Weltgeschichte der Philosophie (review)

Book Reviews Weltgeschichte der Philosophic. By Kurt Schilling. (Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, 1964. Pp. viii + 579.) This is a philosophy of the history of philosophy rather than simply a "world-history of philosophy." The difference is crucial. And it is philosophy of history in the grand manner, accepting as valid Spengler's thesis of the development and decay of great cultures, each lasting about 1,000 to 1~200 years. The "world-history" of philosophy is here pressed into that Procrustean bed. Moreover, Spengler's thesis that great cultures are always the achievement of agricultural rather than urban peoples is also applied to philosophy--with the conclusion that in our Age of Industrializationand Technology philosophy is "dead" (p. 26). A thesis such as this demands, of course, that we have a dependable standard relative to which we can evaluate all philosophy in its ascending and its descending development. As far as Professor Schilling is concerned, this standard was formulated by Socrates when he said that philosophy is knowing what we know and what we do not know (p. 6). This formulation the author finds almost word for word in the sayings of Confucius and, by implication, by Buddha and Kant. Socrates, Confucius, Buddha, and Kant, therefore, represent in each culture the acme of philosophy. Every other philosophical position either leads up to it or descends from it. The course of development as a whole is the same in each culture: prephilosophical wisdom advancing toward knowledge about what we can and cannot know, and then deteriorating into the dogmatism of metaphysical world views. This development, incidentally, Professor Schilling regards as inevitable. If we were to assume, he says on p. 16, that Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, and Kant had died while they were still children, others would have taken their places and the world-history of philosophy would have developed exactly the way it did, for it was predestined to run its course. Given such an approach to the history of philosophy, it is not surprising to find throughout the book evidence of interpretation and interrelation for the sake of the basic thesis. Similarities rather than differences in the four cultures are stressed and, occasionally, the timesequence is minimized if not distorted for the sake of preserving the thesis. This is not to deny the fact that a comparison of the four cultures will not reveal important similarities in the development of the respective philosophies; but a good thing ought not to be overdone. As philosophers we ought to be interested in the specifics of the developing positions rather than in the defense of a speculative thesis such as Professor Schilling presents. This is all the more important since, despite the author's predilections, the development of philosophy in India, for example, deviates in important respects from that in China and Greece (p. 120). The author's over-all thesis lends itself readily to broad generalizations; in fact, it depends on them. And Professor Schilling does not hesitate to present them. A typical example is his assertion that the German idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, important though it may be in itself, is but "a renewal of pre-philosophical wisdom misplaced in time" (p. 447). There is little space left for detailed analyses. Suffice it, therefore, to point out that the whole history of Western philosophy, from around 1500 a.D. to 1900 A~., is covered in 120 pages; that "the end of philosophy" is reached with Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche (pp. 471-501), and that in the United States that "end" came with John Dewey (p. 521). Western philosophy is "dead." W. H. WERKMEISTER University o/ ~gouthern California Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. By W. B. Gallie (New York: Schocken Books, 1964. Pp. 226 + notes 231. $6.00.) It is noteworthy that the desire for a reform within the discipline of history--a re-evaluation of its philosophical basis--has its counterpart in philosophy. Gallie's book is a case in [161] ...