Kant, Ontology, and the A Priori (review)

258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Malebranche, Leibniz, Newton, etc., receive an extensive treatment in relation to their role in the formation of Voltaire's thought. How and through whom did he become acquainted with them? Which works of theirs did he possess and annotate? This is no doubt admirable, but we often have the impression that Voltaire's mind is made up of little patches borrowed from a multitude of authors. The coherence after which Mr. Wade strives does not seem ever to be attained. When Wade deals with straight facts his erudition is unempeachable. But from them he goes on to develop theories--sometimes sound and clear, sometimes quite nebulous and hypothetical--which do not force assent. We are told, for instance, that Voltaire at the beginning of the Cirey period "was unprepared in science, in philosophy, in history , and in the analysis of all social and political institutions." He had only "some command of literature . . ." (p. 267). How are we to believe that Voltaire, then some forty years old, the author of the Lettres philosophiques, was ignorant to that degree? It would appear that he knew Descartes, the greatest French philosopher, only second hand, through Baillet, or Bolingbroke, or Bayle. Would he have written on Descartes in the Lettres philosophiques, comparing him unfavorably with Locke without having gone to the text itself? One has the impression that Mr. Wade is so fascinated by the Cirey period that he tends to overemphasize its impact on Voltaire's intellectual development. It is equally difficult to follow Wade in his interpretation of the Lettres philosophiques, the purpose of which seems really so simple and the condemnation so clearly motivated (by the article on Locke). But Wade explains that this opposition was from the people "brought with the greatest reluctance, to revise its own way of living by mergir~g with a foreign way of life in order to create in the interest of humanity a larger and more appropriate way of living" (p. 239). We remain just as incredulous when Wade attempts to establish a similarity (almost equating identity) between Voltaire's and Bossuet's views on history when we know that the Essai sur les rnceurs was inspired by an irreductible opposition to Bossuet's theory on providence. Nor can we admit that Voltaire's ideas on free-will have not changed when the "philosophe ignorant" tells us the opposite. Mr. Wade abuses the expressions "As we have seen," "As we shall see," and he does not avoid repetitions and prolixity. And yet this is a volume of great import with an enormous amount of information frequently new and solid. I would mention only Wade's interpretation of the genesis of the Traitd de mdtaphysique which contradicts completely the version given by the Kehl editors and followed since by all the scholars. FERNAND VIAL State University of New York at Albany Kant, Ontology, and the A Priori. By Moltke S. Gram. (Evanston, II1., Northwestern University Press, 1968. Pp. vii+194. $5.00) With the appearance of studies of Kant in the last few years such as those of P. F. Strawson, R. P. Wolff, Jonathan Bennett, W. Sellars, J. Hartnack, and others, we seem to be in the midst of a veritable Kantian revival. Moltke Gram's careful and scholarly analysis of Kant's conception of metaphysical propositions is a respectable contribution to this literature. Limiting his analyses to the various interpretations of analytic propositions, synthetic propositions, and synthetic a priori propositions, Gram remains faithful to Kant's text while managing to provide detailed examinations of what he considers to be Kant's overt and his covert theories of judgment. En passant, BOOK REVIEWS 259 careful analyses of the conception of schematism and of the transcendental method are woven into his compressed discussions of the general structure of metaphysical propositions or those propositions which state the necessary conditions under which experience of any phenomenon is possible. The central focus of attention in Gram's study of Kant's theory of predication is placed upon the conflicting accounts Kant himself gives of his theory of judgment. What Gram is concerned to show is that there are two conflicting themes in the Kritik...