Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization (review)

374 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Levi's subsequent chapters: they all are outlines for full-length works that we may hope he gets to before long. Nevertheless, ! find it difficult to accept the claim that such figures as Windelband and Br6hier "have some difficulty in finding their contemporary successors." Randall's work in the history of philosophy, W. T. Jones's, Copleston's, and even, to a lesser extent, Russell's, to mention only a few, have--perhaps with less scholarship (in terms of sheer volume of work reviewed) but with no less pertinacity--become quite worthy successors in the great history of philosophy tradition. Moreover, Randall has repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Windelband , and specifically to that aspect of his work that Levi emphasizes for his own methodology -the social context. One must admire these works, including Levi's, for the light they throw on the ways in which philosophies grow out of certain cultures, for such histories have the considerable merit of explaining much about their genesis. But it is their history, even their "meaning," that is exposed, after all, not their truth. Another way of putting this issue is to ask whether assessing or appreciating Levi's own philosophical contribution in this book involves knowing answers to the following questions: What sort of society is Levi writing for and trying to persuade? What are the current conventions of communication and the literary forms of discourse? What is Levi's class affiliation , his place in the social hierarchy of his age? "And perhaps above all: what [are] his moral commitments, the structure of his ideals?" Of course, these are precisely the questions that Levi insists we must ask to measure the extent of a philosophical contribution to our tradition. Granted that this is not Levi's only contribution (he has given us a number of notable works in the past), it should be obvious that answers to none of the above questions will provide us with answers to the truth of Levi's own key offerings in this book or in his others. Philosophers must face the question of truth, however interesting the questions of psychology, history, biography, social expression, or "meaning," if their contributions are to be measured justly. Of course, Levi might protest that he had no intention of making a philosophical contribution in this book and that therefore the questions he insists we ask about philosophical contributions should not be asked of him. This position would then raise interesting questions about what he means by offering his book as a "contribution to the philosophy of culture," but we shall not pursue these matters further. No such claim is likely to be made. STANLEYM. DAUGERT Western Washington University Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization. By E. M. Adams. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) The argument of this book is built upon Professor Adams's conviction that the ills or failures of contemporary culture are reflected in, and in part caused by, widespread erroneous positions in our philosophy, and that a correction of these errors can be effective in restoring our mental health. The book thus returns to the classical position that has persisted since the Platonic Socrates: philosophy is the guide to the good life, or as the seventeenth century put it, the medicina mentis--in this case, the Western "cultural mind." But it is not so much this conformity to a long tradition of the relation of philosophy to mental or social health that justifies a notice in a journal devoted to the history of philosophy; rather, it is Adams's criticism and correction of recent philosophical currents that pushed the realistic revolt against idealistic metaphysics, early in our century, to the extremes of linguistic analysis, positivism, and scientism. Although Adams addresses his argument not merely to "professional and lay philosophers," but also to "all fully aware people" who sense our cultural alienation from reason and established values, it will require more than a modicum of philosophical training and understanding BOOK REVIEWS 375 for the reader to grasp the hard core of philosophical criticism and construction upon which his argument is built. Following the analogy of ailment...