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he has sometimes been guilty of reading his own thoughts into Kant. Although Kant's approach may be regarded as consistent in itself, it denies intellectual intuition and hence deprives metaphysics of its ground. This explains why Kant has to explore the possibility of a moral theology which, from Mou's view, will lead to nowhere but a dead end. As for Heidegger, he has completely lost sight of the transcendent and has failed in his attempt to reconstruct metaphysics. In the Chinese philosophical tradition, however, the transcendent and the immanent are conceived to be correlative to and interdependent on each other. Such being the case, intellectual intuition is not only possible, but a necessary presupposition for the three major traditions in China, namely, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Therefore, Mou takes the assertion of the metaphysical significance of intellectual intuition as a distinguishing mark of Chinese philosophy in distinction from Western philosophy. There have been three different Chinese views of intellectual intuition: the Confucian, the Taoist, and the Buddhist. Each would merit our careful consideration. Although Mou is a committed Neo-Confucian philosopher, he gives only little space to the Confucian view, since he has already written so much on the subject. In the chapter on Taoism, only the metaphysical aspect is emphasized, the cosmological aspect not being discussed. Maybe Mou feels that this aspect has only secondary importance for the Taoist tradition, and the most profound wisdom of the school lies in its metaphysical aspect. The best part of the book is its penetrating analysis of the Buddhist view of intellectual intuition through a careful examination of the T'ien-t'ai and the Hua-yen traditions. As his own temperament is nearer to T'ien-t'ai, and according to his judgment T'ien-t'ai best illustrates the so-called yuan-chiao (the perfect teachings) of Buddhism, Mou has devoted more than a hundred pages to an analysis of T'ient'ai's way of presenting and at the same time resolving the paradox of transcendence and immanence. Although difficult to read, this book should prove to be challenging for a student of comparative philosophy.
SHU-HSIEN LIU

Southern Illinois University

Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, by M. L. West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. xv + 256. $13.95. The single most important problem facing the student of pre-Socratic philosophy is that of reaching a general understanding of just what the pre-Socratic philosophers were undertaking: What are the general aims and assumptions which lie behind the fragments we possess? What is the general nature of the enterprise which these fragments represent? In a word, what is pre-Socratic philosophy, and how should we approach the pre-Socratic philosophers? This is the sort of problem to which West's book is addressed. The book contains several new interpretations of more or less specific points in Pherecydes (chaps. 1-2), Anaximander and Anaximenes (chap. 3), Heraclitus (chaps. 4-6), and even

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Xenophanes, Pythagoras, and Parmenides (chap. 7); but the overriding concern is always with the broader issue of understanding pre-Socratic philosophy as an enterprise. The thesis developed is that much of what is most distinctive or unique in early Greek philosophy is in fact due to heavy borrowing from (which amounts to an actual dependence upon) Eastern, chiefly Iranian, sources throughout the period c. 550-c. 480 B.c. (prior to this West sees moderate borrowing, subsequently none at all until Hellenistic times): for example, virtually all the elements in Anaximander's cosmography, cosmogony, and cosmology-the arrangement of the heavenly bodies, the rings of fire, the tdxis toi chronou, the apeiron itself-are traced back to antecedents in the mythico-poetic traditions of Near Eastern peoples. To see this in proper perspective, we can distinguish at least five views which enjoy, or have enjoyed, some degree of prominence in this connection: (1) the "Oriental Thesis" that early Greek philosophy derives all, or at least most, of its content through borrowings from Eastern sources of one kind or another-for example, Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Iranian, according to different versions of the thesis; (2) the "Greek Scientific Genius Thesis" that early Greek philosophy is a wholly indigenous phenomenon, arising out of a wave of rationalistic positivism and freethinking which is "characteristically Greek"; (3) the "Religion-to-Philosophy Thesis," that although early Greek philosophy indeed represents the first significant advance toward a scientific and secularized Weltanschauung, the pre-Socratic theories in fact derive their form and much of their content from a prephilosophic tradition which is at once mythico-poetic, sociodynamic, and religious; (4) the "Marxist Thesis" that early Greek philosophy is fundamentally an expression of the uncorrupted mind of homo faber in a kind of socioeconomic Garden of Eden, a time before man had tasted of the knowledge of slavery and surplus value; (5) the "Heideggerian Thesis" that early Greek philosophy is a lisping Heideggerianism. West's view is a version of (1), which is itself a thesis among others. It might seem surprising to find someone defending (1) in this day and age. Widely accepted during the "High 1800s," it suffered eclipse around the turn of the century, chiefly by the interposition of (2) by such scholars as Burnet. The death blow seemed to be dealt by Zeller-Nestle in the sixth edition of Philosophie der Griechen (1919-1920), so that a widely read book of the 1940s opens with the remark that "nobody really qualified to judge" takes this thesis seriously any more (A. H. Armstrong, Introduction to Ancient Philosophy 1947). West's version of (1) differs from earlier ones, however, not only in concentrating upon Iranian (as opposed to Egyptian, Babylonian, or Indian) sources, but also in employing fuller documentation and greater philological rigor. Indeed, the book contains a vast amount of information, and it is painstakingly assembled. Nevertheless, I think that West is less than successful in this attempt "to raise the subject suggested by the title out of the disrepute into which it has fallen" (p. vii). First of all, West's new interpretations, which often figure significantly in his overall argument, are not always presented in the most convincing manner. The complete rejection of any logos doctrine in Heraclitus, for example, requires a much stronger case than West provides; likewise such statements as: "The fact is that the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad alone throws more light on what Heraclitus was talk-

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Book Reviews

ing about than all the remains of the other Presocratic philosophers together" (p. 201). Secondly, West's view completely destroys the continuity of the history of philosophy throughout the whole period. West explains the pre-Socratic systems as resulting from independent borrowings from the East, as though Greek philosophers (for example, Anaximenes) paid no significant attention to other Greek philosophers (for example, Anaximander): "Presocratic thought was not like a boat steered by a succession of pilots, each trying to correct his predecessors' errors" (p. 99). West needs more than a metaphor about boats here. Indeed, if we view the history of philosophy philosophically, as a dialectical phenomenon in its own right, then West's position amounts to a denial of there having been a history of philosophy in this period at all. Thirdly, I do not believe that West establishes his "Oriental Thesis" as firmly as he is wont to claim. Whether we like it or not, we are in the realm of the eikos logos with this as with many another dimension of preSocratic philosophy: the evidence is through and through circumstantial; we cannot expect certainty in this area, and we should not write as though we have attained it. Finally, I do not believe that West or any other writer who subscribes to the Oriental Thesis has successfully addressed himself to the most important question of all, namely: What significance, if any, does this thesis have for the understanding of pre-Socratic philosophy ? Say that we accept West's contentions about the Eastern antecedents for such-and-such element in Anaximander's cosmology, what does this tell us about Anaximandros Philosophos? Anaximander was a philosopher; the bards and holy men who sang the to-be-incorporated elements were not philosophers. To understand Anaximander as a philosopher we must above all gain insight into the sort of question he was raising, his reason for raising it, and the sort of criteria of adequacy he was assuming for his answer. To be an important thesis in the history of philosophy, the Oriental Thesis must help us in gaining such insight. Perhaps it can do this; so far it has not.
E. D. HARTER

University of Hawaii

The Concept and Reality of Existence, by Toshihiko Izutsu. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1971. Pp. ii + 167. (Price not given.) Paper. This work, which is Volume XIII of the Keio Institute's Studies in the Humanities and Social Relations, brings together four essays written by Izutsu in recent years. As indicated by the title of the collection, the essays focus on the concept of existence (wujid). The study is further restricted to Islamic thought, particularly Persian, in the post-Mongol period. "The Basic Structure of Metaphysical Thinking in Islam," the first of the four essays, contrasts the Muslim notion of the reality of existence with the view of the accidentality of existence, mistakenly attributed to Ibn Sina (Avicenna) by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas. The notion of the "reality of existence" demands that existence itself (wujad) be taken as the sole subject and that existents,