Journal of the History of Philosophy

244 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Moreover, the translated pieces have little connection with each other. To the first one, a lecture entitled "Phenomenology and Religio0" (1927), is appended a letter Heidegger wrote in 1964 for a conference at Drew University. There is little reason for joining these two widely separated writings ; they have little in common except to demonstrate how much Heidegger changed his mind in the interim regarding the validity of theology as a science. The third is a review of Ernst Cassirer's Mythical Thought. The fourth, entitled "Principles of Thinking," stems from 1958 and is the most interesting essay because it deals with the dialectical thinking of Hegel and Marx and does so more sympathetically than elsewhere in Heidegger. The final one is a report of a conversation with Heidegger at a Protestant academy in 1953, summarized by a Professor Noack apparently from a recording in which the ideas of other discussants are included and no one is directly quoted. Of all the so-called essays this one is the most relevant to the theme of religion and philosophy. Heidegger 's position, as reported by Noack, can be concisely stated: Philosophy is foolishness for revelation ; consequently, theologians should not be concerned with it nor with Heidegger's own version of philosophy as "thinking."This is in line with his assertions elsewhere to the effect that a Christian philosophy is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle. If there is an unequivocalconvictionon this matter that persists throughout Heidegger's long life, this last statement approaches it. Philosophy and religion have little to do with each other. Yet it is quite evident that posterity will not accept this judgment even about his own work, as he was no doubt well aware. The question of the meaning of Being has from the beginning been closely connected with the question of God and of first and last things. Heidegger's contributionis unlikely to change this tradition. The undecided issue is rather what help, if any, the phenomenological method of questioning can provide. The modem founder of phenomenology, Husserl, was not really interested in theological matters, and this is a fact of no minor significance. Heidegger clearly was, but he believed that the most his method of questioningcould do is to prepare the ground for a possible answer to the question of the relation of Being to the divine. Theology has'ever been more interested in answers than in questions. There remains a lasting tension, if not a contradiction, between the phenomenologicalepoche and religious faith. To put everything in question may be the piety of philosophical thought, but it is only the starting point of the religious quest. J. GLENNGRAY Colorado College A. N. Prior. The Doctrine of Propositions and Terms. Edited by P. T. Geach and A. J. P. Kenny. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. Pp. 143. This volume consists of a selection of chapters from a manuscript ("The Craft of Formal Logic") left unpublishedby Prior. In their introduction, the editors explain the history of the manuscript and the reasons why they finally decided to publish only part of it. There are three main topics: the meaning of sentences (propositions), the meaning of general terms, and the existential import apparently required by some traditional inferences. The first topic is examined in Chapter 1, "Propositions and Sentences." Starting from the medieval sense ofpropositio---sentence--Prior shows very nicely how at a certain point in the history of logic the word "proposition" came to designate the meaning of a sentence. The existence of this meaning as an autonomous entity called "a proposition" (Bolzano's Satz an sich, Meinong's Objective ) raises many difficulties. Accordingly, Prior guides the reader to another theory, the "ascription" theory. Here the meaning of a sentence is identified with the collection of objects and relations or properties that a sentence is about. For example, the proposition corresponding to the sentence "David is the father of Solomon," according to this theory, is the triple (David, Solomon, paternity). Apparently unhappy with the ascription theory too, Prior moves into a radi- BOOK REVIEWS 245 cally different approach (chap. 1, sec. 4). He finds the starting point for it in the Tractatus...