The Visages of Adam ed. by H. A. Nielson, Belief, Knowledge, and Truth ed. by R. R. Ammerman and M. G. Singer (review)

194 BOOK REVIEWS The Visages of Adam. Ed. by H. A. Nielson, New York: Random House, 1970. Pp. 385. $3.75. Belief, Knowledge, and Truth. Ed. by R. R. Ammerman and M. G. Singer. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. Pp. 532. $4.95. The purpose of Visages of Adam is to offer a selection of readings for an introductory course in Philosophical Literature or the Philosophy of Man, to present the basic points of view that are strongly in evidence today bearing upon the personal, interpersonal, and religious dimensions of human life. The criterion for selecting the readings is their relatedness to the question of how one is to regard his own existence. A division into three parts purports to present relevant readings on how philosophers consider man: as a subject in himself, in relation to his perceptual environment, and as a creature. The theme of the anthology is that philosophical problems raised by Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius etc., find their resolution in a kind of Kierkegaardian fideism. The order of the materials, etc., is presented in a manner presupposing an unmentioned acceptance of the existential phenomenological approach to the study of man. The first part expresses three views of man: the conditions of the individual via Socrates' defence of himself in the Apology and Aristotle's discussion of happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics; cosmological approaches to man are conveyed by Lucretius's view of death and Schopenhauer's view of the will. The Christian resolution of what the editor considers to be the problematic nature of the above views is represented by Kierkegaard's insistence that the true man is conscious of living as an individual responsible to God and by Marcel's dynamics of the human personality. The second part primarily presents the difficulties of defining a social virtue in concreto according to Plato together with Aristotle's views of the State and the individual as contrasted with Engel's defence of Dialectical Materialism and its moral consequences. Again, the view is that what the philosophers cannot resolve is resolved via faith represented by St. Augustine. The third part views man as a creature via Pascal's assertion that, due to the conflicting tendencies found in man as a result of his sinfulness, man can only attain to " truth "via the grace of God, and via Kierkegaard's view that only God can truly teach because he can convey Truth and the conditions for understanding it. This is followed by Nietzche's proclamation of the death of God and Maritain's observation that absolute atheism in a reflection of the prevalence of the practical atheism of many believers. It is questionable whether these readings as presented adequately serve as the basis of a course in the Philosophy of Man, etc. The theme of the BOOK REVIEWS 195 book tends to absorb philosophy into theology via a kind of fideism. The insufficient introductory material leaves the student confronted with a series of conclusions of different authors but without the required knowledge of their place in the total corpus; moreover it fails to convey the nature of philosophy as a definite discipline. The failure to present the student with any Anglo-American philosophy and classical or scholastic thought on the nature of the soul is an unfortunate defect in the presentation of the views prevelant today. Finally, in choosing the anthological approach to the teaching of philosophy, is not the purpose to show what men have said about things rather than how the truth of things stands? The editors of the anthology, Belief, Knowledge, and Truth, neither attempt to provide the reader with the history of what philosophers have said in regard to belief, knowledge, and truth, nor readings which could provide the basis of comparison of the various major schools of philosophy on these epistemological issues. Rather they have chosen to provide a good preamble to an intensive study of the problematic nature of defining belief, knowledge, and truth in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. The various schools of this tradition-Analytical Philosophy, Pragmatism, and Critical Realism-are represented in this rather extensive anthology. The consideration of belief, knowledge, and truth in these schools was generated for the...