The Eighteenth Century [Book Review]

Review of Metaphysics 22 (2):373-373 (1968)
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Abstract

This is the English translation of volume V, originally published in 1930, of Bréhier's History of Philosophy. A revised and enlarged bibliography has been prepared by Wesley P. Murphey. Bréhier's History is a standard work in Europe, and its translation permits English speaking readers to become familiar with the background which continental colleagues bring to their work. This is not just a survey of selected philosophers presented in chronological order. It is a history of philosophy, its major and minor trends, contributing influences, its effects and relations with other cultural and historical phenomena contemporary with it. Bréhier sees the eighteenth century as having three philosophical periods. The first, 1700-1740, is "a moment of relaxation for the synthetic and constructive mind." The great systems of Descartes' heirs were collapsing, Newton's doctrines took over the imagination and instruction of scholars, and a radical dualism of mind and nature dominated thought. In the second period, 1740-1775, "an interested and impassioned society," and even the public powers of church and state, are intimately involved in the issues on which the philosophers, were just then publishing their major works. The dominant philosophy, convinced that any ordinary mind when properly guided could penetrate every subject affecting the happiness of man, was both the agent and the result of the great social movement to which it gave expression. These writers came largely from the middle class, they desired to be useful and to make their reputations, so they shunned technical language. The third period saw a return to sentiment and immediate intuition, and the infusion of religious mysticism and elitism which produced great metaphysical systems up until the mid-nineteenth century. Here Bréhier treats Lessing, Herder, and others, concluding with fifty pages on Kant.--M. B. M.

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