Literary and Critical Studies

--~ ----- - - - - - - - - -- -- - - - - - 300 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY WANG (New York and Toronto, Doubleday, xxiv, 354 pp., $4.50). JoNES (NANCY),. For goodness' sake (Toronto, Ryerson, viii, 291 pp., $3.00). MACVICAR (HELENA},. Margaret Scott, a tribute: the Margaret Scott nursing mission (Winnipeg, Stove!; 1948, 28 pp., 50c.). MEILICKE (E. J.), Leaves from the life of a pioneer: being the autobiography of a sometime senator, Emil Julius Meilicke (Vancouver, Wrigley Printing Co., 1948, xv, 168 pp.). RoBINSON (JUDITH), Tom Cullen of Baltimore (:Toronto , Oxford, xii, 435 pp., $3.50). ·SALVERSON (L. G.), Confessions of an immigrant 's daughter (Montreal, Reprint Sodety of Canada, 523 pp., $1.50 to members). UNIVERSITY OF ToRONTO, VICTORIA CoLLEGE, In memoriam, Frank Louis Barher, 18771945 (Toronto, the College, 1948, 19 pp.). 2. Literary and Critical Studies THE EDITOR AND OTHERS At least two volumes that belong in this sub-section, Guido Cavalcanti -'s Theory of Love by J. E. Shaw, and The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge edited by Kathleen Coburn, are to be reviewed in a later number of the QuARTERLY. Another, The Mosaic Tradition by F. V. Winnett is noticed in the next sub-section among "Books on Religion." The following review, of Being and Some Philosophers by Etienne Gilson, has been contributed by Dr. Emil Fackenheim of the Department of Philosophy in the University. Among Professor Gilson's most significant contributions to the history of philosophy has been his insistence that the Greek heritage was not merely received but radically transformed in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Here (and, one might add, in such other medieval philosophers as Maimonides ) the biblical doctrine of creation inspired a more radical quest concerning the nature and origin of existence than was raised by the Greeks who tended to presuppose existence throughout; from this flowed the ontological distinction between ·essence and existence, and a transformation of the emanationist-necessitarian world of the Greeks (especially of Plotinus) into one established by a free Creator, and contingent upon His will. In Being and Some Philosophers, Mr. Gilson is concerned with defending the truth of the Thomist position rather than with its exposition. His central thesis is that existence is elusive, that Aquinas is almost the only philosopher to grasp it philosophically, and that most other philosophers fall into one of two opposite errors. One of these is "essentialism"-the error of accounting for existence (the "that") by making it an essence (a "what'') ; the'other is exemplified in such doctrines as modern existentialism which in its effort to grasp existence denies the reality of essence.Essence and existence are the central terms in Mr. Gilson's argument. Aquinas treats them successfully; among those who fail are Plato, Aristotle~ Plotinus, Avicenna, Averroes, Kant, Hegel, and the. existentialists from Kierkegaard on. There is something eminently sound in a work venturing to engage in a philosophic argument across the ages. An antidote to the all too prevalent LETTERS IN CANADA: 1949 301 historicism, such a work is especially refreshing when by a philosopher who :is well versed in the entire history of philosophy, and who writes with vig-·our. Genuine insights emerge from Mr. Gilson's philosophic confrontation of the philosophers, especially in the case ·of those ancient philosophers already confronted by Aquinas himself. Outstanding examples are his treat- :ment of Plotinus and his account of the reasons involving Aristotle in his :famous difficulties concerning "being." But there is also great danger in such a dialogue across the ages. It is -questionable whether any of the great philosophers can be justly evaluated, or even fully understood, in the terms of another, even if they are terms as time-honoured as are essence and existence in Western thought. One won-·ders whether even Plato and Plotinus can have been as ignorant of existence as Mr. Gilson maintains. And if, in the case of Aristotle, existence ~'once evidenced by sense or concluded by rational argumentation ... is tacitly dismissed" (p. 46), the question arises whether anyone can do more·than that-anyone, that is, who does not hold (and is this on philosophical or theological grounds?) that there is a radical origin of existence, and an·existing Creator who is its cause. The difficulties in...