Journal of the History of Philosophy

13o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:1 JANUARY 1986 has set for himself; in the chapter entitled 'Youthful Scholasticism' a number of the quotations actually come from much later writings. Perhaps after all the diachronic approach is not well-suited to introducing a philosopher whose range of themes and interests is as broad as Leibniz's. Apart from its stress on Leibniz's development, a further distinctive feature of the book is the space it devotes to metaphilosophical issues. Like other recent writers (Loeb, for example), Brown deplores the textbook division of seventeenth-century philosophers into the warring schools of Rationalism and Empiricism. Brown is on strong ground here; this habit of thought is so deeply entrenched that there is no harm in attacking it once again. But Brown is less convincing when he attempts to drive a metaphilosophical wedge between Leibniz and the other 'Rationalists' socalled . He claims that Leibniz's method "even in metaphysics, is much closer to what is nowadays called the hypothetico-deductive method than to that characteristic of Descartes and Spinoza in metaphysics" (63). But even if Brown is right about Leibniz 's method, it is not clear that this sets him apart in the way suggested: Jonathan Bennett has recently argued that Spinoza's method in the Ethics is also hypothedcodeductive . What does seem to be clearly true is that Leibniz does not regard all metaphysical truths as logically necessary. For example, according to Leibniz materialism is contingently false, even though its falsity is knowable a pr/0r/. Brown's eagerness to combat the textbook view of seventeenth-century philosophy sometimes results in strange exegetical claims. In particular, his desire to challenge the traditional opposition of Leibniz and Locke leads him into a flagrant distortion of the debate over natural kinds. Brown tells us that according to Leibniz, "the world does not contain 'natural kinds' but only particulars" (i 1l); again in a footnote we are told that there is a contrast between "Leibniz's nominalism" and "Locke's essentialism" (134 n. 2). Although the issue between the two philosophers in Book III of the New Essays is not always easy to pin down, few readers could fail to notice that Brown has the positions almost exactly reversed. It is Leibniz's spokesman who insists that species are "present in nature whether or not we know it or like it" (New Essays, III. vi). Brown's Leibniz is written in a lucid and pleasing style, but on the whole, it fails in what it sets out to do. Readers who are approaching Leibniz for the first time will hardly be helped by the bibliography; it includes much mediocre material and omits much that is distinguished. NICHOLAS JOLLZY Universityof California, San Diego Alan White. Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics. Series in Continental Thought, Vol. 4. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 198a. Pp. xii + 188. Cloth, $2~.95; Paper, $al.95. The author has entered upon one of the vast fields of philosophy--the comparison of two idealist systems, and upon one of the great topics of modern philosophy: the BOOK REVIEWS 13I relationship of the Hegelian concept to concrete reality. A comparison, a mutual critique of Hegel and Schelling, is all the more surprising since, in English, we have little literature on Schelling's dense thought. At the very least, from this volume the reader learns much about German philosophy in the early nineteenth century, about its origin in Kant and its climax in both Schelling and Hegel. In his introductory pages, White argues that basic critiques of Hegel are found in Schelling and that Schelling's struggle for a philosophy both transcendental and existential does not simply replace or dismiss Hegel. Schelling's critique of Hegel develops in two stages: the first questions whether the totality or the representative work of the Hegelian system is worth retaining; the second argues that the entire undertaking is misguided. White's book is divided into two parts examining these two critiques. In Part One, he argues that Hegel's Logicsurvives Schelling's criticism that it lacks a foundation in reality for its system and thinking; in Part Two, he argues that Schelling...