Aristotle on Practical Wisdom is the first full-scale commentary on Nicomachean Ethics VI to be issued in a century, and the most illuminating ever. A meticulous translation with facing-page analysis enables readers to engage directly with Aristotle's account, while the lucid introduction locates it in the context of his—and later—ethical thought.

Fifty or sixty years ago anyone fluttering the pages of one of the many magazines which then catered for the cultivated and intelligent English reader would have been fairly certain to come upon an article bearing somewhat the same title as that of the present paper. The author would probably be an eminent scientist, such as Huxley or Clifford; a distinguished scholar, such as Frederic Harrison or Edmund Gurney; or a politician of cabinet rank, such as Gladstone or Morley. Whichever (...) side he might take, he would write with the moral fervour of which Englishmen at that time had an inexhaustible supply. Nowadays the so-called “conflict between Religion and Science,” which was then appetizingly hot from the oven, has acquired something of the repulsiveness of half-cold mutton in halfcongealed gravy. There seems to be a widespread opinion that Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, with some highly technical and not readily intelligible assistance from Professor Whitehead, have enabled the lion to lie down with the lamb. Well, I have no wish to pipe a discordant note in this scene of Messianic harmony. But I cannot help reflecting that psychology, anthropology, and psychical research have made considerable advances as well as mathematical physics; and that they seem prima facie much more likely to be relevant to religion. Even the ordinary common sense of the lawyer and the historian may still have something useful to say on such topics. (shrink)

IN a letter to the Editor of MIND, Mr. G. T. Bennett of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, points out a stupid slip which I made on page 499 of MIND, N.S., No. 124. In illustrating Mr. Johnson's analysis of the subsumptive syllogism in my review of his Logic, Part II., I took as a major premise the proposition “Everything with sides and angles is equiangular, if equilateral”. This is, of course, ridiculously false, as Mr. Bennett points out. A figure made (...) of four equal jointed rods could be pushed into many different shapes. I want to make it quite clear that this is a slip.of my own, and that nothing of the kind occurs in Mr. Johnson's book. Of course, for purposes of illustration, it is a matter of indifference whether we choose false propositions or true ones, so that no injustice has been done to Mr. Johnson's theory. But I am not going to pretend that I did not think this proposition to be true at the moment when I wrote it down. I am sorry to have been so careless, and I should be still more sorry if anyone should have ascribed the carelessness to Mr. Johnson himself and not to his reviewer. I must thank Mr. Bennett for pointing out the mistake. (shrink)

Several physicists, among them Hawking, Page, Coule, and Carroll, have argued against the probabilistic intuitions underlying fine-tuning arguments in cosmology and instead propose that the canonical measure on the phase space of Friedman-Robertson-Walker space-times should be used to evaluate fine-tuning. They claim that flat space-times in this set are actually typical on this natural measure and that therefore the flatness problem is illusory. I argue that they misinterpret typicality in this phase space and, moreover, that no conclusion can be (...) drawn at all about the flatness problem by using the canonical measure alone. (shrink)

_A Plato Reader_ offers eight of Plato's best-known works--_Euthyphro_, _Apology_, _Crito_, _Meno_, _Phaedo_, _Symposium_, _Phaedrus_, and _Republic_--unabridged, expertly introduced and annotated, and in widely admired translations by C. D. C. Reeve, G. M. A. Grube, Alexander Nehamas, and Paul Woodruff. The collection features Socrates as its central character and a model of the examined life. Its range allows us to see him in action in very different settings and philosophical modes: from the elenctic Socrates of the _Meno_ and the dialogues (...) concerning his trial and death, to the erotic Socrates of the _Symposium_ and _Phaedrus_, to the dialectician of the _Republic_. Of Reeve's translation of this final masterpiece, Lloyd P. Gerson writes, "Taking full advantage of S. R. Slings' new Greek text of the Republic, Reeve has given us a translation both accurate and limpid. Loving attention to detail and deep familiarity with Plato's thought are evident on every page. Reeve's brilliant decision to cast the dialogue into direct speech produces a compelling impression of immediacy unmatched by other English translations currently available.". (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page 16-18, January 2012.

A brilliantly organized, thorough bibliography including brief but more than sufficient critical notices of each title listed. Sebba's style is succinct and lively, and he does not hesitate to speak his own mind, which he does fairly and in full awareness of the reader's responsibility to judge for himself. Although designed as a reference book, the first 148 pages will provide exciting reading for anyone even moderately interested in Descartes. In this section 562 titles are listed and commented upon, many (...) entries include also citations of reviews and related articles. All the major European languages are represented.—C. D. (shrink)

Soon after its publication, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy was hailed as the favourite to become "the 'standard' text for survey courses in ancient philosophy. Over twenty years later that prediction has been borne out: Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy still stands as the leading anthology of its kind. It is now stronger than ever: This 5th Edition features a completely revised Aristotle unit, with new translations, as well as a newly revised glossary. The Plato unit offers new translations of (...) the Meno and Republic. In the latter, indirect dialogue is cast into direct dialogue for greater readability. The Presocratics unit has been re-edited and streamlined, and the pages of every unit have been completely reset. (shrink)

Coral bleaching has impacted reefs worldwide and the predictions of near‐annual bleaching from over two decades ago have now been realized. While technology currently provides the means to predict large‐scale bleaching, predicting reef‐scale and within‐reef patterns in real‐time for all reef users is limited. In 2020, heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef underpinned the region's third bleaching event in 5 years. Here we review the heterogeneous emergence of bleaching across Heron Island reef habitats and discuss the oceanographic drivers that (...) underpinned variable bleaching emergence. We do so as a case study to highlight how reef end‐user groups who engage with coral reefs in different ways require targeted guidance for how, and when, to alter their use of coral reefs in response to bleaching events. Our case study of coral bleaching emergence demonstrates how within‐reef scale nowcasting of coral bleaching could aid the development of accessible and equitable bleaching response strategies on coral reefs. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/N9Tgb8N-vN0. (shrink)

On 5 August 1968, publication of the Harvard Committee’s report on the subject of “irreversible coma” established a standard for diagnosing death on neurological grounds. On the same day, the 22nd World Medical Assembly met in Sydney, Australia, and announced the Declaration of Sydney, a pronouncement on death, which is less often quoted because it was overshadowed by the impact of the Harvard Report. To put those events into present-day perspective, the authors reviewed all papers published on this subject and (...) the World Medical Association web page and documents, and corresponded with Dr A G Romualdez, the son of Dr A Z Romualdez. There was vast neurological expertise among some of the Harvard Committee members, leading to a comprehensible and practical clinical description of the brain death syndrome and the way to diagnose it. This landmark account had a global medical and social impact on the issue of human death, which simultaneously lessened reception of the Declaration of Sydney. Nonetheless, the Declaration of Sydney faced the main conceptual and philosophical issues on human death in a bold and forthright manner. This statement differentiated the meaning of death at the cellular and tissue levels from the death of the person. This was a pioneering view on the discussion of human death, published as early as in 1968, that should be recognised by current and future generations. (shrink)

Has the private body of biethics become a microcosm of the body politic? Politics is ethics writ large. Ethics is politics writ small. However we turn it, the practice of bioethics is increasingly attuned to developments in public policy. The establishment of a “Health Policy Watch” in these pages is an invitation for research and reflection on these issues.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas by William McCormickD. C. SchindlerMcCORMICK, William. The Christian Structure of Politics: On the De Regno of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. xiii + 272 pp. Cloth, $75.00Challenging general assumptions that, because of its genre as a letter to a king in the speculum principis tradition, Aquinas's De Regno is a (...) minor source for Aquinas's political theory in comparison to the political passages from the Summa and Sentence Commentary, William McCormick, S.J. presents a new interpretation of this somewhat neglected text. Though there exist a few classic articles comparing Aquinas's thought in this letter and elsewhere, and substantial introductions to the De Regno in editions by Eschmann (1949) and Dondaine (1979), The Christian Structure of Politics is the first book-length study of Aquinas's letter to the king of Cyprus. In this respect, the volume makes a very welcome contribution to our understanding of Aquinas's understanding of political order, bringing out a dimension of his thought—its awareness of history and its pedagogical sensitivity—not so apparent in Aquinas's other writings.The book is very much what it presents itself as being, namely, a "close reading" of the text, following the letter's two parts (the second of which [End Page 150] Aquinas left unfinished) paragraph by paragraph, considering various interpretative possibilities and suspending judgment—the words "might" and "perhaps" are no doubt two of the most frequent in the book—until more evidence comes into view, and working up to general principles only at the end. McCormick thus eschews substantial engagement with theoretical issues that would form the backdrop to the discussion (for example, the relation between nature and grace, and between practical and theoretical reason), opting instead to focus on a more immediate engagement with what is presented in the text itself. He also does not make more than passing comments on Aquinas's better-known formulations on political matters from the Summa or Sentences Commentary. On the other hand, the "close reading" does not keep McCormick from discerning a general order in Aquinas's letter, which he divides up thematically according to a proposed schema. His approach shows a sensitivity to the historical context in which Aquinas was writing, even if particular details about Aquinas's addressee and the occasion of composition remain uncertain, but his aim is not simply to produce a historical study. Instead, as the book's title itself already indicates, he investigates the De Regno in order to show that the text offers fundamental principles for a distinctively Christian approach to politics, and thus can shed light even on our contemporary situation.The book is divided into five basic chapters, in addition to a substantial introduction and brief conclusion. The first four chapters follow the order of the De Regno, though the basic lines of division are McCormick's own interpretative proposal. Chapter 1 treats the letter's prooemium and the first two chapters of part one (I.1-2) under the title "The Aristotelian State of Nature," showing that, contrary to ideas found in a certain current of Christian thought, political order is fully natural to man and not simply a practical response to violence. Chapter 2, "The Augustinian Earthly City," treating I.3-6, complements the natural character of politics with the realistic acknowledgment of man's fallen nature. While some commentators have worried that the discussion of tyranny in these and subsequent chapters of the De Regno eclipses the positive account of politics given rather schematically at the start, and so diminishes the interest the text might hold for the political philosopher, McCormick argues that the engagement with the tyrant, and the disorder he generates, represents an essential dimension of Aquinas's political vision. Indeed, one of the principal theses of The Christian Structure of Politics is that Aquinas manages to integrate Aristotelian and Augustinian perspectives in an unusually illuminating way: Christian revelation, which introduces the eschatological horizon and foregrounds the historical narrative of sin and redemption, does not supplant but instead grounds and deepens the integrity of politics and... (shrink)

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicourm Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the foot of each page. There are now over 100 volumes, representing the greater part of the classical Greek and Latin literature.

Arthur Danto is the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and the most influential philosopher of art in the last half century. As an art critic for The Nation for 25 years and frequent contributor to other widely read outlets such as the New York Review of Books, Danto also has become one of the most respected public intellectuals of his generation. He is the author of some two dozen important books, along with hundreds of articles and reviews (...) which have been the center of both controversy and discussion. In this volume Danto offers his intellectual autobiography and responds to essays by 27 of the keenest critics of his thought from the worlds of philosophy and the arts. The book includes 16 pages of color art reproductions. Danto is the author dozens of books on art, philosophy, the philosophy of art, and art criticism. He is a rare philosopher who is also a public intellectual. (shrink)

Like his earlier study The Phenomenological Movement, Spiegelberg’s latest work is a comprehensive overview—not of the phenomenological movement itself —but of its influence on psychology and psychiatry. Its aim is to show that the presence of phenomenology in these disciplines has broadened the perspectives of these empirical sciences and has loosened the death-grip that positivism and naturalism, behaviorism and atomistic associationism, might otherwise have exerted upon them, Spiegelberg does this "concretely" by a wide ranging account of philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists (...) which testifies again to his great erudition and incomparable familiarity with phenomenological literature. The index of authors studied covers six pages of double columns. Part One gives a "general orientation" to the field, discussing first the notion of phenomenological psychology and then the presence of phenomenology in psychology, in psychopathology and psychiatry, in psychoanalysis and in American psychology. The second half of the book is devoted to more concentrated studies of "leading figures" and devotes entire chapters to such thinkers as Jaspers, Binswagner, Minkowski, Buytendijk and Frankl. The American student of phenomenology is once again the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a somewhat unusual account of the philosophy of Jaspers. The "Introduction" contains an historical survey of Existentialism which is rather out of date. It associates Heidegger and Sartre together, and as philosophers of the absurd--a mistake for which by now there is no excuse. It sees a "way out of this barren desert" of the philosophy of absurdity in Jaspers--which is a misleadingly religious way to introduce Jaspers. The body of the work contains chapters (...) on the foundations of Jaspers' thought in Kant, on the concept of philosophical faith, a comparison of Jaspers with some contemporaries, such as Whitehead, and a final comparison of Jaspers' "ciphers" with Maimonides' negative theology. The 79-page long text is heavily punctuated with citations and so does not make for smooth reading. This is followed by nearly half that many pages of notes, some of which are rather interesting and which provide the whole with extensive documentation.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Otto Pöggeler is among the most distinguished living German scholars. He is the coeditor of the new critical edition of the works of Hegel published by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In addition he is the author of what many regard as the book on Heidegger. He has access to documents that Heidegger makes available to only a few and is considered to have an acquaintance with the pre-Sein und Zeit period that is matched by none. This latest volume--a collection of important (...) articles that have appeared in European periodicals on Heidegger, and offered on the occasion of his 80th birthday--is exactly what one would expect of Pöggeler. The contributions are most distinguished. To name a few: Löwith on Heidegger and Protestant theology; Schulz's famous article on the place of Heidegger in the history of Philosophy; Gadamer on Heidegger and Marburg theology; Beda Allemann on Heidegger's engagement with the National Socialists; Tugendhat on Heidegger's idea of truth; and finally an article by Pöggeler on Heidegger's hermeneutics. Pöggeler also provides a 38-page introduction entitled "Heidegger Today." In addition to a helpful index, there is a tripartite bibliography including not only Heidegger's works and the important secondary literature but also the works of independent thinkers who think out of the context and under the influence of Heidegger--such as Binswanger, Bultmann, Fink, Löwith et al.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Josiah Thompson, who has authored a previous work on Kierkegaard in 1967 and just recently edited Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, has, with the present title, made a memorable contribution to Kierkegaardian literature. Kierkegaard may be best described as a philosophical-biographical essay. It studies the development of Kierkegaard’s life from his birth in 1813 to his burial in 1855 in a funeral which results in a "near riot" at the graveside. Thompson has produced a continuous, compelling narrative which is (...) vividly and often beautifully written. There are no footnotes to interrupt the almost novel-like quality of the prose, which often includes even bits of dialogue. Yet, at the end of the 238 pages of prose, there are 37 pages of notes, referring back to page and line, which richly document the facts, scenes, and often the conversation which Thompson has presented. In Chapter 12, "Master of Irony," in the most philosophically important discussion in the book, Thompson develops his thesis that the aim of the pseudonymous writings is to portray "the necessary failure of all human projects". There is a shattering discussion of Kierkegaard’s final reflections on Christianity in the next to the last chapter. In all, Thompson has written a superb and penetrating study of Kierkegaard.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Miss Stambaugh's new translation of Identität und Differenz is a welcome addition to the growing body of English translations of Heidegger. The special merit of Miss Stambaugh's work is that the translator was a student of Heidegger's and was able to prepare this translation in consultation with him. Her work should be particularly well received in view of the very poor quality of the previous translation of the same work, published for some reason under the title Essays in Metaphysics. The (...) "Introduction" is well done but regrettably short as the work stands in need of further explication. There certainly is room for an expanded introduction, as the lectures--even in both languages--barely fill their 146 pages. Miss Stambaugh's linguistic decisions are usually sound. For example, faced with the Heideggerian ambiguity of "Er-eignis," she simply combines the dual meanings into "the event of appropriation," which is as much as one can do with this critically important word in Heidegger's vocabulary.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Like his earlier study The Phenomenological Movement, Spiegelberg’s latest work is a comprehensive overview—not of the phenomenological movement itself —but of its influence on psychology and psychiatry. Its aim is to show that the presence of phenomenology in these disciplines has broadened the perspectives of these empirical sciences and has loosened the death-grip that positivism and naturalism, behaviorism and atomistic associationism, might otherwise have exerted upon them, Spiegelberg does this "concretely" by a wide ranging account of philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists (...) which testifies again to his great erudition and incomparable familiarity with phenomenological literature. The index of authors studied covers six pages of double columns. Part One gives a "general orientation" to the field, discussing first the notion of phenomenological psychology and then the presence of phenomenology in psychology, in psychopathology and psychiatry, in psychoanalysis and in American psychology. The second half of the book is devoted to more concentrated studies of "leading figures" and devotes entire chapters to such thinkers as Jaspers, Binswagner, Minkowski, Buytendijk and Frankl. The American student of phenomenology is once again the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship the beneficiary of Spiegelberg’s conscientious and incisive scholarship.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This is the second of a planned 5-volume translation of the most significant entries in Kierkegaard’s Papirer, which in the Danish edition consumes 20 volumes. The translation is done by Howard and Edna Hong, translators of the Philosophical Fragments and other works of Kierkegaard, and the winners of the National Book Award for Translation in 1967 for their translation of Volume I of the Journals. Volumes I through IV are arranged according to topics in alphabetical order, and within each topic (...) the entries appear in chronological order. Volume V will be devoted to autobiographical material. Some of the more significant themes covered in Volume II include faith, freedom, God, grace, Hegel, history, humor and irony, the individual, and knowledge. Each entry is numbered consecutively and then its source in the Danish edition and date are given. There is a collation of entries in the English edition with the Danish Papirer, and over 60 pages of notes by the translators. The journals of any philosopher are an important aid in understanding his thought, but in the case of Kierkegaard they are especially significant because of the indirect, pseudonymous and ironical character of Kierkegaard’s writings. We are fortunate to have this highly professional translation of these important texts at our disposal to assist us in the difficult work of interpreting Kierkegaard.—J.D.C. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 139-141.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 150-152.

Bien plus qu’une position relativiste ou nihiliste, on reproche parfois aujourd’hui à Lyotard d’avoir fait le lit de la « post-vérité » par la promotion de la multiplicité de jeux de langage sans au-delà et sans principes généraux de validation. Par un raccourci stupéfiant, on y lit l’affirmation que les discours sont tous également légitimes et ne doivent posséder comme autre principe de validation que le fait d’avoir été proférés. Si l’accusation d’un Lyotard inspirateur d’une forme de « post-vérité » (...) nous semble infondée, c’est que la pensée et la parole s’attachent toujours pour lui à « quelque chose » dont il faut avoir le souci ou qu’il faut chercher à entendre. Lyotard nous semble moins soucieux de relativiser ou, comme on l’en accuse aujourd’hui, d’abandonner l’exigence de vérité que de montrer, d’une part, que celle-ci peut se dire en plusieurs sens, et, d’autre part, qu’on ne vient pas à bout de cette dernière aux moyens de ce qu’il nomme « le discours ». Que ce soit par la pensée, la parole, la création ou l’action, on s’attache toujours à « quelque chose » dont on a souci, et la promotion de la multiplicité dans le champ de la vérité vise non à s’affranchir du vrai mais à se montrer à sa hauteur par un élargissement des perspectives qui ne le cantonne pas à un seul genre de lieu. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Zhuangzi:Personal Freedom and/or Incongruity of Names?Paul J. D'Ambrosio (bio)Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom (hereafter Origins) has sparked much scholarly debate. Already numerous presentations, various types of discussions, and reviews have appeared based on Origins. The present review focuses specifically on the Zhuangzi chapter. The entire project actually began, Jiang writes, fifteen years ago as a book on (...) the Zhuangzi. Through his research Jiang realized he needed to learn more about the objects of philosophical ridicule and critique in the Zhuangzi. Origins is the result of this decade-and-a-half study.Origins provides a somewhat novel framework for reading Warring States period philosophy. Summarizing the basic structure of his project Jiang writes: "I make the case that the philosophical dialectics between the partialist humaneness and imperialist justice formed the fundamental dynamics underlying the mainstream moral-political project during the classic period, with the musing on personal freedom as the outlier" (p. 35). As Karyn Lai puts it, Origins revolves around a "predictable set of inherited pre-Qin texts associated with key figures, traditionally called the "Masters" (zi 子) text" (Lai 2022, p. 181). Some models inherited by the "masters," such as yinyang 陰陽 thinking or ming 名 (names) and shi 實 (actualities), are nearly absent in Origins and would cast new light on the project as well [End Page 458] as the tradition. In this review I will first outline Jiang's reading of the Zhuangzi before considering how a richer appreciation of the Chinese tradition, especially its own methodological tools, frameworks, and concepts, could bolster the exciting contributions Origins stands to make. We will start with Jiang's big picture view of the Zhuangzi.In Origins the Zhuangzi is taken to be a completely unique text. It does not engage in the moral and political discourse the other "masters" texts are subsumed by, and instead of supporting either partialist humaneness or impartialist justice it "muses" on personal freedom. Jiang defines: "Personal freedom is understood as the appreciation and cultivation of personal space wherein one can be left alone and enjoy the company of like-minded friends without being entangled in the sociopolitical world" (p. 36). There are two significant points to note about Jiang's understanding of freedom. First, it is almost a word-for-character definition of how the "Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove" have been described by many. Research on these philosophical works could significantly enrich Jiang's reading, albeit from a different angle. Second, Guo Xiang's 郭象 (d. 312) emphasis on, and philosophical explorations of, du 獨 (an interconnected type of "lone") would further fill out how freedom and relationality—which are both attributed to the Zhuangzi by Jiang—are connected.In addition to a "fierce advocacy for personal freedom" Jiang classifies the Zhuangzi as a "singular outlier" for ridiculing the "misguided character of [the contestations between humaneness and justice] and warn[ing] against their potential for inhumanity and injustice" (p. 49). Indeed, the Zhuangzi does demonstrate that these discussions can elicit "the very opposite of what was intended by the participants of the mainstream discourse" (p. 49). Its criticisms are even more penetrating when we appreciate its deeper point about "names being the guests of actualities" (Zhuangzi 1:4). From this perspective the Zhuangzi is not against systems of humaneness or justice as such. It rather points out that humaneness does not have a single referent, nor could that referent be reliably distinguished. The name "humane" does not guarantee humane action, or really anything in particular. The same is true for "justice." We will return to these points below.Jiang's chapter on the Zhuangzi begins by defending moral and political readings of the text. It is an outlier from the perspective of the "humanity-justice" framework, but this only means that the moral-political discourse Zhuangists were engaged in was different. The result was that already by the early Han and by the time of Sima Qian 司馬遷 (d. 86 b.c.e.) "Zhuangzi's teachings were … of little use to contemporary political discourse" (p. 288). Jiang should be delighted to know that the Wei-Jin period, which had inestimable... (shrink)

Au premier abord, les visées et les méthodes philosophiques de Spinoza et de Sartre semblent radicalement différentes. Or, ces différences radicales se trouvent dépassées dès qu'on se penche sur une problématique commune à ces deux philosophes : la production et le maintien de la communauté libre. Une interrogation philosophique sur la question de l'articulation de l'éthique et de la politique nous donnera la possibilité d'évaluer ces philosophes comme les constituants d'une certaine théorie anticontractualiste se fondant spécifiquement sur l'idée de l'émancipation (...) perpétuelle de l'individu dans et par la communauté."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

C A Winch; Education, Literacy and the Development of Rationality, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 187–200, https://d.

_Rhetoric_ is the sixth volume in The New Hackett Aristotle series, a series featuring translations, with Introductions and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve, Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The series will eventually include all of Aristotle's works.

A well put together introduction to twentieth century philosophy and philosophers. Trotignon has achieved a good balance by dividing his book into two parts, the first containing twenty- to thirty-page summaries of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, the second paragraph-long to eight-page presentations of lesser figures. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty are set at two extremes of Husserlian existentialist phenomenology through a series of polarizations : e.g., Sartre's Husserl is the Husserl of Ideen I, Merleau-Ponty's the Husserl of Erfahrung und Urteil, Méditations (...) cartésiennes, and the Krisis. Trotignon's précis of minor figures, consistently to the point, fall into three categories: "Phenomenological currents" "Philosophy of history", and "Twenty years after or the crisis of philosophy". In concluding, Trotignon announces Structuralism, a new "Practical subjectivity," as the philosophy of the future. There follows a three-page bibliography of primary sources for minor figures, with primary and secondary sources for Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.--C. M. R. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

David Hume has been invoked by those who want to found morality on human nature as well as by their critics. He is credited with showing us the fallacy of moving from premises about what is the case to conclusions about what ought to be the case; and yet, just a few pages after the famous is-ought remarks in A Treatise of Human Nature, he embarks on his equally famous derivation of the obligations of justice from facts about the cooperative (...) schemes accepted in human communities. Is he ambivalent on the relationship between facts about human nature and human evaluations? Does he contradict himself – and, if so, which part of his whole position is most valuable? Between the famous is-ought passage and the famous account of convention and the obligations arising from established cooperative schemes once they are morally endorsed, Hume discusses the various meanings of the term “natural.” “Shou'd it be ask'd, Whether we ought to search for these principles [upon which all our notions of morals are founded] in nature or whether we must look for them in some other origin? I wou'd reply, that our answer to this question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.” The natural can be opposed to the miraculous, the unusual, or the artificial. It is the last contrast that Hume wants, for his contrast between the “artificial” culturally variant, convention-dependent obligations of justice and the more invariant “natural virtues,” and what he says about that contrast in this preparation for his account of the “artificial” virtues, makes it clear why he can later refer to justice as “natural” and to the general content of the rules of justice – that is, of basic human conventions of cooperation – as “Laws of Nature”. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.