The predicament with which Professor Paton is concerned is that of religion in an intellectual climate in which its continued survival is becoming more and more difficult, the climate of modern science. The seventh chapter entitled “Intellectual Impediments” states the difficulty very strongly: religion is under fire from physics, biology, i.e., evolution, psychology, history. Professor Paton is concerned with what is left of religion after these partial defeats and he hopes, with a modesty which does not succeed in hiding itself, (...) to “induce some of the indifferent to consider the possibility that religion may not be all nonsense, but may contain something precious without which life may be incomplete”. (shrink)

This book by the Professor of Educational Philosophy and Psychology at Drake University aims at “detailing for the first time the rudiments of a systematic philosophy based upon dialectical material monism”. Moreover, it “attempts to present man as a God in the process of becoming”. Further, this point of view “has forced the writer to new concepts of memory, will self, and freedom”.

This is an important study in Kant’s moral philosophy, and will be read with increasing excitement by those who find the Foundations a puzzling and exasperating work. It is ‘the outcome of years of dissatisfaction’ with the usual interpretations of the treatise, and it puts forward what seems to be an entirely new interpretation.

The Discourses of Epictetus were first translated into English by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter in 1758. This translation was rewritten in 1865 by an American, Thomas W. Higginson. In 1890 Bohn’s Classical Library issued a translation with notes and a life of Epictetus by George Long. Like Higginson, Long began by attempting a revision of Mrs. Carter’s version, and then decided to make his own translation, which he later compared with Mrs. Carter’s and with the Latin version. Apparently Long knew nothing (...) of Higginson’s translation. (shrink)

In recent years philosophers have come to interest themselves quite a lot in religion seen as a human phenomenon. It is coming to be realized that philosophy cannot understand man without taking account of what has been historically his most important activity—apart from the satisfaction of his primary instincts. This taking account is a very complicated and vast business, and we must therefore allow for this in estimating works such as those of Professor Kimpel of Drew University.