BOOK REVIEWS

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1

GENERAL PHILOSOPHY

The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility and Mystery

By .
Clarendon Press, 2002. x + 372 pp. 30.00
David E. Coopers ambitious book addresses the enduring philosophical
questionIs there a way the world anyway is, irrespective of how we take it
to be? (p. 1). Cooper renders intelligible the complex history and persistent
appeal of the negative answer to this question, which he somewhat unexpectedly labels humanism, pitting it against its main rival, absolutism, in
a battle which neither side ultimately wins. For Cooper links the epistemological
and metaphysical question of humanitys relationship to the world directly to
vital questions about value, meaning and purpose in a way which leads him
to evaluate both positions as hubristic, that is, insufficiently attentive to
boundaries of philosophical reflection set by our cognitive limitations and
moral requirements. He concludes by sketching and defending the doctrine
of mystery, which posits a kind of independently existent but ineffable
emptiness, towards which the appropriate stance is humility. While Coopers
wholesale negative arguments and necessarily vague positive recommendations may do little to stop philosophers endless tinkering with various versions
of realism or existentialism, his efforts give us plenty to pause and reflect
upon. For this is a very unusual, and very successful book, in several respects:
its enlightening genealogy of humanism, its use of diverse philosophical traditions, its forging of links among important questions and concerns which
have thus far been studied in isolation, and the sheer dizzying fun to be had
just from trying to take it all in.
The first several chapters of the book provide a philosophical history of
humanism, from its nascent mediaeval form in Ockham to the contemporary existential version Cooper develops from various sources, including the
later Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and surprisingly, Donald Davidson and
John McDowell. Existential humanism is committed to the idea that there is
a special non-contingent intimacy, much like the intimacy between language
speakers and their language, between the human being and his or her world,
such that human being should be understood in terms of a purposive
engagement with a world that could not be encountered or experienced at all
in the absence of that engagement (p. 107). Further, the conditions for the
very possibility of detached spectatorial knowledge favoured by the antihumanists are the ongoing unreflective practices through which both human
beings and the discursable world emerge.
Before addressing the most uncomfortable part of existential humanism,
namely the abandonment of the dream of an independent world by which to
measure our beliefs and practices, Cooper considers absolutism, the idea that
we have the capacity, already approximately realized, to provide an account
of the world that is both true . . . and clean (free from contamination by the
interests, purposes, and values to which our engaged descriptions of the world
inevitably owe) (p. 174). The main absolutist in Coopers sights is the scientific
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realist, who contends that nonscientific explanations of the world are false
or, at best, merely perspectival. Cooper agrees with the humanists that such
scientific realists are guilty of hubris of belief for assuming that there is no
possible form of life whose modes of explanation cannot be reconciled with
our scientific hypotheses. The scientific realist illicitly puts himself in the position
of a cognitively advanced super-explainer, the only position from which one
could have reason to think that scientific realism is the only theory which can give
explanatory answers to the questions human beings ask about their world.
Existentialist humanism, however, fares no better, as it is guilty of hubris
of posture. Humanism supposes, wrongly, that it is possible to live the
uncompensated or dis-incumbrenced stance it takes towards the human
world (p. 252). While other commentators frame the problem in terms of
foundations or grounds, Cooper is concerned rather that by enlarging humanitys responsibility for the world, humanism shrinks our answerability to
something beyond ourselves (p. 254). Without a source of significance beyond
human beings themselves, chains of significations (moral sentiments, social
norms, concrete practices) will themselves lose their meaning, rendering our
commitments and purposes ultimately indefensible and our wills to keep and
pursue them shaken. Since the demand for answerability cannot be overcome,
the posture that humanism asks us to take is unendurable.
Having argued that both absolutism and humanism are false, Cooper offers
a third way: a doctrine of mystery, according to which there is an essentially
non-discursive reality independent of human cognition. This is meant to satisfy
both the human need for answerability and the requirement of humility. The
challenge is to say something interesting about it without undermining ones
own argument by effing the ineffable. To do this, Cooper draws heavily on the
Mahayana school of Buddhism, and also on the later Heidegger. He explores
the notion of emptiness as a way of calling to mind the kinds of experiences
in which mystery becomes present. This section contains nuanced, interwoven
meditations on transparency, grace, and epiphany as metaphors for emptiness.
Cooper walks a very fine line here, but he cannot avoid it. Since mystery
is supposed to provide measure for the comportments and conceptions of
human lives, it cannot be left unexplored. Unfortunately, what he does have
to say about the kind of guidance mystery can provide is quite vague and
undeveloped. Even ethicists who have abandoned the idea that philosophy
can provide universal, yet action-guiding moral rules may be concerned that
the concept of consonance with the experience of mystery, (which requires
prolonged periods of calm concentration and detachment) cannot be
brought to bear on anything besides theory choice at the most abstract
philosophical levels. Cooper, who has led readers in a most compelling and
philosophically astute way through thickets of debates from Ockham to
Foucault, hopes that his re-working of the later Heidegger and Buddhist
thought can re-vision humanitys relation with non-human aspects of reality.
However, to the extent that a critical examination of human social relations
is still necessary (if no longer sufficient) for any ethic, getting from mystery
to measure is a journey yet to be undertaken.

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Richard Rorty
Edited by and .
Cambridge University Press, 2003. xiv + 206 pp. 40.00 cloth, 14.99 paper
Richard Rorty
By
Acumen, 2002. xxii + 202 pp. 40.00 cloth, 12.95 paper
Alan Malachowskis Richard Rorty is part of Acumens appealing Philosophy
Now series, which offers succinct, well-presented introductions to major
figures in contemporary philosophy. Malachowski is well qualified to write the
Rorty volume, having made his name as a Rorty specialist by editing and
contributing to Reading Rorty (Blackwell 1990), one of the two best collections
of papers on Rorty (along with Robert Brandoms Rorty and his Critics (Blackwell
2000)).
An inordinate amount of time is wasted at the start of this book: the
first forty four pages could have been cut with little loss. In the preface,
Malachowski engages in intellectual autobiography. Then after the introduction, which is about the approach Malachowski intends to take rather
than about Rorty per se, Chapter 1 focuses on Rortys own autobiographical
piece, Trotsky and the Wild Orchids. So it is not until Chapter 2 that the
reader learns anything substantial about Rorty.
We are told that the present book does not even attempt to portray the
real Rorty (p. 3), only a particular Rorty (p. 10), and that Rortys antiessentialism calls for such an approach. This is misleading. Imagine a book
portraying Rorty as a Cartesian dualist. Surely we can agree that this particular Rorty is not the real Rorty (but rather textual vandalism (p. 96)),
whether we go on to explain this by the book failing to correspond to Rortys
intentions, or by the interpretation offered not being very useful. Pragmatists
can make sense of getting it right too.
Malachowski says that he intends to introduce his particular interpretation
of Rorty in relative protective isolation from conventional, hyper-critical
reactions (p. 8). Being Hyper-critical is arguing against Rortys position with
conventional philosophical arguments, for Malachowski thinks that Rortys
conception of philosophy represents a Kuhnian paradigm shift to a stance
incommensurate with conventional criticism. I do not think Rorty sees his
work like this (see the introduction to his Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers,
Volume 3, esp. p. 10). Moreover, it is an interpretation which does his work
no favours. Rorty is a critic of traditional philosophical problems, who engages
with the work of his contemporaries, supporting some (Davidson, Dennett)
and attacking others (Searle, Nagel). He is not some guru with whom we may
only concur. Malachowski labels as extremist anyone who thinks Rorty is
either arguing a case or not arguing a case (pp. 634), a conundrum easily
avoided by saying that he is arguing a non-traditional, pragmatist case, using
historicism and redescription (as later described: p. 109). It is in pragmatist
opposition to the tradition that his thought is most powerful, and it is simple
sophistry to suggest that the non-pragmatists he attacks are making some sort
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of mistake if they argue back from any basis except that of the pragmatism
they oppose.
Things take a distinct turn for the better from Chapter 2 onwards, mainly
because Malachowski strays from the programme he has set out, and starts
explaining Rortys arguments. This is done very well (especially pp. 6882),
though there are significant lapses (Rortys famous Antipodean argument is
mentioned but not explained). Malachowski is at his best later in the book,
when explaining the themes of the weird and wonderful (p. 126) Contingency,
Irony, and Solidarity, Rortys attempt to practice what he had preached. Here
are the seeds of the particular Rorty Malachowski likes. But it is downhill
again in Chapter 6, as Malachowski tries to deconstruct some of Rortys
critics: the story about how Thomas Nagel might come around to Rortys
view, which ends with Nagel resolving to ask Rorty if Derridas The Post Card
reads well in translation (p. 167), is particularly hard to take seriously, but
typifies Malachowskis approach.
In conclusion, I doubt this book will prove useful. Analytic philosophers
wanting to know more about Rorty will find the style irritating, and are likely
to have all their worst suspicions confirmed (the comparisons between Rortys
philosophy and John Cages silence (pp. 8 and 179)also alleged to elude
traditional criticismcertainly will not help), while more general readers will
be frustrated by gaps in the explanations (such as the perfunctory account of
Quines two dogmas (p. 52)).
Guignon and Hileys Richard Rorty is a solid collection of papers, made
special by a substantial and particularly lucid editors introduction. This introduction provides a reliable overview of Rortys work, and simple, cogent
explanations of some of the main ideas Rorty has adopted and made central
to his work, i.e. Quine on the analytic/synthetic distinction, Sellars on the
myth of the given, and Davidson on the scheme/content distinction. At the
very end of what had been a balanced, non-partisan overview, however, something stylistically very odd occurs: the authors suddenly and quickly describe
an argument put forward in one of the essays, Jean Bethke Elshtains Dont
be Cruel: Reflections on Rortyan Liberalism, and finish by concluding with
her against Rorty. A brief overview of all the papers would have made more
sense.
Elshtains paper targets Rortys idea that fundamental moral convictions
are a matter of the final vocabulary we employ, a vocabulary which Rortys
liberal ironist recognises as ultimately contingent. She thinks that such a
conception cannot explain the deepness of commitments which people have
defended with their lives. She gives a number of real examples of people who
saved Jews from the Nazis, which seem to show that these people were motivated by the sort of foundationalist moral beliefs which Rorty has claimed are
not of motivational significance (pp. 1524). Elshtain is right: Rorty overstepped his status as a theorist with a pragmatic proposal in making an empirical claim about such peoples motivations. The more substantial issue,
however, is whether this points to a general problem in Rortys philosophy,
that is, whether on abandoning foundationalist beliefs, people could be
sufficiently motivated to act morally, show political commitment, or produce
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interesting work in philosophy. If they could not, then his proposals are not
useful, and so fail by their own criteria.
Michael Williamss Rorty on Knowledge and Truth locates a deep tension
between Rortys historicist critique of epistemology-centred philosophy in
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and his later conception of irony. In the public
interest, Rorty thinks, the ironist must be only privately ironic, whilst publicly
expressing liberal hope. This, Williams argues, echoes Humes split between
philosophical scepticism and natural certainty in life. Both involve finding a
kind of truth in skepticism, but it is a scepticism Rorty was supposed to have
undermined as an artifact of ideas of knowledge and truth that we would be
better off without (p. 74).
Charles Taylor argues that instead of abandoning epistemology-centred
philosophy, we need to rebuild it on the basis of the Heideggerian insight that
all exercises of reflective, conceptual thought have the content they have only
as situated in a context of background understanding that underlies and is
generated in everyday coping (p. 166). He also argues that belief in conceptual schemes need not involve commitment to somehow grasping the world
independently of any description (p. 173), for we can legitimate and rank
schemes in terms of their ability to cope with, allow us to know, describe,
come to understand reality (p. 174). In response, Rorty would probably draw
on the Davidsonian argument that most of our beliefs must be true (see
pp. 1820), but there are unfortunately no responses from Rorty in this volume.

Fundamentals of Philosophy
Edited by
Routledge, 2003. xii + 446 pp. 60.00 cloth, 16.99 paper
This volume is another addition to the ever-growing library of introductions
to philosophy. It comprises fourteen newly written essays, primarily on the
central areas of Anglo-American philosophy, along with a brief introduction
by the editor, which attempts a modicum of scene setting by sketching some
relations between those areas covered in later chapters. The collection arises
from the Routledge series of the same name, with many of the contributors
having authored volumes in that series. The standard of essays is on a par
with that of the earlier volumes; without exception, the entries are lucidly
written, engaging and up to date.
Averaging around thirty pages in length, the essays tend to fall into one of
two categories; either they serve to provide reasonably thorough discussions
of some of the major theories within an area, or they offer brief overviews of
the main points of debate in the field. One of the best examples of the former
is Alexander Millers chapter on the Philosophy of Language; this is a clear,
succinct and comparatively detailed account of Freges main theses (fifteen are
outlined in fourteen pages), followed by concise discussions of the contributions of Russell, Kripke and Putnam. In contrast, Piers Benns entry on Ethics
is more of a survey of the area, sketching the main normative theories in
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accessible terms after brief notes on relativism and egoism, before moving on
to introduce the reader to meta-ethics.
This book is not the best introduction for those entirely unfamiliar with the
subject. The space allocated to individual contributions is not sufficient to
allow authors room to gently introduce newcomers to philosophy, and there
is generally little done to motivate the detailed discussion of particular issues
in a way that would engage the lay reader. For example, three pages into the
main body of Alan Goldmans chapter on Epistemology we are already on
indefeasibility; one more page and we encounter reliabilism, having already
cantered through justification, internalism and Gettier. Such a discussion is
likely to be daunting to the uninitiated.
Goldmans contribution is the first, and possibly least accessible, chapter.
Nevertheless, it helps draw attention to one of the books major strengths. The
collection really comes into its own in terms of the breadth of subjects covered
and the depth of discussion. Few other introductions contain such detailed
discussions; even fewer do so while covering such a range of subjects. The
collection will be of particular benefit to those students already interested in
the subject who wish to expand their philosophical horizons. The experienced
student capable of tackling Goldmans chapter will come away with a respectable grasp of the main concerns of contemporary epistemology.
It is worth mentioning that this collection also goes further than most
introductory works by including three chapters on the history of philosophy.
Weighing in at a total of 110 pages, these chapters cover the ancient, mediaeval and modern periods and provide a historical context for the other areabased chapters. These chapters differ in their approach; Richard Franckss
chapter on Modern Philosophy focuses on six key philosophers (Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume) and sketches one or two key
ideas from each, and Suzanne Stern-Gillets chapter on Ancient Philosophy
introduces the major schools as well as the masters. In contrast, Dermot
Morans chapter on Mediaeval Philosophythe longest in the booknot
only discusses the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, and Ockham, but also ten or
so other figures, including John Scotus Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa.
The inclusion of a chapter on Continental Philosophy by Simon Glendinning is also to be welcomed for similar reasons. This chapter mainly consists
of thumbnail sketches of the major thinkers in this tradition, taking us from
Kant to Michle Le Doueff, with forty nine stops en route. These are helpful
and informative, although it is hard to imagine the new reader gaining much
from these alone. Possibly more useful is the section containing outlines of
various schools or movements within the area; here the reader will find brief
accounts of Lacanian Psychoanalytical theory, Post-Structuralism and the like.
Offering this collection to new students would be equivalent to offering an
espresso to someone unsure of whether coffee was to their taste. There are
plenty of milk-and-two-sugar introductions out there; this book is best seen as
a resource for those keen on the subject but wishing to develop their palate
further. It will be of particular use to those students already part of the way
through an undergraduate degree in philosophy, both as a revision tool and
as a means of deciding between alternative courses of further study. Unlike
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some of the other general introductions on the market, this collection merits
space on the bookshop shelves and is worth recommending to those students
interested in reading further into the subject.

BOOK REVIEWS
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1

METAPHYSICS

Strawson and Kant

Edited by -
Clarendon Press, 2003. xii + 258 pp. 35.00
Strawson and Kant is a volume of articles edited by Hans-Johann Glock and
based on a set of papers that were delivered to the 1999 Kant Society conference that was dedicated to Strawsons influence on Kant studies. I shall lay
my cards on the table from the outset: it is a magnificent collection of articles
but perhaps not one to be embarked upon by the faint-hearted or nave Kant
scholar.
The collection begins with a brief introduction by Glock which provides a
clear steer through the varied subject matters that constitute the text as a
whole. The most general papers are those provided by Hacker, Bird, Cassam,
Stroud, and Glock, all of which deal with questions about the nature of
Strawsons Kantianism and of his rehabilitation of metaphysics as a respectable enterprise within analytic philosophy (p. 1). Of the others, there is a
splendid range of topics from Westphals intriguing paper on Kants Refutation
of Idealism, Rosefeldts analysis of Kants account of the self, Gaynesfords
examination of Kant and Strawsons account of the first person, Allisons
intricate and detailed discussion of the deduction of the principle of the
purposiveness of nature as set out in the Critique of Judgement, Frsters inquiry
into Strawsons tribute to Kants insight on the nature of aesthetic judgement,
Grundmann and Misselhorns take on the relation between transcendental
arguments and realism in terms of semantic externalism, Sterns compelling
account of Strawsons misguided appeal to Humean naturalism as a response
to scepticism, and finally, Hymans very challenging criticism of the modern
causal theory of perception.
But before engaging with any of these essays there is a delightful first
chapter by Peter Strawson entitled A Bit of Intellectual Autobiography ( pp. 7
14). Strawson discusses, all too briefly, the influence that Kant, and others
such as Wittgenstein, have had on him, concluding that he is unrepentant in
having left himself open to the accusation of Platonism or Cartesianism
(p. 14). The central section of this chapter is taken up with a foray into Rae
Langtons defence of Kants claim that we must remain ignorant of the nature
of things as they are in themselves (Kantian Humility (Clarendon Press, 1998)).
This is an unwieldy problem, but it is neatly delineated and Henry Allisons
view (in Kants Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (Yale University
Press, 1983)) is clearly presented as one that preserves the objective reality
of the natural world as studied by the physical sciences . . . [yet] disposes
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