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274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY theory of myth to assign a central place to the mother Goddess and her sacrificial husband/son to the myths he examines. It won't do, at least until we know much more than we do, to castigate theories about eastern Mediterranean myths for explaining them in terms that do not apply to the myths of the Tsimshian or the Bororo. Our reactions--the thrill of awe or horror--appears to draw the limits of myth. Tales so assembled could have quite diverse origins, histories and functions. Indeed, Kirk's wellargued skepticism suggests a further step in mythographical deflation: Men sit about the campfire, answering questions put to them about life and death, conventions, the orderly movement of the sky, the progress of the seasons and all sorts of things. The answers, like the questions, are casual, and on occasion are provided by someone with a flair for story-telling. His version catches on, receives embellishments, and is applied to other questions and on other occasions. Such extemporaneous tales will, no doubt, in their casual way, overlook or suspend logic and causality. But somehow they work for the occasion whether the problem is the dark at the edge of the campfire, the waxing and waning of the moon, the miracle of generation, or whatever in the endless array of mysteries, terrors and amusements preoccupies or interests man. We know many such stories as folk tales, which along with legend, Kirk is anxious to distinguish from myth. Legends, no doubt, have the aim of preserving a record of notable events, and are thus constrained by logic and nature, in a way that other stories, told to amuse or instruct or answer unanswerable puzzles, are not. This suggests that the spectrum of ancient story-telling includes a variety of hues. To single out some of them because of their haunting or compelling character, and then to ask questions about origin and function risks sacrificing Kirk's critical labors against the extravagant fancies of mythographers. Such a definition opens that particular Pandora's box. A. R. LoucH Claremont Graduate School Principles and Persons. By Frederick A. Olafson. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967. Pp. 258) The major contention of this remarkable book is that Anglo-American philosophy has much to gain from an unbiased consideration of an existentialist ethical theory, i.e., "a reasoned interpretation of the fundamental concepts of morality"--once the elements of such a theory have been disengaged "from the forbidding terminology which the existentialists use" and have been reformulated "in terms that are intelligible to those philosophers who do not share this special 'ontological' orientation." In order to achieve clarity and depth of focus, Professor Olafson has wisely chosen to restrict his critical study to those of the existentialists (Heidegger, Sartre and, mostly to illuminate certain internal tensions, Merleau-Ponty) who "conceive moral autonomy as the final and ineluctable condition of man." Even within these limits, he has found it necessary to confine himself to three central issues: the rejection of objectivist accounts of value, the relation between individual choice and general principle, and the possibility of reconciling a theory of radical moral autonomy with traditional notions of obligation and community. And in spite of the lengthy historical sketch that precedes his analysis of these issues, and the extensive citations (usually in the original) supporting the entire text in footnotes, Olafson concludes his introduction with this plea: while I feel that the kind of reconstructed existentialism I propose remains consistent with the deepest inspiration of the writers on whom I draw as my primary sources and is in BOOK REVIEWS 275 fact adumbrated in their writings, I recognize that my emendations may strike some readers as dilutions of the authentic and heady brew of existentialism with an insipid analytical thinner. I would simply ask those who may be unable to recognize any true affinity between the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre and the reformulation I propose, to consider the latter on its own merits alone without any concern for its degree of faithfulness to such originals, and with full appreciation of the seriousness of the criticisms it is designed to meet. (p. xvii) The first...

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