REVIEW-ARTICLE CONDEMNED TO MEANING WHAT?

A S U R \ . E Y OF ’THE W O R L D S C E N E M I G H T R E V E A L T H A T T H E C E X T K A L P R O B L E M OE M A N K I S D C O N S I D E R E D AS 4 W H O L E I S T H A T OF T H E M E A K I N G 0 5 H U M A N E X I S T E N C E .

\T.’hat is the significance of human being? A survey of the world philosophical scene to discover the central problem of philosophers considered collectively might find i t to be that of the place of philosophy in human living. What is the sig- nificance of philosophy? The central problem within this second question may have something to do with the differences between Continental and Anglo- =Imerican styles of philosophizing. To attempt to supply a solution to either of these problems is a superhuman undertaking, for the first has persisted at least since Socrates started asking questions and the second has persisted at least since Bacon and Descartes started writing about new methods. If someone attempted to solve both of these problems, or a t least tried to point out the way they might be pursued for solution, and if he tried to do so in a small book, and if that book, moreover, was addressed to an audience that apparently required considerable popularization of these most weighty of philosophical themes, one could hardly begin to know what should be expected in the way of detail, consistency, com- prehensiveness, and depth. ,At any rate, this is what Huston Smith has boldly attempted in the seventh of the John Dewey Society Lectures, Condemned to Xfeo 72 i ng.

(1) ,After indicating that the expansion of knowledge is accompanied by the “modern malaise,” Smith surveyed anthropology, psychology, and philosophy to indicate that primitive man’s myth-making served to establish meaning and security in his life, that the most significant trend in therapy, existentialism, is best represented by Frankl’s notion of the will-to-meaning, and that there is a “schism” in philosophy between inquiry into life-rneanings and linguistic meanings. (2) He then tried to draw some distinctions that would enable and direct phil- osophical analysis of atomic life-meanings. (3) The subsequent pursuit of the nature of global life-meanings took the form of first suggesting t h a t all meanings are partly constructed, then relating the apparent agreement o f psychiatry, anthropology, and phenomenology concerning the progressive imposition or con- struction of the meaning of one’s life-man makes himself-to kant’s phenom- enalism i n order to set the stage for what may be the most original feature of the book, L “transcendental deduction” of categories of life-meanings: trouble, hope, endeavor, trust, and mystery. The argument then passed beyond this “Knntizn- isin” (which bears a remote resemblance to Heidegger’s derivation o f the existen- t i o h ) to suggest that perhaps there is external support for man’s meanings. This postulation of a realistic thesis, a step Kant did not take, incidentally, because he had read Hunie, suggested that meanings are partially discovered rather than

CONDEMNED 10 L ~ E A N I X C \\THA,I ? 371

invented. ( 5 ) The whole is sandwiched between the title, taken from the quotation from Merleau-Ponty on the frontispiece, “Because we are present to a world, we are condemned to mean- ing,” and the penultimate sentence, “For truly, man is condemned to meaning.” The main filling in this sandwich seems to be a rather loosely-supported, unac- knowledged but poorly disguised, Neo-Thomism. I t is not particularly bad fare because of the appetizing lettuce (phenomenology) and mayonnaise (analysis).

(4) Two implications for education were made.

(1) The so-called explosion of knowledge may be the current myth invented by academia to assure the burgeoning quantity of “researchers” that their life is meaningful after all. To a thorough-going Hurnean-type positivist, however, the problem of induction is not yet solved, so that instead of positive knowledge, what is available is a great variety of ways of conceptually ordering experience, or jargon, for any discipline that has two or more theories to choose from does not have knowledge unless that word is defined in some way other than that used by those who assert th-ere has been an expansion of knowledge. To a thorough-going “empiricist,” as the word is used in the behavioral sciences, there is less knowledge available than is adver- tised, for the “cumulative” studies indicate that the problems are just beginning to be defined and the measuring devices constructed and understood. To a thorough-going phenomenologist, Husserl’s critique of the so-called beharioral sciences is still valid, for as long as man is considered both as a part of nature (by the ‘‘objective’’ behavioral sciences) and a purposeful creature (by the hu- manities and, e.g., humanistic psychologies), i.e., as half slave and half free, there is a crisis i n the knowledge of man, and then the knowledge of man that is allegedly expanding is, on the contrary, foundering. To a thorough-going pragmatist there is no knowIedge “stored in books” or published in journals that is not de- veloped out of and worked into human experience, so that the “expansion of knowledge” could only mean that the possibilities of enriching and fructifying life may have expanded, but that social conditions have not allowed for the ade- quate sharing of the increments of experience called knowledge that could make life more meaningful. To a thorough-going Alarxist, the alleged knowledge explosion may be only part of the bourgeois ideology, perpetrated to assist in the exploitation of the poorly jobbed and jobless (and students) by the newest addi- tion to the leisure class, the university “researcher.”

J t must be, there is so much knowledge accumulating.

Although Smith’s claim that there is a knowledge explosion and that i t is related to an alleged pervasive meaningless in modern life may be essentially cor- rect, there are many ways to articulate the nature of the connection. How one articulates it, in turn, can be related to one’s perception of the “schism” in the academic community. Smith said the schism was between anthropologists, therapy-oriented psychologists, theologians, and existential philosophers, on the one side, and linguists and Anglo-American analytic philosophers on the other. How one sees the schism is also related to how one might attempt to heal the breach: Dewey and C. P. Snow saw the schism quite differently from Smith, sufficiently different to cause one to suspect that attempts such as Smith’s niay be more politically than philosophically wise. If one takes into account the intensiveness of the “training” required to become a first-rate analyst or first-rate phenomenologist, both of whom have primarily a method of doing philosophy

37’ EDUCAVOP~AI. THEORY

(this is not just applicable to analysis as Smith suggests, so that Smith’s point that analysts cannot have doctrine applies to Smith’s attempt to derive doctrine from phenomenology), i t is difficult to imagine either analysts or phenomenologists wanting to partake of a merger with the other. I t is to Smith’s credit that he acknowledged, somewhat heretically, that there were alternative ways of doing philosophy, but mutual respect may be as advantageous as a “synthesis” that is unsatisfactory to both parties “synthesized,” i.e., obliterated.

For example, John Wild has suggested the possibility of a common interest i n that the Lebenswelt, in some respects the prime focus of phenomenological investigation, is also the world of ordinary language. Then the substance of what the ordinary language philosopher studies is that which the phenomenologist studies. At first this looks very promising: two vastly different methods of in- quiry that study the “same thing” might be able to “bracket” methodological differences to engage in common projects, etc. But if neither has a doctrine because each is primarily a method, then what would have to be put out of play to effect collaboration would be the distinct claim to philosophical significance and respectability of each, which is obliteration, or surrendering one’s philosophical integrity for a third of the kingdom. This can be clarified by a glance a t the major figures.

For Heidegger the world of ordinary language is so full of sedimented mean- ings that bring in philosophical assumptions that it is rootless, free-floating (ground- less), and the abode of the opinions that anyone can have, and, therefore, the home of inauthenticity, or a meaningless existence. From Heidegger’s view, then, ordinary language is necessarily alienating and could be engaged in only at the expense of alienation from existential meanings and only on the condition of a prior alienation from one’s authentic existing. For Sartre, furthermore, the spirit of analysis is identical with bourgeois objectivism, which is identical with bourgeois alienation from other people. Whatever one thinks of Heidegger and Sartre, there simply is no gainsaying that Being and Time and Being and Nothing- ness have to be taken very seriously by any quest for what Smith called life- meanings, unless one desires answers before the questions are well put. Asking anyone who takes them seriously to merge with analytic philosophy, then, is ask- ing him to leave his brains behind.

On the other hand, there seems to be little doubt that Wittgenstein’s “therapy” of showing the fly the way out of the bottle through the clarification of misleading expressions has an “existential concern” of its own, for i t approximately identifies certain life-problems with language problems and holds that clarification of the latter “solves” (or, better, dissolves) the former. Wittgenstein also has to be taken very seriously, not only by philosophical analysts but by anyone wishing to engage in any kind of philosophizing, for no philosopher wishes to be led astray through the poor use of words. Other analytically oriented philosophers (of science) also show what can be construed as “existential concern” insofar as their inquiry concerning the methods and uses of scientific inquiry and results is partly consciously motivated by the aim of increasing the warrantability of assertions about the world in which any possible meaning of human existence has to have its realization. Asking either of these kinds of philosophers to merge with a way of doing philosophy that apparently deals solely in misleading expressions and that

c 0 N D E M N E D T 0 h l E A N J N G M’H A T ? 373

apparently finds no need but much condemnation of modern science as a global force, then, is also asking for an act of philosophical suicide.

Any attempt to synthesize Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, in other uords, has to combine the merits of each in such a way that the tasks that each is doing separately are continued, rather than combining the faults of each in such a way that no one well-trained in either way could possibly accept the

synthesis.” Smith has successfully accomplished the latter. The remainder of this article will indicate why his book could not be considered “respectable” as serious philosophizing by either tradition. The kind of “respectability” the book does have, and it does have its own kind, will then be stated.

“

( 2 ) In the chapter on “An Analytic Approach to Existential Meaning” Smith asked why analytic methods cannot be brought to bear on existential meanings, those arising from concrete life, and then drew some distinctions to show where analytic and existential philosophy might work hand in hand. He protected his arguixerit ahead of time by saying that imprecision, etc., demonstrates the need for more niinlytic work. He might as well have said that misleading examples, etc., show the need for rigorous use of phenomenological method, were he not playing both ends against the middle, so to speak. The first so-called distinction is between atomic versus global meaning, as between meanings in a specific situa- tion versus the meaning of life as a whole. Then he cited Hanson to the effect that a scientific concept has a theory implicit in i t such that abandoning a major theory entails abandoning the concept or deriving a new theory lest the concept crumble. Then in asking if the same holds for existential meanings such that atomic meanings belonging to a situation might implicate global meanings, he raised enough questions to make one doubt the validity of the distinction. H e asked the questions explicitly. Then he said that his point was not to show the relation of atomic meanings to global meanings (which is what he did show), but to show how they were distinct. No phenomenologist would grant the validity of the distinction except for describing disintegrated conduct, and no logical analyst would grant that it was validly presented.

\Vhen the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic meanings is illustrated with “S is meaningful” and “X means that Y,” the analyst might respond by saying that the former is a sentence fragment and the phenemenologist might want to know to whom and under what conditions X becomes meaningful. Then when Smith said, “An experience is meaningful insofar as its meaning is fully filled (fulfilled) in the experience itself,” he uttered a tautology, for “meaning is fully filled (fulfilled)” merely repeats “meaningful.” I t says, then, that ameaning- h l elperience is a meaningful experience, which is an odd way to clarify the dis- tinction between intrinsic and extrinsic meaning, for “intrinsic meaning” becomes

that which intrinsically meaningful experiences have,” and “extrinsic meaning” becomes “that which is not intrinsic.” Smith must mean, I take it, that some experiences are meaningful and some are not, which means that unmeaningful experiences must be possible, which may be a contradiction in terms if experience is taken to pertain to that which has meaning, as for Dewey, unless one wishes to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic, or genuine and ungenuine, ex- periencing. The analyst, however, might say that one could not distinguish between intrinsically meaningful experiences and those which are not apart from

“

37‘4 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

one‘s personal preferences as to what is “intrinsically” worthwhile, and a phe- nomenologist could ask for a full-blown treatment of the totality of human being in order to be able to make the distinction because he does not have to grant the former distinction between atomic and global meanings. Smith’s point is that atomic meanings (assigned to analysts, or, where analysts are sequestered tdj are either extrinsically or intrinsically meaningful, whereas global meanings are “invariably” intrinsically meaningful.

“,\ha!” exclaims the analyst, “I thought that is where you were going. But your illustration, ‘Miller’s life is (was) meaningful,’ is misleading, for Alilier and his life are the same thing. You are saying, ‘There is (was) a man called 3Iiller who was meaningful.’ hliller was meaningful? What an odd way to talk. \Ye don’t talk like that.” The phenomenologist might wonder why saj i i t j that lliller’s life is or was meaningful implies, as Smith said, that hliller led life of fulfillment (an existential occurrence); it only implies that someone thought that it was all right to say so, but that no one had the right to say so excep: hliller himself. Then if IlIiller actually did lead such a life, he would not haxe stopped to say so, for significance arises only in full engagement in concrete situations without self-objectification.

A quotation will embody the “distinction” between individual and generic meaning and serve to illustrate pointedly why neither an L\nglo-American analyst nor a Continental phenomenologist could find Smith’s “synthesis” acceptable:

In addition to the question of what life meant to Benvenuto Cellini or men Lving in Tang China, there is the question of the meaning of life-period-and of features it invariably embodies: time, history, freedom, sex, death, and the-world-as-life’s- matrix. Originating as they do i n experiences that men share, such meanings are generic as distinct from individual meanings that vary from person to person. p. 4Q)

\\’hat is the antecedent of “they”? Questions, features, or meanings thereof; How and why are these meanings generic because the “features” are “shared”? Or are there broader experiences that are shared that contain “feature>” and generic meanings? Does “sex” have the same meaning, or some generic similarity of life meaning, for those who “share” i t ? ‘That is, is the general significance of “sex” for life a t all similar for men and women? Except in wars wherein people kill each other, how can death be “shared”? One can share candy, but how does one share sex, death, freedom, or history? How does one share “experience”? Even i f there are generic features of “life,” does this entail any generic meanings, or even family resemblances of significances? Is asserting that they do sufficient to establish the existential fact?

Dificulty with these distinctions without difference does not aribr from standards external to the book, for they gave the author difficulty too. He could not make up his mind whether therapists help elucidate the client’s atomic or global life-meanings (4. p. 36 for atomic with p. 22 and p. 44 for global), and they are indistinguishable for the current influence in psychology that he supports his thesis with. This makes his bow to analytic philosophy seem perfunctory, for he cannot use innovations in therapy to show reason for philosophical attention to global meanings and justify philosophical analysis of atomic existential meanings a t the same time unless he demonstrates a great deal of methodological rigor. These are not existential paradoxes that he is dealing with.

COXDEMNED TO b l E A N I N C \$‘HAT? 375

( 3 ) The categories of meaning, presented as Kantian “regulative principies” that patterns of meaning “invariably” exemplify, are ways

. . . man’s spirit-defined as that level of the self where faculties distinguishable a t more conscious levels as intellect, will, and emotion interpenetrate and act in con- cert-faces the unending task of perceiving meaning in ever-widening areas of human experience. (p. 46)

Before discussing the categories within which meaning is allegedly progressively constructed, it should be noticed tha t intellect, will, and emotion are spoken of as very real, metaphysical things here. I t says tha t the faculties are distinguish- able at “more conscious” levels, and integrated a t some other level, presumably unconscious. No t only would no self-respecting analyst o r phenomenologist accept this, bu t Smith did not either:

It would seem that we have repudiated faculty psychology-the view that man can be divided into compartments, such as intellect, will, and emotion-only to continue to think as if one such faculty, the intellect, can be separated out. . . . (p. 81)

Does Smith accept o r reject faculty psychology? Does he reject it only a t the unconscious level of man’s spirit? This is what he seeins to say. Bu t the unity of the human spirit cannot be much if it is a unity of things without being (if he rejects it): is the distinguishability of the faculties verbal o r existential? T h e other talk about the “intellect,” “those who work with maturing minds,” “the teacher using his specialty-his mind,’’ and so on, make it clear tha t Smith does subscribe to a faculty psychology when i t suits his purposes, which makes the whole enterprise of “synthesis” take on another hue.

O r is this where he accepts i t ?

As for the categories, these are identified as (a) trouble, o r misery, sufFering, wretchedness, sin, o r evil; (b) hope, for which intentionality, phenomenology’s claim tha t consciousness is always conscious of something, bu t transplanted into ontology (as for Heidegger and Sartre), is invoked through the suggestion tha t man’s being is transcending beyond itself, into “space,” the “future,” and ideals; (c) endeavor, to realize ideals, o r bring non-existent states of affairs into being; (d) trust, o r support by a friendly universe; and (e) mystery, o r a sense of wonder a t those things of which one is yet ignorant. Because Smith contended t h a t the five categories have to function in concert for the human spirit to be i n health, discussion of one category will suffice.

Trus t is needed to establish meaning in life, according to Smith, for endeavor succeeds oniy through trusting in a sustaining matrix because hope alone wili not suffice in the long run, “fundamentally.” The opposite of trust, Smith said,

. . . is to see ourselves as targets of an inhuman and antihuman universe that is blindly pursuing its senseless course and gloating, without heart or brain, over the absurdity of the human predicament. It is to see ourselves against an infinitely extended and lifeless cosmos, an insignificant epiphenomenon thrown up by chance evolution on a tiny speck of cosmic dust called “Earth”-a bubble that has no destiny save to burst and be forgotten. We do not argue for the consistency of this view: it mixes feelings with insentience, hostility with indifference. But persons hold it. . . . (pp. 51-52)

376 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

I t goes on to worse confusion. The second sentence is totally unrelated to the first. Of course not, neither did anyone else, for he has mixed various views and has a straw man as a result. The first sentence could only be asserted by a paranoid. The second sentence, on the other hand, is all that the evidence allows by way of warranted assertion, except for the word “epiphenomenon,” for, as Merleau-Ponty said, “The word has meaning,” thus refuting mechanism. Smith is entitled to trusting in more than the evidence allows, but he is not entitled to expect that analytic or phenom- enological philosophers will go beyond evidence, for they will recall where i t is that argument based on faith (the older name for trust) leads. When Smith said that if spirit accepts endeavor but not trust, “it is proud and brittle, stalking the world as a stage while melodramatically stressing the self-world dichotomy that it may boast of its unconquerable soul,” (p. 57) i t is clear that this view is also mixed with hostility and indifference and some projected blame as well, for the Continental thinkers he invoked against philosophical analysts do not possess his notion of trust, yet they, above all others, have refused to accept the “self-world” dichotomy, particularly in their descriptions of authentic action. I t also shows that this view is not unmixed with indifference to other people. What is missing in Smith’s categories is the third member of the ancient virtues, faith, hope, and charity. What is missing is love, or the significance of interpersonal relations, or coexistence, as an essential ingredient in the finding of meaning in human existence.

The whole book is vitiated by the assumption that i t is the solitary man who has to find the meaning of his life in the universe rather than in coexistence. I n this respect, Smith has missed the main thrust of the major phenomenologists. What if the “meaning of life” is to be found only in coexistence rather than in the individual’s relation to the impersonal universe? What if those who find the uni- verse friendly, who have the “feeling that one receives from life a t least as much as one gives,” (p. 50) or the “Faith that the world is on one’s side, or ‘for one,’ ” (p. 51) or sense that “we all receive more than we earn, win more love than we give, and are debtors a t every turn to the bounty of life,” (p. 52) may have merely been the beneficiaries of certain social arrangements, like an upper middle class home life, for example? Why blame the universe for the good that other people have done for one? Dewey’s thesis of The Ouest for Certainty, that certain cosmic beliefs are related to social structure, keeps ringing in one’s ears, loud and clear. Some of the “jaded palates” and “broken spirits,” to use Smith’s terms, (p. 72) may be the only ones who do have a “right” to teach the young, at least until the friendliness of the universe is demonstrable. At least they might not indulge the young with unfulfillable promises.

Smith did not argue for the consistency of the view.

Isn’t this a mixture of hostility and indifference?

Defeat is certain: how should we live meanwhile?

The five categories are presented as if they were part of a critical philosophy, as that which man’s search for meaning must necessarily presuppose, and which any articulated pattern of the meaning of life allegedly must embody, but meta- physical realism kept creeping into Smith’s discussion. The subsequent section, “Beyond Kantianism,” held no surprises in this respect. According to Smith, just creating or constructing meaning would not be sufficient to fulfill man’s alleged need for meaning because then all meaning would be imposed by man and Sartre would be right, man is a useless passion. To find trans-human meaning, Smith cited “most scientists” and misquoted Merleau-Ponty. Even if most scientists

COSDEMNEU TO R ~ E A N I N C WHAT? 377

find “conventionalism” inadequate and prefer some sort of epistemological realism, their preferences are irrelevant to the problem. That their theories do inform us of antecedent reality is not a scientific statement. That the scientist is willing to assert a realistic thesis, if he is, means no more than the layman’s assertion of common sense realism unless it warns us to be wary of his “genuinely” scientific conclusions, for i t indicates that he is not aware of the boundaries of his inquiry.

Smith then generalized as to the way “phenomenology” is allegedly moving. He, and possibly some other Anglo-American philosophers, might like i t to move some way or another, but what is written is not necessarily performative. Smith quoted a commentator to the effect that we are not the absolute source of mean- ing. “We make sense out of our experience from within it . . . meanings are not given to experience but received from it.” (p. 61) The difficulty is that the language is erroneously dualistic: which receives, the subject or the object? Smith turned the ambiguity into realism. If we are our experience and if our experience is nothing separate from us, then the quotation does not mean that meanings are perceived out there as if they were there antecedent to experience, for that per- ception is also experience: given t o or received from are both wrong for RIerleau- Ponty’s view if either suggests a mind or consciousness apart from the total human being. If meanings are received from experience (where else could they originate?), and if we are our experience, then Merleau-Ponty was still right when he said:

Existence is indeterminate in itself, by reason of its fundamental structure, and in so far as it is the very process whereby the hitherto meaningless takes on meaning. (p. 169) Expression is everywhere creative, and what is expressed is aIways insepar- able from it. (p. 391) Noth- ing determines me from the outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world. (p. 456)’

[Expression] brings the meaning into existence. (p. 182)

Then Smith’s statement that Merleau-Ponty accepted a position that meanings are discovered in experience, which might be beyond Kantianism, hinges on the ambiguity of language that suggests a person/experience dichotomy. The only meanings discoverable in experience, however, are those embedded there in prior experience, created there through growing u p in a society wherein there are cul- tural objects and wherein speech is a cultural object, an institution, according to Rlerleau-Ponty. Then if one wishes to complete the sentence that Smith quoted in front of his book, it reads, “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to ineaning, and we cannot do or say anything without acquiring a name in h i ~ t o r y . ” ~ The full quotation restores the relation of meaning to action that “present to the world” implied in the first place, and then the connection of life-meaning with doing, as for the major phenomenologists and for Dewey, is restored. Then Merleau-Ponty’s Statement, “The healthy man proposes to live, to attain certain objects in the world or beyond the world, and not to preserve indicates

2Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenonzenoloxy of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), translated by Colin Smith.

SIbid., gin.

4Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963) translated by .?\Iden Fisher, p. 245, n. 97.

378 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

the shortcomings of Smith’s categories. For Merleau-Ponty, allegations concern- ing the state of the universe are irrelevant to health. So is trust. The evidence is that we end up defeated a t any rate, and that sustenance is not from the uni- verse but from other people. Then any meanings of life are constructed in the social matrix of existence or nowhere.

(4) Then the educational import is not only to let pupils see the meaning of what they study (where have we heard this before?), but also to make objective changes in social conditions so that social life is seen as significant and meaningful by young people because life-meanings are constructed collectively through speech and action.

Thus the attempt to “synthesize” two vastly different ways of doing phi- losophy failed because the merits of each were not captured. Merleau-Ponty said, “Phenomenology is accessible only through a phenomenological method.”l So is analytic philosophy. Smith’s book gives one the impression that he borrowed from Continental thought merely sufficient doctrine to fight the method of phil- osophical analysis, and that he borrowed from analysis merely sufficiently to fight some forms of existence philosophy, thereby failing to evince an understand- ing of either and thereby making sincere efforts to heal the breach or schism more difficult than before because what he says about either “camp” would turn self- respecting analysts or phenomenologists away from each other if what Smith said were all they knew of the other “camp.” Thus it makes i t more difficult for Con- tinental thought to gain respect in America. I t is difficult to see how any good analyst could avoid responding to the book’s emotionalism by brushing it off and not expecting anything from phenomenology. The chapter on the import for education is padded with justifications for inexactitude and imprecision. Aristotle is cited to the effect that standards of inquiry should be expected to be appropriate to the subject matter of inquiry (like Dewey). On the one hand, the major Continental figures are far more precise in dealing with the same subject matter Smith did. One thing philosophical an- alysis and phenomenology do have in common, a t least a t their best, is strict- ness of thought and the high degree of self-criticism that makes this possible. I t may seem unfortunate if strict thinking forces one where he does not want to go, but that is philosophy.

On the other hand, if the degree of precision should be appropriate to the audience, any book can have considerable merit for the right audience. This book has merit for the audience suited to its level of precision. Undergraduates with no previous philosophy can learn a little bit about a great many things from this little book: some analysis, some philosophy of science, some phenomenoiogy, and some Kantianism. What accuracy and precision are missing are not that significant to the quest for meaning at a beginning level, and who knows but what will serve to turn general readers to the further pursuit of philosophy?

His apologies are beside the point.

It is also the authentic search for meaning.