In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

296 BOOK REVIEWS He defines carefully his plan and pursues it with tenacity. But I am suggesting that there is still work to be done on the Scotist element in Hopkins and that further study of it will bring forth answers to questions which are very relevant not merely to a final evaluation of Hopkins hut to the very nature of poetry and art itself. Marquette University, Milwaulcee, Wis. Le Sens de l'Histoire. By NICHOLAS BERDIAEFF. Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne, 1948. Pp. 221. Meaning in History. By KARL LowiTH. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949. Pp. 267 with index. $4.00. The chapters of Berdiae:ff's book consist of lectures delivered by the author at the Liberal Academy of Spiritual Culture in Moscow during the first days of the Soviet regime (1919-1920). To these chapters are added two later lectures: "Vouloire-vivre et volonte de culture," and "Histoire et eschatologie." This French edition is not of great importance for the English reading scholar, inasmuch as all the above material except the lecture on "history and eschatology" appeared in English in 1936 under the title The Meaning of History. The lecture on history and eschatology was delivered by the author to a French audience in 194£ and published here for the first time. Berdiaefi's preface to the French edition, written shortly before his death, is a neat summary of what he has tried to accomplish by his writings on the philosophy of history. This book, Berdiaeff tells the reader, is an attempt to treat of "the fundamental problems of the philosophy of history." His contribution to our understanding of history is now well known: his distinction between culture and civilization; his insistence on the religious element in man's life and in history; his " personalism " with its stress on human freedom and the dignity of man; his presentation of the unique contribution made by Christianity to Western culture; and his analysis of the decadence of the West in modern times. In the preface to this French edition, Berdiaefl' explains that his " philosophy is permeated more and more with personalism ," and that he has become more and more convinced " of the necessity of defending the dignity and the freedom of man," of developing a Christian humanism in the face of modern positivism and materialism. His chapter on " History and Eschatology " restates his basic theory that modern theories of progress are secularizations and perversions of the Judaeo-Christian concept of salvation and the coming of the Kingdom of God. Any meaningful philosophy of history, Berdiaefi insists, must necessarily be messianic and eschatological. Its end must lie outside history, BOOK REVIEWS 297 not in it, for aalvation is not found within history. He therefore dismisses the modern theories of progress for seeking the end of history at some future time within the historical process. In this chapter Berdiaeff also makes some enlightening, though for him not new, remarks on the other two " capital problems " of modern philosophies of history: time and freedom. The contribution of the late Nicholas Berdiaeff to our thinking about the philosophy of history is best summed up in Le Sens de l'Histoire. The single new chapter in the French edition reviewed here, however, adds nothing new to the Berdiaeff literature already in English. Whereas Berdiaeff's thought on this subject has been brought to a close, Karl Lowith's promises to be just beginning. His Meaning in History is his first work to appear in English, but he has done several studies in German in this general field. Lowith uses the device of analyzing critically the thought of masters in the field from early Christian times through the nineteenth century, but this method does not prevent him from presenting his own ideas effectively, both in his introductory and concluding chapters and in his analysis of each of the, fourteen " philosophers of history " he treats. Meaning in History is curiously organized. Because the author sees in modern historical thought " a more or less inconsistent compound of both traditions [classical and Christian)," he thinks it well to start with modern thinkers and work backward through history to " the Hebrew-Christian understanding of history by faith." Thus...

pdf

Share