Journal of the History of Philosophy

424 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY child and sends it out on its own. His art is not the externalizing of himself, but the objectifying of a work of words: poiests. What the poet produces is a verbal object (poiema) in which meanings, released from any personal interest he may vest in them, are neither affirmed nor denied, but simply placed. A poem in this sense does not mean--it does not urge the feelings and opinions of the poet on the reader. It /s--as a thing made it is self-sufficient (per/ectum) and bears no message not indigenous to its perfection. But the poetic object, however much it dispatches the poet's words from the poet, is nevertheless an object (ob]ectum, Gegenstand) and as such commands a response. A direct communication (indicative prose utterance) is a request for assent, and the proper response is some degree of belief or disbelief: One swears by a religious dogma, abandons a moral conviction, gives moderate credence to a scientific hypothesis, denies a factual allegation, and so on. But it would be out of place to believe in, to doubt, or to disaver a poem, since the poet makes no claim to which such attitudes would be relevant. At the same time a poem is not a bit of mute decor that is adequately appreciated when savored. Its locutions embody meanings, and its sensuousness addresses the intelligence. Kierkegaard would say that a poetic object, like any object, but with the preternatural vivacity induced by art, functions as a possibility when it is apprehended by a subject. And that in two distinct but related ways: as a term of knowing and as a challenge to action. A poem calls not for belief but for knowledge, not for admiration but for personal appropriation, t0 Ten years ago, Harold A. Durfee announced the arrival of "The Second Stage of Kierkegaardian Scholarship in America. ''it It may well be that with Mackey's book and a few others of its caliber, not to mention some articles appearing here and there, we are now entering a third and higher stage (pace Hegel) of Kierkegaard scholarship in America. GEORGE L. STENGREN Central Michigan University George Santayana, Lotze's System o/Philosophy. Ed. with an Introduction and Lotzr Bibliography by Paul Grimley Kuntz. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971. Pp. x-l-274. $11.95) This volume contains new information of considerable historical importance. In addition to the text of Santayana's doctorate dissertation submitted in 1889 to the Harvard Department of Philosophy (pp. 109-226 of this volume), it reproduces some of Santayana's marginalia written on the pages of Lotze's Metaphysik during his study of it (pp. 95-125), and includes an essay on Lotze (pp. 3-94) by the editor, in which he discusses: "Santayana and Lotze," "Lotze as Critic of his Predecessors," "Lotze's System: a Theory of Order," "Lotze's Influence on Anglo-American Philosophy." and "Lotze's Relevance to Contemporary Philosophy." A discussion of Lotze, following up Kuntz's account, would be worthwhile, and I suggest it for a future issue of this Journal. Meanwhile, I shall concentrate this review on the insights, given by the marginalia and to a lesser extent by the dissertation, on Santayana's reactions to 10 pp. 284-285. n International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. III, No. 1 (February, 1963), pp. 121-139. BOOK REVIEWS 425 Lotze's metaphysics as well as on Santayana's own philosophy at that time. Later, Santayana referred to this dissertation as hack-work done under protest to please Royce, when Santayana wished to write on Schopenhauer. Kuntz seems to me to have proved on the contrary that the work was not only done carefully but that it also contributed to Santayana's ideas on "the life of reason." The actual composition of The Life of Reason was begun ten years later during a year in England and under the inspiration of Henry Jackson of Trinity College, Cambridge. But Santayana admitted that the general idea of an essay on "human progress" individually and historically had come to him in 1887 when he was thrilled by the lectures of Paulsen at Berlin. The work was...