Philosophical Review

Kant's Philosophy as Rectified by Schopenhauer by M. KellyReview by: Radoslav A. TsanoffThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Jan., 1910), pp. 93-94Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2177649 .

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No. i.] NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 93

survival of this sort, for the essential individual is just conscious mind and its historical continuity, but if consciousness and with it personal identity lapse, then it would seem hardly worth while bothering about the future unfolding of one's potentialities, and the reviewer would beg to be stricken from the list of those desiring what, after all, is of no personal moment.

WM. A. HAMMOND.

Kant's Philosophy as Rectijfed by Schojienhauer. By M. KELLY. London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., I909. -pp. 128.

Not unlike Poe in literature, Schopenhauer has had, in philosophy, the misfortune of being ordinarily discussed either by hostile opponents, blind to his merits, or else by idolatrous worshippers, with no eye for his faults. Of the latter class and tendency, this little book is a fair sample. Feeling confident that " what is true in the transcendental philosophy is still either totally ignored or totally misunderstood" (p. 5), Dr. Kelly proposes to present the fundamentals of Kantianism, as criticised by Schopenhauer, whom he declares " I worth ten times more than all the post-Kantain philos- ophers and professors put together" (p. 8).

The summary and somewhat court-martial fashion in which the author repeatedly disposes of knotty philosophical problems, renders the treatise of slender use to the serious student of the subject. To the novitiate in philosophy, for whom the book is apparently intended, little guidance is offered. The sixteen chapters manifest a strange lack of any sense of pro- portion in the handling of the material. Thirty pages,- one fourth of the entire monograph,- are spent on a note-book summary of The Fourfold Root. Yet there is no adequate discussion of Schopenhauer's Weltjrincifi, as a proffered substitute for Kant's Thing-in-itself, nor of the doctrine of Freedom in the two philosophers. Well-known arguments are recapitu- lated, and sundry problems hastily taken up and cast aside one after another. But no attempt is made to state succinctly the fundamental prob- lems at issue, or even to suggest the possibility of an interpretation of Kant's philosophy different from Schopenhauer's admittedly brilliant, but not infrequently erratic one. The result is that the reader closes the book with no clear conception of what it is all about.

Dr. Kelly seems to have read the post-Kantian Idealists largely in the anthologies that serve as chapter-finales in the revised editions of Schopen- hauer's own works. Otherwise the notions which he has of certain philo- sophical conceptions remain a puzzle. On pages 96-97, for instance, he simply reiterates Schopenhauer's offhand dismissal of the Absolute, on the basis of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, a principle which explicitly applies only within phenomenal experience as such, and can therefore neither prove nor disprove the Absolute. This holds the more forcibly of an Absolute that is put forth as over and beyond phenomenal experience, as, e. g., the Will,- a fact which the author clearly overlooks.

The style betrays an obvious weakness for certain trenchant turns of phrase

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94 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. XIX.

and literary allusions, familiar to readers of Schopenhauer, which the writer employs with no mention of their immediate origin. Again, the Sage of Frankfurt could be pardoned for indulging his splenetic temper in diatribes against hostile contemporaries. But when Dr. Kelly substitutes pungent expletives for cool argument, and,-to mention only one sad example,- characterizes Hegel's philosophy as "I a farrago of unspeakable nonsense" (P. I23), the reader cannot help being amused.

The proof-reading is defective; on the whole, the dress of the book is not inferior to its contents.

RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

The following books also have been received: Knowledge, La/e and Reality. By GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD. New

York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1909. -pp. 538. $3.50. Natural and Social Morals. By CARVETH READ. London, Adam and

Charles Black, 1909. -pp. xxv, 3X4. Logic, Inductive and Deductive. By ADAM L. JONES. New York, Henry

Holt and Co., 1909. - pp. x, 304. Consciousness. By HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL. New York, The Mac-

millan Co., i909. -pp. xv, 685. $4.00. Clavis Universalis. By ARTHUR COLLIER. Edited with introduction and

notes by ETHEL BOWMAN. Chicago, The Open Court Co., I909. -pp.

xxv, I40. Introduction to the New Testnment. By THEODOR ZAHN. 3 vols.

Translated from the third German edition by J. M. TROUT et al. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. -pp. xviii, 564; viii, 617 ; viii, 539.

J. S. Mill's Theory of Inductive Logic. By G. A. TAWNEY. University of Cincinnati Studies, Cincinnati, University Press, 1909. -pp. 40, 53.

The Child and His Religion. By GEORGE E. DAWSON. Chicago, The University Press, I909. -pp. iX, I20.

The Relation of Medicine to Philosojphy. By R. 0. MOON. London and New York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1909. -pp. xiv, 221.

Being and Existence. By FRANK SEWALL. New York, J. B. McGeorge, 1909. -pp 36.

The Psychology of Prayer. By ANNA L. STRONG. Chicago, The Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1909. -pp. 122.

The Gosp5el of Reconciliation. By W. L. WALKER. Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1909. -pp. Vii, 245. $2.00.

The Autobiograjihy. ANNA R. BURR. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. PP. viii, 45 I.

Echoes and Prop5hecies. By V. D. HYDE-VOGL. Westwood, Mass., Ariel Press, 1909. -pp. 193.

Die Bedeutung der Trojiismen fur die Psychologie. Von JACQUES LOEB.

Leipzig, J. A. Barth, I909. -pp. 5I. M. I.

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