F. A. Trendelenburg, Forerunner to John Dewey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 265 tim fulfillment, which contributes to our understanding of alienation. In his nostalgia for perfection, both as achieved in ancient Greece and as projected into an uncertain future, Schiller mediates between the preoccupation of Rousseau and Diderot with primitive simplicity and the monomania of Karl Marx for a liberated future. Schiller expresses both kinds of alienation at once: he has lost one paradise (which Marx never accepted to begin with) and he posits a second one (which Rousseau and Diderot hesitate to call a paradise). Nostalgia for the past and yearning for the future combine in this synthetic mind, which seems to have been happy everywhere but in the here and now. I would suggest that the underlying unity, and the ultimate appeal, of Schiller lies not in his pyrotechnics in print but in his personality (or will), in his many-sided search for perfection . While empathy with this elevated soul may have led Regin to exposit his writings with kindliness, such Einfi~hlung ~ la Dilthey should not blind the expositor to the weakness of those writings, a weakness which does not, however, nullify the stature of their author as a man. For like so many of his contemporaries, Schiller created as his finest achievement his personality, which edified nearly everyone it touched. As Richard Friedenthal's recent biography of Goethe1 has shown, it is not enough to interpret such a man in the light of his writings. To bring to life such a personality, as Friedenthal has done for Goethe, a fullblooded "life and times" biography is required, and for Schiller this has already been supplied by Benno yon Wiese? It is a tribute to the creativeness of the Goethezeit that the preoccupation of thinkers such as Schiller, Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, and Hegel with polar opposites should have evoked an even greater absorption with polarities on the part of their historians. Despite the efforts of such pioneers as Martin Schiitze in his neglected Academic Illusionss to break this spell and the success of such masters as Erich Heller in transcending it, Geistesgeschichte through interweaving of polar opposites carries on. While such a technique may serve unusually well to render the thought of a man like Schiller, who did much to make it popular, no rendering of his thought will suffice to instill it as a force in the mind of the reader. A synthetic mind needs to be studied as a man, not as a mind. Those portions of Regin's book which do this, especially in Part One, are excellent. The rest puts one in a Schillerian mood of perfectionism (i.e., alienation), out of nostalgia for works such as yon Wiese's which have done the job better, and out of aspiration for what in an ideal world Regin's work might have been. WILLIAMM. JOI-INSTON University o] Massachusetts F. A. Trendelenburg, Forerunner to John Dewey. By Gershon George Rosenstock. Foreword by George Kimball Plochmann. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press [1964]. Pp.xvi + 172. $5.50.) Future historians will probably be amused at the title of this book, for some day Trendelenburg will be recognized as a "forerunner" of existentialism and will be given his due place in the I-Iegelian Center. He was a leader of the revolt against Hegel's dialectic as well as against Kantian formalism in logic, and he initiated the biological interpretation of the development of mind in revolt against "essentialism." He was also a founder of the movement known as Lebensphilosophie, which was carried on by his student at Kiel, Wilhelm Dilthey. But, for the time being, since his work and influence is practically ignored in Europe, Rosenstock's singling out John Dewey as his leading successor is quite appropriate. Tren1Richard Friedenthal, Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Zeit (Munich: 1963); Eng. trans., Goethe: His Li]e and Times (Cleveland: 1965). Benno von Wiese, Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart : 1959). 3Martin Schfitze, Academic Illusions in the Field o] Letters and the Arts: a survey, a Criticism, a New Approach, and a Comprehensive Plan ]or Reorganizing the Study o] Letters and Arts (Chicago: 1933; reprinted, Hamden, Conn.: 1962). 266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY delenburg was known better in the United States than in...