A successful attempt to bring all of Freud's discussions of the concepts of repression and defense into systematic form. Madison also argues that there is an observational language which corresponds to- Freud's theoretical language; by translating these concepts into observational terms, we can bring Freudian psychology "up to date."--S. R.

Truth is a fundamental objective of adjudicative processes; ideally, `substantive' as distinct from `formal legal' truth. But problems of evidence, for example, may frustrate finding of substantive truth; other values may lead to exclusions of probative evidence, e.g., for the sake of fairness. `Jury nullification' and `jury equity'. Limits of time, and definitiveness of decision, require allocation of burden of proof. Degree of truth-formality is variable within a system and across systems.

Paul Janssen, of the University of Cologne, has provided a new edition of the book Husserl published in 1929. The edition required no changes in the text of the work itself; the few additions or annotations that Husserl made later are placed in the critical notes. The volume follows the standard format of the Husserliana series. There is an introduction of some thirty pages, followed by the main text, and then supplementary texts and the critical notes and adjustments to the (...) texts. Janssen’s introduction gives the circumstances surrounding the composition of the book, many excerpts from letters of Husserl which reveal his attitude towards it, and an analysis of the work itself. The ten supplementary texts were written between 1920 and 1929 and explore in greater detail themes found in the main text. Among many interesting remarks are the examination of Sinn, noema, immanent and external perception, occasional expressions, and the study of vagueness, distinctness, and identity of judgment. (shrink)

Rosenfield says rhetorical critics agree that the purpose of criticism is to "study the effects of rhetorical discourse". But he claims such a study, like all theoretical analysis, must work through the medium of a set of theoretical concepts. They intervene between us and what we analyze, and contribute to what we are able to say about what exists on the other side of the theoretical grid. In this case, concepts of cause and effect are most important, since rhetorical effects (...) are to be studied. The author then examines two theories of rhetoric, that of Aristotle and that of "information theorists," to see how concepts of cause-effect influence each. He says he need not examine Aristotle’s concept of cause as it works in describing the heavens, nor in theology, nor in "reference to a logical ‘Unmoved Mover'," because such uses do not apply directly to human behavior moreover we cannot interpret Aristotle consistently, "for he contradicts himself" ; moreover we need not depend on Aristotle’s own "explicit statements". The author aims not at providing "an interpretation of Aristotle as revealed in his words," but his attitude of mind, treating his "corpus" in a "flexible" way, allowing "his mind to range away from the printed page". He then proposes to imagine what sort of ideas a sophisticated man like Aristotle, living in a "primitive" society, might have about force, change, etc. This will provide the "foundation" for the author’s interpretation of Aristotle. He goes on to speak about perfective impulses, active and acquiescent powers, dynamic re-alignment, dynamic equilibrium, tendency to order, and referential grids. There are no fewer than 138 references to Aristotle in 36 pages, many long citations, taken from many different works of the Philosopher. Occasionally a remark will point out the difference between Aristotle’s world-view and ours; for instance after quoting Aristotle to the effect that living things need food and perish without it, the author says, "If Aristotle had possessed our vocabulary, he might have said that stable contexts and processes exhibit homeostatic characteristics. However, without the benefit of our experience or terminology, he had to approach such concepts obliquely". (shrink)

This is a careful, line-by-line and often word-by-word commentary on Book XII of the Metaphysics. The commentary is preceded by a seven part introduction which deals with the theology of Book XII, noûs, self-knowledge, desire, the place of the book in Aristotle’s writings, its date and structure, and the problem of Chapter 8 and Aristotle’s monotheism. Elders claims Chapter 8 was not written by Aristotle but by a disciple or disciples. He also claims that Book XII contains at least five (...) other distinct treatises which come from different periods in Aristotle’s life. Throughout his book Elders summarizes the opinions of all the important modern and ancient commentators who have written on the questions he examines, and makes copious references to other Greek thinkers and other works of Aristotle. For example the section on self-knowledge moves through several dialogues of Plato and through Aristotle’s ethical writings. Philological observations abound, and Elders is sensitive to philosophical aspects in them. Some of his remarks about terms like ousia and dokei contain helpful philosophical insights. The presentation is lean, clear and direct. Elders has marked off another definite part of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and has supplied us with all the information, sources and scholarly commentary that are available for it.—R. S. (shrink)

Struve's book inspires sympathy both for its thought and its form. The thought tries to "grasp speculatively the mystical experience"; the form, to restore the aphorism, "reflection out of the disorder." As suggested in the title--The Other Draught--something draws our thinking initially out of its confusion. Unable to say what it is, we can only witness that "it draws." The main theme appears thus to be the departure from attained positions: the Other within and behind present things, although present but (...) not a thing, urges readjustment of all re-presentations. Its address claims an answer, first of all astonishment. Struve's challenge is to translate the personal condition of a reply into philosophical discourse. One is not surprised to learn that he has abundantly commented upon Kierkegaard. The experience of the ineffable splinters the system, but a syntax is necessary to keep it from being dumb. The aphorism is the speech of the unspeakable. The main issues of the phenomenological tradition are reinterpreted in maxims of from two words to twenty lines. "The miracle: all that is I can transcend; I can thus be totally alone."--"A definition of man: the living being that can be totally alone."--"Dream is spell. While one is dreaming, one is in a peculiar way spellbound by oneself within oneself."--"To say yes means to pronounce the reality; I say yes to something, that means: I declare it real."--"Shaping of a world: abode."--"I am not myself; the same paradox as: all is not all." Often the reader feels carried back into the German mystical tradition, at other moments, the texts look like a professor's summarizing of Phenomenology for College students--or for a block-almanac. Triviality indeed sometimes threatens. The chapters are always organized around three concepts: "Finitude, imagehood, worldliness."--"Solitude, bareness, openness."--"Forgetfulness, sensuousness, memory...." An appendix gives notes from voyages to Norway and Egypt. These pages describe life abroad as the symbol of the existence itself: torn out of the familiar, thrown into the undisclosable.--The [[sic]] author, whose lectures we have enjoyed in Freiburg, Germany, moves apart from the desire for public recognition. The strange peacefulness of his book, when shipped over to a busy continent, becomes a peaceful stranger amidst noisy struggles for the survival of philosophy.--R. S. (shrink)

In the first of these volumes Schuhmann attempts to collect all available materials dealing with the relationship between Husserl and Pfänder. He dates their first meeting as taking place in May, 1904, and traces further meetings and communications. He examines in detail the notes Husserl made in his copies of Pfänder’s works, and describes manuscripts which Husserl wrote about them. Finally he examines manuscripts which Husserl composed about Pfänder’s work in general, and in this section he describes in detail the (...) famous meeting of Husserl with Pfänder and Daubert, another philosopher from Munich, at Seefeld in August-September, 1905. Under pressure of their criticism, Husserl is said to have come to the conception of the transcendental reduction at this time; he also changed his understanding of sensation, perception, and the transcendent object, and likewise came to see the necessity of admitting an ego in his phenomenology. This meeting then becomes the turning point between the philosophy of his Logical Investigations and that which emerged, after years of reflection, in Ideas I. Schuhmann studies the "Seefeld manuscripts" in this connection. He closes with an extensive bibliography of Pfänder’s works and writings about him. He reports that Husserl’s main criticism of Pfänder and of the Munich school was that they never moved from psychology into transcendental philosophy; however Schuhmann uses this conflict between Husserl and the others as a sign of the necessity that phenomenology has to be straining against a natural, mundane attitude, a necessity of being both mundane and "reduced," psychological and phenomenological. He uses this argument to verify his conception of what philosophy is. (shrink)

Brand begins his book with a statement of the philosophical and cultural crisis of contemporary life, a crisis brought about by science. The idealizing methods and technology of contemporary science lead to a loss of self-understanding, and to a replacement of ordinary lived experience by scientific constructs; science in its turn has lost its human and philosophical meaning. An exploration of the life-world that provides the basis for science may help remedy this situation. Brand then explores the theme of a (...) concrete, lived world in Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In these sections he examines themes appropriate to each author: essence, intuition, evidence and intentionality in Husserl; hermeneutics, world, sensibility and authenticity in Heidegger; en soi, pour soi, and negativity in Sartre; the body, science, and dialectics in Merleau-Ponty. These are not just introductory analyses; in each case Brand comes to terms with major interpretations and critics, and is able to show the unity of philosophic inspiration behind each man. In the second section of the book he presents his own analysis of the life-world. He begins with a long study of the nature of philosophical reflection. This includes a treatment of the formal process of distinguishing and reuniting into wholes. He analyzes conceptualization, the experience of wonder, meaning and expression, metaphor, communication, sensibility and the body. Action, value, need, choice, scarcity, and motives are among the themes treated next, and also social dimensions like the family, authority, conflict and friends. Finally he examines private dimensions like personal mythos, one's personal career, sex, eros and love, and the inner life. Throughout these pages Brand uses not only the four philosophers analyzed in Part One, but also such figures as Gadamer, Derrida, Habermas, Wittgenstein, and many others. His writing is a guide not only to philosophical problems, but also to vast areas of current literature; long quotations abound. The original problem of the life-world comes from Husserl, but Brand is especially aware of the dimension of action, choice and work, so his interpretation of the life-world is able to illuminate aspects that Husserl touched only lightly. Brand's independent mind is able to cut across philosophical schools and uncover common elements in them, such as his excellent comparison of Wittgenstein and phenomenology on the irreducible character of insight as the beginning of philosophy. He considers the life-world as not the final ground of experience; rather the process of distinguishing is more basic, and is the final term beyond which we cannot move. Brand claims Husserl does not go beyond the life-world to this, and that only the late Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein appreciate it; but are not Husserl's doctrines of parts and wholes and empty and filled intentions a treatment of the process of distinguishing and identifying? And don't these themes take Husserl beyond the life-world? The wide range and multitudinous sources of this book make exhaustive treatment of each area impossible, and on some points Brand merely gives sketches of what might be done. Other themes are very thoroughly analyzed, and all sections are interesting and provocative. This book should be not only an important contribution to phenomenology, but also one of the most helpful volumes in the philosophical discussions of the years to come.--R. S. (shrink)

José Mena tackles no small subject. His title, "From Myth to Ontology," designates that transition in Western history "at which the Greek spirit began to break the circle of autonomy of the spoken word and opened up to history". This book, then, is about the origin of our civilization conceived as the shift from an oral to a written tradition. Mena describes that threshold, "the renaissance of the eighth century B.C.," with a twofold gaze, looking backward to the proto-Hellenic civilizations (...) and forward to archaic Greece. (shrink)

Jacobi first gives a comprehensive survey of interpretations that Nicholas of Cusa's thought has undergone. After examining the methodological problems of reading Nicholas, he reviews earlier Thomistic and Platonic interpretations, as well as the opinion which considers him too original to be included within any school. He then examines those commentators who stress Christian elements in Nicholas' thought, and his place at the beginning of modern philosophy. Part II of the book is a speculative analysis of his thought, centered around (...) the distinction between "functional science" and "identity-ontology." The former is the purely secular analysis of the appearance and structure of things; the latter is a metaphysical and theological grasp of the unity beyond all differences and appearances, the ground for all beings which appear to the human mind, and the origin of the mind's ability to know. Jacobi interprets Nicholas with the help of such modern terms as transcendental reflection and ontological difference, illuminating both the subject of his study and the modern viewpoint from which he examines it. The study is influenced by the work of H. Rombach of Freiburg, where Jacobi presented it as a dissertation. There is a good bibliography and index of passages cited.--R. S. (shrink)

This is a survey of, and introduction to, ordinary language philosophy for the benefit of German readers. Von Savigny first presents the thought of Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin, complete with annotated bibliography of works about each and a thematic list of passages from the Philosophical Investigations. He then shows how ordinary language philosophers approach three general areas: good and evil, being and nonbeing, and opinion and knowledge--ethics, ontology, and epistemology. Each chapter uses the work of many writers and also has (...) an annotated bibliography. Finally, von Savigny examines the methodology in ordinary language philosophy: how ordinary language can be used for clarification, its therapeutic function, how it can serve to prove a position by argument, and how it functions heuristically to provoke inquiry. He closes with a chapter on some principles concerning ordinary language, and another on its philosophical usefulness. The work is clear and basic, the bibliographies at the end of each chapter are comprehensive, and their annotations illuminating.--R. S. (shrink)

Ulrich Claesges, author of an important book on Husserl’s theory of the constitution of space, has edited the famous lectures of 1907 in which Husserl examines the phenomena of "thing" and "space." The introduction to this course has already been published as Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Claesges includes supplementary texts dating from 1906-1917, with one from 1926. It is in the introduction to this course that Husserl uses the transcendental reduction for the first time, and quite appropriately; for the reduction (...) is motivated by the peculiarities inherent in our experience of things. Husserl is persuaded by his analysis of this experience that he must turn to another kind of experience as the basis for philosophy. The reduction is mentioned only a few times in this volume, however. (shrink)

A collection of essays on methodology by practitioners of various disciplines. Raymond Aron, in discussing evidence and inference in history, touches on the old problems of uniqueness, relativism, periodization and pattern in history. H. M. Hart and J. T. McNaughton discuss the special problems of evidence which arise in a legal context. Erik Erikson emphasizes the subjective aspects of the clinical psychologist's method of interpreting evidence. Martin Deutsch writes about the role of theoretical assumptions in interpreting evidence in nuclear research. (...) Paul Lazarsfeld's essay, probably the best, deals with problems of logic and technique in social research. The symposium concludes with a case study by Jacob Fine: the investigation of a problem in medical research. The philosophical content of most of the essays is small, though they provide material of which the philosophical methodologist must take account.—R. S. (shrink)

This book is a good example of Husserl’s phenomenology at work. It contains three parts, each filled with interesting analyses. Part One examines prepredicative experience and describes how certain aspects come to prominence against others, how similarities arise, how a prepredicative sense of attribution occurs. It discusses the difference between the ego’s being affected and his act of attention, explores prepredicative modalities, and the elementary state of relations in experience. In Part Two Husserl moves to explicit predication as his theme, (...) shows how it differs from the passivity that underlies it, explores relations, predicates and sets, and several dimensions to be found in categorial objectivities: states of affairs, propositions, core-forms, modalities, and affair-complexes. The theme of temporality is often mentioned in Parts One and Two. In Part Three the problem of different kinds of generalities is examined. Husserl distinguishes associative similarities, empirical essences, and pure essences. He describes the different kinds of subsumptions or relations to individuals that such generalities permit. In this book Husserl fills out some of the terse analyses of Formal and Transcendental Logic. It was edited for style by Ludwig Landgrebe, and so is more relaxed in expression than Husserl’s other works. The translation is easy to read and proved accurate in places where I compared it to the German. However on page 208, line 13, "this synthesis" should, I think, be "this unity," and on line 16, "they" should be "it." The emendation made on page 325 seems incorrect. Evidenz is translated by "self-evidence," but perhaps "evidence" would be better if it is understood that Husserl gives a special meaning to the term. In his Afterword, Eley uses themes from Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Lorenzen to criticize Husserl’s attempt to get beyond language in the description of experience.—R.S. (shrink)

A slightly expanded version of the De Carle Lectures delivered in 1964. The general program of this essay is to defend the autonomy of certain aspects of first person intentional discourse on the ground that they have a normative element and are thus irreplaceable by scientific explanations of human conduct and mental processes, whatever course these explanations may take. The first chapter distinguishes two kinds of possibility, one of which is human capability or power conceptually connected to the notion of (...) wanting or willing. The second chapter discusses the concept of desire. The third chapter distinguishes two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the natural order justified by observation and inductive reasoning, and knowledge of my future actions whose source is intention or decision. This essay is clearer and more concise than the author's Thought and Action.—R. S. (shrink)

Dorion Cairns’ translations of Husserl have been acclaimed for their exactness and rigor. Even in the most complex passages of Formal and Transcendental Logic, for example, no emphasis or detail is missed, and one can use the translation with great confidence. One of the principles guiding Cairns’ translation is stated in the Preface to this Guide: "So far as possible someone who translates such writings as Husserl’s into another language should always render the same German expression by the same expression (...) in the other language, and different German expressions by different expressions in the other language." In carrying out this injunction himself, Cairns compiled a detailed glossary of German-English equivalents and this book is its final codification. It can be very useful not only for translation but for reading Husserl in German, since some parts or volumes of Husserliana will probably not be translated. (shrink)

Two themes, both from Husserl's later work, criss-cross in this Cologne dissertation: the move from objective science to the life-world, and the problem of the history of philosophy as a subject in Husserl's thought. The two themes are related, since the modern phenomenon of science, as that which has lost its roots in ordinary experience, is a phenomenon peculiar to the present historical condition of men and not a permanent human problem. According to Janssen, Husserl claims that philosophy has never (...) understood its own sense, and that the history of philosophy has always been an "empty intending" of what it is supposed to achieve; in phenomenology the intention is fulfilled, and its history comes to an end. Now a new sort of development, the clarification of what is already achieved, can be started. This understanding of history is neither deterministic nor random, Janssen says, but it is teleological; it allows science to be accepted as a meaningful achievement of man, and yet prevents science from suffocating freedom and discovery, as an outright idealist reading of history might force it to do. This understanding even demands--and makes possible--a special kind of critical responsibility in the scientist. Underlying this appreciation of history is Husserl's conviction that life is essentially a desire for truth. Philosophy reaches its definitive state by recovering the whole of human experience, especially by overcoming the abstract conception of experience which the objective sciences, and modern philosophy, have taken for the whole; it does this by recognizing and studying the Lebenswelt. Janssen develops these ideas clearly and persuasively.--R. S. (shrink)

Happ presents this volume as essentially a philological study of the concept of matter in Aristotle. He is well aware of the philosophical issues and explicitly states his position on them, but the dominant concern is with a close and exhaustive analysis of relevant texts. The work is meant to be a contribution to the history of ideas, and Happ intends to continue the study in other periods of Greek thought. He does not cover all the aspects of the problem (...) of matter; he admits, for instance, that the problem of the substantiality of matter has been left aside. Philosophically, he tries to avoid the extremes of idealism and realism, and sees Aristotle's theory of knowledge as involving both subject and object; phenomena need the help of mind to become actual. He also considers Aristotle to be more similar to Plato than many authors do, and thinks there is little chronological development in the basic issues of Aristotle's thought. He admits aporetic aspects in Aristotle, but combined with an approach to philosophical problems which is both systematic and dynamic. There are eight major sections in the book: An exhaustive review of the literature and a statement of the philosophical viewpoint of the author; Matter in Plato and the Academy, and Aristotle's introduction of the term hylë. ; Matter as substrate for opposites; Metaphysics IV, VI, XI; Matter in the celestial world; Meteorology IV and the biological works; Matter and knowledge; abstraction; matter and mathematics; matter and the science of metaphysics. ; Matter as a principle of being. There as 130 pages of indices and numerous cross-references in the footnotes. Happ stresses that matter is a principle of being in Aristotle, not anything "stuffy," as it was taken by the Stoics. He claims the "idealist" side of Aristotle's doctrine on matter had little philosophical effect in later thought; but isn't the medieval notion of prime matter precisely that of a principle? And is the Plotinian notion of matter as close to Aristotle as Happ claims? One may wonder if he is reading neo-platonic spiritualized matter back into Aristotle. Some of the best pages deal with mathematics and the need for mind to actualize mathematical entities, and with analysis of matter in the heavens and in aether. Happ admits to conjecture when he says that in Metaphysics VII 3 Aristotle, through his via negativa, reaches matter as a general principle of being, beyond the physical substratum of material things. In its comprehension, depth and subtlety of analysis, this work is clearly one of the major studies on Aristotle; it is also superbly printed and bound, and exorbitantly priced.--R. S. (shrink)

This book, as its title indicates, is put forth as a criticism of our age. The author, who is especially known for his work in the tradition of Husserl and Heidegger, and who has written a book on Aristotle, has often mentioned elements of his own philosophical position in his many essays and books; this volume presents the complete view, of which the others gave only hints. Boehm defines "our age" as determined by science, a science which stems from the (...) Greek understanding of knowledge and contains theological elements from antiquity and the middle ages. Knowledge is taken to be an attempt to overcome the limits of the human condition, and Boehm says that this attempt in turn is based on a desire to escape dying. He examines Hesiod, the Bible, and Lao-Tse to find extra-philosophical statements of the interpretation of death as something that somehow might not be. After these analyses of classical and non-philosophical versions of this theme, Boehm has a chapter to show how the issue is developed in various modern ways: Pascal evades the issue of death by escaping into divertissement, and modern political and economic life becomes a process or a game of its own, cut loose from the ends it was contrived to serve; Fichte and Marx are used here, and so are the satires of Parkinson and Boorstin’s analysis of "image" as replacing real need. Boehm emphasizes the reversal of means and ends in contemporary life and sees it as the consequence of the ancient attempt to replace the human condition by knowledge; an inhuman existence results from the desire to avoid being human. In a final chapter, Boehm studies Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, and others as thinkers who further develop the theme of man as "subject," in the sense of a being that subjects itself to necessity as its only way of surviving; this conception of subjectivity is a condition for the modern subjugation of human needs to the control of the "laws" of economics, production, science, bureaucracy, and the other manifestations of sheer rationality. Human needs are reduced to the needs of rationalistic order and thinking. In conclusion, Boehm observes that philosophy can only criticize the image of the age and its foundations; the return to being human must be accomplished by other means. Boehm’s book is very interesting and puts flesh and blood on many themes we have heard from Heidegger in more abstract form. The main weakness in the book is a failure to analyse virtue, phronesis, and action, which must be seen as a counterpoise even for the understanding of Aristotle’s notion of theory. His criticisms of rationalism, and of gnostic versions of religion which attempt to solve human problems purely by knowledge or by thinking, are accurate, although it is questionable whether he gives a satisfactory picture of Christianity and Judaism in the few passages he cites and interprets; for example, once again the dimension of performance in these religions is not included. Some of his historical remarks, like his interpretation of the events of the thirteenth century, are bold, and one is inclined to read them along with his own remarks on the writing of history. The short description of a conversation with a man of science is pointed and well done. The book is lively and vivid, especially in narrating the reversals of ends and means in our present world.—R.S. (shrink)

This book offers even more than its title promises. Embarrassed with my translation of échec, I emphasize that its authors not only reflect on "Man and Failure," but design a vast anthropological fresco by approaching their topic from psychological, economical, medical, religious and philosophical points of view. Jean Lacroix published a book on Failure some years ago; in 1968 he asked thirteen outstanding French writing personalities for contributions to an interdisciplinary study on the same issue. The result is a remarkable (...) collection of insights into this basic experience in human life. Joseph Nuttin, professor in experimental psychology, presents his most recent researches on the transformation of a person's needs and energies into a "project" of life. Failure, the unsuccess of such a project, gives cognitive information useful for subsequent conduct. Raymond Carpentier sees failure in the area of communication: it reveals the ambiguity of any information. On the level of consciousness, he writes, reality only exists in so far as its own failure is contained in its very structure. "Ambiguous like life itself, communication is what has reality only when it does not succeed in its materializations." François Perroux, economist, both calmly and alarmingly sketches the perhaps imminent failure of our economic system. Three other articles deal with ethnological and medical problems. The philosopher and psychoanalyst Mrs. Eliane Amado Lévy-Valenski, author of L'humanisme psychanalytique, le mythe grec et la phénoménologie biblique, pursues her threefold investigation: "Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology or Ontology of Failure?" To fail in one's efforts is both a trial and a temptation, but it also points toward the emergence of infinity within finitude. The three religious contributions give the most personal penetration of the subject. They are the center of the book. The last section deals with three philosophies: the failing thought of Being, the critique of humanism, the restoration of motivations in action. The first of them is due to Rouven Gilead, professor at the University of Tel-Aviv and author of one of the best books on Heidegger. His paper suggests what radical Failure would mean: not of man, nor of given historical situations, nor even of metaphysics, although these three approaches are true. But the "truth of Being" in modern subjectivity, in sciences and in philosophy remains hidden. Our horizon of thought is the nihilism of Being. The fundamental Failure, then, is the history of Being itself.--R. S. (shrink)

The author explores Aristotle’s theory of signification by contrasting it to Plato’s theory of language, which is interpreted, rather uncritically, as a theory of "natural" signification. She discusses Aristotle’s position on the meaning of sentences and sentential parts, and his theory of reference. She then considers Aristotle’s concept of philosophical language as the language of demonstration, in contrast to the saying of myths, and compares apodeixis to rhetoric and poetry. "Clarity" is required in philosophical discourse, and is defined by contrast (...) with equivocation, ambiguity and metaphor. It is good to have a collection of Aristotle’s remarks on these important items, but the author seems not to draw much philosophical capital from them: "clarity" seems to be taken as little more than "careful writing." Finally some passages from the Metaphysics are examined to give an example of how Aristotle uses language in philosophy. The book contains interesting remarks, but the general problem seems misplaced: we are to be shown that Aristotle is "not concerned solely with linguistic clarification but with positive knowledge of nonlinguistic reality", but such a dichotomy is certainly not Aristotelian. Neither is the problem raised in this sentence, "It is difficult to say whether Aristotle thinks men are social because they have the power of speech or the converse". Again, the author says "poetry is the imitation of things" when she means tragedy is the imitation of action.—R. S. (shrink)

In the current mood of disenchantment with Marxism, why is it that one-day headliners like the French "new philosophers" receive instant popularization and translation abroad? These men, B.-H. Levy and A. Glucksmann, say little that is new and are hardly philosophers. And why is it that Henri Lefebvre, who since World War II has sorted out what is alive in Marxism from what is dead, remains all but unknown in this country?

This book examines the theme of the proof of God's existence from motion, as formulated by Aristotle, Cicero, Newton and Hegel. The author has an explicit methodology which he explains in the Introduction: to carry out philosophical semantics--not philosophical inquiry as such--by tracing this theme and disclosing its variations in respect to the four "coordinates" of philosophical semantics: selection of a domain for inquiry; interpretation of what is real and a basis for truth; method, or the model for connection of (...) propositions; and principle, the source of unity and justification for organized propositions. Aristotle's move from motion to the unmoved mover is examined in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 treats Cicero's attempt to examine various perspectives on motion and to distill the notion and existence of God from debates and opinions on the subject. Epicurean, Stoic and Academic opinions are extensively analyzed. In Chapter 3 Newton's move is from phenomenal motion to absolute motion, space and time, and thence to God as the original force in the world system, are discussed. Chapter 4 treats Hegel's interpretation of the process of thinking as a manifestation of God as absolute spirit. A conclusion reflects on the meta-philosophical problem of one theme in many historical appearances.--R. S. (shrink)

This book is of considerable interest to philosophers. Bruns studies poetry from two perspectives: as hermetic and as orphic. In the first, a poem is considered as a self-sufficient whole, admirable and analyzable in itself, the world-reference of its words suspended; in the second, a poem is considered much as Heidegger takes the work of poets, as establishing a world in which meaning can be found, as instituting a condition in which words and being are indistinguishable. Of the book’s eight (...) chapters, six are devoted to the hermetic and two, the last two, are concerned with the orphic. The literary theories and opinions of the Russian Formalists, the Prague Structuralists, Wallace Stevens, Valéry, Barthes, and Foucault are presented as the first modern move towards a hermetic sense of poetry; the literary object is considered as determined by a system of pure relations. The movement is further studied in a chapter on Mallarmé and his attempt to isolate the book and writing from any worldly context, to employ the physical and spatial character of words written on a blank page as the ultimate setting for what is stated; even syntax begins to evaporate, leaving spatial constellation as the principle of order. The hermetic is further intensified in Flaubert and Joyce. Bruns uses Jakobson’s opposition of metaphor and metonymy as a framework here; metaphor is the process of substituting one word or unit of language for another, metonymy the process of annexing other units to the one we have; it works in combination, association, syntax, and the linkage of sentences. Metaphor is normally dominant in poetry, metonymy in narration and prose. But in the prose of Flaubert and Joyce, metaphor comes to prevail. In Flaubert there still remains room for metonymy and its narrative element, but in Joyce metonymy is overwhelmed by metaphor. The extreme is reached in Finnegan’s Wake, where the principle of substitution, metaphor, reaches beyond the replacement of one word by another, into replacements among parts of words: "eventide," for example, blends with "Eve," and completely new words are formed which are, however, parasitic on established words, as the writer attempts to control that which classically remained beyond his free manipulation, the very establishment of words out of phonemic units. The writer tries to move in an area of the subconscious calculus, to insert his choices beyond the limits of what he seemed forced to take for granted. In all this the linguistic object and not the world becomes more and more the writer’s theme, and the last step is reached in the chapter on Beckett. Bruns describes various transformations of language found in Beckett’s work, and concludes with Lessness, in which all syntax is dissolved and no ordering principle seems to remain; correlatively, the speaker of such surrealistic discourse also loses his identity. (shrink)

This work is largely the author’s Habilitationsschrift presented at Erlangen. There are three major parts: the first describes ancient and modern forms of scientific reason, the development of which he calls a first and a second Enlightenment; the second explores more deeply certain elements in modern science such as the laws of motion, experimentation, forms of calculation, gravity and force; the third studies rational methodology, including issues of epistemology and artificial languages. The author accepts Kant’s and Nietzsche’s criticism of earlier (...) forms of metaphysics and sees signs of a coming third Enlightenment which will involve criticism of historical and linguistic reason. In parts one and two, considerable space is given to historical and social circumstances as well as to scientific development. Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant are among the major figures treated, but many detailed issues are also examined, such as scientific concerns in the late middle ages and renaissance. A forty page bibliography indicates the extent of the author’s range.—R. S. (shrink)

The author claims that parts of the De Caelo comprise a distinct work of Aristotle and can be taken as an early composition, earlier than the De Philosophia. The book is a careful philological and philosophical analysis of this text, and takes a position in regard to the authors who have commented on it. The doctrine of the text is contrasted to Plato’s cosmology, especially concerning the concepts of physics and aether. The text is also compared to Aristotle’s later teaching (...) and many differences are noted: hylomorphism, entelechy, and the unmoved mover, are conspicuously absent. Besides analyzing the relevant parts of De Caelo, the author has remarks about such works as the Protreptic, De Philosophia, and Physics I and II.—R.S. (shrink)

Carr examines whether Husserl’s later recognition of the importance of history, and the historical situation in which philosophy is carried out, destroys his earlier conception of philosophy as "transcendental," as the analysis of changeless, trans-historical structures of reason and experience. In the first nine chapters he discusses texts from different periods of Husserl’s development and surmises that some evidence exists for an affirmative answer: Husserl does seem to imply, especially in the Crisis and parts of Experience and Judgment, that cultural (...) concepts so permeate our life-world that it is impossible to isolate structures which go beyond our situation. (shrink)