La Nostalgie de la Grèce à l'aube de l'Idéalisme allemand (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 107 cussing p. 335, all that he is able to do is to provide a model of what the monad is not. Serres tries to discount this by saying that the models in question are "inverted rather than denied," and that Leibniz "seeks complementarities rather than negations" (pp. 338, 378). But this does not seem to be a significant distinction, since to speak of the "complement" of a set A is simply to speak of the set of all elements in a universal set U which are not in the set A. In approximating Leibniz' metaphysics to a logical system, Serres is led to say things about Leibniz' views which appear not to be true. It is not correct to say thal we are a complete concept (p. 104), though it would be true to say that there is a complete concept of each one of us. Nor can it strictly be correct to say that God is a harmony (p. 460). It is true that Leibniz occasionally says this in some of his earlier works (e.g., Academy edition, H.1, p. 162 and VI2, p. 283), but he can hardly have meant that the pro-established harmony is established by another harmony. Nor can it be correct to say (p. 625) that the monad is a one-many relation, though it is correct to say that it has relations to all monads. (Or rather, that it has predicates to which its relations to all other monads are reducible. Serres has much to say about relations, but little about Leibniz' view that they can be reduced to predicates.) Again, Serres says that the universal harmony is logically and morally necessary (p. 631). It is hard to see why it should be logically necessary--it can surely be denied without selfcontradiction --and it is harder still to see how it can have both logical and moral necessity, since Leibniz distinguished sharply between the two (e.g., to Clarke, paper 5, par. 4). Serres' view that there is an indefinite number of points of entry into Leibniz" system, and that any one is as good as any other, has the consequence that his work reads more like a set of loosely connected essays than a book. For example, it does not seem to be a logical order of presentation to discuss perception, which is predicated of monads, before the monads themselves are discussed. Nor is Scrres convincing in his view that Leibniz' system is to be viewed as a net rather than a chain. As he himself admits in his last chapter, it was Leibniz' view that everything depends on God; there is, therefore, what might be called a fixed metaphysical order, even ff it is possible to start from various points in the exposition of the system. One final comment: despite its considerable length, Michel Serres' book merely expounds Leibniz' system, and offers nothing in the way of criticism. But the reader will surely want to know how much, if anything, of the system expounded is to be regarded as true. G. H. R. PARKINSON University of Reading, England La Nostalgie de la Grace ,~ raube de rlddalisme allernand. Kant et los Grecs dans l'itin~ralre de Schiller, de H~51derlin et de Hegel. By Jacques Taminiaux. (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967. Pp. 274) In einer Zeit, da sich die deutsche Geistigkeit yon ihrer eigenen grossen Vergangenheit abgewandt zu haben scheinL liefert uns ein Franzose, dermit erstaunlichem Vers ~ndnis in die deutsche Geisteswelt eingedrungen ist, eine feinsinnige und ausffihrliche Deutung des geistigenAufschwungs yon Kant bis H~Iderlin fibercin halbes Jahrhundert dcutscher Geistesgeschichtehin, deren H6he unbestrittcnbleibt,auch wenn sie heute weitab yon unserem Gedankenkreis liegen mag. Taminiaux intcrpretiertzun~ichstdie "Kritik der Urteilskraft",mit dercn Theorie yon der mysteriSsen Produktivi~t der organischen Natur und der analogen ~tbetischen Produktion des Genies (pp. 53, 59, 108 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 62, 84, 118, 200) Kant den Rationalismus transzendiert und den Idealismus inauguriert, indem er im Prinzip die Subjekt-Dimension rehabilitiert, die vom szientifischen Objektivismus eliminiert wird. Dadurch gewinnen die Metaphysik, der Idealismus und die Spekulation existentiellen Charakter. Sic intendieren n~imlich I) das metaphysiseh Absolute in Form der Ontologie oder "Logik", 2...