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New Booksew Books

'logical litigation'. The manner is sometimes lost amid the mannerisms,but 'le style, c'est Ryle', and on most of his pages one would not wish it

otherwise. The family of children asymptotically having their cake and

eating it until the end of time; the omniscient accountant reducing

Rugger, Anglo-Saxon and Bump Suppers to bloodless banknotes; the

logically preposterous country where all the coins are forged: all these

will be heard of again by those who are devoted to the study of the

'Informal Logic' which Ryle convincingly defends against militaristic

logicians who have no taste for rambling over the moors of ordinary lan-

guage. Meanwhile Dilemmas may be added to the list of books that Mr

Philip Toynbee might profitably read before he returns, in Encounter andthe Sunday Times, to his uninspired crusade against philosophy.

Renford Bambrough

One-Dimensional Man

By Herbert Marcuse

Routledge

The time is out of joint. O Huge DelightThat ever I was born to set it right.

This motto, devised for a managing Victorian aunt by her managedVictorian nieces, would make a good epigraph for Professor Marcuse's

'provocative and disturbing book'. It provokes more than it disturbs.

The burden of this joyous jeremiad is that everything in the world is

going too smoothly. Modern Industrial Society is 'Society without

Opposition'. 'Technological Rationality' rules us all. Political parties that

are supposed to be in conflict secretly agree, and unions join with man-

agements in pressing governments for favours to their industries. East

and West, the Communist world and the 'Free' world, are at one in being

governed by 'the Logic of Domination', and both have spurned 'the

Defeated Logic of Protest'. Even the emerging countries, which mighthave been expected to form a 'third force', put their best foot no more

than half a pace forward before they too succumb to 'Repressive De-sub-

limation' and 'The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness'.

But it is not our fault, or theirs, poor things. It is all the result of 'an

objective societal process', and not of 'moral or intellectual deterioration

or corruption'. Those of us who suffer under a 'Welfare and Warfare

State' are sick rather thansilly

or sinful.

What is Professor Marcuse's prescription-his saving alternative to

'the established rationality'? It is hard to say, because most of the time he

is doggedly faithful to his own precept that 'Abstractness is the very life

of thought', as well as to his unavowed but evidently deep conviction that

Capital Letters are the Very Secret of Style. But he does make plain that

we can remove at least one symptom from the syndrome if we can be

drummed or drugged into repudiating the one-dimensional philosophythat goes with our one-dimensional society.

'logical litigation'. The manner is sometimes lost amid the mannerisms,but 'le style, c'est Ryle', and on most of his pages one would not wish it

otherwise. The family of children asymptotically having their cake and

eating it until the end of time; the omniscient accountant reducing

Rugger, Anglo-Saxon and Bump Suppers to bloodless banknotes; the

logically preposterous country where all the coins are forged: all these

will be heard of again by those who are devoted to the study of the

'Informal Logic' which Ryle convincingly defends against militaristic

logicians who have no taste for rambling over the moors of ordinary lan-

guage. Meanwhile Dilemmas may be added to the list of books that Mr

Philip Toynbee might profitably read before he returns, in Encounter andthe Sunday Times, to his uninspired crusade against philosophy.

Renford Bambrough

One-Dimensional Man

By Herbert Marcuse

Routledge

The time is out of joint. O Huge DelightThat ever I was born to set it right.

This motto, devised for a managing Victorian aunt by her managedVictorian nieces, would make a good epigraph for Professor Marcuse's

'provocative and disturbing book'. It provokes more than it disturbs.

The burden of this joyous jeremiad is that everything in the world is

going too smoothly. Modern Industrial Society is 'Society without

Opposition'. 'Technological Rationality' rules us all. Political parties that

are supposed to be in conflict secretly agree, and unions join with man-

agements in pressing governments for favours to their industries. East

and West, the Communist world and the 'Free' world, are at one in being

governed by 'the Logic of Domination', and both have spurned 'the

Defeated Logic of Protest'. Even the emerging countries, which mighthave been expected to form a 'third force', put their best foot no more

than half a pace forward before they too succumb to 'Repressive De-sub-

limation' and 'The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness'.

But it is not our fault, or theirs, poor things. It is all the result of 'an

objective societal process', and not of 'moral or intellectual deterioration

or corruption'. Those of us who suffer under a 'Welfare and Warfare

State' are sick rather thansilly

or sinful.

What is Professor Marcuse's prescription-his saving alternative to

'the established rationality'? It is hard to say, because most of the time he

is doggedly faithful to his own precept that 'Abstractness is the very life

of thought', as well as to his unavowed but evidently deep conviction that

Capital Letters are the Very Secret of Style. But he does make plain that

we can remove at least one symptom from the syndrome if we can be

drummed or drugged into repudiating the one-dimensional philosophythat goes with our one-dimensional society.

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New Booksew Books

Bishop Butler started the rot with his monstrous and 'unphilosophical'maxim that 'everything is what it is and not another thing.' The deadlywork has been continued in our own time by Wittgenstein, Austin and

Ryle. These vampires, with the help of numerous lesser leeches, havebled us into intellectual anaemia by their irresponsible and wilful deter-mination to say particular things about particular questions instead of

saying everything about everything at once in Professor Marcuse's all tooimitable manner. The writer's misunderstandings of Wittgenstein are

gross and crass. They include all the usual ones, such as that

Wittgenstein was an arch conservative in thought and language, who

would not allow Copernicus to say that the sun does not rise orWordsworth to deny that the man is the father of the child. But he is athis worst when he is entirely original, as when he appears to accuse

Wittgenstein of trying to cramp the great variety of actual language bypressing it into a single mould. He ridicules Wittgenstein for devoting'much acumen and space to the analysis of "My broom is in the corner,"'but the only passage he can possibly have in mind is one in which

Wittgenstein explains why it is misguided to devote much acumen and

space to the analysis of 'My broom is in the corner'.This mistake has its source in another that is more pervasive.

Although Professor Marcuse reminds us of the 'dielectical' character of

philosophical thought, he has not noticed that Wittgenstein's own work is

dialectical, aporetic, conversational, like a Socratic dialogue. Would

Professor Marcuse dismiss Plato's philosophy because, in its 'recurrent

use of the imperative with the intimate or condescending' second personsingular, it 'seems to move between the two poles of pontificating author-

ity and easygoing chumminess'? Philosophers are not the only victims ofthe Professor's slipshod savagery. Social scientists, too, come under the

hammer, and, like the philosophers, they are most sharply rebuked when

they come nearest to attaining the virtues that his own book gravely lacks:clarity, cogency, discipline, and a sense that conclusions need evidence or

argument.Renford Bambrough

Freedomof the Individual

By Stuart HampshireChatto and Windus

Professor Hampshire writes like a Prufrock who has heard the mermaids

singing, each to each, but who has not been able, even with time for ahundred visions and revisions, to make them sing to us. The words aremuffled by the haunting harmony. He leads us to an overwhelming ques-tion, but never quite drops it on the plate. It is impossible to say justwhat he means.

He should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floorsof silent seas. So many people had such good reason for believing thatProfessor Hampshire was destined to produce an important and originalbook that Thoughtand Action was widely overpraised when it appeared in

Bishop Butler started the rot with his monstrous and 'unphilosophical'maxim that 'everything is what it is and not another thing.' The deadlywork has been continued in our own time by Wittgenstein, Austin and

Ryle. These vampires, with the help of numerous lesser leeches, havebled us into intellectual anaemia by their irresponsible and wilful deter-mination to say particular things about particular questions instead of

saying everything about everything at once in Professor Marcuse's all tooimitable manner. The writer's misunderstandings of Wittgenstein are

gross and crass. They include all the usual ones, such as that

Wittgenstein was an arch conservative in thought and language, who

would not allow Copernicus to say that the sun does not rise orWordsworth to deny that the man is the father of the child. But he is athis worst when he is entirely original, as when he appears to accuse

Wittgenstein of trying to cramp the great variety of actual language bypressing it into a single mould. He ridicules Wittgenstein for devoting'much acumen and space to the analysis of "My broom is in the corner,"'but the only passage he can possibly have in mind is one in which

Wittgenstein explains why it is misguided to devote much acumen and

space to the analysis of 'My broom is in the corner'.This mistake has its source in another that is more pervasive.

Although Professor Marcuse reminds us of the 'dielectical' character of

philosophical thought, he has not noticed that Wittgenstein's own work is

dialectical, aporetic, conversational, like a Socratic dialogue. Would

Professor Marcuse dismiss Plato's philosophy because, in its 'recurrent

use of the imperative with the intimate or condescending' second personsingular, it 'seems to move between the two poles of pontificating author-

ity and easygoing chumminess'? Philosophers are not the only victims ofthe Professor's slipshod savagery. Social scientists, too, come under the

hammer, and, like the philosophers, they are most sharply rebuked when

they come nearest to attaining the virtues that his own book gravely lacks:clarity, cogency, discipline, and a sense that conclusions need evidence or

argument.Renford Bambrough

Freedomof the Individual

By Stuart HampshireChatto and Windus

Professor Hampshire writes like a Prufrock who has heard the mermaids

singing, each to each, but who has not been able, even with time for ahundred visions and revisions, to make them sing to us. The words aremuffled by the haunting harmony. He leads us to an overwhelming ques-tion, but never quite drops it on the plate. It is impossible to say justwhat he means.

He should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floorsof silent seas. So many people had such good reason for believing thatProfessor Hampshire was destined to produce an important and originalbook that Thoughtand Action was widely overpraised when it appeared in

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