Jackson takes a panoramic look at philosophy over the past two centuries, and finds that it has worked its way into a self-defeating position. He identifies a way out of this corner, making use of a pre-modern notion of individual freedom.

'Contemporary' philosophy, for Jackson, is defined not by dates but by the outlook it espouses: that the whole of past philosophy is based on error and is best simply set aside. Sp_eculative~Thought is an illusory past-time, and priority must be given to the worldly individual and his_Jjfe. The result has been that while scholars pick through the ruins of philosophy's past, contemporary philosophy has devolved into a mere skeptical activism- This is not quite a failure, for if modern philosophy was intended to be a 'phj^ojo£h^Jp_jfejid__aJJ_jUiiIxisopihiJes', then it had tojend itself as well -- and it did.

According to Jakcson, what lies beneath this revolutionary destruction of speculative thought is a conviction that individual freedom demands it. When the individual is held to be absolute in his immediacy and subjectivity, then his is the only reality that counts. Where religion or philosophical doctrines would impose an external discipline on the individual, therefore, they are rejected.

The consequences of the death of these disciplines are costly. Modern humanism finds itself paralyzed between expectations of paradise and of political or technological cataclysm. And with only subjective principles, the individual feels lost. Jackson does not want us to solve these problems by retrenching ourselves in some outdated system of the past. But by understanding the origins of our present situation, we can see where we went astray and can regain the correct path.

Jackson retraces in some detail how we got where we are. Although the specifics vary from one field of philosophy to another, the general pat-

CURRENT PHILOSOPHY 25

tern is consistent. Pre-Hegelian idealism kept changing over the centuries, until with Hegel himself the individual spirit became an absolute --yet still an abstract one. The 19th century revolt against idealism did not reject the preoccupation -with the self, but, rather, the abstraction. The actuality of freedom became the starting point for philosophy. In the single dogmatic dictum that all philosophies, faiths, and moralities have their sole root in the individual and his freedom, the whole weight of traditional philosophy was cast off.

This position was tenable as long as there were philosophers to be overthrown. But with the death of idealism, the revolution has nothing to revolt against. Therefore it must posit its own premises. But were it to do so, then it would itself become a doctrine and thus, by its own logic, be false. In the 19th century, the revolutionary philosophers found it difficult to extract themselves from the language and assumptions of the older traditions; Jackson specifically discusses Strauss, Kierkegaard, Comte, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, and shows that both the religious and the materialist thinkers among them were snared in this same way. In the 20th century, new ways to dispose of the old idealism have been discovered. But existentialism, positivism, phenomenology, and linguistic analysis still remain essentigny^jiegative positions, with no real substance of their own.

And so we are now left with philosophies that rely on the ultimate significance and absolute right of individuals, and in so doing rely on nothing more than the mere claim of individuals to that significance and that right. Revolutionary individualism is, therefore, intellectual and moral caprice.

The corrective that Jackson prescribes is an understanding of freedom that sees more than its subjective dimension. Freedom must be seen in relation to nature and to the social order -- must, indeed, be seen as a u-niversal and necessary concept. We need, in short, to go back and plant freedom on some solid philosophical ground.