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460 Book Reviews Personalism Revisited: Its Proponents and Critics Thomas O. Buford and Harold H. Oliver, editors Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002 xxix + 399 pp. Personalism Revisited was envisioned initially by the Personalist Discussion Group, Eastern Division (PDG), in 1983 to be a volume "comprised of a selection of essays chosen from those presented at annual meetings of the Eastern Division of The American Philosophical Association" (p. xiii) to mark its fiftieth anniversary in 1988. It took eighteen years for that volume to be published in its current form. The editorial committee of the PDG — consisting of Thomas O. Buford, Harold H. Oliver, Jack Padget and Warren E. Steinkraus — selected the nineteen essays comprising this volume. Personalism Revisited serves as an introduction to "the central ideas of American Personalistic Idealism developed during the twentieth-century, its major criticisms, and recent developments by philosophers who are either Personalistic Idealists or sympathetic to the position" (back cover). 'American Personalistic Idealism' refers to the personalism of Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Peter Anthony Bertocci, and those inspired by their thought. Following the back cover's description of Personalism Revisited, the PDG editorial committee writes that the essays contained in this volume either (a) present "the case for personalism" (p. xiii), (b) "[pose] the most searching questions about [personalism's] claims" (p. xiii), (c) "represent 'an enlargement of the [personalist] vision'" (p. xiii), or (d) explore "themes vital to personalism from the perspective of philosophers sympathetic to the values of personalism" (p. xiii). Each of the four parts of Personalism Revisited corresponds to one of the four descriptions above. "Part One: The Personalist Vision" (chapters 1-4) is where the case for personalism is presented. The theme for "Part Two: The Enlargement of the Vision" (chapters 5-8) is selfexplanatory . "Part Three: Problems with Personalism" (chapters 9-12) is where the most challenging critiques of personalism are articulated. "Part Four: Related Philosophies" (chapters 13-19) is where philosophers sympathetic to personalism engage in a critical dialogue with it. Arranging the essays in this way enables the reader to see personalism as a living, evolving tradition with problems that it has yet to resolve and with its own contributions to make to contemporary philosophical issues and discussions. Due to space constraints, I shall provide only thumbnail sketches of what I consider the most thematically representative essays for each part of this volume. I recommend that readers study the remaining essays — including John H. Lavely's informative introduction, "A History of the Personalist Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Spring, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 2 Book Reviews 461 Discussion Group (1938-1988)" — for their valuable insights into the vision, enlargement, problems, and promise of personalism. I Warren E. Steinkraus (chapter 1) gives an excellent introduction to the thought of Borden Parker Bowne. The first section of Steinkraus's essay describes four of Bowne's arguments for theism without getting bogged down in the complexities of Bowne's personalistic metaphysics. For Steinkraus the two most important theistic arguments Bowne makes are the modified teleological argument and the epistemological argument. What distinguishes Bowne's teleological argument from traditional versions of that argument is that it does not argue that the universe has any sort of predetermined and definite telos. What it does argue is that "the argument of efficient causes for the production of purpose-like effects ... points to a mind and purpose as the ground of the arrangement" (Bowne, quoted on p. 10). This mind and purpose is what Bowne calls God. Steinkraus thinks that Bowne's epistemological argument is "Bowne's most decisive argument for theism" (p. 11). It appears to be an argument from analogy in the form: As we infer that someone in front of us is a human person "from the immediate data before us, we infer a mind in nature from the data of nature present to us" (p. 11). This implies that we can rely on our capacity to infer God's existence from the facts nature presents to us, e.g., the apparent regularities of the natural order (p. 11). Steinkraus spends the second section of his essay describing the two modes of argument Bowne used during...

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