The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (review)

BOOK REVIEWS lO9 purely subjective principle and provides no basis for any "objectively valid rule."3 We may have "good ground to assume a subjective purposiveness in nature," but "we have absolutely no a priori reason for assuming" that "purposes could or should constitute a particular kind of causality''4 that links the Realm of Nature and the Realm of (moral) Ends. Kant himself found it necessary in his projected "Highest Form of Transcendental Philosophy" in the Opus postumum to search for a solution of the problem which, despite Zeldin's exegesis, the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment could not provide. Of the four essays not previously published I regard "Schema, Type, and Symbol: Identifying the Third Man" to be easily the most important. But an adequate evaluation of this integrative interpretation of key concepts in essentially the whole of Kant's opus requires a detailed analysis for which sufficient space is not available in a review. I am glad that it has been included in this challenging collection of essays. An extensive bibliography adds to the value of this collection; and a detailed index, bringing together related topics discussed in several chapters, is of great help to the critical reader. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays. Trans. and commentary by Fritz Marti. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 198o. Pp. 271. $15.oo. Fritz Marti's book The Unconditional in Human Knowledge contains translations of F. W. J. Schelling's first four philosophical essays, only one of which has previously been published? They are, in order of original publication, "On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy" (1794), "Of the I as Principle of Philosophy" or "On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge" 0795), "Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism" (1795), and "New Deduction of Natural Right" (1796). For each essay Marti provides an introduction and very detailed notes, which amount to a running commentary. The book also has a short and witty general introduction that deals with the art of translation, with the historical background of transcendental philosophy in general and of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in particular , and with recent work on Schelling's beginnings. There are four useful apendixes as well: The first two list the publications of Kant and others pertinent to Scheiling's early work; the third is a translation of Friedrich H61derlin's short fragment "Urtheil und Seyn"; and the fourth is an index of Schelling's references to Kant (well over a 3 Ibid., p. 169. 4 Ibid., pp. 359-6o. ' "On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy," Metaphilosophy6, no. a (January 1975):1-~4. 110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY hundred references to eight books and essays). The last unfortunately contains several typographical errors. The four essays chosen for translation have more than chronological unity, as Marti points out in his introduction. Written by Schelling in 1794-96 when he was nineteen to twenty-one years old, they represent everything of philosophical importance that Schelling wrote prior to his decisive turn to Naturphilosophie in a796 and deal with themes that were to recur again and again in his long philosophical career: the possibility of systematic unity in philosophy, the nature of the finite and the absolute self, the understanding of nature, and freedom. The renewed interest in Schelling during the past thirty years, as indicated by the increasing numbers of critical and bibliographic publications and the appearance of the new historical-critical edition of his works,2 has been concentrated to a significant extent on his earliest thought. The various forms of the well-known caricature of Schelling as the devout disciple of Fichte who then broke with the master on the issue of the ontological status of nature, only to become his equally devout opponent, can trace their genealogies back to Hegel. Yet, after reaching a high point of sorts in Richard Kroner's Voin Kant bis Hegel (1924), this view has been reconsidered and gradually rejected as an oversimplification in recent French and German scholarship. It is hoped that the translation of these earliest essays, together with Peter Heath's 1978 translation of System of...