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Two aspects of consciousness are first considered: consciousness as awareness (phenomenological meaning) and consciousness as strategic control (functional meaning). As to awareness, three types can be distinguished: first, awareness as the phenomenal experiences of objects and events; second, awareness as meta-awareness, i.e., the awareness of mental life itself; third, awareness as self-awareness, i.e., the awareness of being oneself. While phenomenal experience and self-awareness are usually present during dreaming (even if many modifications are possible), meta-awareness is usually absent (apart from some (...) particular experiences of self-reflectiveness) with the major exception of lucid dreaming. Consciousness as strategic control may also be present in dreams. The functioning of consciousness is then analyzed, following a cognitive model of dream production. In such a model, the dream is supposed to be the product of the interaction of three components: (a) the bottom-up activation of mnemonic elements coming from LTM systems, (b) interpretative and elaborative top-down processes, and (c) monitoring of phenomenal experience. A feedback circulation is activated among the components, where the top-down interpretative organization and the conscious monitoring of the oneiric scene elicitates other mnemonic contents, according to the requirements of the dream plot. This dream productive activity is submitted to unconscious and conscious processes. (shrink)

Marino & Merskin’s review shows that sheep are intelligent and highly social but their methodology has some shortcomings. I describe five problems with reviewing only the academic and scientific literature and suggest how one might provide an even more compelling case for the complexity of sheep minds.

The encounters of the Romanian philosopher C. Noica with his youger disciples - Gabriel Liicean, Andrei Pleșu, Sorin Vieru et alii - in the transylvanian Carpathian mountains, in the Păltiniș resort were perceived by Noica’s followers as a real philosophical school and an idealistic alternative to the compulsory marxist ideology. In spite of that, the orthodox thinker and literary critic N. Steinhardt took it as a way of avoiding the tough reality of communism and a negation of the Christian religion. (...) Therefore, he criticised that option and the pretention of the “Păltiniș School” to create a viable alternative to the officially imposed marxist vision. Steinhardt’s article received critical answers not only from the members of the so-called School, but also from another thinker and literary critic, Adrian Marino, who thought that both Noica and Steinhardt are wrong and the younger thinkers should act against Nicolae Ceaușescu’s agressive dictatorship by meas of civic and democratic activity. The study tries to emphasize the existence of more than one alternative to the communist ideology in Romania’s 1980s, generally considered as a frozen epoch for free philosophical and politically relevant discussions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and CommunicationGeorge ConnellPoul Houe and Gordon D. Marino. editors. Søren Kierkegaard and the Word(s): Essays on Hermeneutics and Communication. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 2003. Pp. 299. Paper, kr. 375,–Though many associate Kierkegaard with isolated individuality, Kierkegaard scholars are rather gregarious. Four times since 1985, Kierkegaard devotees from all the inhabited continents have gathered at St. Olaf College for several days (...) of intense paper reading. Since it is difficult to keep a handle on so much material presented orally and because many were not able to attend, it is a commendable service that Houe and Marino have edited and published many of the papers delivered at the 2001 conference, just as they had previously published essays from 1998 conference and C. Stephen Evans and I had published essays from the 1989 conference.This volume reflects its origins in several ways. First, the essays are unusually brief compared to most journal articles (around ten pages each). While this is an agreeable format when listening to many papers in a single day, I do think that many of these essays are rather rushed and less than fully developed. Accordingly, the reader of these essays may well feel stimulated by interpretive suggestions rather than satisfied by thoroughly worked out treatments.Second, the essays are quite diverse, as conference papers tend to be, even when, as in this case, a preferred theme—hermeneutics and communication—was stated in advance. Since, as Alastair Hannay notes in the opening keynote essay, "hermeneutics" is used in a wide variety of ways, this theme really did not limit participants to any significant degree. Essays in this volume look variously at Kierkegaard's practice of hermeneutics (especially in reference to the Bible), at our predicament of interpreting Kierkegaard's notoriously elusive and cryptic pseudonymous works, at hermeneutics as our existential disposition as sense-making creature thrust into an ambiguous world, at hermeneutics as a quasi-Hegelian project of engulfing particularity without remainder in a totalizing whole, and, in contrast, at radical hermeneutics (a term coined by John Caputo and applied to Kierkegaard) as an interpretive approach that refuses the consolations and consonances of its Gadamerian cousin. As the use of "hermeneutics" varies, we hear that Kierkegaard is both an exemplary hermeneuticist and "the ultimate non-hermeneuticist." And in a number of essays, the issue of hermeneutics only seems to come up in the vacuous sense that the author offers a reading of some Kierkegaardian text or texts.The wide variety of essays included here reflects itself in the unsatisfactory final article in which Poul Houe makes a thoroughly desultory attempt at pulling the various articles together. I've tried my hand at writing such a piece, so I feel empathy for Houe's plight. But the paragraph per essay tour of the book is so hurried and so perfunctory that I wonder what purpose it really serves in this case.Though widely varying in topic and approach, most of the essays in the volume are quite good, if tantalizingly short. Given that there are twenty-five essays in the volume, it is not possible to summarize them here. But several observations are in order. First, it is especially nice to see five essays by Danish scholars included in this book. The community of Kierkegaard scholars has increasingly come to appreciate that viewing him in terms of his local context can be quite illuminating. American scholars have done excellent work along these lines, but clearly Danes have a crucial role to play in this interpretive task. Second, there have been heated disagreements in Kierkegaard circles over how to place Kierkegaard in reference to philosophical postmodernism. That polemic is in evidence in this volume as well. Several essays, most notably that of David Goicoechea, affiliate [End Page 502] Kierkegaard with postmodernist refusals of the totalizing understandings. In contrast, Sylvia Walsh juxtaposes Kierkegaard's "erotic hermeneutics," which treats its phenomenon with amorous tenderness, with Derrida's deconstructive approach to interpretation, which Walsh sees as a violent expression of the will to power. Christopher Simpson tries to reconcile these divisions by reading Kierkegaardian faith as an attractive... (shrink)

CUPRINS CONTUR Re-Introducere, sau: Dincolo de „teoria şi practica” informării şi documentării – Spre o hermeneutică necesară Viorica Sâncrăian Atelier Philobiblon FOCUS Gheroghe Vais Biblioteca Universităţii din Cluj, 1906-1909 Dénes Győrfi Gyalui Farkas – fost director adjunct al bibliotecii universităţii din Cluj Vladimir F. Wertsman Seria filatelică multiculturală Librariana Meda-Diana Hotea „O scriere chineză în cifre arabe” Carmen Crişan Utilizarea bazelor de date ştiinţifice abonate de Biblioteca Centrala Universitara Lucian Blaga în anul 2005 Gabriela Morărescu Anul 2005 – o nouă (...) abordare a bibliotecilor filiale Mariana Falup Realizări şi perspective în automatizare şi modernizare Maria Petrescu Digitizarea documentelor culturale Alina Ioana Şuta De la schimbul internaţional de publicaţii la schimbul experienţei – un contact polonez Marcela-Georgeta Groza Biblioteca de Matematică şi Informatică între ieri şi mâine Luminiţa Tomuţa Remodelarea unei biblioteci – Remodelarea mentalităţilor Emilia-Maria Soporan O prietenie activă pe tărâmul multiculturalităţii: Andrei Pippidi - Adrian Marino Costel Dumitraşcu Informaţiile bibliografice sau: Pe urmele cărţii în bibliotecă ORIZONTURI Pavel Puşcaş Astrolabium Ioan Mihai Cochinescu Alchimia şi muzica Alin Mihai Gherman Muzică şi literatură – Aproximaţii şi însemnări ale unui meloman înrăit Monica Gheţ Muzica împotriva ciumei Florina Iliş Adrian Marino şi ideea de literatură din perspectivă hermeneutică Rodica Frenţiu Tatakau Hikaku Bungaku – Adrian Marino şi comparatismul militant în Japonia Mariana Soporan Fondul arhivistic Adrian Marino din Biblioteca Centrală Universitară „Lucian Blaga” Gábor Győrffy Adrian Marino: alternativa autohtonă a culturii libere Sidonia Grama Între spaţii ale amintirii şi locuri ale memoriei – Comemorarea a 15 ani de la revoluţie în Timişoara REFLEXII Ioana Robu- Sally Wood-Lamont Cea de-a 10-a Conferinţă a Asociaţiei Europene pentru Informare şi Biblioteci Medicale (EAHIL) Felix Ostrovschi Un alt fel de discurs – Adrian Marino Liana Iancu Radio, presă, carte – Iancu Tiberiu – şi după Kinga Tamás Váczy Leona (1913-1995) Biblioteca, spaţiu intelectual al omului sau: Trecut pentru viitor Adrian Grănescu Emil Pintea (16 decembrie 1944 - 6 ianuarie 2004) – polivalenţa unui destin Melinda Éva Szász Pasiune pentru carte şi artă – Dénes Gábor Meda-Diana Hotea „Lumină din lumină”: primăvară pascală – Expoziţie (07 aprilie - 03 mai 2005) Kolumbán Judit Expoziţia de manuscrise de sec. XVI-XVIII în Biblioteca Centrală Universitară „Lucian Blaga” – Homo scribens: genurile memoriei si tipologia scrierii în secolele XVI-XVIII-lea (Homo scribens: emlékezéskultúra és íráshasználati-szokások a XVI-XVIII században) Meda-Diana Hotea „Cartea cărţilor” – Memoria credinţei – Expoziţie (10.02 - 25.02.2005) Raluca Soare Clădirile clujene sau martorii tăcuţi Adrian Grănescu (Despre) Managementul construcţiilor de biblioteci – recenzie şi marginalii Maria-Stela Constantinescu-Matiţa Mircea Popa: Andrei VERESS – un bibliograf maghiar, prieten al românilor (Recenzie) István Király V. Activitatea Ştiinţifică a Universităţii „Babeş-Bolyai” – 2005, sau de la povara... la demnitatea istoriei Bodnár Róbert Pe urmele unei biblioteci pierdute Raluca Soare Un om, o carte, o bibliotecă – Traian Brad, un slujitor al cărţii Ildikó Bán Lidia Kulikovski: Accesul persoanelor dezavantajate la potenţialul bibliotecilor (Manual pentru bibliotecari) Chişinău, Editura Epigraf, 2006 (Recenzie) Iacob Mârza Meda-Diana Hotea: Catalogul cărţii rare din colecţiile B. C. U. „Lucian Blaga”– Donaţia Gh. Sion Vol. I (sec. XVI-XVIII) (Recenzie) Ruxandra Cesereanu Adrian Marino între unit-ideas şi Zeitgeist Iulia Grad Filozofia evreiască: între Ierusalim şi Atena Raluca Soare De-o parte şi de alta a cărţilor Adrian Grănescu (Recenzie) Boglárka Daróczi Literatura germană pentru copii apărută în România între 1944-1989 – O bibliografie. (shrink)

A repackaged edition of the revered author's classic work that examines the four types of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God—part of the C. S. Lewis Signature Classics series. C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—contemplates the essence of love and how it works in our daily lives in one of (...) his most famous works of nonfiction. Lewis examines four varieties of human love: affection, the most basic form; friendship, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; Eros, passionate love; charity, the greatest and least selfish. Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is the focus of considerable attention from philosophers: Knowing Our Own Minds gives a much-needed overview of current work on the subject, bringing together new essays by leading figures. Knowledge of one's own sensations, desires, intentions, thoughts, beliefs, and other attitudes is characteristically different from other kinds of knowledge: it has greater immediacy, authority, and salience. The contributors examine philosophical questions raised by the distinctive character of self-knowledge, relating it to knowledge of other minds, to rationality and agency, externalist (...) theories of psychological content, and knowledge of language. Together these original, stimulating, and closely interlinked essays demonstrate the special relevance of self-knowledge to a broad range of issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

I argue that a critical feature of language that distinguishes it from animal communication isdisplacement,the means to communicate about the non-present. This implies a capacity for mental travels in time and space, which is the ability to call to mind past episodes, imagine future ones or purely fictitious ones, and locate them in different places. While mental travel in time, in particular, is often considered to be unique to humans, behavioral and neurophysiological evidence suggests that it is evident in some (...) form, at least, in nonhuman animals, including rodents, and may go far back in the evolution of animals that move. The linguistic capacity to share experiences that transcend space and time evolved much more recently, accelerating during the Pleistocene with increasing demands for effective cooperation and long-distance planning. The expansion of mental time travel probably co-evolved with the development of language itself, because the sharing of memories, plans, and stories vastly added to our own individual experiences. From this perspective, the critical period of the Road Map runs from the emergence of the genusHomoaround 2 million years ago to the present. (shrink)

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

Is there such a thing as natural knowledge of God? C. Stephen Evans presents the case for understanding theistic arguments as expressions of natural signs in order to gain a new perspective both on their strengths and weaknesses. Three classical, much-discussed theistic arguments - cosmological, teleological, and moral - are examined for the natural signs they embody. At the heart of this book lie several relatively simple ideas. One is that if there is a God of the kind accepted by (...) Christians, Jews, and Muslims, then it is likely that a 'natural' knowledge of God is possible. Another is that this knowledge will have two characteristics: it will be both widely available to humans and yet easy to resist. If these principles are right, a new perspective on many of the classical arguments for God's existence becomes possible. We understand why these arguments have for many people a continued appeal but also why they do not constitute conclusive 'proofs' that settle the debate once and for all. Touching on the interplay between these ideas and contemporary scientific theories about the origins of religious belief, particularly the role of natural selection in predisposing humans to form beliefs in God or gods, Evans concludes that these scientific accounts of religious belief are fully consistent, even supportive, of the truth of religious convictions. (shrink)

This paper investigates the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP), which is an extension of the well-known Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), and it searches for an optimal tour in a clustered graph, such that every cluster is visited exactly once. In this paper, we describe a novel Memetic Algorithm (MA) for solving efficiently the GTSP. Our proposed MA has at its core a genetic algorithm (GA), completed by a Chromosome Enhancement Procedure (CEP), which is based on a TSP solver and the (...) Shortest Path (SP) algorithm and for improving the convergence characteristics of the GA, a Local Search (LS) operation is applied for the best chromosomes in each generation. We tested our algorithm on a set of well-known instances from the literature and the achieved results prove that our novel memetic algorithm is highly competitive against the existing solution approaches from the specialized literature. (shrink)

Анотація. У статті проаналізовані досягнення Соціального Вчительства Католицької Церкви, репрезентовані працями Лева ХІІІ, Пія ХІ, Пія ХІІ, Івана Павла ІІ, що розкривають змістовні характеристики поняття «принцип субсидіарності», його роль і значення в системі християнських цінностей. Принцип субсидіарності робить можливими такі взаємовідносини в соціальному житті, коли спільнота вищого порядку не втручається у внутрішнє життя спільноти нижчого порядку, перебираючи на себе належні тій функції; заради спільного добра, спільного блага вона надає їй у разі потреби підтримку й допомогу, узгоджуючи у такий спосіб її (...) взаємодію з іншими соціальними структурами. Принцип субсидіарності скеровує соціальну практику на утвердження спільного блага в людському співтоваристві. Поширення і застосування принципу субсидіарності протистоїть небезпеці «одержавлення» суспільства та найзагрозливіших проявів колективізму, обмежує абсолютизацію влади, бюрократизацію державних і соціокультурних структур, стає одним із гарантів дотримання прав і свобод громадян своєї країни. (shrink)

Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione is one of his central works; it continues to be the focus of much attention and debate. C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system, basing this view upon a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis.By treating the work systematically, rather than concentrating on certain selected passages, Whitaker is able to show that, contrary to traditional opinion, it forms (...) an organized and coherent whole. He argues that the De Interpretatione is intended to provide the underpinning for dialectic, the system of argument by question and answer set out in Aristotle's Topics; and he rejects the traditional view that the De Interpretatione concerns the assertion and is oriented towards the formal logic of the Prior Analytics. In doing so, he sheds valuable new light on some of Aristotle's most famous texts. (shrink)

A repackaged edition of the revered author’s spiritual memoir, in which he recounts the story of his divine journey and eventual conversion to Christianity. C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—takes readers on a spiritual journey through his early life and eventual embrace of the Christian faith. Lewis begins with his childhood in Belfast, surveys (...) his boarding school years and his youthful atheism in England, reflects on his experience in World War I, and ends at Oxford, where he became "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." As he recounts his lifelong search for joy, Lewis demonstrates its role in guiding him to find God. (shrink)

C. D. C. Reeve develops a powerful new account of the age-old argument over whether the just are happier than the unjust, drawing from a new understanding of Plato's conception of philosophy.

A study in philosophical logic of the meaning of 'true'. Dr Williams demonstrates the shortcomings of various analyses which interpret 'true' as a predicate or truth as a relational property, and clears up a number of important points about propositions, quantification, definite descriptions and correspondence. This 'deflationary metaphysics' is interwoven with a positive theory of his own, which seeks to develop ideas about the late Arthur Prior. The work is marked throughout by great clarity, precision and thoroughness.

_Verificationism_ is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and the 1960s. The verificationist principle - the concept that a belief with no connection to experience is spurious - is the most sophisticated version of empiricism. More flexible ideas of verification are now being rehabilitated by a number of philosophers. C.J. Misak surveys the precursors, the main proponents and the rehabilitators. Unlike traditional studies, she follows verificationist theory beyond the demise of (...) positivism to examine its reappearance in the work of modern philosophers. Most interestingly, she argues that despite feminism's strenuous opposition to positivism, verificationist thought is at the heart of much of contemporary feminist philosophy. _Verificationism_ is an excellent assessment of a major and influential system of thought. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article challenges conventional readings of Michel Foucault by examining his fascination with neoliberalism in the late 1970s. Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it. The necessary cause for this approval lies in the broader rehabilitation of economic liberalism in France during the 1970s. The sufficient cause lies in Foucault's own intellectual development: drawing on his long-standing critique of the state as a model for conceptualizing power, Foucault concluded, during the 1970s, that economic liberalism, (...) rather than “discipline,” was modernity's paradigmatic power form. Moreover, this article seeks to clarify the relationship between Foucault's philosophical antihumanism and his assessment of liberalism. Rather than arguing that Foucault's antihumanism precluded a positive appraisal of liberalism, or that the apparent reorientation of his politics in a more liberal direction in the late 1970s entailed a partial retreat from antihumanism, this article contends that Foucault's brief, strategic, and contingent endorsement of liberalism was possible precisely because he saw no incompatibility between antihumanism and liberalism—but only liberalism of the economic variety. Economic liberalism alone, and not its political iteration, was compatible with the philosophical antihumanism that is the hallmark of Foucault's thought. (shrink)

The first clear and precise statement of the axioms of qualitative probability was given by de Finetti ([1], Section 13). A more detailed treatment, based however on more complex axioms for conditional qualitative probability, was given later by Koopman [5]. De Finetti and Koopman derived a probability measure from a qualitative probability under the assumption that, for any integer n, there are n mutually exclusive, equally probable events. L. J. Savage [6] has shown that this strong assumption is unnecessary. More (...) precisely, he proves that if a qualitative probability is only fine and tight, then there is one and only one probability measure compatible with it. No property equivalent to countable additivity has been used as yet in the development of qualitative probability theory. However, since the concept of countable additivity is of such fundamental importance in measure theory, it is to be expected that an equivalent property would be of interest in qualitative probability theory, and that in particular it would simplify the proof of the existence of compatible probability measures. Such a property is introduced in this paper, under the name of monotone continuity. It is shown that, if a qualitative probability is atomless and monotonely continuous, then there is one and only one probability measure compatible with it, and this probability measure is countably additive. It is also proved that any fine and tight qualitative probability can be extended to a monotonely continuous qualitative probability, and therefore, contrary to what might be expected, there is no loss in generality if we consider only qualitative probabilities which are monotonely continuous. At the present time there is still a controversy over the interpretation which should be given to the word probability in the scientific and technical literature. Although the present writer subscribes to the opinion that this interpretation may be different in different contexts, in this paper we do not enter into this controversy. We simply remark that a qualitative probability, as a numerical one, may be interpreted either as an objective or as a subjective probability, and therefore the following axiomatic theory is compatible with both interpretations of probability. (shrink)

Introduction -- Saint Thomas : putting nature into natural law -- Maritain and the love for the natural law -- The new natural law and evolutionary natural law -- International human rights, natural law, and Locke -- Conclusion : evil and the limits of the natural law.

The old and yet unanswered question of the precise nature of light, although completely and deliberately neglected nowadays, is reexamined by several new methods, both theoretical and experimental. The wave-corpuscle duality of light then appears somewhat different, and a new hypothesis on the process of electromagnetic interaction may be proposed in an attempt to untangle the dilemma and reach a more realistic description.

For some time now a number of critics have argued that Juergen Habermas has misinterpreted Freud. The gist of this criticism is that Habermas' interpretation of psychoanalysis as `depth hermeneutics' must violate the intent of Freud's work, which is so deeply grounded in drive theory. In other words, Habermas confuses philosophical reflection with psychoanalysis. This paper takes a somewhat different focus. It examines the consequences of Habermas' interpretation of Freud for Habermas' view of the individual. It is shown that Habermas' (...) interpretation eventuates in an abstract and shadowy view of the individual. It is argued that an alternative view of psychoanalysis, object relations theory, can help locate the source of Habermas' pale view of the individual, and help correct it, without succumbing to `neo-Freudian revisionism'. Object relations theory also suggests that in order to overcome the diminution of the individual in real life it is necessary for political theory to examine seriously the role of the family. Finally, object relations theory generates an interesting criticism of so-called postmodern psychoanalysis—for example, the work of Jacques Lacan. This criticism can help us better understand the relationship between Habermas and modernism. (shrink)

C W Evers, J C Walker; Knowledge, Partitioned Sets and Extensionality: a refutation of the forms of knowledge thesis, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume.

A study in philosophical logic of the meaning of 'true'. Dr Williams demonstrates the shortcomings of various analyses which interpret 'true' as a predicate or truth as a relational property, and clears up a number of important points about propositions, quantification, definite descriptions and correspondence. This 'deflationary metaphysics' is interwoven with a positive theory of his own, which seeks to develop ideas about the late Arthur Prior. The work is marked throughout by great clarity, precision and thoroughness.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY entier sans en ~tre l'eselave; toujours menace, mais toujours supdrieur. Le p~ch~ est alors d$truit par la vertu; il n'y a plus de conflit int~rieur. La puret~ du coeur est de vouloir une seule chose. Et c'est alors une mani~re d'immortalit~ par le Jugement. Une derni~re remarque de G. Price: les hommes d'aujourd'hui ont changd &attitude i~ l'~gard de Dieu. La question serait maintenant: Dieu (...) est-il pour ou contre les hommes? Et quel est le sons de l'Etre humain? Telle serait donc la valeur r~elle du probl~me kierkegaardien. Sans doute, G. Price pose l'Un, l'Individuel, en dehors de toute Eglise humaine; mais ainsi se comprend la querelle incessante entre Kierkegaard et l'Eglise de son temps. L'Homme-Dieu a souvent ~t~ consid~rd avec quelque m~fiance par le Dieu trop humanis~ et celui-ci, peut-r est touj ours vu et senti comme trop engag4 dans les structures soeiales du temps present. ANDRE LOUIS LEROY Sorbonne, Paris Cinquant'anni di esperienza idealistica in Italia. By Augusto Guzzo. (Padova: Cedam, 1964.) Con la delicata finezza di tocco che egli ~ propria, Augusto Guzzo, uno dei pifi impegnati protagonisti nel superamento dell'idealismo d'antico stampo, ha sobriamente tratteggiato (in cinque succose lezioni tenure, coli~invitato da Marino Gentile e dall'intera Facolti~ di Lettere e Filosfia presso l'Universit~ di Padova) lo sviluppo della cultura filosofica italiana nella prima met~ del nostro secolo. Assai opportunamente le sue magistrali lezioni sono state test~ pubblicare nella raccolta di Opuscoli Accademici edita dall'Ateneo patavino col titolo suggestivo: Cinquant'anni di espcrienza idealistica in Italia. Quel che eolpisee anzitutto ~ la calda umanit~ del tono, l'alto affiato morale che anima la parola dell'illustre Maestro. Questi, pur trattando dei pifi ardui problemi metafisici e gnoseologici, mai non cade nell'astruso e nell'astratto. Sa cogliere, inveee, con fine introspezione psicologica la genesi delle idee pifi ardue dalla personalit~ di coloro ehe le eoncepirono e eh'Egli individua con sottile discernimento e con artistica vivacitY. Ed alla base della sun intelligente eomprensione e della perspicace sua ermeneutiea psicologia ~ una disposizione morale che vorremmo dire di affettuosa indulgenza e di calore meridionale, anzi schiettamente napoletano, se non fosse pi5 giusto dirla apertura eristiana al colloquio tra le anime e quindi fra gli intelletti. E'questo che ineanta nella nitida prosa del Guzzo, che non ~ mai arcigno e sprezzante, non mai amaro e caustico, bensl sempre si sforza di comprendere e di giustificare. In lui rivive in effetti l'alta ispirazione della perennis philosophia di quel Leibniz che soleva ripetere con quella bonti~ ed umanitk propria solo agli ingegni sublimi: "So debbo ingannarmi, preferisco farlo piuttosto a favore che a svantaggio delle persone. Provo la stessa propensione leggendo gli seritti altrui eh~ mi sforzo di scoprire non quel ehe potrei critieare, bensl quanto merita d'essere approvato e di cui posso approfittare." D'altro canto l'apertura mentale del Guzzo non ~insidiata da quel pericoloso indifferentismo etico ed inttellettuale che, sotto la veste della comprensione e dell'indulgenza, lascia passar tutto, anche le tesi pifl pericolose, attraverso un facile contrabbando. Quella del Guzzo ~una intelligenza aperta e comprensiva, ma che non smarrisce in un sincretismo venato di scetticismo il discrimen trail vero ed il falso, la gerarchia dei valori intellettuali e morali. Egli tratteggia in un arguto viaggio immaginario lo stato dell'Italia aecademica ai principi del secolo, illustrando i fermenti complessi e molteplici che s'agitavano in quella che si suol rappresentare come una eultura positivistica piatta ed informe. Comunque eceo emergere in polemica battagliera e mordace contro di essa la figura dl Benedetto Croce, che le contrappone un hegelismo interpretato alquanto unilateralmente. I1 Guzzo sagacemente lumeggia la grande opera di rinnovamento culturale operata dal grande meridionale e tenta di illuminarne lo spirito profondo riportandosi alla testimonianza, --ch'~ poi un'interpretazione-- di uno dei mlgliori discepoli: Carlo Antoni. Secondo quest'ul- BOOK REVIEWS 139 timo Croce avrebbe avuto coscienza dell'abissale differenza tra lo Spirito universale e l'uomo transeunte. "Croce lo sapeva quando-secondo la testimonianza di Antoni--intendeva lo Spirito come... (shrink)