Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS ~11 answer only ifjudgment's capacity to reflect upon the unity of human experience in its diverse aspects is also taken into account. Finally, Schwyzer's claim that Kant has no way of discussing mutual comprehensibility , although understandable if based exclusively on the texts of the deductions, seems less obvious in light of the argument of the Refutation of Idealism, which is explicitly directed against the Cartesian skeptic, and resembles in some respects the Wittgensteinian private language argument. It is also surprising that in this regard no mention is made of the Prolegomena text (Sects. 18 and 19) where Kant identifies objectivity with "necessary universality (for everybody)," and that there is little discussion of Kant's account of universal communicability (Sect. ~1) in the third Cr/t/que. Failure to discuss new developments in Kant scholarship (it contains neither bibliography nor index) make the book somewhat disappointing from that perspective. Nevertheless , the author addresses important issues in Kant's account of mind, and suggests an interesting "revision" of Kant's theory of concept possession. JANE KNELLER Colorado State University Achim Engstler. Untersuchungen zum ldealismus Salomon Maimons. Stuttgart: Frommann -Holzboog, 199o. Pp. 976. DM 98. This book is an exercise in historical revisionism. It challenges the received view of Maimon as a thinker who strove to improve Kant's Critical philosophy and whose main philosophical achievement was to show that things in themselves could not be the "cause" of sensations. Instead, Engstler proposes an alternate interpretation of Maimon's position, one based upon what he describes as the method of"direct interpretation " (rather than "rational reconstruction"). Though focused upon a single text, viz., the 1789 Versuch i~er die Transcend.entalphilosophie , Engstler's study is much more than a recapitulation of the same. As anyone who has ever struggled with a text by this author will attest, even the most "direct" interpretation of Maimon requires a great deal of ingenuity--as well as critical acumen. Engstler's contention is that the central problem to the solution of which the Versuch is dedicated (and in the light of which it must be interpreted) is what Maimon, following Kant, termed the quidjuris, that is, the question concerning the applicability to empirical objects of a priori concepts. In contrast to the quidfacri, which asks whether we actually do make any empirical use of such categories, the quidjuris demands that wejustify and explain both the/eg/timacy and the comprehensibility of such an application. Maimon's own solution to this problem is entirely different from Kant's, though it grew out of his own, rather questionable, interpretation and criticism of Kant's theory of the schematism. Maimon argued that "a priori time determinations" are quite unable to bridge the gap between the a priori and the a posteriori, and that even if, per impossibile, one were to accept the mediating role of the schemata, this would only raise another quidjuris; for one would still have to ask how the manifest heterogeneity of a priori concepts (categories) and a priori intuitions (time) is overcome. 312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:2 APRIL 1992 Maimon's own solution to the qu/d juris, which he himself described as "rational dogmatism" or as an "improved Leibnizianism," is contained in his difficult theory of the basic "elements" or "differentials" (Different~ale)of experience. He describes these "differentials" as both the real, "infinitesimally small" elements of which intuitions are composed and as genuine "ideas" (Ideen). They appear to solve the problem of the applicability of pure concepts to appearances, for they are simultaneously the basic elements of sense experience and genuine "ideas"---equally a posteriori and a priori. Though certain previous interpreters have treated Maimon's "differentials" as "fictions," Maimon insisted that they constitute the realelements of experience. Thus he embraced a variety of idealism (more Leibnizian than Kantian in character) according to which the world of appearances must ultimately be dependent--in its content as well as its form--upon some "understanding" (Verstand). However, the intellect in question must not be confused with "our" (limited, human) understanding, a confusion which has led many to misinterpret Maimon as a forerunner of Fichte. Instead, Maimon maintained that...