End Of Inquiry Research Articles

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

The Contemporary Resonances of Classical Pragmatism for Studying Organization and Organizing

The legacy of classical American Pragmatism – Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, Mead, Follett and others – in organization theory is significant, albeit that much of its influence has come through implicit and indirect routes. In light of recent calls for an empirical stance as an alternative to the prevailing metaphysical stance in organizational research, we reread Pragmatism as a process philosophy that can profoundly inform process views of organization and organizing. Our particular reading highlights Pragmatism’s emphasis on process and emergence, its theory of knowing as fallible and experimental, its denouncing of dualisms, its future-oriented meliorism, its sensitivity to ethics and democracy, and its positioning of experience as both the start and end of inquiry, arguing that these features lay invaluable groundwork for the study of organization and organizing. We advocate a reappraisal of this legacy, mobilizing seven articles from the back catalogue of this journal in a virtual special issue that demonstrates how classical American Pragmatism can reinvigorate the field while also opening up new questions and new ways of questioning.

The Creative Moment of Scientific Apprehension

Scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory. When we experience scientific explanation in its consummation, we experience what I have deemed a creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is an important aspect of creativity that comes at the end of inquiry and contributes to the development of future inquiry. Because scientific explanation is commonly cleaved from aesthetic experience, this moment of creativity has been neglected in both analyses of scientific practice and analyses of aesthetic experience. By synthesizing John Dewey’s conceptions of scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Charles S. Peirce’s categories, this moment of scientific inquiry is revealed and understood as a fundamental part of our creative reasoning process. In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory, Dewey’s instrumental conception of scientific explanation is provided, which includes why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. A general overview of Dewey’s conception of aesthetic experience and the common division conceived between scientific experience and that of aesthetics is also provided. Reasons are then supplied to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension, especially with regard to scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is followed by a brief discussion concerning how recognition of this moment reveals an important aspect of creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience through what Peirce referred to as firstness and secondness. Analyzing the aesthetic experience of scientific explanations against the backdrop of Dewey’s conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined with Peirce’s categories, accounts for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a scientific explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony, that inspires reverie and future inquiry.

True Alethic Functionalism?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I am grateful to Jens Christian Bjerring, Doug Edwards, Michael Lynch, and Crispin Wright for helpful discussion. 1 Notational convention: I use capitals for concepts. 2 TOM, pp. 8, 10, 12. In TOM, Objectivity and End of Inquiry are stated in terms of beliefs, while Norm of Belief is formulated in terms of propositions – which Lynch takes to be the primary truth-bearer (TOM: pp. 129–32). It should also be noted that Lynch states Objectivity and Norm of Belief as schemas while End of Inquiry has the form of a universal generalizations. The regimented formulation of (O), (NB), and (EI) is adopted from David (forthcoming David, M. (forthcoming, 2012) ‘Lynch’s Functionalist Theory of Truth’, in N. J. L. L. Pedersen and C. D. Wright (eds) Truth Pluralism: Current Debates, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 2012). 3 Lynch’s notion of superwarrant is modeled on Wright’s notion of superassertibility, which in turn is a generalization of the notion of truth as it figures in mathematical intuitionism. For further details, cf. TOM: Ch. 2, and Wright, 1992 Wright, C. 1992. Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2003 Wright, C. 2003. ‘Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed’, in Saving the Differences, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]. 4 The domain conjuncts of (TG) will be omitted in the sequel for ease of exposition. For more on (TG), see Pedersen, 2006 Pedersen, N. J. L. L. 2006. What Can the Problem of Mixed Inferences Teach Us About Alethic Pluralism?. The Monist, 89(1): 103–117. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2010 Pedersen, N. J. L. L. 2010. Stabilizing Alethic Pluralism. Philosophical Quarterly, 60(238): 92–108. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], and Pedersen and Wright (forthcoming Pedersen, N. J. L. L. and C. D. Wright (forthcoming, 2012) ‘Pluralism about Truth as Alethic Disjunctivism’, in N. J. L. L. Pedersen and C. D. Wright (eds) Truth Pluralism: Current Debates, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 2012). 5 I spell out the arguments in full in Appendix A of Pedersen and Wright (forthcoming Wright, C. (forthcoming, 2012) ‘A Plurality of Pluralisms?’, in N. J. L. L. Pedersen and C. D. Wright (eds) Truth Pluralism: Current Debates, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 2012). 6 See Williamson, 1994 Williamson, T. (1994) ‘Critical, Study of Truth and Objectivity’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2(1): 130–144. [Google Scholar], and Tappolet, 2000 Tappolet, C. 2000. Truth Pluralism and Many-Valued Logics: A Reply to Beall. Philosophical Quarterly, 50(200): 383–385. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], for earlier presentations of the problem. 7 For a sample of contributions, see Edwards, 2008 Edwards, D. 2008. Truth-conditions and the Nature of Truth. Analysis, 68: 143–149. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and 2009 Edwards, D. 2009. Truth-conditions and the Nature of Truth. Analysis, 69: 684–688. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Cotnoir, 2009 Cotnoir, A. 2009. Generic Truth and Mixed Conjunctions: Some Alternatives. Analysis, 69(3): 473–479. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Lynch, 2004 Lynch, M. 2004. Truth and Multiple Realizability. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82(3): 384–408. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and 2009 Lynch, M. 2009. Truth as One and Many, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 86–91; Pedersen (n.d.), and Wright (forthcoming Wright, C. (forthcoming, 2012) ‘A Plurality of Pluralisms?’, in N. J. L. L. Pedersen and C. D. Wright (eds) Truth Pluralism: Current Debates, New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 2012). 8 As highlighted in Section 2, Lynch takes Objectivity, Norm of Belief, and End of Inquiry to be core truisms. One way to attempt a functionalist response to the point just raised would be to add a ‘no problem of mixed compounds’ truism and take it to be characteristic of truth in the same way that Objectivity, Norm of Belief, and End of Inquiry are. This would immediately raise the question what precisely such a truism would look like. Would it, e.g., explicitly mention the problem of mixed compounds? Letting it do so would probably not be a promising path to take. For the truisms are meant to be principles accepted at least tacitly by ordinary folk (or philosophical refinements of such principles), and presumably, ordinary folk do not accept principles pertaining to the problem of mixed compounds, not even tacitly. But then we are just back at the initial question: what would the relevant truism look like?

Pragmatic Scruples and the Correspondence Theory of Truth

ABSTRACT: Cheryl Misak has offered a pragmatic argument against a position she calls “scientific transcendentalism.” Scientific transcendentalists hold that truth is something different from what would be believed at the end of inquiry; more specifically, they adhere to a correspondence theory of truth. Misak thinks scientific transcendentalists thereby undermine the connection between truth and inquiry, for (a) pragmatically speaking, it adds nothing to truth and inquiry to ask whether what would be the results of sufficiently rigorous inquiry are really true and (b) they can only accept it as an article of faith that inquiry leads us to truth. I defend “scientific transcendentalism” against Misak’s objections.

The effective evaluation of holistic nursing intervention to improve the physical and mental health of perimenopause women in community

Objective To explore the effect of holistic nursing intervention to improve the physical and mental health of perimennpause women in community. Methods Two hundred and sixteen perimenopause women were randomly divided into intervention and control groups, 108 cases in each group. At the begin and the end of inquiry, the symptom checklist 90 (SCL-90) and the MOS item short from health survey (SF-36) were used to evaluate respectively the psychological state and life quality, meanwhile the situation, knowledge on perimenopause and self-care were measured by self - designed health knowledge questionnaire. Results All factors in SCL - 90 were lower significantly after implementing holistic nursing ( P＜ 0. 001 ), eight queries of life quality in SF - 36 in intervention group were higher significantly than those in control group after 12 months of intervention ( P ＜ 0.01 ) . The difference between perimenopause and self - care knowledge at the begin and the end of inquiry in two groups was not significantly ( P ＞ 0.05 ) . Conclusions Holistic nursing intervention can improve the physical and mental health of perimenopause women in community, and it is an important measure to make their life quality better. Key words: Holistic nursing; Perlmenopause; Community

The Pragmatic Maxim

Cheryl Misak is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where she is also Vice-President and Provost. Much of her work has been on early American philosophy, especially that of the founder of pragmatism, C.S. Peirce. In 2004 Oxford University Press re-issued an expanded version of her 1991 Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth. She also works in the History of Analytic Philosophy (Verifi cationism: Its History and Prospects, Routledge, 1995); political philosophy (Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation, Routledge, 2000); and moral philosophy and philosophy of medicine (“Experience, Narrative, and Ethical Deliberation,” Ethics (2008) and “Narrative Evidence and Evidence Based Medicine,” Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (2010). She is currently writing a book on the whole of American Pragmatism for Oxford University Press.

Morals and Markets: Liberal Democracy Through Dewey and Hayek

Morals and Markets:Liberal Democracy Through Dewey and Hayek Colin Koopman One of the most vexing problems in contemporary liberal democratic theory and practice is the relation between ethics and economics or morals and markets. Recent decades (indeed recent months) have been witness to an intensification of concern regarding this problem, surely motivated in part by at least two increasingly prominent features of contemporary politics. On the one hand, we have seen the increasing intersection of ethical activity and economic activity in the context of various social movements including fair trade, environmentalism, and animal rights. On the other hand, we can observe the increasing disarticulation of morals from markets in the context of a variety of political projects often proceeding under the heading of free trade. These two tendencies often clash in terms of what might be called the "fair trade or free trade" debates. These debates reveal that these two central tendencies of contemporary political practice do not always sit well with one another. These practical developments and debates raise a number of theoretical issues that are of great moment for liberal democratic political philosophers. In this article I propose a novel way of gaining a theoretical focus on these debates and the practical issues implicated therein. The novelty of my focus is enabled by adopting as my theoretical framework a combination of [End Page 151] work developed by an unlikely pair of liberal democratic philosophers who were both enormously influential on twentieth-century political theory and practice: John Dewey and Friedrich Hayek. At first glance, Dewey and Hayek seem to be paradigmatic representatives of the two opposed poles of the fair trade–versus–free trade debates. Dewey's work has often been taken up by those who endorse Old Left labor politics or New Left participatory politics, while Hayek was decisively connected to the politics of the New Reagan Right. But such a caricatured Left-versus-Right contrast neglects important points of convergence between these two political theorists. By exploring these convergences, we can begin the project of establishing a common ground that would enable us to productively reframe debates currently framed in terms of a too-familiar opposition between fair trade Leftism and free trade Rightism. The focal range elaborated in this article is undertaken from the perspective of a Deweyan democratic theory that aims to inflect a pragmatist conception of liberal democracy with beneficial insights articulated in the context of Hayekian liberal theory. The time is ripe for Deweyans to take another look at Hayek. That Hayek has been inexplicably neglected by pragmatists for so long is perhaps due to his being neglected more generally by the overwhelming majority of liberal democratic political philosophers, but we are now beginning to witness an increase of interest in Hayek among political philosophers more widely (among Analytics he offers an increasingly appealing counterweight to the long-standing rationalism of the Kantian liberals, while among Continentals interest is being stirred up by the long-awaited publication in English of Foucault's lectures on branches of American and German liberalism, on which Hayek was influential). In light of this more general increase of interest in Hayek it behooves Deweyans to take another look. In the end Deweyans may conclude that there is little of value in Hayekian theory. But such a conclusion must be justified at the end of inquiry rather than merely assumed at the outset. I think it in fact unjustified, and the effort of the present article is in part to show why. My intention here is decidedly not to suggest that Deweyans ought to become wholehearted Hayekians or that fair tradeists ought to become unabashed free tradeists. I offer a more modest claim that Deweyan ethical democrats might benefit from certain strategies or techniques developed in the context of Hayekian liberalism. One way of cashing out the practical upshot of this proposed theoretical rapprochement would [End Page 152] be a suggestion for how the Left might co-opt some of the successful strategies and techniques originating on the Right. But I have already expressed some suspicion about divisive Left-versus-Right contrasts. So a better description of the proposal offered here may be put in terms of...

Truth, Superassertability, and Conceivability

Sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, unlike unsophisticated epistemic theories of truth, would have us identify truth with some kind of idealization of warranted assertability. The proposal is that a statement is true if and only if it is warrantedly assertable in ideal epistemic conditions. For example, it has been proposed that a statement is true if and only if it is warrantedly assertable at the end of inquiry, after fruitful deliberation, and after all the relevant evidence is in. Among sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, the superassertability theory inspired by Crispin Wright appears to be the most promising formulation. According to the superassertability theory of truth, a statement is true if and only if it is superassertable in that it possesses indefeasible warrant, warrant that cannot be defeated by any possible change to the state of one s information. More specifically, as Wright puts the point, on the superassertability theory of truth, a statement is true if and only if it ‘‘is, or can be, warranted and some warrant for it would survive arbitrarily close scrutiny of its pedigree and arbitrarily extensive increments to or other forms of improvement of our information.’’ The superassertability theory of truth, while promising, encounters an inexorable difficulty. The difficulty is that the superassertability theory of truth, pace other sophisticated epistemic theories of truth, suffers from a kind of instability: it is vulnerable to a similar formal legitimacy argument that the superassertability theorist herself levels against unsophisticated epistemic theories of truth. A variety of commentators including Terrence Horgan and James Van Cleve have begun formulating this kind of instability objection to the superassertability theory of truth, but fail to

Rupp in Perspective: An Examination of Two Topics in Beyond Existentialism and Zen

George Rupp's Beyond Existentialism and Zen, in its typological-structural analysis and model of religious pluralism, proffers an alternative to the dominant Kantian models (e.g., by John Hicks and Sarvepalli Radhakrish nan). The question for Rupp is not which religion is true and how to decide that issue-answered in the Kantian approach in terms of an unknowable Ding an sich that all religions, albeit imperfectly, try to approximate or conceptualize (i.e., God or the Transcendent)-but rather how do religions represent, at least in principle, a structural possibility for salvation or human flourishing, however different and incompatible their distinct prima facie truth claims might be. Although the potential for a radically relativistic model is implicit in Rupp's approach, it is argued here that his Hegelian assumptions lead him to accept relativism only in a provisional ("critical") way; for Rupp, under ideal epistemic conditions (e.g., the Peircian "end of inquiry"), one final conceptualization of ultimate reality will emerge as absolute truth. In the final part of this essay a version of the relativistic model implicit in Rupp's approach is defended against both the Kantian model of Hicks et al. and Rupp's Hegelian-Peircian model, which, it is argued, is incompatible certainly with the spirit of his own typological-structural analysis, if not with the letter. In challenging what Rupp calls the truth of Zen, it is further argued that not only is more than one salvific structural possibility available to us through the different world religions but also that realizing these possibilities is principally a human responsibility, and that the cosmos is quite indifferent to and compatible with several possibilities, from the most destructive to the most conducive to human well being and flourishing.

Being Interrupted: The Self and Schizophrenia

Being Interrupted:The Self and Schizophrenia John Lysaker and Paul Lysaker A theory of the self seeks a comprehensive account of the elements whose interactions constitute a human being and the principles that govern those interactions. It must reckon with a vast array of phenomena, from perception and self-awareness to an infant's journey into adulthood; from language and labor to emotion, conscience, and mental illness. And it must do so in a way that recognizes that human beings are not simply instantiations of an eidos but unique, developing loci of life and activity. No two of us are alike. No one perceives, understands, or desires for another. In this paper we want to explore what we regard as a fundamental facet of a human being: it engages in, even lives, as an ensemble of dialogues. Said otherwise, the locus of life and activity that we are is dialogical, and in the first place. We relate to others and ourselves, we plan, imagine, remember, and lust only on the basis of dialogical relations. Each of us is thus more than an atomistic entity. In elusive but crucial ways, our being is bound to and in some sense involves the presence of others, and our lives unfold as movements within ourselves and among others. Even at the outset, it is crucial to note that our claim is not simply that selves employ narratives that synthesize their lives and that these narratives involve dialogues among various facets of a life. No doubt this happens, and we shall try to explain, at least in part, why and how. But our claim runs further than this. At base, that is, the very self whose life one might gather up and redirect through a narrative—that being is dialogical. To repeat, on our view, the self is dialogical in the first place, and thus a multiple phenomenon in and of itself, not simply in its self-representations. Now, this is not to say that what follows provides a comprehensive account of the self. We have little to say about perception, memory, neurophysiology, [End Page 1] self-conscious and prereflective awareness of bodily states, and so forth. Nor are we claiming that one might develop a comprehensive account using only the elements that we employ, nor even that these elements are irreducible to other phenomena. Falliblists through and through, we have little interest in dictating what any account simply must say at the end of inquiry. In order to demonstrate the power of a dialogical theory of the self, we will use it to interpret the phenomenon of schizophrenia, and in a way that preserves the participants' perspective, addressing what it is like to suffer from schizophrenia and what it means when persons with schizophrenia tell us that their sense of self has been fundamentally damaged or disrupted. More specifically, we will interpret the disruptions in sense of self that characterize schizophrenia as well as the persistence of various symptoms associated with schizophrenia, particularly: (a) hallucinations (or having sensory perceptions that others do not share); (b) delusions (or having beliefs that others deem idiosyncratic and grossly implausible); and finally (c) the diminishment of will and desire. This will show, we think, that a dialogical approach to philosophical anthropology, clinical and experimental psychological research, and psychotherapy promises to pay rich dividends. Let's begin with something of an intellectual history of dialogical theory. The outlines of a dialogical conception of the self can be found in diverse places. Among a distinguished group, we find Bakhtin's reading of Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche's reflections on subjectivity, and Dewey's and Mead's social psychology particularly helpful. Interpreting the poetics of Dostoyevsky, Bakhtin (1985) asserts that humans are best described as polyphonic beings, products of an ongoing series of dialogues among distinct voices. Rather than revolving around singular, conclusive perspectives, Bakhtin holds that our sense of self emerges through conversations among functionally independent elements within persons. As an illustration, consider Dostoyevsky's description of Roskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: "sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud ... insecure ...magnanimous and kind ... cold and callous ... always in a hurry, always too busy and yet he lies there doing nothing" (Dostoyevsky 1993, 215). The point...

TArgument is War...and War is Hell: Philosophy, Education, and Metaphors for Argumentation

The claim that argumentation has no proper role in either philosophy or education, and especially not in philosophical education, flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and traditional pedagogy. There is, however, something to be said for it because it is really only provocative against a certain philosophical backdrop. Our understanding of the concept "argument" is both reflected by and molded by the specific metaphor that argument-is-war, something with winners and losers, offensive and defensive moments, and an essentially adversarial structure. Such arguments may be suitable for teaching a philosophy, but not for teaching philosophy. Surely, education and philosophy do not need to be conceived as having an adversarial essence-if indeed they are thought to have any essence at all. Accordingly, philosophy and education need more pragmatic goals than even Pierce's idealized notion of truth as the end of inquiry, e.g., the simple furtherance of inquiry. For this, new metaphors for framing and understanding the concept of argumentation are needed, and some suggestions in that direction will be considered.

Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth.

Introduction 1. Pragmatism 2. Inquiry: The Fixation of Belief 3. Logic 4. Objectivity, Bivalence, and Truth 5. Ethics Bibliography Index

Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth

Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth

Truth and the End of Inquiry

Truth and the End of Inquiry

Truth and the end of inquiry: a Peircean account of truth

Introduction 1. Pragmatism 2. Inquiry: The Fixation of Belief 3. Logic 4. Objectivity, Bivalence, and Truth 5. Ethics Bibliography Index

Metaphysical Anti-Realism?

Michael Devitt describes the classical correspondence theory of truth, for sentences of a certain type x, as follows. 'Sentences of type x are true or false in virtue of: (i) their objective structure; (2) the objective referential relations between their parts and reality; (3) the objective nature of that reality.'1 By 'objective' Devitt means, at least, theory independent.2 Due partly to the influence of Dummett and Putnam, 'realism' or (Putnam) 'metaphysical realism' has in some circles recently come to mean, or at least to entail, this sort of theory of truth. Thus, being a 'realist' (about this class of sentences or that) has come to be contrasted, for example, with holding a redundancy theory, or a coherence theory, or a Peircean 'end of inquiry' theory of the nature of truth, or, perhaps, with holding that truth is rational assertability. Devitt demurs at this use of 'realism', and is surely right in saying that it tends to confound issues that should be kept separate.3 So the title of this paper should really be 'Metaphysical Anti-CorrespondenceTruth'. For the most part I will defer to Devitt's remonstrance, but I will occasionally lapse so as to avoid talking with too full a mouth. Putnam uses 'metaphysical' as an epithet to label correspondence theories of the sort Devitt described. It seems to connote non-empirical, verification-transcendent, empty, incoherent, bad. My title hints, and I will argue, that 'metaphysical', used this way, snugly fits Putnam's anti-realism. It does not fit the traditional correspondence theory. Two kinds of argument against correspondence truth dominate the contemporary literature. The first claims that it is incumbent on the correspondence theorist to demonstrate that we 'need' a correspondence theory in order to explain at least some phenomena, and that no such need has been demonstrated.4 The second claims that even if we do need a theory that affirms a correspondence between true sentences and affairs in the world, any such theory can correlate sentences only with theory-relative affairs and hence will not be a correspondence theory of the strong kind Devitt described; and that therefore correspondence of Devitt's strong kind could not possibly be the nature of truth. For example, Putnam has claimed that we must draw a distinction between two kinds of correspondence theories, one

Philosophy in Literature: Metaphysical Darkness and Ethical Light (review)

Reviews Philosophy in Literature: Metaphysical Darkness and Ethical Light, by Konstantin Kolenda; xii & 237 pp. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1982, $26.50. Konstantin Kolenda begins this study with a quotation from Auden's For the Time Being, lines prophesying or recognizing a wintry ending to the age in which we have lived, winter in the sense of the death ofour values and a growing doubt of the ability of natural science and its perspectives to give meaningful answers to the questions we would ask. In this dearth of answers, we need, Kolenda believes, to find ways of sharpening or refocusing our questions. History, philosophy, and die social sciences are available for this revised and renewed inquiry, Kolenda says, but the option of particular interest to him is what he calls "another form of thought: namely, literature" (p. ix). Is literature, imaginative literature, a form of thought? Not all philosophers have thus regarded it, with so eminent a figure as Plato among the deniers. Kolenda, himself a philosopher, believes with Aristotle in the cognitive role of imaginative literature. "In great works of art across the centuries of the Modern Age," he says, "are scattered statements about the human condition that express our highest expectations and deepest fears" (p. xi). The human condition, then, is the point of inquiry which Kolenda finds now shrouded in the "metaphysical darkness" of his tide; and his end of inquiry is to find in and through representative works of imaginative literature such "ethical light" as their authors have been able, with the vision of the creative imagination, to reach for us or provide to us. Nature and human nature conspire to bring about our metaphysical darkness. The ethical light of Kolenda's inquiry is the countervailing meaningfulness that humankind has within itself and that is the special human way of illuminating the metaphysical darkness. "The ability to introduce revisions into the state of affairs by taking a stand on them," Kolenda says, "may be perceived as man's calling on earth. Indeed, our special distinction and dignity may consist in our ability to shape our lives and destinies in ways we deem worthy and desirable, even under the most trying of circumstances" (p. 230). The passage I have quoted is from Kolenda's chapter on Rilke's Duino Elegies, the last of the twelve works of imaginative literature which Kolenda studies in this volume, the last and implicidy, I think, from Kolenda's point of view, the most ethically illuminating of the twelve. He groups the twelve under four categories for which he uses metaphors descriptive of the states and degrees of metaphysical darkness in which the respective authors seek for their ethical light. Under the category "Noon," Kolenda places Faust, Hamlet, The Brothers Karamazov; under "Twilight," Billy Budd, Heart ofDarkness, The Magic 128 Reviews129 Mountain; under "Night," The Stranger, No Exit, Waitingfor Godot; and under "Dawn," Four Çhiartets, the Duino Elegies, and Auden's For the Time Bang. Philosophy in Literature is a good, frequently profound, essentially noble book. Its interpretations of its twelve works, like all other interpretations, may be debatable; but the love of literature that guides its thought is exemplary — the love of literature and of ideas, the first, if not the final, fruits of philosophy. Whitman CollegeThomas D. Howells Literary Theory: An Introduction, by Terry Eagleton, viii & 244 pp. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983, $9.95 paperbound. Even many assiduous readers of mis journal are likely to be somewhat baffled by the multi-lateral civil wars (complicated by foreign interventions, mainly from France) which have plagued literary criticism in Anglo-America during the past fifteen or twenty years. These wars, of course, have their roots in earlier conflicts arising out ofthe battles ofonce Young Turks, such as I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, the American Agrarians, etc., against the sort of sentimental and biographical criticism which prevailed throughout the nineteenth century despite the best efforts of Matthew Arnold. Mr. Eagleton, a fellow in English at Wadham College, Oxford, has written an extraordinarily helpful book for those who would like to get clearer about parties and issues. He first establishes the historical context in a short and masterly chapter on the...