This book is the first extended attempt to explain Plato's ethics of natural law, to place it accurately in the history of moral theory, and to defend it against the objections that it is totalitarian. Wild provides a clarification of Plato's ethical doctrine and a defense of that doctrine based not only of his analysis of the dialogues but on the belief that Plato must acknowledged as the founder of the Western tradition of the philosophy of natural law. The book (...) begins with a presentation of the major objections raised against Plato by modern authors, Toynbee, Karl Popper and others, who have condemned the so called totalitarianism of Plato's thought. Wild answers these objections point by point and with a wealth of evidence taken from Plato's own arguments. He then presents a historical study of the ethics of natural law, defining the theory and showing through an examination of relevant dialogues that Plato held such a theory. The work concludes with a systematic study of his realistic ethics and its bearing on contemporary problems. This is a reprint of the 1953 Chicago edition. (shrink)

In the Western world, this negativistic movement has proved to be a far more serious and lasting threat. Failing to take a firm root in Europe, the place of its origin, it moved to England and North America, where the central disciplines of philosophy were found to be less firmly grounded in sound empirical traditions of academic life and thought. Here for many years it has now run its course, and has exerted a powerful destructive effect. In many secular schools (...) and universities, the history of philosophy has been neglected, logic and linguistics have replaced ontology as the focal discipline, and many philosophers, moved by the widespread fear and idolatry of "science," have abandoned the performance of their vital descriptive and synoptic functions. This has had a markedly disintegrating effect on the cultural life of the West at a time of crisis and world upheaval. (shrink)

Heidegger, Sartre and the later existentialist philosophers inherited a world, it has been said, from which "God is absent". Contemporary philosophy begins in the momentous questioning of the Christian experience by such nineteenth-century figures as Nietzsche and Dosteyevsky. But if existentialism is in some respects a beginning-again, it is in other respects linked to the classical world out of which Christianity arose and to certain themes in the writings of ancient and medieval Christians. Renewal and innovation converge. Addressing themselves to (...) the general reader, the three author-philosophers consider both the contemporary and the perennial. [Book jacket]. (shrink)

Heidegger, Sartre and the later existentialist philosophers inherited a world, it has been said, from which "God is absent". Contemporary philosophy begins in the momentous questioning of the Christian experience by such nineteenth-century figures as Nietzsche and Dosteyevsky. But if existentialism is in some respects a beginning-again, it is in other respects linked to the classical world out of which Christianity arose and to certain themes in the writings of ancient and medieval Christians. Renewal and innovation converge. Addressing themselves to (...) the general reader, the three author-philosophers consider both the contemporary and the perennial. [Book jacket]. (shrink)

2. Thesis 2 I accept insofar as it asserts the relation of possibility to actuality to be a fundamental aspect of things. This relation is sui generis.

The translators have been conscious, perhaps overly conscious, of the linguistic difficulties involved in their task, and have provided the reader with a glossary of German terms, an exhaustive index, and an elaborate series of footnotes, largely devoted to linguistic and grammatical considerations, which are found on almost every page. Neither space, nor time, nor energy has been spared in working out this apparatus which is sometimes, as in the indication of the original German paging on the margin, genuinely helpful (...) to the reader. It would have been well if they had been equally concerned and equally careful to deal with the difficulties involved in interpreting this pioneering text, which struggles to describe phenomena hitherto unnoticed through new concepts and new uses of language for which dictionary definitions are a wholly inadequate guide. There is no question that the translators know their dictionaries. But to anyone who has seriously studied Heidegger's text in the original, serious questions arise at many critical points as to whether they understand the text. As a result of such failures to follow the meaning, the version now before us is a sadly imperfect and often misleading rendition of Heidegger's thought. In order to assist those who read this article in avoiding misunderstandings of the text, let me first comment briefly on a few mistranslations of basic points. Afterwards I shall turn to a brief summary and criticism of Heidegger's own thought. (shrink)

First of all it is thought to be contradictory and impossible. A is A and not non-A. For A to become involved with non-A would bring about the destruction of all responsible thought. In the second place, this must lead to a monistic absolute in which everything is confused with everything, and the pluralistic world of experience condemned as an illusion. Of course experience at first is very confusing. But as soon as we understand it at all, we see that (...) it can be analyzed into clear and distinct components, each being just what it is, and not mixed up with the rest. What else can clarify mean? (shrink)

At the beginning of his remarks, Harries quotes my statement that in Heidegger's works there is an "unclarity as to the relation between a basic study of human existence in the world and strict ontology." By "strict ontology" here, I mean the clarification of the meaning of being, as Heidegger calls it, or in my terminology the attempt to discover what things really are in the world, as opposed to our varying human versions. I maintain that the relation between a (...) basic study of human existence and strict ontology, in this sense, is treated in one way in Sein und Zeit, and in a very different way in the Letter on Humanism and the later writings. Shortly before 1947 there was a basic shift, or "turning", in Heidegger's thought. This revealed the "unclarity" about which I am speaking. According to Harries, there is no unclarity here, but only two different stages in a continuous "development". As I see it, there is a real discontinuity, or "turning." But as Harries puts it, "Heidegger does not reverse his position... there is, however, development." This is the first issue between us. (shrink)

In the writings of Martin Heidegger being has again been singled out as the primary factor from which both world and meaning are ultimately derived. Owing to the focusing on what we call the world by recent phenomenological investigations, to which Heidegger himself has made important contributions, his philosophy shows many novel and original features. But as he sees it, being is again the primary factor which manifests itself, through man, in the meaningful clearing of the life-world. So in this (...) respect we must think of his style of thought as a new development of the classical tradition. (shrink)

But in attempting to follow some of the steps of Mr. Barber's later argument, and in examining some of the conclusions to which they lead, I have found myself confronted with difficulties which seem sufficiently important to warrant the critical attention of Mr. Barber and the readers of this Review. These difficulties fall into three groups concerning: 1) preliminary arguments; 2) apparent inconsistencies between certain conclusions; and 3) inadequacies in basic ontology.