Walker, James R. Review of Daniel Dahlstrom's PHILOSOPHICAL LEGACIES. NDPR (January 2009).

Dahlstrom, Daniel O. Philosophical Legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and their Contemporaries. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 2008. Philosophical Legacies is a collection of essays by Daniel Dahlstrom focusing on the legacies of Kant, Hegel, and some of the more important, yet less heralded, figures serving to connect, and also extend, the thought of these two canonical titans. Indeed, Dahlstrom's insightful treatment of these less heralded figures alone would serve to recommend this collection, especially his treatments of F. H. Jacobi, J. G. Hamann, J. G. Herder, and Friedrich Schiller. Dahlstrom does a fine job of demonstrating that a full comprehension of the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel requires an appreciation of the contributions made by these less heralded figures whose polemics and own positive philosophical theories serve to not only connect, but also lay the hermeneutical context for their more heralded idealist contemporaries. Dahlstrom also makes some fine, more direct, contributions to the scholarship on Kant and Hegel. Dahlstrom balances presenting overarching systematic notions and issues fundamental to their entire philosophical thought (e.g., essays one, seven, ten, and fifteen), and also focusing in on some of the finer details constituting those systems (e.g., see essays two and three on Kant, and essays eight, nine, and eleven on Hegel). Indeed, as I will comment more on below, his treatment of Hegel's concern with the problem of the objectivity of thought in the seventh essay is quite insightful and serves to correct many a common error interpreters have made on this extremely thorny issue. Quite simply put, with this collection Dahlstrom has provided a must-read for anyone truly interested in understanding the extremely rich and fertile philosophical period in German philosophy that begins with Kant and runs through Hegel. Yet there is much more to Dahlstrom's work then pure historical exegesis. He not only presents a faithful historical rendering of the thought of those figures he deals with, but he does so in a manner that forces the reader into philosophical engagement with those historical figures. As Dahlstrom indicates in the above quote, the very attempt to determine a philosophical legacy requires one to bring one's own contemporary philosophical concerns and notions to the exegetical table. This allows us, as contemporary philosophers, to engage the historical figure in philosophical dialogue on those very issues that matter most to us as philosophers. Here historical scholarship meets an active pursuit of philosophical insight, and Dahlstrom masterfully balances the two without succumbing to anachronism. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15006.