Page:Philosophical Review Volume 18.djvu/69

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55
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY.
[Vol. XVIII.

not fully successful. But help may be gained by considering the change in a correlative idea, the advance from the qualitative to the quantitative and selective conception of phenomena. From many directions we have all been converging towards the selective view of perception, conception, and theory. Every cognitive act is selective. In dieser Weise ist auch alle Erkenntniss der Gesetze eine von dem Intellekt aus der Fulle der Wirklichkeit zweckvoll herausgearbeitete Erscheinung.

Professor Maier in his lecture, "David Friedrich Strauss," outlined Strauss's development from the beginnings in romanticism to the culminating Hegelian phase. The Hegelian philosophy posits the rationality of religion as itself a product of the world-reason. But this view leads to the critical examination of the New Testament records and the special Christian doctrines. The results of such examination, given in the Leben Jesu and the Glaubenslehre, show religion and philosophy no longer identified in their content under a diversity of form, but philosophy substituting itself for faith. The position of Strauss, however, is not to be condemned, since his error consisted in his failure to appreciate the practical element in religion, rather than in his principle of rational criticism. During his last period, in Der alte und der neue Glaube, he went over to materialism. Nevertheless, he remained an Hegelian, working the results of science and the materialistic view of the world into the framework of metaphysical idealism. Thus there was no break in his development to the end.

For the discussion of special papers the Congress divided into seven sections: I. History of Philosophy, presided over by Xavier Léon (Editor of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, Paris) and Professor Petsch (Heidelberg); II. General Philosophy, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Nature, Professors Külpe (Wiirzburg) and Drews (Carlsruhe); III. Psychology, Professor Miinsterberg and Dr. Hellpach (Carlsruhe); IV. Logic and Epistemology, Professor Maier (Tübingen) and Dr. Lask (Heidelberg); V. Ethics and Sociology, Professor Lasson (Berlin), Dr. Bauch (Halle); VI. Æsthetics, Professors Cohn (Freiburg) and Vossler (Heidelberg); VII. Philosophy of Religion, Professors