Da Schelling a Merleau-Ponty: Studi sulla filosofia contemporanea (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 299 appreciation of the value of a variety of philosophical methods, insights, and principles of explanation. That Leibniz's attempt to provide a consistent deductive metaphysics failed does not undermine the significance of his philosophical investigations. GEORGEJ. STACK Long Island University Da Schelling a Merleau-Ponty: Studi sulla filosofia contemporanea. By Giuseppe Semerari. (Urbino : Cappelli, 1962. Pp. 422. = Biblioteca di cultura filosofica, 20. L. 2.800.) Giuseppe Semerari, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bari, editor of the Review Aut-Aut, who has already written several books (Storisiamo e ontologismo critico, Responsabilita e communita umana, Scienza nova e ragione, La filosofia come relazione ), published together, in 1962, a series of different studies which appeared previously in different journals from 1954 till 1961, except for the Appendix which was written in 1962. The title, From Schelling to Merleau-Ponty, shows us Semerari's reflections; by focusing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology they are unified and articulated, in their historical journey from a critique of dogmatism in Schelling, through an analysis of consciousness in Husserl's style and of existence in Existentialist terms, to the philosophy of the French thinker in its ambiguous significance. The Appendix tries to characterize present philosophical research in the spirit of contemporary continental philosophyma blend of human approach , historical concern, and phenomenological method. The studies are divided into four groups: the birth of criticism in Schelling's philosophy as opposed to dogmatism, philosophy as a rigorous science in Husserl's reaction against dogmatism and Carabellese's anti-dogmatism in his critique of the concrete, the ethical problem in Existentialism, and the positive Existentialism of Merleau-Ponty--his insights on human projection, on science and philosophy, and on a middle way between Existentialism and Marxism. The first study deals with Schelling's first encounter with Kant, in 1795, before the idealistic interpretation: three themes, criticism and dogmatism, natural right, valorisation of Kant's Critique, are discussed. The passage from dogmatism to criticism is a passage from our own alienation in this world to a new self-possession in freedom. It is also the transformation of the idea of the object into a law of life, an effort to unify both theory and practice. The second study, in its analysis of Husserl's views, deals with topics like Psychology and Logic, From Critique to Phenomenology, Phenomenological Dialectic, or topics like Criticism and the Dogmatism of the post-Critique pe:t'iod, Dogmatism of the judicative conception of being, the Anti-Dogmatism of the critical metaphysics, Anti-Dogmatism and the Concrete, Anti-Dogmatism and Man, Dogmatic ]Jmits oi critical ontologism in its analysis of Carabellese's opinions. Husserl emphasizes the need for a radical research, while the Marburg School underlines the autonomy of criticisli~ from doganatism. Phenomenology creates an ideal of science as philosophy; science fulfills this ideal. Iii opposition to Hegel, at the very beginning, Husserl's phenomenology contributes to the rehabilitation of ttegelianism by its doctrine of the Lebenswelt, of history and genesis. The third study deals with Mounier's first approach to Existentialism, the critique of Existentialism by Battaglia, Pastore, Luckacs; logic and history in Existentialism, and the positive Existentialism of Nicola Abbagnano's La struttura dell'esistenza (1939). Existentialism, in spite of its anti-rationalistic tendency, does not renounce the claims of reason. Positive Existentialism finds its acutal development in methodological empiricism and "relationism." The fourth study deals with Merleau-Ponty's relation to the late ttusserl, the possibility and the coexistence of philosophy and science, their meanings in a human 300 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY world, and the intermediary position between an extrinsic view of consciousne~ with Marxism and an intrinsic view of the same with idealism. These studies introduce the Italian speaking reader to a tradition foreign to him. The field is too broad for a deep approach to the subject, but clarity and understanding make the reading profitable. The main line, on the one side, diverges more and more from dogmatism, but on the other side, converges towards phenomenology to the extent that it tends to the self-constitution of reason in a world deeply human, where psychology and sociology have something to say, where philosophy and science coexist, where subjectivity...