The Nature of Philosophy

Guide to Philosophy. By C. E. M. Joad. (Gollancz. 6s.)

MR. C. E. M. JOAD has long been known as a brilliant publicist, an independent thinker, and a lucid and painstaking expounder

of the problems of philosophy. In this book he attempts to give the plain, uninstructed reader a comprehensive account of the nature of philosophical thinking, and a justification of the philosophical point of view. Recently he made a spec- tacular Return to Philosophy, and now he has come back in an " omnibus " ; and it is astonishing how much he has been able to pack into it besides himself.

There have been many Introductions to philosophy, which are readable, and many Histories of philosophy, which are comprehensive ; but Mr. Joad, who is the author of several Introductions, has now written a Guide which succeeds in being both readable and comprehensive at once. The scope of the book is extremely wide. We arc first made acquainted with the difficulties of the Theory of Knowledge. This is followed by an excellent résumé of the most recent contribu- tions of Realism. Mr. Joad is right to dwell on the latter, though I fear the reader may assume that Idealism, in denying an external world, has nothing to say on the subject of know- ledge ; and while he was about it Mr. Joad might have men- tioned the important theory advanced by a philosopher who, I cannot help feeling, has not yet completely shaken off his Idealism—Dr. A. C. Ewing ; to whose masterly book the reader is on several occasions referred. Chapter IV, on " What are the Origins and Nature of our Knowledge ? " is a clear statement of the issue between Rationalism and Empiricism. We might expect that Chapter V, on " Logic and the Laws of Thought," would be an arid distillation of the usual text-book quibbling. Instead, we are given a valuable review of what is perhaps the most vital problem of modern logic and even of modern philosophy— namely, whether the Laws of Thought apply to the behaviour of our minds or to the behaviour of things.

Part II, entitled Critical Metaphysics, is concerned with the problems of Substance, Change, Cause and the Self. Mr. Joad's method is not that of the " historical approach " as convention- ally understood ; for conventionally understood, the " his- torical approach " is simply the " chronological " approach. The true historical approach is that which sees every problem as a living problem, and no previous speculation, however crude, as wholly obsolete ; and this is Mr. Joad's method throughout. In Part III, which is concerned with Con- structive Metaphysics, he is seen at his best and apparently his happiest. No philosopher, with the exception of the early Bertrand Russell, has influenced the development of his views more than Plato ; and the chapters on " Developments and Applications of Plato's Theory of Ideas " are possibly the best in the book. I would particularly recommend Chapter XIII, on " The Philosophy of Aesthetics," both because it deals with a subject not usually treated in books on philosophy and because it contains a most able, not to say timely, criticism of the views of Dr. I. A. Richards. But perhaps the most ambitious part of Mr. Joad's programme is an outline of the philosophies of Kant and Hegel in 43 pages. The objection will be made that it is impossible to do justice to these thinkers in so short a space, and it is true that Mr. Joad admits an antipathy for Kant. But we should not forget that this is only a Guide to philosophy, and that the purpose of a Guide is to help us to find our way ahout. And in this sense I think we may say that Mr. Joad has done what he set out to do with marked success.

There is no space to discuss in detail the problems raised in Mr. Joad's exposition of Dialectical Materialism, and the philosophies of Bergson and Whitehead. It is significant to find 29 pages devoted to Dialectical Materialism as compared with 10 to Bergson (Whitehead has 30) ; but it is obvious, even if it is also regrettable, that a philosophy which is taken seriously by one-sixth of the world's inhabitants must sooner or later be taken seriously (I do not mean accepted) by the other five-sixths as well. And Mr. Joad is certainly a more congenial instructor than the OOPU. Moreover, the attempt at understanding will not be wasted, for it is never quite cer- tain how much of the influence of an official philosophy depends upon imperfect comprehension.

Mr. Joad's exposition is at all times accurate, never weari- some, and surprisingly fair. Occasionally this fairness is

pushed to an extreme where it becomes prejudicial. For Mr. &sad is well aware that the most effective way of revealing a theory's deficiencies is to state it more logically than its advocates have done themselves. His talent for lucidity is such that he was bound to do this in any case, and only his

opponents are to blame if, by being wrong, they provide him with an opportunity to score. Not that Mr. Joad is always as

impartial as he would wish to be. He often has to confess to an element of prejudice. But I think that on these occasions he tends to be over-apologetic. Throughout the book, the reader will find that where impartiality is possible, it is largely irrelevant ; and where it is relevant (as, for instance, in the

Chapter on Aesthetics), it is pretty well impossible. And even if relevant where possible and possible where relevant, it

would be equally undesirable ; for prejudice is only dangerous —only prejudicial—when concealed.

Let me conclude with an example of what I mean. Part III begins with a section entitled A Preliminary Doubt, which consists of a summary of the aims of the so-called Analytical School (who seem to me to analyse everything except what they mean by Experience). Now Mr. Joad neither belongs to this school nor sympathises with its aims. But the point at issue is a vital one, and here, if anywhere, we might look for an

impartial estimate. As far as impartiality can be carried, Mr. Joad is impartial ; but it cannot be carried far enough to

be of very much significance. Mr. Joad does not hesitate to admit his bias : " Unless I thought that philosophy had some contribution to make to the answering of such questions as' What sort of universe is this in which we are living ? and ' How ought we to live in it ? ' " (he says) " I, for one, should have no interest in philosophy. I believe that most philosophers are in similar case. In spite of the scantiness of the light which philosophy has managed to throw upon the constitution of the universe and the status of human existence, in spite of the meagreness of the rules which it has succeeded in drawing up for the right conduct of life, we are, most of us feel convinced, not knocking at a door irrevocably closed, when we look to it to provide understanding and guidance."

It is obvious that unless Mr. Joad believed this—believed, that is to say, that the study of philosophy can, and does, provide us with " understanding and guidance"—he would not have been able to write the present volume for the " Under- standing and guidance " of others.

It remains to be said that this book will probably become the chief stand-by of those taking the Modern Greats course at Oxford. And it remains to be seen whether their tutors will openly disapprove or merely wink the other eye. If they wink, it will surely be because they have one eye on the book