Gregory Stack

In contemporary continental philosophy there is the presumption that Sartre's existential-socialist humanism has been surpassed by clever and sophisticated postmodernist writings. This long and rich rendering of notations made by Sartre between 1947 and 1948 puts this belief in question. While retaining the basic philosophical terminology of Being and Nothingness, Sartre presents numerous phenomenologies of various subjective/social phenomena that are insightful and, once again, show the depth, power, and compassion of his thought. These notes serve as a well-constructed bridge that spans Being and Nothingness and the Critique of Rational Dialectic.

Alexander engages in an ambitious and interesting undertaking which carries a sociobiological orientation closer to philosophical ethics. After arguing that evolutionary biology offers a great deal of knowledge about the natural history of man, Alexander seeks to derive moral systems from genetic reproductive drives and phenotypic selfishness. Basically, it is held that the conflict of interests among individuals transforms a natural, organic self-interest into a kind of social altruism which, in general agreement with Darwin, has biological survival value. In a sense, many of Alexander's arguments unwittingly recapitulate Nietzsche's claim that altruism is but disguised egoistic self-interest. This is a fortiori the case when Alexander emphasizes the role of deception in human relationships and insists that self-deception serves to deceive others.

Believing that the deconstructive turn has arisen out of a dearth of authentic "analogous thinking-action," Cousineau seeks an existential response and a dialogical relation to Nietzsche, the character Zarathustra, and the text of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Adopting the Heidegger-Derrida propensity to philological analysis while prescinding a negative use of deconstruction, Cousineau has given us a curious, insightful, but often uneven study of Nietzschean themes and language. Early on, Wittgenstein's claim that "Ethics and aesthetics are one" is adopted, but Nietzsche's explicit expression of the same idea is missed even though it is evident in the subsequent discussion.

This carefully crafted volume concludes the series of works that began with Cultural Thematics. Seung's primary aim is to go beyond the malaise of post-New Critical studies and to reinstate the centrality of contextual understanding in the interpretation of the structure and meaning of a text. In his introductory discussion of "Text and Context" the author undermines the claims of the objectivity of a text, textual solipsism and textual agnosticism in a manner that recalls the previous arguments in philosophy concerning our knowledge of the external world. Starting with an analysis of textual indeterminacy, Seung ranges over a variety of relevant conceptions of the interpretation of a text, touching upon the works of E. D. Hirsch, Schleiermacher, Cleanth Brooks, Dilthey, Gadamer, and others. In a fairly technical chapter, "Semantics and Pragmatics," the distinctions between formal semantics and informal pragmatics are clearly discussed. An analysis of the pragmatic use of language leads to detailed and informative discussions of pragmatic norms, pragmatic functions, and the relevance of authorial intention for an understanding of a given text. Simplifying Seung's lucid and disciplined arguments, it is shown that a proper understanding of a text requires a grasp of the holistic culture in which it is presented, as well as an understanding of regnant cultural themes. Enriched by interpretations of the Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, the Aeneid, Dante's Commedia, and other literary works, Seung displays the art of contextual interpretation in accordance with his own principles. Of special interest is the presentation of the importance of textual coherence for significant textual interpretations. The various analyses of the role of thematics in the understanding of literature in historical context lead to sympathetic appraisals of Gadamer's hermeneutic program and a brief defence of Gadamer against the charge of falling into an historicist relativity. Finally, Seung concludes his illuminating study with a sketch of a cultural morphology that resembles, in embryo, Hegel's phenomenology of culture. This is no accident, insofar as Seung presents, in his concluding outline of the interaction of cultural themes, an admitted variation on Hegel's dialectical theme. By even finding a place for the "existential dimension of thematic dialectic," the author manages to negate and preserve the solipsism of the reader and give recognition virtually to every relevant aspect of a complex hermeneutic process.--G. J. Stack, SUNY College at Brockport.