Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 493 philosophy, pamcularly the revival of normative ethics and the exchange between philosophy and psychology taking place in cognitive studies, are welcome symptoms of a return to the more robust way of philosophising that Flower and Murphey show to have been the normal practice of American philosophers. Any reader will find these volumes rewarding: those who teach American philosophy will find them essential. This reviewer's opinion that they are destined to become the standard work on the period for this generation is strongly confirmed by the qmte extravagant advance praise quoted on the dust jacket from authorities on American philosophy (including Herbert Schneider and Max Fisch). The index is generally adequate: a test turned up just two serious omlsslons--a discussion of Lamarck (p. 524) and the most complete discussion of Bradley (p. 719). More bothersome is a lack of consistency in giving dates for the figures mentioned in the book. Some are given both birth and death dates, some are givenjust birth dates, and some are dated only by a significant pubhcation. In the next edition it would be useful to include a chart with dates of all the major figures discussed in the book. FINBARRW. O'CONNOR Beaver College Keith Graham. J. L. Austin: A Critique of Ordinar3'Language Philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press, 1977. Pp. vii + 281. $19.25. In this volume Keith Graham undertakes both to expound and to criticize J. L. Austin's philosophy. After an introduction in which he provides the reader with a philosophical background, Graham devotes three chapters to Austin's phdosophy of language: one on his method, a second on his theory of performatives, and a third on hls account of illocutions. The remaining four chapters take up topics on which Austin has written extensively: knowledge, perception, truth, and action. In each chapter Graham sets forth with accuracy and clarity the main lines of Austin's thought and presents various criticisms of his views. Graham is quite unsympathetic to Austin and to the type of phdosoph~cal thinking that he initiated: "I believe that Austin's philosophy is stultifying and exercises an influence for the bad on those who come into contact with it" (pp. 1-2). Graham's main criticisms will not be unfamiliar to those who have lived thorough the rise and decline of ordinary-language philosophy. He thinks that Austin's "single-minded devotion to ordinary language" (p. 36), the "'ingrained conservatism'" implied by his method (p. 37), and his preoccupation with the minutiae of ordinary language represent a mistaken approach to philosophical problems and inhibit one from raising and trying to answer comprehensive questions. For Graham, the heart of Austin's approach is his Darwinian view of the concepts and distinctions embedded in everyday speech: they are likely to be sound because they have survived. This is the basis of Austin's working assumption that "what we do or would say is, because of its proven fitness, what we ought to say" (p. 44). But this commitment to ordinary language cannot contribute to a nondogmatic resolution of conflicts among diverse conceptual schemes. "The fact that different, and rival, ways of looking at the world abound is one reason against a philosophical method which Is essentially a "legitimating' descriptive account of the present conceptual state of affairs" (p. 46). In addition, if our concepts and distinctions evolve and change, as Austin's Darwiman assumption implies, there is no reason to prefer the present conceptual state of affairs to those that will appear in the future. Graham does not object to analyzing our existing conceptual scheme: "Consciousness of one's interpretation of the world.., is the first condition of changing both one's interpretation and the world" (p. 47). But we must be prepared to abandon our initial views in favor of theories which have greater support. The main deficiency in Austin's reliance upon what we do or should say "hes in the fact that Austin does not consider in any detail why we should say this or that, and what there are good reasons for saying" (p. 224). "When it is the adequacy of a whole way of thinking which is in...