This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation.

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

In the Phaedrus, Socrates insists that every proper logos must have the unity of an organic living thing. And yet it is hard to say what imposes any such unity on the various speeches and topics that are dealt with in this very dialogue. This chapter situates the view of Hermias of Alexandria in relation to modern debates about what, if anything, unifies the Phaedrus. For the ancient Neoplatonists, the question of unity was bound up with the question of each (...) dialogue's "skopos". We argue that Hermias' answer to this question -- that the skopos of the Phaedrus is 'beauty at every level' -- is not as wildly implausible as Neoplatonic readings of Plato's dialogues are often thought to be. (shrink)

We are accustomed to thinking of space and time as particulars or individuals—even if we should hesitate to describe them as things or objects or substances. We say ‘space has three dimensions’, ‘material things occupy space’, ‘the debris has disappeared into space’ and we talk in a comparable fashion about time. Not only do we think of space and time as individuals but, in many connections at any rate, we think of them as unique individuals. When we talk about spaces (...) and times in the plural, when we say ‘fill up the spaces on the form’, ‘it could go in the space between the lamp and the door’, ‘there were peaceful times in the early years of their marriage’ we think of these multiple spaces and times as parts of the unique allencompassing space and the unique all-encompassing time. Kant believed that we could not help thinking of them in this way. We do, at any rate, in fact think like this and it is this conviction that I want to examine. (shrink)

In Descartes's Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, the thinker rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. (...) Subsequent philosophy has grappled with Descartes's legacy, questioning many of its conclusions and even his basic approach, but his arguments set the agenda for many of the greatest philosophical thinkers, and their fascination endures.This new translation includes the Third and Fourth Objections and Replies in full, and a selection from the rest of Descartes's exchanges with contemporaries that helped to shape and expound his philosophy. (shrink)

In 1988, Nadine Dormoy conducted a series of interviews with Rene Girard after a number of books and conferences had situated his work in a new context of research on self-organizing systems. In these interviews, Girard discusses the intellectual activity that followed the 1982 Stanford University conference, Disorder and Order. Girard also discusses Theater of Envy, his book on Shakespeare, as well as corrects several misunderstandings of his mimetic hypothesis.

Dernier ouvrage publie par Descartes, le Traite des Passions de l'ame (1649) est le fruit de toute sa philosophie. Ce traite, qui s'appuie sur un resume de la biologie cartesienne, s'oriente vers une medecine concrete des affections psycho-physiologiques et s'epanouit en une apologie de la generosite. Aux observations scientifiques, Descartes ne dedaigne pas d'adjoindre des notations psychologiques dont la finesse evoque parfois ces maximes qui fleurissaient dans les salons au XVIIe siecle. Ainsi l'ampleur des conclusions scientifiques, morales et metaphysiques, sources (...) d'etudes toujours renaissantes pour les specialistes, se colore par surcroit d'une richesse vecue qui fait de ce Traite, ecrit pour une princesse et offert a une reine, le modele des ouvrages accessibles au plus grand public. (shrink)

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

Burke's Enquiry is one of those books that hovers, importantly but ineffectively, at the fringes of the attention of most modern readers of philosophy. It is something that they have always meant to read some time but yet which they all too seldom get around to actually reading. Its neglect, no doubt, is mainly to be accounted for as part of the generally rather forlorn position of aesthetics in our intellectual landscape. Students of literature disregard aesthetics as at once too (...) schematic and abstract for their purposes and as too often the work of people inadequately equipped for and experienced in the direct criticism of literature and the arts. Although the dominant style of modern criticism had as one of its principal sources a fairly consciously philosophical inquiry into the nature of literature, namely Richard's Principles of Literary Criticism , in its prevailing form, as manifested in the writings of Dr. Leavis and his fol-lowers, it is hostile to any pretensions to critical relevance on the part of academic philosophy. If it rejects impressionism for determinedly intellectual analysis of the detail of literature, it still relies on philosophy only in the loosest and most colloquial sense of the word in so far as it embodies a definitely articulated point of view on questions of morality. On the other hand, aesthetics has only figured in the most fitful and peripheral manner on the agenda of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The story that is told in Lord Russell's recent book My Philosophical Development is one that has been told before, by him and by others, but this particular presentation of it stands out by reason of its comprehensiveness and its authority. It is a rather austerely intellectual autobiography, sticking firmly to the topic announced in its title, and the non-philosophical aspects of the author's character and interests take as modest a place in it as Collingwood's do in his not altogether (...) dissimilar Autobiography . What makes a comparison of these two intellectual self-portraits so tempting is the almost diametrical opposition of their authors. Russell is an aristocrat, an influential public figure too lively and multifarious to be contained for long in a university, a communicator who writes to be understood and believed, a mathematician still despite many years away from mathematics, a moral and political radical, an atheist and a lifelong defender of science as the most solid and enduring achievement of the human intellept. Collingwood was a scholarship boy, the son of an unsuccessful literary man, a pure example of the obscure and ineffectual don, who made out that he was too busy to answer criticism or to take part in college administration or university politics, an elaborately conscious stylist, almost as much a historian and an archaeologist as he was a philosopher, essentially a reactionary for all his autumnal flirtation with Marxism, a Christian and an embattled critic of the pretensions of science. (shrink)

In setting out to discuss the trouble with Kant I may seem to be suggesting that there is only one. I do think that there is one fundamental one, which is that he is a wild and intellectually irresponsible arguer. Any innate leaning that way must have been enhanced by the intellectual isolation of Konigsberg, which preserved him from serious criticism. I shall be sticking to one particular example of this failing. It is the account he gives of the way (...) in which the common world of experience is constructed or synthesized by applying some piece of mental apparatus—the forms of intuition and the categories—to what he calls the manifold of sensation. The rather elementary question I want to raise about this theory is that of how the claim can be made good that the outcome of this process is just one, single world; for all of us, for each of us at different times, even for any one of us at a particular time. (shrink)

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

These two volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread (...) demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

The avant-garde has been popular for some time, but its popularity has tended to fly under the radar. This ¿popular avant-garde,¿ conceived as the meeting ground of the avant-garde and popular, avoids the divorce of art and praxis of which the avant-garde has been accused. The Popular Avant-Garde takes stock of the debates about both the ¿historical¿ (¿modernist¿) and posterior avant-gardes, and sets them in relation to popular culture and art forms. With a critical introduction that examines the concepts of (...) ¿the avant-garde,¿ ¿the popular,¿ and ¿the popular avant-garde,¿ the series of essays analyzes the way in which the avant-garde employs popular genres for political purposes, as well as how the popular acquires a critical function with respect to the avant-garde. Each of the volume¿s three sections considers a different aspect of the productive exchange between the avant-garde and popular: the popular avant-garde as a culturally hybrid and cross-border phenomenon; the play between the popular avant-garde and developments in media and technology; and the popular avant-garde¿s upending of conventional ideas about ¿the people¿ and ¿the popular.¿ The Popular Avant-Garde takes a fresh look at the now canonical Dadaist, Futurist, and Surrealist movements from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, and cultural and critical theory, while at the same time exploring less well-known avant-garde work in literature, film, television, music, photography, dance, sculpture, and the graphic arts. This volume¿s coverage of the American and Afro-American, Luso-Brazilian and Latin-American, East-European, and Scandinavian avant-gardes, in addition to the vanguards of Spain and other parts of Western Europe, will appeal to all those interested in avant-garde and popular art forms. (shrink)

René Descartes's Regulae ad directionem ingenii ('Rules for the Direction of the Understanding') is his earliest surviving philosophical treatise, and in many respects his most puzzling text. It is a profoundly original work with few intellectual precursors, and offers the fullest account anywhere in Descartes's work of his theory of method. Yet Descartes left it unfinished, and unpublished, at his death in 1650. The versions currently known to modern readers are all posthumous: a manuscript copied for Leibniz in the late (...) seventeenth century, a Dutch translation of 1684, and the version printed in 1701 in Amsterdam. As a result, the details and date of its composition, its fragmentary, unfinished state, and its philosophical content have long puzzled scholars. The discovery by Richard Serjeantson in 2011 of a previously unknown, early manuscript draft of the Regulae in Cambridge University Library was a hugely significant event in Cartesian scholarship. This edition presents the Cambridge manuscript of the Regulae alongside the 1701 Amsterdam version of the text to allow comparison between the early manuscript draft and the version best-known to modern readers, together with a full English translations of both texts. It is also the first critical edition of the Regulae to take into account the full range of textual witnesses to the text, both manuscript and printed. The new Cambridge manuscript sheds important light on the composition, date, and philosophical content of the Regulae, and will provoke scholars to rethink key questions about Descartes's early philosophical development. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences inform us about objective properties of things in our environment. But they also have perspectival character in the sense that they differ phenomenally when objects are viewed from different points of view. Contemporary representationalists hold, at a minimum, that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. Thus, in order to account for perspectival character, they need to indentify a type of representational content that changes in appropriate ways with the perceiver’s point of view. Many representationlists, including Shoemaker and Lycan, (...) argue that such contents are best construed in terms of mind-dependent properties. Other representationalists, including Tye and Dretske, hold that these contents involve only mind-independent properties. Susanna Schellenberg has recently developed an account of perceptual experience that would serve these latter representationalists extremely well. She suggests that we can do justice to the perspectival character of perceptual experience by appeal to representations of a certain type of relational properties, so-called ‘situation-dependent properties.’ In this paper, I critically engage with Schellenberg’s proposal in order to show how mind-independent representationalists can explain perspectival character. I argue that appeal to situation-dependent properties is problematic. I then show that mind-independent representationalists can account for perspectical character by means of scenario contents in Christopher Peacocke’s sense. (shrink)

"Under Magee's sensitive guidance a remarkably coherent interpretation of this period emerges."--Marshall Cohen, Listener. "The whole book has a marvellous air of casualness and clarity that makes it a delight to read."--Colin Wilson. Contemporary British philosophy is experiencing unprecedented openness to influences from abroad. New growth is evident in many areas of traditional philosophy which had been neglected by the logical positivists and the linguistic analysts. This sense of freedom permeates Magee's volume of conversations with leading British philosophers. Under Magee's (...) direction, the philosophers discuss other influential thinkers, such as Wittgenstein, Russell, Moore, and Austin, as well as ideas of universal interest, such as morality, art, religion, and social theory. As an introduction to contemporary British philosophy, a unique collection of candid commentaries by important thinkers, and study of fresh ideas, Modern British Philosophy is consistently lively and authoritative. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

This study evaluated the integration of psychology ethics into an introductory psychology course. Students in two general psychology sections were exposed to an infusion of psychology ethics in teaching, research, and clinical practice, whereas students in two sections were exposed to traditional course content. Students completed a pre and post-test assessment including a psychology ethics questionnaire and open-ended responses to three ethics case studies. Students in the ethics group displayed a statistically significant increase in scores on both measures from pre (...) to post-test. However, students in the traditional group showed no improvement in scores. (shrink)

In convential democratic decison making, a contradiction has evolved between the demands of long term planning and democratic participation. In this article I will analyse, in how far new modes of decison making, such as national ethics committees, consensus conferences and participatory policy making on the basis of a precautionary principle, has been succesfull in coping with this contradiction. I will conclude that only participatory policy making could meet.

... Lorsque j'ai connu René Boylesve, il lui advint de me parler de son renom et de sa vente. Je reviendrai là-dessus. En tout cas, il pouvait rentrer dans la classe de ces auteurs qui, faute de savoir se montrer dangereux - car alors on vous respecte par crainte -, faute de savoir intriguer pour se faire rendre justice, et parce que les critiques notables les tiennent pour des artistes sans relief, restent dans l'ombre de leur vivant. Il est (...) entendu au demeurant que l'ombre, en France, appartient de droit au talent. Victor Hugo eut un mal infini à percer, et l'Académie l'élut à sa cinquième candidature... (shrink)

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

'Those most capable of being moved by passion are those capable of tasting the most sweetness in this life.'Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of (...) their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Il s’agit d’une édition de fragments (titres et extraits de traités entrepris ou simplement projetés) et de commencements d’œuvres de Descartes qui nous sont parvenus par des sources variées mais parfaitement fiables, et dont Descartes lui-même a fait mention à un moment ou à un autre dans sa Correspondance ou dans le Discours de la méthode, mais qui n’ont jamais été pris en considération pour eux-mêmes. Nous avons réuni ces textes, nous les avons traduits quand ils étaient en latin ou (...) en néerlandais – tout en plaçant les originaux en regard –, présentés, datés et annotés historiquement et philosophiquement. Nous insistons sur la Licence en droit (placard découvert en 1987), l’Étude du bon sens, dont nous restituons l’objet et l’ensemble des fragments non identifiés jusqu’ici, et La recherche de la vérité, pour la première fois traduite en français à partir de sa version néerlandaise et datée de façon sûre. Ces textes ainsi réunis et datés présentent pour la première fois un Descartes inédit, travaillant en philosophe, et non seulement en savant, dans les deux décennies qui précèdent le Discours de la méthode. (shrink)

Der 'Discours de la Méthode', 1637 anonym publiziert, gilt als das erste und wirkmächtigste Manifest des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus und wissenschaftlichen Methodenbewusstseins. Beachtenswerter noch als die von Descartes angeführten vier Regeln selbst, die er als die Grundregeln für die methodische Erlangung wahrer Erkenntnis hervorhebt, erscheint aus heutiger Sicht die autobiographische Perspektive, aus der heraus der Autor das breite Publikum dafür gewinnen will, ihm auf seinem Wege zu folgen, der ihn zu der Entdeckung einer universalen wissenschaftlichen Methode und von lediglich auf die (...) autonome Vernunft gegründeten metaphysischen Prinzipien aller Wissenschaften geführt habe. Nach der 2011 erschienenen zweisprachigen Neuausgabe des 'Discours' (PhB 624), die sich – wie beinahe alle später verbreiteten Ausgaben – auf den Kerntext der Schrift beschränkt, also den 'Entwurf der Methode seine Vernunft richtig zu leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu suchen', folgt jetzt die erste vollständige Ausgabe des Werks in deutscher Übersetzung, die auch die der Erstausgabe von 1637 angefügten drei Proben (Essais) der Anwendung dieser Methode auf Gegenstände der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis umfasst: die Versuche zur Dioptrik, zu den Meteoren und zur Geometrie. Das Ziel dieser Versuche ist nicht, den Lesern zu erklären, was Meteore sind oder wie Licht sich in durchsichtigen Medien verhält, sondern auf drei besonders »kuriosen« Gebieten, die stellvertretend angeführt werden, den Nachweis zu erbringen, dass diese Methode – als universale Methode – allen anderen überlegen ist: Die neue Methode ist universal, weil sie auf alle möglichen Gegenstände unseres Wissens angewendet werden kann. (shrink)