Humanity: The Political and Social Philosophy of Thomas G. Masaryk (review)

242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Humanity: The Political and Social Philosophy of Thomas G. Masaryk. By Antonie van den Beld. Trans. Peter Staples. Issues in Contemporary Politics: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, no. 1. (The Hague: M6uton, 1975. Pp. x + 162) Antonie van den Beld tells us straight away that this effort is an unsupplemented rendering into English of his dissertation. If one missed that admission, one would not, however, be apt to view it otherwise. As absurd as it is to continue the practice of using "dissertation" pejoratively , one cannot do without that usage in this case, for no other description offers a better idea of the character and value of this work. It at once exhibits most of the virtues and suffers from most of the faults of a serious dissertation. Its argument is tight here and shaky there. It is properly narrow in its body but lacks breadth in introduction and conclusions. Too much of Masaryk appears in footnotes and too little in the text. It is well-researched but presents the rewarding results not so rewardingly. Beld "has something," clearly, but one wants him to do the thing again and differently to better convince us of the propriety of his apparent selfconfidence . The above is given, perhaps, as a partial excuse on my part for refraining to take on the thesis argument of this work. The substance of that argument simply lacks the sort of presentation it should have. Another and more compelling reason for so refraining must be looked at, however, and will be below. Let me say before going on that I have no doubt whatever that anyone seriously concerned with Masaryk's thought would have to take Beld's effort into considered account, as it is a much needed attempt to take that thought in-and-for itself. This is important, given that previous studies have ever confounded the evaluation of Masaryk's thought with panegyrics to his statescraft. Inasmuch as Masaryk's thought has been admirably researched by Beld, this little book will undoubtedly find a place in scholarship. If the substance of its argument may make one uncomfortable, it hardly lacks for substance to argue about. One feels that it will most likely come to serve as a guide for "where to find what" in Masaryk. Beld's effort ought to command considerable attention in another sense as well. Although it does not conflict with previous writings in its opinions, it suggests for the first time an element of system or, at least, the possiblity of the compact organization of Masaryk's thought around a central concept. This is the "something" one is sure that Beld has. At the same time, and as might be expected, its elaboration is the "something" that is most troublesome about the book. We are commended to the idea of system or compact organization, yet we find that Beld's substantiation of this is systematic but hardly compact. Whereas the work proposes the reduction of Masaryk's thought to the concept 'humanity', it expands the concept to the point that, while we may be certain of the multiplicity of things contained therein, we cannot be certain that its unity is expressable in any compact manner. The problem here is not so much the attempt at finding a central concept or the concept discovered, but the choice of procedure. The study moves from the concept 'humanity', posited in the first two chapters, to its component parts--that is, Masaryk's concepts of nationality, socialism, and democracy, with the continual admonition that the whole is greater than these parts and that, inasmuch as 'humanity' is a norm, it informs them. We are treated here to reductionism in reverse. 'Humanity' is not drawn out of an examination of Masaryk's major concerns but is rather posited as an initial and ultimate disposition so determinative and full of meaning that we must not lose sight of it for a moment. This is done in spite of the fact that Masaryk himself never treated the concept as strictly prior to, and determinative of, his views on nationality, socialism, democracy, and so on. The outcome of Beld's procedure is that the chapters dealing...