Value and Valuation: Axiological Studies in Honor of R. S. Hartman ed. by John William Davis (review)

724 BOOK REVIEWS suggested by this on the relationships between faith and reason, arguing contrary to Kierkegaard that a faith grounded in reason is superior to a commitment that is based on the improbable, the absurd, and the irrational. Reichenbach's book is not as scholarly as Kenny's and at times the author's use of rhetoric impedes rather than advances his argument. Also, he takes no notice whatever of Kenny's work, which seemingly is unknown to him; this is unfortunate, since his own exposition would have benefitted by attempting to meet Kenny's objections, which are more pointed than those he actually considers. Again, Thomists will not be too happy with Reichenbach's attempt to reduce the prima and secunda viae to the tertia via, or with his implicit contention that the third way underlies and is more fundamental than the first two. These criticisms notwithstanding, however, Reichenbach's work is still an intelligent and worthwhile exposition of a difficult subject matter, and one that is more suited for beginning philosophy students than is Kenny's. The fact that these two books come to such disparate results, of course, is an indication that much serious work yet remains to be done on the cosmological argument. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. WILLIAM A. WALLACE, 0. P. Value and Valuation: Axiological Studies in Honor of R. S. Hartman. Ed. by JoHN WILLIAM DAvis. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972. Pp. 358. $12.95. Of the three summary names descriptive of contemporary value theory, the deontological, the teleological, and the axiological, Value and Valuation is a paradigmatic instance of the axiological. Central to this way of doing value inquiry is the integration of diverse bodies of science extending from economics to psychotherapy to linguistics. The axiological perspective takes a comprehensive attitude toward the field in that it does not exclude or limit the sources for human data from which it draws observations, principles , or conclusions. R. S. Hartman's The Structure of Value: Foundations of Scientific Axiology (1967) presented the background formalities within which the present work, a Festschrift in his honor, has been formulated. Although this supposition is not applicable exactly in each instance, one might read Value and Valuation as a commentary upon the theory of value proposed by Hartman, with the advantage of gaining fuller understanding of that subtle and profound work. On the other hand, though many of the papers advance the reader's attention toward that goal, one should not pick it up as containing a set of papers each working to that end. Value theory BOOK REVIEWS 725 in general is the object of their inquiry rather than the specific ideas of Hartman. Each of the twenty-five papers presents a statement independently of the others. The table of contents, modeled upon Hartman's theory, seems to have been imposed by the editor upon the contributions after they were composed . It manifests Professor Davis's clear awareness and deep appreciation for Hartman's originality and genius and a subtle interpretation of the content in each contributed paper. That Hartman's terminology is being fleshed out can be intuited, although explicit reference to it is sporadic. The editor organized the papers under the rubrics: The Nature and Logic of Value, Problems of Methodology, and Types of Value (intrinsic, extrinsic and systemic). The first two overlap in meaning, with the result that it is difficult to estimate why, for example, Paul Weiss's "The Possibility of a Pure Phenomenology " was placed in the second part when it might as appropriately have been placed in the first. Or why Thomas E. Hill's " The Distinctivenes!'> of the Concept of Good " is put into a different section from Wayne R. Leys's "Use and Abuse of Normative Definitions," since both papers focus on the prima facie difficulty of ambiguity in the word "good." Similarly, this can be observed in the case of Manfred Moritz's "The Naturalistic Fallacy and its Different Forms." These three papers, if not others, could have been grouped together without injustice to their content. This point creates the impression that the editor stretched the meanings of his categories in order to...