Troubled Philosopher: John Dewey and the Struggle for World Peace (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 129 says in his nine-line epilogue, knowledge will be increased if there ever is the time of the end. Until then "whoever persists in the pursuit of first principles appears fated to run to and fro merely" (p. 274). The material presented in the book is most interesting in terms of the theme. We are first shown how Newton's philosophy emerges in large part from the millenarianism of Joseph Mede and Ralph Cudworth, and how the contentions of Newton and his followers express some of this conviction of the immediacy of the end of history. Next, the study of Bentham and the Mills portrays their secular form of millenarianism that will bring about the redemption of the human race. As the Utilitarian movement faded out, that of the Oxford Hegelians presented a new way to save mankind. And, as we know, this was followed by the work of G. E. Moore, Russell, and Whitehead, each seeking a new basis for solving the problems of understanding the world. Quinn shows us how, in each case, these great movements failed to achieve their goals, and faded away. Russell, the most optimistic of twentieth-century thinkers, ended up saying that "'all human knowledge is uncertain, inexact, partial." The scholarship in the study of these movements is quite thorough, although it is limited tO only published sources (and there must be a good deal of manuscript material that would be relevant, such as Russell's papers.) The sources are given at the back of the book but are not often connected with specific quotations or statements. Instead, they contain the material that appears over a few pages. This may not be helpful if one wants to look up a single point and ten books are given as references. Is the book convincing? The four vignettes point up the sad story of how philosophical confidence fails to bring about a major change for the better in human knowledge or affairs. If we generalize from the four English cases to most of the modern movements in philosophy in Europe and America, and see in them this same feature--that they are millenarian or Messianic and that their expectations have not been fulfilled--then what have we learned? One thing is that modern philosophies have in part taken over the role of earlier Jewish and Christian theologies. Insofar as they have assumed such a role, they seem to have gone through the fate of most Messianic and millenarian theories, namely, that they have been unable to bring about the realization of their expectations. In the theological cases, it is presumably because only God knows when the end of days will occur, and only God can make it occur. The failure of the philosophical cases may need an explanation rooted in human and physical nature, and such an explanation may not rule out the possibility of some future philosophical movement being justified in its confidence. Quinn's book is very stimulating, informative, and provocative. Seeing the course of philosophical movements as moral dramas may help in providing another, important perspective, and it may lead to our having somewhat less confidence in these movements as possible ways to truth. RICHARDH. POPKIN Washington University Charles F. Howlett. Troubled Philosopher: John Dewey and the Struggle for World Peace. New York: Kennikat Press. 1977. Pp. 180. $12.50. American liberalism's romance with American pragmatism early in this century probably suffered its greatest setback with John Dewey's well-publicized supp~rt of this country's aggressive involvement in World War I. Writers such as Randolph Bourne and Norman Thomas, otherwise sympathetic to Dewey's philosophical project, considered this either a perversion of the notion of social intelligence as an instrument of human progress or indicative of a fundamental flaw in the Deweyan notion of intelligence itself, and publicly castigated Dewey for his apparent lack of 130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY insight. The dual facts that Dewey at the time thought the war in Europe would encourage the realization of his internationalist ideals, and that he later rejected war entirely as an instrument of social reconstruction, have not ameliorated the still widely held view that the native American philosophy...