This book offers a thorough account of Thomas Reid's philosophy, focussing on his expressionist aesthetics, then traces his influence in nineteenth-century ...

RésuméLe but de cet article est de mettre en évidence les différences entre Descartes et Reid au sujet du rôle que chacun assigne aux sensations dans le processus perceptuel. Dans Perceptual Acquaintance, John Yolton ne trouve quepeu de choses dans les conceptions de Reid qui ne soient pas déjà de quelque façon présentes chez Descartes. Je soutiens au contraire que la théorie des sensations-comme-signes de Reid constitue un développement considérable par rapport à celle de Descartes ou à quoi que ce (...) soit que l'on trouve chez lui, non seulement parce qu'elle est évidemment plus claire et plus cohérente, mais aussi parce qu'elle introduit l'idée d'un élément a priori dans notre expérience perceptuelle et lui attribue un rôle indispensable. Cet élément crucial est tout à fait absent de la conception cartésienne. (shrink)

The book examines the principal philosophies of music put forward during the period extending, roughly, from Descartes through Rameau. In musical chronology, that would include the late Renaissance and most of the Baroque, hence “l’âge classique” makes reference to a cultural epoch, centered principally in France, and not the period in musical history known as “classical.” Composers whose works receive mention include Monteverdi, Lully, and of course Rameau. However, this is a book about theorists, not musicians.

This volume consists of three principal parts. Its centerpiece is a collection of Thomas Reid's lectures and papers on practical ethics, heretofore unpublished; this is preceded by an introductory essay and followed by an extended commentary.

This book announces itself to be an introduction to the philosophy of Thomas Reid which seeks to attain this goal through a critical examination of Reid's principal doctrines. The central focus, as the title indicates, is Reid's own critique of "the way of ideas"--that philosophical approach commonly linked to empiricism, which regards the individual mind as having direct access only to ideas, thus rendering the external, material world either problematic or fictitious.