Hegel’s basic position so far on the various meanings of evil as necessary and thereby intelligible directly in the development of spirit might be summed up as follows. Evil is always a necessary moment of instability which gives impetus in the movement from various meanings of particularity to various meanings of universality; from the more abstract expression of potential unity and truth to the more actualized notion and unity.

Hegel attempts both to give evil its metaphysical due and to give it intelligibility within a processive idealistic system. To accomplish these ends, he consistently employs the contrast between the natural and the free act of the subject and the contrast between the particular and the universal. He places these contrasts within the situation of an original and presupposed unity of spirit that itself is the ground of the mediation required for thinking freedom, for evil, and for ultimate reconciliation. He (...) argues for evil’s ultimate intelligibility in terms of its necessity as a consequent moment in the development of spirit from its ground; he resolves problems of evil’s penultimate irrationality in terms of its unstable contradictory elements in spirit’s history which is not yet fully concrete, a simultaneity of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” in the sense that the instability must be surpassed but not that it should never have been. The aims of this paper will be to summarize and evaluate Hegel’s efforts to give evil both significance and intelligibility within his system and to estimate if a system of progressive idealism contributes a philosophically new dimension to the problem of evil in a universe. (shrink)

A doctrine of analogy in various guises is the traditional medicine for the malady of theological meaninglessness; it supposedly cures both the anthropomorphism of univocation and the unintelligibility of equivocation. If Palmer is right, however, the cure is as bad as the disease. Analogy, he urges, is essential to traditional "descriptive" theology, i.e., to "a systematic presentation of our knowledge about God" which utilizes arguments and licenses inferences. Palmer indicates that analogy is required by anyone who "holds some beliefs about (...) the ultimate nature of the "universe", so that metaphysics as well as natural and revealed theology stands under the strictures of his argument. But his focus is on theology, and he says very little about the consequences for metaphysics. Palmer argues, the doctrine of analogy entails agnosticism with regard to the meaning of terms predicated of God; we cannot know what sense, if any, our theological terms possess. But if we cannot know the sense of our terms, or even whether they have any sense, we cannot know whether any term is being used in the same sense. Hence no inferences or arguments are possible in theology. More precisely, no arguments can be known to be valid in theology, which is to say that theology as traditionally conceived is impossible. (shrink)

Cooper’s book criticizes the traditional "absolutist" Christian doctrine of God, as exemplified in Aquinas, and concludes with a constructive chapter on "Redemption and Process Theism." His critique is chiefly Hartshornean, not Whiteheadian in character. Cooper, adding nothing of substance to Hartshorne’s extant critique, instead scrutinizes the Thomistic texts to show just how and where the difficulties noted by Hartshorne arise. The final chapter, which leans heavily on Whitehead is chiefly a summary of the usual charges against process theism, together with (...) most of the standard process replies. The deepest difficulty, as the author sees it, lies in showing that Whitehead’s God can guarantee ultimate security or redemption in the face of ineradicable pain and evil; to show this requires reconceiving nature and redemption as well as God. Here Cooper is perhaps open to charges of occasional misinterpretation: For example, is it true that for Whitehead the fact of divine existence is "an ultimate irrationality,... an everlasting given"? And can actuality be separated from concreteness? (shrink)

Stanley Cavell’s long-awaited book is largely a revision of his 1961 Harvard dissertation, entitled The Claim to Rationality, but "it is no more properly speaking a revision than its predecessor was properly speaking a dissertation". Cavell notes in his foreword four "periods" or "strata" of writing spanning nearly two decades. Parts 2 and 3 are drawn from the dissertation, though "heavily edited", as is much of part 1, while other portions of parts 1 and most of part 4 were composed (...) as recently as 1974-77. Given this long gestation, plus Cavell’s Daedalian style and exquisite self-consciousness, it is no surprise that this dense and subtle book defies easy description. (shrink)

This collection of eleven essays, the second volume edited for the Society of Philosophy and Public Affairs, attempts to bring philosophical scrutiny to bear on the intersection, if any, of morality and international conduct. The book’s premise is that "the efficacy of reasoned criticism, even if slight, cannot be neglected". Hence these essays "are written not merely to help us understand the political world but to suggest changes in it". There is, however, little agreement beyond this point. Contributors disagree, for (...) example, whether current laws of war are coherent and morally adequate, whether any clear meaning or value can be assigned to "national self-determination," and who or what, if anything, is responsible for genocide in Vietnam—if, indeed, that is what has occurred. But disagreement does not detract from the worth of this volume. Its essays, divided into three parts, are of surprisingly high quality, given the complexity, obscurity, and passion of the issues addressed. (shrink)

This engaging little book strays far from the mainstream of recent philosophy of religion—but for good reason and to good effect. Burke repudiates the parochialism implicit in the recent preoccupation with linguistic meaning, arguments for God’s existence, and problems of immortality. Most recent texts in the field display a "relentlessly Western, even Anglo-Saxon tunnel vision", viewing only a limited form of human religiosity in terms of some narrowing perspective. Hoping to break new ground, Burke treats religion as a universal human (...) phenomenon and tries to illumine its various central "functions" or purposes without casting them in an alien light. His method is expository, descriptive, "analytic," in an unusual sense, and non-argumentative. He attempts to display religious structures in such a perspicuous way that philosophical insight or "recognition" may occur. The result is, as the author notes, "one man’s perspective", yet it is a perspective informed by a great variety of thinkers from various reaches of sociology, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

Evans believes that in order to understand how some people can sometimes speak intelligibly and responsibly about God, we need not merely an analysis of theological language, nor even a comparison of theological with other kinds of discourse, but a full-blown, comprehensive theory of language. In quest of such a theory, Evans traces out two "dimensions," the symbolic and the conceptual, that he claims pervade all discourse interacting dialectically. A symbol is defined as "an ‘illuminating', ‘transformational', and ‘pointing’ linguistic sign (...) which, due to its kinship with or participation in the thing symbolized, makes that thing, through an awareness of it, present and manifest to those in a given community who understand and employ the symbol". "Conceptual" means "non-symbolic." But a theory of language, Evans believes, must go beyond language, since "The symbolic is the location of the disclosure of Being and provides authentic awareness and cognitive insight, and the conceptual is the realm of non-symbolic interpretation and provides conceptual information and objective knowledge". (shrink)

Pucelle tries to show how the idea of personal liberty is central to Green's ethics. Green's criticisms of other philosophers and the historical context of his philosophy are especially well handled. --W. L. M.

This book's fourteen short essays are neither very technical nor definitive, as Schaff warns in his forward. They do, however, reveal the struggle of a sincere philosopher, who happens also to be a high official of the Polish Communist Party, against the absolutes that plague him—absolute determinism, total party discipline, the definitive revolution. Schaff here continues his debate with the existentialists, notably Sartre, and contributes some clarification to the problem of "Marxist ethics."—W. L. M.

In C.Q. xliii , p. 126, Messrs. Klos and Minio-Paluello write: ‘Burnet's and Robin's collations of W… differ for the text of the Phaedo in about 130 readings of a more than orthographical interest. A new inspection of the manuscript has shown that Robin very often corrected Burnet, but added some twenty mistakes.’ As this may give a false impression of Burnet as a collator, it will be well to recall Burnet's own statement in C.Q. xiv , p. 132: ‘He (...) [Wilamowitz] says that my collations of W are inadequate, and have been shown to be so by Schoene for the Symposium, and by Hensel for the Theaetetus and Politicus. As he refers his readers to my Prefaces , he has presumably read them, and ought to have known that I never collated W at all or even saw it.’. (shrink)