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)

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.

Selections of roughly equal length have been included from the Greeks, the Bible, Augustine, Bodin, Vico, Herder, and Hegel. Polybius is the best represented of the Greeks; excerpts from Thucydides total only a page and a half. Tillinghast admits to being an historian rather than a philosopher, and his introductions to each set of readings are seldom profound. While one may lament the necessary brevity of all the selections and dispute some of the choices, the editor has succeeded in producing (...) a reasonably balanced, inexpensive volume for beginners in the philosophy of history.--W. L. M. (shrink)

This is a nonsense book. It summarizes essential tenets of Pölätüöism, which is the definitive reconciliation of modern science and Roman Catholicism, and chronicles the long and eventful life of its founder. Although neither the cleverness nor the taste maintains a uniform excellence, there is much delightful satire on recent philosophy and religion. Pölätüö's interview with Russell, and his paper "On the Reality of the Soul and on the Reality of Onion," are two of the highlights.--W. L. M.

A series of lectures which critically examines neo-Thomist and existentialist currents and concludes by advocating "the reasonableness of personalistic theism." The meaning and justification of this theism is barely treated.--W. L. M.

An attempt to develop some "valuationally neutral" definitions of freedom in the interest of a more rigorous vocabulary in the social sciences. For his analytic purposes, Oppenheim takes as basic "social freedom," a behavioral, relational concept holding between "actors." Within his self-imposed limitations--of analyzing and clarifying, rather than contributing a new theory--Oppenheim has succeeded in dissecting one of political theory's most crucial but emotively colored words. --W. L. M.

A concise set of speculations regarding principal divine attributes. Part I outlines these themes as treated by fourteen historical philosophers. Part II is a systematic reconsideration and reordering of such notions as infinity, form, and self-sufficiency, which Sontag considers central. Freedom of will, hence some degree of contingency, he concludes, must be allowed in a modern concept of God, thereby altering notions of God's unity, power, motion, etc. --W. L. M.

A collection of essays written from a Christian perspective, including a good critique of Marxist educational theory, a comparison of Marx with Gentile, and valuable studies of less prominent figures. --W. L. M.

A fine introduction to a medieval philosopher who has recently been receiving greater attention Bettoni's study is both sympathetic and balanced.--W. L. M.

The relevance of utopian speculation to the social sciences is Krysmanski's central concern. Through an analysis of eight 20th century German utopian novels and a briefer examination of related literary forms, he tries to determine the peculiar features of the modern utopian method. He finds it to be of value in uncovering new possibilities for altering society on the basis of new technology.--W. L. M.

White begins his inaugural lecture by explaining that philosophy is about explanations. He distinguishes between types of explanation and factors in explanation; he finds "reason," "cause," and, most controversially, "motive" to be examples of the former; and "feelings," "dispositions," "desires," and also "intentions" to be instances of the latter. Unfortunately he has no opportunity to elaborate on exactly what type of explanation a motive is.--W. L. M.

Lakoff is writing the history of an idea, and he writes very professionally. He begins by identifying three basic approaches to the concept, which he later equates with liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. A chapter on pre-Reformation thought deals too briefly with Plato and Aristotle, and too insensitively with the Medievals. Thereafter, the development proceeds smoothly to the expected conclusion that each approach might well benefit from the others. Lakoff's exegeses and criticisms are satisfactorily subtle, though his basic classification schema is (...) not.—W. L. M. (shrink)

In this lecture to the British Academy, Strawson points to inter-personal, "reactive attitudes" such as those of resentment, gratitude and forgiveness, as the key to getting around the usual arguments between "optimists" and "pessimists" concerning the alleged moral consequences of the thesis of determinism. These calculative arguments, he thinks, over-intellectualize the facts; the moral sentiments are given along with human society, and are not to be externally justified.--W. L. M.

In this closely packed survey of basic Scholastic concepts the octogenarian author has siphoned off the cream of a half-century's reflection upon them. Contrary to a much trumpeted contemporary outlook, he takes the refreshing stand that not only the questions the Scholastics asked but "also their answers have still much of importance to tell us today". He notes that while "Scholasticism" covers unsystematized differences in thought, a doctrinal as well as historical account of its basic concepts and their relations to (...) today's use of the terms for them is possible. Though recognizing appropriate truth in Scholastics such as Albert, Scotus, Cajetan, and Suarez, he focuses the thrust of his inquiry upon Aquinas, who has not always been correctly understood by professed followers. With warning to avoid any reifying or hypostatizing of its principles and notions he regards metaphysics as the basic philosophy, understanding it not as a philosophical theology but as an ontology. Consequently the basic concepts will above all be metaphysical. (shrink)

Zitta once attended a course given by Lukács in Budapest. He has prepared an impressive partial bibliography of Lukács' pre-1958 writings, and he liberally scatters the sometimes erratic, often interesting notes of an undisciplined but voracious reader throughout his text. The book-beautifully printed, promising insight into a great but much-neglected thinker, its title replete with four of the most emotion-charged words in contemporary philosophical vocabularies—appears on the surface to emanate intellectual respectability. In fact, it is a clearer candidate than most (...) of those chosen by Lukacs himself to illustrate "die Zerstörung der Vernunft." Zitta's method takes its cue from an early phase in Harold Lasswell's thought, in which literary psychoanalysis was regarded as the key to scholarship concerning political writers. Zitta concentrates almost exclusively on Lukács' works through 1923, and devotes much of this "analysis" to expressing his profound personal contempt for his subject. In short, this book abounds with bad grammar and worse scholarship.—W. L. M. (shrink)

A detailed study of Heidegger's views on the dialogue between poet and thinker. Allemann's discussion of Heidegger's neologistic experiments in philology point up the immense problem of translating the German's writing. Fédier's translation is an example of precision and self-effacement, though the resulting text suffers from an understandable heaviness.--W. L. M.

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)

Politics is defined as a governing activity which strives to reconcile conflicting interests without eliminating them. It is therefore threatened by tendencies in democracy, social science, conservatism, liberalism, and socialism, as well as by the more obvious forms of totalitarianism. An elegantly written defense within what Crick regards as the Aristotelian political tradition.--W. L. M.

The author, who is highly sympathetic toward her subject, follows Bentham's career from his birth until 1792. She divides these years into the Benthamite categories of learning, knowing and doing. She clearly shows Bentham's debt to Bacon and the philosophes, the origins of his adherence to democracy, the development of his logical innovations out of his legal concerns, and the growing split between his popular writings and the more complex, often more philosophically sophisticated arcana.--W. L. M.

This is a collection of seventeen articles, beginning with the 1945 essay, "De la Justice." Repeatedly emphasized are Perelman's opposition to "the absolutist ideal" and his insistence on the importance of linguistic considerations in reasoning. The theme of the final article, "what a reflection on law can contribute to the philosopher" epitomizes the spirit of the volume as a whole. The better part of this collection, it should be noted, has been published in English under the title, The Idea of (...) Justice and the Problem of Argument.—W. L. M. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis and Hans Reichenbach are the contemporaries selected for special study to support the thesis that a carefully redrawn Kantianism is still viable in logic and philosophy of science. The synthetic a priori is reinterpreted as the assumption that conceptual systems can be used to organize the data of sensuous awareness. The doctrine of the Ding-an-sich is defended.--W. L. M.

Admitting to some departure from the Aristotelian classification, Jolivet divides human activities into three sorts: labor, play, and contemplation. He warns against the naturalizing effect of the Marxist notion of labor, defends play as the essentially superfluous, and argues for including art in his third category. A proper conception of human wisdom involves all three activities, although the speculative remains the highest, and the love of God is wisdom's fullest perfection. Based on a lecture series, the book is a clear, (...) rather non-technical, and contemporary re-working of some venerable ideas.--W. L. M. (shrink)

For Brun, the separation of men from existence, which expresses itself in various forms of anxiety, is the central concern of philosophy. While the separation of men from one another can be partly overcome by language and by modern technology's "conquests," the ontological separation cannot, the philosophic attitude of wonder can never be entirely replaced by nihil mirari. He takes issue with the philosophies of praxis which regard human action as the potential remedy for all separation. The thesis is defended (...) capably and passionately.--W. L. M. (shrink)

The author regards the Passions de l'Ame as substituting a definitive ethic for the provisional morality of Descartes' earlier years, and sees "generosity" as the culminating passion within the framework of "la sagesse." The treatment of Divine omnipotence, human freedom, and their resolution in Descartes is especially thorough and enlightening. --W. L. M.

The state is analysed successively in terms of three fundamental aspects: "might," "power," and "authority." The first consists of interpretations of Thrasymachus, modern doctrines of Machtstaat, class struggle, and power elites. The perspective of "power" is the domain of legal theory, whereas that of "authority" is proper to ethics. d'Entrèves is concerned about the distortion of the reality of the state that would result from paying exclusive attention to only one or two of the three conceptions. Very well structured, the (...) book combines clear analysis and argument with support from the history of political thought.--W. L. M. (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.

At one point in the preface to the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes outlines his program of study, beginning with provisional ethics and ending with "the other useful sciences." De Vleeschauwer examines the six categories of the program in detail and considers such problems as whether the program is primarily philosophical or pedagogical, and why Descartes neglected to include mathematics in the list.--W. L. M.

May discovered Diderot's copiously annotated copy of this anti-materialist tract by Hemsterhuis, known to many contemporaries as "the Dutch Plato"; this edition contains May's interesting introduction, a facsimile of the original text, and a transcription of all of Diderot's comments. The comments bear on infelicities of style as well as of thought, though the latter preponderate: the Lettre is not, alas, the product of a first-rate philosophical intellect. Diderot's strong objections to Hemsterhuis' crude theory of a moral organ can be (...) taken as complementing his Refutation of Helvetius, which dates from the same period.—W. L. M. (shrink)

A miscellaneous collection of prejudices concerning the state of modern culture.--W. L. M.

This is a worthy addition to P. U. F.'s useful series, "Philosophes." Robinet succeeds in touching, briefly but illuminatingly, on all important aspects of Merleau-Ponty's thought, including the renewed interest in ontological questions in the posthumous Le Visible et l'Invisible. The philosopher's political writings, which have been dismissed as irrelevant by some students of Merleau-Ponty, are shown to be the product of an inquiry into our "perception of history." Of note, also, are Robinet's remarks concerning his subject's historical antecedents, among (...) whom he regards Malebranche as especially important.—W. L. M. (shrink)

As he announces in his first sentence, Goodin looks to an era of "empirical political studies with a sharper evaluative focus"; this book is to be a precursor of such studies. He begins with a discussion of the ethics of power, which he holds to be neutral per se but evil in some of its uses, of which manipulation is found to be an especially egregious example. Goodin then discards certain definitions of manipulation as too broad or too narrow, in (...) favor of a definition of manipulation as activity engaged in deceptively and against the putative will of its subjects. These two characteristics will be invoked in every succeeding chapter to assess alleged instances of manipulation considered by the author, along with two further criteria: the long-term persistence of the manipulation's effects and the existence of "distributive biases" in a given manipulative mechanism, that is, the relative ease of access of certain privileged individuals to it, as contrasted with forms of manipulation that are more or less equally accessible to everyone. (shrink)

Writing in French, the author points to Arnold Geulincx to explain the historical shift in the concepts of philosophic method and first principles. Geulincx' Methodus made use of the synthetic or expositive method, which Descartes had regarded as inferior to his own analytic one, but which he had employed, upon request, in Reply to Objections II. Spinoza, presumably inspired by Geulincx' example, was later to claim demonstrativeness for the mos geometricus.--W. L. M.