We suggest an equilibrium concept for a strategic model with a large number of players in which each player observes the actions of only a small number of the other players. The concept fits well situations in which each player treats his sample as a prediction of the distribution of actions in the entire population, and responds optimally to this prediction. We apply the concept to a strategic voting model and investigate the conditions under which a centrist candidate can win (...) the popular vote although his strength in the population is smaller than the strengths of the right and left candidates.  2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

To comprehend pain, disease, death and suffering as being meaningful - beyond the firing of synapses, the collapse of human abilities, and the mere end of life - requires a context in which to evaluate essential connotations, as well as to place and integrate understandings. If pain and suffering are to have enduring significance, they must be situated within a nest of ontological background assumptions, standards of inquiry, and epistemological foundations. Where secular bioethics fails to give deep meaning to suffering, (...) Christian bioethics succeeds. This essay analyzes the divergent meanings of suffering endorsed by the various Christian religions as conceptualized through the different metaphysical, epistemological, and sociological assumptions of each religion. (shrink)

The issues surrounding ethical controversies in sport have filled the media recently. This book of invited original essays by mainstream philosophers as well as philosophers of sport will provide the reader with a discussion in ethics and sport based on a sound philosophical footing. It will be accessible to a wide range of teachers and students in the field of sport and leisure studies. Contributions from international, highly regarded experts in the fIeld provide the reader with systematic treatment of the (...) ethics of sport from a diverse perspective. (shrink)

To be a proposition is to possess propositional properties and to stand in inferential relations. This is the organic intuition, [OI], concerning propositional recognition. [OI] is not a circular characterization as long as those properties and relations that signal the presence of propositions are independently identified. My take on propositions does not depart from the standard approach widely accepted among philosophers of language. Propositions are truth-bearers, the arguments of truth-functions (‘not’, ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘if’), the arguments of propositional-attitude verbs (‘know’, ‘believe’, (...) ‘doubt’, ‘assume’, ‘reject’) and the kind of entity capable of standing in inferential relations (which are basically implication and incompatibility). The aim of this paper is to argue for [OI]. In doing so, I will show that even what is probably the most repeated argument against non-descriptivism, the so-called Frege-Geach Argument (FGA), presupposes something like [OI], a presupposition that Geach shares with his critics. Despite the huge success of FGA, a thorough analysis of the actual scope of this argument has yet to be given. I will provide such an analysis in section 3 below. In this paper, I argue that [OI] is a meta-theoretical principle which is neutral with respect to specific metaphysical debates about the nature of propositions, as well as specific proposals about the semantics of declarative sentences. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a view beyond that which would narrowly reduce the role of parents in medical decision making to acting as custodians of the best interests of children and toward an account of family authority and family autonomy. As a fundamental social unit, the good of the family is usually appreciated, at least in part, in terms of its ability successfully to instantiate its core moral and cultural understandings as well as to pass on such commitments to (...) future generations. The putative rights of children to expression, information, freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and to freedom of association with others are, in this essay, assessed from the perspective of those conditions necessary for the family to function as a moral community. In so doing, I respond to the move to liberate children from parental authority and to effect the transformation of the family as implied by the United Nations’ "Convention on the Rights of the Child" and the pediatric bioethics it supports. (shrink)

Covers all the important theories from the period 1250-1400, including "maiores" as well as "minores," and issues in a discussion of Marsilius of Inghen (d. ...

In this paper my concern is to evaluate a particular answer to the question of how we acquire mastery of the syntax of our first language. According to this answer children learn syntax by means of scientific investigation. Alison Gopnik has recently championed this idea as an extension of what she calls the ‘theory theory’, a well established approach to cognitive development in developntental psychology. I will argue against this extension of the theory theory. The general thrust of my objection (...) is that at the point at which children are acquiring knowledge of syntax they are not in a position to engage in far-reaching scientific investigation. Or, if they are, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that their scientific investigations will generate a common body of knowledge so making linguistic convergence a mystery. That this is so is a product of two salient features of scientific confirmation. I will conclude that my objections to the theory theory put pressure on learning theories in general. (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with the misconceptions many postmodernist theorists and critics harbor about the history of western philosophy and about various branches of it, misconceptions that I contend are the source of the simplistic account of both postwar culture and literature, and eighteenth-and nineteenth-century realist fiction, that they provide. ;In the first chapter, I consider the campaign that a host of postmodernists have mounted against something they typically refer to as the "logic of either/or," alleged to structure western thought. (...) This logic they claim they try to "subvert" by recourse to something else called the "logic of both/and," which, they assert, violates the law of noncontradiction. Instantiations of the "logic of both/and" that postmodernists cite as evidence of the "contradictory," subversive nature of postmodernism include, for example, that postmodernism is both a break from and a continuation of modernism, that postmodernist fiction is both about reality and about the processes of artistic creation, and that postmodern humor is both destructive and constructive. None of these states of affairs, however, is a contradiction, much less a violation of the law of noncontradiction. What postmodernists assume is that by the terms of classical logic, postmodernism, for example, must be either a break from or a continuation of modernism--that is, they attribute to classical logicians what is considered by them to be one of the most common fallacies of presumption: the either/or fallacy, or black-and-white thinking. It is the trivial notion that A and B can both be predicated of x that underwrites, in effect, the "radical" claims made by postmodernists on behalf of the "logic of both/and." ;In the second chapter, I address the reductive accounts of both realist and postmodernist fiction that postmodernists characteristically offer. Many assume, for example, that a realist metaphysics is implicit in realist fiction, and argue that, for this reason, realist fiction is outmoded. The ground of this assumption is, among other things, a misconception about what metaphysical realism is. A belief in a "world out there" is not, as a number of postmodernists seem to think, tantamount to a belief in the truth of metaphysical realism-- the thesis, simply put, that reality is mind-independent. There is no pat, one-to-one correspondence between literary realism and metaphysical realism , and no reason--stylistic or otherwise--why a realist novel cannot express an anti-realist metaphysics--not even any reason why an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century realist novel couldn't, since metaphysical anti-realism was as alive and well then as metaphysical realism is today. The latter point is important, for postmodernists often base their assertions about the metaphysical assumptions that inform eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realist fiction not on any textual evidence, but on a priori assumptions about the metaphysical beliefs it was possible for realist fiction to reflect. This "ideas-of-the-time" approach to literary history is problematic in its own right, but it becomes even more so if one's assumptions about what were or were not the ideas of the time, are, as in this case, false. (shrink)

Next SectionCultural differences in end-of-life care and the moral disagreements these sometimes give rise to have been well documented. Even so, cultural considerations relevant to end-of-life care remain poorly understood, poorly guided, and poorly resourced in health care domains. Although there has been a strong emphasis in recent years on making policy commitments to patient-centred care and respecting patient choices, persons whose minority cultural worldviews do not fit with the worldviews supported by the conventional principles of western bioethics face a (...) perpetual struggle in getting their care needs met in a meaningful, safe, and healing way. In this essay, attention is given to exploring why cultural differences exist, why they matter, and how health care providers should treat them in order to reduce the incidence and impact of otherwise preventable harmful moral outcomes in end-of-life care. In addressing these questions, a novel application of the renowned terror management theory will be made. (shrink)

In the late seventies of the 20th century, Jacob Taubes, a philosopher of religion and a scholar in Jewish thought, visited Carl Schmitt in his home. Schmitt was a scholar in constitutional and international law who joined the Hitler regime in 1933. Both were fascinated by the apocalyptic tradition, albeit it in opposite ways. They had a conversation about the apostle Paul, especially about his ‘Letter to the Romans’. Their discussion focused on the passage in which Paul speaks of the (...) Jews as 'enemies of God'. Against the background of history’s violent anti-Semitism, this exceptional conversation deconstructs Paul’s texts, traditionally conceived as constitutive of orthodox Christianity, and opens them up for a more subversive, heterodox reading. By Taubes, Paul is portrayed as an heretic Jew who joined the ‘Jesus movement’. He remained loyal to his tradition, while at the same time searching for new forms of spiritual community, avoiding direct political actions, as well as Gnostic interiorization, and establishing a new Law. (shrink)

Solomon discusses at least three passages in which, he believes, Hegel criticizes theories of truth. The first is in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind, and concerns "historical truth". Historical truth, Solomon writes, "is the usual paradigm for the correspondence theory; against it, Hegel argues that we know a "naked fact" only insofar as we know "the reasons behind it." In other words, we need criteria of coherence as well as correspondence". But what Hegel says in this passage is (...) this: historical statements or beliefs are "true," but they are not true in the philosophical sense. This is because they deal with "the sphere of particular existence, with a content in its contingent and arbitrary aspects, features that have no necessity." Even these "truths" share some of the features of philosophical truth. Often, for example, we cannot know them without seeking evidence, and even if we perceive some event, and hence do not need evidence for its occurrence, our knowledge is of no true value unless we also know the "reasons behind it." That is, Hegel is not saying that historical truths appear to be true in a piecemeal correspondence way, but in fact are true in the philosophical sense. Rather, although evidence and reasons are relevant to their truth, this still isn't sufficient to make them philosophically true. Hegel is here criticizing historical truths, and not just a theory of truth. Philosophical truth is not just a theory of truth, but a special sort of truth which historical truths lack. (shrink)

One of the most important achievements of the Internationale Hegel-Vereinigung over the past twenty years has been the way in which it has managed to meet the needs of both the specialist and the general public. In the normal course of events it organizes symposia on research subjects. Every two years it gets a group of experts to pool information and exchange views within a relatively narrow field of inquiry, a comparatively neglected topic which looks as though it might benefit (...) from being brought into the limelight. In order to maintain its international character, it is the general rule that these meetings should take place outside Germany, that they should be hosted by one or other of the countries from which the Society draws its members. It is often the case that they are sponsored by the respective Academy of Sciences or Ministry of Culture. Those invited to take part in them can, therefore, be pretty certain that they are being co-opted into a well co-ordinated program. They also know that their papers will be appearing in a series widely recognized as a trendsetter in continental Hegel studies, in an undertaking which already includes such influential publications as Gadamer’s edition of the Urbino Lectures, Well’s edition of the Lille papers on Objective Spirit, the Zwettl papers on the Jena Period, and the proceedings of the Amersfoort meeting on the Philosophy of Nature. (shrink)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights announces a significant array of welfare entitlements—to personal health and health care, medicine, nutrition, water, improved living conditions, environmental protection, and so forth—as well as corresponding governmental duties to provide for such public health measures, though the simple expedient of announcing that such entitlements are “basic human rights.” The Universal Declaration provides no argument for the legitimacy of the sweeping governmental authority, taxation, and regulation (...) to create and impose such “rights.” As this paper explores that some action promotes a purported good, such as “health,” does not thereby make the action morally permissible. Just as there are moral limits on legitimate personal actions, there are also moral limits on legitimate governmental actions to promote purported goods, including health. A core question of any governmental regulation, therefore, is whether it is a legitimate application of moral political authority or an unauthorized act of state coercion. Pace UNESCO's wide-ranging assertions, this paper argues that promoting health only falls within the legitimate authority of governments in very narrowly defined circumstances. As the paper critically explores, at stake are foundational moral and political questions concerning the limits of governmental authority to intervene in the consensual interaction of persons. Imposing such duties on others, including citizens of a state through regulatory activity and taxation, must be justified, nonarbitrary, and demonstrably within the limits of moral political authority. UNESCO's assertions do not meet this burden of proof. (shrink)

THE methodological principle known as Ockham’s Razor is usually formulated as “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessarium”. However, it is well known that neither this formulation of the principle nor the idea behind it come originally from William of Ockham. This particular formula is due to Leibniz, though Ockham’s works contain equivalent formulas: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”; “Si duae res sufficiunt ad eius veritatem, superfluum est ponere aliam rem”; “Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora”. But (...) Duns Scotus had also used the same principle before Ockham and he refers it directly to Aristotle. If the Razor belongs to anyone then, it belongs to Aristotle, and the study of its exact meaning and value must begin with Aristotle’s views about it. It is interesting to note, in this respect, that the principle was recognized as Aristotle’s at least until the time of Galileo. Thus in his Dialogue concerning the Two chief World Systems Galileo supports his theory that “diurnal motion belongs to the earth alone rather than to the rest of the universe excepting the earth” by referring to “a very true maxim of Aristotle’s which teaches that ‘frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora’.”. (shrink)

In this paper we examine ethical issues relevant to conducting mental health research with refugees and immigrant communities that have cultural orientations and social organisation that are substantially different to those of the broader Australian community, and we relate these issues to NH&MRC Guidelines. We describe the development and conduct of a mental health research project carried out recently in Melbourne with the Somali community, focusing on ethical principles involved, and relating these to the NH&MRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct (...) in Research Involving Humans, and the NH&MRC document Values and Ethics: Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research.The experience of conducting mental health research with the Somali community highlights the fact that the principles of inclusion and benefit enunciated in the NH&MRC document Values and Ethics are particularly pertinent when conducting research with refugees and immigrant communities that are culturally distant to those of the broader Australian community. These principles inform issues of research design and consent, as well as guiding respectful engagement with the participating community and communication of the research findings. (shrink)

In the discourse of 18th-century British intellectuals the term 'luxury' held a well-recognized and much disputed place. Dispute arose chiefly around the problem of disentangling the economic, moral-theological and political strands of the term. The object of the present paper is to trace forward the history of debate over the concept along one develop ing line of specialization - that of 19th-century political economy. It will be seen how the term luxury (and related terms: necessity, decency, productive, unproductive, etc.) adjusted (...) meaning(s) as the economic, social and intellectual contexts in which it was embedded themselves mutated. In particular, it is argued, the changing significance attached to the term illustrates the extent to which a key 19th-century intellec tual elite managed to accommodate the implications of a transition from a society based on assumptions of scarcity and hierarchy to one that was beginning to contemplate the possibility of mass market abun dance. While the profession's leaders did develop a sharpened interest in aspiration to luxury consumption as a legitimate motor of economic growth, all registered their disapproval of certain forms of the aspira tion, revealing in the process a variety of class, gender and 'race' pre occupations - including (from J. S. Mill onwards) a particular distaste for positional or status-related consumption. (shrink)

Alan William Raitt, a Fellow of the British Academy, went up to Magdalen College at the University of Oxford from King Edward's Grammar School in Morpeth, in 1948. He progressed from being an undergraduate there to graduate student, Fellow by Examination, Fellow, Tutor, and Senior Tutor, as well as serving the college as a distinguished Vice-President from 1983 to 1985. Raitt had by then already been named in 1976 Special Lecturer in French Literature for the university and, three years later, (...) University Reader. In 1992 he received the accolade of an ad hominem Chair. Raitt had a gift for friendship; one of his greatest friends was Pierre Castex. His reputation as an international authority on nineteenth-century French literature is second to none. Unlike some British and American scholars, Raitt is widely read and admired by the French themselves, and his name figures prominently in all bibliographies devoted to Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Gustave Flaubert. Despite his many commitments, both in Oxford and in the sphere of French studies generally, he remained a consistently prolific scholar. (shrink)

When socio-economic contexts are sought for Darwin's science, it is customary to turn to the Industrial Revolution. However, important issues about the long run of England's capitalisms can only be recognised by taking a wider view than Industrial Revolution historiographies tend to engage. The role of land and finance capitalisms in the development of the empire is one such issue. If we historians of Darwin's science allow ourselves a distinction between land and finance capitalisms on the one hand and industrial (...) capitalism on the other; and if we ask with which side of this divide were Darwin and his theory of branching descent by natural selection aligned, then reflection on leading features of that theory, including its Malthusian elements, suggests that the answer is often and largely, though not exclusively: on the land side. The case of Wallace, socialist opponent of land capitalism, may not be as anomalous for this suggestion as one might at first think. Social and economic historians have reached no settled consensuses on the long-run of England's capitalisms. We historians of Darwin's science would do well to import some of these unsettled states of discussion into our own work over the years to come. (shrink)

THE methodological principle known as Ockham’s Razor is usually formulated as “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessarium”. However, it is well known that neither this formulation of the principle nor the idea behind it come originally from William of Ockham. This particular formula is due to Leibniz, though Ockham’s works contain equivalent formulas: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate”; “Si duae res sufficiunt ad eius veritatem, superfluum est ponere aliam rem”; “Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora”. But (...) Duns Scotus had also used the same principle before Ockham and he refers it directly to Aristotle. If the Razor belongs to anyone then, it belongs to Aristotle, and the study of its exact meaning and value must begin with Aristotle’s views about it. It is interesting to note, in this respect, that the principle was recognized as Aristotle’s at least until the time of Galileo. Thus in his Dialogue concerning the Two chief World Systems Galileo supports his theory that “diurnal motion belongs to the earth alone rather than to the rest of the universe excepting the earth” by referring to “a very true maxim of Aristotle’s which teaches that ‘frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora’.”. (shrink)

A recently published collection of articles focuses upon a relatively small group of texts dealing mainly with astronomical calculations and omens as well as physiognomic omens, attempting to use these as a basis for reconstructing ancient Jewish science in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. The present review raises questions regarding the aims and methods employed, offering an alternative suggestion for the transfer of technical knowledge from Babylonia to ancient Palestine.

Despite the well-documented social, economic, and adaptive advantages for young children, adolescents, and adults, the traditional family in the West is in decline. A growing percentage of men and women choose not to be bound by the traditional moral and social expectations of marriage and family life. Adults are much more likely than in the past to live as sexually active singles, with a concomitant increase in forms of social isolation as well as in the number of children born outside (...) of marriage. These social shifts are also connected to public policies that provide incentives for individuals to exit the family, leaving behind its social, capital, and economic resources. The individualistic character of the social-democratic egalitarian ideology that underlies the current dominant approaches to health care financing in Western Europe and much of North America, for example, is associated with a decline in family stability. Welfare entitlements, including state-based health care, have made it easier to exit the family, undermining the centrality of the family’s core human relationships. This essay argues for the importance of recognizing the cardinal role and reality of the family and for the importance of family-based health care savings accounts for preserving family integrity, while also providing for sustainable long-term health care reform. (shrink)

It is suggested that consciousness is primarily associated not with stimuli and perception, as commonly supposed, but with movement and responses. Consciousness of stimuli arises in situations in which possible movements are planned, or in which information must be actively acquired rather than passively registered, and may or may not require overt movements to be performed. By emphasizing response, this formulation provides a simple explanation for the perceived unity of consciousness: though stimuli can be diverse, with independent components, movements must (...) necessarily be coordinated. Therefore, if we are to look for a `site' for consciousness, it is likely to be in a region such as the anterior cingulate that is neurally close to the higher motor hierarchical levels, and also accessible both to real sensory feedback and also to virtual feedback derived through mechanisms of efference copy from actual or proposed motor commands. It is suggested that synchrony of arrival of such information may be an important prerequisite of this unity, and that on this basis such a `master node' might be expected to be temporally `equidistant' from each of these sources; this may well be true of the anterior cingulate, but no doubt also of other structures. (shrink)

_Happy Lives, Good Lives_ offers a thorough introduction to a variety of perspectives on happiness. Among the questions at issue: Is happiness only a state of mind, or is it something more? Is it the same for everyone? Is it under our control, and if so, to what extent? Can we be mistaken about whether we are happy? What role, if any, does happiness play in living a good life? Is it sometimes morally wrong to pursue happiness? Should governments promote (...) happiness through public policy? Asking and answering these questions is worthwhile not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as a means of gaining practical insight into how best to pursue a happy life. (shrink)

Philosophical arguments often assume that the folk tends towards moral objectivism. Although recent psychological studies have indicated that lay persons’ attitudes to morality are best characterized in terms of non-objectivism-leaning pluralism, it has been maintained that the folk may be committed to moral objectivism _implicitly_. Since the studies conducted so far almost exclusively assessed subjects’ metaethical attitudes via explicit cognitions, the strength of this rebuttal remains unclear. The current study attempts to test the folk’s implicit metaethical commitments. We present results (...) of a newly developed Implicit Association Test (IAT) for metaethical attitudes which indicate that the folk generally tend towards moral non-objectivism on the implicit level as well. We discuss implications of this finding for the philosophical debate. (shrink)

This is certainly one of the most beautiful books in philosophy published in the last couple of years. It comprises eighty-four essays, carefully selected, well-translated, covering almost the full range of Croce's immense literary production. Croce is certainly one of the most important and influential thinkers of this century and in this huge anthology the English-speaking reader is given an incomparable instrument to get acquainted with him. The list of the headings which classify the eighty-four essays are: The Logic of (...) Philosophy; Philosophical Criticism; Aesthetics; The Philosophy of Art and Language; The Theory of History; Economics and Ethics; Essays in Criticism and Literary History; Moral and Political History. But first one should read the late Cecil Sprigge's excellent introduction.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This little booklet is a reprint of an important article of the Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älten Kirche, 42, pp. 69-104. Through a superior command of Hellenistic sources the author analyzes St. Paul's two well-known utterances of a natural knowledge of God. The author uses the Epistle to the Romans to show that even though the Apostle's Greek terminology is borrowed from the Stoics, the ideas behind it, especially that of the "law," remain profoundly Jewish. On (...) the other hand, the famous discourse on Areopagus closely follows Poseidonius' views and probably comes not from Paul himself but from Luke, the writer of the Acts.—M. J. V. (shrink)

The author of a significant treatise on the philosophy of religion, Wagner is one of the few younger German philosophers who have managed to attain to prominence despite the crushing figure of Martin Heidegger. The present volume is an unchanged second edition of Wagner's best-known book. It is the fruit of patient scholarship as well as of sustained, creative intuition, a book which offers both modes of, and material for, thought.--M. J. V.

The present "Studienausgabe" is the fruit of over 40 years of labor on Paracelus [[sic]]. While Sudhoff's monumental edition continued by K. Goldhammer is intended to serve the specialist, Peuckert's aim is simply to make Paracelsus accessible to the philosopher and to the historian of ideas. Like Luther's, Paracelus's [[sic]] German is hardly comprehensible today; hence the editor had to "rewrite" it. The result is sound and easily understandable German. This welcome "vulgarization" should, however, have been compensated by notes: as (...) a matter of fact there are no critical or commenting notes in any of the volumes published as of now. We are promised a glossary at the end of the fifth volume, but even this will not mend the edition's essential shortcoming: a complete lack of any kind of scholarly apparatus. The first two volumes contain the major "medical" writings in chronological order. These earlier texts witness Paracelsus's emancipation from the ballast of medieval science: Galen, Avicenna, etc., and a significant turn towards a new conception of natural science in which speculation and experience are intimately interwoven. In the first volume there are several writings on Alchemy, among them the short treatise on the Three First Principles which was so heavily to influence the "pansophy" of the seventeenth century and even the great mystic of Görlitz, Jacob Boehme. The second volume contains the mature medical texts including the "Opus Paramirum," this herald of later bio-chemical thought. Obviously the real interest of the so-called medical texts lies in their speculative elements and they should be read together with the philosophical texts, making up the third volume. This third volume is rightly centered around the monumental "Philosophia Sagax," the major work of Paracelsus. This is the treatise whose influence reached far beyond the twilight of pansophy until the early and late Goethe and Romantic philosophy. Better than any other, this text demonstrates the uninterrupted continuity of German speculation throughout three centuries. If the resolution of the remaining two unpublished volumes turns out to be as fortunate as those reviewed here, these well-printed books should find their way to the shelves of any library, private or public, orientated towards the study of German philosophical thought.—M. J. V. (shrink)

After some decades of eclipse, the thought of Schleiermacher has again become the subject of an ever growing number of studies and specialized monographs. The present one deals with one of his principal yet somewhat neglected works, his Christian Ethics. After some discussion of the history of the influence and of the interpretation of the treatise, Birkner analyzes the systematic presuppositions of its teaching within the framework of Schleiermacher's entire doctrine. The author then undertakes the treatment of its major themes. (...) It is a well-written, not over-ambitious yet substantial contribution to the Schleiermacher literature.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This is a monumental work. The author's aim is to follow the destiny of the self-explicitation [[sic]] of western thought from the concept of substance to that of structure. Authentic philosophical thinking has always been ontological, and structure, no less than substance is a form or species of being. System too is a species of being which leads from substance to structure. Structure is only an articulation and intensification of substance. The concept of structure is the central notion of contemporary (...) thought; it is at the focus of the natural as well as of the social sciences and it alone can bridge the gap between the "two cultures." It alone can pave the way for a new philosophical humanism which, without abandoning the claim to universality and "objectivity," retains the thinking man as its focus. The author's contention is that the concept of structure is far from being a newcomer on the scene but it has been rather ripening slowly throughout the great systems of the last six centuries. Without being in any way a treatise on the history of philosophy and on the history of science, the present book describes with great competence and persuasiveness the evolution of "structure" from Nicholas of Autrecourt via Cusanus and early modern science to Descartes. Next comes an extraordinarily rich and insightful analysis of the world of Pascal. Finally the conclusion is reached through a discussion of Leibniz and Kant. This is a difficult book, a long and complex one. It might well belong to those writings which reshape our understanding of the past, and through it, contribute to our expectations of the future.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This recent monograph on the famous head of the Protestant theological school of Tübingen is a mature and well-documented writing, despite a certain circularity and many repetitions in its argument. What Geiger tries to expound above all is Baur's speculative basis—or bias. Baur began with Schleiermacher, but the major and striking influence on Baur's thinking was exerted by Hegel. His books on the history of dogma are a theological counterpart of Hegel's phenomenology. But in his last writings, the speculative schemas (...) are quietly effaced, and we read suddenly that the essence of Christianity is the "pure moral conscience and the autonomy of the subject."—M. J. V. (shrink)

In the mushrooming literature on the late Heidegger, Pugliese's book stands with the distinction of an immense and sometimes almost exasperating amount of learned notes and excurses [[sic]]. On the other hand, the speculative core of the work is a highly original one. It treats the famous "Kehre" in the continuity of Heidegger's thought and proves quite convincingly that it can be organically developed from the original thesis of "historicity" as it stands in Sein und Zeit. Making use of the (...) earliest texts as well as of a number of unpublished lecture-notes, Pugliese tries to back those interpretations which claim that the "Kehre" is indeed a turning-point in the history of metaphysics--even though it represents no break or revolution in Heidegger's own thought. This is a difficult book but fortunately devoid of the affected mannerism of so many Heidegger admirers, and a telling example of the frequent success of French and Spanish "translations" of German speculation.--M. J. V. (shrink)

In this book of essays, Burrell selects five religious thinkers principally to provide an example of doing hermeneutics. His chapters on Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, and Jung, therefore, not only tell us what they thought about certain religious topics, but propose their procedures as distinct models for religious understanding. To bring out their distinctive contributions to the hermeneutical problem, he has carefully chosen the titles for each essay. Augustine shows us an example of religious understanding as a personal quest while (...) Anselm formulates the quest for such understanding. The systematic reflections of Aquinas constitute an articulation of transcendence. The experiencing of the transcendent is expressed in Kierkegaard’s language of spirit and also in Jung’s language for soul. These are telling titles and well worth mentioning even in a very brief review. (shrink)

_Theories of Happiness: An Anthology_ introduces readers to many difficult philosophical questions surrounding the concept of happiness. With historical and contemporary readings in philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, the anthology reflects a dialogue between ideas, providing for a rich conversation that brings out the key insights and strengths of several competing views. Each of the included readings is contextualized by the editors and situated to speak to the larger issues, including the value of happiness and its connection to well-being, (...) the relationship of happiness to morality, whether happiness can be accurately and meaningfully measured, and whether there are universal standards for a happy life. (shrink)

Explanations of cognitive processes provided by traditional artificial intelligence were based on the notion of the knowledge level. This perspective has been challenged by new AI that proposes an approach based on embodied systems that interact with the real‐world. We demonstrate that these two views can be unified. Our argument is based on the assumption that knowledge level explanations can be defined in the context of Bayesian theory while the goals of new AI are captured by using a well established (...) robot based model of learning and problem solving, called Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC). In our analysis we consider random foraging and we prove that minor modifications of the DAC architecture renders a model that is equivalent to a Bayesian analysis of this task. Subsequently, we compare this enhanced, “rational,” model to its “non‐rational” predecessor and a further control condition using both simulated and real robots, in a variety of environments. Our results show that the changes made to the DAC architecture, in order to unify the perspectives of old and new AI, also lead to a significant improvement in random foraging. (shrink)

Explanations of cognitive processes provided by traditional artificial intelligence were based on the notion of the knowledge level. This perspective has been challenged by new AI that proposes an approach based on embodied systems that interact with the real‐world. We demonstrate that these two views can be unified. Our argument is based on the assumption that knowledge level explanations can be defined in the context of Bayesian theory while the goals of new AI are captured by using a well established (...) robot based model of learning and problem solving, called Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC). In our analysis we consider random foraging and we prove that minor modifications of the DAC architecture renders a model that is equivalent to a Bayesian analysis of this task. Subsequently, we compare this enhanced, “rational,” model to its “non‐rational” predecessor and a further control condition using both simulated and real robots, in a variety of environments. Our results show that the changes made to the DAC architecture, in order to unify the perspectives of old and new AI, also lead to a significant improvement in random foraging. (shrink)

This is an interesting theologically oriented study of Saint Bernard's teachings on man. The author tackles the central issue of Bernardian studies: was this holy monk a theologian or a philosopher, or both? Bernard's entire œuvre is penetrated by the questioning of the boundaries of natural and revealed knowledge, i.e., of philosophy and theology. The doctrine of man, that microcosmos in whom God was made flesh, is the best and the most likely ground on which to discuss the interconnection between (...) faith and reason, which was the most intricate issue of medieval culture. To do this, we need, among other things, a chart of the human intellectual faculties—and the author gives us exactly this. This is the core of the book but there is more. He presents an analysis of the properly philosophical aspects and patterns of Bernard's way of thinking, and also a good chapter on his metaphysics of the relationship between body and soul. The author is well-versed in the enormous secondary literature on Saint Bernard to which his study is a valuable addition.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This book is a reprint of one of the pioneer works on German mysticism of the nineteenth century. It is a comprehensive account of the most fertile hundred years of German spiritual and mystical history in the Middle Ages. In contrast to Bach's and Lasson's books on Eckhart written in the same decade, Greith's viewpoint is one of narrow scholastic orthodoxy. However, the wealth of detail and the pleasant simplicity of style compensate for those rather irritating lamentations about the "errors" (...) of Meister Eckhart. Although this book was written before Denifle's discovery of Eckhart's Latin works, it remains of value today due to its systematic study of the doctrinal positions of the major mystical writers of the Rhineland. Included as well is an interesting analysis of mystical poetry centered around the works of the famous Sister Mechtild. The book ends with a lengthy and detailed description of the spirituality and spiritual theory developed in the scattered nunneries of the preaching orders.—M. J. V. (shrink)

One of the most interesting and difficult tasks of contemporary theological reflection is the elaboration of a verifiable theology. The subject is as old as theology itself, and the contemporaries of Schleiermacher, like Hegel and Schelling, devoted immense industry and ingenuity to a speculative study of the history of religions. Yet the idealist's philosophical approach could not satisfy Schleiermacher whose very point of departure is the autonomous category of the religious. His peculiar approach to the different positive religions, their necessity (...) as well as their facticity, is the central theme of Welker's book. In a way, we are given a restatement of Schleiermacher's fundamental views on religion and religions. The treatment of the history of religion is only a corollary of these more general issues. The book is concluded with a rich and interesting chapter comparing Schleiermacher with Rudolph Otto.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Though in a slightly recalcitrant mood, continental Neo-Scholastic writers have been for many decades quite extensively dealing with Kant and the major "critical" problems. An interesting product of this preoccupation is Santeler's long study of the foundation of human dignity in Kant. The thesis of the author is that Kant rejected metaphysics, i.e., ontology, not so much because of the well-known classical theoretical and epistemological reasons but in order to formulate a more fundamental, more autonomous notion of human dignity. We (...) could say the Santeler is motivated by the famous Kantian remark about limiting understanding in order to make room for faith. There is undoubtedly a considerable amount of historical scholarship in those small-printed pages but their fighting mood is more reminiscent of contemporary Anglo-American Kant literature than of the usual elaborate exegesis offered by Continental scholars.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Eckhart is usually treated from the viewpoints of philosophy or speculative mysticism. Weiss is a theologian and his well-documented, heavily-footnoted study on salvation history in Meister Eckhart is a departure from this tradition. Without any claim to revolutionize our Eckhart-image he explores the themes of original sin, Incarnation, Passion and the glorification of Christ, the Church and the sacraments. All these themes of positive theology unfold in the context of the respective patristic and scholastic doctrines. The very meagerness of Eckhart's (...) teaching on the traditional positive and historical aspects of Christian thought reveals how strong and fundamental were this great Dominican's leanings toward neo-Platonic essentialism.—M. J. V. (shrink)

This excellent short book has come only belatedly to our attention. Unlike the more recent work of J. Schlanger, Meier's aim is not to revise, even less to revolutionize, our understanding of the young Schelling. He is following the classical interpretation--from Hegel to Kroner--that already the early Schelling displayed unmistakable signs of an ontological dogmatism. Indeed, with the exception of the ethical inspiration of the celebrated Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism and the gnoseological investigations of the Treatises, the early Schelling (...) is concerned with the issues of ontology--this is at least the author's thesis. The hollow majesty of the System of 1801 is foreshadowed by innumerable passages in the writings on the philosophy of nature. It is true that the System of Transcendental Idealism does display a certain parallelism between the gnoseological and ontological elements--but the balance is quickly broken. Under the appearance of the reconciliation of dogmatism and criticism in the doctrine of absolute knowledge via intellectual intuition, Schelling completes the restoration of ontology in the Bruno, in the Lectures on Academical Studies, and in the System of Würzburg. All this is expounded in clear, precise, well articulated chapters which enable the reader to attain a unified view of the central themes and inspirations of the immense literary production of the early Schelling.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Neither the speculative depth of Meister Eckhart nor the willpower and inner drive of Tauler are to be found in the writings of the third great mystic of fourteenth-century Rhineland, Henry Seuse. But we might well be compensated by authenticity of the description of the spiritual experience. This is not an edition for scholars and does not even try to resurrect the so savagely fought for issue on the authorship of Seuse's autobiography. We have here a major document of spiritual (...) life, with a great literary work making up about one-half of it. The other half contains the Booklet of the Eternal Wisdom, the Booklet of Truth, the Booklet of Letters, and two Sermons. Perhaps a little more critical apparatus and a little more comment on the themes of the texts would have improved the book, but instead of giving this, the translator simply refers to a book on Henry Seuse published in the same year, 1966. Even so this is a beautiful and important collection.--M. J. V. (shrink)

It seems to be more and more evident that the onto-theological notion of the Trinity is at the center of Hegel's thought. Already strongly present in the Jugendschriften, sparingly though most forcefully treated in the Phenomenology, it comes really to the fore in the Encyclopedia and in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Though none of the major commentators have avoided the issue, until recent years there had been only the short study of J. Hessen devoted to the problem. (...) Splett promises to treat extensively the questions Hessen has only touched upon, and does so by a combination of a historical and a systematic analysis of Hegel's thought. The first chapter shows his progression from the texts of Frankfurt via the fascinating Jenafragment on the Divine Triangle to the Phenomenology. The second chapter is devoted to the Propaedeutics, the Logic, and the Encyclopedia where the idea is represented in its naked, speculative articulation. Thereafter comes a collection of relevant texts taken from different lectures on the philosophy of the spirit--and, finally, a clear and succinct exposé of the mature doctrine of the Philosophy of Religion. In the conclusion the author tries to formulate a number of issues where Hegelian speculation and Christian dogmatics might converge. To sum up: this is a good, clear, well-written monograph.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Neo-scholasticism is supposed to be a "creative" development of the spirit of Thomism and its application to contemporary philosophical themes. Yet its partisans as well as its adversaries largely ignore the fact that many of the neo-scholastic thinkers are increasingly applying the transcendental method to reach the major ideas of Aquinas. The thesis of the present book is that the "transcendental method," viewed in a large sense as stretching from Kant to Heidegger, is an integral part of the thought of (...) several well-known neo-Thomists, and that it touches the work of many others. The author studies extensively the work of J. Maréchal, who was the first to attempt an integration of transcendental idealism into the realistic metaphysics of the school of Saint Thomas. Following a review of minor figures like Grégoire, Defever, and Isaye, short chapters investigate the critical approach of certain important contemporary Catholic thinkers to the transcendental method. A highly interesting part of the book treats the neo-scholastic "dialogue" with Heidegger, which is especially important in the work of the most powerful theological mind of contemporary Roman Catholicism, Karl Rahner. Finally, Muck shows, in the chapters on A. Marc, B. Lonergan, and E. Coreth, three examples of fully developed philosophical systems worked out by means of an extensive use of the transcendental method.—M. J. V. (shrink)

A well-documented, thorough but not imaginative study of the Dialogues. The writer is trying to establish definite proofs for the classical thesis, namely that for Plato evil is the material and good is the rational. After a very short introduction we see most of the dialogues analyzed in chronological order. Three periods are distinguished in the development of Platonic views on reason and evil: Early dialogues : insistence on the opposition between pleasure and the affections on the one hand and (...) reason and knowledge which help to develop the good in the soul, on the other hand; Middle period : explicit identification of the bodily with evil and negativity; Later period : generalization and deepening of the concept of evil which is now definitely located in the unruly and chaotic matter of the universe. There is nothing substantially new in the book, and in the long chapter on the Republic one finds detailed summaries of quite irrelevant passages. Yet the book is a useful one: a serious and comprehensive monograph on a central theme of Platonic thought.—M. J. V. (shrink)

In his treatment of the One and the Many in the Science of Logic, is Hegel talking about atoms? He is and is not. He discusses critically the atoms and the void of the ancients as part of his own presentation of a being-for-self One from which the Many purportedly derive. The void of the ancients is seen by Hegel as the ground of movement, but not in the representational sense as affording "room," in which case it would be a (...) presupposition, not a ground. The void is properly conceived as the ground of movement not sensuously or pictorially, says Hegel, but "only as the negative relation of the One to its negative, to the One, i.e., to its own self, which nevertheless is posited as a determinate being." With such an ontological One that in its own being is immanently related to its other, Bloch seeks to show, thinking is freed once and for all from traditional atomism’s pregiven particulate corpuscles fortuitously combining and separating in a pregiven space and time. Hegel’s One is at the same time a plurality of ones, ideal atoms immanently related in their being and requiring no extraneous "forces" to set them in motion or in process with one another. Modern theoretical physics, which concedes the inadequacy of sensuous and intuitive thinking, would do well to note Hegel’s criticisms of historical atomisms and to re-examine the possibilities in Hegel’s Atomistik for new ways of conceiving physical reality. (shrink)

This work exposes the development of Hegel’s political theory from its origins in Hegel’s reading of Sir James Stewart and the composition of the early theological writings, through the Philosophy of Right. Its principle value lies in showing how careful use may be made of Hegel’s earlier writings in interpreting his mature political philosophy. Avineri describes Hegel’s early dissatisfaction with the understanding of the state as an instrument for the protection of private property, and his attempts to develop a concept (...) of ethical community. Developments of the latter notion are seen in the anti-nationalism of The German Constitution, as well as in the theories of property, class, and representation contained therein. Avineri shows the inappropriateness of ascribing to Hegel a political romanticism, regarding either Prussia or Classical Greece. And in his comments on the System der Sittlicheit [[sic]] and the Realphilosophie, he offers detailed and valuable commentary on Hegel’s early concept of labor. He demonstrates here Hegel’s sensitivity to the complex economic reality of modern society, and shows the early Hegel’s ability to describe labor, class divisions, commodity production, money, and alienation in ways remarkably akin to Marx. Here too Hegel’s notion of the state as that which overcomes the private character of production in civil society and constitutes society as an ethical community is seen. (shrink)