The Philosophy of Alexander Campbell (review)

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 the whole one" (p. 229). But naturalism, whether of pragmatism, existentialism, or Zen, goes by the board when it is asserted that "all civilisation is born out of religion," and that personality comes from confronting God. "God and we are in the relationship of absolute unity of the opposites of the one and the many" (p. 234). Perhaps this might be read as a version of the indissoluble relation between Mead's generalized other and the self. But affinity with Mead vanishes in the concluding sentences when creativity is denied to science. Earlier, science and art were considered "as acts of formation" (p. 232). At the last we may agree that it is "abstract to look at historical life merely from the standpoint of science" without agreeing that science "must be called 'environment-like,' because it sticks to the 'from the formed'" (p. 241). If, as stated in the Introduction, "a translation of philosophical texts cannot transmit an impression of the personality," much less can a brief review. A poem by Nishida, given in his calligraphy on the front page and put into English, may help: The bottom of my soul has such depth; Neither joy nor the waves of sorrow can reach it. VAN METER AMES University o] Cincinnati The Philosophy o] Alexander Campbell. By S. Morris Eames. (Bethany, West Virginia: Bethany College, 1966. Pp. 110. Bethany College Benedum Foundation Regional American Studies Series. $3.00.) The founder of the Christian Churches (Disciples o] Christ) which represents America's largest indigenous religious movement, was not only the author of a whole library of lectures and sermons devoted to his reform movement; he was also the author of a philosophical work, The Christian System, which, in its first edition (1835) was entitled: A Connected View o] the Principles and Rules by Which the Living Oracles May Be Intelligibly and Certainly Interpreted, a volume of 400 pages. Professor Eames has extracted from this Christian System the doctrines and methods that relate Alexander Campbell to the empiricism of the late Scottish Enlightenment and to Locke's attempt to show the "reasonableness of Christianity." The most direct sources of this common sense empiricism (which is consciously an antiHume empiricism) were Bacon, Locke, Reid, and Stewart. With these philosophers Campbell became acquainted during his studies at the University of Glasgow immediately prior to his emigration to Pennsylvania in 1809. With the judiciousness and non-speculative "humility" that characterized Campbell's mind Professor Eames expounds the ways in which this common sense empiricism was applied by Campbell to the basic problems of natural and moral philosophy, as well as to the "oracles" of religion. He summarizes his portrait of Campbell as a philosopher as follows: It is doubtful that one can find a man of religion in the day in which Campbell lived who was more modern in his views of science and of nature. He shares the attitude of the age in being anti-speculative in natural things, and he relegated to the realm of "speculative" the whole paraphernalia of "substances" and "essences." His view of analysis and synthesis applied to observable things, and his extreme caution about generalizing with any kind of dogmatism are a credit to his sensitive mind. His reasonableness about all things in nature, human history, and especially religious events are significant insights and show the modernity of his mind (p. 58). This clear and critical exposition of the philosophical system of a great religious leader is a useful contribution to the history of philosophy as well as to the understanding of the tolerant and democratic principles of the churches of The Disciples of Christ. The ability oi 378 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY these churches to deal reasonably with frontier conditions and popular prejudices is common knowledge, but it is often forgotten that their founder and guide during the critical days of growth was also an exponent of the late Scottish Enlightenment. To make this careful analysis of Campbell's philosophy, as an extraordinary specimen of empirical method, is a welcome achievement...