Vico, the great philosopher and legal theorist of the Enlightenment who lived and died in obscurity, was among the first to sound the prevailing modern theme. In The New Science, he marvels "that the philosophers should have bent all their energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made it, He alone knows: and that they should have neglected the study of the nations or civil world, which since men had made it, men could come to know." Attacking Cartesian rationalism as well as questioning the Platonic tradition; developing the comparative studies of mythology, anthropology, archaeology, philology, linguistics; historical in one sense (man's cultural adventures constitute "the ideal eternal history") and ahistorical in another ("progress" is only the rising and falling of cyclical patterns); deciphering the origins of civilization through its primitive riddles, "crude beginnings," "frightful superstitions"—these are some of the recognitions which made no sense to the savants of Vico's day but which are brilliantly annotated in his works. Sir Isaiah Berlin, an articulate expositor and fervent Viconian, has written a dazzling monograph celebrating his hero's immensely protean mind. Like Vico himself, however, he now and then gives the effect of chasing both the hounds and the hares, so that the reader not previously acquainted with the Italian's often contradictory, bizarre, darkly poetic genius may find the journey a bit rough. The complementary study of Herder—whose belief that "we live in a world we ourselves create" became a shibboleth of nationalism, populism, and romanticism—is far easier to grasp. The essays do not overlap, but are presented in stimulating contrast to and concert with one another.
Pub Date: May 20, 1976
ISBN: 0670745855
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1976
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gathered here are essays by philosopher-novelist Murdoch, whose cool, clear thoughts on goodness and beauty offer sanctuary to all weary refugees from moral relativism. The selections, edited by Conradi (Humanities/Kingston Univ., England) and vibrantly introduced by George Steiner, span the years between 1950 and 1986, and include academic papers, radio talks, book reviews, lectures, a BBC interview, and one long essay, ``The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists,'' issued as a book in 1977. Murdoch, a professional philosopher (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 1993) and author of more than 25 novels, reflects here on the moral dimensions of literature and the contrasting ethical visions of Platonic, existential, and British analytic philosophy. The existentialists of the title represent a style of moral decision-making, best illustrated by Jean-Paul Sartre, that centers on self-conscious free will; decisions within a mystical consciousness, like Plato's, flow naturally out of moral ideas, like goodness and beauty, that have enduringly focused its attention. Murdoch appreciates Sartre for employing fiction so successfully in his philosophic demonstration of self-determination, but her sympathies lie finally with Platonists and mystics, whose attentive gaze on reality reveals transcendent value. Literature (which can embody philosophic ideas) and philosophy (which is more sensual and metaphorical, and so more literary, than it lets on) are both means of extending the same gaze. Murdoch has her blind spots. Behind her dismissive remarks on literary theory and fantasy lies the long tradition of critical reflection on philosophy and art inaugurated by the early German Romantics, Schlegel, Schelling, and Novalis—arguably the ancestors of deconstructive thought today—whose names never occur in these essays. Her case for the moral truthfulness of literature needs the challenge of this less overtly moralistic tradition in esthetics. Murdoch smooths the rocky path between ethics and art, but apart from the eternal Plato, many of the choices of representative philosophers in these aging essays—Sartre, Stuart Hampshire, Gilbert Ryle, among others—now seem quaintly dated.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-7139-9225-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
With inspiration from Voltaire's Candide, and a dash of Swiftian satire thrown in for good measure, a first novel that offers a new look at an old form. Professor Lukes (Political and Social Theory/European Univ. Institute, Florence) tries his hand at theory as fiction, though not always with stellar results. The story's Everyman, Nicholas Caritat, professor of the Enlightenment, is sent on a covert mission to find ``the best possible world.'' Hailing from Militaria, an oppressive regime run by the Pessimists, the persecuted professor is rescued by the revolutionary Optimists, who furnish him with the new identity of Professor Pangloss and send him in search of some optimistic news, some new model on which to base the hopes of their frustrated resistance. His first stop is Utilitaria, a smoothly running society, albeit obsessed with calculation. The longer Caritat stays the more evident it becomes that the country is just as repressive and fanatical in its own ways as Militaria (this is the running theme of all his travels), sacrificing individual freedoms for the good of increased productivity. Through a series of adventures, he finds himself in Communitaria and then in Libertaria, equally fantastical nations based on severe interpretations of ideas current in contemporary politics, with recent world events, thinly veiled, giving a humorous horror to the novel. At turns it's amusing and pensive, with the concepts of Enlightenment thinkers bandied about and discussions pertaining to the rights of man and the nature of freedom. But more often than not the book fails to create a sense of sympathy or concern for the professor, making more banal and predictable the events intended to shock. Humor and fine ideas that are held back, in the end, by an issue-driven tone that makes for a flat, one-dimensional narrative.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1995
ISBN: 1-85984-948-2
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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