Abstract

Professor Hospers has produced a most competent text-book, with ‘selected readings’ and ‘exercises’ added to each chapter. He has in mind in the first place undergraduates in American universities; but anyone who wishes to familiarize himself with the methods and approaches to philosophy current in universities in England and the United States will find in this book a useful guide. Philosophy is seen as a critical and purgative activity. It is assumed that if we become clear about the logic of our language a great many of the traditional problems of philosophy disappear or look very different. At least one is inclined to suppose that this is Professor Hospers’s assumption, though he is on the whole a little cagey about showing his own hand; and it may be significant that the name of Wittgenstein does not occur in the Index and that there is no discussion of Professor Ryle’s Concept of Mind—in particular, one is surprised to find no extended discussion of dispositional concepts. The section dealing with ‘the mental and the physical’, admirable though it is, has thus a somewhat old-fashioned appearance.