The Philosophy of Wonder. An Introduction and Incitement to Philosophy by Cornelis Verhoeven (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 715 any length, it does indeed command a place along side of New Essays as an explicit indication that analytic philosophers have not rested assured with the conclusions of New Essays. My only really negative comment, one which I have already indicated, is that such a collection demands more of an introduction than Donnelly's brief sketch in two and one-half pages. Such an introduction would indeed have been of value to graduate students confronting these essays for the first time. In addition, it would have been of assistance to all of us as we forge ahead in reconstructing a cognitively significant philosophical theology. Denison University Granville, Ohio ANTHONY J. LISSKA The Philosophy of Wonder. An Introduction and Incitement to Philosophy. By CoRNELIS VERHOEVEN. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1979l. Pp. 9l04. $6.95. Cornelis Verhoeven's book is a frivolous musing which proves nothing. The Philosophy of Wonder sports a finesse of language which will outrage the interpreters of all philosophical systems. Logical precision is sacrificed to poetry; paradox takes precedence over rigorous distinctions; gratuitous assertions disclaim the need for justification. The work comes to no conclusion , deferring all indefinitely. It is amazing that such writing still passes as philosophy. By Verhoeven's own standard, the above paragraph is more accolade than diatribe. An author who praises Plato for his inventive frivolity must welcome such a characterization of his own work. When he argues that Philosophy is from beginning to end a radicalization of wonder, he refuses to confine himself to any system. A poet who could write " every realization is but a drop which condenses from the cloud of possibilities " naturally eschews the philosophical formalities. In a word, what are generally accepted as weaknesses in philosophical discourse are the strength of Verhoeven 's book. It is an incitement to philosophize. His words are not addressed to the novice so much as they are directed to those inside and outside the philosophical profession who have grown complacent in their dogmatism, cynicism, or alienation. Verhoeven acknowledges no special method for treating radical wonder, yet he does in fact approach his subject phenomenologically. His method is to prescind from all characteristics of the enduring philosophical experience until nothing is left but the primordial and persistent provocation in the face of being. He meticulously unravels the fabric of philosophy to 716 BOOK REVIEWS reveal its essential thread, variously called deferred identity, dwelling in deferment, bewilderment, panic, surprise, and wonder. The phenomenological method links him intimately with Heidegger, Sartre, and Marcel, whom he acknowledges generously throughout. In one of the more imaginative and provocative passages of his work Verhoeven studies the central role of Socrates in the philosophy of wonder. He calls Socrates the" daemon meridianus, whose questions cause people to panic." By no mere play on words, he brings the radical meaning of panic back to the god, Pan, the daemon of mid-day who shepherds his flocks through the dangers of high noon. Most men sleep through midnight and siesta through mid-day because they can stand neither darkness nor hard light. Only Pan ventures across the surrealistic landscape of threatening light which exposes "the impossibility of man's possibilities." Socrates is the personification of honest panic at the possibility that everything is really quite different from what it appears to be. This is panic. This is wonder. Verhoeven's thesis is thus stated: "I wonder that a thing is so only because in this form it is different from what I expected or because it impinges upon my nonthinking self as a strange phenomenon and compels me to think. The realization that a thing is so is the shock that moves me." Wonder perceives the classic tension between reality and appearance. Identity of subject and of object are experienced as endlessly deferred, as unfinished business. "Nothing is identical of itself." Verhoeven sympathizes with the inventive frivolity and religious playfulness of Plato's assertion that beyond all appearance there lies the perfectly realized idea of everything, the only true identity. If Verhoeven does not accept Plato's conclusion, he does accept his beginning, namely, no individual thing is the last word in its or the whole of reality...