Analecta Anselmiana. Volume 5, Untersuchungen über Person und Werk Anselms von Canterbury (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 337 the same intolerance that dominates these pages. The most serious fault in this view of the history of rhetoric, logic, and poetics, and in this method of doing the history of ideas, is its sterility . Since all truths have been discovered, what remains for the contemporary student of rhetoric , logic, and poetics? To develop those theories further? There is no need: "The theory of rhetoric, purified of some of the rhetorical mechanisms which no longer meet the needs of the modern world-invention by resort to commonplaces, for example, or style that grows from the exploitation of the tropes and the figures--is still properly to be regarded as the organon of the literature of statement, while the organon of the literature of symbol is properly to be regarded as poetics" (p. 255). Howell's conception of the contemporary task is astoundingly impoverished: "The crucial problem in bringing Aristotelian poetic theory into relation with twentieth-century criticism seem[s] to be that of finding a word to convey to the modern literary sensibility what the term mimesis has conveyed to ancient Greek and Roman critics and to the literary world of the European Renaissance" (p. 30). That the crucial problem should be finding a word is--more than the lack of evidence at crucial points, more than the failure to examine basic assumptions, more than the reduction of all value to that of distance from his own conception of Aristotle--a proof of the worth of this book. EUGENE GARVER California State College, San Bernardino Analecta Anselmiana. Volume 5, Untersuchungen ~ber Person und Werk Anselms yon Canterbury . Edited by Helmut Kohlenberger et at. Frankfort am Main: Minerva GMBH, 1976. Pp. 310. DM 120. The latest of a series initiated in 1970, this volume continues what is assuredly the most substantive effort by contemporary scholarship in the field of Anselm studies. The contributions are, on the whole, of superior caliber, many dedicated to the philosophical aspect of his thought. Contributions by Brunner, Gombocz, Hopkins, Kohlenberger, Salbego, Schmaus, Vanni Rovighi, Vignaux, and others, are included in this volume. Of special interest to philosophy are the articles by Vignaux, Hopkins, Brunner, and Salbego. Vignaux's study ("L'Histoire de la philosophie devant l'oeuvre de Saint Anselm") attempt s to evaluate the status of Anselm's work within the history of philosophy. Beginning with the Proslogion--certainly the best qualified candidate for philosophical status-he proposes a compromise between an outright denial of its philosophical character (Barth and Stolz) and Gilson's hypothetical "Christian gnosticism." The argument is not grounded on a "logic" peculiar to faith but on a common logic based on the principle of noncontradiction. Furthermore , Anselm's logic and linguistic analysis have certain points of contact; he constructs a "semi-artificial" language possessing technical precision from everyday language (communis locutio). Skirting the ambiguities of language, Anselm structures "natural language" so as to endow it with the precision of technical language. Vignaux further indicates that Anselm's notion of truth, as found in De Veritate, does not depend on its point of departure in Scripture, and the key notion of rectitudo is far more than a mere echo of Psalm 31. Moreover, his definition of justice as "rectitudo propter se servata" prefigures themes in the philosophy of Kant. Even Anselm's angelology, hardly suited to the contemporary temper, contains definitions that are philosophically relevant: injustice defined as "carentia iustitiae debitae" and moral evil as "absentia boni." According to Vignaux, the Cur Deus Homo itself is grounded on the "more philosophical" treatises (Proslogion and Monologion) and characterized by the autonomy of its dialectical structure. Nevertheless, Vignaux does not conclude that Anselm's work is to be included solely within the philosophical domain; rather, it can best be evaluated by the historian of philosophy as "studies" (essa/s) in the philosophy of religion. Whether or not this is a satisfactory solution is 338 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY open to question. The status of philosophy of religion itself as a philosophical discipline has yet to be definitively ascertained. Nevertheless, Vignaux presents a viable solution that merits serious consideration and may well open the way to new perspectives. An important theme that has...