1 comments about Socrates.

1. Alfred Edward Taylor was the son of a Methodist minister, who was educated at Oxford and taught moral philosophy. He spent his last years teaching at Edinburgh, where he died in 1945. He was a leading authority on Plato.
   
   This brief popular study of Socrates was first published in Britain in 1933. It is divided into four sections.
   
   In the first section, on Socrates' early life, Taylor creates a very full picture of Socrates in his younger years, much more specific than most modern experts believe is justified. But he marshals the circumstantial evidence supporting his case well, and it is interesting to read.
   
   In the next section, covering Socrates' trial and death, Taylor does a good job of elucidating the political and legal issues of the trial. He thinks that Socrates' accusers truly believed that Socrates was a threat to the Athenian state, and were not acting merely out of personal spite, although they probably intended to force Socrates into exile rather than execute him. He believes the jury was taken by surprise by Socrates' refusal to go peacefully, that he forced the issue in a direction they did not anticipate, and finally succeeded in angering enough of them that a majority condemned him to death. Even then, the door was left open for exile via a secret escape from prison, which any normal person would have taken. They had not anticipated how unlike most men Socrates was.
   
   In the final section, Taylor elaborates on Socrates' thinking, attributing to him ideas, such as the doctrine of the Forms and his conception of the Soul, that modern authorities would consider Plato's.
   
   Taylor presents a point of view of the study of Plato (and of Plato's teacher, Socrates) that was once widely held. The Ancient Graeco-Roman world comes down to us only in fragile and very incomplete form, so that in some ways it acts as a sort of "cultural Rorschach test", by which the values of the interpretor and his times are projected back onto the Classical world, with results that are often impossible either to fully verify or completely disprove.
   
   Many thinkers have shared Taylor's vision of Socrates as a spiritual figure, a sort of pagan Jesus Christ, and there is no doubt that the Western intellectual tradition begins with Socrates. This alone makes Taylor's book well worth reading.

No comments about William James: His Life and Thought.

1 comments about Tillich (Outstanding Christian Thinkers).

1. This is truly an exquisite Tillich-monography! John Heywood Thomas, who studied with Tillich and remained friends with Tillich until Tillich's death, provides us with an in-depth account of the life and work of Paul Tillich (1886-1965), the remarkable philosopher-theologian who implemented the thought of Schelling, Kant and Hegel, just to name the most prominent of his philosophical influences, directly and explicitly into the theological discourse of the twentieth century. Apart from accounting for these influences, Heywood Thomas interprets Tillich's many points of contact with some of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Heidegger, Otto, Bultmann, Adorno and Barth. Though not as extensive as some of the older, established commentaries on Tillich (such as J L Adams' famous commentary, Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Culture, Science and Religion [New York: Harper and Row, 1965] or the earliest, and still the most valuable, collection of essays on Tillich's work, The Theology of Paul Tillich [Kegley, C & Bretall, R W eds., New York: MacMillan, 1952]), Heywood Thomas' book should to my opinion be regarded as the most penetrating and illuminating account to date of Tillich's extraordinary ability to exploit hardcore philosophical concepts within the realm of theology. These concepts include phenomenology into a "phenomenological theology", existentialism and critical theory into Tillich's own theological theories of "existence" and "estrangement", Neo-Marxist critique into a "theology of culture" and, famously, his "ontological approach" to Christology and salvation. Paul Tillich was indeed a remarkable and unique theologian, exactly because he was as much at home in a philosophical discussion as he was in the pulpit and seemed as keenly interested in art and politics as he was in his life-work as a professional theologian. The book consists of ten chapters, each dealing with a predominant theme in Tillich's work. Chapter 1 (Tillich's life and career) provides the reader with the kind of biographical information which could be considered as crucial for understanding Tillich's philosophical inclinations and his areas of specialization in theology. Tillich's experience of the trench warfare in World War I, for example, had a fundamental impact on his psyche and contributed substantially to him taking leave of the claims of traditional Protestant theology or, at the very least, his reinterpretation of Lutheran theology (pp. 5-10). Actually, it was the war experience that initiated his progressive activist attitude in politics and the church. Much ado has been made of Tillich's debauchery and his infamous erotic experiences with women directly after his wife, Grethi, left him in 1919 (p.9). Heywood Thomas puts this tragic phase of Tillich's life in sympathetic perspective. He certainly was an ambiguous character though: His arrogant personality and lifelong prone to vanity stands in sharp contrast with the gentleness those close to him came to know. He had always been very quick in expression of self-defence and very sensitive to criticism, easily accusing anyone who did not agree with him as personally hostile to him. On the other hand, he was an excellent lecturer and companion. On the one hand, he displayed an unconscious egocentricity which had always been typical of him. On the other hand, he showed himself to be extremely generous. Heywood Thomas contextualizes this complex character in the world of German (and later American) university life, showing that Tillich was many things, a man as complex as his work. I found this first chapter invaluable, not because of a biographical sketch one can read elsewhere, but because Heywood Thomas delicately links up the man with his surroundings and the texts that influenced him so deeply. In chapter 2 (p.28) Heywood Thomas discusses the interconnection of theology, revolution and culture in Tillich's work. It is tempting to begin characterizing Tillich's theology by describing it as a theology of culture, to be distinguished as such from the theology of his contemporary, friend and colleague Karl Barth. Heywood Thomas shows that this contra-Barthian depiction of Tillich's theology has been his fate as a theologian and that this fundamental contrast has lead to a misinterpretation of both theologies. This simple opposition of the two theologies has been an unfortunate misinterpretation of both - Barth's as much as Tillich's. Barth's protest was not against culture but against a simplistic correlation of Christianity and culture. Likewise Tillich was as concerned to spell out a theological critique of culture as he was to rediscover the vitality of theology in an engagement with culture. Heywood Thomas looks carefully at Tillich's argument and represents it with eloquence and style. Being educated in the Barthian tradition myself, at least to a very large extent, I found this chapter to be the most informative in terms of understanding the idiosyncrasies in Tillich's thought; especially with regards to the way in which he seems to re-implement philosophical concepts directly into archaic theological categories. This is compulsory reading for those who still understand Tillich and Barth as being in direct opposition to each other. The situation is much more complex and nuanced than we are led to believe by some Barthians in particular. ...

No comments about William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-84 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History).

2 comments about Three Critics of the Enlightenment.

1. Following that dictum, I might point out that, especially in two areas of contemporary concern, Hamann's thought is highly relevant: Oswald Bayer has shown in Autoritaet und Kritik (1991) that Hamann's hermeneutics -- antedating by two centuries Derrida's reflections on intertextuality -- provides the basis for a devastating critique of deconstruction by subverting the French thinker's concept of the "center," and demonstrating where the true center ("Mitte") is to be located. Further, there is presently a lively discussion among scholars of Hamann's critique of Kant's famous essay: "What is Enlightenment"? Berlin's present study would have done more justice to Hamann's thought by discussing such developments as these and others, which were available during his lifetime.



2. My review is limited to the study of Johann Georg Hamann in the present volume, and the three star rating applies to it alone. Combining Isaiah Berlin's books on Vico, Hamann and Herder under one cover was a felicitous idea of Berlin's editor and literary executor Henry Hardy. The position which these thinkers share: their anti-Cartesianism, their emphasis on history, tradition, language and mythology may now be seen through the considerably different lenses they employ. I feel compelled, however, to register a caveat. When the present Hamann study appeared in book form in 1993, I expressed my reservations about it in a letter to the "New York Review of Books," to which Berlin replied. I lamented the fact that he had ignored modern Hamann scholarship, and had clung to the interpretation of Hamann as an irrationalist, especially that espoused by Rudolf Unger in his 1911 book,"Hamann und die Aufklaerung,"ignoring modern discussions of the "dialectic of the Enlightenment." Specialists in the field now consider Unger's interpretation outdated, and see Hamann as a champion of one side of the Enlightenment, albeit a severe critic of its other, extremely rationalistic, side.

   The question of Hamann's relation to the Enlightenment turns on the conception of reason. I have maintained that Hamann employed a mode of reason distinct from that of the rationalistic Enlighteners as well as from that of his friendly adversary,Kant. In order to designate that mode, I adopted a term once used by Kant in referring to Hamann's thought,i.e., "intuitive reason," or, in the original German, "anschauende Vernunft." I accepted the term as an apt one for Hamann's mode of thought, however Kant felt about it. Further, I have demonstrated how it can be linguistically distinguished from the traditional logico-mathematical mode of thought in my book "The Quarrel of Reason with Itself"(1988),and elsewhere. It is one which Berlin rightly sees as akin to Dilthey's "verstehen," which Berlin also rejects. He lists a group of philosophers whose conception of reason matches his own: Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill, Franz von Brentano, William James, Bertrand Russell and the "Vienna Circle." Most of these thinkers are about as far removed from any kind of "verstehen" as possible. Who then, besides Hamann, may be said to have employed what I have called "intuitive reason"? The prime examples are the great epistemological heirs of Hamann: Goethe and Nietzsche. Goethe belongs here because of his refusal to analyze the "Urphaenomen." Hence, his anti-Newtonian stance. Nietzsche, especially in "Zarathustra," which I have analyzed closely from the standpoint of intuitive reason in "Nietzsche and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition"(1985).

   Having stated my reservations concerning Berlin's interpretation of Hamann, I must say, however, that we can be grateful that he has helped mightily to rescue that German philosopher from the obscurity to which he has been unjustly relegated by those who remain under the spell of the strictly rationalistic wing of the Enlightenment. Berlin, in spite of his basic lack of empathy with Hamann, not only recognized his importance, but was always fascinated by him. He was an early and enthusiastic subscriber to "The Hamann News-Letter," which I edited and published in the early 195O's and 196O's. Further, his correspondence with me regarding Hamann over a period of three and a half decades shows an unflagging interest in the man who both attracted and repelled him. In a letter to me of June 25,1972, he wrote: "My passion for Hamann is undiminished." Not too surprisingly, there are certain passages in the present book in which Berlin seems, unwittingly, to move toward a certain degree of empathy,hence to a kind of "verstehen." But such passages are few, and many others are unjustly harsh. Nevertheless, for all its shortcomings, Berlin's study of Hamann is valuable for introducing the reader, especially the anglophone reader, to the historically important pre-Romantic figure, known as "The Magus of the North," without whom the development of German Romanticism would be unthinkable, and whose insights increasingly bear fruit today, especially in theology and philosophy. As Berlin has said: "Hamann repays study."

No comments about Bursting Bonds: The Autobiography of a "New Negro" (African American Intellectual Heritage Series).

No comments about C. I. Lewis in Focus: The Pulse of Pragmatism (American Philosophy).

3 comments about Walter Benjamin: A Biography.

1. Benjamin deserves much better than this! With so much material to work from, I can't see how the author managed to produce such a dull account of one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers. Benjamin travelled widely, worked outside of academia, experimented with drugs, etc., etc., and generally led anything but a dull life, and certainly not unexamined life. It is the kind of book one should perhaps produce a la Benjamin's own fantasy of a book composed entirely of quotations.



2. Although it provides much information, the book manages to avoid insight, both into Benjamin's remarkable writing and into his difficult relationships, both human and cultural. It is hard to follow any thread through these pages. Its place is on the shelf, as a reference work for biographies we are still expecting.



3. Brodersen is a bibliographer, and this tome is a bibliographer's compendium. More troubling than the lack of original research are two lacunae: his failure to offer virtually any interpretation of Benjamin's writings and his consistent misjudgements about Benjamin's motives and relationships. Whether the Work of Art essay, the Trauerspiel book, or the essay of Goethe's Elective Affinities, texts are for Brodersen no more than dates in a chronicle of events. The abiding enigma of his steel-like bond with the younger, insistent Scholem, the dearth of information about the Paris years, his political and philosophical vacillations, his ambivalences about Jewishness and Judaism -- these and other fundamental questions are rarely answered, and if so, then impressionistically. Deeply unsatisfying are also the stamp-size, poorly reproduced photographs, especially for a work about one of the preeminent visual theorists of the early part of this century. The only serious biographical treatment of Benjamin, however fragmentary, still remains "Benjaminia", regrettably only available in German.

No comments about Conversaciones con Platon/ Coffee with Plato (Conversaciones Con... / Coffee With...).

No comments about The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau Volume 1 (Large Print).