Reflections on American Philosophy from Within (review)

522 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY elude proper, i.e., philosophical, treatment under neo-positivist or Marxist attack. On the other hand, the neo-positivist and the Marxist will not be satisfied with Heintel's discussion, a discussion that moves in a dimension that they thought to have unmasked as illusory. Agreement may never be reached and may not even be desirable. And yet Heintel's extreme standpoint, his rejection of the analytical movement will seem to the analytical philosopher as doing him more justice, and as exhibiting a better comprehension of his motivation than recent attempts at reconciliation and assimilation have done. Heintel is not that radically separated from Marxism as he is from analytical philosophy--particularly if we exclude the rigid shape that Marxism took in the Soviet Russia of the thirties, and if we stress the Hegelianized versions of Marxism of a Luk~cs or a Marcuse. On this he strongly insists himself. w 36 deals with Diamat und Tradition. In note 5 of this paragraph, Heintel reports on biannual meetings between traditional (and in this connection it must be added: Christian) and Marxist practitioners of philosophy that take place in the Austrian monastery of Zwettl and in the vicinity of Prague, meetings that have contributed considerably to a clarification of the issues involved. In addition to having been instrumental in arranging these meetings, Heintel has included treatments of various aspects of Marxism in the series t)berlieferung und Aufgabe: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte und Systematik der europdischen Philosophie, a series of which he is the editor and in which the book under review appears as volume VI. The Vienna that once produced the modernist culture which was philosophically represented by Wittgenstein and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, spreading to and eventually dominating the Anglo-American regions of the Western world, is now giving us a philosophical system that is responsive to modern life and thought, and yet rests upon and aims to continue the great spiritual and intellectual tradition from the Greeks to the German Idealists. KURT RUDOLF FISCHER Millersville State College Reflections on American Philosophy from Within. By Roy Wood Sellars. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Pp. ix+202) Reading these reflections by an insider of the recent American movements of philosophical realism startles me with the realization that the author and I are among the very few insiders who have survived the movements, and therefore, it seems appropriate for me to add a few reflections and recollections from my particular line of fire at Columbia University and the Journal of Philosophy. Sellars and I are also among the still smaller group who have emerged from the rivalries of militant naturalists to find comfort in humanism. This inside information that Professor Sellars gave to his Michigan students, and that is now published, apparently much as he told it extempore, is valuable historically for it records many insights and incidents that would have been otherwise irrecoverable. The second half of the book is devoted to observations on recent and current European trends and philosophers; however, I shall confine my remarks, as the title does, to the American half. These reflective and retrospective judgments on the movement, though still on the inside, show how different a movement appears after it is embedded in the past from the views, aims, and hopes of the contenders during the years of lively debate. Sellars is quite correct in pointing out that the two opposing camps, the "Neo-" and the BOOK REVIEWS 523 "Critical" Realists, did not fight to a stalemate, as outside observers supposed; each group broke up gradually into increasing individual differences. Sellars' ability to spot the emergence of these differences throws light on the fruitfulness of the debates in bringing to light new problems and unexpected divergencies. Another observation by SeUars that seems to me by this time historically justified is his awareness that beneath the variety of realist tactics there was a common enemy--idealism; for whatever the realists did to each other they succeeded in dethroning idealism, not, to be sure, without external aid. Dewey once said to me in a worried tone: If the functional nature of consciousness is not recognized, and...