Background: Patient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors’ decisions. Associations between physicians’ religious characteristics and their weighting of the criteria were also examined. Methods: Mailed survey in 2007 of a stratified random sample of 1000 US primary care physicians, selected from the American Medical Association masterfile. (...) Physicians were asked how much weight should be given to the following: (1) the patient’s expressed wishes and values, (2) the physician’s own judgment about what is in the patient’s best interest, (3) standards and recommendations from professional medical bodies and (4) moral guidelines from religious traditions. Results: Response rate 51% (446/879). Half of physicians (55%) gave the patient’s expressed wishes and values “the highest possible weight”. In comparative analysis, 40% gave patient wishes more weight than the other three factors, and 13% ranked patient wishes behind some other factor. Religious doctors tended to give less weight to the patient’s expressed wishes. For example, 47% of doctors with high intrinsic religious motivation gave patient wishes the “highest possible weight”, versus 67% of those with low (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8). Conclusions: Doctors believe patient wishes and values are important, but other considerations are often equally or more important. This suggests that patient autonomy does not guide physicians’ decisions as much as is often recommended in the ethics literature. (shrink)

Hume's is/ought distinction has long limited the role of empirical research in ethics, saying that data about what something is cannot yield conclusions about the way things ought to be. However, interest in empirical research in ethics has been growing despite this countervailing principle. We attribute some of this increased interest to a conceptual breakdown of the is/ought distinction. MacIntyre, in reviewing the history of the is/ought distinction, argues that is and ought are not strictly separate realms but exist in (...) a close relationship that is clarified by adopting a teleological orientation. We propose that, instead of recovering a teleological orientation, society tends to generate its own goals via democratic methods like those described by Rousseau or adopt agnosticism about teleology such as described by Richard Rorty. In both latter scenarios, the distinction between is and ought is obscured, and the role for empirical research grows, but for controversial reasons. MacIntyre warns that the is/ought distinction should remain, but reminds ethicists to make careful arguments about when and why it is legitimate to move from is to ought. (shrink)

After setting up the classic Platonic doctrine of universals, Zabeeh reviews the Aristotelian and British empiricist attacks on this doctrine, and the doctrine of general ideas. Zabeeh's own "new" look consists in a reworking of many currently familiar ideas to come up with the position that universals are the meanings of general terms and the meanings of general terms are the way in which they are used. While this may do as the start of a semantical theory of universals, it (...) hardly touches the problem of their ontological status. The same basic semantical theory is compatible with realism, conceptualism, or nominalism, as Carnap has shown. Page 33 belongs in place of page 34, page 34 in place of page 32.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The author attacks the authenticity and credibility of the biblical tradition in general, with special emphasis on the New Testament Gospels, arguing from the rational and factual contradictions in the text. Christ is an eschatologically deluded ethical teacher whose real message was some sort of esthetic humanitarianism. Unitarianism represents the faith of the future. The naivete of the author may be a virtue in itself, but not in a field where responsible scholarship is a prerequisite.—E. A. R.

The Islamic Medieval Philosopher al-Ghazᾱlî, known to the Latins as Algazel, was influential in the shaping of the intellectual philosophic movements in the thirteenth century. Though Ghazali’s predecessor Ibn Sînᾱ and successor Ibn Rushd received the philosophic credit due to them, Ghazali’s own philosophic ideas have not been significantly assessed; and hence Ghazali’s “fame” lies, we are told, in being responsible for the decline of Medieval Philosophy, especially Islamic Philosophy, a claim that is extremely difficult to prove. But be that (...) as it may, the intellectual movement in Europe during the thirteenth century pursued the intellectual Islamic heritage, not just of Avicenna and Averroës, but also that of Ghazali. Granted that Ghazali’s philosophic ideas did not assume a definite pattern in the philosophic literature—as was the case with Avicenna and Averroës—still a careful study of Ghazali’s works will reveal how profound and widespread his influence was on Western Medieval scholars. A case in point is the influence of Ghazali on Saint Thomas Aquinas—who studied the works of the Islamic philosophers, especially Ghazali’s, at The University of Naples. Thus in the course of the subsequent analysis, similarities between Ghazali and Aquinas will reveal themselves. The aim of this paper, however, does not consist in delineating their refutations of the arguments of the philosophers that one finds in Ghazali’s and Aquinas’s works. Rather I shall primarily deal with their discussion of the principle of causality and then indicate how the works of Ghazali have played an important role in the shaping of the philosophic ideas of Aquinas. (shrink)

The book is divided into three sections: Law and Ethics, Natural Law, and Judicial Reasoning. The list of contributors is distinguished, but the articles are scarcely that. J. C. Murray's criticism of J. Rawls' attempt to locate justice in a legal order by means of the concept of "fair play," S. G. Brown's criticism of K. Neilsen's nearly ranting attack on Natural Law, and K. Stern's brilliantly suggestive attack on the normative/descriptive dichotomy were all bright spots; but they are not (...) enough to rescue the book from mediocrity.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Another title in the Modern Studies in Philosophy published by Doubleday under the general editorship of Amélie O. Rorty. Thirteen essays plus part of J. L. Ackrill's translation of the Categories are included. The view is mainly from Oxford and is, in the words of the editor, "piecemeal" and "pluralistic." What this means is that there are three essays on Aristotle's logic, two on his categories, four on his metaphysics, and four on his ethics. Nothing on Aristotle's psychology is included. (...) This, however, is due more to the fact that little has been written on this Aristotelian topic in Anglo-American circles than to editorial oversight. The essays by Woods, Moravcsik, and Urmson were written especially for this volume and the Austin article also appears for the first time. A short bibliography is appended.--E. A. R. (shrink)

All the standard problems with no real surprises in the past or contemporary reading selections. The book's claim to originality and usefulness as a text is a final section of approximately seventy-five pages containing original contributions by Ayer, Blanshard, Passmore, and Lazerowitz, and offering a "reappraisal" of "The Nature of Metaphysics."—E. A. R.

Thomas Chubb seems to have been an 18th century English artisan class version of Eric Hoffer. Only the subject for Chubb was Deism rather than democracy. This is not, of course, to deny the link between these two, a link which is accented to some extent in Chubb's own work. Bushell has given us a short biographical account of Chubb together with six chapters that dutifully comb Chubb's moral, political, and, especially, his theological writings for a synthetic view of Chubb's (...) opinion on such subjects as the historical Jesus, theodicy, providence, toleration, and natural law. Chubb seems to have attracted the curiosity of the intelligensia [[sic]] of his own and later times. But, on balance, he does not appear to be even a major minor figure.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This is number 18 in Herder's Quaestiones Disputatae series. It is made up of four chapters from Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie, VI. The first and fourth essays, "The Changing Church" and "The Teaching of Vatican II on the Church and the Future Reality of Christian Life," complement one another, in a rough sort of way, in their treatment of the issue of continuity and change within the Church. The former tackles the problem from the limited point of view of the (...) authoritative and magisterial church. The latter has the more plenary notion of the Church as the solidarity of the faithful and consequently offers a more satisfying treatment of the theme. The second essay covers the topic "Situation Ethics in Ecumenical Perspective" in a non-surprising but quite elegant fashion. Rahner's characteristic sense of proportion is most evident in the essay "The Church's Limits Against Clerical Triumphalists and Lay Defeatists." He resists the all-or-nothing logic which says the Church must completely overlap and transform--at least in intention--the secular domain or be condemned to impotence and irrelevance. The true role of the Church, for Rahner, is found rather in witness: the Church as the sign of the salvation of the world.--E. A. R. (shrink)

In a competent and well-written survey, the author shows how the cosmic eschatological vision of the New Testament was systematically eliminated from Protestant theology by the end of the nineteenth century as the cumulative effect of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. The author criticizes this departure from the tradition, but fails to explore the possibility that rationalism and the elimination of the eschatological cosmic objective of Christianity was a predictable result of Luther's overemphasis upon forensic justification to the detriment of (...) the complementary notion of intrinsic justification, familiar to Pauline as well as Johannine eschatology.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Issued in the Problems of Philosophy Series this book includes selections from Moore, Russell, Lovejoy, Ayer, Price, Austin, and others in the British tradition. The book begins with an introductory section designed to set up the main problems in the theory of perception and is subsequently divided into sections on sense data, types of realism, and phenomenalism. The selections are not as current as they might have been and there is a complete lack of inclusion of continental philosophy, particularly phenomenology.—E. (...) A. R. (shrink)

Elsasser outlines in an informal but meticulous fashion an organismic biology which promises, in his opinion, to combine the best features of epigenetic vitalism and preformationist mechanism. Mechanistic reductionism is for Elsasser an unverifiable metaphysical hypothesis; i.e., if the postulate of infinite homogenous classes is dropped from the axiomatics of Van Neumann's proof that the state of any system is, in principle, Quantum Mechanically determinable, it becomes combinatorically obvious that biological systems and classes are radically inhomogenous [[sic]], a fact which (...) operationally bars the way to any complete reductionism. The door is thus opened to an open-ended theoretical biology in which all questions do not have a truth-functional equivalent answer according to the axioms and laws of the science, and prediction in the science becomes statistical in a nonabsolute way. Elsasser is a physicist with more than a casual acquaintance with biology and his argument benefits by his obvious expertise in both of these areas. Philosophically, however, he is a lightweight and relies, in particular, too much on the ontological ice that might be cut by operationalism. Theories are not verified in the stringent operational sense; they are confirmed in a way which is not logically tied to the requirement that all laws be inductively established. Elsasser, however, has so much to say on the problem of reductionism in biology that is of obvious value that the book is easily recommended over these caveats.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A good anthology of articles drawn mainly from the British and American journals over the past twenty-five years. Some of the names appearing are Ziff, Margolis, Weitz, Black, Hospers, Mothersill, Hofstadter, Aiken, Aldrich, Urmson, and Passmore. The editor has contributed an introduction and an additional article of his own. The book is divided into five sections, the titles of which indicate fairly enough their thematic contents. The sections are concerned with the problems of defining, appreciating, and evaluating works of art, (...) "Problems concerning Fiction, Metaphor, Belief, and Artistic Truth," the epistemological tangles surrounding Aesthetic Experience, and "The Nature of Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theories." The price is a bit steep for a paper cover book.--E. A. R. (shrink)

The editors of this book of readings have packed in a wealth of material in a way which evinces an imaginative conception of, as well as an ambitious program for a course in the philosophy of education. There are forty-three selections of varying completeness from thirty-six different authors; among the philosophers included are Kierkegaard, Schlick, Kant, Ayer, Blanshard, Scheffler, Stace, Moore, Feigl, Russell, Lewis, Dewey, James, Royce, and Peirce. Plato is the only pre-Kantian philosopher to make an appearance. Half of (...) the selections do not concern education or the philosophy of education directly. Rather, they consider one or more of the four main problem areas of philosophy which the editors have decided gear into problems in the philosophy of education most directly. These areas are the nature of philosophy, metaphysics or the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of value. The section on metaphysics is epistemologically slanted, as might be expected where the concern is for the relation of teaching and learning to the nature of reality. The statements of the philosophers on the general philosophical problems are given at the beginning of each of the sections and then followed by applications of the philosophical position by philosophers, once again, and educational theorists to the field of education. Since too often the philosophy of education is taught in the education rather than the philosophy department, the liberal dose of straight philosophy should prove extremely helpful to the student of education who is accustomed to receiving the philosophy appropriate to the philosophy of education in a highly diluted form.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Selections from "twentieth century sources" which include Moore, Broad, Price, Paul, Lewis, Chisholm, and Warnock. Sense data and phenomenalism are the most heavily represented topics. The choice is substantial, and the editor has skillfully arranged selections in pairs which take up opposite sides of the same problem. This appears to be the best buy in paper on this subject.—E. A. R.

A translation of Rahner's Schriften zur Theologie, II, which leaves only Vol. III untranslated; one presumes that it will be forthcoming from Helicon soon. Together with B. J. F. Lonergan, Rahner, of course, bestrides the Catholic theological world like a Colossus, and the more people like Kruger have the courage to tackle his German, the more his stature will increase in this country. There are eleven essays in this volume covering such issues as "Freedom in the Church," "The Dignity and (...) Freedom of Man," "The Lay Apostolate," and "The Resurrection of the Body." The theme of "Personal and Sacramental Piety" is worked out in general and then applied in a striking fashion in the essay "Forgotten Truths Concerning the Sacrament of Penance." While Rahner is undoubtedly a dogmatic theologian, in the technical sense of that adjective, even the philosopher will find plenty to cut his teeth on in these essays. Doubters are invited to digest the chapter, "On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics."—E. A. R. (shrink)

In this, the Aquinas Lecture for 1966, Johann has set for himself the formidable task of showing how belief in God makes a difference within the humanistic climate of contemporary philosophy. Johann draws heavily on the philosophy of experience of Dewey, but concludes with an attempt to show that the wholeness and integrity of experience which Dewey said it is the task of philosophy to advance cannot be conceived even in intention without acknowledging God as the Transcendental Initiative which grounds (...) the possibility of the humanistic ideal. As Johann presents his argument it smacks of a pragmatic transcription of the Ontological argument: as such, it shares the fascinating persuasiveness of the latter argument, but also its logical shortcomings. Of course, it is open to Johann to stigmatize entire frameworks of "logical considerations" as disguised congealings of atrophied metaphysics: the more senescent forms of the latter for Johann would be those which have not yet grasped that thought, hence philosophy, only has meaning insofar as it is related to action. The Lecture is systematically insightful but cries out for a more highly articulated metaphysics upon which to base its conclusions: Johann hints that this metaphysics is to be found in Blondel and John Macmurray. But something even more radical seems required. If this be Hegel, then one hopes Johann will make the most of it in future work.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The volume includes representative and self-contained selections from fifteen authors covering various aspects of the problem of free will. Included are readings from Jonathan Edwards, Calvin, Schlick, Peirce, James, Mill, F. S. C. Schiller, Hospers, Swedenborg, Hume, Stace, Bertocci, Ledger Wood, and Douglas Browning. Enteman has added an elementary introduction and an appendix on "Microphysics and Free Will." Noticeably absent are selections from existential and phenomenological sources. There is a good bibliography, one which makes the reader envious that it was (...) not invaded more extensively for the purposes of the present volume.—E. A. R. (shrink)

James Collins has turned his talent for painstaking and definitive scholarship to the philosophy of religion, and nobody with an interest in this particular area of philosophy, or in the general development of modern philosophy in the hands of Hume, Kant, and Hegel, can afford to miss consulting this book. The philosophy of religion, as distinct from the older style natural theology, theodicy, and straight theological treatments of religion, is a discipline whose need was first felt when the scientific picture (...) of the universe began to declare its independence from, and possible ascendency over, the theistically ordered anthropological and cosmological harmony of the universe. As Collins details in a balanced manner, it was Hume who first formulated a program to meet this need. He did it in such a way, however, that he made religion a legitimate object of, but wholly external and even inimical in content to, philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics. Building upon Hume, Kant defined the epistemological issue more precisely—"I have denied knowledge to save belief"—and reinterpreted the relation between morality and religion as one of complementarity rather than contradictoriness. It remained for Hegel to internalize the relation between the content of religion and the content of philosophy and thus to reduce the former to an anticipation of the latter. Collins' exposition is interpenetrated by a critical concern supplied by the dialectical development of the idea of the philosophy of religion from Hume through Kant to Hegel, and by his own proposal for integrating the genuine and irreducible insights of each of these three classical philosophies within a realistic philosophy of religion that remains basically theistic. The book is an expanded form of Collins' St. Thomas More Lectures at Yale University; it would be an impressive addition to any series of lectures.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In what is at the very least a tour de force, one of the most important contemporary Italian philosophers, Michele Sciacca, has given a critical exposition of literally hundreds of philosophical writers who share in common the tradition of Western philosophy from Kant and Hegel back through Descartes, on the one hand, and back through Augustine, Aristotle, and Plato, on the other. Treatment ranges from a paragraph or two to nineteen pages in the case of Kierkegaard. For those not sharing (...) Sciacca's preference for an integral Christian philosophy which can successfully incorporate all the positive values of humanism, his "criticisms" will frequently seem polemical and unsupported by the exposition he has provided. This is particularly the case in his treatment of scientifically oriented, analytical and linguistic philosophy which he discusses in a chapter with the somewhat unflattering title, "'Physicalism' and the New 'Scientific' Barbarity." But the book is obviously intended more as an act of philosophical reflection than as a history of contemporary philosophy, and is, in this respect, to be assessed more by the criterion of philosophical soundness used to judge, e.g., Aristotle's handling of his predecessors, and Hegel's reading of the history of philosophy, than by considerations of historical scholarship. And, as philosophy, Sciacca's Christian Spiritualism is imposing.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Both the strengths and the weaknesses of this book derive from its acceptance and maintenance of sharp distinctions between the acknowledged positions and categories in current, analytically-minded philosophical psychology. Thus, while Beloff is able to distinguish between linguistic theories of the mind-body problem and ontologically committed physicalisms, he is too quick to conclude that the former inevitably lead to the latter if followed through consistently; and while he has given fairly strong arguments for disputing the physicalistic hypothesis, his suggestion that (...) dualism à la Broad is the only other theory afoot that can "save the appearances" is open to question from someone adopting a Strawsonian or Merleau-Pontyean approach to the mind-body problem. Strawson's theory is considered but set aside as uncompelling because solipsism is not the inevitable result of the dualistic hypothesis. But even though Beloff has not provided any notable new insights into a set of currently puzzling issues in philosophical psychology, he has provided some exceptionally clear discussions of such problems as the relation between mind and body, perception, action, free will, paranormal phenomena, as well as one of the most judiciously sympathetic yet critical accounts of the scope and applications of the Cybernetical model of cognitive processes. In all, a partisan yet excellent introduction to the philosophy of mind.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In a detailed and careful manner, Taylor sets about an analysis of the notions of causation, human action, purpose, and a whole host of other conceptions such as deliberation, willing, mental acts, and reasons that relate to these key concepts in the philosophy of human action. The issue is, of course, what sort of explanation is suited to grasping the inherent intelligibility of human action. Having argued his way through to a notion of agent causality, which differs little from that (...) of Aristotle, and having concluded to the irreducibility of purpose that this conception implies, Taylor maintains that logical reductionism, behaviorism, and/or mechanism are logically deficient and leave human action unexplained; however, the non-reducibility of common sense, teleological and free will concepts does not imply, for Taylor, a dualism Taylor does leave it open as a matter to be empirically decided whether or not ontological reductionism is a viable alternative. While the book is an extraordinarily skillful and dialectical handling of current discussion in the philosophy of action, there is distressingly little mention of the sources and supports of this discussion. The effect is to make some of Taylor's more controversial pronouncements appear a bit more dogmatic than should be the case; but in the end, content triumphs sufficiently over style to make this book important reading for anyone interested in having some clear light thrown on the thorny problems surrounding the philosophy of action.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Al Kindi was, according to Rescher, one of the first of the Medieval Arabian philosophers who took science rather than theology as the locus for his philosophical efforts. Rescher's well-ordered bibliography is meant to provide the most essential part of the research apparatus for the as-yet-unwritten comprehensive study of Al-Kindi and the place of his work in the history of philosophy.—E. A. R.

This volume, the latest in the project of publishing the complete works of Teilhard in English, exhibits Teilhard's cosmic vision breaking into cosmic prayer and the near-mystical desire "to proclaim... the innumerable prolongations of your [Christ's] incarnate Being in the world of matter". Along with "The Mass on the World," "Christ in the World of Matter," and "The Spiritual Power of Matter" are a collection of "Pensées" drawn from both published and as yet unpublished sources. Most akin to The Divine (...) Milieu, these essays and selections raise acutely, once again, the question of what is traditional and developmental, and what is revolutionary in Teilhard's conception of Christian spirituality—E. A. R. (shrink)

Volume VI in Doubleday's Modern Studies in Philosophy series. Martin is responsible for the ten Locke essays, Armstrong for the twelve on Berkeley. The essays on Locke are by Ryle, Yolton, Jackson, Barnes, Bennett, Flew, Monson, Macpherson, and Ryan. The last three cover Locke's political philosophy while the others inevitably concern themselves with Locke's psychology and epistemology. The Berkeley essays are by Broad, Luce, Grave, Marc-Wogau, Cummins, Mabbott, Bennett, Furlong, Beardsley, Thomson, and Popper. Popper's essay is on "Berkeley as Precursor (...) of Mach and Einstein." As with Locke, the other topics are predictable, though a total of three essays are devoted to the role of "God" in Berkeley's philosophy. An index and a short bibliography are appended.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Thirty-one essays by thirty psychologists and philosophers, treating, roughly, methodological, systematic, and miscellaneous "issues." Some of the psychologists and—alas—too many of the philosophers simply put in an appearance; but there is some excellent material. Piaget's "Psychology and Philosophy" points out the priority of the symbolic abstraction from action rather than language in the learning process of the child, a fact which should have consequences for certain philosophical theories of meaning. Bertocci ably defends a "Personalistic Psychology," while, in the best of (...) the philosophers' contributions, R. S. Peters distinguishes between active and passive emotions—between wanting and wishing—using Freud as both a source and exemplum. Pribram argues philosophically and neurophysiologically for what he terms a "Structural Pragmatism"; a similar view is developed very suggestively by Razran in his essay, "Evolutionary Psychology: Levels of Learning—and Perception and Thinking." The holistic as opposed to the atomistic approach in psychology gets in the final word in Wolman's "Principles of Monistic Transitionism." The editor provides an excellent, annotated bibliography of books on philosophical psychology.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a translation of the fourth of the original seven fascicles of Bréhier's standard Histoire de la philosophie. The three prior fascicles have already appeared from the University of Chicago Press. The virtues of Bréhier's history are its extraordinary readability and unpretentious scholarship. The philosophers covered in depth by Bréhier are Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Locke, with lighter treatment being given to the Cambridge Platonists, Bayle, and Fontenelle. The bibliographies are neatly accessible at the end (...) of each chapter, more than adequate, and have been brought up to date through 1965.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a collection of papers, responses, and discussions that took place among philosophers and theologians of all persuasions at a conference held at Princeton. The lead papers are given by H. H. Price, William Alston, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Brand Blanshard on the respective topics of Religious Experience, Psychological Explanation of Religious Belief, the Compatibility of Understanding and Belief, and Irrationalism in Theology. The discussion of irrationalism begins with Blanshard's indictment of Barth and Barthian-style Theology, and provokes sharp responses on (...) both sides, but apparently little communication. Norris Clarke's response to MacIntyre's paper on Understanding and Belief could have been a fruitful point at which to deepen the discussion, but unfortunately MacIntyre did not publish a response to Clarke's criticism of his sociological theory of the relationship between belief and understanding. The section on psychology is deficient for want of a theologian to express an opposite viewpoint to the intra-party dialogue carried on by Alston and Malcolm. In addition to Clarke's response to MacIntyre, Virgil Aldrich's response to Price's paper on Religious Experience is quite incisive.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is Duquesne's second book about the current crisis threatening the healthy continuance of the Roman Catholic institution of the priesthood. Roughly three-quarters of the present book is spent rehearsing, in anecdotal and quasi-sociological and psychological fashion, the accelerated thinning of the priestly ranks, which must be alarming to even the most ostrich-headed bishop. In the last part of the book Duquesne puts forth his own proposals as to what must be done if the Church, as an institution, is to (...) retain its special ministers, and thus survive. Celibacy will have to become optional; there must be greater diversification in types of ministry and priestly formation; professionalization must be increased and rationalized; smaller, more tightly-knit communities, on the model of some of the communities in the so-called underground Church, will have to become the rule rather than the exception; etc. The book breaks no real new ground, but is a highly readable summary of the situation in this area to date.--E. A. R. (shrink)

The merits of this sourcebook are too innumerable to list in entirety but it must be said that it has achieved an almost perfect balance among the requirements of representativeness, comprehensiveness, and structured presentation. The only traditions in religion which are not represented are Christianity and Judaism, and Eliade has made the right decision to presuppose a familiarity with this material on the part of the student so that he might present more material, within a manageable compass, on religions which (...) are less familiar to the occidental mind. There are 360 separate but moderately cross-referenced entries, and in choosing these Eliade has drawn on the primary documents, of course, most heavily. Where these are lacking, however, as is particularly the case with primitive religions, he has provided deftly selected accounts taken from anthropological studies. The selections are grouped around six main themes: I. Gods, Goddesses, and Supernatural Beings; II. Myths of Creation and Origin; III. Man and the Sacred; IV. Death, Afterlife, Eschatology; V. Specialists of the Sacred: From Medicine Men to Mystics and Founders of Religions; VI. Speculations on Man and God. Each of these sections is then subdivided into between five and ten parts, with occasional further structuration going on in some of the subparts. The book would complement any systematic study in comparative religion, and, as might be suspected, meshes beautifully with Eliade's own Patterns in Comparative Religion.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Hart calls attention to the hitherto unread Bentham which is being made available for the first time in the Athlone Press edition of his works. A re-reading of the complete Bentham is not likely to change the basic picture of his philosophy that is now available, but it will, argues Hart, provide the secure ground for a more fundamental understanding of utilitarianism. And this is a sine qua non for an as-yet-wanting adequate critique of utilitarianism.—E. A. R.

The book is divided into two parts, the shorter of which documents and discusses the authoritative and Biblical sources for the Christian, and specifically Catholic, notion of natural law. The second section is taken up with conceptual analyses of such notions as the relation between nature and grace, nature and historical situation, and primary and secondary determinations of the natural law. A final chapter considers the possibility and scope of a Christian Sociology. The, in principle, complete integration of nature and (...) grace is maintained throughout in opposition to what Fuchs types as the postulated antinomy between these two orders that characterizes most Protestant theologies. The major confrontation between the Catholic and Protestant positions takes place in the footnotes, which are consequently of extensive bibliographical value.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The average, general readings in philosophy anthology have five to seven readings on necessary truth. This volume has fourteen. The old workhorses are here: Kant on synthetic and analytic propositions, Mill on necessary truths, Ayer on the a priori, Quine, Grice, and Strawson on dogmas of empiricism. In addition, Pap has two items, one in the middle of an exchange with Putnam over reds, greens, and the synthetic a priori. There is a tough logical analysis by Hintikka, contributions by Jonathan (...) Bennett and Hanson, and a final exchange between Katz and Quine. The selections are by no means comprehensive, but, as the editors note, this would have been impossible. A seventeen-page bibliography comes closer to fulfilling the completeness criterion. The editors include a short introduction, which really should have been expanded, since it raises some of the ontological issues that implicitly guide the debate that takes place among the selections.--E. A. R. (shrink)