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222 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 withdraw from it, and the world is thus 'strongly concealed,' as soon as it is revealed. Concretion, however, is a 'strongly revealing' mode of transcendence, bringing presentation, surge, and anticipation together into a thematic unity. In concretion, ordinary absorbed labour becomes 'special,' as in a hobby, or in a labour that has been transformed into a true vocation. The speech of concretion is that of testimony, of bearing witness. Only here, according to Welch, does Truth emerge (as opposed to the 'correctness' or 'utility' of ordinary language). Only here do words really mean what they say, revealing 'the thinghood of things,' 'the selfhood of selves,' and our true vocational ground. Our linguistic responsibility, then, lies in achieving 'concrete speech' as speakers and writers; for us as readers itlies in learning to question and be questioned by the great writing of our Western heritage, which reveals the historicity of our human condition to us. Thus can one willingly take responsibility for, and affirm, that heritage. This is an intellectually and morally challenging book, though somewhat self-consciously 'important.' Welch's philosophical position is eclectic, but the general intellectual style is that of the late German romantic tradition as exemplified by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer . Unlike most English-speaking philosophers writing in this tradition, Welch's book doesn't read as though it has been badly translated from German. Indeed, it is quite beautifully written, with interesting and provocative interpretations of Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Thoreau and Whitman and Faulkner, and other examples of 'concrete speech.' (LYND FORGUSON) R.c. Grogin. The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900-1914 University of Calgary Press. x, 222. $19.95 The'controversy' referred to in the title of this interesting and informative work is not a matter of point-by-point conceptual argumentation. Grogin's canvas is the larger one of situating Bergson within the intellectual, religious, and social movements of the period. The book is divided into two parts called, respectively, 'Ideas' and 'Controversies.' The initial chapter, 'The Revolt against Mechanism,' is a brief summary of the rise of 'spiritualist' philosophy in France. This reaction against Comte's positivism, whose Cours de philosophie positivewas first published in 1830, dates from about the middle ofthe 1860s. Grogin refers to some of the early figures of this reaction - e.g. Lachelier, Olle-Laprune, Boutroux - and points out that Bergson was at the Ecole Normale when two ofthem were lecturing there. His next point is to suggest that Bergson's doctoral thesis, translated as Time and Free Will and formulated between 1881 and 1889, constitutes not only the foundation of Bergson's philosophy, but HUMANITIES 223 also the culmination of spiritualist philosophy. It is in this work that Bergson first formulates his familiar distinction between the process of intellection, which is proper to science, space, and mathematics, and the much more basic process of 'intuiting' a 'duree,' which is proper to metaphysics, time, and inner consciousness. Given this initial move, Grogin now integrates it into what can be seen as a complement to spiritualist philosophy, a complement he refers to as 'The Occult Revival.' Under the chapter heading he situates occult matters proper, the kind of psychical research undertaken by the society of that name, and a general rebirth of interest in religion and differing forms of mysticism. Able now to characterize Bergson's philosophy as 'mystical,' Grogin completes this part by briefly summarizing the solutions to the body/mind problem and to the problem of reality in this 'mystical' philosophy. Concretely, this refers to Bergson's theory, formulated in Matiere et Memoire (1896), of a memory necessarily separate from the body and therefore ultimately to be identified with Spirit. In the following chapter, Grogin discusses Bergson's non-mechanistic interpretation of evolution, ultimately based on the now discredited idea of vitalism. The last pages of Part 1 concern the relationship between Bergson's views of spiritual evolution and Georges Sorel's views of social evolution. This constitutes a natural bridge to Part 2, which is about the controversies aroused by the manifest influence of Bergson's philosophy and the extraordinary impact of his lectures at the College...

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