Books Received

494 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 97:3 JULY 1989 them all is his transcendental theory of "symbolic preguance"--a pregnance of meaning which finds expression in basic cultural forms of man's living in a world. 'Symbolic forms' manifest man's efforts to make spiritual meaning concrete in a sensory sign, and in this sense anything can become a symbol. A cross, for example, represents Christianity, the Stars and Stripes is a symbol of the U.S.A., and E = mO symbolizes the Atomic Age. Cassirer thus seeks to understand the essential aspects of a culture by asking: What are its basic symbols? The question isjustified because culture is not something theoretical but is a system of actions which finds unified expression in and through symbols--be they linguistic or otherwise. Man's sense of himself finds expression in the symbols of his culture. But the philosophy of symbolic forms is also a theory of conflicts in social forces. Symbols unify and divide people, as is clearly the case in the conflicts between science and religion, between art and technology, and between moral and economic valuations in our time. For the Third Reich the swastika was the symbol, and under its banner the state sought to change all men in order to gain control over them by creating a new myth. Where the Nazis succeeded, the result was a debasement of man because, as Cassirer shows in The Myth of the State, sheer economic and/or military power cannot succeed in "making the souls of the citizens better." In all of Cassirer's writings his primary concern was thus the same: the formation of a true humanity, and providing a systematic justification of the thesis that human culture is man's progressive liberation. As Krois rightly points out, the framework of Cassirer's work on the metaphysics of symbolic forms is Goethean. Symbols are the mode of expression of conceptually incomprehensible primordial phenomena. For an understanding of Cassirer's thought as a whole, "Goethe is thus at least as important.., as is his debt to Kant, Hegel, or Cohen." When Cassirer calls human culture "the progress of man's progressive selfliberation "--a liberation from ignorance, from injustice, and even from fear of death--he speaks in Goethean language. And he rejects Heidegger's thesis that vis-avis death there is no communal life, that the individual is thrown back upon himself. Heidegger's ontology is no solution for man's basic problems. The footnotes to Krois' book not only introduce the reader to a vast range of discussions of Cassirer's work but, at times, continue or augment the arguments developed in the various chapters. They add to the value of the book. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University BOOKS RECEIVED AI-Fayyfimi, Saadiah Ben Joseph. The Book of Theodicy. Translation and Commentaryon the Book of Job. Translated with Commentary by L. E. Goodman. Yale Judaica Series, Vol. 95. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Pp. xvii + 481. $75.oo. BOOKS RECEIVED 495 Balandier, Georges. Le d~sordre. Eloge du mouvement. Paris: Librarie Arth6me Fayard, 1988. Pp. 252. Paper, FF 98. Barrow, John D. The World Within the World. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 398. $24-95. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Authorized Translation by Nancy Margaret Paul. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Pp. 284. $21.95. Berry, ChristopherJ. Human Nature. Issues in PoliticalTheory. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1986. Pp. xiv + 162. Cloth, $35.oo. Paper, $9-95. Buijs, Joseph A., editor. Maimonides. A Collectionof CriticalEssays. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Pp. vii + 317. $29.95. Casertano, Giovanni. I Filosofi e il potere nella societ~ e nella cultura antiche. Atti della "Seconda Giornata di Studio sull FilosofiaAntica," Sorrento, 16 Aprile 1985. Naples: Guida Editori, 1988. Pp. 117. Paper, L 8.ooo. Cell, Howard R. and James I. MacAdam. Rousseau's Response to Hobbes. American University Studies, Series 5, Vol. 37. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. Pp. xii + 271. $38.oo. Cernic, David and Linda Longmire, editors. The Searchfor Community. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. Pp. xx + 132. Paper, $12.5o. Chapman, Michael. ConstructiveEvolution: Origins...