Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES The Responsibility of the Artist. By JAcQuEs MARITAIN. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960. Pp. 1~0. $~.95. In this little book Maritain contemplates the artist and his work in relation to the social community and to his own perfection as a man. Citing the :traditional distinction between prudence and art, he shows that while each is formally distinct, art nevertheless because it resides in a man is indirectly regulated by prudence, so that in the long run the artist will suffer, as artist, if he ceases to live as a man. Art also must be considered in relation to the queen of all the virtues, charity, for it is only by growth in this that an artist may " purify his sources " and arrive, after great storm and struggle, at some integration between the demands of his work and his life. Charity is the key to the responsibility of the artist, for if he loves truth and his fellowmen he will never seek to corrupt either. It is on the basis of a refinement of this thought that Maritain sees the role of the community in censorship. If what the artist does is an incitation to evil action and not just an attempt to impart ideas (admitting the difficulty in distinguishing the two), the civil community has a right to interfere. It is another matter with the supernatural society which is the Church since the common good here is divine truth communicateQ. to men and the inner life of grace vivifying them. Ideas disseminated in such a society obviously cannot be opposed to the truth revealed by God. The best wine in this book is kept until the end where Maritain discusses the problems facing the sincere artist who wants to be a saint. His extreme sensitivity to material beauty, his temptation to taste evil in order to know it, and to be too much in sympathy with the evil characters he depicts, all throw up what seem to some artists an insurmountable barrier to sanctity. "II faudrait etre un saint ... Mais alors on n'ecrirait pas de roman," is the way Mauriac said it. Maritain does not diminish the difficulty but still finds reasons for encouragement. His words should be read by all artists fighting the good fight and swimming, as best they can, against a very considerable stream. St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana 613 THOMAS R. HEATH, 0. P. 614 BRIEF NOTICES The World a& Will and Representation. By ARTHUR ScHOPENHAUER. Tr. by E. F. J. Payne. Indian Hills, Colorado: The Falcon's Wing Press, 1958. Vol. I, pp. 584; Vol. II, pp. 687. $17.50. Schopenhauer shares with Nietzsche the distinction, rare among German philosophers, of being a writer who is both clear and outspoken, who lightens his pages with many striking examples, and not infrequently delights the reader with passages of striking beauty. In fact, he was more of a poet than a philosopher. One who reads him for his philosophy may find many insights, acute observations, and an interesting criticism of Kant; but from the point of view of systematic thought, this voluntaristic and pessimistic view of reality has little to commend it beyond drawing attention to what is undoubtedly one aspect of reality, yet by no means the principal one. There is no need here to dwell on the many internal contradictions and defects that have been pointed out by others, such as Fr. Copleston in his work on Schopenhauer, and more briefly by J. Collins in his history of modern European philosophy. It speaks well for the translation that the reader is hardly aware that what he is reading is not the original. An introduction explains the translator 's aims, and indicates the principal German terms and the vocabulary adopted to express them, especially where previous translations have been thought insufficient, or likely to cause confusion. Only recently the full and original text of Schopenhauer has been made available, largely owing to the scholarly and constant researches of Dr. Arthur Hiibscher, president of the Schopenhauer Gesellschaft; it is this text which has been used in the present edition, thus giving us what must be reckoned the standard critical edition in...