Philosophy and Literature

224Philosophy and Literature confidence. Reason enters into the agent's determination of the mean (Nichomachean Ethics 1139a30ff). Courageous persons do not pursue a dangerous state of affairs for its own sake, but estimate their own ability to overcome the challenge in light ofthe goodness ofthat goal. But on Nietzsche's view, courage "includes a positive desire to face the dangerous" (p. 86); it is "an authentic and passionate desire to face the dangerous and difficult" (p. 87). The goodness of the goal (or the act itself) does not warrant the action; rather, the discharge of passion (will to power) justifies seeking that goal. Any dangerous situation in which one can discharge that passion is desirable. This fundamental reliance on passion in Nietzsche's theory of virtue obfuscates the difference between courage and daring. Hunt, like most of us, appreciates that difference and he realizes the unsetding consequences of basing a theory of virtue solely on the notion of deep character. This book is not for students who are getting acquainted with Nietzsche's thought. It is ambitious and given its range of topics Hunt occasionally (and consciously) resorts to speculation. The little obscurity that exists in this book is due to the inherent obscurity of certain subject matters. (This is the case, I believe, with Nietzsche's political views.) Hunt's book will interest those curious about Nietzsche's theoryofmorality. It poses a challenging alternative to classical theories of virtue. Although some of Nietzsche's theory of virtue may be alarming, we can be grateful to Hunt for showing us with precision the cause of that alarm. University of RochesterMark P. Drost John Dewey and American Democracy, by Robert B. Westbrook ; xix & 570 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, $29.95. This book is a brilliant intellectual biography of John Dewey, America's greatest philosopher, and an illuminating intellectual history of democracy and social activism in the United States from the 1850s to the 1950s. Westbrook provides a model ofhistorical scholarship: remarkably thorough research, clear organization, interesting writing, sound arguments, and a balanced approach. He also offers an appropriately Deweyan account ofDewey's democratic theory and activist practice. Sharing Dewey's emphasis on the cultural context and office of philosophy, Westbrook refuses to "abstract Dewey's thought from the Reviews225 occasions that provoked his thinking," instead locating the "development of his democratic theory within the context of the stresses and strains of his own experience and of American culture generally in the last century" (p. xi). Westbrook attacks the "prevailing consensus" that Dewey was a spokesman for American liberalism or an apologist for American culture. Though this "consensus " may be weaker than Westbrook recognizes, surely his thesis is correct. Dewey, unlike contemporary democratic "realists" and academic "ironists," was a radical cultural critic and tireless advocate of genuinely participatory democracy . Westbrook proceeds chronologically. Part One, "A Social Gospel (1882— 1904)," focuses on Dewey's philosophy from early Hegelianism to Chicago pragmatism, his view of society as organic and democracy as its harmonious self-development, and the intimate connections of this theory to Dewey's own efforts at political and educational reform. Part Two, "Progressive Democracy (1904—1918)," begins with Dewey's efforts to break the intellectual lockjaw of epistemology and reconstruct intelligence and its social function: "Pragmatism was the logic of this new conception of intelligence, deployed to close down an epistemology industry at odds with both science and democracy in order to erect a philosophy responsive to both" (p. 149). This requires fully democratic education—an education for both rich and poor, an education of both head and hands, and an education that critically transforms the corporate regime rather than adapting workers to it. This educational philosophy illuminates Dewey's "politics ofwar": his confrontations with Randolph Bourne and uneasy support for American intervention in World War I, his demands for postwar reconstruction, and his concerns that neither state capitalism nor state socialism would serve democratic ends after the war. These issues are expanded in Part Three, "Toward the Great Community (1918—1929)," where Westbrook discusses Dewey's growing awareness and criticism of American imperialism, his leadership in the Outlawry of War movement , and his responses to conservative and "realist" critics like...