Building the Human by Robert O. Johann, S. J. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 185 Finally, the volume is magnificently edited, though it is in soft cover. It is genuinely to be regretted, however, that there is no true index of subjects but only a detailed listing of chapter titles and subtitles. Almost equally regTettable is the absence of an index of the quotations from Aquinas according to subject matter and treatise. The inclusion of these items would greatly have enhanced the utility of the volume. JAMES B. REICHMANN, s. J. Seattle University Seattle, Washington Building the Human. By RoBERT 0. JoHANN, S. J. New York: Herder and Herder, 1968. Pp. 19~. $4.50. Father Johann proposes a "rebuilding" of the human, both as philosopher and as historian of human thought. Just as a man does not begin from scratch in building a human existence, neither does the author begin from scratch in his musings upon the task. There are strong indications of the influence of H. Richard Neibuhr, John Dewey, John Macmurray and Teilhard de Chardin. The blend is both extremely personal and extremely urbane. And the touch is finally that of a pragmatist in the best sense of the intellectual tradition of Dewey and James. What Father Johann does, it appears, is to put human thought and activities into a broader context than the context of systematic allegiances. In this Johann is eclectic-except that his eclecticism is reduced by a personal synthesis that is half the result of poetic statement, half the autobiographical insinuation of his personal conviction. Throughout, there is often an unspoken comparison implied in his style: he is frequently describing Neibuhr's Man-the-Responder, but he is always keeping Manthe -Consumer or Man-the-Onlooker on the horizon for contrast's sake. Building the Human frequently reaches heights of real eloquence, as when comparing thought, feeling and reality. "Feelings are not arbitrary, isolated occurences taking place under our skins. They are the pervasive and unifying qualities of the interactive process between person and environment that is human life itself. Instead of being irrelevant to what is going on, they are its culminating sense.... In relation, then, to reality, feelings are far from frivolous distractions. Instead they are the ultimate qualitative differences in that inclusive transaction which is reality." And in speaking of love: " Some inkling of love's power can be had by each of us if we but recall those rare and privileged moments when, with sudden splendor, the brightness of love burst into our lives.... We came alive. Possibilities for existing in ways we had forgotten, in ways 186 BOOK REVIEWS that made our past routines appear a barren desert-possibilities that summoned forth a creativity we did not know we had, that infinitely enriched our present by holding up to us a future without bounds-newly quickened our minds and hearts. . . . What being-loved makes being do is precisely be." Synthesis for Johann seems to mean not just a theoretical synthesis of insights from many schools; it seems to mean, above all, a synthesis of philosophy and experience. In giving a concrete manifestation of how he has done this for himself, philosopher Johann has made the project itself both credible and intelligible. Providence College Providence, R. I. PAUL PHILIBERT, O.P. Der Aggressionstrieb und Das Bose. By WINFRIED CzAPlEWSKI-GEoRG ScHERER. Essen: Driewer, 1967. Pp. ~64. These discussions of the relationship between the human aggressive drive and moral evil represent a philosophical examination of the scientific solution of the same problem as offered by Konrad Lorenz in his Das Sogenannte Bose- Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. (Transl.: On Aggression. Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.) The authors, the former being an instructor, the latter the director of the Catholic Academy, i.e., the Institute of Adult Education, of the diocese of Essen, W. Germany, consider Lorenz's thesis worthy of a serious, critical confrontation. On the one hand, Konrad Lorenz, who is one of the founders of modern ethology, is widely recognized as an outstanding authority on animal, especially instinctual behavior. The high esteem enjoyed by scientists in our modern society as well as the urgency of the problem of human aggression in an age of East-West ideological and political conflict and of...