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108 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY numerous concrete discussions of socio-political questions. But they may still object that Dewey fails to take account of the possibility that the self and the socio-political order possess obdurate features, structures, and problems that must be understood and resolved before we can follow him and rely upon pragmatic intelligence to provide theoretical and practical solutions to ethical and socio-political issues. Another way of putting this is to ask rhetorically whether Dewey has taken due note of the phenomena and issues dealt with by such thinkers as Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, who, like him, espouse naturalism, attack the philosophical tradition, and hold that human nature is not "fixed" but flexible and more or less open to social determination. The importance of these questions can be underscored by observing that while both the liberal and the Marxist traditions are well represented in contemporary discussions of the problems of political philosophy, Dewey's work in this area is largely ignored. The preceding points provide some explanation for this. Whether Dewey's position contains the resources to serve as a distinct alternative to these more popular views remains to be seen. GARRYM. BRODSKY University of Connecticut Robert J. Fogelin. Wittgenstein. The Arguments of the Philosophers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976. Pp. xvi + 223. $11.75. Fogelin's contribution to Ted Honderich's series, The Arguments of the Philosophers, raises doubts about the conception of the series parallel to those voiced recently in the Times Literary Supplement by M. R. Ayers in his review of George Pitcher's equally ahistorical volume on Berkeley's arguments (TLS, June 16, 1978, p. 680). Both volumes seem to take Broad's distinction between historical understanding and philosophical criticism to an extreme. Fogelin, "following the charge" of his editor, has produced exegesis of the explicit arguments of Wittgenstein 's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations that is often lucid and insightful, as well as a critical analysis of those arguments that is at its best stimulatinglyoriginal. His discussion of Wittgenstein's contribution to traditional philosophical atomism, his treatment of generality and critique of Wittgenstein's attempt to derive all of logic from the simultaneous negation of a selected set of propositions and its negation in the Tractatus, as well as his discussion of the private-language argument and Wittgenstein's relationship to skepticism, are only a few of the areas where we find illumination. Even scholars who dissent from his positions on these topics will welcome the approach he takes to them. The problem with this approach to Wittgenstein, as Fogelin himself admits, is that "Wittgenstein's writing is often obscure and the text is surprisingly lacking in explicit arguments." Though he laudably resists the fashionable tendency toward "rational reconstruction," he sees nothing problematic about Wittgenstein's attitude to argumentation and its role in philosophy. Since many philosophers take this to be the central issue in Wittgenstein's thought, Fogelin's failure to raise serious discussion about it must be taken to be a major flaw in the book. (The existence of parallel flaws in Pitcher's Berkeley leads one to question whether the basic fault lies in the conception of the series.) The premise upon which Fogelin's book (and the series as a whole, it would seem) rests appears to be the notion that it is not legitimate to raise questions about Wittgenstein's attitude toward arguments and their role in philosophy, since Wittgensteinhimself fails to offer arguments in support of his views of philosophy. Yet without the intentions, alms, and goals that Wittgenstein had in mind in formulating those arguments that are present in his works, we have no sense of the force those arguments are supposed to have. To put the matter slightly differently, we have no idea why they are Wittgenstein's arguments. Indeed, the way the book is written it seems irrelevant that they are Wittgenstein's arguments at all. If Wittgenstein was indeed attempting to put the slumlords of philosophy out of business, as he as he once said he was, if his aim was to BOOK REVIEWS 109 put an end to philosophy as he knew it (for which there is no small amount of...

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