Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.-JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMMN'S MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. (OCTOBEK, 1832.) A Manual of the History of Philosophy; translated from the German of Tennemann. By the llev. Arthur Johnson. M.A., late Fellow of Wadham College. 8vo. Oxford: 1832. We took up this translation with a certain...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.-JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMMN'S MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. (OCTOBEK, 1832.) A Manual of the History of Philosophy; translated from the German of Tennemann. By the llev. Arthur Johnson. M.A., late Fellow of Wadham College. 8vo. Oxford: 1832. We took up this translation with a certain favourable prepo.s- scssion, and felt inclined to have said all we conscientiously could in its behalf; but alas never were expectations more completely disappointed, and we find ourselves constrained exclusively to condemn, where we should gladly have been permitted only to applaud. We were disposed to regard an English version of Tcnne- mann's minor History of Philosophy?his Grundriss, as a work of no inconsiderable utility?if competently executed: but in the present state of philosophical learning in this country we were well aware, that few were adequate to the task, and of those few we hardly expected that any one would be found so disinterested, as to devote himself to a labour, of which the credit stood almost in an inverse proportion to the trouble. Few works, indeed, would prove more difficult to a translator. A complete mastery of the two languages, in a philological sense, was not enough. There was required a comprehensive acquaintance with philosophy in general, and, in particular, an intimate knowledge of the philosophy of Kant. Tennemann was a Kantian; he estimates all opinions by a Kantian standard; and tin- language which he employs is significant only as understood precisely in a Kantian application. In stating this, we have no intention of disparaging the intrinsic value of the work, which, in truth, with all its defects, we highly esteem as the production ofa sober, accurate, and learned mind. Every historian of philosophy must have his system, b...