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Dr. Hartshorne is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. We have had occasion in these columns to note an earlier study by him on the Philosophy and Psychology of Sensation, and approach this ‘New Philosophy’ with curious interest, since ‘Humanism’, more particularly as formulated and written upon by F. C. S. Schiller, recently deceased, had appealed to us strongly.
We read, not infrequently, that psychoanalysis is not interested in
philosophy, which may be so, and recall how Freud speaks of these ‘Baedekers’ constantly under revision, and further, with Stuart Chase in mind, are reminded that William James once spoke of Philosophy as “words, words, words,” whether in earnest or in jest we do not presume to judge.
At all events Dr. Hartshorne would annihilate the ‘humanistic’ approach to “truth,” hold old Protagoras and his ‘man as the measure of all things' as behind the times, and set up his new philosophy of a cosmic mind, or more technically speaking a ‘metaphysical theism’ as the new way to sweetness and light.
Idealism, monism, realism, Thomism, and all the other isms should bow down to the ‘new theism’, a swing back to prescientific metaphysics, to Aquinas, Calvin or Aristotle. Here he would set forth the new philosophy, Hartshorne's recent edition of Baedeker, as superseding its great contemporary rival ‘humanism’, but, be it noted, as per Preface, there needs to be a new book—forthcoming—‘The Vision of God’, to complete his argument of theistic naturalism,—or naturalistic theism, Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.
Since the book is written for philosophers and theologians, one hardly dares to ask the psychoanalytically oriented to tackle it. We have however found it most ingenious, especially the five closing chapters, Russell on Causality, Santayana on Matter, Mead and Alexander on Time, Logical Positivism and Croce, Heidegger and Hartmann. Some of the chapters are, to us, most unintelligable. The author knows somewhat of Freud and even suggests here