Hegeler Institute

Die ethischen Grundfragen. Zehn Vorträge by Theodor LippsThe Monist, Vol. 10, No. 1 (October, 1899), pp. 158-159Published by: Hegeler InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27899114 .

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158 THE MONIST.

originally issued as numbers 135 and 140 of the Library of Useful Knowledge

(1832), and is usually bound up with De Morgan's large Treatise on the Differ

ential and Integral Calculus (1842). Its style is fluent and familiar; the treat

ment continuous and undogmatic. The main difficulties which encompass the early

study of the Calculus are analysed and discussed in connexion with practical and

historical illustrations which in point of simplicity and clearness leave little to be

desired. No one who will read the book through, pencil in hand, will rise from its

perusal without a clear perception of the aim and the simpler fundamental prin

ciples of the Calculus, or without finding that the profounder study of the science

in the more advanced and more methodical treatises has been greatly facilitated.

The book has been reprinted substantially as it stood in its original form ;

but the typography has been greatly improved, and in order to render the subject

matter more synoptic in form and more capable of survey, the text has been re

paragraphed and a great number of descriptive sub headings have been introduced.

An index also has been added, and a Bibliography of English, German, and French

works on the Calculus.-From the Editor's Preface.

DARSTELLUNG UND KRITIK DER KANTISCHEN LEHRE VON DER WILLENSFREIHEIT.

Mit einem geschichtlichen R ckblick auf das Freiheitsproblem, Von Dr.

fhil. P. Sal s. Rostock: Druck von Adler's Erben. 1898.

This book of one hundred and ninety-five pages of exposition has sprung from

its author's belief that the Kantian doctrine of liberty is frequently misunderstood

and misinterpreted, and that both determinists and indeterminists have based their

contradictory conclusions on the authority of Kant. According to Dr. Salits, the

difficulty has arisen entirely from the fact that the concept of liberty is twofold

with Kant, and that Kant himself vacillates in the precise definition of the concept.

This has been the source of untold evils, which will doubtless be eradicated by Dr.

Salits's work. Combined with the discussion of Kant's doctrine proper, the author

has also given an historical retrospect of the problem of free will.

DIE ETHISCHEN GRUNDFRAGEN. Zehn Vortr ge. Von Theodor Lipps. Hamburg

und Leipzig : Verlag von Leopold Voss. 1899. Pages, 308. Price, 5 M.

The philosophical position of Professor Lipps is finely incorporated in the

answer which he gives to Kant's famous question, What can we know ? To this

question, he maintains, one answer only can be given, and that answer is negative,

and to the effect that the knowledge of the highest and most ultimate of things is

denied to us. To the second question of Kant, What are we to do, what shall be

our conduct ? he has endeavored to give an answer in ten lectures which constitute

the present work. This work treats of the " fundamental questions of ethics" with

special reference to the ethical and socio-ethical problems of the day. His ambi

tion is to make it a strictly scientific and objective presentation, and not that of an

individual. He aims to discover the facts and the laws of moral sense, and to draw

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BOOK REVIEWS. 159

from them consistent conclusions. He is opposed both to utilitarian and hedonistic

ethics, claiming that it is neither the utility nor the happiness which results from

an act that gives it its ethical value, but the Good, the conviction, the frame of

heart {Gesinnung), the personality and man behind the act, strong, in perfect har

mony with himself, and free. All the main questions of ethics, such as egotism

and altruism, motives, evil, eudemonism and utilitarianism, autonomy and hete

ronomy, conscience, the ethical norms, teleology, the family and state, determinism

and indeterminism, responsibility, punishment, and so forth, are treated, as are

also fifty-four other minor but burning problems.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND EDUCA

TION :

Vol. IL, No. 3, Basis of Early Christian Theism, by Lawrence Thomas Cole.

S. T. B., Ph. D. May, 1898. Pages, 60. Price, 50 cents

Vol. IL, No. 4, Early American Philosophers, by Adam Leroy Jones, Ph. D.

June, 1898. Pages, 80. Price, 75 cents.

Vol. III., No. i, The Formal and Material Elements of Kant's Ethics, by Wil

liam Morrow Washington, Ph. D. June, 1898. Pages, 67. Price, 60 cents.

New York : The Macmillan Co. Berlin : Mayer and M ller.

Dr. Cole contends that in all accounts of the theistic arguments, ' '

it has been

customary to pass over a space of well-nigh ten centuries of the Christian era in

silence, or with such scanty and unsympathetic notice as to make silence the better

alternative." It has been his endeavor to fill this yawning chasm in the history of

philosophy with a critical discussion of the theistic metaphysics of the period be

ginning with the middle of the second century and concluding with the Council of

Nice. He regards the estimate placed upon the theistic arguments by the Anti

Nicene fathers as predominantly the estimate of common sense, and claims that

"it took the scepticism of a Hume and the criticism of a Kant, with the readjust

ment of all their followers, to bring us back at the close of this nineteenth century

into substantial agreement with it."

Dr. Jones admits that "a review of the progress of philosophical thought in

America reveals little that can be classed as distinctively American." He can find

among early American philosophers two only who can be ranked as prominent,

namely, Jonathan Edwards, the president of Princeton, and Samuel Johnson. These two authors were idealists of the Berkeleian type, but their idealism could

not be regarded as a logical outcome of Puritanism which was entirely out of sym

pathy with philosophy, and condemned it, together with ethics, as contrary to reli

gion. John Witherspoon, another famous president of Princeton, introduced the

Scottish philosophy of common sense, which remained the dominant doctrine until

within very recent times. Four other thinkers are mentioned by Dr. Jones, namely,

William Brattle, Benjamin Franklin, Cadwallader Colden, and Thomas Clap. The

brief bibliography appended to Dr. Jones's brochure is of value.

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