Civilization and Progress (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 133 Professor Engel takes on this project and carries it further than it has been taken thus far. He does this by means of an aporia Wittgenstein finds on his hands in the Blue Book. On the one hand, Wittgenstein here thinks language adequate, as it naturally stands, for a means of expression. Philosophers who make arbitrary changes in language for the sake of clarity or congeniality to their view, do so at their own peril. On the other hand, Wittgenstein thinks the problems that perplex philosophy arise out of misleading words and grammars, which "bewitch" us. How can one have confidence in the accurate expressive capacity of language and yet accuse it of being the origin of philosophical perplexity? Engel thinks Wittgenstein plays both sides of this question without resolution in the Blue Book. The question is also used as an investigative theme for considering possible influence by Kant and Schopenhauer on the later Wittgenstein. Briefly, Engel thinks Wittgenstein's over-riding concern is similar to Kant's, an attempt to put philosophy to rest by showing what it is (an activity), and what it can and cannot do. Schopenhauer's influence shares Wittgenstein's Kantian enterprise as an investigation of language, concentrating on forms of expression rather than forms of judgment. Attention is given to (1) vagueness of conceptual boundaries, a notion that sense is coextensive with skill and limited thereto, and (2) the misguiding lure of paradigms. This latter, the problem of extrapolating from false or limited paradigms, is referred to as a problem of "pictures" by Wittgenstein, and is not to be confused with the earlier Tractarian term. Paradigm-as-picture is Wittgenstein's way of solving the Blue Book's aporiamatic question about sense and license in ordinary language. Misguiding paradigms may have their origin in ordinary language, but they aren't necessarily the fault of ordinary language. The first and last chapters of Engel's book are attempts to put Wittgenstein in a wider historical setting, the first with respect to his present-day followers, the last in the larger picture of twentieth Century philosophical positions. The strength of the book, however, is in the middle historical-comparative chapters. It helps to see Wittgenstein more in the stream of things rather than as he is so often represented, perplexingly and inscrutably unique. The book is not a close study of the Blue Book as might be thought from Engel's subtitle. It also gives very little attention to lingering and vexing exegetical problems important to its theme, for example, what Wittgenstein meant by "use," "rules," or "grammar." Nevertheless, Professor Engel's book has some interesting things to say. ARMAND LARIVE Claremont Graduate School The Role o~ History in Religion. By Robert Leet Patterson. (New York: Exposition Press, 197t. Pp. 176. $6.50) Robert Leet Patterson has put into succinct form an exceptionally thorough critique of the implications of historic religions for the philosophy of history, as well as for philosophy in general. Prophets and philosophers have seldom respected each other, but, according to this well-reasoned analysis, they owe it to each other and to their professions to learn to take each other very seriously. "Something like this has already been accomplished in India, and it would be well worth doing elsewhere.... The deeply religious man does not desire merely to conform but also to understand: the profound thinker desires, not only to understand, but also to adjust himself to his universe.... What I shall endeavor to do will be to distinguish the principal issues in the field of the philosophy of history, and to try to determine how these affect and are affected by various views which may be held by the philosopher of religion" (pp. 68-70). These prob- 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY lems are examined in detail as they apply to the concepts of "revelation," "incarnation ," and "mediatorship." The general theory of "religious rationalism" is then supplemented by expositions of the particular implications of this position for the idea of "history" and for the obligations imposed on the historian by the variety of perspectives. The conclusions arrived at show that in this kind of teleological existence and thinking it...