H.B.G. Casimir's life, interests and works are intertwined with the important developments that have taken place in physics during this century. This book was compiled by his friends and admirers in honour of his 80th birthday and concentrates mainly on Casimir's achievements in the field of physics, though without ignoring the peripheral areas of the history and philosophy of physics in which he was greatly interested. The book is divided into four parts. Part I describes Casimir's teachers, Ehrenfest, Bohr and (...) Pauli, and will be of general interest due to the key role which these physicists played in modern developments. The articles do give new facts and provide new insights into the history of modern physics. Part II consists of essays on recent developments in various areas of physics in which Casimir has taken an active interest, such as the modern concept of time, statistical foundations of electrodynamic theory and field theory. The subjects covered in Part III have been selected because of Casimir's efforts in the industrial research area of physics. They cover past, present and future expectations in research. (shrink)

By a “world-outlook” I mean a systematic account of the nature of the world which claims, by showing the place of man in the scheme of things, to indicate the point and purpose of his life. The theory of the world is often called a metaphysical theory and the theory of conduct an ethical or moral theory. In my opinion the clarification and criticism of world-outlooks is a fundamental part of philosophy. Indeed, I hardly think that philosophy would have existed (...) as something distinct from science or poetry but for the tendency to attempt some explanation of the world as the scene of human endeavour. When Kant referred to “the inevitable problems of pure reason” about “God, freedom, and immortality,” he was referring in a summary way to the fundamental philosophical task of analysing and criticizing world-outlooks, a task that may be undertaken even by those philosophers who do not believe that any world-outlook is or could be adequate. It is clear, of course, that the civilized religions, since they seek to show how human conduct fits in with some Divine Plan or Cosmic Conflict, have world-outlooks. It is, however, misleading to look upon religions and world-outlooks as the same thing, as some people do. For in ordinary usage religion involves belief in supernatural beings and conduct regulated in the light of this belief, but according to some world-outlooks there are no supernatural beings, while according to others beings may exist deserving that description but human conduct need take no account of them. (shrink)

It seems natural enough to suppose that there must be some very close connection between our feelings of sympathy and our moral principles. A large part, at any rate, of the badness of bad men seems to consist in their lack of real concern for other people, and a large part of the goodness of good men consists in the regard they have for their fellows. Could a man who never felt with of for another be regarded as good, or (...) even as a moral being at all ? We should be inclined to say that this was impossible were it not that some philosophers appear to maintain that reason is the fundamental moral requirement and that unsympathetic beings might act rightly from some purely rational principle. Kant, for example, in a well-known passage, contrasts the man who helps others because he is sympathetically inclined towards them with the man who is too unhappy to feel with them but nevertheless helps them because he thinks he ought to. It is the second of these men, in his view, whose action is most clearly moral. In reply to this we may say that although a man's personal griefs at a particular time may render him at that time unable to feel with others even though he helps them as he ought, nevertheless he could not have performed such an act of heroic beneficence if his heart had never warmed towards anybody. (shrink)

The journal of symbolic logic began publishing in 1936. From the outset, the Journal included a Reviews Section, edited by Alonzo Church. The very first issue carried three pages of reviews, written by Bernays, Church, Rosser, and Quine.As the first issue stated, “It is intended that this section of the Journal shall serve as a complete bibliography of current literature in the field of symbolic logic, from January 1, 1936. To this end an effort will be made to include in (...) it, at least by title, all publications in this field, both books and articles in journals, and as far as possible these will be accompanied by signed reviews.” Thus the purpose of the Reviews Section was two-fold. For one, there was its bibliographical function: to provide a complete, suitably indexed, listing of all the publications—both books and journal articles—in symbolic logic, wherever and in whatever language published. And secondly, the reviews were to provide critical, analytical commentary on these publications, whenever possible.The Reviews Section should be viewed as a continuation and expansion of Church's A bibliography of symbolic logic. The Bibliography was a listing, with some annotations, of the publications in symbolic logic prior to 1936. It was published as volume 1, number 4 of the Journal. Church made the listing as complete as he could, of course. (shrink)

Rabindranath Tagore is remembered today chiefly as a poet, and his fame as a poet has often eclipsed his great contributions to other fields of literature and life — especially education. Tagore pondered deeply on the fundamental problems of education — aims, curriculum, method, discipline, values and medium — and wrote and experimented on them freely and extensively. Tagore is perhaps the only literary genius in contemporary history who devoted a major part of his life to thinking about education and (...) creating an educational institution of international significance. Also, the institution he created at Santiniketan proved to be the most global and sustainable among the progressive educational institutions launched by individual thinkers such as Froebel and Russell. This edition revives a classic work, the first comprehensive, full-length account of Tagore’s educational thought and activity, commemorating his 150th birth anniversary. It presents a detailed chronological survey of Tagore’s educational writings and institutional activities in the perspective of his life and thought in general. The book also contains a detailed review and critical discussion on almost all major aspects of his educational work. Through an overall evaluation of Tagore’s unique contribution to education and his message to the world, it seeks to correct some common misconceptions that have existed from time to time about Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati. The book will help form a more complete view of Tagore’s life and work, filling as it does the gaps and voids in the literature that has grown around him, and reinforcing its relevance today. It will be of value to educationists, teachers, policymakers, those interested in modern Indian history and philosophy of education._ _. (shrink)

It is not easy for an Englishman to acquire a competent knowledge of French philosophy. For one thing there are so many French philosophers writing so many books, and for another the multiplicity of men is matched by the variety of views. In a country where a knowledge of philosophy is expected of any cultivated man, and where the flourishing of philosophy in school and university curricula is regarded as a condition of intellectual freedom, this variety is accepted as part (...) of the cultural background. Professor Bréhier's Transformation de la Philosophie Française must, even so, be of great value to French readers, because of the author's capacity-so admirably shown already in a History of Philosophy that is unquestionably the best now obtainable-to pick out what is essential in a welter of theories, arguments, and mere pronouncements. To English readers, whose knowledge of the background is necessarily limited, this book is particularly valuable, not only for the clarification it brings, but also for a bibliography that is closely related to the text. M. Bréhier observes that French philosophers of the generation that followed and criticized Durkheim, Bergson and Brunschwicg showed themselves acutely conscious of the discontinuities of things, and puritanically averse to the construction of philosophical systems. M. Bréhier, however, does not take this anti-systematic, pluralist tendency at its own valuation. French philosophy, he thinks, is in a phase that makes it comparable to medieval philosophy. It was characteristic of medieval philosophy that it comprised no individually constructed systems like those, for example, of Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, which have grown up and died away in Europe since the Renaissance. The main reason for this was that Christianity itself provided a common system which was never to be questioned, so that philosophers concerned themselves not with systems, for that would have led to heresy, but with particular problems. Part of M. Bréhier's parallel with modern times is that some Christians and all Marxists aim to produce the same condition. (shrink)

An outline of the life of Heraclides and his fragmentary writings (on the theory of matter, astronomy, ethical and religious topics) is followed by an attempt to reconstruct his thought. He emerges as not so much a profound thinker as a many-sided writer of considerable literary gifts and occasional flashes of brilliance.

It is easy to understand why Hegel's philosophy should be little studied by English-speaking philosophers today. Those who at the beginning of the twentieth century initiated the movement we are now caught up in presented their earliest philosophical arguments as criticisms of the prevailing Anglo-Hegelian views. It may now be thought illiberal to take much interest in this perhaps excusably slaughtered royal family, and positively reactionary to hanker after the foreign dynasty from which it sometimes claimed descent. Hegel was a (...) systematic philosopher with a scope hardly to be found today, and men who, as we say, wish to keep up with their subject may well be daunted at the idea of having to understand a way of looking at philosophy which they suspect would not repay them for their trouble anyway. Furthermore, since Hegel wrote, formal logic has advanced in ways he could not have foreseen, and has, it seems to many, destroyed the whole basis of his dialectical method. At the same time, the creation of a science of sociology, it is supposed, has rendered obsolete the philosophy of history for which Hegel was at one time admired. In countries where there are Marxist intellectuals, Hegel does get discussed as the inadvertent forerunner of historical and dialectical materialism. But in England, where there is no such need or presence, there do not seem to be any very strong ideological reasons for discussing him. In what follows I shall be asking you to direct your thoughts to certain forgotten far-off things which I hope you will find historically interesting even if you do not agree with me that they give important clues for an understanding of human nature and human society. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays, all of which have appeared earlier as individual pieces. What they have in common is a relentless effort to "demythologize" Marx and Marxism and to ridicule American intellectuals who continue to be attracted to Marxist principles and doctrine. Most disturbing to Feuer is that "the fallacies of an older generation" are being repeated among the younger. The book is at its weakest when Feuer is at his most Freudian. The crudity of attributing Marx's concept (...) of class struggle to his hatred of his mother taxes the credulity. Nor does he become more credible when he blames Marx for the ill-fated and tragic life of his daughter Eleanor. The biggest mystery of all is what such Freudian studies have to do with the merit or demerit of Marx's theories of man, history and society. The mystery is further compounded by Feuer's abrupt and dogmatic dismissal of recent scholarly works which have traced Marx's intellectual debts to Hegel and which have emphasized a fundamental continuity between Marx's concept of alienation in his early works and its re-expression later in political economy terms such as exploitation and fetishization. Feuer adds nothing to these carefully documented studies and detracts much from his own argument by the baldly unsupported assertion that "the truth is" to the contrary. Finally, it hardly enhances Feuer's objectivity to brush aside all of the recent books on Marxism on the grounds that they "add little to the earlier interpretations and criticisms made by Sidney Hook and Max Eastman."--H. B. (shrink)

Spanish readers are fortunate in having a publishing house which is committed to reproduce in Spanish the complete works of Georg Lukács. The complete edition will consist of twenty-four, or more, volumes, of which ten are already in print, covering mainly Lukács works on esthetics and literary criticism. The Hegel volume was originally published in German in 1948. The main draft was written as early as the fall of 1938, but the outbreak of World War II delayed publication. Lukács at (...) that time was in the Soviet Union where, following Stalin's lead, Hegel was characterized as an apologist for the Prussian feudal opposition to the French revolution. Considering the winning of the war as more important than provoking a controversy over Hegel, Lukács put his manuscript aside for the duration. In The Young Hegel, Lukács settles his account with Hegel, much as Marx and Engels in The German Ideology--with one significant difference. The objective of Marx and Engels was the abolition of Hegelianism. Their polemic, therefore, was directed against Hegel and the neo-Hegelians. Lukács, on the other hand, sought the restoration of the Hegelian dimension of Marxism, and, while accepting the Marxian critique of Hegelianism, directed his attack against the detractors of Hegel--against the Stalin line within Marxism and against those like Dilthey and Kierkegaard outside of Marxism who transformed Hegel into an "irrationalist." Lukács is consequently much more positive in his treatment of Hegel than Marx and Engels. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács emphasized the necessity of understanding Hegel in order to properly understand Marx. In The Young Hegel, the emphasis is on the dialectical opposite--Hegel is understood through the eyes of Marx, through the critique of Marx and through a Marxian interpretation by Lukács. Lukács' unique contribution in the present work is the detailed study of the close union of philosophy and economics in the genesis of Hegel's thought. Indeed, the original subtitle of the German edition reads: Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie. The Spanish edition has a two-and-a-half page preface, written specially for it by Lukács in 1963, in which he states his conviction of the importance in the thought of Hegel and other great philosophers of concern with economic problems, both from the standpoint of economic theory and actual economic conditions. An English edition has been promised by Merlin Press in London, but no date of publication has yet been announced.--H. B. (shrink)

Analytical philosophy abounds in tours de force [[sic]], but these are usually directed against other genres of philosophy, particularly the brand which passes under the various titles of "speculative," "systematic," or "substantive" philosophy. What distinguishes Fain's tour de force is that he turns the cutting edge of analytical philosophy on itself and, in so doing, seeks to revalidate speculative philosophy on analytical grounds. The main attack is against the stereotypes of a dichotomy between history and the philosophy of history, of (...) analytical philosophy presented as the true basis of philosophy of history, and of speculative philosophy of history as some kind of pseudo-discipline which is neither philosophy nor history. At the same time, the author rejects the standard division of philosophy of history into analytical and speculative approaches. His positive arguments center around the crucial role of narration in history. It is not the historical facts which give intelligibility to history, but the story-line or plot which combines them into a coherent narrative. Narration is counterposed to the analytical philosopher's emphasis on descriptive explanation of the facts. Fain argues that narration not only does not preclude consideration of history as a science, but that science itself often requires narration for purposes of intelligibility. He downgrades the importance of the debate which has raged for the last three decades over the nature of historical explanation. Absorption with the pros and cons of the covering law model of historical explanation has tended to preempt the whole field of philosophy of history and to obscure other more basic issues such as the relationship of history to science. On the other hand, Fain could not resist the temptation to append an epilogue on Hempel's covering law model, thus denying in practice what he proclaimed in principle. The examples of speculative philosophy are drawn mainly from the works of Hegel, Marx, and Collingwood. They are expounded and criticized within the context of Fain's definition of philosophy of history as "the formulation and the critique of criteria of intelligibility of historical concepts." Although he finds shortcomings in the story-lines of all three from the standpoint of intelligibility, the author concludes with a call for historians and philosophers to debate the story-line that a history of mankind should adopt. The bibliography is informative and selective.--H. B. (shrink)

Marxists tend to write not only with conviction, but with passion, flowing from an active commitment to the emancipation of mankind. In the hands of a dogmatist, such conviction and passion can serve to forge new chains. In the hands of a creative thinker, they can give wings to the freedom struggle. Mészáros' book is a "winger"--one of the most far-ranging books on the subject of Marx's theory of alienation since Lukács' seminal Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein and his chapter on alienation (...) in Der junge Hegel. This is not at all surprising since Mészáros is a former student of, and assistant to, Lukács and freely acknowledges his intellectual indebtedness to his old teacher. The present work concentrates on a close examination of the various aspects of alienation as Marx dealt with them in the Paris Manuscripts of 1844. Mészáros makes clear, however, that the framework of interpretation and evaluation of the Paris Manuscripts is the totality of Marx's works. Within this context, the Manuscripts are presented as Marx's first great "synthesis in statu nascendi," in which he discovered the dialectic of alienated labor as the motive force in history, driving toward its own self-Aufhebung. Mészáros cites chapter and verse on the continuity of this original synthesis in the later works of Marx. Not only did Marx not abandon the concept of alienation after 1845, nor its centrality, but he did not, as has been often alleged, abandon the terms Entfremdung or Entäusserung either. Mészáros' justification for advancing the Marxian concept of alienation today is the bold assertion that the transcendence of labor's self-alienation is on the order of the day; it is the essential ingredient in rescuing mankind from self-destruction, and not a remote concept for the intellectual gratification of isolated intellectuals. Modern usage of the term 'alienation' has proliferated to the extent that it is used to apply to just about any and every manifestation of out-of-jointness between the individual and society, or between one individual and another. There is here a curious confirmation of Marx's thesis. His point was that capitalism inevitably extends alienation more and more pervasively into more and more aspects of life as it extends itself. Alienation is not a byproduct of capitalism; it is integral to the process of capitalism itself. From this, it is easy to derive the "necessity" of its transcendence. In addition to dealing with the origins and structure of Marx's theory of alienation, the author devotes separate chapters to the Economic Aspects, Political Aspects, Ontological and Moral Aspects, and the Aesthetic Aspects. The latter two chapters, in particular, display the influence of Lukács and the originality of Mészáros' points of departure. The last three chapters of the book take up The Controversy about Marx, The Individual and Society, and the Crisis of Education. Mészáros is sometimes unclear and stylistically ponderous, and he occasionally stretches Marx too much and too far, or gets pedantically over-involved in detail, but these are small flaws in a work which throws much light with rigorous scholarship on such an important subject in such a manifold of interrelated aspects.--H. B. (shrink)

Benedict Spinoza (1634–1677) is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls “the rule of (the) multitude,” that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza’s multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that is (...) found in the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for being-affected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza’s emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or “the power of the multitude”—a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature. (shrink)

There are few books in any language which attempt to survey the whole range of Lukács' work. English readers may, therefore, consider themselves fortunate to have available the present volume and, doubly fortunate, to have forthcoming in late 1970 or early 1971 yet another book by one of the present contributors, István Mészáros, titled the Life and Work of Georg Lukács. The work under review is based on a series of lectures in 1968 at the Graduate School of Contemporary European (...) Studies at the University of Reading. The Introduction by Parkinson is largely expository and concentrates on Lukacs' celebrated Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. The individual essays which follow are critical examinations of Lukács' views in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and literary criticism. The essays are generally of a high caliber and the differences which the authors express in relation to various aspects of Lukács are themselves testimony to the complexity and depth of his thought. The most comprehensive, and, in many ways, the most interesting approach to Lukács is in the lead-off essay by Mészáros which, in the context of dealing with his concept of the dialectic, seeks to disclose the basic structure of Lukács' thought and to establish its continuity from the young Lukács to the mature Lukács. Mészáros finds from the very beginning not only a revolutionary turn in Lukács' structure of thought, but along with it--or within it--or perhaps even conditioning it--a complex and far-ranging "ought". The "ought-ridden" character of Lukács' thought, Mészáros claims, is both the source of some of his great intellectual achievements and of some of his great failures, particularly when he substitutes ideology and moral postulates for mediated, concrete reality. Those interested in the development of the concept of the dialectic from Hegel to Marx and from Marx to the present will find Mészáros' discussion of Lukács' categories of "totality" and "mediation" informative and thought-provoking. H. A. Hodges examines Lukács' critique of philosophical irrationalism and singles out for special study his comments on the degree to which Dilthey and Mannheim contributed toward this trend. Parkinson, in addition to writing the introduction, has an essay on the nature of Besonderheit, the central category of Lukács' aesthetics. He translates Besonderheit as "speciality" or "the special." Roy Pascal digs into Lukács' concept of totality as developed in the Ästhetik and as applied in his critique of Walter Scott and of Kafka. In addition, there is an essay by David Craig on how, in Lukács' view, history molds literature, and another essay by Stanley Mitchell on Lukács' concept of the "beautiful." All in all, while the book does not represent a definitive or inclusive introduction to the work of Lukács, it does constitute an important landmark in presenting many important dimensions of his thought, as well as some highly critical appraisals of its validity and importance.--H. B. (shrink)

This book represents the text used by Ortega for presentation of his lecture course on metaphysics at the University of Madrid in 1932-1933. Stylistically, the manuscript is illustrative of his pedagogical method, rather than his method of philosophical exposition. In its own way it demonstrates how the literal transcription of what is effective orally can become in written form tiresomely repetitious and frustratingly slow in development. The thesis of the lectures is that metaphysics is implicit in man's basic orientation toward (...) life. Orientation implies a previous state of disorientation. The authentic self is aware of the need for orientation and makes the move consciously. Ingredient in the consciousness of the authentic self is an awareness of self as solitary and alone, thrown into a chaotic and hostile world in which it must unendingly make its life by what it does. The unauthentic self, on the other hand, lives a fictitious existence, accepting sociality as the basis of existence and therefore uncritically accepting the social and cultural norms of the times. The unauthentic self is always oriented, but falsely so, since it does not find its own way to its orientation. At the end of the lectures, Ortega seems close to the point of merging the authentic and unauthentic "I's" into one self, although he never quite gets there. But whether the two "I's" retain their categorial separateness or whether they are transformed into two modes of being of the same self, the same question remains: On what grounds is public life less authentic than private life, and the external less real than the internal? Further, the asocial, solitary "I" which must think through its orientation in solitude, i.e., independently of society, must use the most social of all tools to carry through its project, namely, language. The last three lectures contain a brief evaluation of idealism and realism and the inadequacies of both doctrines in explaining reality.--H. B. (shrink)

Bradley's essay, first published in 1874, is considered the earliest significant application of British idealism to philosophy of history and an exemplar of Anglo-American analytical philosophy of history. The editor of the present edition goes much further. He credits Bradley with being one of the chief sources of the twentieth-century idea of history and more particularly, of Collingwood's expression of that idea. Rubinoff makes out a good case for the identity between Collingwood and Bradley. Collingwood's concept of history as the (...) re-enactment of past thought has its counterpart in Bradley's "identification of consciousness," and Collingwood's idea of history as an attempt to organize the thought of the past into a dynamically developing scale of forms parallels Bradley's theory of reality as a concrete universal which appears in finite centers. Bradley evidently had no knowledge of Dilthey, yet his reactions to history were essentially the same. Both viewed history as an autonomous discipline requiring its own methodology, and both rejected the "dehumanized" approach of positivism, on the one hand, and the relativism and skepticism of primitive historicism on the other hand. Similarly, both had recourse to the concept of re-experience of past experience by the historian. The line from Bradley to Collingwood is clear enough. What seems cloudy is Rubinoff's claim that Dilthey lapsed back into positivism by presupposing the uniformity of human nature as the ground for understanding self and others, while Bradley escaped this lapse by making the historian the criterion of historical knowledge. It seems more accurate to describe Dilthey's concept as the continuity of human nature, not its uniformity. Uniformity would suggest that primitive man could understand modern society. Dilthey could hardly have been suggesting such a possibility! And, clearly, Bradley's concept of the historian as criterion of historical knowledge is only comprehensible within the framework of the continuity of human nature.--H. B. (shrink)

The modern reinterpretations of Vico are a good example of the rethinking by historians of one age of the rethinking by historians of previous ages of the original thought of a philosopher. The present volume stresses the unique unity of theory and practice in Vico's thought and dispels some unfounded criticisms, such as his alleged reliance on the geometric method, inconsistencies in his use of the terms "philosophy" and "philology," and the mechanical acceptance of the patterns of development of Greece (...) and Rome as the patterns for all nations. Above all, it is suggested that, although Providence was central to Vico's conception of historical development, his system does not collapse by modern rejection of this force. The principle of the continuity of human nature which lies at the core of Dilthey's insight into the special character of history was stated in its pure form by Vico a century and a half earlier. Vico's ideas were sharpened in his critiques of Grotius, Selden, Pufendorf, and Francis Bacon. While drawing some positive inspiration from each, he found in them the common deficiency of reading their own abstract principles into history. Descartes, however, emerges as Vico's bête noire because of his dismissal of history as incapable of producing certainty. Vico's biting polemic against Descartes pales the criticisms of Arnauld and Gassendi, and, at the same time, illustrates the sweep and power of his own historically-grounded concepts. The author gives major attention to Vico's notion of the limits of knowledge, to his notion of cause, to the historicity of human society and its laws and governments, to the vital role of language, to the distinction between imaginative universals and rational universals, and to the necessary union in his New Science of philosophy and philology. Manson is an unrestrained admirer of Vico and he makes no effort to dilute his enthusiasm by taking critical exception to any fundamental aspect of Vico's epistemology.--H. B. (shrink)

At long last, this seminal work is available in English. Originally published in German in 1923, it became almost immediately a center of interest and stormy controversy in both Marxist and non-Marxist circles. With the passage of time, the controversy has abated somewhat, the interest has heightened, and Lukács has become recognized generally as one of the most influential and creative Marxists of the post-World War I world. The tour de force in History and Class Consciousness is its insistence on (...) the indissoluble link between Hegel and Marx and on the centrality of the concept of alienation in Marx's thought--an insistence which was dramatically verified nine years later with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and again in 1939 with the appearance of Marx's Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Of perhaps more lasting value are the dazzling expositions on the nature and role of class consciousness, on the open-endedness of history, on the dialectical method as the essence of authentic and orthodox marxism, on the concept of totality, and on fetishism and reification as the inevitable consequences of commodity production relations. Lukács might have rested his laurels on these features of the book and basked in the glory of their popularity. Instead, he chose to emphasize the negative features which he feared might lead the unwary reader down an un-Marxist or anti-Marxist path. Accordingly, he refused to permit republication or translation and those who wanted to read the work had to resort to mimeographed or photographic reproductions, or "pirate" editions. Despite these difficulties, the book managed to circulate widely among serious Marxists and students of Marxism and to exercise an influence which continues to this day. Both critics and admirers of Lukács considered his ban on the book to be "tactical" and his criticisms of it to be tongue-in-cheek, or opportunistic. But when Lukács finally authorized a new edition in 1967 and wrote a new preface for it, there could no longer be any doubt that he truly believed that the book contained grievous failings and that it was these failings which accounted for the book's popularity. Being still in transition from Hegel to Marx, Lukács had not succeeded in wholly reconstructing Hegel along revolutionary materialist lines, as Marx himself had succeeded in doing. In particular, Lukács had succumbed to the identical subject-object relation, which distorted his view of the relationship of man to nature, destroyed the basis for a solid Marxist ontology in which work mediated between man and nature, and disrupted the unity of theory and practice. From the standpoint of Marxism, Lukács' criticisms are unassailable, but this, by no means, entails that his evaluation of the book as a whole has to be accepted. It remains an impressive attempt, during a revolutionary period, to select those elements in Marxism which serve as effective theoretical tools to guide the revolution along a truly socialist path.--H. B. (shrink)

The Peanese convention for the use of dots as brackets has the disadvantage that it gives only an awkward method for representing chains of indefinite length, such as the compound implicationSuch chains occur frequently in logical investigations of a metatheoretic nature, and it is convenient to have a systematic method of abbreviating them. The most obvious method of doing this would be to leave the parentheses out entirely, and to understand that in such cases the implication sign or other operation (...) appearing on the extreme left is the most inclusive; but this method, which has been followed by Quine, is at variance with our ordinary algebraic usage, in which we write a − b + c − d for ((a − b) + c) − d, and consequently leads to confusion. It is desirable to have a modification of the Peanese convention which gives a simple method of representing such chain implications, and at the same time avoids this difficulty.Such a modification is easily obtained by generalizing somewhat a procedure of Church. The latter author uses only a single dot, which he writes on the right of an operator to signify a bracket extending from that point to the end of the formula (or parenthesized expression). If dots are used only on the right of operations this is all that can be desired. But the essential idea of this device can be extended to the case where dots are used also on the left, as follows: let us suppose that a group of dots on the right of an operation or prefix denotes the beginning of a bracket which extends to the right until it meets a group with an equal or larger number of dots on the left of an operation; and that the scope of a group of dots on the left of an operation shall extend to the left until it reaches a larger group of dots on the right of some operation. (shrink)

This volume is a translation from the French original which appeared in 1965. It is a concise and critical examination of Soviet philosophical thought since the death of Stalin. The study is restricted to dialectical materialism probably on the supposition that this crucial area would provide significant clues to the status of Marxist philosophy as a whole in the post-Stalin period. The author discloses that Soviet philosophers, even before the 20th Congress, had already begun to criticize as thought-stifling Stalin's dogmatic (...) views on diamat. De-Stalinization has encouraged the renewed serious study of Hegel and the rediscovery of the importance of the categories for philosophical synthesis. But the author finds Soviet philosophic thought still barren of originality. Soviet philosophy is found to be the least critical of all philosophies. The easiest way to discredit Soviet philosophy, the author asserts, would be to translate one of their contemporary texts on the history of philosophy! Planty-Bonjour does not make any comparisons between the interplay of philosophers and working scientists in the western world and in the U.S.S.R. He reports that diamat is of no particular use to working Soviet scientists and that it has lost practically all control over scientific activity. The main body of the book is devoted to a critique of the Soviet notion of category and to the dialectification of the categories. In the author's view, Soviet philosophers are inevitably led to a dead-end by the incompatible and nonjustified concepts that the real is rational and that the real is matter. This incompatibility makes diamat inherently incoherent. Hegel's dialectic cannot serve as a means of avoiding the problem of transcendence toward which the basically realistic attitude of Soviet philosophy is leading. A genuine dialogue between Soviet philosophers and spiritualist philosophers is possible only if the former drop the dialectic of nature and allow the realistic tendency in their philosophy to develop.--H. B. (shrink)

If we reject τις, which appears only in derivative manuscripts, then the sentence is notable in the following ways. First, the position of τι—not that it separates ἕκαστος from ὑμν, but because we expect it, if present at all, to appear as πρός ὃ τι … and ἓαστός τι in itself is a conspicuously discordant juxtaposition—hence presumably the corruption to ἓαστός τις. Second, the sense: the sentence must surely mean not that each juryman has a criterion, but that each has (...) a different criterion, that he would like to see satisfied. (shrink)

This is a new translation of one of Plekhanov's major works on historical materialism. It is based on the Russian edition of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, edited by V. A. Fomina. The appendix contains two valuable additional essays by Plekhanov: The Materialist Conception of History and The Role of the Individual in History, both of which are reprints with some minor revisions of translations of 1940. Plekhanov's footnotes are given on the page (...) and explanatory notes by the editor have been added in the back of the book. Plekhanov is generally credited with having been the first to apply the term "dialectical materialism" to the philosophical materialism of Marx and Engels. In the opinion of many non-Marxist and some Marxist scholars, this was the crucial initial step in the elaboration of a deviationist doctrine which not only departed from Marx's and Engels' original thought, but which eventually overshadowed it. Plekhanov, in this view, served as the link between Engels and Lenin in which a tendency in Engels toward a mechanistic materialism, manifested in his Anti-Dühring and The Dialectics of Nature, was developed into a dominant theme. Dialectical materialism became the term applicable to the science of the laws of motion of man, society, and nature--of all reality. Historical materialism, or, as Marx and Engels called it, the materialist conception of history, became but a subordinate branch of dialectical materialism, dealing specifically with the laws of motion of man and society. It became a philosophy of history derived from a broader philosophy of nature, or of the cosmos. Reality became an autonomous existent--independent of the human species. And epistemology became a copy theory of man's never-ending and never-achieved struggle to know and reflect that which pre-exists outside of him. Regrettably, the introduction by the editor ignores these evaluations and interpretations and sticks to the more traditional Marxist areas of discussing Plekhanov's masterful refutation of economic determinism, his exaggeration of the importance of geographic conditions, and Lenin's criticisms of his theoretical weaknesses. Plekhanov's treatment of the materialist conception of history still stands as one of the most brilliant and coherent presentations of this seminal doctrine. It is a pity and a historical deprivation that he became so preoccupied with the polemics of the day as to never sit down to write a systematic exposition of Marxism.--H. B. (shrink)

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

The author has made this treatise on Madhva’s realistic school of Ved?nta philosophy convincing to the modern mind by employing western logical apparatus in substantiating Madhva’s ideas. Following the Indian classical tradition, the author has examined the validity of Advaitaved?nta, the Absolute Monism of ?a?kara and Bh?skara as P?rvapak?a, and logically proved its inconsistencies. He has then established the Dvaitasiddh?nta i.e., the Monotheistic Dualism of Madhva. He has successfully brought out the nuances of the realistic school of Indian philosophical thought (...) in this work. A Modern Introduction to M?dhva Philosophy is Prof B H Kotabagi’s posthumous publication. (shrink)

The Court of Appeals of Minnesota, in State v. Saunders ), held that the statutory offense of practicing medicine without a license was not unconstitutionally vague as applied to a claim involving a farmer who offered a home remedy to cure cancer. The court held that, although Minnesota Statute § 147.081 subd. 3 contains general language and undefined terms, the statute contains sufficient particularity to show ordinary persons what conduct is prohibited, and thereby passes the void-for-vagueness test. The court stated (...) that, according to the statute, while a person holding a license to practice medicine is permitted to engage in a broad range of conduct, those without that license are proscribed from engaging in that same range of conduct.The defendant, Mr. Saunders, a dairy farmer, claimed that he could cure ill people by injecting an ill person's blood into a cow and then feeding that person the cow's colostrum. (shrink)

The eleventh-century Byzantine compiler Cedrenus includes a unique story in the midst of his otherwise traditional and hagiographic material on the emperor Constantine. Mentioning the outbreak of war between the Roman and Persian empires, he describes the cause of the breakdown of peace somewhat as follows. A certain Metrodorus, who was of Persian origin, went to visit the Brahmins in India to study philosophy and won the reputation of being a holy man through his asceticism. He also built water mills (...) and baths, unknown to the Indians till that time. Having acquired this reputation, he entered the temples and took away many precious stones and pearls. He also received gifts from the king of the Indians. On his return to Byzantium he gave them to the emperor Constantine as being gifts of his own. When Constantine expressed his astonishment, Metrodorus said he had sent other gifts by the land route but that they had been detained by the Persians. Constantine then wrote a strong protest to Sapor demanding the gifts but received no reply; thus the peace was broken. This remarkable conte, more appropriate to the Arabian Nights than to sober history, is generally supposed to be referred to in a passage in Ammianus. Towards the end of a long section commenting on the personality and achievements of Julian, Ammianus turns briefly to the question of the ultimate responsibility for the Persian War which ended so disastrously for Julian and the Roman Empire: et quoniam eum obtrectatoribus novos bellorum tumultus ad perniciem rei communis insimulant concitasse, sciant docente veritate perspicue, non Iulianum sed Constantinum ardores Parthicos succendisse, cum Metrodori mendaciis avidius acquiescit, ut dudum rettulimus plane. (shrink)

Significant structural, developmental, and financial constraints exist in Scottish soccer that may predicate a different approach to talent identification and development. To our knowledge, no published reports exist evaluating the prevalence of the relative age effect in Scottish soccer players. Consequently, the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of the RAE among varied playing levels and ages of male Scottish youth soccer players. Birthdates of male youth players from U10 to U17 age groups and from playing levels: (...) “Amateur”, “Development”, and “Performance”, alongside a group of male Scottish senior professional players were recorded and categorized into quartiles and semesters from the start of the selection year. Birthdates were analyzed for: each playing level and each age group irrespective of playing level. For the varied playing levels examined, an RAE was evident in “Development” and “Performance” playing levels only at youth level. When examining each age group, an RAE was observed in U12–U17 players only. While there was a slight asymmetry favoring Q1 born senior professional players, the RAE was not present within this group of our sample. Results from our study suggest that a bias in selecting individuals born earlier in the selection year may exist within male soccer academy structures, but not at amateur level. The asymmetry favoring chronologically older players at youth but not professional level questions the efficacy of this conscious bias within male Scottish soccer players. (shrink)

I have become more convinced, over the years, by the truth of Wittgenstein’s characterisation of philosophy as arising through misconceptions of grammar. Such a misconception of grammar characterises a very popular approach to indexicality which has been current since the 1970s, stemming from the work of Casteñeda, and Kaplan. Gareth Evans was inclined to allow, for instance, that one could say ‘“To the left (I am hot)” is true, as uttered by x at t iff there is someone moderately near (...) to the left of x such that, if he were to utter the sentence “I am hot” at t, what he would thereby say is true’ (Evans 1985: 358). But not only does this disturb the proper relation between direct and indirect speech, it continues a Fregean tradition which these very cases show to be quite mistaken about the logic of intensions. In this paper, however, I want primarily to point out how this misconception of grammar has distorted our view of people. For some of the above thinkers have tried to make out that human motivation is related to the possession of a certain category of indexical belief, by Lewis called ‘de se beliefs’. I shall look here at how the matter arises in Hugh Mellor’s work on Time. In connection with Time, indexicality arises in McTaggart’s ‘A-series’, and Mellor treats this indexicality in parallel with Evans’ language. First, therefore, I aim to show how Mellor’s discussion of Time grammatically misconceives the situation, and leads to a misrepresentation of the motivation of human action. But a larger conclusion about Fregean intensions is also then immediately available. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)

Two uses of ‘if are discussed which do not involve conditions. The first is illustrated in the example ‘If he's here, I don't see him’, the second in ‘He's not a dunce, if a trifle stupid’. A third non‐conditional use, cognate with the first is also mentioned: it would be illustrated in the example ‘If he's a Dutchman, I'll eat my hat’. It is argued that recent attempts to formulate a logic of conditionals have distorted our understanding of ‘if, by (...) ignoring these uses, sometimes deliberately. Specifically, as a result, many arguments involving ‘if have been misjudged as invalid, because the expectation has been that ‘if expresses a condition. It is suggested that the traditional analysis of ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’ in terms of ‘if and only if, is partly to blame for these misunderstandings. And the proper understanding of ‘if’ which emerges shows it is quite fully captured in the propositional calculus. (shrink)

In a previous issue of Philosophical Investigations Professor Radford provides a counterexample to the equation1: a word is on the tip of a man's tongue IFF (a) he can recognize the word and (b1) he believes he may be able to produce It (fairly soon).

Jean-Paul Sartre, in describing the realization of his freedom, was often inclined to say mysterious things like ‘I am what I am not’, ‘I am not what I am’ (‘as I am already what I will be …, I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it’, ‘I make myself not to be the past … which I am’.) He was therefore plainly contradicting himself, but was this merely a playful literary figure (paradox), or (...) was he really being incoherent? By the latter judgment I do not mean to reject his statements entirely (like many of his Anglo-Saxon contemporaries); for I believe there is an intimate link between contradiction and freedom, as I shall explain in this paper. But a minor thing we must first have out of the way is the suggestion that Sartre's language was just a rhetorical trope, designed merely to express some banal platitude in a bemusing way: ‘I am not yet what I will be’, ‘I am no longer what I was’ are sane and sensible, for instance, but cannot be the meant content of Sartre's sayings, since, while they would indeed describe the reform of some character, they would be appropriate only before or after some metamorphosis, not, as Sartre clearly intended, in the midst of some process of riddance and conversion, whether radical or otherwise. Yet, in the turmoil of such a change, ‘I am not what I am’ (or the everyday ‘I am not myself’) still, surely, cannot be true, and if that is the case, Sartre must be being inocherent, and therefore, obfuscating and deliberately obscure, and hence, it seems, must properly be rejected by all right and clear thinking men. (shrink)

The social, educational and political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have become enormously influential in the 200 years since his death. But the breadth as well as the depth of Rousseau's achievement - he was amongst other things a creative writer and musical composer as well as a philosopher - is not always appreciated. In around 100 articles, alphabetically arranged and fully cross-referenced, N. J. H. Dent explores all facets of Rousseau's work and thoughts, while his subject's remarkable life is summarized (...) in a biographical introduction. Details of works by and about Rousseau are listed in an extensive bibliography. For students or general readers seeking an introduction to Rousseau's work, and for those already familiar with the material who require a convenient reference source, this dictionary is essential reading. (shrink)

English title: "The early literary education of the young José Gaos in Valencia (1915-1919)"Resumen: Nuestra intención en este texto es investigar acerca de los primeros años de formación del pensamiento de José Gaos (1900-1969); así pues, no parece ser demasiado erróneo pensar que aquél, hacia 1915 no era, aún, puramente “filosófico”: la Filosofía representaba parte de su formación, cumpliendo el mismo papel —eso sí: básico y fundamental— que desempeñó la Literatura. El primer auténtico encuentro con la Filosofía se daría antes (...) de su llegada a Valencia, en ese mismo año de 1915; pero ese también es el año en que Gaos recibirá una sólida formación estético-literaria a través de prensa y revistas filosóficas, especialmente en el grupo que conformó junto con Max Aub, José Medina Echeverría y su hermano Carlos Gaos. Abstract: This paper investigates in detail about the early years of José Gaos (1900-1969) and his education in philosophy and literature. Therefore, we know that their studies (academic or not) were not purely “philosophical” in 1915. Literature and philosophy played in Gaos an equally important role. The first real encounter with philosophy happens before he comes to Valencia in 1915; but in this year Gaos also receives a strong education, in aesthetic and literary, through press and philosophical journals, and especially within the group formed with Max Aub, José Medina Echeverría and his brother Carlos Gaos. Palabras clave: José Gaos, literatura, juventud, formación, Valencia. Keywords: José Gaos, literature, youth, education, Valencia. (shrink)

It is often said to-day that mathematics is nothing but an extension or development of logic; indeed, the identity of logic and pure mathematics is alleged so confidently by persons whose mathematical attainments entitle them to consideration when they talk about the subject-matter of mathematics, as to be in danger of being ranked with the truths that an educated man should accept on the authority of the specialist. Yet a little reflection might at least make one hesitate. For whatever else (...) may be said about logic, it is generally allowed to study thinking. Some would say merely that it studies inference; but inference is thinking. Now the mathematician thinks and infers, but he does not study the activity of thinking and inferring; and a study of that activity would never make the discoveries credited to the mathematicians. (shrink)

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ says :I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always (...) be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in [‘Some man loves his mother’] and [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun. (shrink)

Until 1969, there was only one book in English on Georg Lukács, Victor Zitta's Georg Lukács' Marxism: Alienation, Dialectics, Revolution. A Study in Utopia and Ideology, published in 1964 by Martinus Nijhoff. In early 1970, Georg Lukács: The Man, His Work, and His Ideas, edited by G. H. R. Parkinson, was published in London by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Now, we have Lichtheim's addition to what promises to be a growing body of literature in English on this many-sided and controversial philosopher. (...) Although Lichtheim expresses some reservations about Zitta's treatment of Lukács, his own work belongs to the same genre in two essential respects: first, it is fundamentally hostile to Lukács, and second, it lapses into many ad hominem arguments which reflect this hostility. Thus, also, the book is sparing in its acknowledgment of Lukács' originality and unsparing in its criticism of his acceptance of any aspect of Leninism as distinct from Marxism. The stated aim of the book is a critical examination of Lukács' theory of aesthetics. In Lukács' case, this requires coming to grips with his views on history, politics, society, and epistemology. Over half of the book is devoted to the latter subjects. The picture of Lukács which emerges is that of an academician, physically divorced from, and without roots in the working class whose cause he espouses. His historical importance is attributed to his recapture of the Hegelian dimension of Marx and his error is his over-extension of the Hegelian aspect to the point where authentic Marxism is submerged in a Hegelianized version of it. Aside from the historical inaccuracy of presenting Lukács as an academician, isolated from the practical sides of daily life, Lichtheim misses the revolutionary essence of Lukács' thought which led him to abandon the comfortable and secure life of a dissident banker's son for the uncertainties and hardships of the life of the revolutionary. The influences of Plato and Dilthey are given undue emphasis in Lukács' thought and a disproportionate part of the book is given over to expounding on this subject. This is a small book about a big philosopher. Most of such books do not satisfy and the present one is no exception.--H. B. (shrink)

Sherburne has the two-fold purpose of framing an aesthetic theory which gains its coherence and clarity by its derivation from a speculative system, and of exploring the adequacy of that system by applying it to one dimension of experience. He begins by developing clearly the categorial notions of Whitehead's mature philosophy and exhibiting them as integral parts of the speculative scheme, and in some cases revising and reformulating them significantly. Using this material, he then frames an aesthetic theory treating such (...) questions as the ontological status of a work of art, aesthetic experience, and artistic creation. A well-written study that illuminates some of the more difficult aspects of Whitehead's thought, and contributes to the discussion of the metaphysical issues of aesthetics.--B. J. H. (shrink)

According to Lewis the medieval universe, "while unimaginably large, was also unambiguously finite." The earth was believed to be infinitesimally small by cosmic standards and to have a perfect spherical shape containing within it an ordered variety. Man looked at the world and saw a manifestation of Divine Wisdom and of human finitude. It is Lewis's thesis that this model of the universe accounts for the most typical vice as well as the most typical virtue of medieval literature. The vice, (...) "sheer unabashed, prolonged dulness," arises because the writer feels the world has a built-in significance and thus he need not embellish his subject-matter. The virtue, an "absence of strain" whereby the story seems to be telling itself, comes from the author's complete confidence in the intrinsic value of his subject-matter and results in a vividness unrivalled until very recent times. Lewis concludes his admirable book with a warning to his contemporaries not to misunderstand the character of a model nor to assume naively that today's model is necessarily more factual and "true" to reality than that of the Middle Ages.—B. P. H. (shrink)

This fifty-page essay treats Marx's concept of action as the principle underlying his whole system. Activity for Marx is described as both a philosophical concept and an element of human experience demanded by his system. The principle of activity is present as early as in Marx's doctoral dissertation and its influence is traced on his materialism, epistemology, and conception of philosophy. In the process, some strong similarities are shown with Dewey's concept of action, despite the difference in goals of the (...) two philosophers. The concept of action was not original with Marx as the author demonstrates in his discussion of Kant's epistemology and Hegel's dialectics. What distinguishes Marx's concept of action is the unification of theory and practice, and the interrelationship of the two on a materialist foundation. To Marx, there was no meaningful theory without practice and no effective action without theory. Furthermore, the oft-quoted statement by Marx that philosophers have only interpreted the world whereas the point is to change it asserts only half of the case. Marx is not advocating change for the sake of change or change in accordance with any interpretation of the world. He is proposing change of a very specific kind and his concept of action cannot be separated from its content. This point does not emerge as clearly as it should in the essay under consideration because the author tends to treat the concept of activity in isolation and as an uninfluenced influence on the rest of Marx's thought. The author welcomes Marx's emphasis on practice as a much-needed antidote to the trend that makes philosophy a world apart. He also approves Marx's active personal role in society and his unhesitating entry into debate with the finest minds of his time. Of great value to those interested in the young Marx is the author's translation of Marx's doctoral dissertation on The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. This is the first complete translation to appear in English. It occupies half the space of the present volume.--H. B. (shrink)

Francis Bacon could imagine the delights of the promised land of science, but he stands today as a propagandist rather than a practitioner. He was no Copernicus or Vesalius or Galileo; he was not even a Gabriel Harvey or a Thomas Harriot. As James Stephens observes in this study he was "never able to provide examples of the interpretation of nature" adequate to validate his claims. A great deal of his thought was taken up not with new experiments but with (...) the problem of how to express the new scientific philosophy in a way that would be intellectually rigorous and at the same time appealing to at least the better educated members of a general audience. Not unlike some modern analytic philosophers, he felt that language is one of the prime causes of human error. The use of language had been systematized for the ancients in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, with later contribution by Isocrates, Cicero, Quintilian, and Seneca, among others. If men’s minds were corrupted by false rhetoric, Bacon’s solution was to offer a true rhetoric. (shrink)

A clear presentation and exploration of the philosophical implications of the classical picture of the physical world and the ways in which contemporary physics has changed it. Capek argues that physics has now moved from a universe governed by a "timeless world formula" toward a world which is irreversible and incomplete, where "becoming has been re-instated." The author's careful attention to the differences between the special and general theories of relativity helps to clear up important misconceptions about the space-time continuum (...) and the "dilatation" of time. Capek is more successful in explaining and clarifying physics than he is in assessing its precise philosophic impact.--B. J. H. (shrink)

The fifteen selections in this volume are collected around the thesis that many of the foundations and tenets of empiricism are mistaken and must be either rejected outright or radically revised. To introduce these essays, Morick briefly traces the development of modern empiricism from what he considers its source in Hume’s theory of knowledge through the phenomenalist stage to the present conception of empiricism, one of whose basic principles continues to be the fundamental role of observation in the acquisition of (...) knowledge: perception provides the foundation of empirical knowledge. It is particularly this "foundation picture" which has been denounced by many contemporary critics of empiricism as both oversimplified and misleading. The critics, including those in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and scientists themselves, have proposed three related objections to this notion. The first is that rather than drawing a sharp distinction between observation claims and theoretical claims, observation claims must be understood in terms of a network of background assumptions. The second objection holds that it is this network of assumptions which bestows the very meaning on observation claims. Consequently, an observation term such as "red" will not maintain a fixed meaning throughout various changes in theories. Further, since the objection also covers observation words, the notion of ostensive words is rejected. The final objection is that our observations themselves should be looked upon as interpretations arising from these background assumptions rather than merely barren perceptions, isolated from one’s beliefs and preconceptions. The selections, most of which are well-known, specify these and other critical arguments and revisions. They are arranged into three slightly overlapping sections: "Empiricism and Ontology", "Empiricism and Science", and "Empiricism and Linguistics". Considering the purpose and scope of the book, the contributions have been appropriately chosen. An eight-page annotated bibliography is included.—B. G. H. (shrink)

One’s first reaction on seeing this book might be to wonder why it is labelled "Aristotle" at all. The de Mundo has long been regarded as spurious, the work of a later Peripatetic, or even of the vaguely Stoicizing eclecticism which was already, in the later Hellenistic period, beginning to see Aristotle and Plato as the proponents of the same philosophy. There has, however, been no general agreement about where precisely in that framework it should be placed, and Reale, who (...) has recently tried, not without success, to rehabilitate Melissus as a serious thinker, now tries to rehabilitate the de Mundo as a genuine work of Aristotle: he thinks the lack of agreement among the critics is itself an argument in its favor. Restoring the original attribution seems to be the main purpose of what is in fact the first full scale edition with commentary of the de Mundo. It contains a text, largely that established by Lorimer, with translation en face, a long introduction, copious notes and a full word index; the text and translation occupy less than a fifth of the whole. As far as a non-Italian can judge the translation is accurate—and free of effusive expansion. The notes are a real mine of information. So it should be said at the start that whether or not one accepts Reale’s thesis about genuineness does not affect the value of the edition as such. The question of authenticity is discussed with great thoroughness in the introduction, with considerable backing, some of it perhaps inevitably repetitious, in the form of detailed discussion in the notes. At the start Reale lists the charges levelled against the work at various times. These are that in general it contains non-Aristotelian elements, that the style is completely different from Aristotle’s, as is the method, being one of assertion rather than demonstration. Further, much of the material in the scientific section is post-Aristotelian, and the "Orphic hymn" of chapter 7 shows Stoic influence. Reale argues that the first three charges will stick only if the basis of discussion is the Aristotle of the treatises and claims that the objectionable material in the de Mundo can be paralleled from the exoteric works. Thus all the pre-Jaeger discussion is misconceived. (shrink)

P.M.S. Hacker, recounting some of Wittgenstein's views, says : [T]he pervasive conception of behaviour that has informed philosophical psychology for the last three centuries has misrepresented human behaviour as 'bare bodily movement', from which it is supposed we infer, by analogy or inference to best explanation, the inner state and so on from which the behaviour might be thought to arise … But we see the pain in a person's face hear the glee in his chortles, perceive the affection in (...) the looks and gestures of lovers. In this paperIexplain how this can be, before meeting several objections. (shrink)

A textbook introduction which borrows heavily from current Existentialist terminology. Each chapter ends with a summary and a list of suggested readings. Although the beginning student's interest may be aroused by this book, it is not made clear what kind of philosophy he is being interested in.—B. P. H.

Lemos’s examination of the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke has as its intended focus "the timeless philosophical significance of their positions and arguments." He is as much concerned, however, with correcting their arguments and carrying out the implications of his own corrections as he is with their thought. Lemos’s decision to disregard the metaphysics, physics, psychology, and epistemology of Hobbes and Locke is merely stated, without support. One might dispute its validity. Likewise, his exclusion of any references to the (...) predecessors or contemporaries of Hobbes and Locke and references to other interpretations costs his book valuable perspective. (shrink)

The eight relatively short papers in this volume were first presented at the International Institute of Philosophy Entretiens held at Helsinki in 1970. Four main topics are considered: the definition of knowledge, memory, Wittgenstein’s theory of knowledge, and evidence. Representing the first topic, B. A. O. Williams’ paper "Knowledge and Reasons" is chiefly directed toward examining the role of reasons in knowledge. His main thesis is that when speaking in general about knowledge, it is not necessary either that "the knower (...) be able to support or ground his true belief by reference to other propositions" or "that he be in any special state" concerning his belief. Yet it is necessary that, "given the truth of p, it is no accident that A believes p rather than not-p." The author is quick to indicate that this formula is highly schematic and, as an analysis of knowledge, insufficient. A. J. Ayer, as commentator on Williams’ paper, tends to concur with and further amplify a number of Williams’ ideas. However, he does take issue with Williams on two main points: his remarks on the possibility of "radically impersonal knowledge" and his formula that true belief should not be accidental. Concerning the latter, Ayer, while aware of the outline form of Williams’ argument, is "sceptical of its power to yield a precise formula which would differentiate between knowledge and true belief" in a satisfactory manner. (shrink)