Lost, One Editor
Body and Mind. Edited by G. N. A. Vesey. (Allen and Unwin, £2 12s. 6d.) Body and Mind. Edited by G. N. A. Vesey. (Allen and Unwin, £2 12s. 6d.) MR. VESEY'S. book consists of readings from forty-one philosophers from Descartes and Spinoza through Mach and Lenin to Vesey and Schaffer. Nowhere is it stated precisely what the object of the exercise is supposed to be. The editor in his preface says that the 'roots of the problem of body and mind lie in our concepts' and that its history is 'the history of the develop- ment of those concepts.' He claims to have pro- duced 'a source-book for the study of that history from the time of Descartes to the present day.' This inadequate explanation is supplemented by the dust-jacket, which adds that the book is 'comprehensive and authori- tative,' providing 'an invaluable introduction to philosophy for those who prefer to read their philosophy in the original, rather than in histories or commentaries.'
Certainly one of the best ways of starting philosophy is through a well-chosen classic. A carefully edited book of readings would be an- other. But if such a book is itself to serve as the introduction, and not just to be the basis for a tutored course, then the editor has a real job to do. It is not enough to select some passages, get permission to reprint, dispatch the copy to the printers, later mark the proofs; and then await patiently the day when you may con- gratulate yourself on your latest publication. You have also to provide a pretty substantial introduction and running commentary, thus undertaking some of the work of a tutor.
Unfortunately Vesey has an extremely reces- sive conception of the editorial function. His preface fills only ten pages, five of them taken up with acknowledgments. After that the read- ings follow one another, without annotation or commentary, in order of first publication, until we reach the two indexes. Of course, to read 'philosophy in the original' is splendid. But in- evitably among the passages which Vesey has chosen are many which one could not hope to understand unless supplied with some of the necessary background. Partly this is a matter of words. No one who has need of a book like this can reasonably be expected to find his waY among the tangled uses of the term idea in Locke and his successors unguided. Partly it is a matter of concept and purpose. What on earth is an ordinarily intelligent beginner, with- out any special knowledge of either Marxist theory or the life of Lenin, supposed to make of four and a half pages of extracts from that powerful revolutionary parergon Materialism and Empirio-Criticism? Still worse perhaps is the case of the Hume extract. Here the reader may not merely fail to understand. He may positivelY misinterpret Hume. He must be warned that Hume's overriding concern is to show that We do not and could not have any a priori insight into logically necessary connections between particular causes and particular effects. In a" these instances the essential guidance could probably be compressed into a paragraph, but the fact that a little might be sufficient makes that little no less necessary.
Its omission might' be put down, charitably, either to uncertainty of aim or to modesty. The same cannot be said of a general neglect of minor editorial chores. The reader is apparently ex- pected to have a smattering of Greek (p. 110), Latin (p. 112, 132 and 208), French (p. 135) and German (p. 352 and frequently in foot- notes): where his originals have bits in these languages Vesey supplies no translation. Neither does he provide any cross-references, even where one of his authors comments directly on some- thing included in an earlier reading. This hap- pens, for instance, on p. 288.
Allowing that Body and Mind would be bad as an introduction, even if it were shorter than
it is, would it be a good set book for a course?
Certainly it would be better for that. Yet eval for such a limited role it has one very serious
defect. Vesey's selections are made on the prin- ciple that 'the roots of the problem lie in our concepts' and that its history 'is the history of
the development of these concepts'; which seems to be interpreted as meaning that it is all an academic matter. This is, as history, quite wrong; and, as teaching, seems calculated to deaden rather than to inspire interest.
Of course philosophical problems are primar- ily conceptual. But that does not at all implY that they cannot be ideologically relevant. No
doubt Lenin's picture of a 'two worlds' conflict between the camp of materialism and the caniP of idealism is altogether too unsubtle. Yet it is indeed ivory-tower academicism to over- look that and why the logical empiricist" against which Lenin directed his polemic was urged by Osiander against Copernicus, by Bellarmine against Galileo, and by Berkeley against Newton. For this view, involving that science gives not an account of the nature of things but only an ordering of our experiences, draws—and certainly was originally intended to draw—the ideological teeth of science.
More centrally to the present theme, it is blinkered donnishness to see a pattern in the development of the notion of the mind as a substance without noticing that part of what is at stake is whether such an entity could sig- nificantly be said to exist separately, and hence be a candidate for survival or immortality. Descartes himself knew the score: emphasising that if, as he maintained, 'the soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body . . . it is not liable to die with the latter'; whereas the con- trary view, 'already sufficiently refuted,' implies that 'after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear, more than flies or ants' (Discourse V). ANTONY mom
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