Berkeley's Doctrine of Notions: A Reconstruction Based on His Theory of Meaning (review)

622 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER 1989 resented Hobbes's position and makes it more difficult, in consequence, for the reader to get an accurate picture of how Hobbes would have set about answering his Lockean critics. (2) Many of Hampton's interesting and perceptive observations get lost or obscured in a text which is, I believe, much too long. This would be a better book if it were shortened or compressed. Futhermore, throughout this work Hampton employs the techniques and jargon of modern game theory. Despite Hampton's remarks (137), I am not convinced that this technical apparatus is strictly necessary or helpful. Its use could certainly have been curtailed. Finally, in order to keep the number of pages down the publisher has used a typeface which is much too small and makes reading a work of this length and complexity more taxing than it should be. Hampton's study cannot be recommended as a helpful guide for students who are fresh to Hobbes's political thought. (An exception to this is her first chapter, which is an especially interesting discussion of the psychological and ethical foundations of Hobbes's argument.) Nevertheless, as should be clear from what I have already said, it is essential reading for all those who are seriously concerned to come to grips with Hobbes's social contract theory. Hobbes scholar and political theorist alike will learn a great deal from it. PAtJL RUSSELL University of British Columbia Daniel E. Flage. Berkeley's Doctrine of Notions: A Reconstruction Based on His Theory of Meaning. New York: St Martin's Press, 1987. Pp. 226. $29.95. For the reviewer of any hermeneutic work about a classical philosopher the first, and the last, questions must be: "How much, and how, does it improve our understanding of the mind of the master?" In the present case the answers are, sadly, "Not much" and "Mainly by emphasizing the importance of Berkeley's distinction between positive and relative notions." Dr. Flage starts by explaining that he will "be concerned with the nature of notional knowledge, the ontological analysis of notions, and the relations between notions and ideas in Berkeley's metaphysics" (1). Yet, surely, for Berkeley himself only the third of these ever constituted a central concern. Even there Flage is at small pains to reveal what for Berkeley rather than for Flage was the main problem. Chapter 1, "Abstraction," contends that Locke had many predecessors as an abstractionist . But since we are never told by what criteria this creature is to be identified, and since Berkeley famously allows that there are senses in which we can all truly be said to be able to abstract, it remains unclear how many of those predecessors are involved with Locke in a common catastrophe. Chapter 2, "Possibility and Impossibility," must appall those sharing Berkeley's own commitment to speaking with the vulgar. Is it really necessary, or even possible, to elucidate his luminously expressed thoughts through pages from which the tortured reader has continually to refer to an appendix listing no less than fifty-five different propositional functions? BOOK REVIEWS 623 In his "Introduction" Flage argues, sensibly enough, that, if we are to find satisfactory answers to questions about Berkeley's doctrine of notions, "it is only reasonable to begin with an examination of his later works" (3). But then in chapter 3, "Berkeley's Theory of Meaning," Flage, almost unbelievably, contrives to make no mention whatsoever of Alciphron 7. 14. That is the section which sums tip what, "upon the whole, may be said of all signs:--that they do not always suggest ideas signified to the mind: that when they suggest ideas, they are not general abstract ideas; that they have other uses besides barely standing for and exhibiting ideas ... for instance, the algebraic mark, which denotes the root of a negative square, hath its use in logistic operations, although it be impossible to form an idea of any such quantity." I shall not here repeat my argument for construing this example as a Wittgensteinian anticipation.' But it does still have to be said that the whole section must make it difficult to maintain, without qualification...