British Analytical Philosophy (review)

196 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY another. A well-told story suggests its explanation, and in order to be scientific it need not appeal to any "historical law" at all. Telling true stories is a case of making valid judgments and is subject to the same kind of evidential tests that governs testimony in general. In one sense, telling true stories in cultural history is like telling true stories in historical geology. Both have implications for present "conditions" on earth. But the human story is admittedly full of "teleonomic" processes or operations and requires coduction in Knrtz's sense, whereas natural history, if it bears on the "present condition," does so only in so far as there is a human present. A present that involves no decision can hardly be called a "condition ." In short, for the sake of historical science and of behavioral science generally, it would be desirable to have further analysis of the difference between physical and human contexts, or between cultural presence and physical succession. HERBEaT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California British Analytical Philosophy. Edited by Bernard Williams and Alan Montefiore. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method, 1966. Pp. 346. $7.50.) The papers in this volume were designed originally for an audience of Italian philosophers, but contain much that is useful to analytical philosophers as well. Some papers summarize typical departments and issues in contemporary British philosophy, others simply do a bit of philosophy. Good examples of the first method are Quinton's article on "The Foundations of Knowledge" and Lemmon's review of interpretations of definite descriptions. Of the second method, Searle's "Assertions and Aberrations" and Ischiguro's piece on Imagination are noteworthy, the latter especially so, as it calls attention to wide areas of agreement between Ryle and Sartre. Other papers treat philosophical issues in ethics, aesthetics, theology, politics, history, and the description of human action. Charles Taylor tries to account for the lack of Marxist philosophy in England while, understandably, disavowing any intention to sociologize, though, so far as he succeeds, he does offer something like historical or sociological reasons. Finally, an "outsider," Istvan Mfizs presents objections to Austin's style of English philosophy, arguing that Austin's method is fixed upon the ideal of natural science. Many philosophers, I suspect, would look to Austin as a philosopher who had freed them from this fixation. It is unfortuante that M6z~ros should have based his interpretation of Austin not on the published writings, but on the remarks delivered at the ill-fated Royaumont conference, where British and continental philosophy failed to meet. But the present collection, for lucidity, and the absence of anything that might be thought to be an overbearing attitude of British philosophers toward their continental counterparts, ought to make possible a better understanding of English philosophy by those who are prone to view it as grammatical trifling. A. R. LOUCH Claremont Graduate School Human Aims in Modern Perspective. By D. W. Gotshalk. (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Press, 1966. Pp. 122. $4.99.) With Human Aims in Modern Perspective Professor Gotshalk concludes his trilogy on value which began with The Promise o] Modern Life (Antioch Press, 1958) and which also includes Patterns o] Good and Evil (University of Illinois Press, 1963). Gotshalk's axiology, which has as its core the inter-relational principle, is itself a logical outgrowth of his first book, Structure and Reality (Dial Press, 1937), where relationality is regarded as a first principle of metaphysics. In this book Gotshalk tells us that "philosophy is a venture in comprehensive understanding." His trilogy on value is an excellent example of such a ...