Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/453

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435
SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES.
[Vol. VIII.

analogous to those which he reached on the theoretical plane—that the fundamental principles of morality could not be satisfactorily established by either the rational or empirical method. Nevertheless, Kant remained convinced that the analysis of the moral consciousness must lead to the formulation of the fundamental ethical laws. It is also shown that Kant soon perceived the superficiality of Rousseau's view that morality is embodied in the Natur mensch: his own experience and the influence of his religious education led him to the conclusion that man only becomes truly moral through conflict with his natural instincts and sensuous impulses. We also find that during the later sixties he expressly abandons all attempts to find the basis of morality in feeling, though he had previously been inclined to agree with Hutcheson that an object is the more truly moral the more universal the feeling upon which it is based. When we come to the dissertation of 1770, it is pure reason alone which supplies the principles of moral judgment. How the principles of morals are recognized by reason, or in what way they are to be derived from it, Kant does not explain. From letters to Lambert and Herz during 1770-73, it appears that Kant kept constantly before him the moral problem as well as the theoretical, and that he formed several plans for a treatise on ethical philosophy. Turning to Kant's Vorlesungen über die Metaphysik, and Kant's Menschenkunde, the author discusses at considerable length the probable date to which each belongs. In opposition to most authorities, he gives 1778-79 or 1779-80 as the date of the former, and places the latter between 1779-1788, perhaps in 1784. It consequently follows that neither of these works throws any light upon the history of Kantian Ethics in the early seventies and the author therefore turns to the Löse Blätter and the Reflexionen. Fragment 6 of the former work is especially significant as showing the attempt, which Kant made to rationalize the natural desires, and as indicating the most important influence of the theoretical philosophy which finally enabled Kant to solve the antinomy of the moral problem by means of the distinction between the sensible and intelligible worlds.

J. E. C.

HISTORICAL.

Hegel s Treatment of the Categories of the Objective Notion. J. Ellis McTaggart. Mind, No. 29, pp. 35-62.

The categories of the objective notion are mechanism, chemism, and teleology. Two of them bear the names of physical sciences. But this does not mean that these categories belong only to the subject-matter of mechanics and chemistry. "Like all categories, each of them is a predicate more or less accurate of all reality," but their most striking use is found in these sciences. These categories follow from those of the subjective notion, the conclusion of which was that reality is a system of laws according to which all its content is determined. Since, however,