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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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