Philosophical Review

A Short Life of Kierkegaard. by Walter LowrieReview by: Gustav MuellerThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Jan., 1944), pp. 88-89Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2181230 .

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88 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW [VOL. LIII.

fail to realize-that humour often lies in the very incongruity between convention and reality.

The final chapter of the book (VIII) presents an analysis and refutation of the many conflicting theories regarding Ecd. IV, the so- called Messianic Eclogue. The author rightly objects to the over- emphasis which some have laid upon an oriental background; and, although he grants that the prophecy and the child connected with it do point to the East, he insists that the fundamental idea of the pro- gressive regeneration of the world can be explained by reference to Hesiod and Plato. The mother and child are not, as some would have it, mere abstractions or mystic figures, but -real, even though they cannot be given names. The mother is a wife to be of Octavian, and the child is their son to be. This theory will do as well as any other; but it, too, raises as many questions as it answers.

Concise notes on each chapter are appended (22I-265) wherein adequate references are given to sources and to books and articles relevant to the purpose in view (cf. pref. viii). There is an Index, chiefly of proper names, to give completeness to an excellent book, helpful and interesting both to the specialist and to the general reader.

MARBURY B. OGLE UNIVERSITY OF MIN'NESOTA

A Short Life of Kierkegaard. By WALTER LOWRIE. Princeton, Prince- ton University Press, I942. Pp. xii, 272. This book is exactly what the title says it is: a short life of

Kierkegaard. It is an exact and authentic account of the tortuous windings of S. K.'s innermost development. Considered as sympa- thetic, objective portrayal it is as perfect as may be expected of an author who has given us a larger work on S. K. before, and has translated many of his works from the original Danish. Kierkegaard himself, though, would certainly have called it "poetry". It remains outside, it does not appropriate the thinker's problems. It does not wrestle, it does not come to grips with them. A few superficial refer- ences to Karl Barth, Heidegger and others who have entered the struggle with Kierkegaard, the "existential thinker", productively, critically, systematically, shows up the difference between entering a thinker's true life, and merely portraying it; it would have been better to leave those references out, in order to keep the descriptive character of the book pure.

Its gist and attitude -is fairly evident in the following passage (P. 208): "Having been so indiscreet as to admit that I am a lover of Kierkegaard, I would have it known that this is the Kierkegaard I love-not the dissolute and despairing youth, nor the returning

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No. 1.] REVIEWS OF BOOKS 89

prodigal nor the unhappy lover, not the genius who created the pseudonyms, but the frail man, utterly unfitted to cope with the world, who nevertheless was able to confront the real danger of penury (?) as well as the vain (?) terrors his imagination conjured up, and in fear and trembling, fighting with fabulous monsters ( ?), ventured as a lone swimmer far out upon the deep, where no human hand could be stretched out to save him, and there, with 70,000 fathoms of water under him, for three years held out, waiting for his orders, and then said distinctly that definite thing he was bidden to say, and died with a hallelujah on his lips. I could not love him as I do unless I could venerate him, and I learned to venerate him only when I saw that he had the courage to die as a witness for the truth".

GUSTAV MUELLER UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

La reincarnation des esprits. PAR PAUL SIWEK. Rio de Janeiro, Desclee, De Brouwer et Cie., I942. Pp. 244. This book is a brief summary of the author's previous publications

on the subject of reincarnation. The work is decidedly polemical in character and comprises historical and critical analyses of the concept of reincarnation. Among others, the author examines with devastating effect the basic arguments of theosophists such as Irving Cooper, Madame H. P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant. The work is divided into four parts: Reincarnation of Spirits and Religion, Reincarnation in the Light of Morality, Reincarnation and Philosophy, and the Theory of Reincarnation and Psychology.

The progress of the theory of reincarnation in modern times is due, the author concludes, to the mentality of the epoch or "the spirit of the times". In the realm of science the spirit of the times is mani- fested by three widely accepted laws or principles, namely, the law of the conservation of energy, the law of closed causality and the law of evolution. Reincarnation theory, understood as a scientific synthesis, rests precisely on these three laws. Similarly in the domain of religion the prevailing mentality denies transcendentalism and the doctrine of divine grace and affirms immanentism and its logical consequence, pantheism. The theory of reincarnation, the author points out, implies immanentism as well as the doctrine of Karma, the mechanical law or process whereby all without exception ulti- mately arrive at moral perfection and "deliver God" within them. Finally, in the social realm the spirit of the times is imbued with "the mirage of absolute equality". The theory of reincarnation like- wise presupposes the principle of absolute equality of all souls as its basic premise.

The author maintains, however, that the prospects of the theory of

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