A Study of Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 105 In short, the question that Professor Cherno has raised about the genesis of the Luther book involves also the genesis of the whole Luther strand in the revision of The Essence of Christianity between 1841 and 1843. Not only were they contiguous in content and in time, they both ran counter to an intention that Feuerbach had had for the first edition of The Essence of Christianity. He had wanted that book to end forever his work on theology. He wished to devote himself, instead, to natural sciences and to develop his philosophy in relation to them. 3 On a more pedestrian level, some details call for amendment in a future edition of this work. The claim that Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity was originally received "as no work had been received since Hegel's writings decades before" (p. 7) ignores the impact made, six years before, by Strauss's Leben 1esu. Placing publication of Feuerbach's Luther "in the early part" of 1844 (p. 8) dates it a bit too early; midyear is the earliest timing compatible with references to it in his correspondence (e.g., a May 13, 1844 letter to Kapp saying that the MS is currently in press 4 and a June 1 note to his brother Friedrich [unpublished] holding the book to be "'last schon fertig"). The reference to only "two other editions" of the German text than the one used here should also mention the second edition (Leipzig, 1855); and the review of English translations (p. 27) should add The Essence of Religion (New York, 1873). Finally, a helpful task that Professor Cherno has performed on citations of works by Luther quoted in this volume can be carried still further. He has transposed Feuerbach's references to the Leipzig edition of Luther's works, so rare in the United States, into references to the widely available Weimar edition, except for several passages that "could not be identified. with certainty" (p. 32, n. 2) Of those ten that have been left citing the Leipzig edition, at least six can be replaced by Weimar references.5 But such items are minor, compared to the important service that Professor Cherno has unquestionably rendered readers of Feuerbach. It is noteworthy that the same publisher has brought out both the Lectures and the Luther. This contribution merits all the more commendation, since it is Harper & Row that has also kept The Essence of Christianity in print for over a decade. One hopes that this house will soon make these latest translations more widely available to students in paperbound editions that are less expensive. JOHN GLASSE Vassar College A Study of Husserrs Formal and Transcendental Logic. By Suzanne Bachelard. Trans. by L. E. Embree. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. Pp. 227. $8.50) Although Mme. Bachelard's explication of Husserl's logic and commentary on the Formale und transzendentale Logik was available in French some time ago, there is a value in its appearance in English at this time since the English translation of Husserl's See, e.g., his letter of March 11, 1841 to his friend Kapp, in W. Bolin, Ausgewiihlte Brie/e yon und an Ludwig Feuerbach (Leipzig, 1904), Bd. II, 61. Ibid., 136. On page 34 of the translation the reference missing from the second quotation is Leipzig V, 176, the Weimar equivalent of which is 5:542. On page 40, XIII, 657 is WA 21:398. On page 50, XVIII, 125 should read XXII, 125 and thus WA 37:49. On page 55, XXI, 419 should read 519 and thus WA 54:402. On page 86, XX, 568 is W,4 34:57. On page 116, XIII, 725 is WA 21:490. 106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY work (by Dorion Cairns) followed in its wake. In addition, Mme. Bachelard's familiarity with Husserl's works is such that it adds a dimension of depth and accuracy to her work which clearly justifies its translation. In this step by step exposition and commentary on Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic there is an emphasis upon the centrality of his antipsychologism as well as upon the development of the concept of phenomenology. While Husserl repudiated...