59. Journal for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism

Formerly published in association with several scholars by Dr. I. H. Fichte and Dr. H. Ulrici, edited by Dr. Richard Fal ckenberg, Professor of Philosophy in Erlangen. New series. 100th volume 1st and 2nd issue, 101st volume 1st issue. Leipzig 1892

The "Zeitschrift für Philosophie" occupies an outstanding position among the philosophical journals in Germany. The three issues before us prove this anew. From the rich content of the first, I would like to highlight the essay by Dr. Nicolaus von Seeland: "On the one-sidedness of the prevailing theory of force" and a brief comment by Eugen Dreher on the "law of the conservation of force" and on inertia. The criticism which Dreher, in my opinion one of our most gifted and unfortunately most unrecognized physicists, makes of Jul. Rob. Mayer's ingenious conception seems to me to be highly noteworthy. I would like to take this opportunity to refer to Eugen Dreher's writings and essays in general. Regrettably, this scholar does not succeed in getting beyond dualism and forcing his way through to monism. However, where this fundamental flaw in his thinking does not come into consideration, his explanations are of the greatest importance due to the originality of his approach.* The second issue contains a contribution by

• In the second issue we also find a remarkable essay by Dreher: Critical Remarks and Additions to Kant's Antinomies. Robert Schellwien "Zur Erkenntnislehre Kants", which, like the essay by the same author recently published by us in the "Literarischer Merkur", we consider to be one of the most significant that recent philosophical literature has brought to our attention. Like so many of our contemporaries, Schellwien is not blind to Kant's errors. He strives for a solution to philosophical problems that goes beyond Kant and is independent of his teachings. Schellwien says "that human consciousness, which of course is not original, but constantly emerges only from the suspension of ignorance, can be a post-creative identity of the knower and the known, indeed, according to its own principles, it must be of the a priori nature of cognition". Kant never reached this degree of insight. Because he did not, he constructed human consciousness from two contradictory components: the passive reception and the active processing of the material of knowledge, which resulted in the "Critique of Pure Reason" becoming the most confused book among the intellectual works of the first rank.

In this issue we also encounter the essay: "Philosophische Randbemerkungen zu den Verhandlungen über den preußischen Volksschulgesetzentwurf" (Philosophical comments on the negotiations on the Prussian elementary school bill) from the pen of the astute Max Schasler, whose boldness of thought has always endeared him to us.

The next issue is an anniversary issue. It marks the second hundredth issue in the magazine's series. For this reason, it is adorned with the portrait of I. H. Fichte, the founder of the journal, and contains an account by Rud. Seydel of its origins, which is well worth reading. It describes in a stimulating way the needs to which the philosophical enterprise owes its origin and the activities of the men involved in its founding. The essays in this issue begin with "Psychological Aphorisms" by Otto Liebmann. Like everything that the critical mind of this researcher treats with his truly caustic acuity, the psychological field is also richly stimulated here by a sharp definition of the concepts, a precise statement of the problems and a clear indication of the tendencies that the endeavors have to take towards a solution. An essay by Eduard von Hartmann is of great interest: "Below and above good and evil". With regard to these two concepts, Hartmann distinguishes three exclusive points of view: 1. the naturalistic one, which makes the individual-egoistic needs and instincts the sole starting point for action, stamps the tendencies of the same as the only moral principle and rejects any regulation of the same by the laws of practical reason. 2. the moralistic, which establishes the abstract imperatives of reason as the highest practical maxims and declares every kind of action, including divine action, to be bound by them. 3. the supranaturalistic view, which places the will of God-inspired man above the laws of reason and claims that if a person is so imbued with the eternal counsel of God that he has made it his own ethical driving force, then he is no longer bound by any laws of reason. These counsels would be higher than all reason. Only the middle point of view can establish an actual morality. The first and the last, because they establish principles of action that are different from the rules of practical reason, are "beyond good and evil", the former "below", the latter "above". Hartmann now characterizes the one-sidedness of the three standpoints and finds that the two most important questions of ethics, that of responsibility and the origin of evil, can only be solved by an interpenetration of the three spheres. The limited space makes it impossible for us to enter into a critical discussion of this subject, which deals with the most important problems of practical philosophy.

Friedrich Jodl's "Jahresbericht über Erscheinungen der anglo-amerikanischen Literatur aus der Zeit von 1890 bis 1891" is also valuable in this booklet. We must also draw attention to the fact that a number of philosophical publications of the present day have received remarkable reviews and that a bibliography of philosophical writings and a table of contents from philosophical journals at home and abroad conclude the individual issues of this work, which no one interested in the philosophy of the present day can do without.