Die Ontologie Kants (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 97 cannot read the ontology and cosmology volumes or the parallel German treatises in the original. But Burns does not provide much in the way of sound critical analysis and his perspective, a kind of monolithic and self-erected ghetto Scholasticism, runs counter to fruitful historical scholarship. To label and correct Wolff's thought is one thing; to understand and learn from it is quite something else. In short, although a reader in search of introductory material on the topics covered by Bums' book might find some profit in its reading, some recent journal articles are more likely to be of value. For example, as a general introduction to Wolff (besides the Preliminary Discourse itself), one might look at IL J. Blackweli's "The Structure of Wolffian Philosophy," The Modern Schoolman, XXXVIII (1961), 203-218; for the ontology, Jean Ecole's "La Philosophia prima sive ontologia de Christian Wolff: I-Iistoire, doctrine et mtthode," Giornale di Metaftsica, XVI (1961), 114-125; for the cosmology, Ecole's "Un essai d'explication rationnelle du monde ou la Cosmologia generalis de Chr/stian Wolff,'ibid., XVHI (1963), 622-650; and for the psychology, Blackwell's "Christian Wolff's Doctrine of the Soul," Journal of the History of Ideas, XXII (1961), 339-354. As a small corrective to the traditional tendency, which Bums generally follows, to over-state the identity between the views of Leibniz and Wolff, one might also read Ecole's "Cosmolo#oe wolffienne et dynamique leibnizienne: Essai sur les rapports de Wolff avec Leibniz," Les Etudes Philosophiques, XIX (1964), 3-9. What all of this means, of course, and what Burns' book brings clearly to our attention, is that we still need a good book in English on the central methodological, epistemolo#ocai, and metaphysical principles of Christian Wolff's philosophy. OtARLES A. Co~ Southern Illinois University Die Ontologie Kants. By Ottokar Blaha. Salzburger Studien zur Philosophic, VII. (Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1967. Pp. 244) Despite the immense literature dealing with Kant's philosophy, despite all the commentaries on his major and minor works, and despite the detailed analyses and critical evaluations of his arguments and suggestions in epistemology and ethics, here is a book which presents Kant's philosophical position in a new perspective. Ottokar Blaha's theme is that behind Kant's reorientation in epistemology as well as behind his ethics there is discernible a basic ontology which, though #oven an epoch-making new direction in Kant's epistemology and ethics, is nevertheless conceived in the spirit of the great European traditions. The justification for this approach to Kant's philosophy Blaha finds in the sustained arguments that knit Kant's first and second Critiques into a unified whole and that are augmented by the arguments in some of Kant's minor works. As might be expected, the center of this ontological interpretation is the well-known problematic of the thing-in-itself. Concerning this problematic we can discern two basically different traditions. Advocates of one tradition (H. J. Paton among them) concede that Kant took the conception of the thing-initself seriously and that it plays an important part in his philosophy. They, nevertheless, regard his philosophy as primarily an epistemology. Advocates of the other tradition (among them the Marburg neo-Kantians) hold that a transcendent thing-in-itself has no justifiable place in Kant's transcendental philosophy, that it represents an inconsistency in his thinking and should therefore be eliminated. The advocates of both traditions thus fail to recognize "a transcendent ontology in Kant's transcendental philosophy." In contradistinction to these traditions, Blaha maintains that for Kant the conception of the thing-in-itself is "the center of a genuine, original, all-encompassing and unitary ontological argument which underlies his epistemology" and is the basis for his ethics as well. A meticulous and extensive textual analysis of Kant's works provides the argument supporting this thesis. Insofar as this argument is developed by Kant in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" and the 'q'ranscendental Analytic" of the first Critique, it culminates in the demonstration that the conflict within a mechanistic world of nature between the particularity of individual things 98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and the universality of...