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BRIEF NOTICES Reflections on .Art: A Source Book of Writings by Artists, Critics, and Philosophers. By SusANNE K. LANGER (Ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958. Pp. 88fl. This anthology is the work of one of our most notable philosophers in the field of aesthetics. From her own very wide reading she has selected some 26 essays, many of them from French and German periodicals. For the most part they are not philosophical in character but rather supply material for philosophical reflection. The writers are critics interested in pointing out certain aesthetic phenomena which are sometimes overlooked by aestheticians. It is this wealth of observation and example that will make the anthology useful, and set it apart from the usual collection of excerpts from formal treatises on aesthetics. The weakness of the collection is that it gives us a good deal on the psychological aspects of the work of art, but very little on the work of art in its own proper character. The Aristotelian will feel that most of the writers are concerned with peripheral, rather than central aesthetic problems . However, he will find much here of interest on the role of time and of place in the arts, on imagery, aesthetic distance, emotive response, and illusion. Dominican House of Studies, Ri11er Forest, IU. BENEDICT M. AsHLEY, 0. P. The History of Philosophy. By JoHANNES HmscHBERGER. Translated from the German by Rt. Rev. ANTHONY N. FUERST, S. T. D. Milwaukee: Bruce. Volume I: 1958. Pp. 516. $8.00. Volume II: 1959. Pp. 752. $9.50. Since 1955 the English-speaking world has benefited from significant advances in the study of the history of philosophy. Chief among these has been the periodic publication over the past four years of the first five volumes of Fr. Copleston's monumental work .A History of Philosophy. The translation in 1955 of Fr. Thonnard's Precis d'Histoire de la Philosophie under the English title .A Brief History of Philosophy was received with well-merited enthusiasm. One of the most recent contributions to the rapidly expanding literature in this field is the translation of Professor Hirschberger's excellent two-volume study Geschichte der Philosophie. The German edition of Volume One was first published in 1949. This was followed by the publication of Volume Two in 1952. 186 BRIEF NOTICES 187 In his Preface to Volume One the author distinguishes between the History of Philosophy as "a science of history" and as "philosophy." In the intricate manner typical of German scholarship he explains that the goal of the History of Philosophy as a science of history " is accomplished by examining the origins of both the men and their works, by placing them in their proper relation to greater spheres of thought, by correlating them with other contributions and with the all-pervading spiritual and cultural currents among peoples of various eras, and finally by unfolding for us the fundamental suppositions and the ultimate assumptions from which the concepts, the problems, and the teachings of philosophy have originally sprung as from a matrix." As Philosophy, the author envisages the History of Philosophy as "an arduous and honorable search for truth ... possessing inner continuity." Perhaps the most notable characteristic of Professor Hirschberger's work is that it brings together these two aspects of the History of Philosophy into a synthesis which can accurately be described as remarkable. While stating, as every History of Philosophy must, the facts concerning the life and thought of each philosopher, Hirschberger's book adds, as few Histories of Philosophy do, a third transhistoric dimension to a science too frequently drawn upon the bidimensional plane of time and place. The author intends his book to serve as a basic text and standard reference work for students of philosophy. He is not content, however, to compile and classify facts as do the authors of most Histories of Philosophy. He interprets the facts which he presents, and he makes no apology for doing so. More than most, this author is likely to suffer from the pens of reviewers adept at quoting out of context. Speaking of Aristotle's relationship to Plato, for example, Hirschberger asserts that Aristotle " personally was basically in accord with his master's...

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