Book Reviews

not yet capable of truth. Such forgetting leads to not knowing, whereas truth is
about unveiling what is and knowing it. Not knowing is agnosis (αγνοσις), the
attitude of those who are not yet or no longer capable of facing truth. Quite clearly
Heidegger feels deeply scornful about such people and sees philosophers as far
superior to this state of agnostic being.
In Part 2 of the book, Heidegger addresses Plato’s Theaetetus and the essence
of untruth, since the latter has been shown in need of better understanding. This
leads to the question ‘what is knowledge, episteme (έπιστημη)?’. As genuine
auditors, that is, as co-questioners, we allow ourselves to be drawn into this
question. What you know does not matter much: ‚what is essential is that you are
ready and willing to pose questions‛ (p.111). To know, Heidegger says, means
only to direct ourselves towards something, placing ourselves towards it, in order
to find out, for that is what the Greek verb ‘γιγνώσκω, to know’ literally means in
Plato’s time. By the time Aristotle was writing, the word had taken on a different
meaning: something much more akin to science. Of course in Plato’s Theaetetus the
question of knowledge turns into the question of how man is to understand
himself. To gain any knowledge, we have to put ourselves in question. It is only if
we are willing to face the untruth we usually inhabit that we can begin our
journey towards truth. The beginning of truth is therefore self-knowledge.
‚Knowledge is the having present of what is present as such, having disposal over
it in its presence, even when indeed precisely when, it is absent, when it is not at
one’ s disposal‛ (p.116–17).
It is my own impression after studying Heidegger’s text carefully and over
many weeks, that Heidegger, as so often, lacks in self-modesty. He tries to use
Plato’s work to obtain a stamp of Greek philosopher’s approval for his view that
some of us are rather more holy than others, and have a hold on the truth that
puts us in a superior and privileged position. I often find myself tempted to follow
Heidegger’s direction, for it is flattering to believe oneself part of an elite, capable
of such authenticity and truth. But, at the end of the day, Heidegger’s striving
seems petty, wasted and rather conceited. Then I return to my understanding of
Socrates’ wisdom, that is, that I only know that I do not know very much at all.

Emmy van Deurzen

University of Sheffield
Centre for the Study of Conflict and Reconciliation,
School of Health and Related Research
emmy@dial.pipex.com

John R. Searle

Freedom & Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and

Political Power
New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 113

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Book Reviews

ISBN 0-231-13752-4 (hb), $25.50, £15.50

John Searle has made important contributions to a number of subfields of
philosophy, including philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and
philosophy of the social sciences. Although the title of his latest book may elicit
the expectation that it treats the very interesting and relatively unexplored
question of how neurobiological theories of free will might affect our
understanding of political power, in fact the two topics are kept entirely separate
from each other.
This volume contains versions of two lectures that were originally delivered
and published in France. The first, ‚Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology‛
presents Searle's attempt to lay out what might be called a ‚roadmap towards
peace‛ between the neurobiological approach to the study of mind and the
doctrine of metaphysical human free will. The second lecture, ‚Social Ontology
and Political Power‛ summarises the ideas about the ontology of social reality he
developed earlier in The Construction of Social Reality (1997) and applies them to the
analysis of the notion of political power. The two lectures are preceded by a thirty-
five page introduction (‚Philosophy and the Basic Facts‛), which sets out to show
how they fit into Searle's larger project of creating the framework for a
comprehensive and naturalistic philosophical system, that is to say, a system
whose solutions to philosophical problems are solidly based on the results of
research in the empirical sciences.
I was disappointed by this book. Eric Kandel's blurb on its back cover
claims that it provides ‚a broad introduction to the complete Searle‛, and many,
no doubt, hoped that Freedom & Neurobiology would serve as a continuation and
update of Searle's very well-received 1984 Reith Lectures (published under the
title Minds, Brains, and Science). In fact, while the book can be useful as a
comprehensive outline of his ideas for people who are already well acquainted
with his work, it is much too dry and sketchy to serve as an introduction for the
uninitiated. There is little evidence in it of the imaginative thinking that gave the
world the Chinese Room thought experiment. It is difficult to assess the
arguments that Searle makes in this book because they are so often incomplete or
absent, replaced with bibliographical pointers to his other, more substantial books.
For all Searle's talk about naturalism, he has practically nothing to say that
is related to actual developments in neurobiological science. The book could have
been just as easily written back in the old days when philosophers made furtive
references to ‘c-fibres’ in the hope of making materialist theories of mind sound
more scientific. Tellingly, Searle writes: ‚The solution to the philosophical mind-
body problem seems to me not very difficult. However, the philosophical solution
kicks the problem upstairs to neurobiology, where it leaves us with a very difficult
neurobiological problem‛ (p.40). Unlike his nemesis (Daniel Dennett), Searle has
nothing to tell us about how neurobiology might actually go about solving this, its
very difficult problem.
On a more positive note, at least the book does give us a tantalising glimpse
of the direction in which Searle would like to go to find a solution to the problem
of the material brain giving rise to a metaphysically free will. He seems to think
that there is no real difference between compatibilism and the idea that freedom is
merely an illusion, rejecting both ideas while admitting that ‚most neurobiologists
would feel that this is probably how the brain actually works‛ (p.62). His ultimate

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 Book Reviews

argument against such views is evolutionary: ‚An enormous biological price is

paid for conscious decision making < To suppose that this plays no role in
inclusive fitness is not like supposing the human appendix plays no role. It would
be more like supposing that vision or digestion played no evolutionary role‛
(p.70).
How, then, can a material brain give rise to a metaphysically free
consciousness? Searle borrows Roger Penrose's suggestion that the
indeterminancy found in nature by the standard interpretation of quantum
mechanics can serve as the theoretical deus ex machina that creates a place for
freedom in nature. Searle is well aware that the sheer randomness associated with
quantum indeterminancy cannot serve as a direct model for the indeterminate yet
responsible free will he associates with conscious human agency. He suggests that
while the indeterminancy associated with micro-quantum level descriptions of the
brain will carry over to the holistic ‘system level’ where consciousness and
freedom are to be found, the randomness of the micro-quantum level will fail to
make that passage. How does random indeterminancy at the micro level become
non-random indeterminancy at the macro level? Searle does not tell us. Perhaps he
believes it is another question best left for scientists to ponder.

Berel Dov Lerner

Western Galilee College,
Akko, Israel, bdlerner@gmail.com

Raymond Geuss

Philosophy and Real Politics

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. viii + 116

ISBN: 978-0-691-13788-9 (hb), $19.95, £11.95

In just over a hundred pages Geuss manages to shake the foundations of, and the
way we normally approach, Political Philosophy. Such a feat is meritorious in itself
and it may turn this short book into a little classic of our times, as political
philosophers will certainly feel the need to either elaborate or refute Geuss’s ideas.
This book is the result of Geuss expanding a lecture he gave at the
University of Athens in April 2007, entitled ‚(Lenin), Rawls and Political
Philosophy‛; it is divided into two parts. In Part I Geuss draws much of his
argument from Lenin, Nietzsche and Weber in advocating Realism in Political
Philosophy. Geuss argues that a Realist Theory has to account for three elements:
Lenin’s who whom? (i.e. ‚Who <does> what to whom for whose benefit?‛ (p.25);
Nietzsche’s timing and skill in decision making (i.e. ‚... on performing potentially
far-reaching political action only at a specified ‘right’ moment, neither too early
not too late‛ (p.32); and Weber’s legitimacy of political action (i.e. ‚The
legitimatory mechanisms available in a given society change from one historical
period to another...the total set of beliefs held by agents, the mechanisms for
changing beliefs, or generating new ones‛ (p.35). In Part II Geuss attacks head-on

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