This paper is the reprinting under a new title of the “Foreword” of Paul A. Weiss's Life, Order, and Understanding: A Theme in Three Variations, published in 1970 as volume 8 supplement of The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, #5.00 [hardcover], #2.50 [paperback], 157 pages). We reprint this paper here for two reasons. The first is that its beautiful, scientifically grounded imagery of living systems in relation to wave dynamics provides a significant supplement to (...) this issue of Zygon on human values in the context of thermodynamics. The second is that it is hoped this foreword will serve better than would a book review to introduce Zygon readers to the philosophical and scientific wisdom contained in Life, Order, and Understanding.–Editor. (shrink)

This self-contained treatise, originally published in 1947 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, examines fundamental features of nature in order to lay the groundwork for providing a solution to the major problems of ethics.

In a wide-ranging study of unusual interest, Paul Weiss, Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, applies the principles and methods of philosophy to athletics. Every culture, he notes, has games of some kind; few activities seem to interest both children and young men as much as sports do; and few attract so many spectators, rich and poor. Yet none of the great philosophers, claiming to take all knowledge and being as their province, have made more than a (...) passing reference to sport, in part, Professor Weiss suggests, because they thought that what pleased the vulgar was not worth sustained study by the leisured. This seminal book breaks new ground and explores new paths: psychological and sociological forms of human behavior exhibited in games; the physiology of athletics, and the efforts of training and conditioning; and the motivation of athletics—the rhythm and aims of contests and games, and the meaning of team play. More importantly, however, Professor Weiss’s unique contributions lie in his discussions of the distinct contributions that sport makes to civilization. Professor Weiss discusses at length such topics as the Olympic Games and men and women as amateur and pro­fessional athletes—and their sacrifices, defeats, and humilia­tions. And he delineates the stages the athlete must go through in his progress toward self-completion. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging study of unusual interest, Paul Weiss, Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, applies the principles and methods of philosophy to athletics. Every culture, he notes, has games of some kind; few activities seem to interest both children and young men as much as sports do; and few attract so many spectators, rich and poor. Yet none of the great philosophers, claiming to take all knowledge and being as their province, have made more than a (...) passing reference to sport, in part, Professor Weiss suggests, because they thought that what pleased the vulgar was not worth sustained study by the leisured. This seminal book breaks new ground and explores new paths: psychological and sociological forms of human behavior exhibited in games; the physiology of athletics, and the efforts of training and conditioning; and the motivation of athletics—the rhythm and aims of contests and games, and the meaning of team play. More importantly, however, Professor Weiss’s unique contributions lie in his discussions of the distinct contributions that sport makes to civilization. Professor Weiss discusses at length such topics as the Olympic Games and men and women as amateur and pro­fessional athletes—and their sacrifices, defeats, and humilia­tions. And he delineates the stages the athlete must go through in his progress toward self-completion. (shrink)

Of course private-public terminology has a certain first-hand obviousness for us. No one does my experiencing for me; there are features of myself evident to me simply by virtue of the fact that I live through them. These features are not available in quite the same way to others. And your situation is the same. Meanwhile we all have the same sort of access to what we can see and touch and explore scientifically, i.e., the public common world. These remarks (...) must not be taken to imply that a human's privacy is identical with awareness or with immediate feelings; privacy is not exhausted in consciousness. Nevertheless the importance of the private-public distinction à propos actualities is its promise for clearing up or at least clarifying many puzzles involving consciousness: problems about perception, mind-brain connections, and even perhaps immortality. At least the distinction is promising if you begin by taking us to be indeed individual centers of an awareness which discloses some private content but also discloses real other bodily beings. That is, something like Weiss's conception of private and public or inside and outside seems to be essential if one holds that mentality has a firm non-dubious place in the natural world. (shrink)

Paul Weiss is Heffer Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. He founded the Metaphysical Society of America and The Review of Metaphysics.

1. Almost from the beginning of its history, it has tried to provide intelligible, systematic accounts of the world of actualities--the spatio-temporal objects which ground our daily experiences. Because of the great success of science in formulating cosmic schemes which are sustained by many widespread observations, multiple, daring predictions, and a host of desirable practical productions, many thinkers have been tempted to turn the entire task over to the sciences. Others have supposed that the philosopher has nothing more to do (...) than to occupy himself with historical studies, logical investigations, and perhaps some asides on ethics, aesthetics, and politics. (shrink)

An instrument is any object which makes possible the attainment of desired ends. It is not essential to the being of the instrument that it be inanimate, worked over, or its mode of operation understood. A pigeon can carry a message; a stone as well as a hammer can be employed to break a glass; a child can start an automobile. The instrument need not function in the interests of men, be set into operation by living beings, or even be (...) used at all. Leaves serve some insects as umbrellas do men; the rays of the sun may turn a screw; a new knife has not yet had a chance to cut. A cow is an instrument for the production of milk, a hen for the production of eggs, though neither is inanimate, worked over, nor its operation understood; they can serve the interests of other animals, are able to initiate their own movements, and may not yet have had occasion to produce the desired results. But they are instruments because they are acknowledged means for the production of the desired milk and eggs. (shrink)

As a philosophic work should, it attempts to articulate a vision of the whole of things. This means that it must run counter to the temper not only of ...

Excerpt from Man's Freedom Human originals act in unusual ways at anticipatable times. Their lives are no less surely delimited, ordered, rhythmic than are our own. Unreliable, they nevertheless are never outside the reach of reasonable expectation and control. They behave in regular ways in a recognizable area which happens to be wider than that in which the rest live. The lives of iconoclasts and rebels, of eccentrics and of some men of genius seem to be unordered from the standpoint (...) of the groups to which they normally belong. Their lives, though, are no less ordered than those of ordinary men. Even from the standpoint of their own societies, they can be understood as men who are stable in ways differ ent from the usual - as men whose unconventionalities are only the usual conventionalities modified, defied, or unappreciated - and that predictably. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Paul Weiss continues the brilliant analysis of art he began in _The World of Art _and _Nine Basic Arts_—here_ _in the medium of film, at which he takes a close and inde­pendent look. Writing in a vigorous, jargon-free style, and covering all aspects of films and film making, Mr. Weiss presents a fresh, new approach to the study of our newest art. During the course of writing _Cinematics_,_ _Mr. Weiss asked various writers, critics, scholars, and producers (...) long involved with film to read and remark on what he had written. Five of them—Eric Sherman, Joseph Williman, Arthur Knight, David Slavitt, and Robert Thom—provided comments which are incorporated in the text. Their remarks are often trenchant, and perceptively provocative. These men frequently comment on lines of inquiry suggested in the book and often take issue with what has been said. The result is a kind of dialogue crisscrossed with stimu­lating insights. While this book is aimed at the general reader, Mr. Weiss hopes that experts and practitioners of film making will benefit from this fresh, independent, and philo­sophically based inquiry. Readers already familiar with Mr. Weiss’s writings will delight in this distillation of his thought on an art so intimately a part of our cul­ture. (shrink)

A realistic study of man’s primary di­mensions and roles that breaches custo­mary bounds to the consideration of man to draw closer to the quintessence of man than ever before. Paul Weiss moves beyond the point where psychologists, psychiatrists, ethi­cists, and physiologists usually stop to make evident how man is at once pri­vate and public, with an I, a me, native rights, and responsibility, able to be and to function together with others in so­ciety and in the cosmos. He (...) examines the you we come to know as we confront other men, show­ing this to be both accountable and re­sponsible, with distinctive values and powers, maintained from within and ap­proached from without. You is con­trasted and compared with the me, what is publicly available to each alone, known and sustained by a radically private I. In opposition to contemporary thought, Weiss shows that I has a being, nature, and power of its own, able to make use of the self and mind, and to sustain the you and the me. These explorations pre­pare the way for a novel examination of different types of we—those that govern men, those with which they interplay, and those that, together with them, con­stitute the groups, societies, and states in which men live together. His final section deals with the dif­ference and relations between the they and the others in which he provides a fresh examination of the way men and their lived-in bodies both stand apart from and fit in the cosmos. In discussing these pivotal notions he extends our comprehension of such central topics as the difference between freedom and lib­erty, the nature of self-consciousness, the rights of the subhuman, the nature of the physical world, abortion, behav­iorism, mental health, biography, fic­tion, and the differences between men, animals, and things. (shrink)

The most extreme form of sacrifice is that in which a man gives up his life or its meaning for the sake of another. It is perhaps the most praiseworthy of all the acts of which he is capable. But how can an act be praiseworthy if it involves the loss of something as precious as a human life? Can an act be at all praiseworthy which precludes the making of further efforts to bring about what is good? Can that (...) act be good which makes impossible further goods? (shrink)

An internationally renowned philoso­pher propounds a way to advance be­yond appearance to ultimate realities and a final ideal. “One of philosophy’s main functions is to arouse thought, to awaken and redirect. It asks others to think through, to assess, and at the same time to be flexible and steady. Author and reader must, despite the printed page, despite differences in age and experience, training and knowl­edge, philosophize together,” writes Paul Weiss in his brilliant new book. And this is (...) exactly what the reader will find himself doing as the eminent speculative philosopher directs his attention to that which is beyond appearance—beyond daily living and, ultimately, beyond life itself. In this perhaps richest and finest of Mr. Weiss’s books, the average reader who daily confronts the various aspects of our complicated lives will find an enlivening answer to persisting fundamental questions. Mr. Weiss’s searching analysis of matter and his thought-provoking answers to questions raised provide a thoroughly enlightened examination of the realities of man’s inalienable rights, his identity over the course of a changing career, and his possible immortality. (shrink)

Book jacket/back: 'Being and Other Realities, ' by our greatest living metaphysician, pushes Paul Weiss's philosophy to new subtlety. It moves on two fronts. On one, it further refines the categorial scheme Weiss has been developing over 50 years. On the other, it is a shining example of radical questioning and exploration. This is an important book, especially for philosophers like myself, who believe being is not another reality. --Robert C. Neville, Boston University, Author of Normative Cultures (...) and The Truth of Broken Symbols. (shrink)

_In _Broader, Bolder, Better_, authors Elaine Weiss, of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign, and Paul Reville, former Massachusetts secretary of education, make a compelling case for a fundamental change in the way we view education._ The authors argue for a large-scale expansion of community-school partnerships in order to provide holistic, integrated student supports (ISS) from cradle to career, including traditional wraparound services like health, mental health, nutrition, and family supports, as well as expanded access to opportunities (...) such as early childhood education, afterschool activities, and summer enrichment programs. The book builds on nearly a decade of research by the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, a national initiative endorsed by more than sixty policy experts and leaders from across the country, and draws on the work of Harvard’s Education Redesign Lab. It pulls from case studies of effective ISS efforts in twelve diverse communities to illustrate the variety of strategies that can be adopted locally. A call to action that also provides examples of communities that are successfully leveling the playing field for poor children, this book offers a detailed vision for building—through field work, mobilization, and financing—comprehensive systems to prepare all children for success. (shrink)

Like _Beyond All Appearances_,_ _which it supplements, Paul Weiss’s new book is a fundamental work which faces all the hard issues which are not only at the heart of philosophy but at the core of our entire culture. Readers of Mr. Weiss’s phenomenology of religion will need no introduction to this new work which expands and clari­fies many of the issues raised in _Beyond All Appearances. _However, no knowl­edge of Paul Weiss’s previous books is required (...) to understand and appreciate this brilliant new exposition. Weiss’s plain style makes his ideas accessible to all intelligent readers, whether or not they have been trained as professional philosophers. Here in _First Considerations _Mr. Weiss addresses himself to such topics as actuality, internalization, evidence, names, substance, being, natures and possibilities, existence, unity and the cosmos—issues which have engrossed him as a moral philosopher and meta­physician throughout his distinguished career. In his progress through the ideas and issues expounded in this new book Mr. Weiss is concerned with the human condition distinctive of this species of ours. Rigorously applied, his moral philosophy is as complete and thorough as that of any of the major thinkers, and provides as complete a guide as, for example, that of Buddhism. A highly original work, no doubt well in advance of current trends in philosophy, _First Considerations _will provoke further thought and discussion and will be regarded as a seminal work in modern philosophical approaches. (shrink)

The culmination of over twenty years’ writing, this seventh and last volume of _Philosophy in Process _represents a fitting capstone to the extraordinary journal of Paul Weiss, one of the world’s leading speculative philosophers. With the publication of this volume, readers will have available over 5,000 printed pages spanning a period during which Weiss wrote many of his most noted books and articles. During the period covered by Vol­ume 7, Weiss published _Cinematics _and Volume 6 of (...) _Philosophy in Process _and wrote _First Considerations_,_ _published in 1977. In this same period he worked on the manuscript “You, I and the Others”—a major forthcoming work. As in previous volumes in this series Weiss here deals with actualities, finalities, the One and the Many, unity, exis­tence, space, and other basic ideas also discussed in such other works as _Modes of Being_,_ Reality_,_ The Making of Men_,_ _and _The World of Art_. (shrink)

In this fifth volume of _Philosophy in Process _Paul Weiss presses further his search for “breakthroughs in insight,” as his reflections take him deeper into a consideration of the full nature of actualities, the problem of death, an analysis of logic, and a consideration of a theory of the future. Like its predecessors in the series, the present volume consists of journal entries which, in this instance, cover the months from September 1965_ _through August 1968,_ _a period which saw (...) published Mr. Weiss’s _The Making of Men_,_ _as well as volumes 3_ _and 4_ _of _Philosophy in Process_,_ _and the writing and preparation for publication of _Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry. _These and other books of Mr. Weiss are discussed by him in his journals. Volume 5_ _is especially rich in providing review of and reflection on his own work. (shrink)

Surrogates introduces an important new philosophic topic: the pervasive ways that things stand for one another in nature and human experience. Going beyond semiotic theory, Paul Weiss interprets surrogacy in terms of metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and religious dimensions of life, integrating the concept into a systematic way of regarding reality. Just as philosophy brings a systematic set of questions to the issue of surrogate reality, Weiss’s investigation of the topic raises new questions for philosophy itself, manifesting his (...) great concern for philosophy’s freedom and creativity. The author concludes each chapter with a provocative set of questions and answers that engage imagined critics in a dialogue. Together with his previous book, Emphatics, Surrogates constitutes a richly textured phenomenology of human experience with important ramifications for contemporary pragmatism. The wit and intelligence of this volume are a delight for any reader. (shrink)

The major_ _topic of Professor Weiss’s present work is the experience of and concern with God_ _in privacy and in community. His purpose is to reveal the primary nuances and distinctions essential to an adequate grasp of the nature of religion, and he seeks to isolate the pure, undistorted relation men have to God. The God we seek is thus, in Mr. Weiss’s viewpoint, no distillate, no abstract desiccated element but something at least as rich and as concrete (...) as the specialized forms of experience and concerns exhibited in particular religions—but without their bias. Presupposing only those rudimentary experiences which are shared by everyone, Mr. Weiss focuses on that pure, rich, concrete relation which connects men and God, “a relation which is diversely ritualized and specialized by the various religions.” Mr. Weiss makes evident that there are many ways in which men make contact with God, “apart from special revelations, messages, or miracles.” God, he shows, is enjoyed in dedicated communities, is reached through the fissures of experience, and is present in sacred objects and in service. Written in Professor Weiss’s usual incisive, clear style and addressed to the general reader as well as to the theologian, minister, and philosopher, the work as a whole is challenging and highly quotable in its observations. The virtues and limitations of the different religions, the nature of faith, prayer and worship, mysticism and religious language are some of the topics dealt with in a fresh and illuminating spirit. Mr. Weiss’s discussion of religious history is particularly noteworthy for sharply marking out an area that is neglected in most modern religious and historical studies. An independent work, _The God We Seek _serves also as the capstone of Paul Weiss’s entire philosophic system: a philosophic system dealing with the whole of being and knowledge, both in a highly abstract form, and in concrete, specialized guises._ _His intellectual diary, _Philosophy in Process_,_ _is now appearing in a series of twelve fascicles, published at intervals of three months. (shrink)

_Privacy _advances and refines Professor Weiss’s philosophic quest to isolate unmistakable evidences of that which is ultimately real and to trace those evidences to their original sources. The quest began with the publication of _Beyond All Appearances _, was expanded and refined into a more defensible formula­tion by _First Considerations _, and developed to provide a corre­sponding, precise, and systematic treatment of man, as apart from and to oppose and interplay with those final realities, in _You, I, and the (...) Others _. This new work continues his venture as he seeks to isolate evidences of human privacy in the body and the world, to understand what then becomes knowable, and to explore the result. Weiss demonstrates the inutility of a reductionist methodology when searching for the ultimately real in human beings, stressing that a soundly based nonreductionist method for learning about humanity is built upon the supposition that each person has sure self-knowledge acquired through observation or introspection. By attending to what all people—including oneself—publicly show themselves to be, it becomes possible to extricate evidence of pow­ers present in anyone and thus to learn about the true nature of human privacy. He writes: “To be acquainted with the one is al­ready to be in contact with the other, and in a position to make an intensive, convergent, insistent further move into the sources as not yet expressed.” Weiss begins his study with an examination of evidences of the human person, and particularly of its most primitive, persistent epitomization, sensitivity. He goes on to examine more and more advanced epitomizations, arriving at and passing beyond the stage where a self comes to be, with its epitomizing assumed accountabil­ity, responsibility, and I. (shrink)

Dealing with some of the major, pivotal issues in philosophy, this sixth volume of Mr. Weiss’s _Philosophy in Process _repre­sents the final development and expression in journal form of many of his original views. In addition, the period covered in this volume was exceptionally fruitful for Mr. Weiss’s own work. During this time he published the fourth volume of _Philos­ophy in Process _and his widely discussed and provocative _Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry _and began writing _Beyond All Appearances _and (...) _Cinematics._. (shrink)

A logical absurdity is self-contradictory. It results when a term and its negation are conjoined. It is intrinsically impossible; one need not look outside it to know that it is impossible everywhere It is not because every domain rebuffs it that it is unable to appear in any, but because it cannot attain the status of appearing anywhere at all.

A God would have the wisdom, power and concern to do all that must be done to supplement man's activities in such a way that only good is done, and this everywhere. If we could count on his existence, concern and aid, we could be sure of getting the right help and to the right degree. Only a God is both powerful and wise enough to provide all the help that would be needed, and only a God is good and (...) wise enough to give it always at the right time and in the right way. He alone can guarantee the perfect production of whatever was distorted and left undone because of man's impotence, ignorance and folly. It is tempting therefore to claim that men always do, or that they always should look to a God for the aid they need if good is to be fully realized. (shrink)

a. Were our concepts not readied for imposition on experienced content, we would think, decide and act in ways which will not cohere with what we encounter; we would then create only fictions and idle suppositions, not theories or significant hypotheses. Fictions and idle suppositions, though intelligible in themselves, are not pointed to anything beyond; they are enjoyed, entertained, for the moment taken to be final, whereas the theories and significant hypotheses are offered as elements which are to be united (...) with what is beyond them. The fictions might offer illuminating perspectives on the world, and our theories might provide most inadequate ways of organizing it, but since the one was not and the other was readied for what is available, the two will continue to have decidedly different weights and centers of gravity. A defeated hypothesis is not yet a fiction; a dream which turns out to answer to the facts is not yet a perception. (shrink)

Definition: An essence is a meaning, a structure, the character, the nature of an entity, "what" it is.

Yet if there be a Many there must be a number of units somehow together. Were items entirely separate from one another, related in no way at all, they could not add up, make a plurality. A radical atomism offers not a Many but just a One, and then a One, and then a One, and so on, and thus has no way of ever knowing that there is more than one entity. To know that there are Many it is (...) necessary to have them all brought together under the aegis of a common or comprehensive One. (shrink)

IS THERE A WARRANT FOR SAYING that computers, or other machines, are intelligent? Will there ever be a time when it will be proper to say that they think? Both questions can be reasonably answered affirmatively, unless there is something amiss in saying that a sundial or a watch tells time, corporations are quasi-persons, floods threaten lives and bodies, or that computers are property.

I BEGIN with a summary. The mind-body problem is one of a group of four and cannot be adequately understood without some understanding of the others. It deals with the relation of an individual mind to an individual body. But there is also a question of how an individual mind is related to an impersonal body that is a part of a world; how an individual body is related to an impersonal mind that is part of a reason; and, finally, (...) how the world and reason are related. I think all can be resolved by taking account of a mediator in which both extremes are interfused in an epitomized form. A mind and body are related by means of an individualized human nature; mind and world by a body; body and reason by a mind; and reason and world by a self. (shrink)

What we experience is somewhat of a melange, something at once perceptual, mediated by the sense organs; scientific, reflecting our use of mathematical and other formal devices to make clear and systematic the causes of what is now taking place, and pointing us towards what might be expected; eventful, stretches of vital movement in which beginning and ending are, though separate, inescapably interlocked; and important, reflecting both our sense of value and the presence of an objective standard outside us and (...) unaffected by our interests. Initially these strands are inchoately together, constituting commonsense objects, artifactual or natural, the occupants of the world of which we unreflectively take account. On some occasions one of these facets may be to the fore, on other occasions it may be so recessive that its presence is overlooked. (shrink)

From this it is evident that despite the controversies of the last decades, there is no genuine opposition between symbolic logicians and Aristotelian logicians on the question of the legitimacy of the deduction of "some x is y" from "all x is y." Symbolic logicians have held that the Aristotelians mistakenly deduce the former from the latter; Aristotelians have said that the symbolic logicians mistakenly divorce the latter from the former. But in fact neither makes a mistake. Each side employs (...) a special meaning of "all." For the Aristotelian, "all" refers to a "general," an actual totality of existents; for the symbolic logician, "all" refers to a universal, a meaning. The general "all" as the Aristotelian sees, allows for the deduction of "some," where "some" means an "existent some." From "All professors at Yale are men," "some professors at Yale are men" follows. The symbolic logician sees that "all" as a universal does not allow for the deduction of "some" ; he rightly rejects the derivation of "Some gryphons at Yale are men" from "All gryphons at Yale are men." However,--and this the symbolic logician overlooks--from "All gryphons at Yale are men," we can legitimately derive "Some gryphons at Yale are men." There are, in short, two distinct meanings of "some,", of which only one, the Aristotelian, has been recognized even by symbolic logicians. The "some" which follows from the general "all" refers to an actual subdivision of an actual class; the "some" which follows from the universal "all" refers to an intellectually distinguished part of an intention or meaning. From the latter "some" the former, the existent, cannot be legitimately derived. (shrink)

Are such evils necessary? If they are, what necessitates them? If they are not, why do they occur? Could there be a universe in which there was no evil of any kind? If so, why is evil in ours? Must any universe whatsoever contain something evil? Does a universe therefore presuppose the existence of a superior being?

These various paradoxes can be viewed as variants of a ninth to the effect that men ought to do what is absolutely right, although none has sufficient power or knowledge for the purpose. It is to this last paradox that I shall devote the major part of my discourse. I will try to show that the paradox is inescapable, that a number of commonly accepted answers to it are unsatisfactory, and that an adequate answer to it will require a consideration (...) of activities and categories which are outside the province of ethics. Only after these steps are covered will we be in a position to justify our basic contention that ethics and religion are independent and even sometimes incompatible enterprises. (shrink)