless cases
in which, notwithstanding appearances, we are not competent judges whether
a particular action will upon the whole do good or harm" (II, p. 188, cp.
pp. 13-14, 221, etc.). Secondly, although Duncan-Jones is correct in saying
that Butler does not believe there are any inherently bad principles in men,
his view that Butler failed to recognize "real ill-will" seems not to take note
of the lengthy treatment in Sermons VII and X of the fact that men "will and
can be wicked with calmness and thought; we see they are" (II, p. 113,
cp. pp. 16, 69, 107, 109, 112, 146-7, 149, etc.).
But none of these errors of interpretation suffices to injure the merits of
this pleasant, clear, and logical work. ALAN R. WHITE.

A History of Philosophy. By FRANK THILLY. Revised by Ledger Wood,

(George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1952. Pp. xx + 658. Price 40s.)
In his preface to the revised edition of Professor Thilly's history of
philosophy Professor Wood of Princeton University draws attention to the
objectivity and impartiality manifested in the work. This objective attitude
has been retained; and the result is a good straightforward one-volume history
of philosophy which should prove useful to students. I doubt if one could call
it an entertaining work. But it seems to me to be a reliable, sensible and clear
statement of the opinions of the successive philosophers. And I imagine that
students will find it of considerably more practical utility as a source of
information than some impressionistic survey which tells the reader more
about the author's personal reactions than about the opinions of the philoso-
phers dealt with.
A certain amount of fresh material has been added in this revised edition,
chiefly, of course, by Professor Wood himself but in the case of some sections
by other writers. For example, there is a new section on Nietzsche by Professor
Walter A. Kaufmann. Professor Wood has added material on Kant, existenti-
alism, modern positivism, German phenomenology, "recent British realism"
{including Moore, Russell and Whitehead) and recent American realism. New
material has also been added in the earlier parts of the work, and a number of
sections have been rewritten. Bibliographies have been brought more up to
date.
While I hold no brief for dialectical materialism, it seems to me somewhat
odd that it receives only one very brief mention, in the section entitled
"Hegelian Schools." "What was once rational, Marx reasoned, becomes
irrational in the process of evolution: private property, which was once right
and rational, will be superseded and overcome as a result of the dialectical-
logical process of history." Surely Marxism is of sufficient importance to merit
more attention than this, especially when some twelve pages are devoted to
Hegel. As for existentialism, exception might be taken to the broad statement
that "existentialism is a philosophy of disillusion and despair" and that it is a
"philosophy of nihilism which literally reduces all human endeavour to
naught." This may be true of some brands of existentialism; but the term
"existentialism" is a portmanteau word, and a statement -which is true of one
brand of it may not be true of another brand.
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 PHILOSOPHY
Some statements might be reconsidered; for example, the statement that
Aristotle's work On the Soul consists of eight books. And the bibliographies
might, perhaps, be again revised. For instance, there is a later and much better
edition of GUson's work on Aquinas than the 1924 edition mentioned. It is
true that the large new edition is so far available only in French; but in the
same bibliography the French title of a work by P. Rousselot (called Rouselot
through a misprint) is mentioned, though there is an English translation. I
have noticed one or two omissions in the index. Thus Carnap's name does not
appear there, though he is mentioned in the section on recent positivistic
tendencies. But these are minor points, of course, and do not affect the general
merits of the work as an excellent and useful text-book.
FREDERICK C. COPLESTON.

Philosophic Thought in France and the United States. Essays representing

Major Trends in Contemporary French and American Philosophy.
Edited by MARVIN FARBER. (University of Buffalo Publications in
Philosophy. 1950. Pp. x + 775. Price $7.50.)
The first part of this work consists of eighteen essays by French philosophers,
followed by "An American Reaction to the Present Situation in French
Philosophy" by Professor R. McKeon. The second part contains eighteen
essays by American philosophers, followed by "Reflections of a French
Philosopher on the Preceding American Essays" by Professor A. Lalande,
author of the well-known Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie.
Some of the essays are mainly descriptive, like Robert Campbell's paper on
existentialism in France since the Liberation or Professor Edel's account of
some trends in American naturalistic ethics. Others are predominantly
expositions of the authors' own points of view, like Rene Le Senne's paper on
"La philosophie de I'esprit," Louis Lavelle's "The Three Stages of Metaphysics"
or Felix Kaufmann's "Basic Issues in Logical Positivism." At the end of
practically all the essays there is a selected bibliography. There was to have
been a contribution on the philosophy of science in France by Professor
Gaston Bachelard; but as he was prevented by accidental circumstances from
writing it. Professor Lalande contributed instead a bibliography of relevant
works.
There is, probably inevitably, some considerable overlapping, though this
remark applies, I think, more to the French than to the American essays.
Thinkers like Sartre, Marcel, Blondel, Bergson and Maritain are discussed in
several places. But their several contributions to philosophy are by no means
always evaluated in the same way. For example, while in the opinion of one
writer Bergson's philosophy exercised a "visible liberating influence," in the
opinion of Professor Cornu it is "the ideological expression of the decadent
bourgeoisie." If M. Cornu's standpoint was not already clear from this remark,
it would be sufficiently indicated by saying that he now holds a chair in the
university of Leipzig. Again, while for Professor Dum6ry Maritain is, in a
complimentary sense, "first and foremost a logician," the logical tradition
which he represents is elsewhere criticized as being too closely associated with
a specific ontology in which no distinction is made between the process of
speech and the process of thought and which is "impervious to the under-
standing of anything outside the pre-established framework of language."
Whichever set of papers one takes, the French or the American, one will, of
course, discover considerable differences in philosophical outlook. In spite,
however, of internal differences the two sets of papers clearly represent two
philosophic traditions, manifested in different idioms and approaches. Perhaps
362