PARTISAN REVIEW
present situation.
If
this is accepted, no brand of Existentialism will make
sense except that of Sartre, and those applying the Existentialist method
for a different purpose and in a different sense can achieve nothing but
futility. Accordingly,
in
Mrs. Grene's expose, Kierkegaard is merely a
provincial coffeehouse eccentric, and Jaspers as well as Gabriel Marcel
are philosophical pygmies, completely dwarfed by the colossal stature of
Sartre. This judgment, I repeat, is inevitable if we accept Marjorie
Grene's definition of what Existentialism is; but everything will appear
in a different light if we reject the definition.
The main question, then, is this: Is Existentialism primarily a re–
sponse to man's loss of faith in God, Reason, Progress, and Science,
and an acceptance of this loss of faith as final? Or should it be under–
stood as an attempt to give a new answer to traditional questions of
philosophy, especially to questions concerning the nature of Being and
Truth? To be sure, the movement will appear far less sensational
if
we
adopt this second definition; but I think its philosophical content cannot
be discovered in any other way.
Dreadful Freedom
is an able and penetrating statement of a sensitive
philosophical reader's fascination with Sartre, but it is no "critique" of
Existentialism as such.
If
anyone wants to supply an adequate critique of
Existentialism, the first requirement is to get over that fascination.
Paul Kecskemeti
OF MANDARIN EXCELLENCE
TWO QUIET LIVES. By Dovid Cecil. Bobbs-Merrill. $3.00.
As one reads the best of David Cecil's writings, it is not ir–
relevant to
think
of Cyril Connolly's thoroughly
~tty
and alert pro–
nouncements on the style of the "new Mandarins." Mr. Connolly, with
rather more than a drop of Mandarin blood in his own veins, is one
to
be
trusted in making discriminations of Mandarin excellence: time
is
on his side in his notation of the enduring merits of Lytton Strachey's
Eminent Victorians.
In that small company more than a few of Virginia
Woolrs
Com711!0n Reader
essays hold their place, and so does Geoffrey
Scott's
The Portrait ·of <,elide,
and to them may be added David Cecil's
life of Cowper,
The Stri,cken Deer,
(first published
in
1929), and today,
his portrait of Thomas Gray in
Two
Quie~
Lives.
If
in
this
country the bestl examples of David Cecil's art have been
slow
in
gaining critical recognition, it is because of his critical modesty
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