Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES The Drama of Atheist Humanism. By HENRI DE LUBAC, S.J. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950. Pp. 258, with index. $4.00. In this short volume Father de Lubac, the French theologian, deals with the impossible problem of man's attempt to build a .·humanism on the denial of God. The atheists he selects for this study are mainly three: Marx, Nietzsche, and Comte. Against them he places Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky as believers in God who seriously plumbed the depths of atheist thought and rejected it for being anti-humanist as well as anti-theist. The volume is curiously arranged into three parts. The first treats of four figures; Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, with comparisons and discussion centering about the last. The second section is devoted to Comte and Christianity, and the third to Dostoevsky. With the exception of the 90 pages devoted to Comte, the work is not a systematic treatment of any one author's thought about God but rather a selection from each one's writings to illustrate the particular point Father de Lubac is making at the time. The treatment of Comte, incidentally, is the best critical analysis of the French positivist's thought this author has yet seen. It makes one wish Father de Lubac would do more systematic writing instead of the brilliant but disjointed method he usually employs. A book of this kind does :p.ot lend itself so much to systematic review as to a series of observations on its principal merits and its deficiencies. In the. first place, The Drama of Atheist Humanism is a hard book to classify. Written by a theologian on a theological subject, it is not a piece of theological writing. Perhaps, it can best be called apologetics. Judged with the author's other works, it appears part of his plan to examine all the alternative answers to the question of human destiny and God's existence. In this work he demonstrates the impossibility of an atheist humanism. Father de Lubac treats his antagonists with respect and with charity. He states the Nietzschean, Marxian, and Comtean positions as strongly and as sympathetically as possible before showing their inadequacies and their positive errors. The great value of this work, indeed, is that the author understands his antagonists-his psychological insight into other systems of thought is remarkable-and exposes the inner contradictions in their systems of thought. Next, it should be observed that for those in the Christian tradition the book is valuable chiefly for the many phrases and sentences dropped along the wayside by the author, any one of which can serve as a point of departure for serious reconsideration of our thought and our action in the past half century. i90 BRIEF NOTICES 291 This reviewer is not convinced that Comte's positivism remains as important as Father de Lubac considers it. " To my mind," he insists, "it is one of the most dangerous [menaces] that beset us". (p. 157). '.fo us in this country, Comte's religion of sociolatry seems too naive to be taken seriously at this date, although his methodology and his general attitude toward the various fields of knowledge have left a pernicious heritage from which the modern world still suffers. Some may wonder why Father de Lubac confronts atheist humanism with the theistic affirmations of Dostoevsky instead of with the traditional Catholic affirmations about God. To me, this use of Dostoevsky seems a masterpiece of apologetics, for the author gropes through the darkness of atheist negations with Dostoevsky and comes with him-reluctantly almost on Dostoevsky's part-to an affirmation of God's existence. ' Dostoevsky is valuable apologetically, for, as he puts it," My hosanna has come forth from the crucible of doubt." It is much more difficult to analyze a novelist's thought than it is the thought of an essayist· or polemicist. Father de Lubac threads his way deftly among Dostoevsky's characters to pick out·what he considers the author's personal beliefs. Experts in literary criticism may disagree with certain of his conclusions, but this reviewer at least is satisfied that his interpretations of Dostoevsky's novels are essentially correct. The Drama...