Die systembildende Rolle von Ästhetik und Kulturphilosophie bei Kant (review)

698 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER X989 changes in Hutcheson's situation, this might have been different. In this regard the book might have been assisted by some of the more recent literature on the Scottish Enlightenment, but on this point it was generally a decade out of date on its appearance . In a work of such thoroughness, it is surprising that the author entirely overlooks one of Hutcheson's writings, viz., his translation (with a colleague) of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. This contains extensive annotations which might have helped the author sort out the prominence of Stoic ideas in Hutcheson. The book has its flaws and limitations, but it is nevertheless a very good book and by far the best comprehensive study of Hutcheson. The introduction to the translation supplements it by providing an extensive overview of the reception of Hutcheson. Any future work of any scope in this field will have to start from the scholarship and analytic sharpness of these contributions. KNUD HAAKONSSEN Australian National University, Canberra, and The Woodrow Wilson International Centerfor Scholars, Washington, D.C. Gerhard Kr~imling. Die systembildende Rolle yon ~4sthetikund Kulturphilosophie bei Kant. Freiburg/Mi~nchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 1985. Pp. 319. NP. This book, on the mediating role of the Critique ofJudgment in Kant's system of philosophy , makes some important contributions to our understanding of the relation of reflective judgment to the project of reason. Gerhard Kr~imling shows how the principle of reflective judgment improves on earlier attempts by Kant to create a unity between the demands of theoretical and practical reason. He attacks the view held by M. Liedtke and R. Zocher, among others, that the principle of reflective judgment is merely another formulation of the regulative use of the ideas of reason put forward in the Critique of Pure Reason. Instead, he develops the view of W. Bartuschat that the principle of reflective judgment moves beyond the regulative use of ideas of reason. Whereas ideas of reason can only conceive the particular on the basis of the universal, reflective judgment first allows Kant to approach the particular as particular. Central to Kr~imling's account are the shifts in the way that Kant conceives the problem of the highest good in the three Critiques. In the "Canon of Pure Reason" of the first Critique, Kant projects an ideal of the highest good which allows theoretical reason to be guided by practical reason. The demand of practical reason that happiness correspond to moral worth leads to the representation of the world as a "systematische Einheit der Zwecke" (KdrV, A8a 5/B843). The world itself must be represented as having a divine rational origin if it is to harmonize with the idea of a highest good. By means of this idea, "bekommt alle Naturforschung eine Richtung nach der Form eines Systems der Zwecke und wird in ihrer h6chsten Ausbreitung Physikotheologie " (KdrV, A 816/B844 ). Kant points here to a unification of practical and speculative reason, which suggests that any extension of pure reason due to its practical use is also an extension of its theoretical use. In the second Critique, however, Kant asks: "Wie eine Erweiterung der reinen BOOK REVIEWS 629 Vernunft in praktischer Hinsicht, ohne damit ihr ErkenntniB als speculativ zugleich zu erweitern, zu denken m6glich sei?''~ According to Kr~imling, this change in Kant's view was required by a more rigorous conception of the moral law (67), which becomes less concerned with its efficacy and dismisses happiness as an ideal, not of reason, but of the imagination. However, the change also reflects the fact that in the KdrV Kant conceived the highest good in terms of the question "What can we hopefor?" whereas in the KdpV the achievement of the highest good is not only a possibility for which God's existence is postulated but also a duty for which our own immortality is postulated. The highest good becomes an infinite task. A "dritte Fassung der Theorie des h6chsten Gutes" (69) can be found in the third Critique where the imagination is given a life independent of the concern of sense for happiness, in order to serve culture as a historical...