The Anti-Christianity of Kierkegaard (review)

180 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Spirit." Augusto Guzzo's "Berkeley and Things" deals with various aspects of Berkeley's conception of percipi. Guzzo claims that in perception there is judgment (according to Berkeley), despite the fact that Berkeley goes to great lengths to deny this. This essay is valuable since it grapples with many of the fundamental concepts of Berkeley's analysis of perception; but it attempts to deal with too much. In an essay entitled "Substance in Berkeley," Harry M. Bracken effectively argues for the view that Berkeley's fundamental appeal to the language metaphor (Turbayne's conception ) leads to the notion that knowing that a specific set of "ideas" (or sense data) is called a "die" is "like knowing that a certain set of marks mean something" (p. 89). It is claimed that the "substance-accident" relationship (or "tie") which Berkeley adopts is basically intentional. He denies that the part-whole relationship (i.e., the collection theory of things) which has been associated with phenomenalism is Berkeley's theoretical preference . Much of Bracken's thesis seems to depend upon the assumption of Turbayne's conception of the importance of the "language model" in Berkeley's writings. However, it does not seem to follow that because Berkeley sought "meanings" in the visible language of nature that he did not describe perception in terms of the coUigation of a multitude of sense data. The act of colligation is, indeed, intentional; but it may be said that Berkeley was looking for a eonstruction4heory of objects (something like the later notion of logical constructionism). Despite quarrels we might have with some details in this essay, Bracken's study of Berkeley is worthy of serious attention. In the penultimate essay in this collection an attempt is made to defend Berkeley against four fundamental objections which have been made against his philosophical position. It is argued that Berkeley did not adopt a strictly substantialist conception of the self, but had an empirical view of the self. This may be contrasted to Berkeley's clear statements to the contrary; Berkeley often tends to think of the self in Leibnizean terms as un $tre capable d'action. At any rate, Professor Steinkrans, in his essay "Berkeley and His Modern Critics," does present some good defenses of Berkeley's philosophy, especially in regard to the charge of "solipsism" and the view that Berkeley assumes the "priority of cognitive conseiousness ." In addition, Steinkraus makes a statement which may be taken as a justification of these New Studies in Berkeley's Philosophy: "...in spite of his failings and even errors, all the way from vacillating linguistic usage to his facile acceptance of traditional theodicy, his thought raises the kind of perennial problems that axe the life-blood of philosophy" (p. 162). In addition to the above essays, there is a good discussion of the importance of analogy in Berkeley's thought in Andre-Louis Leroy's "Was Berkley an Idealist?" The final essay in the collection is called an "interpretation" of Berkeley even though it is hardly that. It is a discursive essay on the influence of a bastardized Berkeley (via James Beattie) on Kant and a comparison between Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis and Berkeley's philosophy which adds little to previous discussions. Despite quarrels we may have with some of the interpretations provided in the essays, this collection is a fine contribution to Berkeleian scholarship which lacks only the counterbalance of unsympathetic critics of Berkeley or the work of representatives of linguistic analysis. There is, as these articles testify, much that is living in the thought of Berkeley--a man whose influence on contemporary thought is considerable. GEoaoE J. STACK Long Island University The Anti-Christianity o] Kierkegaard. By Herbert M. Garelick. (The Hague: Martinns Nijhoff, 1965.Pp. 71.) According to the author, this monograph is prompted by the "present impasse in Kierkegaardian scholarship" (p. 3), whose two major lines of development, the biographical (Lowrie, Geismar, Reinhardt, and Haecker are mentioned) and the synoptic (Collins, BOOK REVIEWS 181 Jolivet, Thomte), have yielded httle but reiteration of familiar biographical data and elementary themes. The result has been an "increasing sterihty" in which "philosophical development and critical inspection are frozen...