Erscheinung bei Kant. Ein Problem der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 403 A brief comparison of Berkeley and Shaftesbury may help to bring into sharper focus Berkeley's stance on moral issues. As Olscamp recognizes, the two philosophers had much in common, though Berkeley attacked Shaftesbury violently in Alciphron, distorting and misrepresenting his ideas in the process, thus reducing the effectiveness of the criticisms made. Why so crude an attack? I think the very fact that the two thinkers were so close on a number of issues--and notably in their belief that nature was a manifestation of Mind--made Berkeley all the more fearful of the influence of Shaftesbury's arguments on points where they disagreed. Worst of all, Shaftesbury was a gifted and acute critic of orthodox religious doctrines which Berkeley---committed to the belief that revelation and true reason must agree found it necessary to defend. The third Earl's attack on the traditional doctrine of retribution is one example. Berkeley went to pains to argue for the necessity of extrinsic rewards and punishments--ultimately eternal--as a sanction of the moral life. Shaftesbury's defense of the use of wit and humor in treating religious as well as political concepts must have been particularly offensive to the pious churchman. Finally, Shaftesbury's sustained arguments for the autonomy of ethics strike at the heart of Berkeley's convictions. For the Bishop would never admit that rightness or wrongness could be determined independently of the Divine Will. Religious rather than philosophic concerns led him to emphasize the arbitrariness of Divine Will and Power. Nature, he writes, is "nothing else but a series of free actions produced by the best and wisest Agent" (PassiveObedience,sec. 14). Olscamp has pointed out the difficulties in Berkeley's position. The fact is that Berkeley seems to be playing a double game--insisting on the absolute transcendence and arbitrariness of the Divine Will on the one hand, and on the other, contending that "in morality the eternal rules of action have the same immutable universal truth with propositions in geometry . . . being at all times, and in all places, without limitation or exception, true" (Passive Obedience, sec. 53). In this respect, Shaftesbury's position seems philosophically sounder; whether it was religiously more effective is a different question. Finally, two complaints: the book provides no index, an inconvenience for scholars; and second, the abbreviations of Berkeley's works provided in the key are not always consistent with those employed in the footnotes in the text. This attempted reconstruction of Berkeley's ethics will not change the history of ethics, though it may add a couple of footnotes. It should be of use to students of Berkeley and to those studying the development of utilitarianism. Berkeley's thought represents an interesting conjunction of theological and philosophical currents. His influence in the development of British thought was often not in the direction he intended. It is an irony of history that this enemy of skepticism should have provided Hume with "the best lessons of skepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers .... " STANLEYGREAN Ohio University, Athens Erscheinung bei Kant. Ein Problem der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. By Gerold Prauss. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971. Pp. 339) An important and admirably thorough contribution to the Kant-Literatur, Prauss' study has shed some helpful light on what is still today one of the darkest corners of the Kantian labyrinth--his doctrine of the Wahrnehmungsurteil as an immediate judgment about "die Erscheinung selbst." As Prauss himself is at great pains to point out throughout his book, the problem of a "subjective consciousness," an apprehension of appearances just as appearances (not "yet" as Erfahrung) is not some merely diversionary, minor difficulty. Kant's whole theory of Er/ahrung, if it is to make sense, must make room for immediately given contents of consciousness, immediate results of affection, which contents can be 404 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY transcendentally distinguished from the proper concern of most of the Critique's account, Erkenntnis, genuinely obiective knowledge. Prauss' problem touches the very core of Kant's greatest difficulty, that of incorporating within his totally "determining" theory of cor~sciousr~ess, contents which can '~ ptlre~y "subjectively" ~,e~ennined, in some...