Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 145 P0//t/cus appeared in English in 1689 and 1729. Later in the eighteenth century, as a full-blown atheism developed among some French Enlightenment figures, their views no doubt affected English thinking positively and negatively. And irreligious theories being developed in Germany and transplanted to the United States also should have had some effect. Treating England as an isolated intellectual island deprives us of the international interaction of ideas involved. The development of atheism in England did, of course, take different turns from that in France, Germany, the U.S., and elsewhere. But the cross-currents were important. In addressing one of the central problems of the book, why atheism developed so late, I think one has to take into consideration the intellectual, institutional, and political conditions in different parts of Europe and in America, especially after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution (when blasphemy could no longer be a crime). Since atheism, real or imaginary, has played so great a role in our intellectual development , it is very good to have so carefully done a history of it in England. People can, and probably will, argue about details in Berman's account. But it provides a fine rich picture, and an excellent antidote to the overblown, tendentious, quasi-mythological stories which have been presented to us for the last couple of centuries. RICHARD n. POPKIN Washington University and U.C.L.A. Rtidiger Safranski. Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy. Translated by Ewald Osers. Cambridge, HA: Harvard University Press, 199o. Pp. vii + 385 . Cloth, $30.oo. Arthur Schopenhauer was not an especially endearing character. With others he was always distrustful, sometimes antagonistic, occasionally hostile. His relationship with his father was strained by the fact that, as an adolescent, he was slated to follow in his father's footsteps and become a merchant, a way of life the young Schopenhauer anticipated with fear and loathing. Following his father's (apparent) suicide, his mother encouraged him to pursue an academic life, but he relentlessly maintained a derisive attitude toward his mother, who had established herself as one of the bestknown writers in Germany, albeit for a brief period. He often quarrelled with his neighbors: he threw his neighbor, Caroline Marquet, out of his apartment with such violence that she was able to sue him for an allowance of fifteen ta/er each quarter for twenty years. He frequently bickered with his publisher Brockhaus. His romantic relationships bordered on farce. His romantic involvement with the chorus girl Caroline Richter was always marred by jealousy, distrust, and fear of commitment. He disdained the philosophers of his day, especially Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. He sometimes behaved cruelly toward his admiring disciple Julian Frauens~dt. Even those who most desired a better relationship with Schopenhauer--especially his sister Adele--failed. Any biographer, therefore, who attempts to get sufficiently close to Schopenhauer so as to present a more human picture of his character sets for himselfa formidable task. 146 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30: I JANUARY 1992 Safranski does, however, show us a man plagued by fears, doubts, and insecurities; he is able to reveal the very real suffering that Schopenhauer himself strove to conceal beneath his dyspeptic, brusque, and short-tempered exterior. Safranski is at his best when describing scenes such as the sixteen-year-old Arthur's horror at witnessing the miserable conditions in which the galley slaves were forced to subsist in the great arsenal at Toulon. Safranski speculates that "the arsenal of Toulon left in him a supply of garish images, to which he was to refer back later in elucidating in his Metaphysicsof the Will [sic], the fettering of human existence and reason to the anonymous will to live: we are all galley slaves of the will that passes through us" (49-50). However, Safranski's portrait of Schopenhauer is painted against a background of Schopenhauer's intellectual milieu; here Safranski's brush is too broad, The brushstrokes too sweeping. There are serious omissions: no mention of the Pantheisrausstreit, the rise of Spinozism, Jacobi's influential Kanacritik (so like Schopenhauer's own), Schulze's revival of Humean skepticism. There are equally serious errors...