From Bohm-Bawerk on, political economists have seemingly blown great holes in Marxism, disproving its key concepts and falsifying Marx's predictions. In this book, Geoffrey Pilling maintains that even the most devastating of such factual analyses are fruitless because they misconstrue the nature of Marx's critique. In Pilling's presentation, Marx's critique of political economy is not "economic" but philosophic. In criticizing political economy, Marx transcends it and in so doing is essentially immune from any analysis which turns on "facts." According to (...) Pilling, "Marx's work cannot be reduced to a series of results, to be tested against the 'facts' of capitalist development". Pilling, following the lead of Lenin, seeks to overturn the "shallow empiricism" which has led to the degeneration of Marxism. It is Pilling's aim to recover the "philosophical method" of Capital, i.e., to re-work Capital in the light of Hegel's Logic, to rehabilitate dialectic over empiricism. Pilling begins by showing how "... Marx's critique of political economy [is] of a philosophic nature, rather than one concerned with the details of economic theory alone". Marx, as we know, rejects the individualism of political economy which derives from Locke. He condemns the uncritical and "ahistorical" character of political economy, i.e., the tendency to treat the categories of economics as natural. According to Pilling's. (shrink)

A concise, popular introduction to Buddhism, this book presents Buddha's teaching: avoid "desiring too much and avoid desiring too much stopping of such desiring." After a preliminary exposition, the author proceeds to examine the causes for various misinterpretations of Buddha's teaching and concludes with his own criticisms. Bahm's lack of sympathy, however, prevented him from seeing the relevance of Buddha's teaching to the problems confronting Western civilization. And in desiring too much to argue and to document, he interferes with the (...) natural persuasiveness of Buddhism. Nevertheless, the book is to be recommended as a useful introductory work on Buddhism.--T. L. M. (shrink)

This book is primarily a survey of commonly accepted theories of memory. In the course of the book Locke attempts to show that the traditional theories of memory, that is the Representative and the Realist theories are inadequate because of certain mistaken assumptions adopted by the advocates of these views. For example, both of these theories’ proponents mistakenly assume that remembering is an occurrence, that this occurrence consists in a mental experience in the form of having mental images, and that (...) memory-knowledge is knowledge based on or derived from the memory-experience or the memory-image. These notions are mistaken, Locke claims, because memory consists in immediate knowledge of the past, not in the immediate experience of the past; and memory is a form of knowledge, not a form of quasi-perceptual awareness. The notion that memory is a form of knowledge is considered by Locke to be the standard contemporary account of the nature of memory. It is in these terms that he analyzes the different forms of memory: factual memory, which is defined as retained factual knowledge or knowledge we have possessed before and still possess; practical memory, which is defined as retained practical knowledge or knowledge that consists in possessing certain acquired abilities and skills; and personal memory, which is defined as memory of items that one has experienced for himself. The true test of the contemporary account, as Locke sees it, is whether it allows one to answer affirmatively the question "Is memory reliable?". In the final analysis, however, this seems to be impossible. Generally speaking, one believes that he is entitled to rely on something insofar as it can be established that what is relied upon is normally an accurate guide to the facts of the matter. Nevertheless, if one can never tell when memory is correct, it cannot be established that memory is a reliable guide to anything; thus, one can never be entitled to rely on memories. One solution to this dilemma seems to lie in the suggestion that even if one cannot demonstrate that memory is reliable, this is the simplest and possibly the only plausible assumption to make to explain the plain facts of the human situation. Moreover, one who rejects this pragmatic use of the reliability of memory is committed to saying that knowledge is impossible in any case. If there is no avenue to the past, then there is no assurance that anyone or anything has a past history at all. Without a past history, one has never acquired any information nor any reason for knowing anything, not even about the present. Memory-knowledge, then, is not a matter of simple utility, rather it is a matter of what presuppositions or assumptions have to be made if knowledge is to be possible at all. In effect, Locke sees this as simply a "transcendental argument" for the reliability of memory; that is, an argument that shows that a certain principle has to be accepted as true if a certain form of inquiry is to be possible.—T. L. M. (shrink)