Thoughts on various subjects arranged in alphabetical order from "abnormal" to "zero."--F. M. S.

Written for Catholic students, this textbook presents simplified neo-Thomistic answers to basic neo-Thomistic questions. Points of view other than the "perennial philosophy" are briefly mentioned but quickly dismissed. --F. M. S.

Rotenstreich sees history as a domain defined by the distinctive relation between the historical subject and the historical process, which are ontologically identical but epistemologically separate. The dialectic between subject and object sets the framework for discussions of objectivity, historical time, the relation of history to the social sciences, and the role of causality and laws in history. The book should prove rewarding to any one who will take the trouble to wade through a style which is difficult and often (...) very obscure.--F. M. S. (shrink)

Seven scholarly studies developing the thesis that no significant history has been or will be written apart from the historian's having a philosophical and political conception of history." Recognizing the dangers inherent in this recommended interpenetration of history with philosophy and politics, the author discusses its philosophical distortion in dialectical idealism and materialism and its political distortion in the subordination of history to political ideology in Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. The book is representative of the non-speculative "philosophy of history" being (...) done in Germany today. --F. M. S. (shrink)

This study centers on Sein und Zeit, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, and Einführung in die Metaphysik, and emphasizes the shift from the earlier to the later Heidegger. It should be useful to beginning students: consisting largely of translation and paraphrase, it does not distort Heidegger. It contains some good insights, but it is much too short to do justice to the subject--F. M. S.

This book effectively challenges the dogma that all explanation can be reduced to the "general law" type. The author maintains that this theory accounts for most historical explanation only by making qualifications and exceptions which vitiate whatever force the theory might have and by excluding the most important considerations from the theory itself by calling them "psychological," "heuristic," etc. This leads Dray to argue that the "general law" theory is being assumed true a priori and then forced to fit a (...) mode of explanation to which it is unsuited--indeed, he goes so far as to doubt that the theory is suitable for physics. Because he meets the analytic defenders of the theory on their own ground, his criticisms are lucid, relevant, and compelling; but the constructive proposals are sketchy.--F. M. S. (shrink)

A semi-popular defense of the objective validity and cognitive truth of moral, aesthetic and religious insight. The author describes Kant's method of defending "scientific insight" in the first Critique and attempts to apply this method to the other areas of experience more consistently and successfully than Kant did.--F. M. S.

A nicely documented and interesting, though loosely argued and dogmatic, study, from a neo-Calvinist perspective, of the Christian doctrine of man and its relation to doctrines of man implicit in politics, literature and philosophy.--F. M. S.

A report on the teacher education programs supported by the Fund for the Advancement of Education which calls for a broad liberal education for all teachers and greater attention to the philosophy of education.--F. M. S.

Volumes two and three of this six-volume work together deal with Greek culture from its pre-hellenic origins to the period of the Skeptics. It is philosophy of history in the grand style. Though the language is diffuse and metaphorical, the work is learned and has a certain precision. Voegelin's thesis is that the creation of order is a constant of human nature. A concrete society, besides being an organization for pragmatic survival, is also an attunement with the order of being (...) and an attempt to bring the two realms into harmony. The Greek pragmatic order took the form of polis, and its conception of the order of being reached its highest form in the overcoming of the cosmological myth in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.--F. M. S. (shrink)

A competent and philosophically subtle study of S. K.'s notion of the relation of Christianity and history. The relation of time and eternity, of "sacred history" and ordinary history and the problem of contemporaneity in the Fragments, the Postscript and Training in Christianity are brought into focus through S. K.'s doctrine of the incarnation. This Holm interprets as "fictionalist"; "it is valid to believe that this man is God... as if it were so, although his empirical appearance can never reveal (...) it." --F. M. S. (shrink)

A sympathetic study of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition which attempts to clarify the nature of the Free Church heritage and show its contributions to religious and political freedom. Though well-documented and competent, it is episodic and somewhat disorganized; it dwells less on history than on the relevance of Free Church ideas to contemporary problems of religion and society.--F. M. S.

Berkson maintains that the "progressive" distortions of Dewey were not entirely unfounded and criticizes Dewey for his individualism, for a biologicism which cannot ground his own intentions except by a tour de force, and for his failure to recognize the necessity of clearly formulated ideal ends. Emphasizes the Hegelian side of Dewey.--F. M. S.

The final volume in the fine translation of Cassirer's central work deals with the problem of knowledge, "the structure and articulation of a theoretical world view." The analysis proceeds from perception and representation, through the function of signification and the idea of concept, to mathematics and the highest forms of natural science. Cassirer's introduction offers a concise discussion in historical context of the idea of symbolic form itself.--F. M. S.

An "essay on life" giving us in 60 pages a doctrine of man and the universe based on broadly Christian principles plus, for good measure, a commentary on every book of the Old Testament.--F. M. S.