Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 109 This learned and useful book does, however, contain various errors of philosophic interpretation, some of them quite serious. Matsen's curious view that Ockham is the authentic follower of Aristotle is encountered only among persons who have been connected with Columbia University. What Aristotle calls a pros hen relationship is very different from what he calls analogia, a point on which the author seems very confused (p. 84). Aristotle does not say that universals are in particulars, nor does he mention "existence," for which there is no word in Greek, nor does he mention "efficient" cause, a notion introduced by Avicenna. Aristotle explicitly rejects the view that the good is a degree of Goodness (Eth. Nic. I, 6) (p. 155). Matsen does not always understand technical terminology very accurately: for example, "existence is said quidditatively" does not mean that existence is the quiddity or essence of that which exists (p. 162). (Quidditas, by the way, is a literal translation from the Arabic ma-un, p. 160). And essence, in Aristotle, Thomas, and most other thinkers, is assuredly not something mental, or nonphysical; rather, it is something perfectly objective and extramental (p. 101). The author does not notice that the distinction of existence and essence is altogether different in St. Thomas and in Aegidius Romanus (pp. 77, 82). And, in Thomas, the human intellect in the body, the proper object of which is the being of sensible things, is not quite identical with intellectus, the proper object of which is being, ens (p. 114). Matsen's translations are generally excellent, but he correctly translates "object" only then to gloss it as meaning "subject" (p. 117). Relationes rationum (p. 168) cannot be right. There are slight misprints in English (pp. 66, 110, 115,239, 240), Spanish (p. 184), and German (pp. 288,312). Taken as a whole, this study provides a balanced, careful introduction to a philosopher, who, although not a major original thinker, is an important and fascinating sign of his times, the great time of the Italian Renaissance. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado Si~mtliche Schriften und Briefe. First Series, Allgemeiner politischer und historischer BriefwechseL Volume 9, 1693. By Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Compiled by Kurt MOiler, Gfinter Scheel, and Gerda Unterm6hlen. Edited by the Leibniz-Archiv der Nieders ~ichsischen Landesbibliothek Hannover. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1975) This latest volume in Series 1 of the great Academy edition of Leibniz's works (the series containing his general political and historical correspondence) includes 481 letters that passed between Leibniz and his correspondents in the year 1693. The preceding volume of this series (reviewed in this Journal, 10 [1972] :227-230) appeared in 1970; it included 392 letters from the last eight months of 1692. If the same rate of publication of a volume every five years, for every year of correspondence, is sustained for the remaining twenty-three years of Leibniz's life, with the same high standard of editing, it is clear that the completion of the series will be a matter for generations of scholarly editors. Moreover, the philosophical, mathematical and scientific correspondence is assigned to other series, whose completion depends upon this basic general correspondence to bring the entire edition into a systematic whole. Of the 481 letters included in this volume, 152 are by Leibniz, 329 by his correspondents. Of Leibniz's letters, only 67 had been previously published in their entirety. To succeed in crowding the correspondence of 1693 into a single volume the editors were compelled to abridge or summarize many less important letters to Leibniz and to exclude one large group of letters connected with his renewal of earlier efforts to increase the productive capacity of the silver mines in the Harz Mountains (which provided the chief source of the Duchy's currency and trade). This body of correspondence, extending from 1693 to 1696, presents a chapter of Leibniz 's biography, heretofore overlooked, that is to appear in a separate additional volume. Although this volume throws much additional light on many aspects of Leibniz's activities and interests, it adds little to our understanding of his philosophy. 110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY As in previous volumes, the letters of 1693 are arranged...