Bibliographia Cartesiana: A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature 1800-1960 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 257 "1930" on page 126; Wittgenstein is included as a member of the Vienna Circle and is said to have gone to Cambridge in 1939 on page 138. The bibliography on naturalism gives no reference to the Krikorian-edited Naturalism and the Human Spirit, and the bibliography on logical positivism does not mention the Feigl-Sellars Readings in Philosophical Analysis. The section on linguistic analysis is the poorest part of the book; while Wittgenstein and Ryle are mentioned, no reference is made to their writings in the chapter bibliography; G. E. Moore, John Austin, and Antony Flew, for example, are not mentioned anywhere in the book. It may be argued that Thomism and Modem Thought is better than nothing. Its reader would know that a number of philosophic movements have existed in the past two centuries upon which Thomism has had little impact. This would tend to raise questions for the Thomistic-trained student which are not answered by the selection from the Gilson Reader: "The true scholastic philosophers will always be theologians." But is not the need of such a student to know about contemporary philosophy better answered through the reading and study of the contemporary philosophers themselves? I hope the quality of philosophic education in Catholic universities will soon have passed the stage where books such as this are needed. DESMOND J. FITZGERALD University o] San Francisco Bibliographia Cartesiana: A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature 1800-1960. By Gregor Sebba. Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Idles, 5. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964. Pp. 510.) Professor Sebba has published a model of what every philosophical bibliography ought to be. Those of us who have been so deeply in his debt for preliminary stages of the present work will find satisfaction ia the more complete listings and the addition of an invaluable topical index. Those who have not yet been introduced to Sebba will delight in the discovery that this is not merely a staggering compilation of entries but an illuminating and witty commentary on the literature itself. Sebba's purpose was, he says, to turn "bibliography from a repository of references into a workshop of research," and in this he has succeeded admirably. The book is divided into three parts. Part II, over half the volume, is an alphabetical checklist of nearly three thousand items on Descartes, and, while Sebba disavows any claim to completeness, it is unlikely that any items of importance written in a major European language have been overlooked. A critical guide to their contents is provided for some entries. In Part I, "An Introduction to Descartes Studies," Sebba has selected nearly one-fifth of this list for separate consideration as "significant contributions." Here we find Sebba's annotations: precis of the topics covered (sometimes reproduction of the table of contents), the author's thesis, a valuable listing of the major reviews and discussions of the work, and Sebba's own discriminating comment on its merit or historical importance. Two indices comprise Section III: an Analytic Index, the customary subject and author listing, remarkably exhaustive, which is preceded by a Systematic Index, twenty-seven lists of headings from the Analytic Index. The merits of two indices are obvious: if one wants to know quickly who wrote what on a specific point in Descartes, the pineal gland, say, the Analytic Index will direct him there with despatch. If, however, he is interested in the broader area of Descartes' views on medicine, the heading "Biology, Medicine, Physiology," in the Systematic Index will furnish twenty additional entries in the Analytic Index. He is led on to explore, to find connections which may never have occurred to him. Thus, the bibliography is indeed a well-equipped "workshop of research." We would be grateful if this were all Sebba has done. But seldom has a workshop been more inviting. It sounds perverse, perhaps, to recommend a bibliography as first-rate entertainment , a book for browsing, but it is this too. Though Sebba was for some time Prolessor of Economics and Chairman of Statistics at the University of Georgia, he has given us 258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY not mere data, entries in a ledger, but the very personal assessment...