Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics (review)

266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Jean Theau's second book, Consciousness o/ Duration and the Concept o[ Time, may be the second stage in his metaphysical enterprise. The relationship to Bergson is admitted, even required, of anyone who, like Theau, can say of Bergson what he said of intelligence: it has in itself enough to go beyond itself. That is true of any great philosopher; and we shall not discuss Theau's own choice of a guide to go beyond himself, i.e., to go to Eternity. But the conquest of Eternity is only possible if at the same time one stays here and there, within and beyond. It is a necessary and gallant battle--a lost-to-be-won fight. Faced by these two books I am pleased to pay tribute to a generous, disinterested, intellectual effort to descend again into this philosophical battle-ground, thus reminding us that such a place still exists, ready for new enterprises; and that more recent attempts to escape from the fight or the field--as phenomenology did or the so-called structural analysis is doing--are no definite answers, which would give to Man's culture its desired balance. In fine, let us be grateful to Jean Theau for having proved that Henri Bergson's thought is not dead. EDOUARD MORoT-Sm The University o/ Arizona Values and Imperatives: Studies in Ethics. By Clarence Irving Lewis. Ed. (with intro.) John Lange. (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1969. Pp. xv+201. $7.50) This book is a collection of ten of C. I. Lewis' papers and lectures on ethics dating from 1948 to 1959. Lewis unfortunately never managed to complete his work on ethics (as distinct from valuation), but these papers and lectures provide valuable insights into the ways his ethical views were developing in his later years. The most important part of the book is the series of four lectures delivered at Wesleyan University in 1959 under the title, "Foundations of Ethics." Lewis apparently desired that this series of lectures should be published as a fair statement of his later ethical views if he failed to be able to finish his final work on ethics. Of the other six pieces, two have been published previously. Of the newly published work, the lecture "Practical and Moral Imperatives" delivered at Swarthmore College in 1949 seems to me the most important for casting light on debated issues about Lewis' position on ethics. Since these ten pieces were not written for publication together, there is considerable repetition of some points. On the other hand the various presentations of some points differ in ways interesting enough to make their inclusion valuable. Lewis never prepared some of the lectures for publication, and they fall short at times of his usual careful argument. Many points worthy of discussion are raised by these essays and lectures. For the sake of brevity I shall try to illustrate their value by discussing one point concerning which there has been disagreement and On which these pieces may help to throw some (even if not enough) light. It has often been thought since the publication of An Analysis o[ Knowledge and Valuation that Lewis would not be able to fit an account of right and obligation of the kind he himself desired into his overall scheme. He closes that work by saying that while valuation is always a matter of empirical knowledge , what is right and just can never be determined by empirical facts alone. This led critics to think that Lewis faced an insoluble problem about obligation and right. Morton White for example pointed out that Lewis' position on right might be closer to the emotivists whom he intended to resist than he had realized (Phil. Review, LVIII, 321-329). For Lewis, of course, insisted that all knowledge is divided into BOOK REVIEWS 267 knowledge of the analytic and knowledge of the empirical. Since he does not hold that all judgments of right are analytic and holds that they are never merely empirical, he must either admit that they are synthetic a priori, which undermines his whole theory of knowledge, or embrace some form of non-cognitivism which he is unwilling to do. Frankena has...