In their rare comments on Existentialism, contemporary British philosophers, with a few notable exceptions, frequently ridicule the use of “nothing” by such writers as Sartre and Heidegger. And when it is discovered that these writers maintain that the contemplation of nothingness gives rise to anguish, this ridicule is expressed even more strongly. What may be taken as a typical example of this tendency are Professor Ayer's remarks in his Horizon articles on Sartre. A characteristic quotation runs as follows: “In particular, (...) Sartre's reasoning on the subject of le néant seems to me exactly on a par with that of the King in Alice through the Looking-Glass … The point is that words like ‘nothing” and ‘nobody” are not used as the names of something insubstantial and mysterious; they are not used to name anything at all”;. (shrink)

On the life of Mādhava, d. 1386, exponent of Dvaita philosophy.

Purpose. Nietzschean proponents classify people into seemingly two distinct groups: those possessing 'Master' moralities and those with 'Slave' moralities. Each type of person is characterized to have certain qualities, traits, ideologies, and methods of dealing with everyday situations. This paper attributes these moralities to the personnel working in the corporate sector of Pakistan to observe their prospects of success. Originality. A specialized survey instrument was designed to gauge different Morality Types of the study subjects by calculating a Morality Quotient. The (...) respondents were then categorized into three categories possessing, Slave, Master and Neutral or Mixed traits. These traits are then contrasted to the position held by the subjects to see which morality type was more prevalent in higher management levels and whether the association was significant. Conclusions. Our results prove to be contradictory to common wisdom and shows that despite the leadership-like qualities of those with Master moralities, the proportion of those with Slave moralities was significantly higher at senior management levels of the corporate sector in Pakistan. Moreover, a trend of declining Master morality traits is observed with the rise in managerial level. In addition, an association between work experience and Morality type was also observed indicating adaptability of cross morality traits with increasing job experience. These findings are in line with the increasing focus on democratic and adaptable leadership instead of autocratic leadership styles in contemporary organizations. (shrink)

First published in 1921, and originally intended as a textbook for students entering secondary school, this book gives an overview of the human and physical geography of the occupied areas of the earth's surface. The text is richly illustrated with diagrams, tables, and contemporary photographs of places of interest. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of education.

An argument for the historical continuity of Neo-Platonism and the Early Academy, resting principally on the positions held by 1) Posidonius on the relation between the soul and mathematics, 2) Speusippus on the relation between the One and the material principle, and 3) Boethius on the relation between degrees of being and degrees of knowledge. There is also an analysis of the elements of Neo-Platonism in Aristotle's metaphysics. A scholarly and readable book, certain to be controversial.--A. R.

In an attempt to develop a synthesis between biology and metaphysics, the author argues that the categories of metaphysics should properly come not from an abstract logic, but rather from "organic nature." The arguments of the mechanists and vitalists are re-interpreted; the position of the vitalist is defended and broadened so as to provide a foundation for the new science of psycho-biology, which is to merge with metaphysics.--A. R.

Mauchaussat gives a detailed, chronological, and dense picture of Lachelier's thought and its milieu. He studies with erudition the connections with thinkers of analogous tendencies: Maine de Biran, Ravaisson, Boutroux, and Brunschvicg, and, outside the French tradition, Lachelier's relations and debts to Kant.--A. R.

From an examination of Leibniz's letters and papers, the author traces the influence of Spinoza on Leibniz, and considers the criticisms which Leibniz raised against Spinoza. There is an appendix on the scholastic and renaissance antecedents of the two philosophers.--A. R.

A study of post-Hegelian German historicism. There are chapters on Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Simmel, Weber, Spengler, Troeltsch, and Meinecke. The development of historicism as a form of Romanticism which treats history as a realization of an absolute principle, to its use as a justification for the relativity of values is traced, and its return to "the affirmation of the absolute" in the work of Troeltsch and Meinecke analyzed.--A. R.

An attempt, by a Rosmini scholar, to develop a contemporary metaphysics capable of accounting for the spiritual crisis of our time. Beginning with the theoretical problems of "the ethics of the spirit," the author moves dialectically to the existential problems of the relation between choice and situation.--A. R.

This is a "philosophic inquiry concerning the order of human existence in society and history." The first in a projected series of six volumes, it deals with the cosmological myth as the principle of organization in the imperialistic societies of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. The imbalance of such an order is diagnosed, and the emergence of the historical order of ancient Israel is analyzed. The order of history is also treated as manifesting itself in different modes of symbolizing: 1) the (...) participation in being, 2) the pre-occupation with the lasting and the passing, 3) the construction of symbols "to interpret the unknown by analogy with the really or supposedly known. The history of symbols is a progression from compact to differentiated experiences and symbols."--A. R. (shrink)

This book attempts to place the problems of logic, epistemology, science, history, and ethics on a new scientific basis.--A. R.

A collection of excerpts from Mead's three posthumous volumes, with a short introduction offering a concise presentation of Mead's pragmatic analysis of the role of evolution in the formation of the self and its relation to society.--A. R.

At once a contribution to the history of science, the history of philosophy, the history of classical Greece, and transhistorical, good, clean, reading enjoyment, this book is obviously designed for the library that hitherto had everything. From coin-operated holy water, vending-machines, Athenian electioneering gadgets for "automating honesty," and wine-splashing games of kottabos to the steam-powered toys and automated theatres of the second century A. D. Alexandrian gadgeteer, Heron, Brumbaugh has provided a fascinating catalogue of and commentary on the neglected artifactual (...) and technological genius of the ancient world. The book includes reproductions of many of Heron's "blueprints" as well as plates showing some of the items that have been excavated on the site of the ancient Agora. The illustrations and plates should have been numbered for easier reference but this is a minor defect in a wholly delightful book. The extensive, annotated bibliography is a pleasant bonus.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A dialectically rather than chronologically ordered survey: it moves first through the outright dualism of Descartes, to the primacy-of-soul position of Plato, and then to the extremes of Feuerbachian materialism and Berkeleyean immaterialism. Then, returning to pre-philosophical foundations in an attempt to recapture the lived phenomenon of body-soul unity that each of the above philosophers acknowledged, but lost in a welter of reductive abstractions, Van Peursen considers the non-dualistic and non-reductivist conceptions of primitive man, Homeric man, and Biblical man. Coming (...) back to the philosophers, this time to those of a more hylomorphic stamp, Van Peursen critically discusses Aristotle, and the corps vécu analyses of Gehlen, Plessner, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Finally, Van Peursen treats the variegated positions of Wittgenstein, Hampshire, and Ryle; the former two coming in for guarded endorsement while Ryle is set forth sympathetically, but attacked for his doctrine of the merely indexical "I." In the last chapter, Van Peursen's own phenomenological version of an "I" which is simultaneously embodied and transcendent—the latter owing to its structure as an "oriented" embodiment—is presented in a suggestive but sketchy fashion. The book is valuable as an introduction, and if, in the end, one is prepared to agree with the spirit, if not the letter, of Van Peursen's embodiment theory, then the metaphilosophical lesson he has tried to drum in throughout the book, namely, the danger inherent in philosophers hypostatizing philosophical or scientific abstractions to the detriment of the integral reality which is man, will make this something more than simply a sensitive survey.—E. A R. (shrink)

With the exception of standard selections from Moore, Ross, and Prichard, "Contemporary" means post Frankena's "The Naturalistic Fallacy", with most of the selections coming from the literature of the last fifteen years. "Ethical Theory" means Anglo-American analytical ethics, with Frankena, Rawls, and Stevenson holding up the American end. The depth-coverage achieved is perhaps justification enough for such a single-minded approach, and Margolis has not wasted the advantages of his chosen framework by indulging in any idiosyncrasies; the papers are all important (...) because they provoked or significantly continued the twentieth-century discussion. Included are Austin's "Ifs and Cans," Rawls' "Justice as Fairness" and "Two Concepts of Rules," Hare's "'Ought' and Imperatives," and Hampshire's "Fallacies in Moral Philosophy." Other authors represented are Ryle, Nowell-Smith, Foot, Strawson, Hart, Peters, and Quinton. "Moore and Metaethics" and "Duty, Self-Interest, and Welfare" are the two main section groupings. Margolis has put some care into a well-ordered, seventeen page bibliography.—E. A. R. (shrink)

As the subtitle states, this book is "a summary of beliefs, practices, and history of the eastern Orthodox Church." Directed to the layman and casual reader, the book is competent within its modest limits.—E. A. R.

Volume two in the Beacon Texts in the Judaic Tradition, this book deals with the Jewish Tradition as it survived and was enriched during the Middle Ages and the later Renaissance by such figures as Gabirol, Nahmanides and Maimonides. Each chapter presents a theme according to which selections from various thinkers are reproduced as commentaries or exemplifications. The editor has provided a sensitive general introduction as well as chapter and individual selection introductions. An index and bibliographies of primary and secondary (...) materials help to make this book an excellent introduction to Medieval and early Modern Jewish thought.—E. A. R. (shrink)

A topical rather than systematic consideration of some key methodological rather than substantive notions in the philosophy of science. The form and strategy of scientific inquiry and explanation, confirmation of hypotheses, laws, and theories are the mainstays of Hempel's discussion. The treatment is lucid in the way an introduction should be. The chapter on concept formation contains a discussion of operational definitions which is especially well done. Perhaps the only drawback is that the student reading this introductory text will not (...) get as much of an impression as would be desirable that there are issues as well as topics in the philosophy of science.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Eighteen of Straus' papers, published in various journals and anthologies between 1930 and 1962, are included in this volume. They are divided into three sections: Phenomenological Studies, Anthropological Studies, and Clinical Studies. But cutting across these divisions is the recurring philosophical theme of the inadequacy of the behavioristic ideal in psychology and the similar inadequacy of the reductionistic mentality of that strain of contemporary philosophy which nurtures this ideal. Straus' critical moments are often more whimsical and polemical than philosophical. But (...) the real strength of the organic approach he defends are his specific analyses of such phenomena as memory, wakefulness, hallucinations, and human action. His phenomenological methods join up with rather than defer to the more rigorously philosophical versions thereof, and "make sense" out of the phenomena in a way that a logically, or ontologically, straightjacketed method might find impossible. This is not to make the trivial point that, in the end, Straus is a scientist, not a philosopher; he is a scientist, but one who has something philosophical to say. Among other important papers are included "The Upright Posture," "Lived Movement," and "Descartes' Significance for Modern Psychology."—E. A. R. (shrink)

The excuse for publishing a new anthology of texts in ancient philosophy is that the effort is not a duplication of previous attempts, either in terms of the texts offered or the interpretations tendered. It is impossible to meet the first criterion for the pre-Socratics, since there is a concise and relatively agreed upon canon of material. What then of the interpretations offered in this volume? They are scant, unimaginative, and, in some cases, misleading. This is especially true in the (...) case of the sophists. Thus, Callicles' long speech from the Gorgias is quoted as representative of sophistical doctrine on the antithesis between nature and convention. The practice of quoting Plato on the sophists is hazardous at best. Why not, instead, print and analyze those intriguing fragments one and two of Antiphon's Περὶ ληθείας? Or if Plato is to be trusted in regard to the sophists, why not quote Protagoras' remarks in the Platonic dialogue of that same name? Or the excursion in the Theaetetus? These selections would present a much more complete picture of Protagoras' doctrines than the seven lines from the doxographical tradition that the editors supply. In addition, there appears to be little logic in the bibliographies. The only secondary source suggested for the sophists is Untersteiner's book. Havelock's The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics is equally controversial, but certainly more reliable. Or if J. H. Loenen's "Was Anaximander an Evolutionist?" could be dredged up from Mnemosyne, surely some material from the other journals could have been found for the sophists. After the pre-Socratics, the book offers about eighty-five pages of selections from Plato, one hundred pages from Aristotle, twenty-five pages from Hellenistic stoicism, Epicureanism, and skepticism and a concluding twenty pages from Plotinus. A novel and quite useful feature of the book is a thematic table which topically indexes the texts according to the editors' conception of the main branches of philosophy.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Made up of about twenty-two essays written between 1916 and 1952, some of which are published here for the first time, this book spells out, in repetitious detail, the basic theme of Part IV of The Phenomenon of Man. Teilhard attempts to support his vision of the super-hominisation of man psychologically, theologically and—most importantly for him-scientifically. Super-hominisation is the concretely realized unity of all men in one super-organism which stands in the future as the final term of the natural and (...) psychic evolution of the universe. These essays make it increasingly apparent that Teilhard will find his eventual audience among theologians rather than scientists.—E. A. R. (shrink)