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La Difesa del Libero Arbitrio da Erasmo a Kant (review)
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 6, Number 3, July 1968
- pp. 298-301
- 10.1353/hph.2008.1170
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
298 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY stitutes no objection to his theory. Ethical universality does not entail anthropological uniformity " (p. 24). Central to the author's discriminating case for Kant is his treatment of the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. It is noted that in most contemporary writings an analytic proposition is seen to follow from an explicit definition by rules of formal logic. If it is assumed that all definitions are nominal or stipulative, and that all a priori propositions are analytic, it follows that an a priori proposition is linguistic in origin and scope. In drawing his distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, Kant did not make any of these assumptions. Failure to notice this has kept Kant's doctrines from teaching us anything important by obscuring what was unique and original in his formulation. Recent disputes about the possibility of a priori synthetic propositions are really not discussions of the problem to which Kant devoted the First Critique, and do not contribute to a solution of the problem of justifying a priori judgments whose necessity is not that of formal logic. By sharpening up the issues pertaining to these and other principal contentions (with which this reviewer is generally in agreement), Beck not merely makes his case plausible but does so in such a way as to exhibit Kant's contribution to the solution of problems for contemporary philosophy. Thus the contention that only the essay on Hertz's letter to Kant is "purely historical" is born out. One of the finest features of the collection is the interesting array of strategies employed for exhibiting aspects of Kant's thought within the framework of a language and thought forms less than completely hospitable to them. Thus, in "The Fact of Reason: An Essay on the Justification of Ethics," by borrowing the term "external question " from Camap and applying it to the consideration of "practical" questions relating to ethics and values, he occasions a dialogue between points of view often supposed alien. If there are some d~f~cult passages (two of which, at least, this reviewer would not presume to evaluate), the reader may find reason to suspect that this follows from the nature of the subject. The serious student of Kant will be more than compensated both by the fact that Beck is never trivial and by the fact that he is never obviously disposed to retreat from the more profound and sometimes problematical aspects of Kant's thought. Confronted by obscurities in Kant's terminology, as in the consideration of the Categorical Imperative in "Apodictic Imperatives," for example, he does not hesitate to propose a revision of usages in the interest of showing the reader what Kant was about. His case is trenchent enough so that a challenge is not joined casually, nor is an alternative respecting a significant issue proposed in a brief review. Moreover, though the author has felt the full force of Kant's thought, here, as generally, there is evidence that he has retained a desirable critical detachment. Every serious student of Kant will wish to have the contents of this book at hand, and many will find it convenient to have it in one volume which can be placed on a shelf beside Commentary on Kant's Critique o] Practical Reason and other works by the author. It should prove an especially valuable resource for graduate students. DARR~LE. CHRIBTENSEN Wo#ord College Spartanburg, South Carolina La Di]esa del Libero Arbitrio da Erasmo a Kant. By Antonio Capizzi. La Nuova Italia, Biblioteca di Cultura, 72. (Florence, 1963. Pp. 254) Despite Schlick's vigorous efforts to direct ethical investigations toward more fruitful problems than that of the free will, the controversy over moral freedom and determinism can still prompt the spilling of much ink. Published results are nevertheless quite discouraging , as Shute remarked a few years ago (Mind, 1963, p. 331). In this country the controversy continues on a primary level of conceptual analysis, and good arguments are adduced in BOOK REVIEWS 299 proof that the problem of moral freedom is or is not a pseudo-problem and that freedom is or is not compatible with determinism variously defined. In the...