Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Poland: Selected Essays (review)

546 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Values in European Thought. By Fritz Joachim yon Rintelen. (Pamplona, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1972. Pp. 565. $8.50) In the preface to this book the author states that this work, although "going back to an earlier German publication, Der Wertgedanke in der Europiiischen Geistesentwicklung (1932)," is "a substantially expanded and thoroughly new work." Collation of the two texts shows that there are indeed significant changes in the new version. The evidence is there from the beginning. The fine preface of the German version has been omitted, as has been in effect the Ein]iihrung with its extensive and highly informative bibliographical footnotes . The present chapter I is small compensation for that loss. Chapter II can be regarded as a free translation of the original text: but here the footnotes have been retained and have been somewhat augmented. Section A of chapter III, "Non-European Cultural Spheres," has been greatly expanded (from 7 pages to 22), especially in the discussion of Indian philosophy. Excellent bibliographical references add much to the value of the enlarged version. Section B of the same chapter, "Socrates-Plato," is likewise substantially expanded. Although there is no change in the interpretation, the bibliographical and explanatory footnotes have been considerably augmented. To some extent the same is true of section C, "Aristotle," and section D, "Dissolution" or the fading out of ancient philosophy (which has been expanded from 17 pages to 47, and is a much more informative text). In Section C of chapter IV, "The High Middle Ages," the discussion of Thomas Aquinas's philosophy has been considerably expanded, and the literature has been brought up to date. It is a much improved presentation. New paragraphs have been added also to Section D, "The Later Middle Ages." The final Section of the book, "Modern Axiological Thought"--a sparse 9 pages---is now as it was in 1932, a mere after-thought--a not too significant postscript to an otherwise highly informative and penetrating analysis of value conceptions in European thought. The Engiish version of the book is indeed a "substantially expanded" and in many respects a new work. What makes it so is the fact that, throughout , the author has included in his discussions his reactions to the vast literature in the field that has been published since 1932. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Poland: Selected Essays. Edited by Jean G. Harrell and Alina Wierzbianska. (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1973. Pp. 285. $12.00) This selection was originally done by Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, when he was a guest professor in California. But the composition has been changed. Jean G. Harrell, the author of the introduction, has made assiduous efforts to publish the material, the aim being to acquaint English-reading scholars with the excellence of aesthetic thought in Poland and its alleged similarity to aesthetic writings in the English-speaking world. The entire introduction is devoted to this purpose. However, these writings were influenced rather by German aesthetics before the Second World War. The value of the included essays and book excerpts is unequal. The importance of the historian of aesthetics Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz and of Roman Ingarden is well known; the former is now translated into English and the latter's works were written also in German. The essay of S. I. Witldewicz (known also as "Witkacy"), "On Pure Form," is one of the numerous formalistic statements in Europe after the emergence of abstract, nonrepresentational art. The excerpt from the book The Multiplicity o/Reality by the logician and mathematician Leon Chwistek tries to set up four stages of arththe primitive, the realistic, the impressionistic and the futuristic. The writings of these two authors have a BOOK REVIEWS 547 documentary historical worth. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz' article "Abstract Art and Philosophy " makes the very apposite observation that similar styles exist in abstract and in representational painting--for instance, impressionism and expressionism. The parallel between the painting of cubism (for example, Picasso) and the philosophy of Edmund Husserl drawn by Ksawery Piwocki, because Husserl and the cubists wanted to penetrate the "essence" of things, is rather arbitrary. The sociologist Stanislaw Ossowski is the author of a book At the...