From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy by Louis E. Loeb (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 161 From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. By Loms E. LOEB. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981. Pp. 382. $24.50. When someone denies old and cherished assumptions, especially if we comfortably lean on them and never seriously question them, we are likely to be dise-0ncerted rather than refreshed and to reach for a quick destructive retort rather than reconsider our assumptions. In From Descartes to Hitme Louis E. Loeb denies three assumptions which for many of us are of just that sort. He gathers them together as constituents of what he calls "The Standard Theory": (1) the most important modern philosophers before Kant are six in number: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; (2) these philosophers fall into two groups-the Continental Rationalists and the British Empiricists (as just listed, with the semicolon representing the English Channel); and (3) within each group a dialectical process occurred by which rationalism and empiricism became more rigorous and consistent. Loeb, on the contrary , (1) sees Malebranche as more important than Spinoza; (2) regards the rationalist-empiricist distinction as inapposite, proposing in its place a distinction between "Continental Metaphysicians" (among whom Berkeley is listed despite his British origins) and its enemies, with Hume as the principal enemy; and (3) cannot find the sort of dialectical development which the proponents of the standard theory purport to descry. The three components of the standard theory are obviously of unequal importance. The first, concerning the "big six" of the period, is least important and receives least attention. Loeb's dissent seems to be limited to proposing Malebranche as more important than Spinoza, and he makes a mere beginning on the difficulties involved in measuring philosophic importance. (Moreover, he still devotes one of his eight chapters to Spinoza, a chapter that is only slightly shorter than the chapter on Malebranche .) The other two components of the standard theory are plainly interlocked : namely, the division into empiricists and rationalists and the dialectical development supposed to have taken place from Locke through Berkeley to Hume and from Descartes to Spinoza and Leibniz. The heart of Loeb's case against the standard theory, however, is the alleged superiority of a category of continental metaphysicians over the conventional category of continental rationalists. Let us concentrate on this. Loeb's new category contrasts with the one for which it is (roughly) a replacement in that it is concerned with ontology where the old one is 162 '.BOOK REVIEWS epistemological. Loeb accords primary importance to doctrines on substance and causality-especially causality-and ties his continental metaphysicians together as deniers of causal relations (taking "causal" in the modern manner as meaning efficient-causal} : Descartes denies that the existence of mind depends causally upon the existence of the body; Spinoza denies that modes of distinct attributes can interact; Malebranche denies that there are any causes other than God; Berkeley restricts causality to volitions; Leibniz denies that monads can act upon each other. These philosophers, Loeb maintains, are only loosely linked and exhibit little logical development in their temporal sequence. But their foes are even less a family, and receive scant notice, though Hume does get some ten pages in the final section of the final chapter ("Hume's Attack on Continental Metaphysics"). Do we see the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (prior to Kant) more truly, more penetratingly, if we adopt Loeb's divisionY (Loeb concedes that his dichotomy is pedagogically inferior and makes things messier; but, if things are messy, we of course ought to be honest about it.) Needless to say, Loeb's interpretation of the history of philosophy from Descartes to Hume should be opposed to a sophisticated rather than simplistic version of the standard theory, and Loeb himself seeks to avoid setting up a straw adversary that can be easily knocked down. One certainly does not want to deny the rationalistic elements in the empiricists (in Locke's conception of ethics, for instance) or the empiricist elements in the rationalists. Nor would one want to ignore the sometimes rather than important intellectual intercourse between continental and British philosophars (e.g., Malebranche and Berkeley). When the needed...