American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago Sociology, and Symbolic Interaction, and: Marx and Mead: Contributions to a Sociology of Knowledge (review)

258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY world that was as empirical and as objective as natural science" (p. 7). Later we are told that Dilthey realized "the impossibility of objective historical knowledge" (p. 53)For more on the objectivity issue as dealt with by Bulhof, see pp. 3o, 32, 53-4, 67-8, 7o-2, 75-8, lo8- 9, 118-22, 124, and 144-6. (For some strange reason, the key concept of objectivity is not included in the book's index.) Because Bulhof holds out for a stronger conception of objectivity than Dihhey's writings seem to me to allow, she misses his irrationalism. We read that he "... could not live with the thought that everything in the world is not destined to be known and mastered by reason" (p. xxo). She does refer to the "riddle" or enigma with which we are confronted in experience, according to Dilthey, but she argues that "... the origin of the riddle is in us--in our finiteness--not in the meaningful objects or in life. Neither these objects nor life as such are riddles, they do not present themselves as mystery" (p. 78). In his famous "dream," however, Dilthey speaks of the universe as "incomprehensible, unfathomable" (see Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, p. 224). Because she ignores the questionof the development of Dilthey's thought, Bulhof draws some mistaken conclusions about the role of "psychology" in his thinking. She wrongly equates "psychological" with "cultural" at one point (p. 63) and repeats the error later: "Psychologie means the study of all kinds of manifestations of... Geist" (p. 159). Despite these disagreements about the overall interpretation of Dihhey, I can recommend this book as a route into Dilthey's "maze." Many facets of his thought (often not linked to one another) are explored, and many connections are made with twentieth-century thinkers. Dilthey's erratic brilliance comes through in Bulhof's book, leaving the reader hungry for more of what Dilthey saw as he surveyed the rich landscape of Western civilization. THEODORE PLANTINGA Redeemer College j. David Lewis and Richard L. Smith. American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago Sociology, and Symbolic Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 198o. Pp. xx + 356 . Tom W. Goff. Marx and Mead: Contributions to a Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 198o. Pp. viii + 166. $18.5o. At some point any work in the history of ideas is faced with the choice of whether to emphasize the history or the ideas. Divided neatly on this simple dichotomy are two recent books: American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago Sociology, and Symbolic Interaction, by J. David Lewis and Richard L. Smith; and Marx and Mead: Contributions to a Sociology of Knowledge, by Tom W. Goff. Both are concerned with the epistemological bases of social science, the particular contributions of George Herbert Mead, and a practical sociology of knowledge. There the similarlity ends. Lewis and Smith have written a narrow and mundane history from deep within the academy; Goff works in vivid ideas of human concern. BOOK REVIEWS 259 The historical inquiry of Lewis and Smith asks what the Chicago School of North American Sociology was and what was Mead's place in it. For those who seldom ask themselves this question, it should be explained that many contemporary sociologists and their basic texts believed that there was a unified tradition of sociological analysis that developed at the University of Chicago between 1894 and the late 192os. Moreover , it is believed that Mead provided the philosophical inspiration for this school and played an influential role in the training and research pursued in his sister department. The book refutes these beliefs. The demonstration is accomplished in a combination of two methods: a textual analysis of the writings of the prominent pragmatists (Pierce, James, Dewey, and Mead) and a factual account of what was really going on in Hyde Park so many years ago. The results will interest biographers of the great sociologists and certainly will call for a paragraph of clarification in the standard texts. It turns out, first, that if the pragmatists are sorted according to their leanings toward nominalism or realism (we are not told why other important orientations are excluded), there are...