The Collected Essays of Gregor Sebba: Truth, History and the Imagination (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 477 of his own, "Seventy Years before the GoldenBough: George Grote's Unpublished Essay on 'Magick'." Since the Ritualists' views will always be considered, "reconsideration" calls for the re-estimation and elevation of their importance. Unfortunately, none of these essays gives us reason to do so. One wonders whether perhaps the reconsideration is intended for irrational elements behind religion, literature, and philosophy. ANGELO JUFFRAS William Paterson College Helen Sebba, Anibal A. Bueno, and Hendrikus Boers, eds. The CollectedEssaysofGregor Sebba: Truth, History and the Imagination. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. Pp. xxvii + 469. Cloth, $45.oo. Most scholars and students of early modern philosophy are probably familiar with Gregor Sebba's name by way of his magnificent BibliographiaCartesiana:A CriticalGuide to theDescartesLiterature 18oo-I96o 0964), as well as his contribution on Descartes to A CriticalBibliography of FrenchLiterature 0961). But Sebba's work extended way beyond the boundaries of Cartesian scholarship and the narrow categories of discipline that circumscribe most academic careers. A professor of economics and statistics at the University of Georgia from 1947 to 1959, when he assumed the directorship of the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University (a post he held until his retirement in 1973), Sebba's teaching and scholarly interests included philosophy, literary criticism, art history, education, sociology, and political science. Nowhere is this range of interests more evident than in the twenty essays collected in this volume. They represent a record of more than thirty years of thinking upon profound and vitally important questions. Some of the essays were never published before; others now appear in English for the first time. ,What seems to unite them all is Sebba's concern with the "social, psychological, and artistic dimensions of the human creative imagination, its rage for order and unflagging search for truth" (xx). Although many of the essays nominally focus on a single thinker or writer or cultural phenomenon (Descartes, Rilke, Eliot, Greek tragedy, Heidegger, mannerism, Rousseau , Pascal), Sebba's interest is always with more universal themes: the nature of historical and poetic truth, the role of myth in society, the relationship between time and the construction of the self, the meaning of modernity, the educational and political value of drama vs. philosophy, among others. Sebba's learning is immense and his style eminently readable. But what most impresses the reader of these essays is how seriously Sebba takes the questions he investigates and how deeply felt are his explorations of the issues they raise. The essays are divided into four sections. The essays in Part I, "Self and Society: Problems of the Modern Age," are "Symbol and Myth in Modern Rationalistic Societies ," "Time and the Modern Self: Descartes, Rousseau, Beckett," "History, Modernity , and Gnosticism," and "Descartes and Pascal: A Retrospect." Part II, "Truth and History: Problems of Historical Understanding," includes an essay on the role in politi- 478 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:3 JULY ~993 cal education that tragedy played in the Greek polls of the fifth century s.c., three essays on Sebba's mentor Eric Voegelin, and three essays concerned with problems in the historiography of philosophy. Of particular interest in the latter is Sebba's discussion of the differences and relationship between "doctrinal analysis" and historical investigation in writing history of philosophy. I suspect that the distinction he draws may well seem simplistic to many practitioners of the craft, and too abstracted from the actual doing of history of philosophy, although Sebba does not hesitate to elucidate his claims with his own analysis of the Malebranche-Foucher debate. In Part III, "The Ordering Power of the Imagination," Sebba turns to human creativity and the work of art, with a particular emphasis on poetry9 Part IV, "Ideas and Cultural Style," consists in two essays on the ideas informing the styles of two cultural periods: the Baroque and the post-Enlightenment9 The volume concludes with a "Coda" on interdisciplinary studies and Sebba's reflections on professionalism and specialization in academia. The editors (and publisher) of the book are to be commended for making these essays--many of which were published in out-of-the-way places--readily accessible in a single source. Sebba's writings...