Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Pyrrhonian (review)

624 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:4 OCTOBER 1996 ingly addresses and largely resolves Schopenhauer's seeming contradictions and paradoxes . Indeed, his concluding remarks are largely devoted to clarifying and tracing out of some important implications of this "single thought." Third, Atwell's presentation of Schopenhauer's philosophy offers much both to long-time scholars of Schopenhauer's works and to readers who are relatively new to his thought. He achieves this balance by providing a careful and deliberate explication of Schopenhauer's thoughts. Atwell focuses on Schopenhauer's central work, The World as Will and Representation (1819) and he analyzes its four books with masterful precision, always blending his critical evaluation with a selective representation of secondary criticism, along with appropriate references to Schopenhauer's other works. A few criticisms may, nevertheless, be raised against Atwell's work. First, though he does touch upon several important criticisms that have been leveled against Schopenhauer 's philosophy, some important ones are excluded--e.g., Bryan Magee's argument that Schopenhauer never claimed that knowledge of the noumenon--ultimate reality as it is in itself--was possible? The exclusion of certain criticisms seems to reflect Atwelrs own agenda, for he does not seem to be as concerned with defending Schopenhauer's philosophy against various critical commentators as he is with delivering a fundamentally cogent presentation and evaluation of his system as a whole. Second, Atwell devotes so much effort to certain areas of Schopenhauer's thought, that other equally important ones are underestimated. Much of the energy he expends to explicate "the single thought" could have been used to further elaborate on many other problems and issues raised by Schopenhauer's philosophy, such as aesthetic contemplation as a means for temporarily overcoming desire, or the self-denial and abolition of the will. Again, it is not that Atwell totally ignores these issues. But more work could have been done to address these and other significant dilemmas that emerge throughout Schopenhauer's philosophy. Nevertheless, Atwell's Schopenhaueron the Characterof the World: The Metaphysicsof Will is a remarkable accomplishment that will greatly advance our understanding and appreciation of Schopenhauer's philosophy as the work of a consistent and highly intuitive thinker, who should no longer be considered as existing merely on the fringe of philosophical greatness. DON GILES UniversityofKentucky Jos~ Raimundo Maid Neto, Machado de Assis: The Brazilian Pyrrhonian. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii + ~31. Cloth, $35.95. Hidden away in the prevailing ignorance of things Brazilian is Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, one of the keenest writers of fiction anywhere. His style is so original for his time, the nineteenth century, that he has been seized upon as a forerunner of ' Bryan Magee. MisunderstandingSchopenlmuer,The 1989 Bithell Memorial Lecture (Institute of Germanic Studies: University of London, x99o). BOOK REVIEWS 625 both modernism and that furtively defined phenomenon called postmodernism. This is often the case with an original artist who seems to be out of place and out of time. Now, with this careful study, Jos6 Raimundo Maia Neto has placed Machado, if not within a philosophical school, within a tendency at least: Pyrrhonian skepticism. He makes no claim for Machado's being familiar with Pyrrho himself, but notes that the Brazilian novelist was by his own admission an adept of Montaigne and Pascal, notably the latter. Mr. Maia Neto has organized his study by chronology and by works, tracing the evolution of the novelist's thought and technique from his earliest attempts at fiction up to his mature masterpieces. In keeping with the theme of his study, Mr. Maia Neto has hewn closely to those works and episodes that afford a cogent picture of Machado's Pyrrhonian outlook. He is also careful not to confuse the novelist with his narrators, as the three main novels under consideration, Merntrias Ptstumas de Brtts Cubas, Dora Casmurro, and Memorial deAires, are all narrated by their protagonists. In line with this he has not dealt in a thoroughgoing way with QuincasBorba as it is not a first-person narrative by the main character. We are given four categories in Machado's work: (l) outward life--the locus of divertissement, precarious beliefs...