A History of Muslim Philosophy, with Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands, Vol. II (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 81 product of Socrates' maieutic, elenctic, aporetic, negative method is also self-knowledge. The formal disagreement between the sophists and Socrates on how knowledge is to be taught leads to a disagreement in content: what is the nature and value of knowledge? Whereas the sophists offered convictions, opinions, and ready-made solutions to ethical-political problems , Socrates insisted upon imparting truth and knowledge. Opinions are accepted, and knowledge is to be appropriated, made one's own by a laborious process of enquiry, reflection, and argumentation. Although the therapeutic function of Socrates' teaching is familiar to the readers of Plato's dialogues, nevertheless Versenyi's ability to distinguish knowledge from opinions without appealing to transcendent forms is remarkable. Unlike opinion, Versenyi argues, knowledge is self-authenticating and self-augmenting. If a man happens to possess true opinions or to believe that something is the case, he still cannot be said to know, for such a state of mind may just be a matter of chance. To know is to have the "right" to be sure in the peculiarly Socratic connotation of a personal assent and rational recognition that what one knows is the product of one's search. By this process Socrates' students discover their limitations and are ready to become their own teachers. "Socrates' teaching naturally aimed at imparting not only formal self-knowledge, the knowledge of what one knows and what one does not know, but material self-knowledge, the knowledge of what one is and thus needs and desires and must have by nature, the knowledge of what is one's own, one's goal, and one's good" (p. 123). By stressing the hedonism, eudaemonism, and teleology of Socratic eth/cs, Versenyi remains faithful to the primary aim of his study. Aristippus, Antisthenes, and the cynics can easily be recognized as belonging to a continuous Socratic tradition. In his treatment of Diotima's speech in the Symposium, he describes the ascent to the vision of the beautiful as paradigmatic of Plato's transcendence and mysticism. He compares this epistemological trend with Socrates' conception of eros. Using the language of existentialism at its best he elaborates on the two different types of life, death, and responsibility. The Socratic life driven by eros is autonomous, self-sufficient; the Platonic is directed toward the divine, transcendent, etc. As he must, Versenyi concludes that transcendence so understood is irreconcilable with humanism (p. 76). If this is the case, the reader is left to wonder how to take the remark Versenyi makes (p. 183) that his study was also supposed to account for the development of Plato's epistemology. This last comment is intended to point out the only contradiction within the otherwise consistent hypothesis of Socratic humanism. L. M. P~,L~nm University of Delaware A Hisr o/Muslim Philosophy, with Short Accounts of Other Discildlnes and the Modern Renai~san~ i~ Muslim Lands, Vol. II. Ed. and intro. M. M. Sharif. (Wiesbaden: Otto Harra~owitz, 1966. Pp. viii -~ 1003) There is a definite need for perspective in the study of non-Western philosophies or systems of thought, unless we want to remain at the level of philology and literary research. For as soon as we recognize certain basic problems from which a given thought system has evolved and we begin a process of understanding and interpretation, the question arises: in what perspective might, can, or should this be done? One approach to the problem--and perhaps the most philosophical one---is to consider any thought on its own merits and investigate it in view of its own problems, treatment, and proposed solutions. With the assumption of the continuity of human thought, the perspective here is essentially that of a universal ~oh//osolvh/a/~renn/8: the movement of thought either per se or as an expression of human existence. Another approach is the historical one, i.e., considering human thought as a developing process proceeding from various sources and through different streams in the course of time. Here the perspective is that of a universal Ge/~sge~/chte: the history of ideas as a development of reason or of human consciousness. 82 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY A third approach...