La Naissance de l'esprit laïque au déclin du Moyen-Âge. Par Georges de Lagarde. Tome III, Le Defensor Pacis, Paris-Louvain, Ed. Nauwelaerts, 1970, 389 pages.

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS the act of thinking is no longer a dialectic of eternal moments but it has become a "dialogue" of ideal selves. To be conscious and hence to acquire personality simply entails the ability to found an internal community with one's self, teacher, state and society. Hence Harris can accurately maintain that "There can be no logical justification in his view for the swallowing of the individual by society, since the selfconsciousness of the individual is seen as the transcendental ground of all empirical society and there can be no justification for fanaticism since the "method of immanence" forbids us to assume the reality of any community that we do not ourselves create..." {Genesis and Structure of Society, p. 50) While I agree that "the social theory of the act of thinking" is a viable answer to the problem of self-constitution and community membership, I doubt that the novelty of Gentile's last position saves him from scepticism.