< Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu
This page needs to be proofread.

NEW BOOKS. 629

sciences, on the distinctions of its subject-matter ; pointing out, for example, the impossibility of inferring from the physical characters, such as the form of the skulls of the Mediterranean races, the character of a pro- duct such as Greek art (pp. 20-1). Philosophy, he says, has the right to protest against the exaggerations of a doctrine that regards history as. determined simply by external needs, just as it had the right to protest against the exaggerations of the opposite doctrine of a spirit acting by mere internal impulse and making its way unaffected by obstacles (pp* 41-2).. He criticises the ideas of progress and of the unity of history, and contends, for an " epigenetic " as distinguished from an evolutionary view of the- origins of civilisation. Ueber das Sclione. Analytische und historisch-kritische Untersuchungen. Von Dr. JULIUS BERGMANN, ord. Professor der Philosophic an der Universitat zu Marburg. Berlin : E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1887. Pp. 201. Before proceeding to the historico-critical studies that form the greater part of this volume, the author defines with extreme care the nature of, aesthetic emotion. His principal conclusions are these. A pleasure, to be- aesthetic, must be a pleasure felt in mere contemplation. What is contem- plated may be either a perception, or an imagination, or a state of subjec- tive feeling aroused by a perception or imagination. A beautiful object may have a worth for feeling independent of mere contemplation ; in order- to recognise its beauty, an intellectual process may be necessary : but the aesthetic pleasure is something distinct, though perhaps not separable, from any other value of the object for feeling ; and the subsidiary intellectual process is not to be regarded as itself esthetic, because it is necessary to the existence of the aesthetic pleasure. Beauty is subjective ; that is, a thing or a phenomenon is beautiful for a subject contemplating it, and not in itself apart from every possible subject. From the doctrine that beauty is some- thing residing in an absolute object the doctrine of the " speculative " or " cosmological " systems of post-Kantian aesthetics is to be distinguished Herbart's doctrine of the " objectivity " of beauty, which is a psychological theory, not inconsistent with the doctrine of its "subjectivity" in the- author's sense. Such a view, and in particular the doctrine that beauty is subjective, the author regards as the result finally attained by the move- ment of aesthetics in Germany since Kant. The cosmological point of view has now, as he puts it, been replaced by the psychological point of view, which may henceforth be regarded as a common possession. The problem of aesthetics is recognised as being to determine the nature and conditions of aesthetic enjoyment, not the nature of the beautiful as it is in itself. The principal aesthetic writers discussed in the historical part of the book are Kant, Herbart and Schopenhauer. The critical examination of their con- clusions is made the basis of further analysis. Die drei metaphysician Fragen nach Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena zu einer jeden kiinftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftrctcn Jconnen beantwortet von F. V. VON WASSERSCHLEBEN. Berlin : C. Duncker (C. Heymons), 1887. Pp. vii., 115. The author has proposed to himself to construct a metaphysics in the sense of Kant's Prolegomena zu einer jeden kiinftigen Metaphysik, 011 the basis of modern science. The writers from whom he has received most influence are, as he mentions, F. A. Lange and Prof. Wundt. He proceeds to ask the answer, on scientific grounds, to each of Kant's three questions ; taking the three " Ideas, the Psychological, the Cosmological and the Theological, or Immortality, Freedom, God, in the order given. "The

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.