276 BOOK EEVIEWS

in question and of those systems which they oppose, and then concentrates on the
existentialist vocabulary and conceptual framework.
The attempt to discover an existentialist ' table of categories ' is specifically French
in the manner of its execution, known to the English reader through Emmanuel Mou-
nier's Existentialist Philosophies (1948). Like Mounier, Wahl concentrates on generalities
and problems, and is, like him, so imbued with the spirit of Hegelian dialectic, t h a t he
is not satisfied until he has arranged his categories in the beautiful order of triads.
But whereas Mounier's book is sweeping, provocative, highly personal and flavoured
with his own personalist philosophy, Wahl's survey is somewhat pedestrian, based on
a greater specialist knowledge, scholarly, detached, and moving on a higher level of
abstraction. The conceptual approach has its advantages and disadvantages. I t has
the disadvantage of cutting the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre

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and Marcel into pieces which are by no means identical, but merely analogous. The
consequence is that in the end the analysis is restricted to Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre,
and that in spite of this restriction generalisations emerge, which, strictly speaking, are
not correct. If, for example, we read : ' L'idee de projet est essentialle a la philosophie
de Sartre et aussi essentielle a la philosophie de Heidegger ' (p. 77), this is only true
with qualifications of Heidegger's first period, but not of his last writings. Wahl's
method has the further disadvantage t h a t the choice of words included in the vocab-
ulary as well as in the table of categories is somewhat arbitrary. That for instance
' scandal ' figures in the vocabulary is very French, b u t unwarranted ; and it is difficult
to understand why the central concept of' estrangement ' is missing from the categories,
although, in the wake of Hegel and Marx, it has dominated existentialist thought from
Kierkegaard to the present day.
On the other hand, the advantages of this approach are considerable. Concepts
such as existence, transcendence, choice, liberty, communication, subjective truth,
paradox and ambiguity, and their different uses by these authors are discussed. The
book is rich in illuminating comparisons which shed new light on details, and deserves
close study by those who have already some knowledge of the works under discussion.
The emerging general picture of these philosophies as philosophies de I'ichec and phil-
osophies de VambiguM is less convincing, b u t I am in agreement with the conclusion
t h a t the problematic character of these philosophies draws our attention to fundamental
philosophical problems.
Paradoxically, the most interesting point in this book is its title. The specific French
contribution was the transformation of the German Existenzphilosophie into Marcel's
Christian existentialism and Sartre's atheist existentialism. Sartre has, however, brought
the term ' existentialism ' into such discredit t h a t Heidegger, Jaspers and Marcel now
decline to be called existentialists, and t h a t Jaspers remarks t h a t existentialism is
the end of the philosophy of existence. The simple reversion to the original title is,
however, no solution of the problem. On the contrary, it reveals more t h a n it conceals
the crisis of this movement which Wahl does not mention. I n fact, Heidegger's ' new
ontology ', Jaspers's new ' philosophy of reason ', Sartre's ' atheistic humanism ' and
Marcel's ' neo-Socratism ' are beyond ' the philosophy of existence ' as well as beyond
' existentialism '. W h a t we need is not a retrogression to philosophies of existence,
but an advance to a new analysis of those existential problems which, as Wahl admirably
shows, are of vital importance.
F. H. HEINEMANN

The Nihilism of John Dewey. By PAUL K. CBOSSER. (New York : Philosophical Library.
1955. P p . xi + 238. Price $3.75).

Although Dewey died quite recently, his pragmatism, or instrumentalism, seems in

retrospect to be very much the philosophy of a past epoch in American history, the
product of the self-confident, materialistic days when there still was a physical ' fron-
tier ' presenting a succession of problems to be solved. His doctrines have not in recent
years attracted much attention in this country (although they were still being refuted
in the General Logic Class at St. Andrews in 1930), b u t the symposium edited by P. A.
Schilpp in 1939, reprinted in 1951, would indicate that in America Dewey is still
important. I n the educational world his influence was immense. But even the ' Pro-
gressive ' movement in American education would seem to have largely spent its force,
and the inevitable reaction has begun. The attack has come from several sides : for
one thing, Dewey's views on religion are not at present fashionable ; and the fall in
standards in American and Canadian secondary schools has moved several people in
the academic world to write in protest.
I n this book Paul Crosser, a Columbia Ph.D., tries to show how Dewey's views on
epistemology, and especially his doctrine of the ' continuum ', leads to such an all-round
 BOOK REVIEWS 277
blurring of distinctions and such a destruction of standards that the result is chaos.
I n chapters 1-3 this treatment is applied to Dewey's epistemology, psychology, and
sociology ; in chapters 4-6 to his aesthetics ; in chapters 7 and 8 to his philosophy of
education. Crosser limits himself to three of Dewey's many worksLogic, the Theory
of Inquiry, Art as Experience, and Experience and Education, but has satisfied himself
(p. 235) t h a t Dewey's other works ' contain either fragments of restatements of the
conceptions which have been dealt with in this critical exposition or refer to matter
which is extraneous to Dewey's over-riding cognitive proposition of Extreme Relativism '.
I t cannot be said t h a t the thing is well done. Dewey's own style is rebarbative,
but it is better than Crosser's. The argument is not marshalled in any way ; it proceeds
in jerky sentences, each a paragraph in itself, which often contain a quotation from
Dewey and Crosser's rejoinder. The result is reminiscent of an ancient scholiast;

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indeed, were the three works in question ever lost, the relevant chapters could largely
be reconstructed from Crosser, just as Neumann produced Julian's Against the Oali-
laeans from Cyril of Alexandria. The expression is often repetitive and cumbersome
(e.g. p. 198' By virtue of the overextension of the range of the generalization of the
factor of objective conditions '), and there are countless irritating variations for ' Dewey
says ', such as ' D. amplifies ', ' D. qualifies ', ' D. elaborates ', ' D. consoles himself ',
' D. underscores ', and so on. Perhaps it is pedantic to object to such a phrase as ' by
his rooting for having the cognition and perception of time sequence eliminated ', but
there are what must be grammatical solecisms even across the Atlantic ; misprints are
frequent; and the punctuation is sometimes very odd.
A certain amount of Crosser's attack is legitimate enough. I t is true, for example,
that Dewey often used common words in uncommon senses (p. 9), and that his analysis
of what is involved in knowing is unplausible. I t is also true that he was too ready to
assimilate all human activity to the pattern of a scientific experiment. But I am not
sure t h a t Crosser always grasps Dewey's meaning, and he sometimes seems to distort
it, for example on p. 223, where he fails to explain that the progressive educationists,
whom he credits with a ' firm opposition to the effectuation of the ultra-relativistic
undifferentiation principle in regard to educational theory and practice ' are the fol-
lowers (often the blind followers) of Dewey himself ; and on p. 225, where he uses ' pro-
jection ' as the equivalent of Dewey's ' project ' (a technical term of the new pedagogy) ;
and p. 226, where he seems to imply t h a t Dewey's ' nihilism ' went the length of in-
ability to distinguish between one person and another. Crosser's piecemeal attack gives
the impression of arguing for arguing's sake, and Dewey would almost certainly have
replied (cf. his apologia in Schilpp's book) that his arguments should be taken as a
whole. Curiously enough, apart from one reference to Aristotle, Crosser does not mention
any other writer than Dewey in the whole book.
Dewey was a considerable figure, if sometimes a misguided one ; his work does
invite and deserve attack, b u t hardly of this kind.
J. W. L. ADAMS

The Philosophy of Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Edited by P. A. SCHILPP. (New

York : Tudor Publishing Co. Library of Living Philosophers. Cambridge :
University Press. 1952. P p . xvi + 883. Price 63s).

The Library of Living Philosophers has already departed from its early practice of
confining its attention to philosophers in the strict and narrow sense. Three of its earlier
volumes dealt with such undoubted philosophers as Moore, Whitehead and Russell.
The series then produced a volume on Albert Einstein, probably the greatest scientific
thinker of the century, but hardly a philosopher's philosopher. Radhakrishnan is also
far from being the typical contemporary philosopher. But unlike Einstein, his academic
training was philosophical and he has been a teacher and professor of philosophy (in
the broad sense). W h a t sharply differentiates Radhakrishnan from the average aca-
demic philosopher is his literary fecundity on the one hand (he has published about
27 books and a great number of articles) and, on the other hand, the fact that, like
Thomas Masaryk before him, an accident of politics thrust him out of academic philo-
sophy into great offices of state. Radhakrishnan has served the Republic of India as
its Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., and, since 1952, as its Vice-President. He has become
the philosopher-statesman of t h a t great nation whose ancient caste-system dominated
by priest-kings may have inspired the social stratification of Plato's Republic. Like
Indian philosophy itself, Radhakrishnan's writings reveal breadth of vision, subtlety
of mind and a fund of religious sense. He has long been known in the West as the
foremost exponent of the Indian philosophical tradition, as a prophet of universal
religion and as a friend of Mahatma Gandhi. He is rather less well known, at least in
the United Kingdom, in his role of statesman. The volume under review is prefaced