Aristotle's rejection of the Platonic ideas robbed him of Plato's unity of Being and Value as well. By an extensive, clear interpretation and analysis of the whole Aristotelian corpus, Oates shows that Aristotle lacks a coherent theory of value. While considerations of value unavoidably occur in the Metaphysics, just as ontological ones do in the Ethics, nowhere in Aristotle is there a unification of axiology and ontology. For this reason, Oates argues, the Nicomachean Ethics fails to be a theory of (...) moral good. The book is a temperate, perhaps non-controversial critique of Aristotle, and its polished, easy style makes it a pleasure to read.—A. B. D. (shrink)

These fragmentary and often repetitious papers-some of them published before Schutz's death--are organized under three headings: 1) On the Methodology of the Social Sciences, 2) Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, and 3) Symbol, Reality and Society. Schutz elaborates the structures of the "natural attitude," earlier described by Husserl, and defends the irreducible reality of the Lebenswelt which is necessarily presupposed by science, knowledge, language, and the interpretation of signs. Intersubjectivity is at the core of the Lebenswelt and Schutz ably criticizes (...) the inadequate work done by Husserl, Scheler and Sartre on the problem of the other. The tone of all the papers is expository and critical rather than original, as if Schutz was preparing his own views by "working through" a host of other writers.--A. B. D. (shrink)

A far less exhaustive work than Richardson's scholarly tome, but more focused than Vycinas' ventriloquial interpretation, Guilead's book concentrates on the theme of freedom in Sein und Zeit and in Heidegger's later works. The author is in full control of Heidegger's terminology and he succinctly reports how Heidegger uncovers and destroys the subjectivism of modern philosophy, as represented by Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Nietzsche, and Marx. Guilead contends that the germ of the "Kehre" was already present in Sein und Seit [[sic]]. (...) Heidegger's later thought shows that man is a cosmic being, a relation to Being, and his freedom can not be rooted in subjectivity but in the realization of his authentic cosmic being, in his "habitation," "dwelling," and "building." The author finds two problems in Heidegger's philosophy: a lack of real otherness in beings, and a danger of humanizing Being. But are they not one problem?—A. B. D. (shrink)

A bi-lingual edition of poems and a "free philosophical treatise" by a poet-logician who is now imprisoned somewhere in Russia. In this choppy and compressed treatise, written hours before he was arrested, the writer discusses some pseudo-problems of philosophy, argues against the principle of excluded middle, and states the real problem of philosophy as being the relationship between the subconscious and consciousness.--A. B. D.

Theories of immanence and botanical analogy dominated the work of the eighteenth-century naturalists. They believed, with little factual support, that electricity was the immanent principle of the universe and that plants and animals had truly analogical functions. When a science of biology finally came into being in the nineteenth century, the romantic poets decried the positivistic approach to nature; but it was often overlooked that their poetry voiced anew the concepts of the eighteenth-century speculation. The super-abundance of quotations makes for (...) laborious reading, although the author deftly threads his narrative through them.—A. B. D. (shrink)

This book must have been a joy "to write": the author relishes playing with variations of Zeno's 'bisection' paradox to vindicate the reality of an Actual Infinite. The Infinite is a "lush" concept and though mathematical rigor forbids it, the world demands it. Benardete traces the development of mathematics through Aristotle, Leibniz, Gauss, Cantor, and Brouwer, and he examines recent developments in hyper-mathematics. Siding with Cantor, he argues that mathematics is no longer a formal discipline. It is teleological and it (...) requires a rich ontology of the Infinite. He criticizes modern philosophy, particularly Kant and the later Wittgenstein, for rejecting the "cosmological horizon," for ruling out the Actual Infinite. Even a non-mathematician will understand his lively discussions of "random numbers," the "long run," nondenumerable and denumerable infinites, and the significance of the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem.—A. B. D. (shrink)

Science naively presupposes the intelligibility of the universe, necessary laws, and a universal truth. The author reflects on these presuppositions to arrive at a demonstration of God's existence. In a vigorous and exclamatory style, he condemns the alternative views of idealism, phenomenology, and philosophies of science which cannot rationally justify their faith in a universal truth. The only rational basis for these presuppositions is a theistic God--the "Vérité mesurante" and "Pensée fondatrice" of scientific reason.--A. B. D.

This is a compact, comparative analysis of Western and Chinese thought according to distinctive styles of thought and attitudes toward the world and what can be known of it. The model of Western Philosophy is presented as an abstract whole beyond experience—the Kantian ideal; the model of Chinese thought is a concrete whole found in experience. Chinese thought, as amply represented by passages from Confucius, Mencius and others, always has a feeling for the concrete, for a particular fact intuitively suggesting (...) a universal law; and it always has a predilection for paradox. The author thinks that abstract Western thought is still under the sway of Kant's concepts and forms of judgment, even in its current tendency toward the concrete.—A. B. D. (shrink)

This book is primarily for the patient and empathetic poetaster; it is a treasure-chest of themes on the imagination, metaphor, day-dream, and memory. Bachelard presents a phenomenology of the poetic image of inner or inhabited space, or what he terms "felicitous space." Inner space refers not only to the house of man but to the houses of things, drawers, chests, and wardrobes, and to the houses of animals, nests and shells. Bachelard's method is to articulate the many reverberations which any (...) poetic image calls forth in the reader's mind. He masterfully interprets the images which he draws from a vast amount of literary material and he is also adept at describing his own daydreams. The last two chapters deal with a dialectic of inside and outside and a phenomenology of "roundness" which he had hoped to include in a later, more metaphysical work.—A. B. D. (shrink)

In the French unclassifiable genre, Brun explores biological evolution, poetry, philosophy, mythology, dance movements and palm-reading to unearth the significance and function of the human hand. Man does not have a hand; part of his being is being-a-hand. He is differentiated from animals not only because he is a tool-user, but because he can make tools to make other tools. Brun shows that the sense of touch overcomes the separation between man and the world in a second section dealing with (...) the erotic, cognitive and existential meanings of le toucher. A difficult, sometimes insightful study but mainly overstated.—A. B. D. (shrink)

The important features of Hartmann's realist ontology are first described as presuppositions of his regional ontology of spirit. Then Breton sympathetically investigates the categories of "l'être spirituel" and focuses on Hartmann's notion of objective spirit, contrasting it with Hegel's. Despite Hartmann's rejection of systems, Breton concludes that his ontology of the levels of being is "architecturally" systematic.—A. B. D.

This brief work valuably shows how a distinguished historian ascertains the causes of his historical facts. Koht, a Norwegian European historian, eschews any philosophy of history, claiming only that the nature of man is permanent through historical change. Drawing from his own historical research he discusses the significance of the different forces of history. These are religion, economics, class consciousness, the power of the state, war, revolt, science, and internationalism. No one force or cause is primary.—A. B. D.

The author guarantees the partial truth of Socrates' reputation as a sophist by presenting the ideas of Protagoras, Gorgias and others, measuring Socrates' agreement with them, and specifying how he went beyond their relativistic humanism. All the themes in the Socratic dialogues are actually one theme: What is man? Versényi shows that the answers to this question were given as much in Socrates' life as in his teachings. Indeed, Socrates is aptly described as a Heideggerian hero whose death was an (...) authentic affirmation of his life. But such existentialist overtones are not overbearing in this very readable book.--A. B. D. (shrink)

Daniel Lagache has said that the psychoanalytical experience is a moral one. It is, in Mme. Amado's words, "the drama of a subject, discovering his radical truth." The task of psychoanalysis is the demystification of the narcissistic, alienated subject who lives in a primary or primitive moment of subjectivity. The moment of cure is the recognition of the other, and simultaneously, a discovery of oneself--intersubjectivity. Mme. Amado gives an excellent phenomenology of alienation, seeing its presence both in mental disorders and (...) normal behavior.--A. B. D. (shrink)

The relative freedom, spontaneity, and complexity of the images formed between the elastic body/mind of the dancer present in the room with me, the projected video of bodies, and performers interacting in space gave a palpable electric sense of virtual synergy. These are the words I wrote to describe the experience of being immersed in my first Interplay multi-site performance. I had the sense that I had experienced a telematic embrace, an event that was truly more than the sum of (...) its parts, which Roy Ascott described as a feeling of connection and close community, almost an intimacy quite unlike face to face meetings. (shrink)

A reprint of the book published in 1942, with the addition of an appendix and a new preface. Beginning with the concrete and conceptual aspects of the person and showing how the principles of logic are embodied in human experience, the author describes the ontological and logical connections between the world, man and God.--A. B. D.

Not an anthropologist by training, Tyler succeeds where the trained anthropologist has often failed: he manages to understand a style of life not his own. He relates and interprets the stories of the gods of the Zunis, Keres, and Hopi Indians, comparing them to some of the Greek myths. The Pueblos are "realists"; they believe in a world of rough harmony, of "normalcy," and their animistic religion is devoted to preserving the natural order of things. Their sophisticated outlook cannot be (...) explained by theories of primitive or infantile animism; in fact, Tyler uses Pueblo animism to debunk the Freudian and other theories of animism. A map, a geographical table, and an extensive bibliography help fill out the picture of the Pueblo.—A. B. D. (shrink)

First published in 1898 in Année Sociologique, this remarkable essay has long deserved English publication. Mauss and Hubert shun the myriad forms of sacrifice to concentrate on the structure or eidos uniting them all. This structure appears in certain procedures which are systematically followed, in certain relationships which are established between the sacrifier, priest and victim, and finally in the sequence of events from entrance into and exit from the sacrificial place. As an eidetic description of the form of sacrifice (...) the essay is clearly a forerunner of later structural anthropology.—A. B. D. (shrink)

In these William James lectures, Marcel traces the relationship between events in his life and his philosophical and literary works. Drawing largely on his dramatic works, he interprets and clarifies some of his key philosophical themes, such as "intersubjectivity," "participation" and "the mystery of Being."--A. B. D.

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases. We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in the tropics. Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in (...) the tropical troposphere are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”.This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets now show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from remote sensing systems, enhancedRSS warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in remote sensing systems RSS, observed tropical lapse rates are not significantly different from those in all model simulations.Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on the use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability and application of an inappropriate statistical “consistency test”. (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, “Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness”, a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a critical (...) survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. (shrink)

This volume begins a series in which the editor intends to do for sociologists what Schilpp has done for philosophers. Sorokin as sociologist, philosopher, anthropologist, sexologist, and political theorist is the topic of the critical essays by international experts in these fields. Sorokin himself contributes a sociological autobiography and a "Reply to My Critics."--A. B. D.

Merleau-Ponty had projected a work of considerable dimensions, according to Lefort, which was to have borne the title now given to this posthumous volume. Though the chapters he had actually written out and the notes de travail selected by Lefort for this edition seem to be only introductory parts and suggestions of the larger work, they are already considerable in richness, depth and difficulty. Here we find Merleau-Ponty returning to the problems of his earlier works, showing why the problems posed (...) in the Phenomenology of Perception were "insoluble"; examining in ever greater depth the thought of Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre; uncovering the naiveté of scientific thinking and the false sophistication of reflective, dialectical and intuitionistic philosophies. He has moved well beyond phenomenology in the strict sense, toward his own interrogation ontologique and a theory of logic. Lefort has done an extraordinary and exemplary job of organizing, editing and annotating the manuscripts. —A. B. D. and C. D. (shrink)