Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness: Three Philosophical Essays (review)

376 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY sentiment of existence, stripped of all other affections" (the "r~veries solitaires" of the magnificent Fifth Promenade); "good" but not "virtuous" (Sixth Promenade), Jean-Jacques ultimately lived in a close approximation to the condition that he had once said "no longer exists, perhaps never existed, [and] will never exist" (Second Discourse, Preface). It would of course be absurd to argue that Rousseau's philosophic concepts "caused" his own life-experience and character. Since we rarely know all the reasons for our own acts and thoughts, the main point lies elsewhere: whatever the role of Jean-Jacques' psychological make-up, he developed a coherent philosophy which could justify his solitude and his writings. Just as no man's thought can be totally divorced from his existence, so no great philosopher's works can be fully understood as a mere reflection of personality. The great difficulty concerning Rousseau on this point is that his theoretical principles are so strongly devoted to the defense of the freedom of the solitary writer or artist he himself became. But precisely because Rousseau's philosophy and his private life are so inter-dependent, we must be especially careful not to deny his theories the same serious consideration we give any famous philosopher. In this respect, Gu~henno's biography is--paradoxically--a great aid, even though he does not share the analysis presented above. We can only gain in the clarity of our analysis of the Discourses, ~mile, or Social Contract, if we are not unaware of the author's preoccupations at the time of their composition. Whether specific chapters are consulted separately or read in entirety. Gudhenno's work will long stand as one of the most useful biographical sources. But in utilizing this fascinating description of Jean-Jacques, it is to be hoped that Rousseau's readers will take his philosophic works as seriously as those of other major thinkers. ROGER D. MASTERS Yale University Intelligibility and the Philosophy o] Nothingness: Three Philosophical Essays. By Kitar5 Nishida. Translated from the Japanese with an Introduction by Robert Schinzinger. (Tokyo : Maruzen Co., Ltd., 1958. 2nd printing, Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966. Pp. 251. $5.50.) Nishida (1870-1945), called the foremost philosopher of modern Japan, undertook to unify the deep calm of Zen with the strenuous activity of the West, using a dialectic largely German . The first essay, "The Intelligible World," finds that Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel come short of Zen. Hegel widens reason to the Universal, but only to further the theoretical standpoint (cf. pp. 120-122). Nishida would transcend knowledge to arrive at absolute Nothingness . Such a transcendent conception aims not only beyond post-Kantian thought but above the earthy Zen of some ancient Chinese sages, and the naturalistic Zen of Japanese masters when they have delighted in the way things go in their everyday suchness. In the second essay, "Goethe's Metaphysical Background," the Zen Nothingness beyond and the Zen nothing-butwhat -there-is are found together in Goethe. He is admired because for him "there is no inward and no outward; everything is as it is; it comes from where there is nothing, and goes where there is nothing" (p. 157). The third essay, "The Unity of Opposites," struggles again to say what is unsayable in Zen by way of what was never quite said in German philosophy. Surprisingly, this essay veers toward George Herbert Mead (whom apparently Nishida had not read), in tracing evolution to a unity of opposites "represented in symbols" at the stage where "we human beings are social beings" (p. 199). But saying that the unavoidable contradiction in life is what religious men call sin (p. 205) does not sound like Zen or Mead, and Nishida denies that he would "regard truth pragmatically" (p. 218). Despite this denial, he virtually says that ideas are motor, that intelligence is creative, and that knowing is also doing, as we "approach reality by poiesis and practical action" (cf. pp. 227-228). There is an existentialist emphasis BOOK REVIEWS 377 on "individuals from the beginning" in human society, and on the "personal element... realized when in the unity of opposites, the individual many are confronted with...