The Journal of Value Inquiry 27: 283-284, 1993.

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Rudolf Hailer and Johannes Brandl (eds.), Wittgenstein: Eine Neubewertung~Towards a re-evaluation. Vienna: Verlag Hrlder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1990. ISBN (set) 3-209-01123-0 (paper), 3 vols. Nineteen eighty-nine marked the hundredth anniversary of Ludwig Wittgenstein's birth. To commemorate this significant date, the organizers of the annual International Wittgenstein Symposium decided to devote that year's meeting to re-evaluating Wittgenstein's philosophy. Thus, with this daunting task set before them, six-hundred Wittgensteinians from around the world converged on Kirchberg am Wechsel in Austria. Some arrived with new interpretations of aspects of the metaphysics contained in the Tractatus. Some went with new, philosophically relevant biographical information, mostly about the young Wittgenstein and the contextual background of his early philosophy. Others showed up merely to present a run of the mill analysis of a particularly problematic passage from Wittgenstein's philosophy, early, middle, and late. The end result of everyone's contribution was this three-volume collection of 138 of the 230 papers presented at the seven-day conference. The length of the essays ranges from sixteen pages to three pages: from the formal invited lecalres, to the short presentations delivered at the numerous workshops that were held. Even though it is questionable that all of the essays actually address the issue of re-evaluating Wittgenstein's philosophy (as the editors readily admit), this set is an impressive compilation of much of the recent scholarship devoted to one of the most influential, provocative, misunderstood, vexing, and written about philosophers since Hegel or Nietzsche. These volumes are not for the casualreaders of Wittgenstein. Most of the essays are microscopic, extremely dense, and closely argued. In fact, rarely have I encountered so much thought and substance packed into so little space, especially in the three to four-page presentations. Indeed, readers need to have a thoroughgoing knowledge of virtually every aspect of Wittgenstein's thought before tackling the essays. Consequently, only the most serious students of Wittgenstein will be capable of reading and understanding more than just a few of them. No matter what a reader's background, however, some of the essays defy understanding, either in part or altogether. Every once and awhile readers will also come across some really grand pronouncements, such as, "For Bolzano, as for Wittgenstein, the concept of space is of a purely conceptual nature" (Vol. I, p. 114). Probably no one has enough years left to his or her life to read every essay with the care and consideration most of them deserve. But, then again, these volumes are not meant for light reading or for mass consumption. Instead,

284 as intended, they will take their place as yet another collection that will serve well as a reference work. Regrettably, the volumes are riddled with typographical errors: the editors should have been more exacting in their proof reading and general editorial duties. Two essays I found particularly insightful are Peter Sullivan's "The Inexpressibility of Form" (Vol. I, pp. 77-83) and Newton Garver's "The Metaphysics of the Tractatus" (Vol. I, pp. 84-95). Jaakko Hintikka's "Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Immediate Experience" (Vol. I, pp. 155-167), which compares Wittgenstein's philosophy with Husserl's phenomenology, is also noteworthy, even though in his discussion of Wittgenstein Hintikka should have broadened his understanding of phenomenology to include some late nineteenth century, non-Husserlian versions of it. In their day, Mach and Hertz were also considered "phenomenalists." Stephen Toulmin's essay on "Wittgenstein and the Death of Philosophy" (Vol. I, pp. 221-227) is, in some ways, the best of the short papers in the set. Tied for a close second are Walter Schweidler's "Wittgenstein's Anti-Cartesianism" (Vol. III, pp. 226-230) and Wayne Myrvold's "Tractatus 4.04: (Compare Hertz" Mechanics, On Dynamical Models)" (Vol. III, pp. 41-44). My favorite, and the one that struck me as most in the intended spirit of the conference, is Colin Radford's "Wittgenstein and Philosophy" (Vol. I, pp. 253-260). I cannot help but think that this paper lit a fire under more than a few of the conferees. In it, Radford suggests perhaps the most fundamental re-interpretation of Wittgenstein contained in any of the papers. His remarks are worth quoting at length: The smaller world of Wittgensteinians is now scholastic, ridden with theory, and riven by strife. (I hope it will not be thought inappropriate to mention the case of two contemporary scholars, enormously erudite and totally committed to Wittgenstein who now disagree so strongly with each other that they wish to repudiate as joint work books they wrote together before their rift.) Perhaps it is time to treat Wittgenstein as an historical figure rather than a bible which defines our problems and in which we can find all our answers. And I end with the quotation from Nestroy that prefaces the Investigations: "Anyway, it is a feature of progress that it seems to be bigger than it really is." (Vol. I, p. 259) Perhaps we still need some historical distance between Wittgenstein and the gospel of his apostles on the one hand and us on the other before the passion will fade from our interpretations and debates. But, is that a sign of progress? Andrew D. Wilson History and Philosophy Morrison Hall Keene State College Keene, NH 03431, USA

The Journal of Value Inquiry 27: 285-286, 1993.

BookRe~ew

Sandra B. Rosenthal and Patrick L. Bourgeois, Mead and Merleau-Ponty: Toward a common vision. Albany, N.Y. State University of New York Press, 1991. ISBN 0-7914-0789-6, $ 49.50 (hardbound), ISBN 0-79140790-X, $16.95 (paper), 231 pp. (indexed). According to Robert Graves, book reviews fall out among four categories: (1) the author knows his stuff and writes convincingly; (2) he knows his stuff but writes unconvincingly; (3) he does not know his stuff but writes convincingly; and (4) he does not know his stuff and writes unconvincingly. In Mead and Merleau-Ponty, Sandra B. Rosenthal and Patrick L. Bourgeois know their stuff and write convincingly. No obvious errors of interpretation are committed with respect to Maurice Merleau-Ponty or George Herbert Mead. My only reservation is a lack of reference to Medeau-Ponty scholarship. The present volume is the third in a series of monographs coauthored by Bourgeois and Rosenthal, the others being Pragmatism and Phenomenology: A Philosophical Encounter (1980) and Thematic Studies in Phenomenology and Pragmatism (1983). In their collaboration, Rosenthal is more the pragmatist, Bourgeois more the phenomenologist. While the comparison and contrast of two thinkers is often odious, the affinities of these two psychologist-philosophers have long been remarked. A nuanced discussion of the relationship between their doctrines has long been overdue. The book is highly recommended to students of Mead and Merleau-Ponty. Rosenthal and Bourgeois's scholarship is a paragon of seriousness. They are content to tell the truth as far as they can recognize and convey it, and they do not sacrifice veracity to the desire to be congenial or rhetorically effective. They compare and contrast the opinions of Merleau-Ponty and Mead on many topics, including perception, the dichotomy of subject and object, time, self, Ianguage, and freedom. Their conclusion is that both the thinking of Mead and Merleau-Ponty have something to contribute to each other. On the one hand, MedeauPonty's opposition to speculative philosophy is interpreted as a rejection more of philosophical interpretations of empirical science than of speculation as such, and Mead is thought to show Merleau-Pontians that a more worthwhile form of philosophical speculation is possible that grounds itself in concrete descriptions of the life-world. On the other hand, Medeau-Ponty is said to demonstrate to Meadeans that his kind of philosophical speculation is reasonable only if grounded in descriptions of the life-world, thereby

286 demonstrating the centrality of the metaphysics of sociality to Mead's larger project. In other words, pragmatism must separate itself even more radically from scientism than it has done if it is to remain plausible in light of what the phenomenology of perception reveals about the relationship of science to our prescientific situation. In short, Rosenthal and Bourgeois see the phenomenology of perception and of the life-world as a privileged standpoint for the grounding of a pragmatist ontology. In my view, Bourgeois and Rosenthal need much more to stress the dialectical aspect of Merleau-Ponty's thinking. In the phenomenology of perception is a dialectics that negates both empiricist and neo-Kantian speculation and leaves no ground for the validity of philosophical speculation of any kind. Again, Bourgeois and Rosenthal err if they think that phenomenology reveals enough of the operation of the means-ends distinction at the prethetic 1eve1 to ground pragmatist speculation, that is, a speculation that takes the means-ends distinction to be validly applicable in any and all ontological contexts. Even if the pre-objective level displayed the means-ends relationship in a nascent mode, it would provide at most a groundless ground. For the nascent means-end relationship to serve as a ground, it would have to ground the emergence of its own fully constituted mode, and in this manner ground itself, but nothing can stand firm solely in the anticipation of its own emergence. Pragmatists must confront the paradox of technologism, that while it celebrates the dominance of the technological mode of comprehension, it cannot explain, in its own terms, why this end is desirable. For technological thinking determines means for given ends, such that this determination is its only intrinsic end. But technological thinking, not having a basis for determining preference among ends, cannot validate its own end. And pragmatism, under any account, passes for no more than its mistaken attempt to do so. At the risk of sounding cavalier, let us say that the ultimate problem for Rosenthal and Bourgeois is that by seeing truth as a function of utility, pragmatism has the gravest difficulties in establishing its truth consistently, for it is unclear how the view that the true is the useful could be itself useful and hence true. Glenn W. Erickson Department of Philosophy and Humanities Texas A & M University College Station, TX 77843-4237 USA