Philosophie als System bei Fichte, Schelling und Hegel (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 485 consent to suffer or die? Consent, contractual obligations, and free acts of commitment certainly have a place in a complete ethical theory. But do they have the only place? If Wolff has consigned certain of Kant's central theses to the deep, he also has managed to salvage and restore others. In The Right and the Good, for instance, Ross argues that it is logically absurd to suppose that we ought to act from a sense of duty. But Wolff argues convincinglythat "what Kant actually says is that our acts have moral worth only insofar as they are done from a certain motive (namely, respect for the law). Their rightness is quite independent of their motive. We have, according to Kant, an obligation to do what is right. We do not have an obligation to perform morally meritorious acts" (p. 81). Wolff also manages to shed light on Kant's analysis of rational agency and the nature of will. He enables us to see more clearly than Kant himself does that "will" does not name a faculty but rather has a home in such phrases as "to have a will" which, in turn, "simply means to be capable of being moved by reason rather than by natural causes.... To be free is simply to be moved by reason" (p. 216). Despite its flaws as a commentary, The Autonomy of Reason contributes significantly to our understanding of Kant and the problems he addresses. Wolff's critique is especially valuable because it attempts to relate Kant's ethics to his metaphysics and epistemology in more than a superficial manner. If it does not always succeed, it never ceases to be provocative, imaginative, and well-argued. The Autonomy of Reason offers us a flesh opportunity not only to grapple with the central problems of Kantian ethics but to face the central issues of contemporary ethics as well. HANS OBERDIEK Swarthmore College Philosophic als System bei Fichte Schelling und Hegel. By Adolf Schurr. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann, 1974, Pp. 192. DM 58) Fichte and Schelling often seem to have existed merely to serve as a bridge between the genius of Kant and Hegel. Whether or not they deserve better can here be left unanswered, but in any case Schurr's study has supported this common conception. It begins with a "Kantian" Fichte, passes through a confused Schelling, and ends with a young and confident Hegel. The particular topic developed by Schurr is the attempts made by Fichte and Schelling to forge a unitary system from the brilliant yet fundamentally unresolved conceptions of the Kantian legacy. The study was initiallyprepared as Schurr's Habilitationschrift at Regensburg University, and it evidences all of the virtues and vices of these advanced forms of doctoral dissertations: it is orderly and firmly documented, virtues that when pressed pass into the vices of a deadening style and an uninspired recital of textual references. Perhaps the best single term encompassing these virtues and vices is "conscientiousness." The study should arouse neither speculative enthusiasm nor scholarly disdain, being principally a direct and uncomplicated exposition of some central principles found in the philosophy of Fichte, the thought of young Schelling, and a single text of Hegel. It covers the brief historical period from Fichte's review of Schulze's Aenesidemus in 1794 to the appearance of Hegel's 1801 study Differenz des Fichteschen und Sehellingsehen Systems der Philosophic. The work, then, is naturally divided into three chapters of uneven length. Were the reader to rely upon pagination alone to determine importance, Fichte leads by far, and Hegel is the least, being granted only nineteen pages. Insofar as each philosopher is confined to his chapter , the length allowed seems more than usually significant. In this regard, as the final chapter on Hegel can hardly be said to touch directly upon Hegel's own conception of a system, the title of Schurr's work could be misleading to anyone more closely interested in Hegel. 486 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The work lacks both a general introduction and a conclusion, not only as separate sections but in any form whatsoever. Certainly the reader is prepared, for whatever unspoken necessity, to surrender such amenities...