A subspace V of an infinite dimensional fully effective vector space V ∞ is called decidable if V is r.e. and there exists an r.e. W such that $V \oplus W = V_\infty$ . These subspaces of V ∞ are natural analogues of recursive subsets of ω. The set of r.e. subspaces forms a lattice L(V ∞ ) and the set of decidable subspaces forms a lower semilattice S(V ∞ ). We analyse S(V ∞ ) and its relationship with L(V (...) ∞ ). We show: Proposition. Let U, V, W ∈ L(V ∞ ) where U is infinite dimensional and $U \oplus V = W$ . Then there exists a decidable subspace D such that U |oplus D = W. Corollary. Any r.e. subspace can be expressed as the direct sum of two decidable subspaces. These results allow us to show: Proposition. The first order theory of the lower semilattice of decidable subspaces, Th(S(V ∞ )), is undecidable. This contrasts sharply with the result for recursive sets. Finally we examine various generalizations of our results. In particular we analyse S * (V ∞ ), that is, S(V ∞ ) modulo finite dimensional subspaces. We show S * (V ∞ ) is not a lattice. (shrink)

The current rise in malpractice litigation has led to concern in the research community as to the prospect of litigation against researchers. Clearly as the responsibility for the day-to-day conduct of the research falls upon the researchers they will be potentially liable should there be negligence in the conduct of the research project itself. But to what extent can the research ethics committee and its members be held liable should harm result to the research subject? How far does the prospect (...) of the threat of litigation equate with the reality of the prospect of liability? Although the NHS research governance framework suggests that primary responsibility for the conduct of the trial is with the researcher this does not mean that REC members will be immune from actions in tort where research subjects suffer harm in the conduct of a research project approved by their NHS REC. This paper focuses upon the prospect for liability in the law of tort of NHS RECs and their members. While in practice the vast majority of such claims are unlikely to be successful members of RECs may incur resultant legal costs as a consequence of involvement in proposed litigation. It is submitted that the scope of indemnity provision provided to RECs and their members should be precisely determined, otherwise there is a real prospect that the risk of malpractice litigation may deter individuals from serving on such committees. (shrink)

Herder spent two years studying at the University of Königsberg and attended four courses taught by Kant, who at the time had just published his first really important philosophical writing on the "Only Possible Proof of the Demonstration of God's Existence." Herder's notes are probably the only ones preserved from any lecture by Kant in that decade. The texts on logic and mathematics are short and insignificant. The pages on metaphysics are devoted to mostly psychological inquiries. Herder's notes are most (...) complete on "Practical Philosophy after Hutcheson and Baumgarten" where Kant analyzes not only purely ethical questions, but treats at some length religious issues as well. Even though these notes do not revolutionize our understanding of the genesis of Kant's philosophy, they do help us to retrace in more detail his road to the Dissertation of 1770 and to the critical writings. The editor's introduction is brief but good, and the bibliographical notes are abundant and excellent.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Another volume in a rich list of publications in the history of philosophy by the University of Urbino. Although the present book is an unpretentious commentary on Schelling's Philosophy of Art, making use of a few more of his texts related to aesthetics, still it is a welcome sign of the renewal of interest in the early Schelling after three decades of research oriented almost exclusively to his middle and late periods. After a rather comprehensive treatment of the role of (...) the philosophy of art within philosophy as such, of the evolution of Schelling's aesthetics and of the relationship between beauty and truth, the author offers us his interpretation of the Philosophy of Art as a "Goethean system." An interesting appendix consists of the German text and the Italian translation of the few poems we know from Schelling.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Hegel's philosophy of history used to be interpreted mainly in terms of what it is supposed to say about the direction and the end of history, yet the central historical category is, after all, the present, "the spiritual midday." True historicity is in the concrete moment--and this is the thesis that so many commentators of the Phenomenology of the Spirit neglect to emphasize. Hence, after a dutiful examination of the concept of history in this first major work of the philosopher, (...) the author engages in a detailed and interesting history of the interpretations of the Phenomenology. From Feuerbach to Rohrmoser, via Marx, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger we see the radiation of this great work; then comes a discussion with Kojève. In this Auseinandersetzung one definitely senses a sort of aversion toward the brilliant French interpreter but even here the historian's objectivity and expository purpose prevail.--M. J. V. (shrink)

One of the movements sharply critical of the Enlightenment was illuminism. Weishaupt, Saint-Martin, Eckertshausen are little more than names today yet in their time they contributed to the birth of a new and rich intellectual world, that of Romanticism. Through the life of a well-to-do citizen of Berne, Kirchberger, we see the fortunes of the illuminists, their hopes, their doubts, their ultimately marginal destiny. The book begins with a careful historical account of the papers of Kirchberger followed by a description (...) of his life. Later on we are introduced into a more speculative world: that of the post-Boehmean speculation on the Divine Sophia. The speculative mysticism of these times was an offspring of heterodox theological speculation and condemned quietistic spirituality. Kirchberger, with his rich and diverse correspondence, is an interesting witness of this movement.--M. J. V. (shrink)

The present book is an interesting essay on Origen's place in the history of Western thought, or better, about the question whether he was a philosopher at all, and if so, in what sense. Because of his intense speculative drive and his wide learning in Neoplatonic thought Origen has been considered to be the "most philosophical" of the Greek Fathers. Such a view very often entails the attempt at "reorganizing" his thought as systematic philosophical reflection. The author's final thesis is (...) that such an approach is doomed to failure in really understanding the Origenian mind. This "pupil" of Ammonius Saccas was above all a Christian theologian and as such an outsider to philosophy. Philosophy had not been taken for granted by him but it was to be probed into from the depth of Christian experience and its theological self-interpretation. Philosophy itself-which means to his mind pagan philosophy—should be treated within the framework of that vast theological enterprise Origen had been carrying through in his whole life. It is only after the analysis of his philosophy of theology that Origen's contribution to philosophy proper can be evaluated. It is in this sense that the author considers his work as a prolegomenon to "Origenian philosophy."—M. J. V. (shrink)

This is certainly one of the most beautiful books in philosophy published in the last couple of years. It comprises eighty-four essays, carefully selected, well-translated, covering almost the full range of Croce's immense literary production. Croce is certainly one of the most important and influential thinkers of this century and in this huge anthology the English-speaking reader is given an incomparable instrument to get acquainted with him. The list of the headings which classify the eighty-four essays are: The Logic of (...) Philosophy; Philosophical Criticism; Aesthetics; The Philosophy of Art and Language; The Theory of History; Economics and Ethics; Essays in Criticism and Literary History; Moral and Political History. But first one should read the late Cecil Sprigge's excellent introduction.—M. J. V. (shrink)

The present "Studienausgabe" is the fruit of over 40 years of labor on Paracelus [[sic]]. While Sudhoff's monumental edition continued by K. Goldhammer is intended to serve the specialist, Peuckert's aim is simply to make Paracelsus accessible to the philosopher and to the historian of ideas. Like Luther's, Paracelus's [[sic]] German is hardly comprehensible today; hence the editor had to "rewrite" it. The result is sound and easily understandable German. This welcome "vulgarization" should, however, have been compensated by notes: as (...) a matter of fact there are no critical or commenting notes in any of the volumes published as of now. We are promised a glossary at the end of the fifth volume, but even this will not mend the edition's essential shortcoming: a complete lack of any kind of scholarly apparatus. The first two volumes contain the major "medical" writings in chronological order. These earlier texts witness Paracelsus's emancipation from the ballast of medieval science: Galen, Avicenna, etc., and a significant turn towards a new conception of natural science in which speculation and experience are intimately interwoven. In the first volume there are several writings on Alchemy, among them the short treatise on the Three First Principles which was so heavily to influence the "pansophy" of the seventeenth century and even the great mystic of Görlitz, Jacob Boehme. The second volume contains the mature medical texts including the "Opus Paramirum," this herald of later bio-chemical thought. Obviously the real interest of the so-called medical texts lies in their speculative elements and they should be read together with the philosophical texts, making up the third volume. This third volume is rightly centered around the monumental "Philosophia Sagax," the major work of Paracelsus. This is the treatise whose influence reached far beyond the twilight of pansophy until the early and late Goethe and Romantic philosophy. Better than any other, this text demonstrates the uninterrupted continuity of German speculation throughout three centuries. If the resolution of the remaining two unpublished volumes turns out to be as fortunate as those reviewed here, these well-printed books should find their way to the shelves of any library, private or public, orientated towards the study of German philosophical thought.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This is a monumental work. The author's aim is to follow the destiny of the self-explicitation [[sic]] of western thought from the concept of substance to that of structure. Authentic philosophical thinking has always been ontological, and structure, no less than substance is a form or species of being. System too is a species of being which leads from substance to structure. Structure is only an articulation and intensification of substance. The concept of structure is the central notion of contemporary (...) thought; it is at the focus of the natural as well as of the social sciences and it alone can bridge the gap between the "two cultures." It alone can pave the way for a new philosophical humanism which, without abandoning the claim to universality and "objectivity," retains the thinking man as its focus. The author's contention is that the concept of structure is far from being a newcomer on the scene but it has been rather ripening slowly throughout the great systems of the last six centuries. Without being in any way a treatise on the history of philosophy and on the history of science, the present book describes with great competence and persuasiveness the evolution of "structure" from Nicholas of Autrecourt via Cusanus and early modern science to Descartes. Next comes an extraordinarily rich and insightful analysis of the world of Pascal. Finally the conclusion is reached through a discussion of Leibniz and Kant. This is a difficult book, a long and complex one. It might well belong to those writings which reshape our understanding of the past, and through it, contribute to our expectations of the future.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Wölfel's study is a very technical enterprise, profusely endowed with footnotes and making little attempt if any at reaching the nonspecialist. Yet the subject matter of the work must be of concern to anyone interested in philosophical theology and the history of Christian speculation. Two seemingly very distant topics, those of the Trinity and of natural theology are brought together by the author and the point of departure for this rapprochement is the univocal concept of being, one cornerstone of Scotism. (...) This is why a book almost entirely devoted to an investigation dwelling on the inner structure of the being of God can have relevance to general ontology.--M. J. V. (shrink)

More than six centuries of Christian and non-Christian reflection and admiration of Meister Eckhart are the subject matter of this very scholarly yet very readable work. Philosophers like Nicolas Cusanus and Hegel, great scholars like H. Denifle and a number of lesser men are examined in order to determine what they thought about Eckhart, what they learned from him, how much they knew of him. The medieval condemnations and Cusanus' admiration issued into a period of relative neglect of Eckhart, broken (...) only by the deserving attempts of Daniel Sudermann to collect Eckhart's manuscripts. The great Dominican did not come into his own until the beginning of the last century. Franz von Baader was the one who "discovered" him and who drew Hegel's attention to some of his texts. With the monographs by C. Schmidt and Bishop Martensen, Eckhart had become known to the philosophical public as a forerunner of nineteenth-century speculation and this image had not been shattered until Denifle shifted the focus of attention to the Latin texts with their more orthodox formulations. In this century there has been a renewal of interest in the German writings which continue to have a certain popular appeal, but now, thanks to the monumental edition of the complete works, a more objective and more scholarly atmosphere pervades the literature on Meister Eckhart.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Chuang Chou is counted among the greatest of the classical, Chinese philosophers. His thought, strongly inspired by the father of Taoism, Lao Tzu, is a reaction against the ritualized and ossified Confucianism of his own time. He shows little interest in legal matters and moral casuistry, and his whole work, i.e., the collection of texts attributed to him since ancient times, is centered around the deepest metaphysical and religious problems. God, and the way to Him, are the real subject matter (...) of his writings. But Chuang Chou attempted to write no treatise on systematic theology: he preferred to clothe his ideas in short stories, tales, and magnificent aphorisms. Practically no knowledge of the history of Chinese civilization is needed to understand and to love this book, which manages to preserve, after twenty-three centuries, its marvellous freshness.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This book is an interesting entry in the vast and ever expanding field of secondary literature on Hegelian ontologically grounded analysis of the relationship between theory and praxis. It is interesting and slightly unusual for it neither treats Hegel simply as the predecessor of Marx nor does it ignore the more contemporary problems of political philosophy arising from the Hegelian heritage. There is a balance between erudition and speculation and the thorough study of the texts always remains firmly subjected to (...) the broader problems of a philosophy of praxis. This book offers a general interpretation of Hegel and a judgment on the very locus of Hegelianism in the history of modern philosophy. Finally, one should not forget to commend the excurses: there are a number of them, they are short and concentrated, and some of them quote from unpublished student notes taken at Hegel's lectures.--M. J. V. (shrink)

The present reprint of Reinhold's principal work is a great service to anybody undertaking a genetic study of the evolution of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre from Kant's Critique. Reinhold was by no means an original and creative mind. His major importance lies in his systematic formulation of some central problems in the Kantian philosophy in an attempt to overcome the latter's major weakness: the rigid separation of the knowing faculties from each other. But the unified "faculty of representation" proposed by Reinhold shifted (...) the focus of epistemological considerations into an overtly psychological direction which only Fichte was to correct. All the same, among the epigons [[sic]] and half-Kantians of the outgoing eighteenth century, Reinhold alone can still be read with interest and genuine appreciation.—M. J. V. (shrink)

In the mushrooming literature on the late Heidegger, Pugliese's book stands with the distinction of an immense and sometimes almost exasperating amount of learned notes and excurses [[sic]]. On the other hand, the speculative core of the work is a highly original one. It treats the famous "Kehre" in the continuity of Heidegger's thought and proves quite convincingly that it can be organically developed from the original thesis of "historicity" as it stands in Sein und Zeit. Making use of the (...) earliest texts as well as of a number of unpublished lecture-notes, Pugliese tries to back those interpretations which claim that the "Kehre" is indeed a turning-point in the history of metaphysics--even though it represents no break or revolution in Heidegger's own thought. This is a difficult book but fortunately devoid of the affected mannerism of so many Heidegger admirers, and a telling example of the frequent success of French and Spanish "translations" of German speculation.--M. J. V. (shrink)