Process and Reality (review)

400 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY cal language in order to convey the dialectic of "limit" and "unlimit" is a sophisticated and elucidating interpretation that serves to make transparent what is somewhat opaque in Kierkegaard's writings themselves. Manheimer points out that Kierkegaard conceives of language (especially in Works of Love) as "transferred" or as having the capacity to "carry over" the individual beyond the limits of language (p. i95). Through a use of language designed to transform the spiritual sensitivity of others, it is said, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange. The central metaphor of Kierkegaard's vocation is "upbuilding," a metaphor that is employed in order to bring us to the point of realizing the power of love to "build up." In Manheimer's view an "edifying speech" awakens the listener by calling forth a contrast between "the reladve density or magnitude of two dimensions of meaning." Like metaphorical language, it creates a "field of contrast" that releases the individual from "confined meanings" and thereby renews "our concern for what is of ultimate value" (p. 198). In his remarkable interpretation of the nature and function of language in Kierkegaard 's thought Manheimer tends, at times, to stress the finitude and limitation of language in such a way as to suggest its concreteness. This view is at odds with Kierkegaard's account of language as an "ideality" in Johannes Climacv.s and in some of his journal entries. Quite often, he contrasts the ideal nature of language with the concrete actuality of the actual world and maintains that it is the juxtaposition in consciousness between the ideality of language (as expressing a subjective possibility for an individual) and the concrete actuality of the empirical self that generates a sense of existential possibility. Again, the concept of immediacy is not only related to the aesthetic orientation in life, but is used to refer to concrete experience as well. Despite these rather minor quibbles, there is no doubt that Manheimer has given us a sensitive and perceptive account of Kierkegaard's modes of communication and his understanding of the limits of language. By interpreting Kierkegaard as educator Manheimer has explored his methods and intentions in a unique and illuminating way and has understood Kierkegaard "from within" in a very sophisticated manner. Anyone interested in Kierkegaard's thought or in the possibility of communicating competency or capability must read Kierkegaard as Educator. GEORGE J. STACK SUNY at Brockport Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality. Corrected edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press, 1978. Pp. xxxi + 413. $16.95. Ever since Process and Reality was published a half-century ago, scholars have felt the need for a corrected edition. Typographical errors abound in the original Macmillan edition, as the manuscript did not receive any rigorous copy editing, and Whitehead seems to have been largely indifferent to the niceties of the printing process. The Cambridge edition caught many, but by no means all, of these anomalies, but this BOOK REVIEWS 401 edition was not widely available in this country. Eventually, since Macmillan simply continued to reprint the t929 edition uncorrected, a list of over ~oo corrigenda was published in Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy (ed. George L. Kline [Englewood Cliffs, N.j.: Prentice-Hall, i963], pp. 200-207). It might have been expected that these corrigenda would be incorporated whenever Macmillan reset the plates for Process and Reality, but, alas, that was not to be. When in 1969, The Free Press published its paperback edition, necessitating yet another pagination, these corrigenda were not consulted. In addition, many new errors crept into the text. As Vere Chappell once observed, we possessed a better edition of Plato's Republic than of Process and Reality. This corrected edition has changed all that. It has been handsomely produced and meticulously proofread. Over 7oo corrections have been made, about 35~ being divergencies between the two editions, and another 35~ divergencies from both editions. Though this edition introduces its own pagination, the standard pagination of the 19e 9 edition has been indicated in the body of the text. (Marginal notation, with just a slash in the text, would have...