Journal of the History of Philosophy

350 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY terialism and a rationalist commitment, and the relationship between normative utterances and economic conditions, freedom and determinism, transcendence and immanence. The final chapter, Chapter Seven, is an account of the transformation of the cognitive meaning of the concept "alienation" from the time of Plotinus to Marx. While the treatment is interesting, it is much too brief to be substantial, and its direct relevance to the preceding discussion is not immediately evident. The final chapter is more of an appendix than an integral part of the text. Unfortunately, there is little attempt to explicate the various meanings which Marx himself assigned to the concept in the course of his own intellectual maturation. This volume is recommended as a compact and responsible exposition and critique of the philosophy of the young Marx. It is significantly better than much of the available English language literature and as such is a welcomed addition to the body of scholarship devoted to the subject. A. J~LMESGBEGOR University o] Texas Immediacy, Reason and Existence. By R. N. Kaul. (Allahabad: Udayana Publications, 1965. Pp. x[i] T 259. $6.50.) This book deserves to be read carefully by anyone who wishes to learn how a scholar who is thoroughly familiar with the philosophy of F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and other members of that great group of idealists in and around Oxford estimates the achievements of other philosophers and other movements in recent and contemporary thought. It is written with great simplicity , clarity, and incisiveness, so that not only the initiated but also beginning students can follow Professor Kaul's expositions and criticisms with pleasure and profit. Kaul has included in his analysis brief accounts of the ideas of some of his colleagues and teachers in India (especially Sri Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharya, Ramana Maharshi, and R. D. Ranade) in so far as these ideas have a bearing on the problem central to this work the relation of immediacy and reason to existence. But the theme that dominates his historical narrative is the development of dialectical method since Hegel, and this story is told with exceptional lucidity. What is most impressive is the skill and sympathy with which a mind that is dominated by Bradley's handling of the problems centering in the absolute can appreciate the various "reactions " to such a dialectical idealism that range from the romantic revolt of Nietzsche to Ryle's "geography of the categories." In the course of the history of "reactions" Kaul gives serious attention to British realism, to historicism , to Whitehead's and Nicolai Hartmann's "neo-romantic" accounts of the ingression of eternal objects into natural processes, to logical positivism, phenomenology, Heidegger, and Jaspers. He criticizes these varied departures from what he regards as genuine metaphysics without losing patience and with a respect for genuine difficulties. He gives an informative account of how philosophical problems became increasingly perplexing on top of the serious initial perplexities of Bradley. His chief interest appears to be in the recent re-appearance of immediacy in existential ontology after it had been bracketed out of the realm of knowledge ; and he gives the impression that there is hope for a better understood absolute in both East and West as a result of the misfortunes that the idealistic absolute encountered in the West after Hegel's romantic adventure with it. Pure knowing or pure theory cannot stand apart by itself--it must be one moment of a whole which is completed by a second moment of doing or acting. No philosophy which claims to be purely theoretical can be genuine .... Bradley and Bosanquet go too far when they assume that philosophy by definition is a secondary activity, presupposing a primary activity, of which it is a theoretical interpretation .... According to this arbitrary limitation of the scope and function of philosophy, it may be regarded as itself but appearance. (pp. 102-3) However, the primary contribution of this fine piece of philosophical writing lies less in its conclusions than in its rare combination of good history and keen rational criticism. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Cali/ornia ...