Philosophical Review

Form and Relation by Dimitri MichaltscheffReview by: Radoslav A. TsanoffThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 23, No. 5 (Sep., 1914), pp. 578-579Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2178599 .

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578 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. XXIII.

Fouillee shows the insufficiency of the individualistic anarchistic view of ethics, as held by libertarians from Proudhon to Nietzsche. Even the philos- ophy of "intense and expansive Life," propounded by Guyau, fails to justify the individualistic point of view. For in going beyond himself, as this expan- sive 'Life' compels him to do, the individual is inevitably merged in the whole. The libertarian point of view must finally be given up in favor of one which includes the humanitarian. Just so, the humanitarian point of view is equally inadequate by itself. The sociologists and utilitarian moralists who place society above the individual forget that society depends upon individuals and that there could be no abstract conception of humanity, were it not for the personal values of the conceiving individual. The third essay presents the synthesis of the two points of view criticized in the other two essays. In La morale des idees-forces Fouillee propounds an ethics of desinteressement, which is at once 'personal' and 'universal.' The ego being inseparable from the non-ego in our thought, we can never isolate ourselves from others, as the libertarians would have us do. But morality being dependent upon the intelli- gence and will of the individual, it can never be a mere development of customs or manners, as sociology would teach. The ethics of idees-forces seeks the springs of morality in the volonte de conscience, which is both personal and impersonal, both subjective and objective.

The introductory essay and the address which serves as an appendix are further examples of Fouillee's application of the concept of idee-force to sociol- ogy. In the first of these he shows how sociology depends upon psychology: "The ultimate forces which act upon humanity, and, through reciprocal re- action, engender social laws, are the individual minds which constantly in- fluence each other." (p. i i.) In the appended essay, Le rapprochement des races, we find the fitting conclusion of Fouillee's sociological and ethical studies in the statement: " The future belongs not to Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Greeks, or Latins, not to Christians or Buddhists, but to the wisest, the most industrious, and the most moral." (p. 209.)

ALMA ROSA THORNE.

Forma i Otnoshenie (Form and Relation). A Contribution to the Theory of Knowledge. By DIMITRI MICHALTSCHEFF. Vol. I. Published by the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, I9I4.-PP. 760.

Bulgaria joined the family of nations only thirty-six years ago; yet she is today contributing actually as many names to the "'Who's Who in Science "

as all her Balkan neighbors put together. This original treatise indicates Bulgaria's growing interest in philosophy, already roused by translations of standard works. A brief notice of it may not be out of place here, aside from the suggestiveness of the book as showing some currents of philosophic thought in "a region of war-correspondents." For the author's German work Philos- ophische Studien: Beitrdge zur Kritik des modernen Psychologismus has been noted on two different occasions in this Review (Vol. xix, 3, pp. 323-327; 5,

PP. 497-499)-

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No. 5.] NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 579

Michaltscheff's main thesis is to prove that the doctrine of form owes its importance in the history of epistemology to a wrong conception of the gnoseo- logical problem, and that a right understanding of the r6le played by relations in the process of knowledge would show the doctrine of form to be only a means of hiding the logical defects of a fallacious train of thought.

In the present volume, he traces the logical and historical genesis of the doctrine of form, and its bearing on the notion of relations. His historical inquiry, covering the entire course of philosophic thought, leads him to the conclusion that the problem of relations can be answered satisfactorily only by freeing it from the confusion of the image-copy theory of knowledge. And this confusion will vanish when we cast aside the notion of subject-object opposition, when we abandon the question: How the subject comes to have its objects, etc. The whole problem must be attacked from a different angle: I find the world given as a causal unity, in which I find material things as spatial individuals, and consciousness as something non-spatial-what sort of unity, then, is matter, what sort of unity is consciousness, what sort of unity is the causal unity, and so forth.

In terms of this newer method the author proposes, in a second volume, to answer positively the question as to the nature of the relations and their place in the process of knowledge. Michaltscheff's general point of view can be well understood by the reader of his German volume referred to above: it is the immanental point of view of Johannes Rehmke, who has found an energetic disciple in this young Bulgarian philosopher.

RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF. THE RICE INSTITUTE, HOUSTON, TEXAS.

The following books also have been received: The Elements of Psychology. By DAVID R. MAJOR. Columbus, O., R. G.

Adams and Company, Revised edition. I9I4.-PP. xv, 4I3. Religio Doctoris. By a Retired College President. Richard G. Badger, The

Gorham Press, Boston, 19I3.-PP. viii, i83. Religious Confessions and Confessants. By ANNA ROBESON BURR. Boston

and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, I9I4.-PP. 562. The Soul of America. By STANTON COIT. New York, The Macmillan Com-

pany, I9I4.-PP. x, 405. $2.00.

The Problem of Individuality. By HANS DRIESCH. London, Macmillan and Company, I9I4.-PP. vii, 84. $I100.

Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx. By BENDETTO CROCE. Translated by C. M. Meredith. New York, The Macmillan Company, I9I4.-PP. i88. $I.25.

The Culture of Ancient Israel. By CARL HEINRICH CORNILL. Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Co., I9I4.-PP. I67.

Friedrich Nietzsche. By GEORGE BRANDES. New York, The Macmillan Company,-pp. II7. $I.75.

Introduction to Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. By ALFRED W. TILLETT. London, P. S. King & Son, 19I4.-PP. xviii, I77.

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