Dénaturation et violence dans la pensée de J.-J. Rousseau (review)

480 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (e.g., p. 119), and he also apparently regards "immateriality argument" (p. 121) as being equivalent in meaning. But while the history of the simplicity argument shows clearly that simplicity is always taken to imply inextension (all things extended thereby have parts and thus cannot be simple), it is by no means equally clear that the reverse implication holds (consider complex ideas in general and, especially, complex ideas of nonextended things). Mijuskovic's failure to offer more than a guess as to the interchangeabilityof "simple," "unextended," and "indivisible" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries renders what he says in Chapter 5 about the possible role of the simplicity argument in the development of idealisms of various sorts--much of it admittedly suggestive-somewhat problematic. Can one really "identify Descartes' insistence that the mind is unextended with the simplicity thesis" as Mijuskovic suggests? Not unless one has reason to believe that Descartes held either that the mind is essentially simple (as an independent position) or that whatever is unextended is necessarily simple. The latter is not a very plausible view to attribute to anyone; the former is something for which one would like to see more convincing evidence than Mijuskovic offers.' My complaint is not that Mijuskovic is wrong in emphasizing the idealistic and solipsistic consequences of doctrines of ideas current in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but only that he fails to make a convincingcase for his suggestion that it is the simplicityargument that is the motor of such idealistic impetus. Other criticisms could be made on similar grounds--grounds generally of insufficiently rigorous argument and somewhat imprecise and obscure language? The latter is compounded by infelicities of style in which the book abounds ("Sixthly, quoted examples are summoned whenever singularly clear formulations of the argument can be exhibited to have occurred," p. 5; "the significance of this will gain importance in chapter two," p. 6, use-mention confusions, e.g., on p. 121). All of these conspire to make one uneasy about the nature of the enterprise and to take one back to that question about the status of the history of ideas with which I began. Mijuskovic says in his conclusion that "this study is... a plea to promote the discipline of the history of ideas" as an antedote to present-day positivism, materialism, determinism, and mechanism--which he sees as the dominant tendencies associated with modern science (and, by implication, philosophy) and which he deplores-and in the service of "human values and ideals." Some may think that such a false opposition of science and "humanism" is itself one of the chief culprits in whatever it is that we like to think of as the peculiar intellectual crisis of modern times. However that may be, one can still agree with Mijuskovic about the salutary effects of pursuing the history of ideas. But for that pursuit to have those effects--let alone to serve as the paradigm for humanistic inquiry-it had better be done with thoroughness and rigor (virtues not the exclusive province of science). In spite of some real contributions, Mijuskovic's essay falls short of such standards. J. I. BIRO University of Oklahoma D~naturation et violence dans la pens~e de J.-J. Rousseau. By Mich61e Ansart-Dourlen. (Paris: Klincksieck, 1975. Pp. 308) For Mich61e Ansart-Dourlen, the concepts of "denaturation"--the move away from humanity 's natural state--and violence are central to Rousseau's thought, providing a key for grasping his substantive philosophical positions and the systematic connections among his Somewhat similar remarks may be made about Mijuskovic's treatment of Berkeley.(Bythe way,can I be the only one who would welcomea ban on referring to Berkeley as "the good bishop"?) One example: Mijuskovic conflates finding "a simple idea of the selfcontinuously present in . . . consciousness" (p. 109)with finding an idea of a continuing selfin consciousness(ever). (He also talks of having "an idea of the self, every moment of our lives," ibid., my emphasis.) In discussing Hume's misgivingsabout the self, he therefore fails to see that they are about the possibility of the second; denial of the first would be trivial! BOOK REVIEWS 481 political...