Journal of the History of Philosophy

602 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:4 OCTOBER 1985 stein's praise of Peirce's contribution to American philosophy as "the closest to a prayer to life" (55). Scarcely less disconcerting are his suggestions that Peirce anticipates Unamuno and has a mystical vision akin to Dostoevsky's. Unsurprisingly, Weinstein thinks that "the high point in American life-philosophy is reached in the thought of William James" (88). Many existentialist insights are attributed to him, and "The Will to Believe" is presented as "the central expression of American life-philosophy" (77). Even Dewey's work is found to be rich in existential insights. Dewey's account of the quest for certainty he likens to the existentialists' account of the human condition. However, having credited Dewey with a valuable life-philosophy, Weinstein takes pains to indicate the respects in which Dewey is not thoroughgoing in his Existentialism . Also existentialist but not existentialist enough, Santayana is thought to have made the serious blunder of misunderstanding the Angst and nothingness that are central to the thought of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. In ontological wonder, too, Santayana receives low marks since "[f]lux is as close as [he] comes to naming the mystery of being" (x2x). In his concluding chapter Weinstein devotes more space to Nietzsche than to any American philosopher. His intention is to show that, although Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, and Santayana are worthy life-philosophers, they fail to reach the high standard set by Nietzsche who fully understood "the moral consequences of the death of God" (134). What is the value of such an unusual interpretation of classical American philosophy ? So long as readers understand that the account is extremely selective, there is genuine value in such an account. Existentialists, like thinkers of every persuasion, wish to enrich their own thinking by examining ideas similar to their own in the history of philosophy. The danger in such an account is, of course, that it will be taken as a balanced history by innocent readers. Innocent readers may include literary historians likely to be Weinstein's primary audience. Such scholars may cite Weinstein as having demonstrated that American philosophy is existentialist, when he has demonstrated nothing of the sort. Weinstein has explored existentialist aspects of American philosophers just as existentialist aspects of any philosopher from Plato to Wittgenstein could be explored. He has not shown that life-philosophy is central to classical American philosophy. PETER H. HARE State University of New York at Buffalo James c. Edwards. Ethics Without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life. Gainesville : The University Presses of Florida, 198~. Pp. xiv + ~7~. $~o.oo. Despite Richard Rorty's encomium on the dust jacket, Ethics Without Philosophyis at best a mediocre study of the development and significance of Wittgenstein's view of ethics. Edwards's thesis is that the radicalism of Wittgenstein's later philosophizing BOOK REVIEWS 6o3 needs to be recovered; however, it is not altogether clear by whom: philosophers or mere mortals. On this unorthodox view the later Wittgenstrein is a religious thinker with strong affinities with Kierkegaard and Tolstoi. His philosophizing amounts to a (evangelical?) gesturing, which aims at re-directing (converting!) our attention from a form of life which seeks to provide philosophical foundations for belief (Descartes) to one which sees the limits of theorizing in sound human understanding (Kierkegaard ). This provocative thesis rests, however, on little more than (1) an incomplete, if not inaccurate, account of Wittgenstein's thinking on that subject, (2) cliches concerning his development and the history of modern philosophy generally, and (3) a reified notion of ethics. Missing from the picture of Wittgenstein's ethics are all references to his profound , well-documented debt to William James. In a letter to Russell in 191~ Wittgenstein reported that he was not only enthusiastic about James's VarietiesofReligiou~ Experience but was actually using it as a model in his efforts to become a saint. Equally puzzling is the absence of all references to the only moral philosopher Wittgenstein himself ever numbered (as he did did neither Tolstoi nor Kierkegaard) among the figures who influenced him: Otto Weininger. It is astonishing that this most radical, if entirely wrong-headed, ethical thinker, whose main claim...