The Problem of Embodiment, Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 301 mental school of pedagogy at Chicago and his further development of the idea of "organic " in terms of genetic and social psychology, the instrumental function of ideas, and a scientific treatment of ethics. The two chapters of part II, devoted to Dewey's idea of experience, expound in great and informative detail how Dewey at Columbia University and in the city of New York faced a series of technical polemics centering in the relation of subject to object, and how he defended his "unitary" theory of experience against idealists, realists, and "dualists" in general. They also describe the many applications Dewey made of his philosophy to current issues in economics, law, politics, war and peace, metaphysics, and behavioral sciences. Deledalle divides this story into two periods: 1904-1925, when he emphasized the instrumental value of ideas for the theory of experience itself, and for all kinds of empirical problems; 1919-1952, when he developed his theory in terms of "l'experience transactionnelle" and in the context of "le naturalisme humaniste." Deledalle's extended analysis of Dewey's late emphasis on the idea of "transaction" (in contrast to interaction) is especially valuable, since this development of the idea of experience is less well known than his earlier work, and since it puts into a more recent context an analysis that goes back to his early critique of the reflex-arc concept. Dewey's friend, Arthur Bentley, who stimulated Dewey in the development of transactionalism, attempted to commit him to a radical behaviorism, and shortly before Dewey's death (as the correspondence between Dewey and Bentley reveals, recently published by the Rutgers Press, edited by Sidney Rather and Jules Altman, 1964) Bentley even had the temerity to suggest to Dewey that perhaps it was time to dispense with the idea of experience itself; to which Dewey replied: perhaps eventually, but not yet. Deledalle adds brief notes on Dewey's relations to Durkheim, Bergson, Bradley, and other contemporaries, and more extended sections on his relations to Peirce, James, Whitehead, Santayana, R. B. Perry, and G. H. Mead. The Bibliography is especially valuable for its many references to European writings about Dewey. The notes and documentation are excellent throughout. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California The Problem o] Embodiment, Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body. By Richard M. Zaner. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. -= Phaenomenologica, 17. Pp. xiv ~- 294.) For persons acquainted with and interested in the epistemological questions which divide contemporary phenomenologists into the opposed camps of the "transcendental idealists" and the "existential phenomenologists" this is a stimulating and provocative book. It is written with verve, even with passion, and presents a most lively introduction to some of the problems of the phenomenology of the ego. The spirit with which it is written more than amply offsets the formalistic cast in which the argument is set: a series of theses arranged, as in a good doctoral dissertation, into sections symmetrically divided into "introduction," "body," and "critical remarks." This rather artificial arrangement requires a number of inevitable and unnecessary repetitions which on a less "exciting" topic could easily become turgid. Moreover, Zaner did not intend this book to be a complete historical investigation of the problem of the body-subject in the philosophical tradition, nor is it a new attempt to begin an original phenomenology of the body de novo, with a marshalling of new empirical or experiential evidence. It is, rather, limited to a discussion and criticism of certain theses taken from Marcel, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty; the treatment of these authors in this order accounts for the division of the book into three parts, each of which has three chapters (though there is a quick run through the writings of Bergson and Husserl in the epilogue). The three parts of the book, though symmetricaUy arranged, are of quite unequal length and build up to a gradual crescendo: Marcel is treated most succinctly and sympathetically, 302 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Sartre is given a larger space and considerably more argument, and Merleau-Ponty takes pride of place both as Zaner's chief interest and personal despair. The methodological principle which governs the selection of "theses" to be discussed from these...