IN HIS PAPER "Hegel and the Law of Identity," Reynold Siemens accuses me of becoming involved in several serious muddles in my Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel. I am grateful to Mr. Siemens for treating what I have written seriously enough to think it worthy of considered criticism, but I fear that it is not so much I who have fallen into confusion as he. It is a confusion common among Hegel commentators, including many more sympathetic than Mr. Siemens, (...) and is apparent from the very beginning of his article, in his allegation that Hegel is ambivalent about the law of identity, and that he equivocates over the meaning of "true." I had hoped that I had warned readers of my book of this sort of confusion, but in his case I seem to have failed, and must try again. (shrink)

Similar circumstances to those Professor Blanshard records have prevented my receiving the May, 1980, issue of Idealistic Studies, and only now by consulting a library copy have I seen his reply to my paper “Reason and Rationalism.” I crave the privilege of responding to his defense of his position, if only because it would be most regrettable to create the impression that two persons with philosophical views so closely akin could so far fail to understand one another. I did preface (...) my criticism of Professor Blanshard with the caveat that I was uncertain if I had understood him aright, and now that he has explained many points more fully, I can see that I had not—at least in several respects. Equally I seem not to have made my own position properly clear to him, and in all probability also not to others. Sometimes where I have tried to present a position I did not hold, he has attributed that position to me; at others he has not grasped the implications of the view I wished to advocate. Accordingly, I am seeking this opportunity to remove what I am convinced are misunderstandings on both sides. (shrink)

Similar circumstances to those Professor Blanshard records have prevented my receiving the May, 1980, issue of Idealistic Studies, and only now by consulting a library copy have I seen his reply to my paper “Reason and Rationalism.” I crave the privilege of responding to his defense of his position, if only because it would be most regrettable to create the impression that two persons with philosophical views so closely akin could so far fail to understand one another. I did preface (...) my criticism of Professor Blanshard with the caveat that I was uncertain if I had understood him aright, and now that he has explained many points more fully, I can see that I had not—at least in several respects. Equally I seem not to have made my own position properly clear to him, and in all probability also not to others. Sometimes where I have tried to present a position I did not hold, he has attributed that position to me; at others he has not grasped the implications of the view I wished to advocate. Accordingly, I am seeking this opportunity to remove what I am convinced are misunderstandings on both sides. (shrink)

We are nowadays so often reminded that we live in times of crisis that no controversy is likely to arise on that score, but the knowledge of its source and nature is not so easy to come by as the awareness of the fact. Macmurray is not the first to suggest that the crisis springs from the oversight or suppression of personality. Max Horkheimer, for instance, some years back deplored the submergence of the individual in a totalitarian mass civilization; but (...) whereas Horkheimer traces back the salient characteristics of the crisis situation to the subversion of reason as an objective standard, Macmurray's diagnosis seems, at least prima facie, just the opposite--the substitution of thought for practice as our philosophical presupposition and of the subject for the agent in our idea of the person. This opposition of the two analyses is, however, only apparent as I shall try to show anon. (shrink)