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to secure a belief which, to some extent, is always withheld. Utopian
thought, usually associated with groups not in power, withdraws
belief in current social arrangements and imagines a completely new
organization of power or a society in which power is abolished.
If
ideologies are tied to motives, however, a final step must be
taken: the acceptance that ideologies are inevitable so long as it
makes sense to think of humans as motivated beings . At this point,
Ricoeur turns to Habermas and Geertz in order to argue that every
society is founded on a primitive set of beliefs, a preexisting symbolic
structure . Ideology identifies this set of beliefs, since no culture can
claim absolute truth for its values; yet only adherence to a fun–
damental set of beliefs qualifies the individual as a member of this
society rather than of another one. "In its function as integration,
ideology is . .. basic and ineluctable."
Such statements of humanistic faith will hardly satisfy the an–
tihumanist. But Ricoeur also works hard to show that the an–
tihumanist position is philosophically untenable, irrespective of its
political or moral content. The antihumanist must resort to human–
ist concepts in order to formulate his position. The complexity of
motives, and the influence of beliefs (as distinct from interest) on
behavior, retain an explanatory value that cannot be sidestepped
completely, just as the concept of purposive human action cannot be
altogether jettisoned. Antihumanists may dream of starting a civil
war that brings about a complete political and social transformation,
but Ricoeur's works suggest that they are much more deeply within
the humanist tradition than they would like to believe.
JOHN McGOWAN
TOURISTS AT HOME
THE MISALLIANCE. By Anita Brookner. Pantheon. $14.95.
PERSIAN NIGHTS. By Diane Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf. $17.95 .
The Misalliance
is not a novel, really, so much as a portrait
of a lady , a handsome miniature of a certain kind of woman, of a
certain age , childless, alone and adrift in her own private universe .
Blanche Vernon's husband has recently left her for a flighty young
