Abstract

In a wise and forceful reaction against his training in analytic philosophy, Vaught fervently seeks a genuinely human wholeness in life. But while this wholeness at once involves and integrates our origins, our goals, our existential contingency, our social roles, and our orientation in the cosmos and with respect to God, still: "Wholeness is not to be equated with completeness, and fragmentation is not a problem that can be dealt with at the exclusively reflective level". Such a Kierkegaardian denial of the efficacy of speculation in what is essentially a religious facet of the individual naturally brings Vaught into conflict with Hegel, and Vaught does not evade this challenge. The consideration of Hegel is the last of the four "images" which constitute the book, the first three being Melville's Moby Dick, the Bible's Hebrew patriarchs, and Plato's Euthyphro. Each "image" is designed to occupy a middle ground between systematic philosophy and direct experience--and indeed to be just a "story"--so that the "storyteller" Vaught may present each as a "version," rather than as an abstract or a part, of the whole.