Abstract
BOOK REVIEWS 311 centrality of antiabstractionism to his program. However, it appears that Muehlmann's stated goal of showing that Berkeley's idealism is well grounded (l 9) has not been met. The second half of the book focuses on a second puzzle: "How does Berkeley manage to convince himself that this astonishing thesis [idealism] can rest tensionless, or at least without contradiction, side by side with common-sense realism?" (3). Here, one might object that Muehlmann has overemphasized Berkeley's commitment to the dictates of common sense. Most of Berkeley's claims about the commonsensical nature of his philosophy are essentially comparative: his system is more commonsensical than materialism because it is not subject to a similar collapse into scepticism. Many of Berkeley's efforts to reconcile his system with the "plain man's view" appear simply to be damage control. However, Muehlmann provides a useful inventory of the resources Berkeley provides for accommodating realism and, when he finds them wanting, supplies an ingenious Berkeley-esque account of the nature of bodies and our perception of them, designed to secure realism. According to this account, bodies are constitutedby objective laws of nature, and our awareness of bodies is notional. Muehlmann argues that for this account to be workable, notions must be acts of the mind, distinct from their objects but intrinsically directed towards them, a conclusion that he suggests is incompatible with Berkeley's nominalism. The focus of the book is intentionally narrow, surveying only Berkeley's ontological views in the early (pre-i 714) works, and its treatments of Berkeley's attack on mechanism and his views on causation are disappointingly brief. However, Muehlmann mines Berkeley's philosophical notebooks to good effect, and packs his chapters with provocative theses, metaphysical analyses, and significant criticism of other commentators (sometimes to the point that the reader may temporarily lose sight of the central thread). Lls^ DowNInG University of Pennsylvania Theodor Ludwig Lau. MeditationesphilosophicaedeDeo,Mundo, Homine, and Meditationes, Theses, Dubia philosophico-theologica. Philosophische Clandestina der deutschen Aufkllirung. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 199~. Pp. 378. Cloth, DM 245. Had Theodor Ludwig Lau published his Meditationes de Deo, Mundo, Homine (1717) a century earlier, he probablywould have suffered the same fate as Giordano Bruno or Giulio Cesare Vanini. But the righteous citizens of Frankfurt am Main contented themselves with execrating, confiscating, and burning Lau's little treatise and with banishing its author. In his introduction, Lau himself had foreseen the risks, yet proceeded to publish a scathing socio-political critique even as he sought employment with the new Elector of the Palatinate. Moreover, he afterwards submitted a somewhat disingenuous appeal of his condemnation to the faculty of the University at Halle, only to respond intemperately to their judgment. Two years later he published a second, no 312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:9 APRIL 199 4 less obnoxious, if redundant, treatise, the Meditations, Theses, Dubia philosophicotheologica . Lau's treatises have now been reprinted as the first volume of the series "Philosophische Clandestina der deutschen Aufkl~irung," which will also include the clandestinely circulated works of Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch, Gabriel Wagner, Urban Gottfried Bucher and Johann Georg Wachter. Martin Pott, author of this volume's introduction, regards Lau as perhaps the most important of this group of freethinkers and seeks to rescue him from both contemporary and later misrepresentation, misinterpretation and neglect. Supporting documents include: the retraction exacted from Lau by the Consistory at K6nigsberg in 1728; Christian Thomasius's history of Lau's dealings with the University of Halle, Elender Zustand einesin dieAtheistereyverfallenenGelehrten;and a refutation of Lau's first treatise by the theologian Johann Konrad Arnold. By the standards of clandestine literature, Lau offers few original ideas? His materialist physics, belief in the plurality of worlds, rejection of the biblical account of the Creation and Fall, denial of the priority of Christianity, adoption of a pantheistic and deistic theology, and demands for a "rational" religion--these are all familiar motifs. His theories of religious impostorship and the political uses of religion had already been forcefully expressed and were being widely disseminated via the clandestine classic, The Treatiseof the ThreeImpostors. Lau's originality lies in how he embeds his socio...
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