Books: The Lost Philosopher

FROM THE OTHER SHORE (208 pp.)—Alexander Herzen—George Brazlller ($3.75).

Among the valuable enterprises the Soviets destroyed when they began to liquidate the bourgeoisie in 1917 was the practice of philosophy. The simulated-wood face of a Khrushchev or Molotov presents itself to the world as the visage of modern Russia. But Russia was once represented by nobler faces, and Alexander Herzen was among them. Contemplating the ruins of the Roman Empire, he said: "The wisest of the Romans vanished from the scene ... in the silent grandeur of their grief." In Herzen himself, the West today can sense the not-so-silent grandeur of a...