Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 383 "Friesian school" (which was continued later on in the "Neo-Friesian school" of Leonard Nelson). The break in his philosophical career almost induced him to join his brother in the then wilderness of the Vachovia, North Carolina. His brother was one of the founders of Old-Salem whose descendants established a mighty industrial empire there. A small book, Sehnsucht und eine Reise ans Ende der Welt (1822), gives us Fries' "romantic" reflections about this. The present selections show him as a religious and aesthetic thinker. Based on an integration of natural teleology and an aesthetic world-view in the manner of the late German enlightenment, his religious philosophy had a considerable impact on 19th and 2oth century Protestant thought in Germany, where Wilhelm Bousset and Rudolf Otto carried on his heritage. His views might be summed up in his teaching that the experience and the knowledge of natural sciences as well as the aesthetic experience of beauty in nature and in the human soul makes us "intuitively aware" (laesst uns ahnden) of the existence of a divine spiritual being which can only be grasped by natural and aesthetic symbols. And these, therefore, are the genuine means of an enlightened belief which must be the real foundation of scientific knowledge. His book Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung (18o5) might be a good candidate for further translations into English. But Fries was not only a religious thinker of high standing. It is one of the virtues of the present book to show him also as a wise man, a keen observer of man, society, and the world, a magnanimous teacher and a sensitive guide about the problems of daily life. These dialogues contain a richness of insights, mature experiences, and valuable advice for the mastery of life in the tradition of the great moralists such as Plato, Epictetus, Bahhasar Gracian, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury. They have not lost their charm and spell, even if they come to us in somewhat old clothes. And perhaps they might be appreciated more than ever in our time so obviously lacking in, but aspiring to, spiritual guidance. Interest in and study of Fries' philosophy has grown considerably in Germany as in Italy. The edition of his complete works' is now almost complete, and an exhaustive bibliographical study of his works and the Fries-literature by Bruno Bianco ~ will greatly facilitate the access to his hitherto dispersed original writings. LUTZ GELDSETZER University of Diisseldorf Michael Rosen. Hegel's Dialectic and its Criticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pp. xiii + 19o. $24-95. This book would be easier to review if it argued in a consecutive manner for a single clear thesis; but it is more like a series of rather loosely related essays, each bearing upon one or perhaps two theses, neither of which is satisfactorily established. Nor is SaemtlicheSchriften, 26 vols., edited by G. Koenig and L. Geldsetzer. Aalen: Scientia, x967 ff. J. F. Fries,Rassegnastoricadeglistudi x8o3-1979, Naples, Bibliopolis, 198o. 384 JOURNAL OF THE IIISTORY OF PHILOSOPIIY 22:3 JULY 1984 the argument in any one chapter consecutive, but moves in a somewhat meandering way between points, each of which has relevance to its topic, but which are not arranged so as to develop it in direct orthogenesis. None of"them contributes anything to establish the final conclusion: that Hegel is wrong, and that nothing of intrinsic philosophical value remains in his legacy. Hegel's doctrine, according to Rosen, is simply a form of speculative Neo-Platonism. If this were true, we are still not told why this makes it wrong. But it is so far from true as to be a mere travesty, springing partly from misconception and partly from oversight of" Hegel's essential wholism and realism . Rosen asserts that there is no such thing as the self-development of thought. This is, no doubt, true of his own book, but that is no proof" of the general thesis. "Fhe introductory chapter on philosophical interpretation holds some promise. Its conclusion that interpretation is a craft rather than a science is welcome, and it is surely sound sense to maintain that the key concepts of an author's work serve as principles...