Book 1. Volume I, Greece and Rome ; Volume II, Augustine to Scotus ; Volume III, Ockham to Suarez.

F. C. Copleston; XIV*—The Logical Empiricism of Nicholas of Autrecourt, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 249–262.

In the preface to his Philosophy of Right Hegel maintains that a philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought. It is not the philosopher's business to create an imaginary world of his own. His task is to understand the present and actual as subsuming the past in itself, as the culmination of a process of development.

In his introduction Professor Edwards remarks that he does not believe that the work will be condemned "as either dull or timid", whatever else may be said about it. And, in the main, he is right in this belief. It is hardly feasible of course to maintain a uniform policy of scintillating provocativeness when one is summarizing the ideas of some rather obscure thinkers or dealing with some highly technical matter. But on controversial issues articles are often lively and make (...) no pretense of Olympian detachment. Some articles, even though useful, may be a bit flat. But the work as a whole certainly does not give this impression. (shrink)

Aristotle stated that philosophy began with “wonder” and that men continue to philosophize because and in so far as they continue to “wonder.” Philosophy, in other words, is rooted in the desire to understand the world, in the desire to find an intelligible pattern in events and to answer problems which occur to the mind in connection with the world. By using the phrase “the world” I do not mean to imply that the world is something finished and complete at (...) any given moment: I use the phrase in the sense of the data of outer and inner experience with which any mind is confronted. One might say just as well that philosophy arises out of the desire to understand the “historical situation,” meaning by the last phrase the external material environment in which a man finds himself, his physiological and psychological make-up and that of other people, and the historic past. One might discuss the question whether the desire to understand ought to be interpreted or analysed in terms of another drive or other drives. Nietzsche, for example, suggested in the notes which have been published under the title “The Will to Power” that the desire to understand is one of the forms taken by the will to power. (shrink)

In an essay on pantheism Schopenhauer observes that his chief objection against it is that it says nothing, that it simply enriches language with a superfluous synonym of the word “world.” It can hardly be denied that by this remark the great pessimist, who was himself an atheist, scored a real point. For if a philosopher starts off with the physical world and proceeds to call it God, he has not added anything to the world except a label, a label (...) which, if we take into account the ordinary significance of the word “God,” might well appear unnecessary and superfluous: one might just as pertinently say that the world is the world as that the world is God. Neither the Jew nor the Christian nor the Moslem understand by “God” the physical world, so that, if someone calls the physical world God, he cannot be taken to mean that the world is God according to the Jewish or Christian or Moslem understanding of God. Does he mean any more than that the physical world is ultimately self-explanatory, that no Cause external to the world, no transcendent Being is requisite or admissible, i.e. that there is no God? If that were all there is in pantheism, the latter would indeed be indistinguishable from atheism, and those who called Spinoza an atheist would be fully justified. (shrink)

The author presents a discussion of the problem of religious knowledge. The author poses the problem as follows: "if there is (or is not) a real god, How can we find out that fact?" (staff).

The meaning of the title of this essay is not clear. And something must be done towards clarifying it, in order that the question at issue may be understood.

Many people who have never read the works of Nietzsche possess some vague notion of what he taught. For them the philosophy of Nietzsche is represented by a few floating ideas—“Superman,” “Will to Power,” and even perhaps “blond beast.” Others again have learnt a little more about Nietzsche and perhaps read something of what he actually said; yet the net result is an impression of a passionate and destructive thinker, who launched his attacks on this side and on that, without (...) any regard for consistency. For them there can be no philosophy of Nietzsche: they know that he often wrote in the form of aphorism and they picture his thought in general as a series of detached utterances, many of which are mutually exclusive. It may then be of use to some, if we attempt to set forth the guiding inspiration and leading ideas of Nietzsche, for when these have been grasped, it will be seen that it is by no means absurd to speak of a philosophy of Nietzsche. It may well be impossible to reconcile all his utterances, at least so far as the words are concerned—though Nietzsche is of course not the only philosopher who betrays inconsistency in his thought—but it should be remembered that Nietzsche was not given to standing still: his thought developed. Moreover, he often spoke in an exaggerated form, so that some of the apparent inconsistencies may be ascribed to over-emphasis. In any case, even granting the presence of irreconcilable inconsistencies in his thought, Nietzsche's various theories not only may, but must, be seen as a whole, if they are seen in the light of his guiding ideas and inspiration. (shrink)

To treat existentialism as a philosophy is no more possible than to treat idealism as a philosophy. The reason is obvious. Jean-Paul Sartre is an existentialist and Gabriel Marcel is also an existentialist; but the philosophy of Sartre is not the same as the philosophy of Marcel. One can no more speak of the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel and Berdyaev, as though they maintained the same system, than one could speak of the philosophy of Plato, Berkeley and (...) Hegel, as though one philosophy was common to the three thinkers. Of course, if one took idealism in the sense in which the Marxist uses the term, as meaning the doctrine that mind is prior to matter, i.e. as opposed to materialism , one would have a definite theme to consider; but one would be forced to recognize as idealists thinkers who would never call themselves by that name and who would not be generally recognized as such. Similarly, if one said that existentialism is the doctrine that man is free and that what he makes of himself depends on himself, on his free choices, one would doubtless have mentioned a doctrine which is common to the existentialists and which they insist upon; but one would at the same time be forced to include in the ranks of the existentialists philosophers whose inclusion would be manifestly absurd. (shrink)

IT HAS OFTEN BEEN STATED that Nietzsche's predominantly aphoristic style of writing militated against the construction of any system analogous to those of Spinoza and Hegel. The statement is doubtless true. But it is essential to add that Nietzsche had no wish to construct such a system. Spinoza was convinced that the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things; and Hegel believed that the rational is the real and the real the rational. (...) Nietzsche, however, had no such conviction or belief. Hence it would be rather misleading to say that he "failed" to construct a system comparable to those of Spinoza or Hegel. (shrink)

The author discusses the philosophical views on personality of the personalists, The existentialists, And professors lavelle and le senne. (staff).