Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 151 sure, an extensive investigation into Schopenhauer's surrounding social setting will not always inform his arguments. With regard to Schopenhauer's denial of the possibility of the ontological and cosmological arguments, however, a careful regard for the philosophical spirit of the times might have generated a rather fascinating and fertile inquiry into the ramifications of denying the coincidence between logical and historical patterns of necessity. On a related methodological note, White rarely cites the existing literature on Schopenhauer in either English or German, and leaves his intended audience-introductory readers of Schopenhauer--with only a minimal sense of how other scholars have alternatively interpreted the issues at hand. Moreover, White draws freely from Schopenhauer's works as if they were composed simultaneously, and gives slight indication of how Schopenhauer's views evolved, if ever so subtly. In his own defense, White remarks in his preface that "sehopenhauer would have approved of this way of treating his works as a single corpus." Invoking Schopenhauer as a hermeneutical authority, though, only veils what is undeniable: an author's reworking of a twentyfive -year-old dissertation manuscript tends to complicate, rather than simplify, questions of interpretation. In sum, though White's critical commentary contributes nicely to the existing literature, there is certainly room for a more historically and philologically responsive study of Schopenhauer's dissertation. ROBERT WICKS University of Arizona A. P. Martinich and Michael J. White, eds. Certainty and Surface in Epistemology and Philosophical Method: Essays in Honor of Avrum Stroll. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. Pp. ~13. Cloth, NP. This collection in honor of Avrum Stroll, professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, consists of eleven philosophical papers together with a list of Stroll's publications. Most of the papers discuss topics and issues that are of special interest to Stroll (certainty and skepticism, the foundation of knowledge, surfaces and perception, and common sense and philosophical method), and some of them (those by Hannay, Popkin, Alexander and Martinich) contain critical discussions of Stroll's own philosophical views. All of the papers are of general philosophical interest and can be read with profit and enjoyment by anyone interested in these topics, whether or not he is familiar with Strolrs writings. One of the papers, "How I See Philosophy: Common Sense and the Common Sense View of the World," is by Stroll himself. His approach to philosophy is in the tradition of Moore, Wittgenstein, and Austin in that he appeals to common sense to argue for and against various viewpoints put forward by philosophers. In this stimulating discussion, Stroll distinguishes between The Common Sense View of the World, "which is wholly true, that conforms to those precepts of common sense that are true, and accordingly that is not paradoxical in the way in which most traditional philosophi- 152 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32" 1 JANUARY 1994 cal views are" (187), and common sense itself which is not a view at all, which therefore is not a philosophical view, and which contains widely divergent ingredients some of which are not beliefs. I am not convinced, however, that The Common Sense View of the World is wholly true. For example, according to Stroll, this view "asserts that somet/mes things are different from the way they appear to be" (196). But I think that it can be established by argument that even though there are material things, there are no colored material things, so that things are frequently different from the way they appear to be. The sort of reflection on secondary qualities initiated by Galileo, Hobbes, and Locke leads us away from the type of realism that accords with The Common Sense View to a realism grounded in science. Thus I found Alastair Hannay's assertion in "New Foundations and Philosophers" that "where theory confounds common sense there is no objection in principle to allowing settlements in favour of theory" (36) more plausible than Stroll's claim that since The Common Sense View is wholly true, when theory dashes with it, theory must always give way. In a provocative paper suggestive of Leibniz's monadology, Zeno Vendler claims that "what we experience at...