This book contains three essays: "The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and Art" by Gombrich, the renowned art historian and critic; "The Representation of Things and People" by psychologist, Julian Hochberg; and "How Do Pictures Represent" by philosopher, Max Black. The book is based upon lectures delivered in the Johns Hopkins 1970 Thalheimer Lectures, where, taking off from the question "how there can be an underlying identity in the manifold and changing facial expression of (...) a single individual," there is an interdisciplinary attempt at clarifying the problem of representation. Gombrich’s central thesis is that the key to artistic representation is empathy and projection, which is guided by the interlocking display of the permanent and mobile features of the object represented. Perceptual activity and empathy rely more on the muscular imitation than on passive visual reception. He holds that what is singled out as the likeness-factor uniting the permanent and mobile features in, for example, the photograph of the four-year old Lord Russell and such factors in the ninety-year old Russell is the "general tonus, the melody of transition from given ranges of relaxations to forms of tenseness." Hochberg’s essay spells out the position that perception is purposive behavior, wherein the purpose is the information sought and behavior is the "succession of glances in different directions." Holding that perceptual activity is grounded in expectations, he lays aside Gombrich’s muscularity-thesis in favor of a learned expectation of feature characteristics. Black’s essay is a conceptual analysis of "depiction," or more precisely, of "P displays a subject S if and only if R, where R ‘will constitute the necessary and sufficient condition for P displaying S'." The essay, which proceeds in a Wittgensteinian Investigations-type fashion ends where the reader would hope it begin. He concludes that the problem can only be adequately answered by moving from logical investigation to the world of the artisan and art lover. To arrive at this conclusion he debunks six candidates that claim to meet the depiction conditions: causal history, selective information, intention, mimesis, resemblance, and "looking-like." At best, depiction may be considered a "cluster" concept of all six. Further determination, he holds, requires knowledge of the purpose of a particular depiction, and this takes us out of logic and into art; and so Black stops, unfortunately.—W. A. F. (shrink)

This book centers around a new translation of Aristotle’s small treatise, On Memory. It is preceded by three essays by Sorabji and is followed by a section of notes. The treatise treats of the distinction between memory and recollection and what each is. Memory is "the having of an image regarded as a copy of that which it is an image" and it belongs to "the primary perception part [of the soul] and that with which we perceive time." Here the (...) key ideas, finely modulated, are image as in itself and as copy, and time perception. Recollection is distinct from memory; it is the natural or habitual succession of given image: starting from one image and moving to something similar, opposite or neighboring, until the required image is present. Recollecting is "a sort of search" requiring deliberation and peculiar to men, whereas remembering is common to many higher animals. An interesting point regarding the act of remembering is, besides the succession of images, the attendant perception of proportioned time-lapses, so much so, that "when exercising his memory a person cannot think he is not doing so and fail to notice that he is doing so." The section of notes contains many illuminative remarks on the translator’s choice of words for all the major phrases as well as helpful explanations of the structure and meaning of the textual arguments. The three essays by Sorabji, on memory, mnemonic techniques and recollection, are critical accounts of Aristotle’s doctrine, taking into account the teachings of thinkers ranging from Plato and Berkeley to the Australian materialists and William James. Here Sorabji is most helpful in demonstrating the importance and relationship of the doctrines of On Memory to the larger Aristotelian teaching on thinking and on dialectical reasoning. The essay on recollection centers around Aristotle’s relationship to Plato on the same topic and on the systematic problem of association of ideas. All in all, Aristotle on Memory is an excellent little book, illuminating the larger context and satisfying in itself.—W. A. F. (shrink)

This book covers a period of Austrian history stretching from 1848 to 1933, a period of amazing intellectual activity, on a scale comparable perhaps only with renaissance Italy. Johnston includes chapters on Emperor Franz Joseph, the Beidermeir culture, legal and economic theorists, Austro-marxists, and Viennese aestheticism. Perhaps most interesting for philosophers are sections on positivism and impressionism and the author’s discussions of men such as Mach, Boltzman, Schlick, Mauthner, the ever-present Karl Kraus, Wittgenstein, Buber, and Freud. There is another notable (...) section on Bohemian Reform Catholicism which includes discussions of Bolzano, Herbart, Brentano, and Husserl. The author’s scholarship is excellent. A large amount of significant information is exceedingly well-organized. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the construction of a house commissioned by Mrs. Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein, which was partially designed and supervised by her brother, Ludwig. The book consists of two main parts. At the beginning Leitner presents, in the original German, with an English translation, a recollection of Wittgenstein and the building of the house. They are short excerpts from Family Recollections written in the early forties by his other sister, Hermain Wittgenstein. Speaking of the house, she writes, "I (...) always knew that I neither wanted to, nor could, live in it myself. It seemed indeed to be much more a dwelling for the gods... at first I even had to overcome a faint opposition to this ‘house turned logic', as I called it, to this perfection and monumentality. However, this house fitted my sister Gretl like a glove...." Throughout, the tone of the excerpts is easy but tempered by the style of an intelligent, perceptive, cultured woman. (shrink)