Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 627 question of how strong a recourse to transcendental structures must be in order to "explain" semiotic functions and how weak they can be and still be explicative. Graeser does not answer this question, but it is to his credit to have formulated it clearly. To what extent is Cassirer's philosophy really transcendental? In a rare display of hyperbole Graeser terms Cassirer's rejection of the notion of immediately present content in perception "spectacular and provocative" (138). In Cassirer's radical theory of symbolism, there is no presence or, rather, the only presence is representation. But if Cassirer has broken with the subjectivism of transcendental philosophy, as Graeser seems to think, the question arises of where his philosophy then stands in regard to the proponents of philosophies of signs and symbols for whom signs only refer to other signs. This question is all the more pressing given Graeser's view that for Cassirer truth was a form of "coherence" 068). The point which readers of this journal will perhaps find uncongenial in Graeser's book is its emphasis upon systematic over historical interpretation. Natorp, for example , is not mentioned. The present writer does not find fault in Graeser's decision to read Cassirer as a contemporary thinker, but the historical reasons for Cassirer's neglect as a philosopher (a point which Graeser himself finds perplexing; 189) might themselves have philosophical bearing. That in postwar Germany Cassirer's reception was confined until very recently to footnotes and a fewjournal articles stands in sharp contrast to Graeser's overall high regard for Cassirer's achievements as a philosopher. His apparent lack of sympathy with the predominance of the (rarely mentioned) Frankfurt school and of Heidegger's influence seem to indicate an area in which historical research might have shed light on matters of systematic importance. Graeser shows where the structure of Cassirer's often hard-to-follow arguments lead and problems they lead to. On the whole, Graeser's book has an apologetic character. His strongest criticism of Cassirer is that his language is not clear enough, with terms like "Geist" and "Tun" leaving too much unsaid and giving much room for misinterpretation (186). This is no doubt why Graeser expends particular effort to reconstruct systematically Cassirer's key notion of the symbolic (Chapter 6). This book marks the beginning of a new positive phase in the German reception of Cassirer's philosophy. JOHN MICHAEL KROIS Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin Valery A. Kuvakin, editor. A History of Russian Philosophy: From the Tenth through the Twentieth Centuries. Volumes I and H. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994. Pp. 747. Cloth, $89.95. This work, a collaborative effort by twenty-one Russian scholars, has much to recommend it, despite some obvious discrepancies between what it purports to be and what it is. Is it, as its opening sentence proclaims, "the first work by Russian historians on their national philosophy m be published in English"? Certainly not. Both a onevolume history by N. O. Lossky and a monumental two-volume history by V. V. 628 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:4 OCTOBER 1996 Zenkovsky have existed in English translation for decades, x Does it, as its subtitle claims, range from the tenth through the twentieth centuries? Hardly. Its final section deals with the idealist philosophers who came to maturity during Russia's "Silver Age" in the first decades of the twentieth century. Excluded are not only the endre school of Russian and Soviet Marxist philosophy (absent are Plekhanov, Bogdanov, even Lenin!) but also later non-Marxist Russian thinkers of importance such as Gustav Shpet and Alexey Loser. Is it an "indispensable reference work," as the dust jacket maintains? More on indispensability later, but i~ value as a reference work is seriously diminished by two circumstances. First, it omits some important thinkers--not only the twentieth- century philosophers just mentioned but such imposing earlier figures as Gregory Skovoroda and Nikolay Fyodorov. Second, it lacks an elementary requisite of a reference work-an index. The only way to locate the discussion of a particular thinker is to search the multi-page table of contents of each volume--and those tables list only the...