we consider this merit, however, to have almost no value in comparison to one which we wish to acquire from the offended worshippers of galileo. we announce to them that after having identified and reordered the scattered writings which complete the sixth dialogue as far as percussion is concerned, we were also able to reintegrate the dialogue with regard to the use of a little chain to provide a rule for aiming artillery, without having to resort to laborious calculations.

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is primarily a display of conceptual interrelationships of the same logical kind as might occur in an academic work of analytic philosophy. Its pyrotechnic show of jokes, puns and cross-purposes consists mainly in sparks thrown off by the underlying conceptual exploration. That philosophical insights are closely connected with jokes is a fact which Carroll exploited in Through the Looking Glass, a work which is brim-full of small-scale philosophy. Stoppard, unlike Carroll, works intensively at (...) a small cluster of intimately connected concepts. The central one is the concept of reality, and grouped around it are identity, memory, activity and death. One source of the play’s power - to move and disturb, as well as to amuse - is that these concepts are so important in our thinking about ourselves; but the power derives also from the sheer pertinacity and complexity and depth of the conceptual exploration. Although this can be felt by someone who does not fully realize what is going on, one’s experience of the play can be heightened, and the play made more illuminating and memorable, if one becomes consciously aware of its underlying structures. My aim here will be to make such an awareness available - both as a service (I hope) to readers who will subsequently encounter the play, and also as a defence of my judgment about what kind of play it is and how good it is of its kind. I shall write as though for readers who are ignorant of Stoppard’s play but not of Shakespeare’s. All quotations are from the Faber editions of the play. There will be no omissions within anything I quote, so any rows of ellipses in my quotations are Stoppard’s own. The chief personages are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and “the Player” - the leader of the band of tragedians who perform for Hamlet the play within the play.. (shrink)

'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'l But if things considered in themselves are neither good nor bad, if there is no realm of value existing independently of animate beings and their activities, then thought is not the activity that summons value into being. Hume reminds us, 'Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions', and while Hume's dictum has been widely disputed, we shall defend it.2 Desire, not thought, and volition, (...) not 'cognition, are the springs of good and evil. (shrink)

The aim of Kant’s Sources in Translation is to retrieve the rich intellectual world that influenced Kant’s philosophical development. In its first stage, the series makes available the most important textbooks Kant used throughout his long teaching career. Many of these textbooks are in Latin or in German and remain inaccessible to Anglophone readers. Lacking this material, however, it is difficult to appreciate Kant’s originality and process of philosophical maturation, for readers are unable to understand what prompted Kant to introduce (...) a distinction, offer a qualification, attack a position, or develop a new thesis. This background is essential to understand the genesis of Kant’s thought. -/- This volume provides a translation of Georg Friedrich Meier’s Auszugaus der Vernunftlehre, the textbook that serves not only as the basis for Kant’s lectures on logic and related Reflexionen but is also crucial for studying the so-called Jäsche Logic of 1800, which is redacted from the marginal and interleave notes found in Kant’s personal copy of Meier’s book. Given the recent growth in scholarship on Kant’s logic, normative epistemology, and the psychology of belief, this volume makes a major contribution to contemporary debates in the field. (shrink)

The aim of Kant’s Sources in Translation is to retrieve the rich intellectual world that influenced Kant’s philosophical development. In its first stage, the series makes available the most important textbooks Kant used throughout his long teaching career. Many of these textbooks are in Latin or in German and remain inaccessible to Anglophone readers. Lacking this material, however, it is difficult to appreciate Kant’s originality and process of philosophical maturation, for readers are unable to understand what prompted Kant to introduce (...) a distinction, offer a qualification, attack a position, or develop a new thesis. This background is essential to understand the genesis of Kant’s thought. -/- This volume provides a translation of Georg Friedrich Meier’s Auszugaus der Vernunftlehre, the textbook that serves not only as the basis for Kant’s lectures on logic and related Reflexionen but is also crucial for studying the so-called Jäsche Logic of 1800, which is redacted from the marginal and interleave notes found in Kant’s personal copy of Meier’s book. Given the recent growth in scholarship on Kant’s logic, normative epistemology, and the psychology of belief, this volume makes a major contribution to contemporary debates in the field. (shrink)

Theodore Waitz, in the section of his introduction to Aristotle's Organon called De Codicibus graecis organi, prints a number of passages found in various manuscripts, which are not to be treated simply as scholia on Aristotle, but are still of some interest to the student of Aristotle's logic. In this paper I am concerned with three leaves, fos. 84–6, from Laurentianus 71, 32, a fourteenth-century manuscript containing paraphrases of several works, which Waitz uses for scholia on the Categories and (...) the De Interpretatione. These leaves are in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, and Waitz thinks they originated elsewhere. The heading is: Περ τς το ποτ κτηγορς, and the work falls into two parts, a discussion of Time, based on Physics 4, and an independent section in which the category of When, which Aristotle does little more than mention in a number of lists, is treated at length. In Waitz' text there are a number of references to scholia: these are in fact from Simplicius' Commentary on the Categories, and a comparison with these and still other passages of Simplicius not mentioned by Waitz suggests that the author of this work was Boethus of Sidon, the Peripatetic. I propose to examine it and argue that it is indeed by Boethus. Boethus, known as ‘the Peripatetic’, to distinguish him from the Stoic philosopher of the same name, was head of the Peripatos in succession to Andronicus of Rhodes. There is some uncertainty about Andronicus' dates, but he lived some time in the middle of the first century b.c. and we may place Boethus somewhat later in the same century. Andronicus is well known as the editor, and in a sense the rediscoverer, of the esoteric works of Aristotle; it is less well known that he had an independent attitude to Aristotle and put forward what he presumably thought of as some improvements in doctrine. What concerns us here is his attempt to substitute the category of Time for that of When. In opposition to him Boethus may be seen as a conservative, coming to the defence of Aristotle against these innovations. (shrink)

Theodore Waitz, in the section of his introduction to Aristotle's Organon called De Codicibus graecis organi, prints a number of passages found in various manuscripts, which are not to be treated simply as scholia on Aristotle, but are still of some interest to the student of Aristotle's logic. In this paper I am concerned with three leaves, fos. 84–6, from Laurentianus 71, 32, a fourteenth-century manuscript containing paraphrases of several works, which Waitz uses for scholia on the Categories and (...) the De Interpretatione. These leaves are in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, and Waitz thinks they originated elsewhere. The heading is: Περ τς το ποτ κτηγορς, and the work falls into two parts, a discussion of Time, based on Physics 4, and an independent section in which the category of When, which Aristotle does little more than mention in a number of lists, is treated at length. In Waitz' text there are a number of references to scholia: these are in fact from Simplicius' Commentary on the Categories, and a comparison with these and still other passages of Simplicius not mentioned by Waitz suggests that the author of this work was Boethus of Sidon, the Peripatetic. I propose to examine it and argue that it is indeed by Boethus. Boethus, known as ‘the Peripatetic’, to distinguish him from the Stoic philosopher of the same name, was head of the Peripatos in succession to Andronicus of Rhodes. There is some uncertainty about Andronicus' dates, but he lived some time in the middle of the first century b.c. and we may place Boethus somewhat later in the same century. Andronicus is well known as the editor, and in a sense the rediscoverer, of the esoteric works of Aristotle; it is less well known that he had an independent attitude to Aristotle and put forward what he presumably thought of as some improvements in doctrine. What concerns us here is his attempt to substitute the category of Time for that of When. In opposition to him Boethus may be seen as a conservative, coming to the defence of Aristotle against these innovations. (shrink)

George W. Bush is not only America’s president, but also its most prominent moralist. No other president in living memory has spoken so often about good and evil, right and wrong. His inaugural address was a call to build “a single nation of justice and opportunity.” A year later, he famously proclaimed North Korea, Iran and Iraq to be an “axis of evil,” and in contrast, he called the United States “a moral nation.” He defends his tax policy in moral (...) terms, saying that it is fair, and gives back to taxpayers what is rightfully theirs. The case he makes for free trade is “not just monetary, but moral.” Open trade is a “moral imperative.” Another “moral imperative,” he says, is alleviating hunger and poverty throughout the world. He has said that “America’s greatest economic need is higher ethical standards.” In setting out the “Bush doctrine,” which defends preemptive strikes against those who might threaten America with weapons of mass destruction, he asserted: “Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place.” But in what moral truths does the president believe? Considering how much the president says about ethics, it is surprising how little serious discussion there has been of the moral philosophy of George W. Bush. (shrink)