Logic has a function in the social act of persuading. It defines the rules of relevance, coherence, and consistency which persuading should exemplify. These rules are not themselves objects of persuasion, but a priori reference-points persuading must take for granted. In the theories of logic currently in vogue, logical rules are found, not made. As we find them, we are ‘logical spectators’. Using them, we are ‘logical agents’.

My quarrel is with Ehman's third and concluding section. There he undertakes a confrontation of the two conceptions of the self developed in his preceding argument. "We must decide," he says, "whether the self is reducible to a determinate object in the world or is a transcending subject for which both the world and the self's own determinate nature are mere objects". But the self can never be reduced to a mere object, for the self "can detach itself in thought (...) and will from every objective determination" --a power one would hardly wish to ascribe to a mere object. Thus. (shrink)

Romantic love is subject to the same philosophical analysis, this book shows, as any other human experience such as selfhood, good and evil, or justice—even though most philosophers have neglected it. An appropriate method of inquiry here, the author holds, "must be an ontological theory; it must evaluate the reality of love in comparison to the other things we think are real." Part I examines the layman's conception of romantic love as a "mysterious, unanalyzable feeling." It also examines the psychologist's (...) conception of romantic love as "an unmysterious natural phenomenon"—a drive. Part II turns to the sociologist's conception of romantic love as a social institution—"an interpersonal transaction with a social function." Part III concludes that romantic love is an objective social process which society makes possible "by granting the individual a private inner being which escapes typification by being literally unspeakable." Written with clarity, wit, and charm, _Romantic Love _will appeal to all intellectually curious readers including philosophers and social scientists. (shrink)