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Kants Empirical Realism, by Paul Abela. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002, viii1303 pp. ISBN 0-19-924274-7 40.00 Paul Abelas distinctive approach to the first Critique is to examine it primarily through its empirical realism rather than its transcendental idealism. The two doctrines are of course inextricably linked, but Abelas approach brings considerable advantages. One is that it enables him to set aside certain interpretative postures which have become familiar among contemporary analytic commentators on Kant. He associates that rejected approach with Buchdahls description of the Kant constantly contradicts himself club, evident also in Bennetts notorious aim of fighting Kant tooth and nail. However they are expressed such attitudes underline every apparent tension in the text at the expense of trying seriously to understand what Kant is saying. Abelas approach allows him to identify a central theme in the Critique and to compare Kants expression of, and arguments for, it with those of Davidson, Evans, McDowell and others. That theme, located in what Abela calls the priority of judgement thesis seems by contemporary standards to be evidently correct, but also worth further exploration. That positive thesis combines in his account with a rejection of some traditional views about the nature of transcendental idealism. He rejects accounts of that doctrine which represent it as a Berkeleian subjective idealism coupled with a commitment to the existence of things in themselves or noumena. The former is well expressed in his denial that Kant is a Berkeley buttressed with formal a priori scaffolding. The latter is denied in such claims as that The receptivity characteristic of our form of discursive cognition has no need for the involvement of a noumenal input, and that Kants project involvesydenying any epistemological role for noumenal reality (p. 290). His view is that with Kants judgementoriented approach to representation (p. vii) and a related account of objectivity a noumenal input is neither required nor desired (p. 291). Such a view effectively sets aside Strawsons account in The Bounds of Sense of what is called the metaphysics of transcendental idealism, and enables him to focus on the more fruitful empirical realism and its priority of judgement thesis. Abela, surely rightly, takes empirical realism to be about empirical objects, objects of experience, phenomena and not noumena. He denies that empirical realism either is a misleading and disguised form of traditional, empirical, idealism, or needs to be justified within that traditional idealist framework. He consequently represents Kant as rejecting not only Berkeleys position but any associated with what he calls the Cartesian epistemological model (CEM), that is, a traditional empirical idealism. The judgement-oriented approach to representation and the priority of judgement thesis identify objectivity with a genuine truth valuation for synthetic judgements. They move Kant away from a traditional idealism which understands it as a representing relation between subjective mental states, such as sense data, and a real external world of physical objects. Abela notes that such an appeal to judgement and objectivity in judgement shares that background with contemporary debates about realism and anti-realism

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(or idealism). He consequently spends some time comparing Kants position with that of the more recent anti-realists (or idealists) and argues that Kants approach is different. The two basic views to be compared with Kant are those of the Ultimate Realist (UR) and Epistemic Humanist (EH). The former is characterised as an appeal to what is given in experience as transcendental matter (pp. 7-9, 21) and reintroduces that Kantian commitment to things in themselves which Abela rejects. The latter is identified as rejecting realist truth conditions and replacing them with an assertion condition (anti-realist, idealist) account of the semantics of synthetic judgements. Behind both of these opposed accounts of Kant is a conflict between a semantics of ultimate but inaccessible, or recognition transcendent, truth conditions (UR), and a semantics of assertion conditions and warranted assertibility (EH). The assumption in the comparison is that Kants idealism (anti-realism) engages the contemporary discussion among such philosophers as Dummett and Putnam of truth-conditional or assertion-conditional semantics, and of underlying views about effective decidability, bivalence, intuitionist logic and the law of excluded middle. According to Abela Kants position cannot be simply identified with either of these, UR or EH, accounts. Kant accepts an unreflective, even realist, notion of immanent or phenomenal truth but has no commitment either to a transcendent reality of things in themselves or to a deflationary substitute for truth such as assertion conditions or warranted assertibility. However natural it may be to regard these contemporary issues as the up-dated inheritor of the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century debates under the same realist and idealist titles, there is a serious danger of anachronism in such assumptions. There is a temptation even to regard these up-dated versions of the historical discussions as the only issues worth discussing, or as alone providing the substance of the older tradition. If it is asked whether Kants admittedly anthropocentric empirical realism should be understood in terms of antirealist assertion conditions (EH) or of recognition-transcendent truth conditions (UR), Abelas discussion answers it correctly by rejecting both such accounts of Kant. Such a rejection might have been based simply on the charge of evident anachronism, admitted by some contributors to these issues such as Carl Posy, but Abelas discussion takes the issues more seriously and provides useful discussions of those contemporary doctrines independently of Kant. He is also rightly motivated in this by recognising that even though Kant cannot be designated a realist or anti-realist in these terms, he does accept the underlying priority of judgement thesis on which those conflicting contemporary views depend. What is certainly true, and importantly acknowledged in the book, is that the two alternatives, EH and UR, do not exhaust Kants options, and it is that alternative region which Abela seeks to explore within the background thesis about judgement. That goal is driven by two primary considerations which in turn reflect the structure of the argument in the book. First is that his exploration is undertaken with the idea of actually justifying Kants empirical realism. Abela takes Kant not merely to be accepting the (phenomenal, immanent) reality of the realm or realms endorsed in common sense or scientific belief, but actually providing a philosophical justification, or support, for that acceptance. The success of his attempt turns on the extensive discussion of the Analytic of Principles, especially the Analogies and Refutation of Idealism. Each of these sections in the Critique along with the mathematical principles, which involve reference also to the Aesthetic, receives a serious and valuable discussion. Inevitably there are two related questions: whether Abelas version of these passages correctly represents Kant, and whether the arguments so represented are successful in justifying our beliefs about empirical reality. The second point concerns the implications of such an empirical realism for Kants conception of transcendence among the dialectical Ideas (Ideen). Abela focusses on the central dialectical Idea of systematic unity in order to resolve the familiar disagreements

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over Kants treatment of that notion. The discussion is again placed in the context of current realist/anti-realist debate by representing the alternative interpretations as, respectively, of an objective unity of nature or only of a methodological prescription in enquiring into nature. Kants own terminology is, of course, even more complex. The issue might be put by asking whether Kant accepts a genuine (transcendental) necessity in systematic unity or only a natural injunction to enquire in certain open-ended ways. I wont comment further on that issue, partly because I think the association of the alternative positions here with realism and anti-realism is no more compelling or helpful than it is in the discussion of the Analytic. But there is a genuine puzzle in understanding Kants apparently unstable views about dialectical Ideas, and Abelas discussion is a valuable contribution to that issue. I think that he is right to stress, against other commentators such as Guyer, the similarity between Kants account of these issues in the first and third Critiques. The major (that is, non-Dialectical) part of Paul Abelas account rests on the appeal to judgement and the priority of judgement thesis. The approach is elaborated in a comparison with those views of Sellars, Davidson, and latterly McDowell, in which any epistemological role for bare sensations, or inner experiences, is either played down, relocated, or dismissed altogether. The central claim, variously expressed in these philosophers, is that sensations, or inner experiences, can have no role in what is called the space of reasons, or that if we are to speak of such a role then it must be only within the framework of concepts or language. It involves a rejection of Cartesian selfauthenticating inner experiences which act as supposed intermediaries between belief and world. Such views have become very familiar but are ambiguous and controversial both in relation to, and independently of, Kant. Abela takes this judgement-oriented view, with its priority of judgement thesis to be the fundamental guiding thread throughout the Critique, explaining how objectivity is achieved through the categories and their principles, and eventually proving in the Refutation of Idealism that our belief in an objective world is justified against scepticism. There is much that is plausible and correct, and even more that is stimulating and instructive, in such a view; but it is open to some queries about the central theses, whether canvassed by Kant or more recent philosophers, and about their success in achieving what Abela wants to claim for them. Kant for example has at least three theses which express some priority of judgements over other aspects of our experience. In the Metaphysical Deduction he gives a priority to judgements and their forms over their constituent concepts. In the Transcendental Deduction judgements have a priority in defining that agreement and determinacy which provide Kants criteria for objectivity. And in the Refutation of Idealism a priority is attached to outer experience and its judgements over those of inner experience. Abela is more interested in the second and third priorities, although the first plainly has some underlying importance for the others and for the judgement-oriented approach to representation. But the other two contexts, and their arguments about objectivity in the Deduction and the Refutation, are not the same. For one thing, if we make objective judgements about inner experience, then the Deductions priority will hold for both inner and outer experience. If objectivity has to do with genuine truth valuation for judgements, then as far as that argument is concerned no priority between those types of judgement is at issue. The Refutation of Idealism by contrast plainly does canvass a particular priority between outer and inner judgements, even though the formal argument is not explicitly about judgements but about the experience they designate. Something similar holds of the more recent discussions of a priority of judgement thesis. It might signify nothing more than a policy of approaching all philosophical issues

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through the language in which we express our experience. It might, more particularly, signify a rejection of a myth of the given, that is of Sellarss critical views about the existence of, and role for, self-authenticating inner experiences. Even that view is ambiguous. The myth might be rejected on the ground that inner experiences are not selfauthenticating, or that they dont exist, or that they do exist but, whatever their nature, they cannot provide the foundation required in the tradition for our knowledge and experience. All of these claims are present in Sellars, along with the additional idea that judgements of the form yisy have a priority over judgements of the form yseemsy. That latter claim is about certain forms of linguistic expression and says nothing about a general priority of outer experience over inner. The same seems/is distinction can be drawn just as well for inner as for outer experience. Again even if that priority holds it is compatible with the claim that yseemsy judgements also have some priority over yisy judgements. McDowells contribution to these theses is his idea that because experience properly requires both sense and understanding, as Kant insists, there cannot be an even notionally separable contribution from the senses alone. In all this variety of positions held by Kant and the more modern theorists, which of the latter views can be ascribed to Kant? Kant thinks that philosophy deals in concepts but is not analytic, and needs also to make reference to other fundamental cognitive powers such as intuition. He accepts that inner experiences are not self-authenticating, both because inner experience depends on outer, and also because the objective validity and reality of experience rest on a priori concepts, intuitions, and principles. He disagrees with McDowells claim that sensibility cannot be even notionally separated from understanding. Although McDowells thesis may have its origin in Kants requirement that only through the union of the two faculties can knowledge arise, Kant reserves a notional place for the distinctive contribution of the senses. Many of those Kantian positions reflect Abelas priority of judgement thesis, but others, such as the insistence on cognitive powers such as sensibility, do not. Abelas development of his thesis in the principles gives some indication of the range of his argument, but the disparities indicate something of its limitations. There are two particular points where those disparities seem to limit his discussion. The first is the position of the mathematical principles, and the second is the scope and success of the formal Refutation of Idealism. The first is important because if, with Abela, you take the view that there can be no, even notional, reference to the senses or intuitions apart from our concepts or understanding, then the mathematical principles become problematic. This is because they, unlike the Analogies, are supposed to be about a pure intuition notionally separate from the understanding. The second is important because if, with Abela, Kant is held to aim there for a refutation of a general scepticism about truth, objectivity, and experience, then the argument is likely to be over-ambitious. Abela recognises the difficulty in fitting the mathematical principles into his scheme. He asks (p. 116): How do we accommodate something that embodies judgement but which without the Analogies is nothing to us? Another way of putting it arises from the characterisation of intuition as indeterminate. If Kants aim is to show how the mathematical categories match an indeterminate sensibility what could be meant by the understandings determining something that is simply indeterminate? His response to these problems is captured in passages from pp. 116-117. He says: Empirical intuition is not bereft of cognitive significance and structure, and: We should not be barred from investigating the pre-objective role of the Axioms and Anticipations merely on the grounds that the content and temporal structure they yield is made fully determinate only withythe Analogies. Finally, while we cannot objectively represent the indeterminate level on its ownywe can make intelligible why low-level judgement must still be at work

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at this level of cognition, and we can explore how the structures of empirical intuition reveal the underlying activity of judgement without accepting that theseyon their own render cognitive content to the mind. These problems are just as much Kants as Abelas, but it remains unclear how intuition can be both indeterminate and structured, both lack judgement and also reveal its underlying activity. The claim about the Refutation of Idealism is that it offers a rebuttal of a global scepticism about our knowledge and experience. It does so by appealing to a Kantian holism which entails that the collective force of our beliefs about the empirical world cannot be false. Such an account echoes a view of Davidsons, but it is difficult to see that view in the Refutation of Idealism, which seems to be more narrowly focussed and does not make explicit that Davidsonian appeal to the collective force of our beliefs. The argument is more narrowly focussed since it is explicitly directed at a weak Cartesian or strong Berkeleian scepticism about external objects. Since it is designed to turn the arguments of such idealists against themselves it seems to concern just that kind of traditional idealist scepticism rather than a wider, global, scepticism about knowledge or experience in general. Kants position throughout the Critique is undeniably holistic but it is difficult to see that character emerging in the Refutation of Idealism exactly in Davidsons form. Paul Abela takes it that Kants judgement-oriented approach shows how global scepticism fails, so that to envisage the falsity of our total governing structure of representation is (variously) vacuous (p. 206), or of dubious merit (p. 207), or inherently unintelligible (p. 208). The Refutation argument seems both less ambitious and more carefully targeted than that. But it might also be observed that Kant himself undoubtedly thinks that we can envisage something like the failure of our structure of representation in other possible worlds with subjects whose cognitive faculties are different from ours. Kant does not so much canvass Davidsons argument against the global sceptic as, apparently, concede the sceptical possibility, but very sensibly decline to draw the sceptics conclusion. It would be easy to adjust Abelas conclusions to take these problems into account, and they are, to repeat, problems with Kant as much as with Abela himself. The general structure and thesis in his book are both thoroughly convincing and well developed. As a representative of an anti-traditional approach to Kant the book will be valuable for students at all levels, and can be recommended to anyone with an interest in Kant. Graham Bird University of Wales grabird@supanet

Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition, by Michael Steven Green. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, 200 pp. ISBN 0-252-02735-3 $29.95 In this book Green offers a substantial and thorough examination of Nietzsches treatment of epistemological issues. His analysis covers such topics as the contentious error theory, naturalism, the nature of judgment, the status of logic, consciousness, causality, space, time, antirealism and the self-reference problem. Green contends that Nietzsches treatment of such issues must be understood in the context of a fundamental tension in his writings between naturalism and antinaturalism. The central and guiding argument of the book is that Nietzsches approach to epistemology is paradoxical (p. 7). According to

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Green, Nietzsche adopts a naturalistic approach to epistemology while retaining a commitment to a transcendental antinaturalist conception of an objectively valid judgment. Green contends that Nietzsche naturalizes all our judgments but that in so doing he casts doubt upon the possibility of any truth, including the truth of the very naturalism that motivates his philosophy (p. 7). Thus Nietzsche, Green argues, ultimately denies that objectively valid judgments are possible. As a consequence Green contends that Nietzsche is forced to adopt a noncognitivist position that is tantamount to the claim that we are unable to think at all and that our judgments can neither be true nor false. One of the principal strengths of Greens analysis is the manner in which he successfully combines sensitivity to historical context with a broader issue-led investigation of Nietzsches views on truth and knowledge. He argues that in order to fully understand these views we must appreciate the historical context in which Nietzsche wrote. By emphasizing the historical dimension to Nietzsches thought Green follows in the footsteps of writers like Peter Poellner (Nietzsche and Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) and Robin Small (Nietzsche in Context, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001) who seek to understand Nietzsche in the context of his contemporaries. In so doing, he seeks to temper the trend in Nietzsche studies that attempts to make sense of Nietzsches writings solely in the context of our own contemporaries such as Derrida, Foucault, Tarski and Quine (p.3). Greens historical analysis involves an in-depth investigation of the Kantian background to Nietzsches thought. Kants influence on Nietzsche, he argues, is mediated by the writings of Afrikan Spir and centers round the issue of objectively valid judgment. Green outlines how for Kant, an objectively valid judgment must entail a necessary and atemporal connection of our representations in contrast to Humean psychological laws of association. Objectively valid judgment, for Kant, requires that intuitions be brought under concepts. However, Green demonstrates that Kants attempt to show how the categories apply to sensations results in an oscillation between emphasizing either the formal/ spontaneous aspect of cognition or the sensory/passive component. Green argues that Kants failure to show how the timeless preconditions of thought can be married to the temporal flow of sensations gives rise to Spirs view that the gap between the two cannot be bridged. Thus Spir argues that the manifold of sensation cannot be thought. Confronted with what he sees as the unbridgeable gap between experience and thought, Spir contends that the only objectively valid judgment that is possible is about an atemporal and absolute unity that stands above the temporal flow of sensations (p. 48). As such, absolute becoming (the occurrence of events in time) is said to be incompatible with either the truth or the falsity of a judgment. It is this view of cognition that, Green claims, Nietzsche inherits from Spir. However, unlike Spir, who argues that reality is essentially unitary and simple, Nietzsche stresses the reality of absolute becoming as it is revealed through the senses and the temporal succession of our mental contents. What is especially interesting about Greens analysis is the manner in which he appeals to the Spirean background to Nietzsches thought to reappraise the cognitivist reading of Nietzsches epistemology put forward by the analytic strand of Nietzsche scholarship, particularly by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter. Green contends that these writers have underestimated Nietzsches claim that the world is becoming. They, according to Green, see Nietzsches doctrine of becoming as a means to deny the possibility of a priori metaphysics. However, Green contends that Nietzsches claim regarding the reality of becoming is in fact part of a sophisticated argument against the possibility of objectively valid judgment (p. 51). In so doing, Green points out that, rather than supporting the cognitive interpretation of Nietzsches naturalism, the doctrine of becoming actually gives us full license to take Nietzsches statements of the error theory and noncognitivism seriously. Greens claim is

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that, although Nietzsche is a naturalist, he still holds to a Kantian/Spirean transcendental and antinaturalist account of objectively valid judgment. Such judgments presuppose, according to Nietzsche, timeless categories that cannot be reconciled with the reality of absolute becoming. The consequence of this failure of reconciliation is, Green argues, that Nietzsches approach to epistemological questions is fundamentally noncognitivist in character. However, although he argues that Nietzsche is a noncognitivist, Green is concerned to deny the postmodern view that Nietzsche replaces truth with mere aesthetics by way of judgment. In so doing, Green is concerned to counteract the anything goes (p. 12) view of belief interpretation of Nietzsches writings. He argues that Nietzsche retains the view that our judgments are non-trivial and that we can adjudicate between correct and incorrect judgments. In this way, the actual substantive claims that Green attributes to Nietzsche are close to those attributed to him by Clarks cognitivist reading. For example, Green agrees that Nietzsche thinks that his own claims such as his criticisms of Christianity, asceticism and Platonism are correct. Thus Green denies Clarks charge that a noncognitivist reading renders judgments arbitrary and trivial. However, he argues in contrast to the cognitivist that our feeling of cognitive constraint is not to be attributed to concepts but rather to the self-disciplined goal directedness of our drives. Green compares Nietzsches naturalist account of constraint to the emotivists appeal to unconditional desires over conditional desires. In so doing, he argues that our judgments are rooted in our current affective make-up but that, contrary to Clarks objection, our values are not right just because I value them (conditional desire) but rather that they are valuable unconditionally. Such desires are said to be unconditional because they aim at states of affairs other than the satisfaction of our desires themselves (p. 139). It is through this comparison with ethical emotivism that Green counteracts the charge that Nietzsche is either an ethical/ epistemic hedonist who claims that my values/judgments are correct only if I desire them or a nihilist who claims that we cannot prefer one value/judgment over another. It would be incorrect, however, to conclude on the basis of this that Greens Nietzsche is a relatively uncontroversial one. He has not simply given us the cognitivist Nietzsche under a new name; rather he employs the Spirean background to Nietzsches thought to show how Nietzsches statement of the error theory might be plausible. Contrary to Clark, and in an argument that closely mirrors one previously put forward by R. Lanier Anderson (Overcoming Charity: The Case of Maudemarie Clarks Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy , in Nietzsche-Studien, 25, 1996, 30741), Green claims that the error theory is present throughout the entire corpus of Nietzsches writings. Green contends that the error theory arises not in the context of comparisons between our judgments and reality, but rather from the Spirean thesis that our concept of an empirical object harbours an antinomy and is fundamentally contradictory. The antinomy ensues from the demand for a union of being with becoming that cannot be realized. It is in this specific sense that Green argues that Nietzsches noncognitivism (which denies the possibility of objectively valid judgments) is compatible with the error theory (which claims that our judgments about the world are false). Nietzsches acceptance of the error theory bears serious philosophical consequences that Green contends have not been given sufficient attention by commentators. He outlines how Spirs argument that true knowledge is of a timeless realm of being endorses the thetic side of Kants antinomy. Nietzsche, according to Green, accepts Spirs view regarding the falsity of empirical knowledge. However, he denies that we have some alternative knowledge of being. Rather, Nietzsche contends, according to Green, that To the extent that we think at all, what we think must be false (p. 60). Thus whereas Spir emphasizes the thetic position of the antinomy, Nietzsche endorses the

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antithetic position. Green argues that his adoption of the antithetic position leads Nietzsche to reject both synchronic and diachronic self-identity and to adopt antithetic theories of substance, space, time and causality. Nietzsches world of becoming is thus a world without substances and causal relations, within which things happen at no particular rate of time and things exist in no particular place (p. 7). However, Green also argues that Nietzsches error theory is prone to certain inconsistencies. He claims that the error theory is plausible independently of any claim about what reality is like. To the extent that Nietzsche attempts to articulate absolute becoming (through the will to power thesis), Green claims that Nietzsche brings his ontology to the brink of incoherence (p. 92). For Green contends that Nietzsches attempt to articulate absolute becoming is an attempt to express the inexpressible (p. 160). Moreover, Green argues that if absolute becoming exists then it is not clear how error is possible because it is a mystery how we think in the first place. Consequently, Greens argument in chapter five that Nietzsches noncognitivism is ultimately subject to the problem of self-reference and that he is unable to overcome this difficulty is particularly significant. However, Green contends that self-referential inconsistency is not a reason to dismiss Nietzsches epistemology. According to Green, the most significant aspect of Nietzsches naturalism is not its referential capacity but rather its ability to induce an affirmation of the drives that inform our judgments through the cultivation of self-discipline. In this vein Greens analysis is similar to that put forward by Ken Gemes (Nietzsches Critique of Truth in John Richardson and Brian Leiter (eds.) Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and others who argue that, for Nietzsche, the ultimate significance of our values resides not in their truth or falsity but rather in the practical effect that such values have on human life. However, Green doubts that Nietzsches project is ultimately successful in this regard, due to the fact that Nietzsche has often been perceived as encouraging a lack of discipline rather than a focused and resolute investigation of the world (p. 162). In his introduction Green claims that his aim is to present what Nietzsche actually says rather than what his readers think he ought to have said. The cognitivist reading of Nietzsche put forward by Clark and others, Green contends, is motivated not by an appreciation of what Nietzsche actually says but by a desire to vindicate reason and rigorous argumentation in academic discourse in general (p. 3). Green here points to what he sees as a deficiency amongst the Nietzsche commentaries written in the English language. Indeed he argues that noncognitivist readings such as the one that he puts forward in this book have met with more sympathy amongst German language interpreters of Nietzsches writings. However, if Green is correct in his claim that he presents an accurate picture of Nietzsche, then it is difficult to see how Nietzsches writings can be a serious source of inspiration for philosophers outside the Nietzsche canon. Ultimately, in Greens analysis, Nietzsches naturalism collapses into incoherence. His ontological theses such as the will to power are unsuccessful attempts to articulate that which cannot be articulated, and his epistemological views make sense only to the extent that they show that thought is impossible. Greens rather literal interpretation of Nietzsches notebook entries will be a cause of concern for some readers. For Greens Spirean interpretation of Nietzsche as adopting an antithetic account of reality but a thetic standard of objectively valid judgment commits him to a metaphysics of opposites that Nietzsche himself claims to reject (Human All Too Human, 1; Beyond Good and Evil, 2). Moreover, Greens argument that Nietzsche remains committed to the Kantian standard of objectively valid judgment sits uncomfortably with Nietzsches warning in Schopenhauer as Educator, 3, that Kants philosophy represents a despair of truth that results in relativism and scepticism. Nietzsches

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alleged commitment to Kants antinaturalist understanding of cognition is further called into question when we consider those many passages in Nietzsches writings that suggest that he thinks that Kants epistemology is ultimately sceptical due to the reference to the thing-in-itself (Twilight of the Idols, IV). In such passages Nietzsche claims that Kant understands the thing-in-itself as the unknowable but ultimate standard of reality. Moreover, it is questionable whether Nietzsche fully appreciated Kants transcendental idealism and its distinctness from empirical idealism. In The Philosopher, 106, Nietzsche describes Kants theory of knowledge as the view that the world has its reality only in man. It is tossed back and forth like a ball in the heads of men. Here Nietzsche arguably accepts Schopenhauers thesis that Kant is an inconsistent Berkeleian who divorces the humanly made (empirical idealism) world from reality as it is in itself. All of the above suggest that Nietzsche thinks that atemporal and invariable concepts such as Kants categories are unable to forge a necessary connection between our judgments and the ultimate object of knowledge. If Nietzsche had accepted Kants transcendental idealism, then the object of knowledge would be the empirically real world. However, if Nietzsche was not fully cognizant of Kants transcendental idealism then it seems that the Kantian object of knowledge is, for Nietzsche, the thing-in-itself from which our human knowledge must always be divorced. Since the claim that Nietzsche is a noncognitivist ultimately relies on his commitment to Kantian antinaturalist standards of objectively valid judgment it may be more appropriate, in light of the above, to describe Nietzsches project as a redefinition of what constitutes knowledge rather than as a rejection of its possibility altogether. Such a redefinition is suggested, for example, by Nietzsches appeal to perspectival objectivity in Genealogy of Morality, III, 12. However, despite these questions, Greens book is an extremely thought provoking and challenging study that opens up a rich historical examination of Nietzsches writings. To the extent that he argues that such historical analyses have not yet been completed (p. 16), this study opens up the field of Nietzsche studies for further investigation. In particular, it shows the importance of addressing Nietzsches notebook entries in their entirety rather than just those that have been translated into English. There is, it seems, more work to be done in the area of Nietzsche studies. Tsarina Doyle Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy Milltown Park, Dublin 6 Ireland tsarinadoyle@hotmail.com

The Minds Affective Life: A Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Inquiry, by Gemma Corradi Fiumara. Hove; Brunner-Routledge, 2001, 174 pp. ISBN 1-58391-153-7 hb 40.00 1-58391-154-5 pb 17.99 Over the last couple of decades there has occurred a discernible renewal of interest across a variety of disciplines in the topic of emotion. Various widely read works such as Descartes Error, by neurologist Antonio Damasio, and Emotional Intelligence, by psychologist Daniel Goleman, have, in their own ways, challenged conventional assumptions about emotion and, in particular, its relation to cognition. The classically modern view the error that Damasio imputes to Descartes construed cognitive states and processes as essentially affectless and, conversely, treated emotions as brute and unintelligent feelings.

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That is, cognition and affect had been dichotomised in terms of the conventional mindbody distinction, and the idea of cool-headed affectless thought had shaded into the exalted, often exclusive, epistemic value that modern Western culture had attributed to the natural sciences conceived as models of dispassionate objectivity. Thought of as located outside of cognition in this way, emotions could only be regarded as having the negative cognitive status of being disrupters to cool-headed thinking. Against this, however, Damasio and Goleman have contributed to a broad coalition of revisionist views which Fiumara describes as extending from the domain of psychoanalysis to the neurosciences [which] seems to converge in the belief that affects and intelligence may function as a synergy (p. 80). In studying individuals with brain injuries that had resulted in affective but, apparently, not cognitive malfunction, Damasio found that the ability to perform normally on clinical tests of cognitive functioning could coexist with the hopeless performance of everyday life. The lives of these people suggested to him the idea of an impairment of a type of practical intelligence in which affective states were crucial for the capacity to judge or evaluate situations in ways that reflected their pertinence for those agents lives. Fiumaras interpretation on the synergy between affects and cognition builds on these sorts of revisionist approaches but takes them to more radical conclusions. For Fiumara, these sorts of studies of the relation of emotions to cognition must ultimately rebound on the deep underlying epistemological assumptions presupposed by modern culture and, indeed, presupposed by many of these revisionary studies of the emotions themselves. Drawing on a combination of psychoanalysis and the types of antirepresentationalist epistemological approaches found especially in contemporary feminist philosophy, Fiumara is suspicious of the traditional paradigm of a cool-headed affectless reason, not just in terms of its narrowness, but in terms of the repressed affective states she discerns within it. Instead she suggests turning a psychoanalytically attuned ear to Western epistemic culture, listening within its expressions for the possible affective orientations and processes implicit, and yet repressed, within them. Thus, as she says in the introduction, the book is an attempt to explore the affective components of apparently non-affective human enterprises (p. 2). This aspect of her project leads her to counter traditional epistemologically centred philosophy with a stance she calls epistemophilic. If affects are the ways of feeling our own modes of being alive (p. 56) and are implicated in our cognitive processes, we may ask what they reveal about those particular modes of being alive that constitute inquiry. Traditional epistemology has taken an abstract conception of reason which, she acknowledges, has particular legitimate uses, but has decontextualised it and generalised it into a conception of reason per se and, furthermore, into a type of ideal of human existence. But the cost of this type of reason is that it functions on the basis of a repression of the sorts of affective states originally motivating it, resulting in an alienation of reason from its affective resources which ultimately constitutes a mutilation of our potential for thinking and relating (p. 22). In contrast with such epistemology, from the epistemophilic stance we can increasingly strive to think of the minds life in terms of caring interactions and projects of self-creation (p. 22). With the idea that cool-headed reason might actually be based on a desire to shape and control, predict and utilise whatever objects of inquiry (p. 41), Fiumaras approach joins with relatively familiar critical positions within modern philosophy, from Heidegger, say, to the type of critique of instrumental reason of the Frankfurt school. But Fiumaras psychoanalytic orientation allows her to get considerably more nuanced than this: we are asked, for example, to consider what passes for distance and objectivity as the possible

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effects of the operation of a primitive psychic defence mechanism brought to bear to protect the organism against various negative affects. The cool-headed reason aspired to might thus really be the manifestation of a type of pathological indifference, a state of mind prevalent in contemporary life that is more dangerous than any other psychic menace, in that it functions as an almost irresistible seduction it is painless, costless, invisible, and increasingly effective against any suffering (p. 141). From this perspective the agent of the idealised rationality might be seen to be impaired in ways analogous to Damasios brain-impaired patients, unable to mobilise and respond appropriately to affects and hence unable to articulate an evaluative orientation to the world. Fiumaras type of critical orientation towards the enlightenments rationalist hypostatisation of disembodied and affectless reason, together with its focus on the affective dimension of human life and the idea of individual self-constitution recalls certain types of early nineteenth-century romantic forms of cultural criticism. As with Fichtes pre-figuration of romanticism, Fiumara has extended the Kantian approach of charting the necessary conditions of human knowledge and thought into the realm of the immediacy of embodied feeling. Knowledge, then, is regarded as the end-point of a process of the symbolic articulation of such initial affective states, rather than primarily the representation of some objectively existing state of affairs. As within much romantic thought, Fiumara focuses on the threat to particularity and self-awareness by the levelling nature of the enlightenment goals of objective and universal representation. As with many of the romantics too, Fiumaras intellectual interest in affects is tied to a critical reflection (in her case, a psychoanalytically shaped one) on modern culture and society. It seems that for her there is something about the deteriorating nature of our affective lives that gives an urgency to this type of inquiry. As affective orientation underlies our evaluative capacity, our loss of affective literacy renders our lives centreless and prey to political manipulation. Fiumara always has an eye on the fact that there are organisations, parties, or groups that relieve us from the risky management of genuine affects: they coach us into the proper and satisfying allocation of our emotional forces in such a way that we grossly misrepresent and falsify core affects (p. 141). Hans-Georg Gadamer famously commented on the paradox facing the inquiries of those nineteenth-century romantic historians who, faced with what they thought to be the devastating effects of modern societys dislocation from earlier organic traditions, attempted to reconstitute the link by scientific history: regarding history as a scientific object of knowledge, Gadamer contended, presupposed the sort of dislocation from it that it sought to overcome. Fiumara has analogous concerns about how to conduct an inquiry into the nature of affect. She points to the self-defeating nature of simply extending our traditional objective modes of inquiry into the realm of our affective lives which will not be saved, or enhanced, by the power of theories (p. 66). Rather, the salvation of our affective life will occur through a transformed insight into our deeper self, and through transformed vocabularies with which to approach the predicament (p. 66). However, as rich and suggestive as Fiumaras approach here is, it is unclear to me how the invention of the new vocabularies she advocates for discussing our affective lives is meant to be kept separate from the construction of new theories of the affects. Moreover, even if they could be kept separate, it seems unclear why new and sophisticated ways of talking about the affects should be free from the type of reification that Fiumara seems concerned about with respect to theories of affect. Finally, while appreciative of Fiumaras basic point, in reading the book I often found myself looking for some more sustained and explicit theorising of this subject domain. The down-side of her admirable ability to range across a broad domain of contemporary approaches to the subject is that quite a bit of the process of

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mounting her case has been done by a type of lateral linking of diverse approaches at the expense of a sustained and conceptually unified, that is, more theoretical development of it. Paul Redding Department of Philosophy The University of Sydney NSW, 2006 Australia paul.redding@philosophy.usyd.edu.au

rung. Akten des IX. Internationalen Kantkongresses, 5 vols., Kant und die Berliner Aufkla edited by Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Ralph Schumacher. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001, 3264 pp. ISBN 3-11-016979-7 hb h168.00 Kant and the Berlin Enlightenment is a subject that might be described as a large area, yet it makes up only a small, and by no means overrepresented, part of what is found in this edition of that title. For the Akten des IX. Internationalen Kantkongresses, which took place at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2000, comprises no less than five volumes and 352 articles in German, English and French, representing to a very large extent, in both systematic and historical respects, the current state of Kant scholarship as a whole. This is due to the editors decision to document almost all the papers given at the congress, so that along with established big names of Kant scholarship such as Henry Allison, Konrad atrice LonCramer, Eckart Fo rster, Michael Friedman, Paul Guyer, Dieter Henrich, Be guenesse, Onora ONeill and Allen Wood the list of authors includes numerous younger academics and graduate students of varying intellectual and geographical background. An undertaking such as this is obviously beyond simple characterization in terms of dominant approaches, as it is any representative selection of papers on the reviewers part. In the following I will concentrate on a few of the contributions to the congress. However, if one nonetheless starts by looking briefly at the contributions as a whole, it is conspicuous that they are mostly characterized not so much by the attempt to use analytic means to bring out a systematically tenable core of Kants philosophy as by attention to a broad canon of individual problems posed by Kants various texts. In terms of content, interest in the justificatory arguments that Kant called Deductions has waned noticeably. Instead, individual questions in the foundation of the sciences have come to the fore, with and this is a new feature convincing papers often being those that focus on following a historical development through the individual periods of Kants thought. The paper by atrice Longuenesse, which follows Kants attempts to determine and justify the Be principle of sufficient reason from the Nova Dilucidatio through to the various texts of his critical philosophy, can be regarded as an example of this. On the whole there is only seldom a break with established problems of Kant scholarship, but from time to time the authors deliberations, where successful, do achieve considerable increases in precision and deeper understanding of Kants complex and multifaceted work. In keeping with this latter observation, the vast majority of contributions deal only with Kants own position and do not discuss his work in the context of other approaches. So, for example, the relationship between Kant and German Idealism has lost all its interest, at least among Kantians.

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One of the central themes in Kants own work at the intersection just referred to between theoretical philosophy and the sciences is surely the relationship between Kants theory of space and geometry. This is not merely a matter of what stance one should take on Kants thesis that the propositions of geometry are synthetic and a priori. The brevity alone of the expositions found in the first Critique and the Prolegomena makes it difficult to understand how exactly Kant imagined the assumptions of his theory of space and procedures in Euclidean geometry dovetailing. The paper by Michael Wolff, who is at home with both Kant scholarship and the history of geometry, provides important insights on this subject. Wolff emphasizes first that according to Kant geometrical knowledge is based not only on intuition, and hence space as its form, but equally on the operative use of concepts, above all the concept of extensive magnitude. This insight is familiar to the schooled Kantian, but it gains its keenness only when one sees how Wolff pursues it using the example of the Euclidean straight line and parallel axioms. The straight line axiom initially states that the straight line is the space between two points. For Kant, according to Wolff, we attain insight into the correctness of the alternative Archimedean formulation the straight line is the shortest connection between two points only when the intuition of straight lines is subsumed under the concept of magnitude. The fact that we can build up particular lines and sections of space, using imagination, only by successive steps in our intuition, means that magnitude is simultaneously presupposed as extensive magnitude. But, assuming divisibility, not only can the straight line connecting two points be distinguished as that line of which all parts are similar. If one part is taken as a unit of measurement and it is assumed that this is to be placed either on the line itself or on its chord, it also becomes clear that this has to occur least often for the straight line, which is therefore the shortest connection. In the attempt to relate the Kantian principle of understanding all intuitions are extensive magnitudes to the Euclidean parallel axiom too, Wolff has to rely more heavily on speculative considerations, since there is no mention of the parallel axiom in the relevant sections of the Critique and the Prolegomena. Wolff inserts two steps to close the gap: First he assumes that if space is an extensive magnitude, so that further segments can be added to any line, it must then also be possible for any given geometrical figure to find a similar figure, differing in size (i.e. magnitude) but of the same proportions. Wolff then looks to the history of geometry and finds that the proof of the parallel axiom developed by the English mathematician Wallis (1616 1703) relies on a proposition which is to be understood as a special case of the conclusion Wolff had drawn in his first step. On this assumption the proof of the parallel axiom (If two straight lines form interior angles with a third, the sum of which is smaller than two right angles, then with sufficient lengthening they will intersect) can be summarized roughly as follows: First one of the straight lines is shifted so that it intersects the second and hence, together with the third, forms a triangle; from the principle of proportional variability it then follows that there is a similar, larger triangle which can be proven to have a corner lying on the two straight lines in their original position. The question as to whether Kant had in mind the above consequence of his principle of extensive magnitude and its relation to the proof ultimately remains founded on considerations of plausibility (Might Kant have known about Walliss proof through Ka stner?). Nonetheless, one merit of Wolffs account is that it allows one to move from the universal statement that we attain insight based on the intuitive case of individual geometrical figures to a determination of this insight which matches the way mathematicians in fact proceed and this at least on Kantian foundations. It is less clear what Wolffs considerations on the possible status of a Kantian theory of space in view of Einsteins relativity theory, which he himself understands as preliminary,

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might amount to. Although Wolff points out that relativity theory brings a change in the object with space as a medium of extensive magnitudes being replaced by kinematics, the basic concepts of which are defined only for events he does not want to assume that geometry, independently of experience as a pure science of space, has a residual subject matter of its own that in itself provides its concepts with meaning, since, also according to Kant, concepts would be meaningless if they had no possible application to empirical intuition. But Wolff disputes the conclusion that we can acquire the empirical meaning of geometrical concepts only by means of corporeal measures, which are antecedently subject to the laws of physics. Rather, he claims, for Kant a more or less exact drawing of a circle or observation of a spreading wave is sufficient evidence that the geometrical concept of the circle is not meaningless (I, 231). Note the negative formulation. The background to this is that (1) as a consequence of strongly emphasizing the conceptual side of geometrical knowledge, Wolff restricts the role of intuition to the provision of meaning; and (2) in intuition the empirical side must also be considered, where exact equivalents of pure geometrical objects are never found. One must ask of this attempted positioning of Kant how inexact empirical objects, which are supposed to constitute meaning, are to be related to the exact meaning of mathematical objects without being exposed to reservations like those pressed by Frege in his theory of numbers. This question emerges all the more clearly as Wolff avoids assuming an ideal and itself pure access, based on intuitional conditions, just as he avoids the precision of mathematical physics since this would lead back to the tension with relativity theory. The question as to what role can be ascribed to Kants theses following the turbulent development of geometry in the 19th century is considered by K. N. Ihmigs paper. He chooses a point of departure similar to Wolffs: If, as the above principle of proportional variability already shows, geometrical properties do not depend on the size and position of certain figures, then these cannot be drawn on to answer the new question that arose at the end of the century namely, how one geometry can be distinguished over another. This can, however, be done by relying on properties that remain invariant under a class of transformations such as rotations and reflections. Following on from Felix Klein, who showed that the set of such transformations forms a group in the mathematical sense, Ihmig outlines a modified Kantian programme seeking to replace the idea of an infinite given magnitude and for Kant (B 39) this means the idea of space as a form of intuition itself with the concept of a group and its deduction. But against this it must be urged that this would then leave quite open what role intuition still has to play and on what basis a geometry, the transformations of which are to fall under the group concept, is selected. Because of the successive intellectualization of geometry in the 19th century, Ihmig is subsequently only able to attribute to intuition and the use of the individual intuitive object in universal geometrical apprehension a role within a non-psychological heuristics. In so doing he departs from discussion of the quid juris? question, and thus, on the one hand, distances himself further from Kant. On the other hand, even his reflections on heuristics seem to be guided by the paradigm case of Euclidean geometry. But, if this is the starting point, the question arises whether one might not arrive at a further-reaching defence of intuition by investigating how geometrical theorems acquire their meaning. Such a position would be Kantian in a broader sense, if a connection could be established between the intuitively grounded criterion of meaning and the validity of geometrical axioms. This would represent an alternative to the intellectualist procedure of Hilberts implicit definitions on which Ihmigs description of the situation is based. However, such an approach would also have to deal with the difficulties that we have already met with Wolff.

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Eckart Fo rsters paper Kants Philosophical Construction traces a long line of development through Kants theoretical philosophy. In doing this Fo rster too is not without reference to geometry since the application of the Kantian concept of construction is most clearly appreciated in this domain. The Critique of Pure Reason defines the concept of construction as the procedure of a priori exhibition of the intuition corresponding to a concept. It is this procedure that serves as the basis of the, previously mentioned, description of the geometrical mode of knowledge, according to which in the intuitive demonstration of a Euclidean proof (e.g. that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 1801) one sees the validity of the general thesis in the one presented case of a particular triangle. Kant distinguished this, both in his 1762 essay on the clarity of principles and in 1781, from philosophical knowledge, which is abstract conceptual knowledge not based on intuitive exhibition. If one considers this distinction, the pressing question is what, in a Kantian sense, a philosophical construction might be and what task it assumes within the architecture of the critical philosophy. Although this question is most pertinent to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, in which a metaphysical and hence philosophical construction is involved, this is largely eclipsed in Fo rsters account by a second issue which he reconstructs from the development of the first Critique. This is the question as to whether the proof of the categorial concepts meaning and their relation to reality the well-known aim of the first Critique is already achieved in the so-called Schematism chapter by relating the categorial concepts solely to determinations of time, as the framework within which everything sensible is given, but not to the other form of intuition (space). For Fo rster defends the bold thesis that philosophical construction, which he attempts to bring out from the Metaphysical Foundations, has precisely the task of completing the unfinished proof of the categories reality. In this way, according to Fo rster, a successively shifting problem opens up a line of development that can be followed from the key topic of the first Critique through to Kants theory of the human body as a natural machine in the Opus postumum. Considered more closely Fo rsters argument proceeds in three steps. In the first step he claims that the necessity of a spatial schematism is justified by the increased value acquired by space, in the transition from the first to the second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, as a result of Kants attempt to distinguish himself from Berkeley. Kant argues that experience presupposes change, which is possible only when at the same time there is something permanent. This in turn implies simultaneity, which we attain not by time alone, in which everything is subject to sequential progression, but only in connection with space. If this is correct, a schematism that considers temporal determinations alone would establish the possibility of categories referring to intuitions only on an account of this possibility which, because it does not lead to the full sense of experience, remains one-sided. In his second step Fo rster urges that we must now look to the Metaphysical Foundations and identifies the deliberations found there on the concept of matter as (1) a genuine case of the philosophical construction sought, and (2) as an attempt to catch up on the missing schematism of outer sense. In this way the question of outer senses possible relation to reality becomes the question as to the conditions in which matter concentrates into bodies that can affect our senses. According to Kant, the formation of bodies is possible only when this is underlain by a construction of distinct forces that can be shown to be working in different ways, since it would not otherwise be possible to explain differences in density that first lead to bodies and hence to different intuitions. Of the many difficulties with this conception, which Fo rster knowledgeably and precisely brings out, there is one above all that in his eyes leads beyond the Metaphysical Foundations to the development of the Opus postumum. This is the fact that the attractive force deployed by Kant suggests its

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identification with the attractive force in the law of gravitation, which, however, already presupposes differences in density. In the third step Fo rster then characterizes the new point of departure for the Opus postumum: On the one hand, aether theory can explain the formation of bodies, but does not do so by means of a philosophical construction; on the other hand, the problem of establishing categories relation to reality via outer sense has still not been resolved. Fo rster identifies Kants theory of the body as a natural machine as an attempt to solve this problem. In this theory the outer senses relation to reality remains bound to the capacity of forces to exert influence; but I can experience these only when I myself exert force, which is made possible by the mechanical character of my body. This means that ultimately ones own body becomes the mediating authority that makes available the procedures which furnish concepts with intuitions and as which construction and the schematism were defined. The broad historical and thematic span, with its simultaneous concentration on a specific problem, makes Fo rsters paper outstanding, but not everything that enters into his deliberations is equally convincing. Thus Kants obscure thesis in the Schematism chapter that it is only time itself to which what is permanent in appearance corresponds (A 143, B 183) can point to difficulties in accounting for the plurality of stable substances on the basis of the temporal schematism alone, a move underpinning Fo rsters first step. Less obvious is the issue of whether Fo rsters new determination of the task of the Metaphysical Foundations and its conception of matter can be carried out in the way he sketches. In particular a question arises here concerning the fact, emphasized by Fo rster himself, that the construction of matter is based on an empirical datum and must proceed from an empirical concept of matter. The question is whether this is actually compatible with the description of the schemata of categorial concepts in the first Critique, which characterizes these as formal and pure condition[s] of sensibility (A 140, B 179). Yet if this connection cannot be established, it would be fatal for the whole set up of Fo rsters interpretation. For since the individual problems that Fo rster seeks to bring out in the conception of construction of matter have little to do with the task of establishing the reality of the categories, the Opus postumum can only be linked with the first Critique via the Metaphysical Foundations if it is settled that the overall function of the construction of matter corresponds to that of the schematism. But it is not only Fo rsters thesis that we cannot settle for the first Critique and must turn to the Opus postumum that depends on the continuity of the question; so too does the question of which problems the theorems of the Opus postumum should be considered as contributing to. The authors great strength can be seen, however, in that one gains a multitude of insights into Kants work notwithstanding these concerns. If the Metaphysical Foundations represent one central point of reference for exploring the Opus postumum and its thesis of the human body as a natural machine, then the third Critique, and particularly its theory of the living, is the other. On this matter the paper by Dina Emundts provides a circumspect inventory of the problem and the conceptual distinctions in both works. The paper restrains from any strongly accented theses concerning historical development, with the difference lying, according to the author, in nuance. Thus for Emundts there is no reason to assume that in the Opus postumum Kant retracted the thesis that the explanation of the origin of organisms cannot be objectively valid, since it presupposes a concept of causality as an effect of the whole on its parts which deviates from the category of causality and which we cannot render intelligible. What has changed, however, are the definitions of the analogies developed by Kant around the concept of purposiveness which he attributes to the efficient relationship of the

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whole to its parts. Thus, although the analogy with action is already set up in the talk of purpose in the Critique of Judgement, it is only with the faculty of desire, as a force within our own body, that the immaterial cause already implicit in the concept of action is also explicitly emphasized, and hence assumed to be obligatory in other cases too. And prior to this recourse to the concept of the machine, which serves a purpose to which the parts are subordinated while simultaneously belonging to physics, had already had the task of hinting at possible compatibility between the forms of causality. However, talk of ones own body as a natural machine extends the concept of the machine in a way that no longer identifies the machine with mere apparatus. Immediate experience of the purposiveness of ones own body and of the faculty of desire becomes the decisive court of appeal. At the same time, according to Emundts, it is not clear how problems in the explanation of organisms as natural machines, rather than artefacts, might be overcome by these means. Hence of course and this shows the limit of the authors approach the question as to which motives guided Kant in rebuilding his conception remains largely unanswered. The number of contributions worth reading on the domain of Kants theoretical philosophy is far from exhausted by the above themes and I would like at least to point out several contributions grouped around another topic. Marcus Willaschek seeks to defuse the problem of the thing-in-itself with a subtle analysis of the concepts equivocality. Patricia Kitcher takes a new look at Trendelenburgs objection and aims to show that construing this as an objection rests on a misunderstanding of the Kantian programme. Peter Rohs discusses the question of whether, for Kant, intuitions refer immediately to objects in the light of a more precise version of the Kantian theory of judgement. Finally, Tobias Rosefeldt looks into the Kantian distinction between logical and real in order to understand what Kant means by the abiding and permanent I . Among the papers on practical philosophy the essay by Robert B. Pippin deserves particular attention. He begins by examining several recent strategies that react to the wellknown charge of rigorism directed against Kants thesis that only such actions deserve moral praise as are motivated by duty alone. But his essay then centres on a much more complex discussion of an interpretation suggested by Barbara Herman which takes Kants stance in the Groundwork to be not deontological, but value-theoretical and hence teleological (see Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgement, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 20840). To be able to assess Pippins critique, one should recall which assumptions of Hermans are concealed behind these headings. She begins by pointing out that, if the moral principle features only as the external touchstone of the action and its purpose, it will not be clear to the agent why one should submit to this touchstone and what is wrong with the action. Both clarifications are, however, possible if at the same time the principle has the status of a value set by reason which, as its aim, can be part of orienting the action itself. Kant takes this step, according to Herman, when, among the many formulations of the moral principle, he makes the transition from the universal law formula to the definition of humanity as an end in itself and its underpinning in the idea of autonomy. But rational self-determination can be an ultimate value only if it is not dependent on other factors in its role as a source of orientation. This means, however, that as rational beings we have to be rational all the way down and ourselves be guided in this self-understanding by reasons that are also intelligible to others. This does not imply that reason alone can lead to particular actions, but merely that we are able to distance ourselves from the immediate execution of our actions so as to view its orientation from the standpoint of its rational implications. Although content-wise nothing changes in the balance between rational and empirical components in the orientation of the action, there is change in the intelligibility provided to the agent by the arrangement of the principles.

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Against this line of thought Pippin emphasizes the limitedness and contextdependency of humans. Using the example of care for our children, he clarifies that although this cannot be interpreted as an expression of our own pleasure, as Kants theory of nonmoral actions is often caricatured, nor can it be understood in terms of final ends set by reason alone, nor yet by being true to my own self-understanding as a rational being. It also does not help here, according to Pippin, if one attempts to distinguish an objective good already characterized as an final end as being good for me. Pippins critique seems to waver. If one understands it as an immanent critique of Herman, one readily gains the impression that he attributes her with too forced an interpretation of Kant. For assuming the role of an final end might also mean the weak assumption that it cannot be relativized by other purposes possibly involved in the action. And why should the aspect of autonomy, with its implications of independence, not play a key role on the morally relevant side of our relationship with our children? Pippins reservation gains in force if it is read more generally as questioning whether the picture of the autonomous subject as an end in itself and the resultant link with impartial reasons in fact allows all morally relevant aspects of actions to be picked out. According to Herman, however, the end-in-itself formula is to distinguish nothing more than the universal law formula already has; the ordering is merely to become more comprehensible. Because of this, Pippins critique seems at this point to shift from engagement with Herman to a fundamental difference with Kant himself, such that the morally constitutive role of individual conditions, our biographical experience of value and so on, is set up in a communitarian manner against the Kantian outset in the obligatory viewpoint of a formal which for Herman means: guided by autonomous subjectivity itself practical rationality. The paper by Pippin leads to the heart of Kantian ethics, allowing the reader to pursue related themes further in other essays. Particularly worth mentioning are Onora ONeills analysis of what it means for reasons to be public and Konrad Cramers very succinct critique of Kants use of the deposit example in attempting to make sense of the universal law formulation of the imperative. Although this is followed by further contributions that are worth reading, for example on Kants treatment of moral dilemmas, the overall impression is nonetheless that the papers on both Kants practical philosophy and the Critique of Judgement are not represented with the same weight as those on the theoretical philosophy. The great degree of completeness there leads the reader to perceive the absence of a number of authors who have given impulses to discussion of Kant, among whom Barbara Herman and Christine Korsgaard in the area of practical philosophy, and Hannah Ginsborg on the Critique of Judgement should be mentioned. If one finally looks at the multitude of further sections, stretching from the philosophies of religion, history and politics through at last! to Kants relation to German Enlightenment literature, one notices a clear increase in interest in Kants anthropology, resulting not infrequently from problems of practical philosophy similar to that just discussed. This is the case, for example, in Allen Woods paper, which approaches anthropology from the starting point of the definition of the concept of practical anthropology found in the Groundwork. This, as all the other papers mentioned, is distinguished by a degree of precision, combined with a subtlety of knowledge, that makes Kant scholarship an enjoyable undertaking even when it is not turning our image of Kant upside down. In this respect, the Akten des IX. Internationalen Kantkongresses constitutes a treasure trove for the interested reader, before whose eyes both Kants multifaceted work and complex scholarly discussions open up. If reservations are sought, one might say that at times a stronger systematically founded challenge to Kantian positions might have broadened the perspective. Further, one cannot entirely conceal the fact that this comprehensive documentation provided the pleasure of

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seeing their work in print to a fair number of authors whose papers either contribute little to the state of scholarly debate, pursue obscure issues, or rest on easily identifiable false assumptions. This, however, belongs to the nature of the project and does not diminish the degree of expertise gathered in these volumes. sser Ulrich Schlo r Philosophie Institut fu t Berlin Humboldt-Universita Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin Germany SchloesserU@Philosophie.HU-Berlin.de

Translated by Andrew Inkpin and Kristina Mussgnug Barrett

ren Kierkegaards, Vom Zweifel zur Verzweiflung: Grundbegriffe der Existenzphilosophie So rzburg: Ko nigshausen & Neumann, 2002, 151 pp. by Kristin Kaufmann. Wu ISBN 3-826-02162-2 hb h25.00 nchen: Beck, 2000, 157 pp. Sren Kierkegaard, by Annemarie Pieper. Mu ISBN 3-406-41956-9 pb h12.50 The scope of both these works is ambitious: to make sense of the point of Kierkegaards existential dialectic in the pseudonymous authorship. While Piepers book presents a general introduction to Kierkegaards thought, Kaufmanns intention is to trace out the paths that Kierkegaards characters take when attempting to overcome doubt and despair by various existential means. Inevitably, perhaps, while both authors succeed on the broad brush front, neither leaves the reader entirely satisfied when it comes to the detail. Kaufmanns point of departure is the young Kierkegaards conception of Faustian doubt. The figure of Faust as an archetype exemplifies, for Kierkegaard, the romantic intellectual on a quest for absolute truth who ends up finding himself mired in an all-consuming scepticism. Kaufmann shows convincingly how Faust first starts off as a methodological doubter who finds that objective truth is unattainable and who then gradually becomes an existential doubter in the sense that the doubt attacks not only his thought, but his very person and life. For Faust, therefore, doubt becomes despair over the contingency of everything. Kaufmann argues that at first it seems as if only two responses to this predicament are possible: quitting the quest by withdrawing from everything the solution that the aesthete offers in Either or suicide. Kaufmann then goes on to show, however, that all the pseudonymous authors engage in different ways with this perennial issue and try to present strategies with which this stark dilemma could be headed off. In this way, she believes, each subsequent pseudonymous production can be read as offering a critique of its predecessors attempt at finding an existential solution to the despair engendered by out-and-out doubt. The remainder of the book thus consists of a scholarly run-through, in chronological order, of all the relevant works, showing that they all revolve around the two key problems, doubt and despair, that she has identified. There isnt much to object to in this project. I doubt that any Kierkegaard scholar would disagree with Kaufmanns assessment that finding a viable, liveable solution to the problem

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posed by a disenchantment of the world and the consequent lived scepticism (which, of course, in the case of aesthete A coincides with a sophisticated hedonism) is a major part of Kierkegaards overall concern. I also agree with her verdict that contra some commentators (she cites Lowrie) this was not just a phase in Kierkegaards thinking later overcome by his religious conversion. She rightly emphasises that although all the ethical and religious pseudonyms believe that there is only one way of stopping the doubt, namely by choosing not to doubt anymore and by recanting a commitment to the Gods eye view in favour of subjectivity, the pseudonymous production is nevertheless populated by characters incapable of making this leap themselves (Johannes Climacus being a paradigmatic example). Interestingly, Pieper comes to a very different conclusion in the case of Climacus. She believes that in order for Climacus (in Concluding Unscientific Postscript) to be able to depict plausibly the transition from the ethical to the Christian existence sphere, he already must have chosen the Christian form of life for himself. His insistence on not being a Christian, Pieper thinks, merely has to do with his role as a teacher, which has forced him to choose humour as his incognito, so that he wouldnt appear to be an authority to be emulated by his prospective student (p. 104). I dont think that an accurate appraisal of the text supports such a reading and therefore side with Kaufmann in this debate, in the sense that I dont believe that Climacus can contrary to his own avowals be taken to be a confident Christian (permitting the further interpretative leap that Kierkegaard was one too). The very fact that Climacus is so remarkably adept at illustrating the utter despair that an individual can face when trying to live this absolute commitment to subjectivity, which, for Climacus, is faith, shows, I think, that if Climacus really is a Christian, he is a very tormented one. And this, it seems to me, provides evidence for Kaufmanns view that regarding the religious existence sphere as an antidote to doubt and despair is a very double-edged sword indeed. For, although the Christian form of life may provide a potential way out of Faustian doubt, it brings with it its own peculiar kind of despair, so that the Kierkegaardian reader would be forgiven for wondering whether the price we have to pay for Christianity (at least according to Climacus conception of it) might not, in the end, be too high. I therefore also disagree with Piepers final verdict that the result of Kierkegaards entire production (pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous) is the view that the existential traveller is lost without the religious compass (p. 135). She says, To show how one can, through Christian self-construction, become such a compass is Kierkegaards purpose. From the depiction of existential failures there emerges a form of life which can be experienced as a successful and a happy one. Although the path to this goal [the Christian form of life] is riddled with offence and humiliation, once one has arrived there, everything becomes easy, because from then on all striving can be structured towards this goal (p. 136, translation mine). I think this reading does no justice to the complexity and open-endedness of Kierkegaards work. It is true that Kierkegaard himself often claims (for example in The Point of View) that he is first and foremost a religious writer, but I believe, as do many commentators nowadays (see, for instance, Harvie Fergusons excellent book, Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity, Routledge 1995), that these self-professions must be viewed with a certain amount of scepticism. Indeed, it has even become quite fashionable to suppose that the name Sren Kierkegaard is just another pseudonym. Whether one would want to go that far is of course another matter, but Pieper gives no more support for her reading than the aforementioned point that Climacus could not have such an

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inside view of Christianity, if he, or at least Kierkegaard, were not a Christian. This, as textual evidence, is a bit thin. In defence of her interpretation it can be said, however, that Pieper does manage in what is after all only a short work to present an account of Kierkegaards oeuvre that is very homogeneous. (But then, again, perhaps exactly that is its fault.) Rather than orientate her interpretative strategy around doubt and despair, as does Kaufmann, Pieper takes her cue from the different notions of selfhood that pervade all three existence spheres. She argues quite persuasively that the three existence spheres (or forms of life, as she prefers to call them) present three different kinds of self-relations which all pose different kinds of problems. The aesthetic individual, for example, seeks happiness through pleasure and the erotic by simply accepting contingency, enjoying the moment, shunning all commitments and ultimately re-creating the world in his own image through recollection. However, as Pieper rightly emphasises, the aesthete, in the end, is not happy, for it is an illusion to suppose that the moment can be made absolute and is sufficient for grounding a self. It is therefore the task of the ethicist to show that contrary to appearances, the aesthete is really no more than a slave of his nature and that by aspiring to be the poet of chance, he forgoes the possibility of making genuine choices for himself. So paradoxically, its really the ethical that provides the genuine freedom the aesthete vainly believes himself to possess, and this precisely because of its normative constraints. Pieper argues that the ethical form of life is the highest an individual can attain by himself (p. 82). Within the ethical sphere the individual decides to will absolutely, that is to say, the individual wills to be a self whose actions can be cashed out in normative terms (in contrast to the aesthete who is amoral). In this way the individual transforms a contingent, historical event (a particular action) into something eternal or absolute by giving it a normative dimension. By imposing a set of self-postulated theoretical and practical criteria of judgment upon himself, the individual can be said to be properly creating his self. The problems with this conception are of course notorious, as the aesthete would probably be the first to point out. Isnt the ethicist ultimately doing exactly what he reproached the aesthete for doing generating an absolute by pure fiat? Has the Kierkegaardian ethicist really moved beyond the Kantian problem of how practical reason is supposed to be possible without God? In this respect it is significant that Judge William (the ethicist from Or) finishes his attempt at persuading the aesthete by appending a sermon, his ultimatum to the aesthete. So is William, wittingly or unwittingly, really throwing the ethical a religious life-line? These are issues that Pieper does not address directly. She seems to think that the ethical is really a kind of Climacean religiousness A an immanent or Socratic religiousness with the utmost confidence in the eternal within every human being. She says, As far as a human being is capable of abstracting from all that is conditional about his desires and wants and is able to will unconditionally namely freedom as the aspiration to the Good for its own sake the individual realises himself in this self-relation as God (p. 83, translation mine). If this is what Pieper takes the ethical sphere to consist in, one might legitimately wonder how this is supposed to be different from the religious existence sphere. Her answer is that the properly religious sphere must be equated with the Christian form of life, that is, with what Climacus in the Postscript calls religiousness B. She suggests that the individual falls out of the ethical sphere, once he is no longer able to locate the God within himself once he has lost access to the eternal within him. What exactly this is supposed to mean, however, remains obscure.

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The only way the disappointed ethical individual can find a way of re-grounding his lost self, according to Pieper, who seems to derive most of the support for her interpretation from Climacus Philosophical Fragments, is by accepting Jesus Christ as God. This is only possible, though, if the individual is prepared to accept that he has lost the eternal through his own fault, that it was sin that has made him kill the God within himself. Naturally, sin is already a religious category, so it seems that one already has to think in Christian terms, in order to become a Christian, which would make the whole thing circular. Pieper agrees that this is indeed the case that the awareness of sin and the belief in Jesus Christ as a saviour, the personified eternal who alone is able to restore the lost contact with God, have to occur simultaneously (p. 86). Of course this is paradoxical and even absurd from reasons point of view, as Climacus himself keeps emphasising. According to Piepers interpretation, however, the paradox (the Incarnation) simply has to be accepted as such namely as absolutely incomprehensible (das schlechthin Unbegreifliche, p. 94). I must confess I have a certain kind of admiration for this blithe, literal-minded reading, which is not to say, of course, that it doesnt also strike me as completely untenable. Given that Pieper makes no attempt at offering any sort of elucidation of what Climacus means by the above, I suppose that she has no qualms about saddling Climacus (and indeed Kierkegaard) with a view that is philosophically dubious, to say the least. It is also a complete mystery to me how talk of something absolutely incomprehensible can sit comfortably with the distinction that Climacus very clearly draws between objective and subjective attempts at grasping Christianity. For, surely, something can only be absolutely incomprehensible (were that even to make sense) from the perspective of objective reasoning that is, from a speculative vantage point. Given that Climacus makes it very clear that this point of view is simply misconceived when it comes to religious matters, I dont see how talk of absolute incomprehensibility (something that thought can never think) can be so much as relevant to the question at hand. Overall, then, I not only disagree with Pieper on the detail, but also as regards her general conception of Kierkegaards authorship. I dont think, as Pieper seems to, that Kierkegaards production constitutes a kind of scala paradisi with three main rungs the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious, the latter constituting its culmination. In this respect, Kaufmanns reading is much truer to the multifacettedness of and constant selfcriticism implicit in Kierkegaards work. She, too, however, rather leaves the reader in the lurch when it comes to explaining what moral we are to draw philosophically from the interpretation she has presented. This is a pity: there are signs in her book that she might have had something interesting to say on the point, had she decided to address it. And this leads me to a final point of criticism as regards both Piepers and Kaufmanns general approach. Although they present their readings in meticulous fashion, both works are purely descriptive. They make no attempt at properly elucidating what relevance a discussion of aspects of Kierkegaards works has to philosophical problems today, whether what Kierkegaard intends to do is philosophically tenable, or, indeed, what the philosophical implications are of the interpretations both authors present. These are, I think, very serious lacunae which no amount of scholarship can overcome.

nbaumsfeld Genia Scho

Department of Philosophy University of Southampton Southampton, S017 1BJ UK gmes@soton.ac.uk

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tze der Rechts- und Demokratietheorie. Mit Zwischen Recht und Moral: Neuere Ansa von Schomberg and Grundtexten von Karl-Otto Apel und Ingeborg Maus, edited by Rene nster: LIT Verlag, 2002, iv1393 pp. Peter Niesen. Mu ISBN 3-8258-5389-6 hb h20.90 For several decades, questions of law and right were not natural parts of the works of philosophers, political theorists and sociologists. However, since the beginning of the 1990s law and right have increasingly become the focus of the works of philosophers, and social and political theorists. Legal theory is no longer thought of as a separate discipline which looks at law in isolation from the rest of society or from normative questions. In particular, legal theory and democratic theory are now often considered to be linked intrinsically. The contributors to Zwischen Recht und Moral themselves philosophers and political theorists address the relation between law and morality from a number of perspectives, both conceptual and political. For all the contributors, law has a moral aspect to it, and we cannot, therefore, view the laws and the constitution simply from the perspective of legal positivism. At the same time, however, law cannot be simply subsumed under morality for instance, as the concrete extension of a higher morality. Each contribution to the volume wrestles with this problem: How can we think about right between positive law and natural (that is, moral) law? Some of the contributors to the volume for instance, Matthias Kettner and Rene Gabrie ls & Regina Kreide discuss the question of the relationship between law and morality in relation to, among other things, human rights and international law. For them, this is also a question of the relationship between law and morality. On the one hand, if human rights are not reduced to their positivity, that is, if human rights are not viewed simply as the expression of a popular will at any given time and place, then we may argue that they have a cross-national and cross-cultural dimension. On the other hand, if human rights are not the immediate expression of a higher, natural law because human rights must be mediated by democratic will-formation in some form then we are still faced with the problem of showing in what sense the validity of human rights norms exceeds their concrete, contextual genesis. The problem of the relationship between law and morality for instance, in human rights only arises to the extent that we cannot reduce one to the other. If we cannot reduce one to the other, or simply subsume one under the other, then we are faced with two possibilities. One solution is to try to show that law and morality can, as it were, be reconciled in a mediating third. Some of the contributors attempt to do this through discursive democratic will-formation. Another possible solution is simply to acknowledge the impossibility of reconciling the relationship between law and morality in any way; this is not a line of argument that any of the contributors to the volume discuss, however. The majority of the contributors to Zwischen Recht und Moral are from the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Although Ju rgen Habermas himself does not contribute to the volume, he is nonetheless very present. All of the contributors consider his work at some Gabrie level, and in particular Peter Niesen, Karl-Otto Apel, Ingeborg Maus, and Rene ls & Regina Kreide discuss Habermass approach to democracy, law and morality. Habermas has played an important part in the renewed interest in the relation between democracy, law and morality among philosophers, political theorists and sociologists, first of all through his Between Facts and Norms (1996; see also Habermas 1988). This work sought to develop a discursive conception of law and democracy, and the contributors to Zwischen Recht und Moral are all committed to some notion of discourse ethics or discursive democracy, albeit with some important differences.

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The volume contains eight articles, some of which have been published previously elsewhere. It is centred around two longer texts by Karl-Otto Apel and Ingeborg Maus, with shorter texts by the other contributors. Apels and Mauss contributions are difficult, but also rewarding, readings; the rest of the contributions are more easily accessible for readers new to the field. In the following, I will show the relevance of the contributions to the thematic of the volume, although due to constraints of space I shall not consider here the validity of the positions. Karl-Otto Apel sets out to think with Habermas against Habermas. He does so by proceeding along two parallel routes. First, by way of an immanent critique of Habermass work; and, second, by way of opposing Habermass version of discourse ethics to his own version of discourse ethics, which is centred around a notion of human dignity. Apel is interested in the relationship in Habermass work between, on one level, the discourse principle and, on another level, the moral principle and the principle of law. The discourse principle (D) is a principle of argumentation, stipulating the conditions of normative validity in general (D: Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses; Habermas 1996: 107). The moral principle also referred to as the universalization principle (U) sets out the conditions for the validity of moral norms, and in a similar fashion the principle of law sets out the conditions for the validity of legal norms. Prior to Between Facts and Norms, Habermas did not distinguish between the discourse principle and the moral principle in a clear and systematic way (Habermas 1988; Habermas 1996: 108ff), and his argument for the discourse principle was, in essence, a moral argument. However, from Between Facts and Norms onwards, Habermas distinguishes between the discourse principle and the moral principle as if they were two different levels of his argument. The discourse principle is now merely a rule of argumentation reconstructed by asking for the unavoidable presuppositions of communicative action in general and argumentation in particular. And the discourse principle is ` -vis the moral principle and the principle of law. now supposed to be neutral vis-a It is at this point that Apel finds a contradiction in Habermas. On the one hand, the ` -vis the principles of morality and law, so that discourse principle has to be neutral vis-a morality and law stand at the same level with respect to the discourse principle. On the other hand, the principles of law and morality have to be derived from the discourse principle. The problem is, then, how to get from the discourse principle to, for instance, the ` -vis the moral principle, then it is moral principle. If the discourse principle is neutral vis-a only possible to move from the discourse principle to the moral principle, not by way of derivation, but by way of a decision. This would introduce an element of decisionism into the argument that both Habermas and Apel want to avoid. It is only possible to solve this problem or so Apel argues if we accept that the discourse principle (D) already has a moral content, namely what Apel refers to as a primordial moral content. The discourse principle is, thus, biased in favour of moral argumentation and in favour of the use of the moral principle (U). This creates a certain hierarchy of discourse regarding morality and law, with the principle of law in some sense subsumed under the principle of morality. This is also the case, according to Apel, because law is necessarily mediated by democratic autonomy, which is always connected to the assertion of popular sovereignty and, hence, not universal in the sense that moral norms are. The primordial moral content of the discourse principle is linked to the fact that the discourse principle presupposes certain norms of mutual recognition and hence a notion of human dignity. And, according to Apel, this also involves the inherent imperative to realize this mutual recognition and human dignity. Thus, the discourse principle already implies an answer to the questions why be moral? and why build moral institutions?.

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Discourse ethics, pace Habermas, is therefore also an ethic of responsibility, namely a responsibility for the protection of the human dignity of the other. Finally, law is not simply the expression of morality, and in that sense it is not subsumed under morality. Rather, law is the enforced realization of the conditions of the discourse principle (D): responsibility and human dignity. Matthias Kettners contribution to the volume is in part an application of Apels work to human rights. Following Apels conception of the discourse principle (D) in terms of human dignity, Kettner understands human rights in light of collective experiences of nondignity. Kettner argues that, although human rights are euro-genetic, they are not necessarily eurocentric. He argues that a ground for a non-eurocentric conception of human rights can be found through a reconstruction of the vocabulary of the history of human rights, first of all the United Nations Human Rights Declaration. This reconstruction shows human dignity to be a basic value, a kind of right to have rights. Human rights can then be seen as the concretisation of human dignity, and, as such, they can be universalised beyond their contingent, western European genesis. Like Apel, Ingeborg Maus clarifies her own position through a discussion of Habermass work. Maus is concerned with the relationship between popular sovereignty and individual rights. According to Habermas, these are co-original, and Maus agrees with Habermass account of this co-originality. However, Maus is also critical of what she refers to as Habermass caricatures of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Contra Habermas, Maus insists that Kant does not moralize law. In fact, she argues, Kant mediates, not only positive law, but also supra-positive law through popular sovereignty, so that legitimate popular sovereignty is not simply reduced to the expression of a higher suprapositive law. And contra Habermas, Maus tries to show that, for Rousseau, the ethical collective subject that is, the people is the product of democratic self-determination, and that the latter is not simply the expression of an already constituted ethical macro-subject. In her contribution, Ella van Dommelen takes issue with another idea in Mauss contribution. For Maus, legally instituted procedures of democratic will-formation are the primary instrument for generating legitimate law. Thus, she is opposed to the idea that legal norms are simply the concrete expression of a higher moral law. In addition, Maus opposes the idea of division of powers understood as checks and balances. Instead she argues that the parliament is the sole source of sovereignty. As a consequence, she is sceptical about judicial review, for instance in the form of a supreme court checking the constitutionality of the laws passed by parliament. The problem with judicial review, according to Maus, is that it introduces a competing source of sovereignty, if not above, then next to the parliament. Against this view, van Dommelen argues that judicial review does not necessarily mean depoliticization. She acknowledges that the institution of judicial review does contain the danger of an expertocracy (namely, the judges) posed above, and hence protected from, the politicisation of parliament and the public sphere. However, van Dommelen suggests that, since we are not able to do away with the fact that judges also take political (and not merely neutral) decisions, the best strategy is to have a broader conception of politics taking into account the political decisions that are in fact taken within the judiciary and the administration. Peter Niesen looks at the way in which Habermas and Maus distinguish between law and morality, and how they mediate the two through democracy. The question Niesen raises and that some of the other contributors also raise, as we have seen is how we can demand that the law also be moral without introducing a competing source of legitimacy to democratic law-making. Niesen wants to avoid overruling democracy, as it were; that is, he wants to avoid speaking in the name of, and thus asserting, a pre-political or supra-

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political morality. This would, he argues, lead to an undue moralization of politics. One way this could happen would be if judicial review were taken to be the application of a higher (moral) law to the laws of parliament. Niesens contribution serves as a good introduction to Mauss work, and it is a fine discussion of the different forms that moralization may take and of Habermass and Mauss positions in relation to this question. Like van Dommelen, Norbert Campagna in his contribution to the volume also looks at the role of the courts. He too argues that the current increased focus on and use of the courts in political disputes does not necessarily carry the danger of a paternalistic expertocracy. This paternalism on the part of the courts can be avoided if two conditions are met. First, the courts themselves must be democratised in the sense that they must be viewed as fora of public deliberation. Here Campagna is following Habermas. Second, one must distinguish between matters of policy and matters of principle, and the courts should deal only with the latter. On this, Campagna is following Ronald Dworkin. In this way, according to Campagna, it is possible to reconcile democracy and constitutionalism, and, ultimately, to avoid a contradiction between law and morality. Zwischen Recht und Moral will be of interest to scholars in legal philosophy, not only in Germany but also in other countries, including the Anglo-Saxon world, and to anyone who wishes to study the relationship between law and morality within discourse theoretical approaches to law, morality and democracy. Although the volume has a lot of typos, and Apels contribution could easily have been shortened considerably without the loss of substantive content, it is a well-edited volume. It is coherent, and the contributions are of high quality; the volume deserves praise for the way in which it sheds light on different aspects of the same question, so that the contributions speak well to each other. If there is any, this is also the drawback of the volume, however: the discourse theoretical perspective is taken as given and except to some extent in van Dommelens piece not put into question as such. Lasse Thomassen Department of Government University of Essex CO4 3SQ Colchester UK lathom@essex.ac.uk

REFERENCES
Habermas, J. (1988), Law and Morality, trans. Kenneth Baynes, in S. M. McMurrin (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Vol. VIII (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), pp. 21779. (1996), Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. The Genealogy of Aesthetics, by Ekbert Faas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, xxiii1439 pp. ISBN 0-521-81182-1 hb 47.50 Reviewers should review the book that an author has written, not the one that they might wish had been written. It does not hurt, however, to be clear at the beginning about what a

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book is not, in spite of appearances. First, Ekbert Faas has not written a book about traditional aesthetics, though the word appears in numerous places throughout the book and numerous claims are made about the past and future of aesthetics. To engage in dialogues with academic astheticians [sic] would only have further increased the bulk, while adding little to what is articulated in my discussions of the major authors I deal with (8). Faas also does not engage the principle aesthetic questions themselves. I take those questions to include What is the nature of aesthetic judgment?, Is aesthetic judgment (or taste) merely subjective? (Hume, etc.), Is a critic a part of the artistic process or a hindrance to it?, Which is aesthetically primary: nature or art?, Is aesthetic value related to or independent of moral value?, Is the creative process governed by rules or not?, What is the relation of imagined or created worlds to knowledge of the actual world? and more. All of these are questions addressed by philosophers engaged by the arts from Plato onward, but they are addressed in Faass book obliquely at most. Second, this is not a book in the history of ideas tradition even though the first two thirds of the book is a chronologically organized treatment of philosophically important figures and texts on aesthetics. Faas begins with Plato and moves through Plotinus, Augustine, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, including Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Burke, Hume, Erasmus Darwin, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx until he comes to Heidegger and Derrida. But his object is not to provide an account of aesthetic thought but to show how, from the perspective of Nietzsches transvaluation of values, each of these figures has succumbed to an otherworldly denial of beauty: Everything once called beautiful for causing natural pleasure has been debunked as a misrepresentation of reality, denounced as an inducement to evil, or reviled as plain ugly or shameful; what is called beautiful is a nothingness beyond reality (p. 27). In order to fit this history into his preconceived thesis, Faas must skip over many significant figures in the history of aesthetics who would not fit neatly. Aristotle is referenced frequently, but only as a series of notes to others. Philip Sidney and the traditions of courtly love and allegory do not appear at all. Shaftesbury is given an extensive but largely one-sided treatment, and the most significant eighteenth-century thinkers about aesthetics Hutcheson, Hume, Kames, DuBos, Diderot, and the poettheoreticians such as Dryden and Pope are either absent or subordinated to Burke. Kant is the aesthetic villain. Nothing of the nineteenth century after Hegel remains, and the twentieth-century tradition that includes Bullough, Croce, Santayana, and Bloomsbury does not exist at all for Faas. So whatever the history in this genealogy, it is not a history of ideas or of aesthetics. Instead, the first two thirds of the book is an extended interpretation of aesthetic value from a Nietzschean perspective. Art is understood as merely one manifestation of a bodily, sexual form of pleasure that is opposed by Plato and all who follow him in appealing to a religious, metaphysical otherness that is world- and body-denying. Under the pervasive influence of Plato and Augustine, aesthetics becomes an ideology of repression, forcing pleasure into a prison house of self-denial. Artists rebel against this repression only to be forced into conformity by metaphysics and Nietzschean secular ascetic priests. For example, the Renaissance academies did everything, although often unconsciously, to force an emerging prosensualist art back into the life-negating, post-Platonic mould (p. 94). The underlying concept is Platonic sophrosyne understood as a purgation of all emotion (p. 35). The prison house of aesthetics is simply one form of the Platonic sophronisterion (p. 36). The controlling concept in Faass interpretation of this history is what he calls Nietzsches transvaluation of values, that amounts to a return to a prePlatonic affirmation of bodily and sexual pleasure. Nietzsche is the dominant figure, cited

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as the epigraph to each chapter, though Burke, Mandeville, and some artists are granted a partial glimpse of what is available outside the gates of the emotional prison. There are many things that one might say by way of objection to this history. Plato appears as an ascetic priest, which he often is in the Republic and the Laws, but the Plato of the Symposium is nowhere to be found. (For a more balanced reading see Janaway 1995.) The result is a one-dimensional treatment of Platonic aesthetics, particularly as they are re-formulated by Plotinus in the Enneads. The neo-Platonic dialectic that reaches from the One to non-Being and moves in both directions is by no means as self-denying as Faas takes it to be. The Augustinian denial of sexuality must be viewed in the light of Augustines own all-to-human struggles. As one moves through this history, some of the figures appear only as caricatures. Shaftesburys Socinian this-worldliness and impatience with both enthusiasm and orthodoxy is never mentioned; all of the satire is gone from Mandeville; Hume is reduced to a mere shadow of the historian-philosopher known as le bon David; and Kants argumentation is totally subordinated to a simplistic transcendentalism. But it would be a mistake to dwell too much on these shortcomings. Faas has a thesis Nietzsche is right, Plato wrong about the body and emotions and that thesis is clearly and forcefully presented. If some of the texts to which the copious footnotes refer are read very selectively, that too is part of Faass methodology. We do not read Nietzsche as a sober historian of things Greek but as a thinker who has shaped a worldview. Faas, as an adherent to that worldview, is entitled to its ideology. How one regards the first twothirds of this book will depend very much on how one regards Nietzsche, therefore, but that is only as it should be. The latter third of the book is a dialogue with Heidegger and the post-modernism of Derrida and Paul de Man. Here too the perspective is Nietzschean, but now the critique is more pointed in its attempts to show that Heidegger and Derrida remain fixed within the western, post-Platonic aesthetics. Heidegger is credited with recognizing the inimical effect of traditional aesthetics: In sum, western aesthetics might misrepresent not just nonwestern art, but western art as well. As Heidegger would say in one of his more daring moments, it in fact amounted to a misconception about art per se. In order to get to grips with the true nature of art and poetry, he told his Freiburg students during the 1931/32 winter semester, philosophy has to shed its habit of addressing the problem of art as one of aesthetics. (p. 200) Art, and especially poetry, should be approached not aesthetically but as the ground of Being (p. 201), according to Heidegger. Unfortunately, from Faass point of view, Heidegger gets Nietzsche badly wrong and thus both Heidegger himself and Heideggers Nietzsche remain caught in the western metaphysical prison house: Despite all protests to the contrary, Heidegger remains far more deeply entangled in the metaphysical tradition he claimed to have deconstructed and twisted free from than Nietzsche. His effort to prove the opposite rests on a single major claim: Nietzsches transvaluation of values, which Heidegger reduces to a mere reversal (Umdrehung), resulted in the opposite of what it set out to achieve (p. 221). Derrida only compounds Heideggers error: The underlying agenda of this bizarre protocol for reading Nietzsche sounds an all too familiar note. After more than once reversing himself in parenthetical afterthoughts, Derrida finally decides that, in the effort to do justice to Nietzsche, Heideggers reading is uncircumventible after all (p. 237). The result is a form of interpretive violence (p. 244), an emergence of a theological and religious turn in Derridas recent writings, and a complete failure to grasp Nietzsches deconstruction of the western aesthetic tradition.

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Faas, through nearly three hundred pages of densely quoted material, has endeavored to show that Nietzsche was right and the entire western tradition from Plato onward wrong in separating art and the aesthetic from the body, physical and sexual pleasure, and the biological and psychological roots of life. Metaphysics and a mind differentiated from the body are mistakes, and aesthetics is merely one manifestation of this disastrous separation. Yet Faas, in his critical mode, has relatively little to say by way of a positive defense of this thesis. Nietzsche is the master, but it is Nietzsches opponents and critics who receive most of the attention. It is a little strange to find Stephen David Ross singled out at the end as the exemplar of what has gone wrong. One would have thought that someone like Arthur Danto, who has his own Hegelian roots, would have been a more forceful and productive opponent. It is even stranger in the final Afterword to find that the real thrust of this book is not Nietzschean at all but the sociobiology of E. O. Wilson. Exactly how one is to get from Nietzsche to bioaesthetics is unclear. In spite of a call for a balance between the overintellectualization of aesthetics and an emphasis on the body, sexuality, biology, genetics, and evolutionary theorizing (p. 301), Faas clearly believes that the future of aesthetics lies on the side of the sociobiologists. He seems unconcerned about the problematic scientific evidence for such an extension: A narrative about, say, the putative origins of language or art should be judged, not so much by its 100 percent accuracy in detail, but rather by its evolutionary imaginability within the framework of the steadily accumulating evidence supporting the modern synthesis between Darwinian evolution, Mendelian genetics, and recent molecular biology (p. 302). Somehow, I cannot imagine a molecular biologist feeling comfortable with being assimilated to evolutionary imaginability rather than accuracy of detail. Faas has little use for philosophers, tending to lump them all together as transcendentalists. In a telling anecdote, he quotes Jerry Fodor: As Jerry Fodor puts it in reviewing Christopher Peacockes transcendentalist Study of Concepts: The cognitive scientists I know are mostly a rowdy and irreverent lot, and I shouldnt want to be around when they hear Peacockes view about the primacy of philosophy in defining their enterprise (p. 308). But then, one wants to ask, what are they likely to say about the idea that they should follow Nietzsche! This is a dense book, filled with quotations (more than one hundred in most chapters). It would be impossible in a review to assess in detail the accuracy of the readings or even the accuracy of the quotations and their context. (That there are some problems is evidenced by the misleading attribution to Addison of a passage quoted in J. T. Boultons introduction to Edmund Burkes A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and by the lack of any citation at all to what appears to be a quotation at the top of p. 307.) Instead, I will try to raise some more basic issues. First, the understanding of aesthetics itself is disputable. Faas evidently takes aesthetics to be about the production of pleasure, especially bodily pleasure. The following passage illustrates his position: Postmodern critics have questioned the distinction between high and low art. But litist aesthetics absorbing art into a critical by simultaneously promoting a megae discourse more impenetrable to the noninitiate than ever, they have done so for all the wrong reasons. When compared with the bottom-up inclusiveness of evolutionary aesthetics, they also have by no means gone far enough. (p. 307) Now there are several things wrong with this way of approaching aesthetics. First, it is open to the same objections that have been posed to all utilitarian hedonisms. Is there no difference between the beauty of a sows snout and a Raphael painting? Is the pleasure of

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the intellect no different and no better than the pleasure of push pin? (Faas is, of course, aware of these objections.) Granted that there is an animal aisthesis, the interesting questions only begin to arise when one moves on, as Faas acknowledges one must, to human aisthesis. But then the kind of aesthetic questions that I raised at the beginning of this review become the important ones. Faass view of aesthetics is either so broad as to be philosophically uninteresting, or it is so reductionistic as to miss the philosophical point. Faas, of course, would think that this is to slip back into Kantian transcendentalism, but much of the direction of contemporary aesthetics is quite contrary to such a move. The whole apparatus of aesthetic disinterestedness and aesthetic attitudes has been largely dismantled by recent philosophical aesthetics. In its place is a salutary attention to the concreteness of the arts and their historical and cultural contexts. As Peter Kivy has argued in a recent personal commentary, the focus has shifted to philosophies of individual arts and what makes them individual. But Kivy also concludes, echoing Hume, be an aesthetic pluralist, but be still a philosopher (Kivy 2003: 12). One may admire Faass passion for an aesthetic pluralism while doubting the philosophical rigor of his approach. Second, Faass way of casting the historical genealogy is more limited than his wideranging contrast between post-Platonic, ascetic metaphysics and pre-Platonic and Nietzschean bodily thought might suggest. Viewed from our postmodern perspective, if such a thing is possible, the most significant historical shift occurs in the enlightenment and scientific revolution. Put most simply, scientific empiricism and secular historiography combine to displace the essentially dialectical thought of the preceding millennia. The characteristics of the shift are from a religious to an historical way of viewing the human situation, a shift from a dialectical or cyclical view of time to a linear, irreversible narrative structure, and an epistemological shift from universal categories and deductive reasoning to individual evidence and inductive generalization. In short, science displaces the supernatural and history displaces myth as the fundamental ways of understanding human nature and human meaning. Art and the aesthetic are subject to this reorganization as any study of the history of the arts beginning in the Renaissance will demonstrate. Such a shift is not universal, of course, and it is resisted in numerous, essentially reactionary, ways that continue to the present. Viewed in this way, Nietzsche is part of that reaction. He reverses the dialectic radically, but he remains a thoroughly dialectical thinker. Faas may be correct in labeling the Heideggerian and Derridean versions of Nietzsche erroneous, and one can certainly be sympathetic to his rejection of the postmodernist jargon (though he uses it extensively himself), but it does not follow that his linking of Nietzsche to sociobiology is correct. It is, I think, a fundamental distortion. In Fasss world, one must choose between Nietzsche and Plato, the body or the soul as the dialectical good. It is a false choice, of course. Dabney Townsend Armstrong Atlantic State University P. O. Box 915 Pooler GA 31322 USA townseda@mail.armstrong.edu

REFERENCES
Janaway, C. (1995), Images of Excellence: Platos Critique of the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kivy, P. (2003), Voices from the Profession, American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter, 23.

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On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts, by Ruth Garrett Millikan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, xiii1258 pp. ISBN 0-521-62386-3 hb 45.00, ISBN 0-521-62553-X pb 16.95

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The main theme of this book is an analysis of the nature, acquisition, and use of substance concepts. Millikan examines these topics from the perspective of the philosophy of mind. In fact, Millikan does so as a realist and externalist, following ideas put forward by Putnam in The meaning of meaning (1975) and by Kripke in Naming and Necessity (1972). The book offers detailed discussions of a variety of challenging questions: how we should think about what is going on in the mind; how we re-identify objects; what the vehicles and content in perception come down to; how we grasp sameness; what information is; and how we know what we are thinking of. Ideas about biological evolution play a central role in Millikans account of substance concepts and how we acquire them. Perhaps the books main claim is that substance concepts are abilities: abilities to identify substances. Such abilities are not mere (subjective) dispositions or some other merely subjective aspects of our mind, such that their occasional suitability for cognizing objects would be a matter of chance. Instead, they must be intrinsically related to the objects we use them for. There must be an intimate structural relationship between these abilities and certain objects that can be thought of as their objects. This kind of objectivity is explained by pointing out that our conceptual abilities have been evolutionarily selected for and maintained in an environment that is similar to the one in which we now apply them. Our abilities fit the world because they evolved together. Millikans focus on a particular kind of concept substance concepts is significant because the ontology of substances offers sufficient stability over time, allowing us to learn something in one encounter that can be used on further encounters, so that our abilities (i.e. substance concepts) can successfully co-evolve with their corresponding substances. We may say that this provides a bridge between the subjective (our abilities) and the objective (the substances in the world around us) although Millikan does not use the terms subjective and objective in this context. The title On Clear and Confused Ideas is apposite: one can easily get lost and confused here. But there is a point to this, as Millikan rightly points out at the very beginning, quoting Wittgenstein: Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a glue pot, nails and screws The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. One is entitled to wonder whether it is possible to construct a uniform theory of such concepts given their diversity. To make things more manageable, Millikan concentrates on substance concepts. But even such concepts come in many kinds: there are individuals like Mama or a particular building; stuffs like gold, water, and milk; natural kinds like mice or human beings; and event types, cultural artifacts, musical compositions, and there are even things such as McDonalds. What all these types of concepts have in common is that we can learn something from them. In Millikans words: From the standpoint of an organism that wishes to learn, the most immediately useful and accessible subjects of knowledge are things that retain their properties, hence potentials for use, over numerous encounters with them. This makes it possible for the organism to store away knowledge or know-how concerning the thing as observed or experienced on earlier occasions for their use on later occasions, the knowledge retaining its validity over time (p. 2). Knowledge has to hold good and carry over (p. 3), and substance concepts offer exactly this benefit. In other words, substances are whatever one can learn from given only one or a few encounters,

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various skills or information that will apply on other encounters. Further, this possibility must be grounded in some kind of natural necessity. The function of a substance concept is to make possible this sort of learning (p. 33). Understood in this way, we naturally obtain a rather firm externalist basis of meaning; and the influence of Putnams arguments that meanings are not in the head and of Kripkes account of metaphysical necessity is visible here. Millikan also follows their arguments against descriptionism (mainly Russells) and, in a similar vein, turns against any attempt to understand concepts as classifiers. Instead, we have to think of concepts as abilities that enable us to identify, and not simply classify, their objects. Millikan points out that the conclusions of Putnam and Kripke have been mainly negative, telling us how extensions of concepts are not to be determined. She wants to remedy this by providing a positive account and does so less from a linguistic than a psychological perspective. But at the same time Millikan wants to distinguish between (mere) conceptions and concepts, the former being more subjective, the latter more objective. A child and a specialist, for example, might have totally different conceptions of one and the same thing, but some conceptions are better grounded in the object than others and are therefore more appropriately referred to as concepts. This sounds similar to Freges distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung, but later on, Millikan also criticizes this distinction, mainly because she is operating in the framework of philosophy of mind and cannot be satisfied with Freges all too brief account of what is be meant by grasping a sense that belongs to the third realm. To arrive at a positive account of concepts (abilities), Millikan attempts a task analysis inspired by David Marrs analysis of vision. She asks: What do we have such concepts for? What is their task? Her answer is that we have them in order to re-identify substances under various conditions. It is not only her method that is inspired by Marrs analysis of vision, since Millikan also, like Marr, argues that conceptual abilities are similar to perceptual ones. We have basic abilities to perceptually track objects. We do this with our eyes, hands, nose, ears, and even our whole body, and we do this under various conditions and without necessarily having to form representations of them and then re-identify these mental representations. Instead, we can track an object without having to know any of its properties; for example, in tracking Fido, I am also tracking the species dog, and also fur and bone (p. 77). This leads to conceptual tracking. In fact, there is no strict distinction between perception and cognition. Perception often gets interrupted, and then conceptual tracking must continue over long and wide interruptions in perceptual tracking. Furthermore, just as our mechanisms for perceptual tracking are basically endogenous and then tuned through experience, so it is the case with conceptual tracking. To have substance concepts is quite simply to have abilities and does not require having concepts of properties as such. Thus animals may have concepts but need not have concepts of properties, because, as Millikan assumes, having concepts of properties y would be to represent properties, as such, in thought (p. 78). Human infants know their mother by smell and by recognizing her face; they may know innately at least two good ways conceptually to track individual conspecifics. Faces and personal odors are indicative of individual identity (p. 79). This, Millikan argues, does not require the infants to have concepts of smell or faces as such, i.e. as representations to think about. In general, Millikan tries to make it clear that neither identifying nor recognizing necessarily requires having criteria of identity as such, i.e. knowledge of such criteria: Our world has a certain space-time and causal structure in which we too are ingredient and to which we are attuned. That is, for the most part we can find our way about in it. This should not be confused with the idea that knowledge of or thoughts about this structure

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are required for success in this activity (p. 75). On the other hand, identifying and recognizing does require more than just a repetition of responsive behaviour. We must have specific abilities, and these abilities must fit their objects (substances) because they evolved in conjunction with those objects. What Millikan calls the repetition view of reidentifying (p. 109) is to a large extent the result of the passive picture theory of perception. Both of them are mistaken, Millikan argues, thereby criticizing all the classical views (p. 111) that explain perception and cognition in terms of grasping representations and likenesses. Millikan wants to do without these ideas. According to her, they suggest the wrong picture, because for instance: The frog that reacts the same way each time its optic-nerve bug-detector fires does not thereby cognize a sameness among the bugs it eats (p. 134). To give substance to her criticism of both the repetition view and the passive picture theory, Millikan writes quite extensively about various kinds of perceptual intermediaries and the misuse philosophers have often made of them. Although there is usually nothing wrong with postulating intermediaries as such (sense data, percepts, sensations, neural nets, representations, acts of grasping Fregean senses, capacities), philosophers often have used them illegitimately in what Millikan summarizes as externalizing and internalizing moves. These moves are projections and wrong arguments based on confusions about the vehicles of representation and their objects of perception. Although they are intended to explain something, in the end they do not show anything. They can even be misleading, especially when such moves are combined with explanatory demands for consistency and completeness. Her main focus here is on sameness and difference, since these are essential for her argument, as Millikan is interested in our ability to reidentify substances. We have to distinguish between seeing (or visaging to allow for mistakes) the same and seeing sameness, and similarly between visaging differents and visaging difference. If this gets combined with externalizing and internalizing moves, possibly to and fro between object and vehicle, we obtain a rather long list of possible confusions. Her main targets here are Evans, Peacocke, Goodman and Frege. One by one Millikan shows how they made such mistaken externalizing and internalizing moves. This part of the book does not make for easy reading. Time will show, hopefully, whether her criticisms are justified. After having argued against various kinds of repetition views of identification, Millikan introduces various models (in particular, the one introduced by P. F. Strawson) of how identity can be thought of as being grasped, or thought of, by the mind. As a general guide, she proposes that the combination of past information with new is the best sign of identification: In order to combine and thus amplify information, we always need a middle term of some kind that can serve as a bridge or pivot, and such a middle term presupposes a grasp of identity. Substance concepts do provide such middle terms and are therefore useful, evolutionarily selected for, and maintained. In several places, Millikan talks about animals and their perceptual abilities. Although she stresses that there is no sharp line between perception and cognition, Millikan insists that a beaver, for instance, does not need a concept of danger as such (p. 199) and that an animals perception of the spatial layout of its immediate environment for purposes of moving about in it, avoiding obstacles, y need not involve any concepts (p. 199), not even that of an obstacle. You need not be collecting information y for future usey Certainly, say, a deer need not (p. 199). But doesnt a deer learn, too? I am not sure how exactly to understand her distinction between having a concept and having one as such. It appears that Millikan thinks of the latter as coming into play only with thought and judgment, which are not her main concerns here. But is it really true that we dont need concepts

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as such to tie our shoelaces but need them to know that this is the rope Sally was hunting for (p. 200)? At the end of the book we find two appendices about various theories of information as have been put forward by Evans, Dretske, Fodor and Gibson. To a great extent Millikan follows Dretskes account of natural information, although she finds it not soft enough. Millikan thinks his account tends to be too probabilistic and lawful, making the criticism that he assumes the channel conditions to be fixed and law-like and that he does not explain them. In opposition to this Millikan points out various ways in which the environment has to cooperate and claims that this involves more than mere statistical frequency. Natural law-like information, defined by Dretske as informationL, is ubiquitous, does not require organisms, but is uncommunicative. To make it intentional, we need evolution because only in terms of teleology and natural selection can we explain how organisms tap into the relevant kinds of informationL and only through use and selection does normativity arise. To substantiate her idea of some kind of softer information, Millikan proposes codes instead of mechanisms and channels of natural informationL. Again, her proposal is based on the idea of evolution (similar to her explanation of abilities): the coding and using parts of the system have coevolved (p. 233) and it is for this reason that they naturally fit each other. Based on the role of such codes, we should also understand intentionality and its evolution. Furthermore, this kind of intentionality is independent of informationL, Millikan argues, because it also works for what she calls informationC. This is information based on mere correlation of events, aspects, properties, and so forth. After all, what is essential is only that the organism can learn from one of the relata (i.e. the sign) something about the other. In several places, Millikan addresses herself to the views of other philosophers and to the history of philosophy in general. Millikan discusses in great detail some of the views put forward during the twentieth century and a little earlier, beginning with Frege and Russell. Absent, however, are discussions of certain thinkers whose work would seem to be very relevant to Millikans project. One wonders what Millikan thinks for instance about Dennetts work on evolution or Searles extensive treatment of intentionality and meaning. These philosophers are not even mentioned. Nor are Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, although they wrote extensively about problems of perception. As the topic of her book is very broad, one of course cannot expect Millikan to include everything and everybody. But sometimes she speaks rather sweepingly of the tradition and the classical view, of the ways in which the tradition got it all wrong. One then wonders which tradition or what classical view it is that she has in mind. For instance, she writes: tradition has pretty single-mindedly taken substance concepts to be classifiers (p. 83). However, Kant, whom she mentions just once, en passant (he is not listed in the index), and who certainly is part of the tradition, did not, in my view, get it wrong. His theories of synthetic unity of apperception, schematism, imagination, the power of judgment (especially in its reflective function in concept formation), and teleology, do not just take concepts as classifiers and certainly are not single-minded. In fact, Kant himself reproached (what he called and coined as) formal logic for doing exactly this, i.e. for taking concepts merely as classifiers. He offered his transcendental logic and his Deduction of the categories in its place. Perhaps more justifiably, at least from the perspective of the philosophy of mind, Millikan ber Sinn und Bedeutung (1892). But is not satisfied with Freges account of identity in U Frege was also concerned with mathematical concepts (something Millikan does not even touch upon), and one wonders whether it is appropriate to assert that Fregean senses and their kin y have to be pretty much trashed (p. 13). Millikans attitude to the tradition is perhaps best expressed on page one: In this book, I propose a thesis about the nature of

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one and only one kind of concept, namely, concepts of what (with a respectful nod to Aristotle) I call substances . Furthermore, in opposition to the tradition, Millikan speaks of we moderns, and one is entitled to wonder who exactly these moderns are. Does Millikan tacitly exclude contemporary continental philosophers? Apart from these criticisms of Millikans treatment of the history of philosophy, it has to be said that this book covers many difficult and problematic issues, and that she skilfully presents vivid examples to illustrate her argument. Christian Helmut Wenzel National Chi Nan University, FLLD Puli, Nantou 545 Taiwan wenzel@ncnu.edu.tw

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