From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy (review)

976 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Louis E. Loeb. From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981. Pp. 38~. $24.5 o. A virtue of this book is that, in refreshing contrast to most histories of philosophy, it attempts to defend a robust thesis. Further,'it does so in a clear and provocative way with well-crafted arguments that exhibit an appealing philosophical sophistication. Yet I believe few will.judge the book a success. The aim of Loeb's book is to get the history of early modern philosophy right in a way the "standard theory" about the period does not. The are three central features of the standard theory. The first concerns the importance it assigns certain figures; Locke, Berkeley and Hume, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, are important. "By contrast, such men as Arnauld, Bacon, Gassendi, Hobbes, Malebranche, Pascal--not to mention the 'minor Cartesians' and the 'Cambridge Platonists'-receive scant attention" (p. ~5). Secondly, the two groups of important figures belong to different schools, Empiricism and Rationalism, distinguished by epistemologicai views relating to the nature, standards, sources, structure, and extent of human knowledge. Finally, each of the school exhibits a dialectic of modifying a metaphysical position as a result of the increasingly rigorous application of its epistemologicai priniciples. Locke admits material substance, which is rejected by Hume. Descartes allows causal interaction between minds and bodies; Spinoza replaces interactionism with the double aspect theory, Malebranche with occasionalism , Leibniz with the pre-established harmony. How does Loeb view the period? First, the standard pantheon reappears nearly intact. To be sure, the importance of Spinoza is reduced, but on grounds no less telling against any of the other figures discussed, viz. his unsatisfactory account of the nfind-body relation. On the other hand, Malebranche is promoted to the first rank. On independent grounds one may well agree with Loeb's largely unsupported contention that in his own time Malebranche was viewed as philosophically more meritorious and influential than Spimlza, who though not "largely ignored" (p. 191), was taken as the nearly perfect anti-authority. But we do not get an historical explanation of this view of Malebranche or even a mention of those who held it. Instead we find a philosophical discussion of but one of Malebranche's theses, which, as far as it goes, shows hiln to be even less philosophically astute than Spinoza, thus actually enhancing the supposedly false historical thesis. And, contrary to our expectations, only Malebranche is promoted. Arnauld and Gassendi appear only as critics of Descartes; Bacon, Hobbes and Pascal, having been said to receive scant attention from the standard theory receive no further attention whatever; among the Cambridge Platonists only More appears (once, as a correspondent of Descartes) and the minor Cartesians LaForge, Cordemoy, et al., are but mentioned with no indication of either why their works should receive more than the scant attention of the standard theory, or that in this case they were consulted at all. Secondly, in lieu of the standard Rationalist-Empiricist division, which is "brokenbacked ", there appears "Continental Metaphysics". This is a "philosophical genre", BOOK arvIEws 277 which is "circumscribed" a) by a characteristic sort of philosophical theorizing, viz. the denial on putatively demonstrative grounds that certain causal connections obtain , and b) by "the historical interconnections which in part account for the proliferation of examples of such theorizing" (p. 327). These interconnections are not attributable to a response to a common mind-body problem, as is standardly claimed, and thus the third feature of the standard theory must be rejected. Instead, they are partly attributable to an interest in causation for a variety of other reasons (though curiously even according to Loeb, a perceived mind-body problem was addressed as such by Spinoza, served as the occasion of Malebranche's occasionalism, and figured prominently in Leibniz's early dualist metaphysics). They are also partly attributable to "the fact that [this sort of theorizing] came to be a standard and a prominent way of philosophizing" (ibid. Loeb does not attempt to explain why this was so or, apart from the following list, to show that it was so). The practitioners of this...