Embodiment, Vesey maintains, is the term applied to our experience of an unmediated movement of our body and an unmediated awareness within perceptual experience. Vesey argues for embodiment as the most satisfying explanation of the mind-body relationship chiefly by arguing against substance dualism as presented by the Local Sign theory of sensation and the Ideo-motor theory of bodily movement. The former is deficient because it rests on the false empirical assumption that all perceptual capacities are learned; the latter is inadequate (...) for more complex reasons, the development of which leads Vesey through his own theory of perception and movement. Vesey's own theory rests on contrast between causal, substance dualism and his own favored, non-causal, subject-object duality, which avoids an absolute dualism because of the internal relatedness of its key terms from the outset. The first half of the book presents a concise review and criticism of current non-dualistic views of the mind-body relation other than that of embodiment; here Vesey has a brief and somewhat unsatisfying skirmish with double aspect and identity theories.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Twenty essays by fifteen British and American writers representing some of the best anglo-american Platonic scholarship dating, chiefly, from the fifties but with essays by Cherniss, Ryle, Vlastos, and Hackforth dating from the thirties. The later dialogues are the focus with nine of the essays treating the Theory of Forms explicitly. Included are essays by Ryle and Runciman on the Parmenides, and also the Vlastos-Geach exchange on the Third Man Argument. The Timaeus is covered by Cherniss' "On the Relation of (...) the Timaeus to Plato's Later Dialogues," and also by Vlastos' "The Disorderly Motion in the Timaeus" and Morrow's "Necessity and Persuasion in Plato's Timaeus." In all, a welcome collection.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Eleven previously published essays presenting a moderately unified argument in favor of the general conception of what Jonas calls the "Philosophy of Life," as well as detailed arguments pointing in the direction of a non-dualistic, realistic, and non-naturalistic philosophy of mind. The "nons" are deliberately placed, as Jonas spends the better part of the book questioning the tenability of dualistic and, especially, materialistic and mechanistically oriented theories of mind. With extraordinary historical sensitivity—at times threatening to dissolve a problem by laying (...) bare the conceptual confusions which surrounded its origins—and with a better than working knowledge of biology and physiology, not to mention anthropology, Jonas argues, on the one hand, that the clues to the dynamism and structure of mind are to be found in such organic features as sentience, motility, and emotion: e.g., the conceptual strands that unite in the notions of causality and truth are rooted in the respective experiences of force and resistance, and vision. On the other hand, Jonas argues for the irreducibility of the subject-object structure of man's relation to nature on the grounds that this is the necessary burden of subjectivity. In all, the book is an impressive performance.—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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

At once a contribution to the history of science, the history of philosophy, the history of classical Greece, and transhistorical, good, clean, reading enjoyment, this book is obviously designed for the library that hitherto had everything. From coin-operated holy water, vending-machines, Athenian electioneering gadgets for "automating honesty," and wine-splashing games of kottabos to the steam-powered toys and automated theatres of the second century A. D. Alexandrian gadgeteer, Heron, Brumbaugh has provided a fascinating catalogue of and commentary on the neglected artifactual (...) and technological genius of the ancient world. The book includes reproductions of many of Heron's "blueprints" as well as plates showing some of the items that have been excavated on the site of the ancient Agora. The illustrations and plates should have been numbered for easier reference but this is a minor defect in a wholly delightful book. The extensive, annotated bibliography is a pleasant bonus.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In the Preface, Kargon states the two objectives of this monograph in the history of science: "First, I wish to bring to the attention of historians of science the existence and importance of two circles of natural philosophers which played an important role in the history of atomism. Secondly, I wish to trace the evolution of atomism and illustrate the mechanism of its establishment in England in the latter seventeenth century. In doing so, I will re-evaluate the contributions of four (...) major figures and many minor ones, including Walter Charleton, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, William Petty, Charles Cavendish, and John Pell". Kargon turns in cash on both promissory notes with a careful yet highly readable piece of scholarship. Some obscurities remain, however, in particular his attempt to link the Northumberland and Newcastle groups with the suggestion that Hobbes' atomism might have been influenced through his connection with John Pell. Concurrence rather than influence was more likely the case. It is also suggested that there might have been a link between Bacon's early atomism and that of Hariot's Northumberland group. But once again the arguments in favor of such a connection are inconclusive at best. Of great importance for the history of atomism is the influence maintained to have been exerted by the 1653 publication of Bacon's atomistic works; this influence was felt by the Newcastle group and the Royal Society. Most interesting, however, is the securely attested influence of the Baconian method on Barrow, Newton, and the Royal Society in general.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The market has been flooded for some time with introductory anthologies such as the present one. What this one has over most of the others is more pages with a competitive price. Twenty-eight of the eighty-three selections come from "classical" sources. Except for a brief selection from Tillich, the modern selections come from the analytical and proto-analytical tradition. A good many classic papers make their appearance; Margolis has not indulged himself in many idiosyncratic choices. The topic divisions are predictable: Meaning (...) and Perception, Mind-Body Problem, Knowledge and Certainty, Conduct and Values, God and Religious Language, Human Behavior and Physical Phenomena, and an introductory set of readings on Philosophical Inquiry. Margolis' section introductions of three or so pages provide concise orientation in the problem areas. Unannotated bibliographies are provided for each section.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This book is designed for the general reader or as a text in a beginning course in philosophy. It is divided into five parts which treat the history of philosophy, rational psychology, ethics, philosophy of nature and metaphysics. Sets of review questions and topics for essays and discussion are included for each chapter. The historical section has been the chief beneficiary of the revision with an expanded treatment of the Sophists and the Pre-Socratics.—E. A. R.

Twenty-five selections have been added to this introductory anthology, at least one in each of the eight sections. Most of these additions are from recent sources, and, in particular, the sections on "Body, Mind, and Death" and "Moral Judgments" have been beefed up through these additions. Edwards' section introductions have been revised over the original edition, but Pap's were left as is. The value of the previously excellent, annotated bibliographies has been enhanced by bringing them up to date. In all, (...) A Modern Introduction remains a first-rate text for topic-centered, introductory, philosophy courses.—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.

A detailed, paragraph by paragraph, interpretation of the De Ente et Essentia. Bobik has supplied his own translation of the text. It is only incidental that his claim to this being the only full-scale commentary in English is negated by the new translation of the Cajetan Commentary ; but the undergraduate and the student who has not yet thoroughly studied the tradition is bound to find Bobik's Interpretation much more approachable than Cajetan's Commentary. Bobik concentrates heavily upon distinguishing and keeping (...) straight the logical and metaphysical themes in Thomas' work and is able to delineate, with more than usual success, Thomas' doctrine of first and second intentions and the always thorny problem of universals. Though his is definitely an interpretive rather than an historical and textual approach, Bobik explicitly rejects such aggiornamentizing as the existential interpretation of Thomas, specifically the reading of esse as "act of existing" rather than as the less theoretically loaded "being." This perhaps accounts for his failure to mention one possible interpretation of the prima via which does not regard the demonstration as limited to a cause of physical motion—as Bobik seems to think. Bobik's efforts may well provoke rather than be provocative for many neo-scholastically oriented philosophers, but there is a good deal of light thrown on Thomas' metaphysics that would be lost if this attitude held sway.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Three of the ten, previously unpublished papers in this volume deal with problems relating to causation. The most intriguing of these is the lead paper, in one of the symposia, by Zeno Vendler. In character with his name, Vendler argues, on the basis of some fairly gymnastic grammatical transformations and his "linguistic intuitions" that causes do not really have effects, but rather, results, which are to be distinguished categorically from the former—a thesis which might well serve as a prolegomenon to (...) an event ontology. S. Bromberger and W. H. Dray comment, Dray presenting the most important dissent on the basis that Vendler's analysis rules out agents being causes. Other papers include an analysis, by J. R. Lucas of the role of necessary and sufficient conditions in causal discourse, and an exceptionally clear presentation of a basically inductive theory of counterfactuals by J. L. Mackie. "Propositions," "Some Paradoxes," "Nonentities," and "Some Remarks about the Senses" are contributed by R. Cartwright, J. F. Thomson, A. N. Prior, and H. P. Grice respectively. D. Gasking and M. E. Lean contribute to a symposium on "Avowals," R. C. Buck's "Non-Other Minds" treats essentially the same problem, while Putnam's paper on "Dreaming and 'Depth Grammar'" serves as a highly critical review of Malcolm's Dreaming while at the same time offering a sketch of a program for linguistics.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In general, the eleven, previously unpublished papers are not as strong as those in the first series. Bromberger attempts to detail the necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being an explanation; Anscombe offers some provocative but inconclusive remarks on the intentionality of sensation; Malpas examines some criteriological puzzles which arise in considering the location of sound as a bit of unlearned perceptual behavior. The rest of the papers are second order assessments and attacks upon positions maintained by other analytical philosophers. (...) Of these Putnam's attack on Malcolm's brand of behaviorism and Butler's attempted dissolution of Goodman's "grue" paradox make their points most effectively. Moravcsik contends, against Strawson, that events are at least as primitive in our conceptual scheme as physical bodies. Wiggins questions some Fregean analyses of the logic of identity-statements; taking off from Strawson, Woods distinguishes a principle of individuation from a criterion of identity and attempts to clarify their separate but related roles by an analysis of the sorts of questions that require their use in giving answers. Rundle is concerned to modify certain Quinean answers to paradoxes of tense requirements that arise in the quantification of modal statements; Savan questions Vlastos' ascription of fallacies to the Socratic argument on the unity of Wisdom and Temperance in the Protagoras. Finally, Shorter points out the general inconclusiveness of "transformational analysis" by exhibiting specific shortcomings of Vendler's analysis of causality in the first volume of this series.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A popular, ecumenical effort that avoids theologizing, this book offers a short summary of each of the books of the Bible according to content, purpose, style, author and date.—E. A. R.

The essay on abstraction provides an historical review of the notion of abstraction with an attempt being made to show that there is a basic similarity between the doctrines of Aristotle and Aquinas, on the one hand, and Locke on the other. The conclusion that is then drawn is that the nominalistic critique initiated by Berkeley and refined by Hume in direct answer to the Lockean theory of general ideas is effective against all doctrines of abstraction which hope to end (...) up in a moderate realism. Other concerns are 1) to show the basic affinities between Berkeleyean and Humean nominalism, and late medieval nominalism, in particular that of Ockham, 2) to show that such a nominalism is inadequate and must be replaced by, what has been termed in contemporary analytical circles, psychological nominalism. The essay on relation shows the continuity in the history of the doctrine of relations from the time of Melissus to the Rusellian critique of the substance-accident ontology, critique which Weinberg thinks definitively replaced the unilateral-attribute doctrine of relations. The essay on induction attempts to show how the medieval commentators modified Aristotle's intuitionistic and vestigally [[sic]] Platonic doctrine of induction into a doctrine of covert inference, and anticipated, in part, Bacon's and Mill's theories.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A soberly written biography that sacrifices nothing to scholarship to achieve an impressive readability. The chapters are arranged to treat, alternately and in chronological order, the biographical data available on St. Thomas and the data available on his intellectual development. Bourke adds no new facts and very few conjectures to the material at his disposal. He makes an objective assessment of rival accounts of St. Thomas' activities, paring off, where necessary, overly pious accretions. His selection of "facts" is then put (...) together in a coherent account of St. Thomas' life. The person of St. Thomas continues to wear the garb of the perfect intellectual, but that this is not the mask of colorless impersonality will be apparent to anyone who encounters Bourke's portrait of St. Thomas—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is an excellent addition to Bobbs-Merrill's "Text and Commentary Series." In addition to the text of the Principles, there are eleven critical essays, three of which are original with this volume. Turbayne has arranged the essays to parallel the unfolding of the major themes in the Principles. Thus, he himself opens with "Berkeley's Metaphysical Grammar," which picks up and develops the theme of the centrality of the study of language to the philosophical enterprise, a point Berkeley makes in his (...) "Preface." Next, W. H. Hay and Richard Van Iten are paired together with different perspectives on Berkeley's nominalism. By way of comment on esse is percipi, G. E. Moore and W. T. Stace present their respective refutations of idealism and realism. Richard Popkin discusses skepticism and Berkeley. Popper examines the ways in which Berkeley anticipated Mach and Einstein, as well as significant features of contemporary philosophy of science. Turbayne and Cornman offer differing appraisals of the philosophy of mind that is sketched in the Principles. Paul Olscamp attempts to systematize the elements of Berkeley's critical theory. Finally, J. D. Mabbott treats of "The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy" and argues for a radical voluntarism in Berkeley--a not surprising analysis, but one which often gets buried under the epistemological issues raised in the Principles. Turbayne has also supplied an excellent introduction, a chronology of Berkeley's life, a working bibliography, and an analytical index. This enhances the usefulness of an already first-rate book.--E. A. R. (shrink)

It is a pleasure to see that there is an art to editing college, readings texts. Individual editors handle five more or less isolable schools of thought, and in the same stroke achieve a modest effort in the history of ethical thought. I. The "Classical" authors include Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas ; II. "Dialectical" thinkers include Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels ; III. "American Naturalistic Thought" contains selections from James, Dewey, Edel, Hook, Romanell, Dennes ; IV. "Analytic" selections are from Moore, (...) Schlick, Ayer, Stevenson, Toulmin, Nowell-Smith ; V. "Existentialist" material is from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Marcel, Camus, Teilhard de Chardin. The introductions to each section are well-done and genuinely informative, and include a glossary of key terms occurring throughout each particular section. Analytically designed questions are placed after each selection and each section contains a selected but annotated bibliography.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The volume opens with selections from Descartes and proceeds in chronological order through the contributions of forty other authors to the philosophy of mind, ending with J. Shaffer's "Could mental states be brain processes?" Other recent contributors include Ryle, Vesey, Smart, Strawson, Wisdom, Campbell, and MacKay. For the combination of the period and perspectives covered, the book is as exhaustive as could be hoped. Vesey's analytical index makes the volume an even more valuable tool for the beginning student.—E. A. R.

Nine lead papers, all with two or three commentators, and six with replies to the commentators. It is the Identity theorists cum cybernetician versus the "non-Cartesian dualists" and C. D. Broad-style interactionists. The most sparks are generated with MacKay's paper, "From Mechanism to Mind," and the ensuing exchange between MacKay and Beloff; MacKay's paper is intended as a summary of his work in cybernetics as it relates to the philosophy of mind, and Beloff's criticisms range from the cautious to the (...) devastating. Beloff's own paper is a well-ordered, rear-guard action against the Identity theory, which fastens on the dual nature of consciousness and para-psychological phenomena as the theory's present obstacles. Flew's "A Rational Animal" is an incisive challenging of what he dubs the "Co-existence Thesis," i.e., the view defended by such people as Winch and MacIntyre, that explanations by reasons and explanations by causes, or, in another idiom, teleological and mechanical explanations, can exist together in irreducible harmony—even given the ideal of a unified science. It should be mentioned that Price's paper is the bulk of his 1952 lecture before the Members of the Society for Psychical Research, "Survival and the Idea of 'Another World.'"—E. A. R. (shrink)

Fourteen essays ranging over issues in political philosophy, philosophy of language, theory of reference, aesthetics, philosophy of history, philosophical psychology, metaethics, "Foundations of Knowledge", "Wittgenstein and Austin". The final essay, "The Possibility of a Dialogue," by I. Mézáros, is a rather pessimistic post mortem on the "Cahiers de Royaumont", the proceedings of a 1959 conference on analytical philosophy held between the men of Oxford and some continental philosophers. From the perspective of continental philosophy, Mézáros is denying the possibility of a (...) meaningful dialogue until analytical philosophers extensively broaden their horizons and methods. A reading of the essays in this volume painfully bears out Mézáros judgment, though the issue of whether or how analytical philosophers ought to mend their ways is not as easily decided as Mézáros seems to indicate.—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.

An anthology of shorter texts, chronologically arranged, and designed to exhibit the development and spectrum of opinions concerning the mind-body problem, the problem of the self, and the question of immortality. Any volume of this sort must necessarily exclude some thinkers who may be important, but Flew's failure to include any philosopher after Leibniz from outside the English speaking world seems inexcusable and creates quite an imbalance in the presentation of contemporary thought on these problems. Flew's introduction is critical as (...) well as historical. A selected bibliography, that the beginning student will find useful, is included.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Dedicated to Philipp Frank and containing introductory greetings to Frank by some of his more illustrious pupils and colleagues, the essays in this volume cover the proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1962-1964. The essays deal with most of the important problems in the philosophy of science from physics to the biological sciences and psychology, and include approaches from diverse traditions: Whiteheadian, Scientific Realism, Thomistic, Phenomenological, as well as historical approaches. High points were McMullin's "From Matter (...) to Mass," which contained a highly sensitive analysis of the Aristotelian doctrine of prime matter; Sellars's "The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem"; Capek's "The Myth of Frozen Passage," which very ably took to task some historical and theoretical overextensions of Relativity Theory and spatializations of time which have resulted in the Block-Universe theory: the fact that Donald Williams commented on Capek's paper made it all the more interesting as it was William's theory in particular that was under attack. The best part of the book, however, was an approximately one hundred page exchange on the nature of scientific explanation which included a lead paper by J. J. C. Smart and lengthy commentaries by Sellars, Putnam, and Feyerabend. The issue, in part, was the radical-replaceability-of-frameworks theory of Feyerabend versus the gradual-replacement theory of Sellars.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A dialectically rather than chronologically ordered survey: it moves first through the outright dualism of Descartes, to the primacy-of-soul position of Plato, and then to the extremes of Feuerbachian materialism and Berkeleyean immaterialism. Then, returning to pre-philosophical foundations in an attempt to recapture the lived phenomenon of body-soul unity that each of the above philosophers acknowledged, but lost in a welter of reductive abstractions, Van Peursen considers the non-dualistic and non-reductivist conceptions of primitive man, Homeric man, and Biblical man. Coming (...) back to the philosophers, this time to those of a more hylomorphic stamp, Van Peursen critically discusses Aristotle, and the corps vécu analyses of Gehlen, Plessner, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Finally, Van Peursen treats the variegated positions of Wittgenstein, Hampshire, and Ryle; the former two coming in for guarded endorsement while Ryle is set forth sympathetically, but attacked for his doctrine of the merely indexical "I." In the last chapter, Van Peursen's own phenomenological version of an "I" which is simultaneously embodied and transcendent—the latter owing to its structure as an "oriented" embodiment—is presented in a suggestive but sketchy fashion. The book is valuable as an introduction, and if, in the end, one is prepared to agree with the spirit, if not the letter, of Van Peursen's embodiment theory, then the metaphilosophical lesson he has tried to drum in throughout the book, namely, the danger inherent in philosophers hypostatizing philosophical or scientific abstractions to the detriment of the integral reality which is man, will make this something more than simply a sensitive survey.—E. A R. (shrink)

A very readable and for the most part nontechnical explanation of the logic, structure, and operation of computers. Fink sketches approaches to the questions of computer-brain analogies, computer creativity, and artificial intelligence but these are not his main concern. The book is designed for those who have more than a casual interest but less than a professional competence, and is successful within these limits.—E. A. R.

In these three Riddell Memorial Lectures for 1965 Ramsey views religious discourse as an instrument for expressing or stimulating "cosmic disclosure." RD must invariably work through the medium of "models," systems of concepts drawn from human experience and applied only by way of metaphor to the presumably transcendent object of RD. No single model is wholly adequate to exhaust a cosmic disclosure, and the danger lies in interpreting them in too literal a fashion and creating the false, and eventually inconsistent, (...) idea that all or most of the elements of the model are isomorphic with the reality of the object of the disclosure. This danger was succumbed to in the past, according to Ramsey, by most explanations of the doctrine of Atonement. Love, Ramsey concludes, is the best model upon which to express Atonement, and the model of the person is most appropriately used to express the disclosure of God. Having detailed this theory of RD, Ramsey attempts to show how it can be used successfully in resolving some of the difficulties raised in the "Honest to God" debate.—E. A. R. (shrink)

With the exception of standard selections from Moore, Ross, and Prichard, "Contemporary" means post Frankena's "The Naturalistic Fallacy", with most of the selections coming from the literature of the last fifteen years. "Ethical Theory" means Anglo-American analytical ethics, with Frankena, Rawls, and Stevenson holding up the American end. The depth-coverage achieved is perhaps justification enough for such a single-minded approach, and Margolis has not wasted the advantages of his chosen framework by indulging in any idiosyncrasies; the papers are all important (...) because they provoked or significantly continued the twentieth-century discussion. Included are Austin's "Ifs and Cans," Rawls' "Justice as Fairness" and "Two Concepts of Rules," Hare's "'Ought' and Imperatives," and Hampshire's "Fallacies in Moral Philosophy." Other authors represented are Ryle, Nowell-Smith, Foot, Strawson, Hart, Peters, and Quinton. "Moore and Metaethics" and "Duty, Self-Interest, and Welfare" are the two main section groupings. Margolis has put some care into a well-ordered, seventeen page bibliography.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Volume IV in the series "New Testament Tools and Studies" edited by Metzger, this book is chiefly a collection of essays that he has produced in the last fifteen years. Thoroughly scholarly and impeccably objective, the book contains chapters on the Lucianic recension of the Greek Bible, the Caesarean text of the Gospels, and Old Slavonic version of the Bible, Tatian's Diatessaron and a Persian Harmony of the Gospels, recent Spanish contributions to the textual criticism of the New Testament, trends (...) in the textual criticism of the Illiad and the Mahabharata, and an appendix on William Bowyer's contribution to the textual criticism of the New Testament.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Though he specifically disavows any intention of providing an answer to the question of whether philosophy in a Christian context can have a theoretical independence from revelation and faith, Tresmontant does offer what he considers to be empirical support for the thesis that metaphysics, when it has developed within the Christian community, has been considerably shaped in its adopted form by the recognized, spiritually authoritative sources of that community. Specifically, Tresmontant reviews the pronouncements of the various Councils of the Church, (...) and to some extent Scripture, and sketches on the basis of these sources what he considers to be a continuously developing and consistently maintained metaphysical perspective on the issues of Creation, God's transcendence, the non-dualistic character of human nature and human destiny, and the completional relation that exists between faith and reason. The value of the book is difficult to assess because it is precisely when one goes beyond the sketch that the author has provided that one encounters all the objections that have been put forth to defeat a thesis such as the one offered in this book.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Along with the translation of Cajetan's text the translators have provided their own translation of the De Ente et Essentia. In addition, an introduction, without which a good deal of what Cajetan is up to would be missed, is supplied. In it the translators explain the context of the Commentary as Cajetan's defense of Thomas' and Cajetan's own metaphysics against Scotism, particularly that of Anthony of Trombetta. The introduction centers particularly on Cajetan's understanding—and in some cases, the translators claim, misunderstanding—of (...) the difficult notion of esse. The scholarly apparatus is impeccable and an extensive bibliography is provided; in all, a welcome addition to a valuable series of Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is Volume I of a new series entitled Aquinas Scripture Commentaries. With the exception of the nineteenth century Oxford translation of Aquinas' Gospel Commentaries, Aquinas the exegete has not been available in English. It is hoped that this Magi Books series will fill this gap soon, though no definite prospectus of further titles other than this and the one mentioned below has been set forth by the publisher. Aquinas' Scripture Commentaries, like his Commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus, follow the (...) lectio form of line by line and structural interpretation of the entire text. This literal approach to Biblical exegesis is mediated, however, by the systematic philosophical and theological perspective Aquinas brings to bear on the text. The result of this union is a Commentary which has quite a bit more than simply historical importance. The translation is smooth and the book has been turned out in a reasonably scholarly fashion.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The joy at seeing another of Thomas' historically and doctrinally important Commentaries on Aristotle translated into English is somewhat dampened by the prodigality of this edition. The translator's introduction is printed in both volumes, and, in a way which suggests that some mystical significance was attached to reaching 1,000 pages, 56 identical pages of bibliography and index are printed in each volume. Litzinger has included his translation of what he takes to be William of Moerbeke's Latin translation of Aristotle's Ethics, (...) and supposedly the text from which Aquinas worked. The translator has gone to a great deal of trouble in providing treatise, book, and lesson outlines, based on Thomas' own analytical outline, and lettered in such a way that the reader can always locate in an instant the point in Aristotle's text to which Thomas is referring—E. A. R. (shrink)

The general tenor of this introductory text is metaphilosophical, perhaps too much so for an introduction to twentieth century philosophy. The book is divided into sections on Realism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Existentialism, and Analysis. Each of these sections has an introduction of twenty or so pages which traces the currents in the history of philosophy which gave rise to Realism, Idealism, etc. in the twentieth century. Two spokesmen or "voices" for the general position or for some methodological consequences of the position (...) are then presented by means of reasonably lengthy and self-contained selections from their writings: Lovejoy and Montague on Realism, Blanshard and Joachim on Idealism, Dewey and Lewis on Pragmatism, Sartre and Tillich on Existentialism, and Schlick and Austin on Analysis. Each section concludes with a good annotated guide for further reading. There are dangers in the "isms" approach to philosophy on any, let alone an introductory, level. The editors seem aware of these dangers in their general introduction, but the format of their book works against their own admonitions, and the instructor who adopts this text will have to provide considerable supplementation.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Sixteen articles by fifteen authors, two of which, the ones by Plantinga and Kenny, have never appeared in this form before. Three of the selections have been translated for the first time from French: those by B. A. O. Williams, E. Bréhier, and P. H. J. Hoenen. The latter two selections are the sole representatives of French Cartesian scholarship. This is unfortunate, as Descartes' positive contribution to modern philosophy is better reflected in recent phenomenological and existential philosophy. The dominant tone (...) of this volume is negative and piecemeal, though in terms of this limited approach to Cartesian studies there are many excellent essays in this volume. The balance of the contributors includes Ayer, Moore, Ryle, A. K. Stout, Malcolm, Hintikka, Gewirth, Prichard, Frankfurt, and Alston. The editor has included a very comprehensive bibliography.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This book, number 14 in the Studia series published by Les Facultés S. J. de Montréal, is essentially a critical study of the different opinions of recent neo-scholastic authors on the theoretical basis and possibility of the deontological argument for the existence of God. The author divides the theories into two basic types, "Extrinsécisme" and "Intrinsécisme," with various subdivisions within these two main classifications. The book is valuable for its summaries and criticisms, and especially for its exhaustive bibliography. A valuable (...) analytic table of contents and an index of proper names have been appended.—E. A. R. (shrink)

As the subtitle states, this book is "a summary of beliefs, practices, and history of the eastern Orthodox Church." Directed to the layman and casual reader, the book is competent within its modest limits.—E. A. R.

The basic theme is the development of the Platonic notion of Eros and its relation to the soul from the Platonic texts through the neo-Platonic and early Christian writers. Rist is concerned to modify Nygren's thesis that Eros is situated as a radically upward movement, while the downward movement of love is to be assigned exclusively to the Christian notion of Agape. He tries to show how Plato, and even more Plotinus, and finally Origen associated a downward movement with Eros (...) and attributed it to the Good, the One, or to God, as the case might be. Some other suggestive contributions are his criticism of J. Gould's attempt to apply the Rylean distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that" to an interpretation of the Socratic dictum that "Virtue is knowledge"; and his pointing out of the hyperintellectualization of the notion of virtue beginning with Aristotle's sharp distinction between theoria and praxis, continuing into the neo-Platonic tradition, until its eventual disintegration, under the partial influence of Gnosticism, into anti-nominianism.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are certainly first rate, as is Natanson's introduction, which attempts to outline the more salient features of phenomenology as a method for philosophy and a philosophical evaluation of the other sciences. Included are Erwin Straus' "The Upright Posture," a translation of Sartre's "Faces" and "Official Portraits," Schutz's "Some Leading Concepts of Phenomenology," and Spiegelberg's "How Subjective is Phenomenology?" A balance between actual phenomenological analyses and historical and critical evaluations of phenomenology itself is attempted and achieved. (...) Other contributors include Aron Gurwitsch, James Street Fulton, Harmon Chapman, Michael Kullman and Charles Taylor, Fritz Kaufmann, and Paul-Louis Landsberg.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is an indispensable volume for the study of Wittgenstein's philosophy and is also, in a certain manner, an introduction to many of the problems which have beset Anglo-American philosophy as a whole since the first appearance of the Tractatus. The thirty articles, reviews, and notes are arranged chronologically—with the exception of Ryle's quasi-expository article which begins the volume—and run from Ramsey's 1923 review to David Keyt's 1964 article, "Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Language." All the articles are complete with the (...) exception of a review of Stenius' book by Shwayder. A comprehensive bibliography of items relating to the Tractatus is included as is an index of references to the propositions of the Tractatus. Credits for the Zemach and second Keyt articles were omitted from the proper place, evidently by mistake; they are given in the bibliography. Wittgenstein's own "Some Remarks on Logical Form" is included—with a proxy disclaimer as to its relevance by Wittgenstein through Anscombe. Also included is a satirical "Epistle" written by Julian Bell in 1932. The book as a whole is a model example of what a critical anthology should be.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Volume two in the Beacon Texts in the Judaic Tradition, this book deals with the Jewish Tradition as it survived and was enriched during the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance by such figures as Gabirol, Nahmanides and Maimonides. Each chapter presents a theme according to which selections from various thinkers are reproduced as commentaries or exemplifications. The editor has provided a sensitive general introduction as well as chapter and individual selection introductions. An index and bibliographies of primary and secondary (...) materials help to make this book an excellent introduction to Medieval and early Modern Jewish thought.—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)

In this 1965 Lindley Lecture Hampshire centers his argument around the nature of belief; but the argument could be easily generalized to cover any mental act or activity where reasons rather than causes are invoked to classify and partially explain the act or activity in question. The causes which Hampshire distinguishes from reasons are the sort that would fit into explanations of the covering-law variety. Hampshire argues that causes in the above mentioned sense undoubtedly form the basis for intentional activity; (...) but were an agent to be shown that such causes were the sufficient conditions for a particular piece of his behavior, he would change the classification of this particular bit of behavior from intentional to non-intentional. The effect would not, however, be a reductive explanation of intentional behavior, but merely a limitation of its scope. The point is seen most clearly in the case of belief: if it appeared that there were sufficient causal conditions for a given belief, the holder of this belief would reassess his position and transform his belief into an inclination to belief. The causal conditions would become part of the evidential basis for re-making or rejecting the belief. The point is that belief itself requires a commitment beyond the given; and the ontological requirement of such a commitment is what Hampshire, following Spinoza, calls "freedom of mind."--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)