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BOOK REVIEWS 165 things to illustrate intelligence and the two classes of intelligible things" (p. 150). In short, the analogies of the Sun and Divided Line constitute one developed analogy which is illustrative in character rather than classificatory. An extended discussion of the main upper segment of the line reveals that the analogy articulates more completely the methodology of philosophical discovery, i.e., the twofold movement of thought. The downward deductive movement is exhibited most clearly in mathematical reasoning but is not restricted thereto. The upward inductive movement (the real work of metaphysical construction and generalization ) is described as philosophical dialectic. Seen from this point of view, the Sun-Divided Line analogy is a limited analogy serving a restricted purpose, viz. by use of two classes of visible things, physical objects and their reflections, to exhibit the two classes of intelligible things, the Ideas as unordered plurality and the Ideas as a coherent whole dependent upon the Good (p. 164). The allegory of the Cave serves a different purpose, maintains Raven, and in so doing moves us beyond limited analogy to comprehensive allegory. "The Cave is to give us a picture of every state of mind through which a man may pass, from a state of total illusion to a state of total enlightenment " (p. 164). Thus, in the allegory of the Cave we have a comprehensive contrast between the "sensible" world and its objects and the intelligible world and its Ideas. We are no longer restricted to a limited analogy between the visible and the intelligible. Assuming that Raven's account of the three allegories or analogies is correct, it is evident that the establishment of his thesis requires no radical or innovating reinterpretation of either the development or of the meaning of Platonic metaphysics. Considered from that point of view, the thesis, while valid and correcting a widespread misinterpretation, is trivial. However, in challenging the accepted version of the three allegories and providing a radically new understanding of their meaning, Raven does conform to another standard that measures the importance of a philosophical interpretation, namely, that it be interesting. From this new perspective on the three focal allegories of Plato's metaphysics, the well-known problems of Plato's thought may be confronted with a freshness and a clarity that is useful both to the specialist and the non-specialist. A. M. FRAZIER Emory University The Middle Ages and Philosophy. By Anton Pegis. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1963. Pp. 102. $3.75.) For a long time now there has been genuine dispute as to whether Christian philosophy is possible. If Christian, it rests on faith, not on reason. If philosophy, it rests on reason, not on faith. The thesis that Christianity, or any religious view of the world that rests on nonrational grounds, can inspire "philosophy whose claim to authenticity as a philosophy in no way denies this inspiration" (p. 7) deserves our consideration. Secular universities resist the teaching of medieval philosophy because it is not pure of religious and theological infection . In the first place, such a resistance can seriously damage the training of young philosophers because it ignores the fact that philosophy from the sixteenth century on has been influenced and shaped by the theological-philosophical systems of the later Middle Ages. For a proper understanding of events in philosophy and in science since 1500 one cannot ignore the preceding seven hundred years. Secondly, it might be well for "pure" philosophers to examine the possibility of such purity and next to consider that perhaps an impure infusion of ideas into the bloodstream of philosophical thinking may nonetheless be philosophically important and rationally defensible. As Professor Pegis says to his Catholic audience, "We find it difficult today to think that theology can generate a philosophy within itself as its own human instrument" (p. 88). Pegis presents in brief, readable form the issues as they have crystallized during the past eighty years. Since this volume is the result of a single lecture, it does not purport to be exhaustive. There is, however, a respectable bibliography which any reader can explore if he 166 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY wishes to pursue the problem further. In addition, though he is addressing...

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