The [[sic]] substantial thread connecting the six essays that constitute this collection is the nature and consciousness of being. The first half of the book is given to the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, principally as regards his doctrine of being and his concept of the person. Essays treating Descartes’ doctrine of being and what the author calls Kant’s transcendental being serve to set Gumppenberg’s Thomas in relief. The collection is concluded with a short chapter treating the metaphysical basis of the (...) thought of Viktor Warnach, a neo-Thomist and a warmly regarded former teacher of the author. The work is written in a clear and lucid style with copious references not only to works by the principal philosophers treated, but also to Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers, Koyre, [[sic]] Siewerth, and others. (shrink)

This collection of twenty-one essays presents a comprehensive, well-rounded picture of Nietzsche’s influence upon philosophy generally, and upon morals, psychology, and literature in particular. Fourteen of the essays have been previously published. To students of Nietzsche the most familiar of these fourteen will be two selections from Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist—"The Death of God and the Revaluation," and "The Discovery of the Will to Power;" a discussion of perspectivism from Arthur Danto’s Nietzsche as Philosopher; Hans Vaihinger’s "Nietzsche and (...) His Doctrine of Conscious Illusion," a précis of Nietzschean epistemology; and a selection on morality and human creativity from Karl Jaspers’ Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. Other essays previously published include Richard Schacht’s "Nietzsche and Nihilism;" an important excerpt from the first volume of Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche ; Henry David Aiken’s "Introduction to Zarathustra;" a short piece by Frederick A. Olafson on the relation of Nietzsche and Kant to existentialism; a selection from Max Scheler’s Ressentiment, in which Scheler develops and criticizes Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment; and a brief exposition by Danto of the "scientific" aspect of Nietzschean eternal recurrence. Aiken’s "Introduction" here is rather unsatisfactory. A much better one would have been the "Introduction" to R. J. Hollingdale’s translation of Zarathustra. On the whole, Stambaugh’s translation of the passages from Heidegger is accurate and readable. (shrink)

This book presents a suggestive, creative, to some extent impatient reading of Nietzsche from the viewpoint of metaphor. Kofman has studied under Jacques Derrida, and this fact is evidenced in her book, e.g., in the consideration given to ériture [[sic]]. Kofman shows how the pre-Socratics are paradigmatic for Nietzsche’s understanding of philosophy. "It is a matter of making the original Greek philosophy return, of rescuing it from the oblivion where the triumph of nihilistic forces had caused it to sink, of (...) repeating it by taking it as a model". For Nietzsche, this means a return to the richness of metaphorical writing, as exemplified in Heraclitus, as opposed to the strictures of reason and its rigid concepts in Aristotle. Kofman goes on to discuss the oblivion of the metaphor, and the development of conceptual thinking. The world becomes simplified, generalized, in terms of the concept, which is itself, however, the product of a more diversified metaphorical activity. (shrink)

This collection of eight critical essays makes a significant contribution to the secondary literature on Merleau-Ponty. As stated in the preface, the intention of the book is "to bring to expression the levels and directions through which the thought of Merleau-Ponty moved from The Structure of Behavior to The Visible and the Invisible." The first essay, by Gillan, entitled, "In the Folds of the Flesh; Philosophy and Language," sets the context for the essays which follow. It centers around the two (...) "foci" of Merleau-Ponty’s "struggle with the meaning of being": "the language of philosophy and its self-discovery within the corporeal texture of language itself, the flesh of language". Gillan’s comprehensive expose traces the development of Merleau-Ponty’s thought in terms of these two foci. Don Ihde’s "Singing the World; Language and Perception" suggests a certain "priority" for Merleau-Ponty of language over perception. Language is "not just one dimension of being," and the problem of perception, consequently, has become "enigmatic". Ihde also raises the question of whether Merleau-Ponty has overcome the nature-culture dichotomy. (shrink)