William James: His Life and Thought (review)

500 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26" 3 JULY 1988 within a transcendental system like Fichte's, but it is not at all clear that this is an argument that Fichte himself would have accepted. In fact, the textual evidence which Renaut is able to marshall for the latter contention is rather meagre, and one finishes his book with a nagging question: If the Grundlage desNaturrechtsreally does occupy the central place within the entire Wissenschaftslehrethat Renaut claims, then why did Fichte himself (who, throughout his Jena period, tried over and over again to explain his system to the general public) fail to emphasize this point more clearly and unambiguously ? Why has it taken almost ~oo years for us to discover what Fichte was trying to say? Finally, as should be apparent from the above, Renaut is no mere interpreter of Fichte's Rechtslehre;he is an unabashed exponent of the same. He intends his book to be something more than a contribution to "Fichte studies," and thus he often turns from commentary on Fichte's texts to contemporary debates over social theory and politics, in an attempt to show the relevance of the former to the latter. Rather than detracting from its more purely academic merits, this gives Le syst#mede clroitan urgency which is quite extraordinary. Nor does Renaut overemphasize this portion of his thesis: He never pretends to have demonstrated the correctness of Fichte's approach to social, legal, and political philosophy nor to have refuted all the alternative approaches. Instead, he simply attempts to persuade the reader that Fichte's writings of the 179os do indeed offer a quite novel approach to certain questions which are still of great concern to us (for example: what are "human rights"?)--an approach which has been almost entirely neglected until now and which is, moreover, not entirely without promise for the future. DANIEL BREAZEALE University of Kentucky Gerald E. Myers. William James: His Life and Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1986. Pp. xxi + 628. $35.oo. Ten years ago I wrote a dissertation in the history of American philosophy. Among the usual traumas associated with this rite I recall a particular frustration: I could not find a single great commentary on several of the major figures occupying my attention. This is not to say that there were not a number of fine works that adumbrated aspects of the philosophers I was studying. What I longed for were the sort of painstaking interpretive texts to which my colleagues in German or French or even English philosophy could turn. Those were bulky books that had as much heft as the ideas at issue were supposed to have, books that explicated, analyzed, criticized, related to the philosopher 's life, colleagues and contemporary influences, and presented that generation 's view of a great thinker's continuing importance. Thus I welcome Gerald Myers' opus as evidence that scholarship in American philosophy--as a living tradition as well as a field of historical study--has reached a new level of maturity. The book contains all the necessary scholarly apparatus and begins with a serviceable biographical essay. Its distinguishing characteristics include BOOK REVIEWS 501 some very sober responses to several areas ofJames' life and personality that have been popular subjects of speculation. For example, there is the theory that Henry ]ames, Sr. contributed to his eldest son's identity crisis by encouraging him to pursue science rather than art, or Leon Edel's contention that William was stung by his mother's alleged preference for Henry, or Jean Strouse's recent analysis of William's relationship with his sister Alice as one charged with sexual tension in a way that stunted Alice's personal growth. Of each of these debates Myers has his own considered estimate, carried through in lengthy footnotes that are as interesting as the text. The thirteen remaining chapters are each devoted to some large subject that occupied James in psychology, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, or ethics. Each can profitably be studied independently of the others, as I am sure they will be for many years to come. Myers manages to keep James' personality as a useful background for his technical...