ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

188 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
remote from our direct experience and therefore least amenable to
the kinds of proof which are insisted upon. In the meantime the
possibility of an investigation into the accessible conditions of
human happiness in its various parts and varieties is entirely lost
from sight.
However, despite the many criticisms which I have made of his
various arguments, I would not want to deny Brecht credit for being
more open to things which lie beyond the narrow confines of Scientific
Method and Scientific Value Relativism than are most of his
fellow "scientific value relativists." If he has promised more than he
has been able to deliver, he is at least to be credited for insisting
upon the necessity of the attempt to understand and justify these
current "scientific" orthodoxies in relation to the underlying
philosophical issues. And if he is censurable for the inconsistency of
his treatment of some of those issues, he is nevertheless to be praised
for his stubborn adherence to "common sense" and his avoidance of
moral obtuseness in the face of what so many others apparently find
to be thoroughly intimidating "scientific" conventionalities. It is not
particularly remarkable that he failed to rise above all of those conventions.
Very few people do.
University of Waterloo ALLAN D. NELSON