Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:732 BOOK REVIEWS the historical subj.ect" threaten to destroy the transcendental project (p. 190). The variety of approaches to phenomenological theology that are represented in this collection, with the inclusion even of essays that present challenges to the phenomenological project, is a strength in that it provides something to stimulate every reader's interest and prevents the book from being doctrinaire. Steven Laycock's introductory essay goes a long way towards making explicit some of the implications of the various essays and towards sorting out the interrelationships among the views of the contributors. Nevertheless, this reviewer was left with the wish that there had been more of an attempt on the part of the editors to have the individual contributors directly address one another's differing views. This may be an unfair criticism, however, since it is in effect a request for another, more narrowly focused kind of book about phenomenological theology. Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California TIINA ALLIK The Mental Philosophy of John Henry Newman. By JAY NEWMAN. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: The Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 209. $22.95. Cloth. " It is obvious," wrote the literary critic George Levine in his study of John Henry Newman in The Boundaries of Fiction (Princeton, 1968, p. 195), "that everything [Newman] wrote was aimed at producing an effect, or, to use Mill's terms, at working 'upon the feeling, or upon the belief, or the will of another.' " Whatever else he may or may not have been, Newman was.ever the skilled, even consummate rhetorician-a fact which has been for many tantamount to an admission of his having been, at best an equivocator, at worst a calculating liar. "Like the sophists of old," Kingsley charged Newman in 1864, " he has used reason to destroy reason" (Apologia, Oxford, 1967, p. 370). Of course, Aristotle had a high regard for rhetoric, not as sophistry but as an art of informed argument on contingent matters, so the mere fact that Newman sought to persuade may be itself no argument as to the quality of the rhetoric he produced. Admirers of Newman hear in his writings notes of moral and religious truth, and have claimed to have found there intellectual riches to last more than a season. Indeed, nearly a hundred years after his death Newman speaks cor ad cor to increasing numbers. Among commentators, however, it is still something of an issue whether or to what BOOK REVIEWS 788 extent critics like Kingsley were correct: even i£ Newman was sincere enough in practice (which is not always conceded), the question remains whether his theory of reason skeptically undermines the enterprise of philosophy. This question, and others connected with it, provide the leitmotif for Professor Newman's book. Like others before him (e.g., Pailin, Price, Boekraad, Cronin, D'Arcy, Zeno, Juergens), Jay Newman seeks to understand and assess Newman's theory of belief as set forth in the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), but unlike them he undertakes " to provide an analytical philosophical criticism " (p. 202), that is, a chapter-by-chapter examination of the Grammar alone, "using only the logical tools of the analytical philosopher" (p. 7). Despite its title, then, this work is not designed to have the sweep that a Vargish or Sillem offers of Newman's "mental philosophy," nor in any way to serve as an introductory survey of Newman's work. And though there are disadvantages to reading the Grammar apart from Newman's work as a whole, students of Newman's thought will find here a clearly-written, careful, and above all provocative discussion which will occasion new reflections on Newman 's treatment of enduring philosophical problems. What I perceive to be serious problems with this study-of method, argument, and interpretation -considerably tempers my enthusiasm (these problems I will mention after a description of the book's contents). But it is to be hoped that the serious student of Newman's work will weigh these difficulties against the real gains that Professor Newman offers. Chapter One, "Newman's Philosophical Proj.ect," is a polemical introduction to Newman the man and to the Grammar. Its general effect is to...