The Concept of the Primitive ed. by Ashley Montagu (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 589 an internationally known scholar for his contribution to the mutual understanding of the Oriental and Occidental philosophers, was doubtlessly one of the most competent for a fruitful treatment of the themes. What he has here really indicated will be very useful even for Japanese intellectuals. Oura-tenshudo Nagasaki, Japan TosHIYUKI l\1IYAKAWA The Concept of the Prirnitive. AsHLEY MoNTAGU, Editor. New York: The Free Press, 1968. Pp. 283. $6.95. This book is a collection of papers by Montagu, Berndt, Hseu, Tax, Diamond, George, Sahlius, Henry and Dozier on the value of the term "primitive" for the technical language of anthropology. It will have some interest for philosophers and theologians in their use of anthropological literature for research in their own fields. Montague himself, and most of the contributors, argue for the elimination of the term. They argue that not only is it vague, but it is tainted with ethnocentrism and is incompatible with the value-free, objective, relativistic, and functionalistic methodology of anthropology. It originated in the assumption of European scientists that Western technological culture is superior to all others and a norm by which they can be judged. This prejudice was reinforced by the evolutionary approach which was simplisticly transferred from biology to the social sciences. If the term has any value, they believe, it can only be as a chronological designation for the culture of early man and cannot be applied to any existing cultures. Most of the writers favor such a term as " non-literate," or other purely descriptive labels for those societies which today are popularly called " primitive." They show that non-literate cultures are not necessarily very ancient, nor particularly simple in structure, nor by any means crude in their art, their thought, their manners and morals, or in the functional adaptation of life to environment. The only real dissentor in this discussion is Stanley Diamond in his essay " The Search for the Primitive." Diamond very vigorously argues for a new-Rousseauian position. He believes that many non-literate cultures are actually superior to modern civilization in the way they are designed to meet basic human needs. He argues, therefore, that there are certain aspects of man rightly labeled "primitive," which are seriously neglected in modern, rationalistic culture. He, therefore, proposes that the term be retained to characterize cultures in which these human traits receive their due. In a brief essay Jules Henry indicates the importance of the idea of the 590 BOOK REVIEWS "primitive" for Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and suggests that their philosophical insights may be helpful to anthropologists, even if the term is not. Aquinas Institute of Philosophy River Forest, IUinois BENEDICT M. AsHLEY, o. P. Human Existence: Contradiction and Hope. By WALTER STROLZ. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967. Pp. 171. $5.95. For more and more people today human existence seems either partly or wholly meaningless. The endeavor to overthrow traditional sexual and moral values; the attempt to make men assume sole responsibility for their actions and their destiny in a world which has witnessed the " death of God "; the " hippy " withdrawal from the "establishment "; all such phenomena are manifestations of this growing attitude. In part it is due to the discoveries of science and to the emergence of modern technology. Both have made men reject the myth-pictures of the past and replace them with a modern scientific or pseudo-scientific one. Man, seen in this new way, seems an entirely different creature. The meaning which his life had in the past is gone. That is the present meaninglessness of his existence for so many of our contemporaries. Strolz's collection of existential essays is a reflection upon this. Without being technical and without entering into any problem in depth, it manages to convey a good sense of what one form of existential thinking makes of the situation. The author has little to say which is original. But he comes at the problem from many sides, and this gives his work a certain breadth and trueness to life which highly technical and penetrating treatises often lack. He sees the problem in the light of science, philosophy, religion, art and music. And each of these...