Abstract

t54 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:1 JANUARY 1996 the theme of play, the comparisons with Japanese and Chinese thought .would benefit from reflection on the psychological implications of Nietzsche's sense of"the innocence of becoming," emphasized, for example, by Joan Stambaugh in The Other Nietzsche. Finally, as I develop in my book From Nietzsche to Wittgenstein: The Problem of Truth and Nihilism in theModern WorM, Nietzsche's own understanding of his philosophical task was inseparable from the historical problem of nihilism and its overcoming in the modern world. To portray him primarily as the great psychologist he surely was is to perhaps unduly minimize not only his philosophical self-understanding, but his philosophical significance for our own engagement with the problem of nihilism in the twentieth century. Yet in spite of such limitations, this book remains a masterpiece of its kind. GLEN T. MARTIN Radford University Edmund Husserl. Briefwechsel. H usserliana Dokumente II 1/1-1 o. Karl and Elisabeth Schuhmann, editors. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1993. Cloth, $15oo.oo. Why should anyone interested in a philosopher's philosophy need to read that philoso- pher's correspondence? Is not curiosity about someone's personal liti: and character irrelevant to grasping the value and meaning of that person's thought? It is, of course, a basic philosophical issue to determine to what extent and for what reason the study of a..