God and Polarity by William H. Sheldon (review)

BOOK REVIEWS God and Polarity. By WILLIAM H. SHELDON. New Haven: Yale University Press 1954. Pp. 71~ with index. $8.00. This vast work by the emeritus Sheldon Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University is a most ambitious attempt to reconcile the chief perennial disputes among the various opposing schools of philosophy as they have developed in the history of philosophy and as they now present themselves , including the thought of both East and West. It is the author's conviction that historically these various systems may be arranged in counterpart pairs, each member of a pair providing what the other member lacks. Thu~ idealism is compared with materialism, Thomism with process philosophy, monism with pluralism and rationalism with irrationalism. In this way there is created a graded system of polar opposites ranging from inanimate matter to the Deity. In reality this graded polarity is a protest against the pure intellectualism inherited from Greek philosophers which reaches its extreme in Hegelianism. Actually reality cannot be comprehended by intellect alone but only by a union of intellect with feelings and will. Professor Sheldon is moved to write his opus magnum by the vast futility of opposing systems of philosophy, each of which avows that it alone is right and the others wrong. Yet as Aldous Huxley writes: "l\Ien live in accordance with their philosophy of life, their conception of the world. This is true even of the most thoughtless. It is impossible to live without a metaphysics. The choice that is given us is not between some kind of metaphysics and no metaphysics; it is always between a good metaphysics and a bad metaphysics." Professor Sheldon suggests that perhaps all systems of metaphysics are in the main correct except where each thinks it has refuted the other. Each may have shown its truth and all can pool their results without any one being relegated to an inferior grade, " in short that philosophy has succeeded to a high degree; that its manner, not its matter, has caused its downfall. Well, such is the case as the following pages are to set forth.... The situation of man today is unique, unique because it is critical as never before in recorded history. To meet it man must have a firm assurance of the powers that control his_ universe, powers good, bad, or indifferent, to which he must adapt his living if he would survive or perhaps progress-yes even if those powers are only his own. So does the moving finger write Philosophy in these days, giving it an opportunity, a task, a momentous choice to integrate itself or die in its seclusion, and perhaps man with it." (p. 3) 541 542 BOOK REVIEWS After one of the longest and best reviews of idealism, ci>vering nearly a third of the text, Sheldon. concludes that this philosophical approach in its three major forms has indeed done mankind great service in keeping man's mind fixed on the highest values, those of the spirit, proving as it does that law and order are to a high degree present in the universe and necessary for the best human life, that social order is no more than a means to the needs of individual persons where progress first must be rooted; " that 'there is an absolute personal spirit or God in some sense ubiquitous; that the deeper personal values are powers, real entities, upon which man may rely in guiding his life. However, the idealist experiment has not proved its clear exclusions: that matter, time, space and other categories of the physical and mental reality are to a degree unreal, that the Deity is in any way limited, etc., as detailed above. But how vague! say the modem precisians . What is person? Define mind! How much law and order do we need? Define your absolute personal spirit. All this long and dreary argument for so slim a result." (p. 860) Polar to idealism will be materialism, which the author disposes of in a -relatively short discussion. Materialism is considered as rightly insisting on the ultimate reality of physical being insofar as, we can at present aee. It is wrong in denying that consciousness, mind, spirit...