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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