American Religious Philosophy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 197 Heidegger stresses the ability to wait for insight, which is not, however, a mere passive waiting for something fixed. It would be too easy to oppose the active structuring of reality as it is understood by the Neo-Kantian philosophy of science with a Bergsonian concept of absolute intuition. Instead, Heidegger calls for a more respectful attitude toward language, or as he says elsewhere, a listening to the voice of Being, whereby the already existent structure of reality can be revealed to us in its basic indeterminacy. The only objection to this very readable translation is that not enough attention is drawn to the positive suggestivity of Heidegger's terminology. Because no German equivalents are given in the text the English reader loses the awareness that the word Gelassenh~it is surrounded by a series of cognates with the root lassen (to let) such as zulassen (to permit), einlassen (to let in) which are used to describe man's relation to Being. In this connection, it seems that the term "releasement" might have served better as the translation for Heidegger's more peripheral concept of Losgelassen~ein (being let loose) than for Gelassenheit. Moreover, it would have been unnecessary for the translators to commit themselves from the start to one fixed equivalent for this problematical word, had they given the original word in brackets. They could then have introduced different translations appropriate to different contexts or at least have resorted to hendiadys to preserve the suggestiveness of the original text. Rigid adherence to one translation produces such awkward phrases as "releasement toward things" which it seems could be rendered more satisfactorily by a phrase like "letting things be." It is to be hoped that the key German terms will be provided in the succeeding translations of Heidegger's works under the general editorship of Professor J. Glenn Gray. This will be especially useful for interrelating passages from various works as rendered by different translators. RUVOLFA. MAKKR~I, University oI Cali]ornia, San Diego American Religious Philosophy. By Robert J. Roth, S. J. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967.Pp. vi W 211. $2.95.) Father Roth's examination of the religious thought of James, Peirce, Dewey, Whitehead, and Royce presents the thesis that American philosophers, due to the distinctive character of the American experience, have something distinctive to contribute to religious thought. "If I have insisted on anything, it is that American philosophers have shown that the way of personal experience is a starting point that can lead to theism" (p. 187). To the extent that this thesis is at all definite, it seems to refer to the approach suggested by James in "The Will to Believe" and by Peirce in "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." The way to God is not through demonstration, but rather through the hopes and needs of human nature. While the author, most likely, intended this work as a contribution to current religious discussions, it is also an essay in the history of philosophy. This review will be restricted to the second aspect. It is strange to find Josiah Royce among the exponents of the "personal experience" approach to religion. After all, was not most of his life devoted to demonstrating God's existence? This difficulty is overcome by the two-Royces theory. The absolutist metaphysician and builder of abstract systems is opposed to the "Jamesian" Royce whose "starting point" is "actual experience" and who "resolutely tries to stay in contact with experience" (p. 154). This is, of course, the later Royce of The Philosophy o] Loyal~y and The Problem o] Christianity. If the two-Royces theory is correct, what are we to make of Royce's insistence that his later works are applications of idealism to the more concrete problems of human life? The earlier metaphysical works lay the foundation for such application. Thus, in The 198 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY World and the Individual, the idealistic theory of being is described as a "method" in terms of which we should estimate the facts of experience (II, 5). In the absence of such theory, the study of experience would entirely lack "metaphysical foundation" (I, 393). For...