Experience and Its Systematization: Studies in Kant (review)

104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Grundbewandtnis, wenn Marx formuliert, die eigne Tat des Mensehen werde ihm zu einer fremden, gegentiberstehenden Macht, die ihn unterjoeht, start dass er sie beherrseht. (p. 11) Die Entfremdung des arbeitenden Menschen in seiner Arbeit--von seiner Arbeit. Dies betrifft ein konkretes Ph~inomen, das sich ebensowohl in der 5stlichen wie in der westlichen Welt, in marxistischer wie in existenzphilosophischer Sicht, zeigt. Hier kommt eine sonderbare Entwicklung in Sicht, Niederschlag eines geschichtlichen Prozesses, den niemand gewollt, den niemand vorhergesehen, den vielleicht in gewissem Sinne vor Marx niemand studiert hat. Es ist der Prozess, der zu dem folgenden f~hrt, das uns allen eine Erfahrung ist: dass n~imlich unser Arbeiten yon uns beim Verrichten der Arbeit nicht bejaht wird, sondern ein Negativum geworden ist wie eine Last, wie eine Ent/iusserung-ftir-einen-Anderen, fiir den "Betrieb", wie eine Biirde, die uns erst ausserhalb der Arbeit yon den Schultern gleitet, so dass wir eigentlich in der Arbeit nicht recht wir selbst zu sein vermhgen. (Philosophische Anthropologie, Metapolitik und Politische Bildung, pp. 11-12. See complete listing of this essay at head of this review.) HERBERTW. SCHNEIDER Claremont, Cali]ornia Experience and Its Systematization: Studies in Kant. By Nathan Rotenstreich. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965. Pp. 178.) Professor Rotenstreich admirably fulfills his intention to bring the whole of Kant's philosophy to focus through an analysis of some of its pivotal issues. Each of the six chapters takes up such an issue: the "two logics" and the question of primacy between them, the meaning and place of the schematism, the concept of metaphysics, that of dialectics, the question of Kant's "scepticism," especially in the Critique o] Judgment, and Kant's argument for the primacy of Practical over Theoretical Reason. A sensitive analysis of certain major German interpretations of Kant's Critique o] Pure Reason is appended to the volume, and there are thoroughly competent discussions of such philosophers as Reinhold, Maimon, and Hegel throughout the book. One of the more impressive achievements of the volume is Rotenstreich's perceptive analysis of Kant's fundamental assumption of heterogeneity (not only of the elements of knowledge , but of the two logics, of Verstand and Vernun#, and the two thrusts of Reason, practical and theoretical) and his consequent struggle with the questions of primacy and mediating "thirds." He clearly shows that it is this complex of problems which underlies the double meaning of "system" in Kant's thought. On the one hand, it is only in view of his assumption of the heterogeneity of the elements of knowledge that it is necessary for Kant to establish the possibility of a synthesis between concepts and percepts. On the other, Kant's total effort to demonstrate a fundamental system of all the "critiques," primarily the spheres of knowledge and morals, arises from the same sort of assumption: not only the duality of Verstand and Vernun]t, but more importantly, between the two "interests" of Reason (practical and theoretical). At the same time, Rotenstreich's study of Kantian "dialectics" (both systematic and historical ) and "scepticism" (as contrasted with that of Maimon) demonstrates that, although Kant was quite aware of the considerable difficulties in attempting to bridge the hiatus in the dualities, his efforts have serious limitations. For instance, Kant's insistence on the primacy of Practical Reason not only equivocates on the meaning of "practical" (as regards its epistemic , moral, and actional meanings), but, it is shown, obscures a principal part of his own conception of Reason which in the end vitiates the very emphasis on primacy. The thesis of primacy, in fact, is either unnecessary or superfluous. Since freedom is identical with selfsponsored activity, i.e., with the spontaneity of pure reason, "Kant does not need to assume the primacy of action or of practical knowledge, in order to prove the possibility and the reality of freedom" (p. 121). Kant overhastily identifies freedom and the domain of the practical ; his own doctrine argues for the identity of freedom and the spontaneity of reason as such, and therefore the primacy thesis is not essential. In fact, Rotenstreich argues with considerable force, since it is man's freedom in the context of his empirical...