The Philosophical Approach of Reid MacCallum

REVIEV\TS THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH OF REID MAcCALLUM* THOMAS G. HENDERSON Judging from his book, Reid MacCallum was a man whose ability in manipulating abstractions did not blanket his sensitivity to the im~ plications of immediately felt experiences. By this is meant that in his posthumous volume of collected essays MacCallum masters a wide variety of abstract theories; yet at the same time he approaches these theories in the perspective of the sort of thing that any theory is. This procedure enables him to reap the value of sundry theoretical insights without being fooled by an over-extended application of these insights to the richness of concrete facts. And when he thus separates the gold in theory from overgeneralized straws he uses as a sifter what is evident from the pages of this book, namely his own sensitive, discriminating, and inclusively oriented nature. Such an attitude towards abstract theories and the experiential facts they are intended to fit is expressed in the penultimate chapter. Here we find a well-balanced account, from a contemporary point of view, of how philosophy should be a development of the Delphic injunction to "Know Thyself." A conception of the broadest possible role that philosophy has to play is worked out. This role is described negatively by saying that anyone is unphilosophical in so far as his generalizations narrow down authentic human experience to only one of its ranges--to, say, a range of either external sense or of aesthetic or moral or economic or religious experience. This wise warning is supported in the last paper by the assertion that a well-rounded philosophy should not confine itself to considering our human selves as known objects at the expense of approaching these same selves as also being acting subjects or agents. And MacCallum's own caution to avoid unfairness to anything that can be used as evidence for a philosophy is taken seriously throughout his book. More specifically, his concentration on aesthetics illustrates how a philosopher should be fair to all the relevant evidence. This is to be seen in the chapter on contemporary aesthetic theory, where he shows that several of the more recent aestheticians abuse the evidence available to them. They either confine that evidence to only a selection of the arts or they go *Imitation & Design and Other Essays. By ltErn MAcCALLUM. Edited by WILLIAM BLISSETT. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1953. pp. xviii, 209. $5.00. 421 422 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY beyond the pertinent evidence to stress something such as pleasure or empathy which is of wider scope than the strictly artistic. The theme underlying this criticism of current aesthetic theory is given a fascinating and happily detailed exposition in the first three, and the longest, chapters of this volume. Thus chapter I, which is the title essay of the collection, is devoted especially to painting, and it argues a strong case for aesthetic justice being done to both expressive design and the imitation of nature. This justice leads to a "significant marriage" in which a formal design that expresses emotion is the partner of prime importance-the husband. The wife is the objective reference of forms which imitate or represent the natural world, and she is subordinate to her husband in so far as she contributes associations which enhance and specify the expression of emotion through form. In other words, MacCallum takes the expression of subjective feelings to be the dominant aim of the painter, and this expression is achieved by forms which have at least some degree of resemblance, though certainly not a literal resemblance, to what we find in. the objective world about us. During the course of working out this conception of the expressive role performed by resemblance or imitation, he gives his reasons for thinking that imitation should be a via media between the extremes of merely copying and being altogether absent. Certain facts in the history of religion, morality, logic, and aesthetics are used to show why a painter does not, and should not, aim at the extreme of a literal representation of nature. And further reasons are given why an artist should not go to the other extreme of creating a totally non...