266
PARTISAN REVIEW
volume) are illustrations of this thesis, indicating the lines of a natural–
istic treatment of several disdplines: religion (Lamprecht), ethics
(Edel), esthetics (Vivas), history of philosophy (Boas), history (Strong),
sociology of knowledge (Lavine), logic (Nagel)
a~d
psychology (Kriko–
rian).
The papers by Nagel and Vivas were particularly clear and sug–
gestive. But on the whole, the attempt made in this book to assimilate,
as Randall puts it in his epilogue, "the genuine values of the personalistic
and theistic philosophies to its own scientific thought and temper" is
not as impressive as might be wished. This is not, I think, to be ascribed
to the particular contributions, nor yet to any fundamental weaknesses
in the naturalistic outlook. It is a consequence of the predominantly
programmatic
character of present-day naturalism, whether of the posi–
tivist, empiricist or pragmatist variety.
Contemporary philosophy, Randall suggests, is properly to be regarded
as "post-modern." "Our generation has seen the passing of the problem
that has dominated the whole of 'modern philosophy'-the conflict of
the moral and religious tradition with newer scientific concepts and
techniques.... Today we are at last in possession of a science that in–
sists on the importance and reality of all man's experience and enter–
prises, and has developed concepts that promise to render them all in–
telligible. In consequence we are now able to erect for ourselves philoso–
phies that can find a natural and intelligible place for all human interests
and aims, and can embrace in one natural world, amenable to a single
intellectual method, all the realities to which human experience points."
The present volume is an elaboration of this
the~is.
But to assert, or
even prove, that such philosophies can be erected is not to erect them.
The important issues are no longer between naturalism and non-natural–
ism, but within naturalism. The major problem confronting the philo–
sophical enterprise today is not so much to refute non-naturalism as to
explicate, with concreteness and precision, the content of naturalism
itself.
ABRAHAM KAPLAN
A VERSION OF BAUDELAIRE
BAUDELAIRE.
By Joseph D. Bennett. Princeton University Press. $2.0().
BAUDELAmE ET SA MERE.
By Albert Feuillerat. Varietes, Montreal.
J
OSEPH BENNETT'S book
is
another bad book on Baudelaire: How–
ever it is worthy of comment since it illustrates so well the shift in
our judgments on Baudelaire and since it is illuminating by very virtue
of its faults. Moreover there are so few extensive studies of this grea.
poet that even a bad study should not be ignored.
Bennett appears to be a pupil of a school of cPiticism rather than
an independent, and as a pupil he displays the shortcomings of his school
