Santinello, Giovanni and Gregorio Piaia, Editors. Storia delle storie generali della filosofia.

Pozzo, Riccardo

SANTINELLO, Giovanni and Gregorio PIAIA, Editors. Storia delle storie generali della filosofia, vol. 4/II, L'eta hegeliana. Rome: Antenore, 2004. 540 pp. Cloth, $48.00; Il secondo Ottocento, vol. 5. Rome: Antenore, 2004. 673 pp. Cloth, $62.00--These two books, which have appeared contemporaneously, complete the endeavor initiated by Giovanni Santinello (who passed away in 2003) dedicated to the history of general histories of philosophy from the Renaissance to Dilthey, that is, those works that deal with the history of philosophy in a general way, without taking account of any special perspective. Volume 1 was published in 1981 and translated into English by C. W. T. Blackwell with the title Models of the History of Philosophy: From its Origins in the Renaissance to the Historia philosophica (Dordrecht: Kluewer, 1993), and it is hoped that a translation will eventually present the English-speaking public with the full work. Volume 2 appeared in 1979 and dealt with the late sixteenth century to Johann Jakob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae, which came out in first edition in 1748. The two parts of the third volume covering the second half of the eighteenth century and the aetas kantiana appeared in 1988, while the first part of the fourth volume covering the first half of the eighteenth century appeared in 1995. Nine years later, in 2004, we see the completion of Santinello's endeavor with the second part of the first half of the nineteenth century and the second half of the nineteenth century.

In volume 4, L'eta hegeliana II, on the first half of the nineteenth century outside of Germany and Great Britain, the team of researchers raised by Santinello has provided a comprehensive investigation of the French Joseph-Marie Degerando and Victor Cousin (by Gregorio Piaia, pp. 5-200); of the Italians Baldassarre Poli, Vincenzo Gioberti, Pasquale Galluppi, and Antonio Rosmini (by Luciano Malusa, pp. 203-386); of the Spaniards Tomas Lapena, Sebastian Quintana, Victor Arnau y Lamea, Tomas Garcia Luna, and Jaime Balmes (by Antonio Jimenez Garcia, pp. 389-434), of the Austrians Michael Klaus, Eduard Job, Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel, and Johann Pleithner (by Franz Martin Wimmer, pp. 435-52), of the Ungarian historians of philosophy between 1740 and 1840 (by Larry Steindler, pp. 453-75), and finally of the Russians Aleksandr Ivanovie Galie and Gavriil the Archimandrite (by Marija Torgova, pp. 477-516).

Volume 5, the conclusive one, Il secondo ottocento, dealing with the second half of the nineteenth century in the whole of Europe, begins with portraits of the Germans Heinrich Christoph Wilhelm Sigwart, Johann Eduard Erdmann, Friedrich Karl Albert Schwegler, Rudolf Haym, Eduard Zeller, Kuno Fischer, Friedrich Ueberweg, Albert Stockl, Wilhelm Windelband, Wilhelm Dilthey, and the Dane Harald Hoffding by Claudio Cesa (pp. 3-10; 88-125), Francesca d'Alberto (pp. 328-63), Fabio Grigenti (pp. 23-53; 216-46; 294-327), Mario Longo (pp. 10-23; 53-88; 125-216), Larry Steindler (pp. 270-94), and Giovanna Varani (pp. 247-70). Giuseppe Micheli (pp. 367-443) follows with a presentation of the works on history of philosophy in Great Britain by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir William B. Hamilton, George Henry Lewes, and Benjamin Jovett, while Gregorio Piaia (pp. 457-543) and Ubirajara Rancan de Azevedo Marques (pp. 445-57; 543-63) present the French Emile Boutroux, Charles Renouvier, and Luciano Malusa (pp. 565-624), the Italians Bertrando Spaventa, Augusto Conti, Felice Tocco, Francesco Fiorentino, and Carlo Cantoni. Finally, Marija Torgova (pp. 625-52) goes into the historic-philosophical production of Russian universities, of Russian theological schools, and of the Hegelian theist Sil'vestr Sil'vestrovie Gogockij. All contributors are renowned specialists on the authors upon whom they write. One has just to think of Cesa for Hasan, Longo for Zeller, Grigenti for Ueberweg, d'Alberto for Dilthey, Micheli for Hamilton, and Malusa for Rosmini. The numerous sections regarding lesser-known authors provide a fundamental enrichment. In fact, each presentation contains a biographical sketch, a critical expose of all works pertaining to the history of philosophy, and an accurate (and rather complete) bibliographical note. That history of philosophy has come the long way it has from the Renaissance to Dilthey, and from Dilthey to our time, is a terrific accomplishment indeed; even more terrific, though, is the akribeia with which the team led by Santinello has carried to completion a 3,600-page work less than thirty years after its conception in 1975.--Riccardo Pozzo, University of Verona.