La storia della filosofia secondo Kant (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 535 ception because Reid's aesthetics are part of his over-all philosophy of perception. Unfortunately , he neglects altogether a number of important and interesting topics in aesthetics which Reid discussed, e.g., eloquence, the improvement and progress of taste, the nature of expression in various of the fine arts, and the different ways the different fine arts are aesthetically pleasing. The elements of Kivy's exposition of Reid's theory of perception are derived wholly from Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind. Except for one footnote he ignores entirely Reid's later statement of his theory of perception in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers o[ Man. Odder still is Kivy's studied failure to discuss the relation of Reid's work on aesthetics in the Lectures on the Fine Arts to his essay "Of Taste" in the Intellectual Powers where Reid's aesthetic theories get their fullest, and only published, statement. Professor Kivy's justification for his peculiar focus is that he regards the Lectures on the Fine Arts as belonging to the same stage of Reid's philosophical development as the Inquiry into the Human Mind. I find this unconvincing. Reid's Philosophical Orations (1753; 1756; 1759; 1762) were delivered at an even earlier period in Reid's career than the Lectures on the Fine Arts and they contain important discussions of characteristic Reidian doctrines which are neglected in the Inquiry but which get taken up and discussed in detail in the Intellectual Powers. The fact seems to be that there is very little that in any rich sense can be called development in Reid's philosophy. His later works are not so much developments of his early views as amplifications and elaborations of them, so Kivy might well have utilized the Intellectual Powers to the advantage of himself and his readers. Various accounts of Reid's aesthetic theories are to be found in works on 18th century British aesthetics, but Kivy's Introduction exceeds them all in interest and importance. He argues, correctly I believe, that Reid's work on aesthetics deepened the epistemological significance of the fine arts in ways which only Kant was to surpass later in the century . Kivy's demonstration of Reid's proto-Kantianism in aesthetics will be of great interest to historians of ideas, and aestheticians will be interested in this account of how Reid attempted to relate aesthetic perception to the rest of human experience through an objectivist theory of aesthetic qualities which connects aesthetic qualities with an epistemological and ontological analysis of the primary/secondary quality distinction. Even so, Professor Kivy's neglect of the special topics in aesthetics which Reid discusses is a censurable defect. D. D. TODD Simon Fraser University La storia della filosofia secondo Kant. By Sergio Givone. (Milano: U. Mursica & Co., 1972. Pp. 197) This study, sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Turin and supported by the Italian National Council for Research, is an examination of Kant's conception of the history of philosophy. The author deals with the problem in four stages: (1) the interrelation of philosophy and the history of philosophy; (2) Kant's philosophy as foundation of the history of philosophy; (3) the problem of that foundation as "the destiny of reason"; and (4) an attempt to reconstruct a history of philosophy on the basis of the fragmentary Kantian interpretation as a progressive manifestation of reason. The author bases his discussions on Kant's writings from the Dissertation of 1770 to the Opus postumum, stressing the teleological theme in all of Kant's works. The first problem---(1) above--the author discusses largely in connection with the early and the late sections of the Critique o[ Pure Reason (B8 to B27, B860 to B864), and the Prolegomena. He finds (a) that the period of the Enlightenment in the history of philosophy coincides in time with the period of Enlightenment in history in general; and (b) 536 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Kant gives us both, a mechanistic and a teleological interpretation of history, the one being a complement of the other (p. 43). In discussing the second theme--(2) above the author keys his analysis to...