Abstract

In this volume the author discusses the major trends in the philosophy of religion from Kant to the beginning of the twentieth century. The work is divided into three parts dealing respectively with the methods of study of the religious phenomenon, the nature of religion, and the approach to religion from experience and the principle of immanence. In Part I the theological method, based on revelation and authority, is first discussed; and then the rationalistic method emphasizing the approach to religion from natural reason and having its chief exponents in Kant, Fries, Hegel, Feuerbach and Schleiermacher. Both methods are called aprioristic in contrast with the empirical method adopted by philologists, anthropologists, sociologists and, more recently, by psychologists such as Ribot, Delacroix, Starbuck and William James. Important as it is, the empirical method cannot attain to the essence of religion, which is the chief objective of Lamanna's study. Hence a distinction must be made between science of religion characteristic of the empirical method and philosophy of religion to which the author directs his attention in the second part of his work. Taking as starting point the threefold aspect of psychic life in its dynamic activity, Lamanna groups the various trends in the study of the essence of religion under the following headings: 1) religion as a product of the cognitive function, where both the idealistic doctrines of Hegel, Caird, Vacherot and Spir and the naturalistic doctrines of Gratry, Max Müller, Wundt, and Spencer are analyzed; 2) religion as a product of practical function, where the idealistic theories of Kant, Ritschl, Herrmann, and others are contrasted with the positivistic views of Comte, Durkheim and Nietzsche; 3) religion as a product of the contemplative function, where again idealistic trends as represented by Fries and Schleiermacher are opposed to the naturalistic trends of Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Guyau. The last part of the work is devoted to the study of those theories of religion which stress the approach to God through the inner activity of the self. This may take the form of immediate experience of the divine in the consciousness of the moral ideal ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute immanent in action ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute in the intuition of becoming ; and finally, experience of the divine in the unconscious. In summarizing the results of his inquiry, the author points out the need for an Absolute Reality as the objective goal toward which the inner tendencies of the life of the spirit are directed and as the actualization of the supreme ideals of truth, goodness and beauty. Lamanna's work is a very thorough and extremely informative study that has few equals in the field of philosophy of religion.--B. M. B.