Hegel and the History of Philosophy (review)

112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY categories he needs to make his point. In the Preface Polonoff seems to want to make a statement about the increasing importance of Kant's views on metaphysical principles. In the conclusion he restates his thesis as demonstrating Kant's shift in interest toward methodological problems. Now it is not apparent what relation Polonoff believes obtains between these two aspects of knowledge. This is no incidental problem for an analysis of Kant, especially since the force of Kant's contribution to philosophy has often been interpreted as employing a new method to redefine the sphere of legitimate metaphysics. What makes a principle "metaphysical "? Polonoff never says. He also does not state explicitly which principles are "metaphysical " rather than "mechanical" or "methodological," but the likeliest candidates seem to be the principles of continuity, equality of cause and effect, least action, conservation, sufficient reason, identity of indiscernibles, succession and coexistence. Consider the principles of continuity and least action: Why are they "metaphysical" when they can be applied to physical entities as well as to nonphysical entities? And might not adherence to these principles have important consequences for the way in which one develops a theory of science? Polonoff may have some criteria for his distinctions between various kinds of principles, but he does not communicate them to the reader. Instead of sharpening these distinctions, he compounds the confusion by multiplyingbranches of knowledge. Thus we have not only metaphysics, mechanics and methodology to contend with, but also cosmology (pp. 62, 96, 144-145), cosmogony (pp. 116-117), physico-theology (p. 96) and ontology (p. 152). Polonoff's book is much more successful in achieving its secondary goal, to demonstrate the relations between Kant's views and the dominant intellectual trends of the period. A convincing picture emerges of Kant as only a minor participant in the major debates. His 1747essay on vis viva appeared four years after D'Alembert's solution was published in the Trait~ de Dynamique. A table of the correlation between various academy prize questions and Kant's essays (p. 123, n. 116) presents strong evidence of the external motivation for Kant's interest in various topics. The discussion of Kant's conception of moving force in Living Forces exhibits Kant as generalizing the definition of force, from the idea of the producer of motion to the more vague idea of the initiator of changes in other bodies, at a time when other thinkers, notably D'Alembert, moved towards a more mathematical treatment of problems of mechanics . The reader who will profit most from this book is the one desiring a general characterization of Kant's early works and the intellectual climate of the period in which he wrote. The reader who wants to elucidate connections between Kant's pre-Critical and Critical thought, on the other hand, will wish that Polonoff had been more selective in his material, following a few major themes through their development in a more detailed and precise manner. JILL VANCE BUROKER University of California, Irvine Itegel and the llistory of Philosophy. Ed. by Joseph J. O'Malley, Keith W. Algozin, and Frederick G. Weiss. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. P. vi+242. $37.50) This volume of Proceedings of the Hegel Society of America in 1972contains twelve papers by American scholars and is devoted mainly to Hegel as philosophical historian. All the essays are instructive and interesting, making the task of a reviewer a pleasant one. If none of them can claim to break new ground in Hegelian interpretation, all repay careful reading. When we consider the recency of the latest renaissance of Hegelian studies, it is satisfying indeed to note the level of this scholarship. Perhaps few of the contributors, except John Findlay, have been actively engaged with Hegel more than a few years. It is true that not many of them reveal close acquaintance with the latest works of German and French students of Hegel, or even of earlier scholars like Kojeve and Hyppolite, despite the fact that a great deal of this literature is listed in a valuable bibliography assembled by Joseph Flay at the end of the volume. (This bibliography adds considerably to the book's...