From the Stoics, there follows a psychological tradition leading, through Hobbes and Leibniz, to Peirce and Dewey. These thinkers are drawn on to show the significance of the conception of thinking first articulated in the Odyssey. Homer's work inaugurates an approach that has provoked philosophical conflict persisting into the present, and opposition to pragmatism and Pragmatism can be discerned in prominent critiques of Homer and his hero which are analyzed and countered in this study.

The early Greek Stoics were the first philosophers to recognize the object of normal human perception as predicative or propositional in nature. Fundamentally we do not perceive qualities or things, but situations and things happening, facts. To mark their difference from Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics adopted phantasia as their word for perception.

Hobbes conception of reason as computation or reckoning is significantly different in Part I of De Corpore from what I take to be the later treatment in Leviathan. In the late actual computation with words starts with making an affirmation, framing a proposition. Reckoning then has to do with the consequences of propositions, or how they connect the facts, states of affairs or actions which they refer tor account. Starting from this it can be made clear how Hobbes understood the (...) crucial application of this conception to natural law, identified as 'right reason'. (shrink)

Alluding to a passage in Plato’s Philebus Paul Ricoeur remarks, "Philosophy’s eminence lies in the art of arranging ordered manifolds". Whatever its general pertinence, this comment certainly applies to Ricoeur’s own work. The Rule of Metaphor, expertly translated from La métaphore vive, presents a multi-faceted approach to problems of metaphor and meaning that justifies the subtitle yet also manages to build up a coherent argument from ideas drawn from a wide variety of sources in philosophy and linguistics.

This collection brings together ten essays on literary and philosophical topics, each of which provides occasion for advancing the critical approach now signified by the twin terms of the title.

"Property I have nowhere found more clearly explained than in a book entitled Two Treatises of Government," Locke wrote. Yet nothing has led to greater confusion and debate regarding Locke than his conception of property. Tully's Discourse is a welcome addition to the debate because it tackles this central problem with insight, thoroughness, and clarity.

Hobbes and all the commentators so far who have argued for the overall coherence of his philosophy have attempted, and failed, to establish it on a foundation in "mechanical" conceptions of body and motion, according to Weiss. But Hobbes in effect overcame the inherent limitations of the mechanical model when he introduced in his conception of man as a seeker after power a model drawn from a different kind of machine: "cybernetic" structures carried over from psychology into politics are the (...) real basis of Hobbes's system. (shrink)

One of Derrida’s first publications, the introduction to his translation of one of Husserl’s last writings, this text is rather an interpretive elaboration and critique than an introduction with respect to Husserl, but provides an introduction to Derrida in that it shows the germination of themes central to the works published in 1967 which established his reputation: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, all of which are now available in English. Also appended to this translation is a (...) French and English bibliography of Derrida. (shrink)

An uneven hodge-podge, more a sampler for those familiar with Foucault than a suitable introduction, this collection is divided into three sections, according to the rubrics of the book’s title. The first part brings together four essays on literary topics, including a piece on Georges Bataille, one on the emergence of "literature" as a new valence of language at the end of the eighteenth century, and a review of Laplanche’s Hölderlin et la question du père, all from the early 1960s.

This publication of Dewey’s lectures in courses on "The Psychology of Ethics" and "Political Ethics" at the University of Chicago is a welcome addition to the edition of his Early Works in five volumes, covering the period 1882-98. The text is based on stenographic records, expertly edited, annotated and introduced by Donald F. Koch.

La Cena de le ceneri is one of Bruno’s five dialogues in Italian, which were all written and published in England in 1584-5. A comparable English translation of the Cena by Stanley L. Jaki, under the same title is not referred to in the apparatus of the version under review, and we may assume that the latter was well under way when the former appeared.

In an introduction, "The Dilthey Problem," Ermarth writes, "often his quite singular intellectual position is resolved either into a pale reflection of a prior Golden Age of German Idealism or else a ‘genial’ anticipation of later existentialism and phenomenology". Ermarth avoids the first of these twin dangers, to some extent, by beginning with a detailed and differentiated survey of nineteenth-century German thought.

Hobbes conception of reason as computation or reckoning is significantly different in Part I of De Corpore from what I take to be the later treatment in Leviathan. In the late actual computation with words starts with making an affirmation, framing a proposition. Reckoning then has to do with the consequences of propositions, or how they connect the facts, states of affairs or actions which they refer tor account. Starting from this it can be made clear how Hobbes understood the (...) crucial application of this conception to natural law, identified as 'right reason'. (shrink)