Almeder's book is a substantive contribution both to Peirce scholarship and to contemporary analytic epistemology. The great strength of The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce is its engagement of Peirce's later thought with current issues in the foundation of knowledge and the philosophy of science. Almeder brings Peirce's ideas to bear on positions held by Quine, Sellars, Rescher, Hintikka, Scheffler, Popper, Feyerabend, and Russell and in so doing makes Peirce this group's contemporary and, in most cases, its philosophical better. (...) In addition, Almeder provides a rather sophisticated defense of epistemological realism, a defense broadly Peircean but supplemented considerably by Almeder's own friendly arguments. (shrink)

After introductory remarks concerning Hartshorne’s contribution to contemporary thought, Gragg takes on the task of exposition of Hartshorne’s work, both as an original thinker and as an interpreter of Whitehead. He does this by a three-step analysis of Hartshorne’s metaphysics, moving from the question of the really real to that of man to that of the supreme reality. Dealing with the central metaphysical question—What is really real?—Gragg summarizes Hartshorne’s method, his position of panpsychism and his social conception of the universe. (...) He then moves to a description of Hartshorne’s ideas about man through a discussion of the issues which usually become central whenever process philosophy is contrasted with the classical tradition: self-identity, volition, personal immortality. The Hartshornian doctrines of sociality and altruism are also given some attention here. Chapter IV completes Gragg’s unpacking of the scheme. He elaborates on the supreme reality as established by Hartshorne’s "metaphysics of love." Here the dipolar God, a pantheistic deity with categorical supremacy, emerges as the resolution of the tension between classical theism on the one hand and atheistic humanism on the other. (shrink)

At the end of I.3, 319a29ff, Aristotle asks a series of questions. This difficult and condensed passage, whose translation is controversial at some points, raises two questions: what is what is not without qualification? and is the matter of earth and fire the same or different? In this essay, I shall focus on the second question.

Avec The First Reception of Berkeley’s Immaterialism, paru en 1959 et réédité par la suite en 1965, Harry M. Bracken tentait de donner une explication crédible à la transformation radicale au sein de la modernité d’une forme d’empirisme très particulière, l’immatérialisme, en pur et simple solipsisme. C’est dans cet horizon de pensée que s’inscrit l’ouvrage commun de Charles J. McCracken et de Ian C. Tipton, puisqu’il vise à rassembler des textes des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles qui «illuminate the background (...) from which Berkeley’s philosophical views emerged or illustrate the reactions those views provoked». Il s’agit donc avant tout d’un recueil de textes et non d’une analyse d’ensemble, quoique les différentes présentations mettant en contexte chacun des extraits choisis permettent de fournir une interprétation globale du travail accompli. Et ce travail se déploie sous deux champs d’analyse, dont la figure même de Berkeley marque la rupture. (shrink)

Consists largely of fragments from the works of poets, prophets, and philosophers, particularly the author's teacher, Charles E. Garman, all expressive of a kind of anti-dogmatic theism.--C. M.