Abstract

But there's no good in our merely feeling sorry for ourselves. Instead, we might do well to read and seriously reflect upon the example set by Professor C. A. Campbell's On Selfhood and Godhood. For imagine anyone in the present dispensation of insular philosophy in Great Britain writing a book on selfhood and Godhood, of all things! This might have been all very well for the Gifford lectures of 50 years ago, and yet the present book comprises the Gifford lectures of 1953-54 and '54-55. Nor is Professor Campbell himself unaware of being a seeming anachronism. For in his very preface, he flatly declares, "Readers of this book will not be long in discovering my inability to do obeisance to the twin gods of so much recent British philosophy--empiricism and linguisticism". And he then goes on blandly to acknowledge that for this reason he may very well be classed among those authors who are but "philosophic Rip Van Winkles talking in their sleep". For that matter he is not averse, every now and again, to interject a wry aside of the following type: "I propose to lead up to my own view, etc.".