Franciscan Studies

BOOK REVIEWS173 pleasingly written, although undocumented. At times, especially in the earlier part of the story one would welcome a more exact chronology; a few German expressions are misspelled; whereas on p. 29 we are told that the head of the "Lagerfiihrer", Fritsch, resembled that of a "bouldogue ". But for all that the booklet has already reached a wide circulation and this reviewer presages for it a still larger diffusion the greater the interest in Father Kolbe grows. His cause for beatification was opened at Padua on May 24, 1948, less than seven years after his death! RAPHAEL M. HUBER, O.F.M. CONV. Catholic University, Washington, D.C. Naturaleza, Historia, Dios. By Xavier Zubiri. Madrid, Spain: Editora Nacional, 1944. Pp. 563. Although this book made its public appearance four years ago it well deserves that we should devote a few lines to it, particularly because at the time of its appearance it did not receive due attention. Under the title of Nature, History, God, and in answer to a request of former students and friends, the author has grouped together in one volume the essays written within the last ten years and previously published, either wholly or in part, in various national and foreign magazines. The book contains a brief introduction and three parts, the third of which gives its general title to the book. In the introduction the author calls our attention to the fact that the grouping of divers papers into three parts is somewhat arbitrary and is calculated to facilitate their reading. Here are the titles of the various essays: Part I (Reality, Science, Philosophy): Our Intellectual Situation; What is knowledge; Science and Reality; Aristotle's Idea of Philosophy; Philosophical knowledge and its History, Part II (Philosophy in its History): Historical Notes; Socrates and Greek Wisdom; Hegel and the Metaphysical Problem. Part III (Nature, History, God): The Idea of Nature: The New Physics; Human History: Greece and the Survival of the Philosophical Past; Concerning the Problem of God; The Supernatural Being: God and Deification in Saint Paul's Theology. 174BOOK REVIEWS The book being a compilation of papers of different character, written on rather dissimilar occasions in the course of the years, one is not expected to find in it a systematic exposition of the author's philosophical thought, even supposing that the author had a system. I say "even supposing", for his definition of philosophy (p. 155) would seem to indicate that he has none. To a firm and systematic position Zubiri prefers, it seems, to keep his interest open to all systems worthy of consideration. And we should add that in this matter of having one's soul open to the most varied thoughts of others he is a model. His flexibility of spirit and his capacity to scrutinize from inside the thought of the most distant authors is superlative. Another merit which the reader will immediately discover is that Zubiri masters all those sciences which are auxiliary to philosophy: history, natural sciences, philology, theology. He is not, therefore, of the number of those who believe that a popular, every-day knowledge of physical reality is sufficient for philosophizing. As is the case with so many modern philosophers, Zubiri attaches a new meaning or shade of meaning to old philosophical terms; as an example, we may refer to the terms "existence" and "person". For this reason the author will be either criticized or praised according to whether the reader considers the method something short of intellectual dishonesty , or believes, on the contrary, that leaving our concepts "open" helps to catch all the better the innumerable aspects of reality. We cannot undertake a detailed exposition of all excellent essays contained in the book. We shall turn our attention exclusively to the one entitled "Concerning the Problem of God" (pp. 423-469). In it Zubiri tries to break, so to say, the closed circle of Heidegger's philosophy, although without deviating from the latter's line of thought, in order to make room in it for the problem of God. Zubiri's effort is different from those undertaken in the same direction by R. Bultmann ("Die Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins und der Glaube", Zeitschrift für Theologie...