Journal of the History of Philosophy

458 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:3 JULY 1987 for the French Revolution and a partisan of Napoleon in the German states. But he had to make most of his career in post-Napoleonic Prussia, where the "liberalism" of his earlier years (it would be better to call it "rationalism," but neither term quite fits) collided with the duties of a civil servant (professor in a royal university). His sympathy for some friends who were victims of the Karlsbad Decrees threatened (or at least he thought it threatened) his position in Berlin. Brought to Berlin by a liberal ministry, he had to serve under a reactionary one. Naturally cautious and anxious (47o), he was careful not to offend the censor and slowly adjusted himself to the Berlin Restoration. With advancing age and hearty enjoyment of increasing fame and influence, he came to accept in good conscience what had hitherto been primarily expedient. His good friend Victor Cousin described him as "profoundly liberal without being in the least republican" (667), but even his liberalism did not withstand the fears which the July Revolution and the First Reform Bill excited in him. This book provides the information we need in order to form a fair estimate of a great but unheroic philosopher caught between opposing pressures which most of us are fortunate enough to have avoided. Perhaps few of us would do better than Hegel did. The translation is excellent; I noticed only two places where definite improvement might be made. There are too many typographical errors. Some misspellings and misconstructions cannot be attributed solely to the typesetter. LEWIS WHITE BECK The University of Rochester Wilhelm Dilthey. Selected Works, Volume V. Poetry and Experience. Edited with an Introduction by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. xiv + 396. $32.5o. Poetry and Experience constitutes volume 5 of the Selected Works which Princeton University Press is publishing. It is the first volume to appear in the set of six volumes that have been planned. The volume contains Dilthey's most important contributions to a philosophical understanding of poetry and to literary criticism. The book also contains an essay on Dilthey's conception of aesthetics as well as two essays devoted to literary criticism. The first essay of the present volume, "The Imagination of the Poet," was written in 1887 and contains Dilthey's most systematic attempt to examine the philosophical bearings of literature in relation to psychological and historical theory. This essay consists of four major parts: (1) New tasks for poetics, (~) The poet's constitution and poetic creativity, (3) On the typical in poetry, and (4) Prospects for a theory of poetic technique. This essay was written at a time when Dilthey still thought it to be possible to develop special explanatory laws for the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).Dilthey first develops the idea that poetics provides an analytic model whose results can have systematic implications for the other human sciences. In his view one can use poetics to examine the influences which are exerted in the human world generally and thus to explain how cre- Boot: REVIEWS 459 ative impulses manifest themselves in the historical world which is constituted by different human objectifications. Next, Dilthey makes an effort to understand the creativity of the poet by means of descriptive psychology; this effort makes the poetics the first account of his new conception of psychology as an interpretative science. Furthermore, the essay also shows how Dilthey at that time conceived of the relation between psychology and history. Finally, by examining the psychological and historical contributions to the work of art, Dilthey tries to define what is universally valid for aesthetics and what is merely historically conditioned. One of the ways in which Dilthey's search for universally valid laws in aesthetics manifests itself consists in his analysis of six elementary spheres of feeling that are relevant to our aesthetic response to a literary work. Yet the universal psychological laws of aesthetics which Dilthey tried to formulate illuminate only one aspect of the art work. The work must also be examined from a historical perspective . Dilthey distinguishes carefully the aesthetic expression of world views from possible religious...