Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 397 certain lack of philosophical empathy, have yielded some amazing results, as revealed on pages 181 and 182: Das Seiende "hat die Gestalt einer Kugel" ("has the shape of a ball"). Eine "gleichm ~iflig ausgedehnte, qualit~tslose Seinskugel" (an "equably extended, qualityless being-ball"). "Da das Seiende in rliumliche Grenzen eingeschlossen ist, ist es materieU" ("Since the being is enclosed in spatial borders, it is material" [one of those conceptual anachronisms the book is teeming with]). "Das Seiende ist eine Kugel, welche keine Akzidentien hat mad deshalb den Sinnen nicht zug~inglich ist" ("the being is a ball which has no accidentals and therefore is not accessible to the senses"). "Das kugelfSrmige Seiende, dem Ausdehnung nicht als Akzidens, sondern wesenflich, keine Qualit/iten, auch nicht Bewegung, Ver~inderung, Leben, Denkkraft zugesprochen werden, scheint ein stereometrisches Gebilde zu sein" ("The spherical being, to which extension not as accidens, but essential, no qualities nor motion, change, life, thinkingpower are attributed, seems to be some stereomr configuration"). Well, one thing is sure: No matter wh~ther one considers Parmenides the deepest Greek thinker or agrees with Aristotle's remark that his way of thinking verges on insanity--this awe-inspiring pre-sophistic giant should have deserved a better image. FELIX M. O.~vE New School [or Social Research, New York From the Many to the One: A Study o] Personality and Views o/ Human Nature in the Context o[ Ancient Greek Society, Values, and Belie[s. By A. W. H. Adkins. (Ithaca, New York: CorneU University Press, 1970. Pp. xv+312. $8.50) This study pursues further certain themes developed in the author's Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (1960), except that the investigation of these values is extended into Hellenistic times. Its thesis may be simply stated. Greek culture was a "shame-culture," or "results-culture," i.e. one "in which the evaluation of actions is not related to intentions" but to results (p. 238). Now "where the result is all-important , and intentions unimportant, the action is judged in terms of what is exterior to the personality, and the development of a stable core of personality is not encouraged" ~ibid.). Indeed, it is actively discouraged: "the competitive nature of Greek society, with its emphasis on results, not intentions, was responsible for a low degree of personality structure in Greece, which resulted in the individual's feeling his emotions and passions as something 'over against' his reason, over which his reason had little or no control" (p. 259). The stresses generated by this inner fragmentation, coupled with the external threats posed by the disorders of the Hellenistic period, led to a large-scale failure of nerve to which Stoicism and Epicureanism offered themselves as answers. These ideas are not new. They first made their appearance in E. R. Dodds' The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), a highly praised and widely read attempt to apply to the analysis of Greek civilization certain psychological and anthropological categories fashionable in intellectual circles some thirty years ago. It is open to question whether Dodds himself did not press these ideas beyond their breaking-point in his highly suggestive book. In Adkins' case there can be no doubt of the result; Dodds' categories are pressed home all the way, and the result, if unsuccessful, can fairly be viewed as a reductio ad absurdum of the m~,hods employed by the master. 398 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The author begins by applying the distinction between "shame-culture" and "guiltculture " (borrowed from the anthropologist Ruth Benedict) to what Finley has called "the world of Odysseus," i.e. the society found in Homeric epic. This society is a prime example of a "shame-culture," according to Adkins. The agathos, who is a warrior, is judged by results, not intentions. The sanction is " 'what people will say', and over this he has no control, and he cannot set his own consciousness of his self and its value against the estimation of his fellows, since his self has only the value which they put upon it" (pp. 41-42). The result is that the experience of Homeric man is highly fragmented; "in fact, it might be said that...