A "problem" book which reads, throughout too many of its pages, like an almanac of distinctions. Yet Bunge's discussions of partial truth, causality and chance, and especially of metanomological statements restore the balance and lend support to his thesis: science as a body of knowledge must be regarded as a set of systems of propositions and proposals of many kinds with the aim of "the maximization of the degree of truth."--G. L. C.

Science, which is guided by reason and not pure intuition, is to be regarded as justifiable opinion. Bunge's sketch of philosophical intuition from Aristotle to Heidegger will probably be of interest primarily to the general reader.--G. L. C.

Bruening describes his book as "an attempt to capture the spirit of the man—not his works and his life considered in isolation from each other, but the person himself as one single human being." For the most part, however, life and works are separately presented, most of the biographical data being concentrated in the first chapter. Thereafter the works are treated one by one, in largely chronological order: "Notes on Logic" ; "Notes Dictated to Moore" ; Notebooks ; Prototractatus ; (...) Tractatus ; "Lecture on Ethics" ; Blue Book ; Brown Book ; Philosophical Investigations ; Philosophische Bemerkungen ; Philosophical Grammar ; Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics ; Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief ; Zettel ; On Certainty. Bruening does not explain his principles of selection. The direction of his interests is suggested by the ten pages on Lectures and Conversations, not written by Wittgenstein, as compared to the mere half page devoted to On Certainty, or by the four pages on a popular lecture on ethics as compared to the single page on Philosophische Bemerkungen. Longer treatments follow the course of the work being glossed and sample its topics, save in the case of the Investigations, where remarks are grouped under these five headings: "Reflections on the Tractatus," "Language Games and Forms of Life," "The Mind-Body Problem and Private Language," "The Nature of Philosophy," and "Seeing and Seeing As." Doubtless beginning readers such as Bruening usually has in view would have found more profit and interest in the coherent development of such themes than in running comments on work after work, especially if they had been shown inside Wittgenstein’s problems and been made to sense the struggle. This seldom happens, however, and the inaccuracies are numerous and sometimes serious. A select bibliography is appended.—G.L.H. (shrink)

In CQ n.s. 26 . 62–84 I argued that the defeat of Sparta in 371 B.C. was not due to the pursuit of unwise policies towards the other Greek states. Unwise policies there had been. Sparta being by no means superior to Athens in the formulation of foreign policy, but these did not affect the position on the eve of Leuctra when, with Thebes politically isolated, and with some of the Boeotians disaffected, Cieombrotus at the head of a numerically superior (...) Spartan and allied army was poised for the, destruction of Theban power; a triumph of policy it must have seemed. Sparta failed for military reasons. Her army was unequal to the military genius of Epaminondas. (shrink)