A William Ernest Hocking Reader with Commentary (review)

232 Book Reviews A William Ernest Hocking Reader with Commentary Edited by John Lachs and D. Micah Hester Vanderbilt University Press, 2004 400 pp. Though largely forgotten today, William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966) was once nationally and internationally renowned for his metaphysical idealism, mysticism, philosophy of science and political philosophy. Spending a large portion of his academic career at Harvard, Hocking was appointed to the Afford Professorship in Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, authored over twenty books and two hundred and fifty articles, served as president of the American Philosophical Association in 1927, and was awarded the Gifford Lectureship on Natural Religion in 1938-1939. Figures within Hocking's circle include William James, Josiah Royce, Edmund Husserl, George Santayana, Alfred North Whitehead, C.I. Lewis, W.V.O. Quine, John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell. A William Earnest Hocking Reader with Commentary is the result of SOPHIA's (Society of Philosophers in America) efforts to bring attention once again to Hocking's thought. The first half of the text, "Hocking in His Own Words," is comprised of selections from Hocking's most prominent books and articles. This section is subdivided into seventeen chapters. The first chapter was selected to provide a broad outline of Hocking's philosophy as pluralistic. Chapters two through five provide a basic overview of the method and structure of Hocking's metaphysics, as that which preserves personhood and freedom in affirming inter-personal experience. The sixth through eighth chapters provide selections wherein Hocking overcomes solipsism by arguing for a relationship between the selves and groups that is dialectically constitutive. The next chapters, nine through eleven, provide an overview of Hocking's social and political philosophies, which relate Hocking's analysis of selves and groups to his analysis of liberal politics and the future of the liberal state, while chapter twelve addresses Hocking's philosophy of science. The final chapters, thirteen through sixteen, focus on Hocking's philosophy of religion. These chapters discuss the purposiveness and orderliness of the world, religious faith, and God. The second half of the text, "Hocking as Seen Today," contains essays written on Hocking by ten scholars invited to give lectures at universities across the United States during 1996-1997. John Howie's "W. E. Hocking's 'Transfigured Naturalism,'" focuses on defining Hocking's transfigured naturalism by distinguishing it from metaphysical naturalism. While Howie also distinguishes Hocking's transfigured naturalism from methodological naturalism, a methodology respected by Hocking, Howie notes that it was metaphysical naturalism that Hocking vehementiy opposed. Hocking rejected metaphysical Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Winter, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 1 Book Reviews 233 naturalism's reduction of mind to matter and its inadequate treatment of causality and purpose. Hocking argues both that mind is not reducible to nature, and that causality and purpose are not only compatible, but together express a teleology. Regarding mind, he holds that the human being is simultaneously part of nature and transcendent of it. He defines the human being as a "field of fields," insofar as the human being possesses both excursive and reflective poles, and argues that metaphysical naturalism can account for only the former, but not the latter. In terms of causality and purpose, Hocking dismissed the role of randomness and opted for a view of the universe as representative of an original choice with values anticipated by a purposive agent. Howie concludes by noting that when Hocking's life ended, he was seeking to develop a belief in a living and active God that provides the ground of scientific progress and creative action. Howie writes: "Unfortunately, Hocking never develops this 'new route' to an idealistic metaphysics. Instead, he offers wisdom for our times and insights earned from a rich and full life" (p. 230). Bruce Wilshire's, "Passion For Meaning: W. E. Hocking's ReligiousPhilosophical Views," situates Hocking's idealism within both European and American philosophical traditions. Drawing on Hocking's brief period of study in Germany under phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, Wilshire interprets Hocking's work concerning God, nature, and the body from within the context of the thought of Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Marcel. Likewise, Wilshire draws upon Hocking's formative and professional years at Harvard in...