Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/444

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. VI.

only by means of the quickening power of Greek ideas that he was enabled to adapt himself to rule the world.

Mary G. Allen.

The Conformity to Natural Law of Social Phenomena. S. N. Balhakof. Voprosẏ, No. 35, pp. 575-612.
Economic Materialism and the Conformity to Natural Law of Social Phenomena. N. J. Karejef. Voprosẏ, No. 36, pp. 107-120.
Freedom and Historical Necessity. P. B. Struve. Voprosẏ, No. 36, pp. 120-139.

All of these papers disuss the question of the relation between the free human will and the necessary laws of the development of human society. The discussion was suggested by the theory of R. Stammler, who in his paper Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung undertakes to change the evolutionary doctrine of Karl Marx by introducing the notion of free will of the critical philosophy. According to the opinion of Stammler we think about the sensory objects of our experience according to the laws of causality, the result of which is the idea of a necessary order of things. But since we are able to think not only about what is, but also about what should be, the last way of thinking is governed by the law of purpose or finality; and this leaves the field free to the human will, which forms the ideals of life to be attained.—Balhakof adopts the materialistic conception of historical evolution as formulated by Marx, and objects to the gnoseological dualism of the practical and the theoretic intellects as having proved unsatisfactory even to Kant himself, who finally gave the supremacy to the practical intellect. For the writer everything in human social development springs from the material conditions of life. Every kind of phenomena of human life, as well in the past as in the present, has to be considered under the law of causality.—Karejef objects to Balhakof's reduction of all sociological laws to the laws of economic life. Beside the latter, there exist other laws of a sociological, biological, and psychological nature, which explain phenomena that cannot be considered as depending upon the economic conditions of society. For example, the laws of a country are based, not upon the material conditions of life, but upon the ethics. Teleology cannot possibly be excluded from the notion of social life. The materialists themselves have a certain social ideal.—Struve, apparently a follower of the Immanente Philosophie, will have the problem considered from the gnoseological point of view. The subjective states of consciousness are for him different from the objective states, only through the lesser degree of reality which accompanies them: there is no difference in their nature. The feeling of freedom and of obligation are subjective additions to our content of knowledge. While from the objective point of view we consider phenomena as governed by the law of causality, the subjective feeling of obligation serves to point out a certain