Review

Author(s): Melvin M. Rader

Review by: Melvin M. Rader
Source: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 44-45
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2911879
Accessed: 11-08-2015 02:39 UTC

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44

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, JANUARY, 1933

Emmanuel Kant in England: 1793-1838. By RENE WELLEK.

Princeton: UniversityPress, 1931. Pp. ix + 317.
BertrandRussell has said that Emmanuel Kant was a philosophical catastrophe. A sympathizerwith Russell's opinion and
radical temperamentcould find supportin Rene Wellek's excellent studyof Kant's introductioninto England duringthe years
1793 to 1838. The effectof the disseminationof the Kantian
philosophywas not to breakthe shacklesof conventionalpiety,but
to reinforcethe spiritof credulityand compromise. Kant in this
earlyperiodprimarilyappealed to what William Jameshas called
" thinker,the man with a bias towardrationthe " tender-minded
alism, idealism,optimism,monism,free-will,and religiousorthodoxy.
It is doubtlesstrue that Kant clearedthe path formodernpositivismand agnosticism,even thoughhis purposewas mainlyconstructive. But the English Kantians utilizedthe negationsof the
Critiqueof Pure Reason not to destroynor to inventanew,but to
reestablisha traditionalphilosophyof comfort,which was frequentlystatedin dogmaticand highlysentimentalterms. If Kant
is right,they reasoned,if science and metaphysicsapply only to
experienceand not to the "noumenal" order,then the land of
heart'sdesiremayexistin thevastunknownbeyondsensibleknowledge. What could be more plausible than to suppose that this
invisiblerealm is knownto the " heart" but not to the " head"?
Kant has justified" faith"; thereis no longeranythingto hinder
belief. Thus did the Romanticspreparethe way forthe Victorian
compromises.
We findnowherein thisperiodanyvigorousutilizationof Kant's
the proofthatformis a part of
to philosophy,
greatestcontribution
all experience,that there can be no consciousnessat all except
organizedand unitaryconsciousness.Kant's argumentmeantthat
had necessarilyto be radicallyreconpsychologyand epistemology
stituted,and thatthepsychologicalatomismwhichhad been almost
universallyaccreditedfor the past centuryhad at last receivedits
thought
deathblow. The factthatthisrallyingcall to constructive
fellon practicallydeafears is a strikingindicationof the declineof
speculativevirilityin England.
In the case of Carlyle'sSartor Resartusalone did Kant appreciablyinfluencea workof the artisticimagination. But I believe
that Wellek has probablyunderestimatedthe influenceof the
Kantianism of Coleridgeupon Wordsworth.' Coleridgehimself
was the mostprominentand eruditespokesmanfor Kant in Engdeservesspecial consideration.The readerdoes
land and therefore
1 See my recent monograph, Presiding Ideas in Wordsworth's Poetry,
especially pages 167-169 and 189-193.

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45

REVIEWS

of Colenot gatherfromWellek'saccounta favorableimpression

ridge's philosophicalcapacities. Quite in oppositionto J. II.
to rehaMuirhead'sattemptin his book,Coleridgeas Philosopher,
bilitatehis reputationas a thinker,Wellek reveals him as a
uncrea" prophetof theend and failureof Reason,"a sentimental
tiveeclectic. He all too readilycapitulatedto a " merephilosophy
of faith." His greatestservicewas to disseminateideas widely,
notto inventnewones.
In Rene Wellek'sstudythe historianof culturewill discovera
readingof the intellectualpulse of the RomanticAge.
significant
Universityof Washington

MELVIN

M.

RADER

German Romanticism. By OSKAR WALZEL. AuthorizedTranslation fromthe German by ALMA ELISE LuSSKY. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1932. Pp. x + 314. $3.50.
Walzel's two volumes in Teubner's Natur und Geisteswelt,after
all still the most comprehensivetreatmentof GermanRomanticism,
are no easy reading for any one not thoroughlyconversantwith
the language of recent German literary investigation,which is
fraught with philosophical and newly coined theoreticalterminology. The presenttranslation,therefore,is a most welcomeaddition to our comparativelysmall stock of handbooks of German
literaturein English rendering. As far as I can judge from a
rather comprehensivetesting of the text itself as well as of the
wealth of quotations scatteredthroughoutthe book, the task has
been exceedingly well done to the very point of interpretative
renderings wherever these seemed imperative. Only in a few
instances I felt that a less ambiguous expressionmight have been
used:
Page 73: "gallant passions" might have been termed more
pithily gallant amours; page 106: "its setting" is hardly clear
enough for die falsche Stellung-" our wrong attitude" or " relation towardit " or " our wrongperspective"; page 107: unschuldig
referringto the Diimmling type is "naive," ratherthan " inoffen'
sive "; the passage above, "master of all masters,"is hardly adequate to Hans alterHdnse, of which,however,a satisfactorytranslation is verydifficult;the translationon page 123 line 3, foll. does
not take into account the intendedrepetitionof zdhlen.und nenner
in zdhlt und nenntfourlines below; the end of this quotation die
Tonkunst stromtihn uns selber vor is excellentlydone into " in
music, however,the stream itself seems to be released," to give at
least one example of the author's achievement.

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