Die transzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 455 ideas. Many discussions of theologians and philosophers alike conclude by dismissing them as not great thinkers, eccentric, or fringe thinkers. Even more telling for "the most sustained intellectual tradition" is the admission that "the[ir] maneuvers had not taken theologians any significant distance from Edwards" (214). Moreover, cogency of the claim for the importance of the New Theology for Dewey's instrumentalism is diminished by misapprehensions of that inst'rumentalism. For example, Kuklick's response to the standard criticisms of Dewey's writing as murky is that "they miss the creative advance permitted by equivocation" (249), a response that itself misses the fact that any language of interaction will seem equivocal or murky to an entitative thinker or to a dualist. Moreover, Kuklick's assertion that Dewey taught that power in the world should belong to the intellectuals (26o) misses entirely Dewey's democratic spirit. The history of the ideas that were prominent during crucial stages of Dewey's intellectual evolution is both interesting and important, so long as we do not distort Dewey by pressing those ideas into his mature, thoroughly naturalistic thought. But in the final analysis, the distance between Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and Dewey's A CommonFaith is of far more significance for the history of American thought than are such remnants of the New Theology as may be excavated in Dewey's book. DARNELL RUCKER Skidmore College Reinhard Lauth. Die tranzendentale Naturlehre Fichtes nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre . Schriften zur Tranzendentalphilosophie, Vol. 6. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, x984. Pp. xviii + a9o. DM 68. The author, Reinhard Lauth, is the outstanding Fichte scholar in the world today. He is co-editor of the definitive edition of the complete writings (in progress), and has written numerous important studies of Fichte's thought which have been widely translated into various languages. The present work concerns the philosophy of nature, which very imperfectly corresponds to the field now known as the philosophy of science. It is widely assumed in discussion concerning Fichte, as was also supposed by his contemporaries Schelling and Hegel, that his position does not contain a philosophy of nature. This assumption was central to the evolution of post-Fichtean German idealism in the writings of Schelling and Hegel, and figures prominently in the discussion of its legacy. Habermas, for instance, has written that after Kant philosophy ceased to understand science. The immediate purpose of the discussion is revisionist. It is intended to show that main elements of a philosophy of nature can be found in Fichte's writings, especially in the various versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, his major text. Lauth's argument to that effect is made with skill, intelligence, and in full awareness of the entire range of Fichte's writings, including several manuscripts which have only recently appeared. 456 JOURNAL or THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 198 7 The discussion opens with an able account of Kant's transcendental approach to the philosophy of nature, followed by a description of Fichte's reaction to it. There then follow three chapters, concerning respectively: the constitution of external objectivity from the transcendental perspective of the Wissenschaftslehre, the construction on that basis of an objective external world, and the relation of organic nature to a reflective theory of judgment. A fourth chapter discusses the concept of freedom which follows from this idealist angle of vision. The fifth chapter offers a general summary of the entire theory of nature in useful fashion as well as a series of conclusions. Finally, there is an Appendix (Anhang) devoted to the differences in the views of the philosophy of nature of Fichte and his erstwhile student Schelling. The double purpose of this appendix is to show that Fichte was misunderstood on this point by Schelling and, further, to demonstrate that the speculative form of the philosophy of nature elaborated by the latter and followed by Hegel is not tenable. In my opinion, the book is carefully organized, well argued, highly original, and of real importance. This book makes contributions on more than one level, which can be quickly differentiated as follows. To begin with, this is clearly a masterly examination...