The proposition is not that there are a number of essentially distinct species or natures in the world of sensible things. It asserts the existence of nothing, though its intention is to assert something that, if true, is necessarily true of really existent things. Should existences be found to have natures that are essentially distinct, then the natural kinds thus discovered will necessarily constitute a hierarchical order.

This volume is dedicated to Mario Bunge in honor of his sixtieth birthday. Mario Bunge is a philosopher of great repute, whose enormous output includes dozens of books in several languages, which will culminate with his Treatise on Basic Philosophy projected in seven volumes, four of which have already appeared [Reidel, I 974ff. ]. He is known for his works on research methods, the foundations of physics, biology, the social sciences, the diverse applications of mathematical methods and of systems analysis, (...) and more. Bunge stands for exact philosophy, classical liberal social philosophy, rationalism and enlightenment. He is brave, even relentless, in his attacks on subjectivism, mentalism, and spiritualism, as well as on positivism, mechanism, and dialectics. He believes in logic and clarity, in science and open-mindedness - not as the philosopher's equivalent to the poli tician's rhetoric of motherhood and apple pie, but as a matter of everyday practice, as qualities to cultivate daily in our pursuit of the life worth living. Bunge's philosophy often has the quality of Columbus's egg, and he is prone to come to swift and decisive conclusions on the basis of argu ments which seem to him valid; he will not be perturbed by the fact that most of the advanced thinkers in the field hold different views. (shrink)

The world today is divided not only by conflicting interests and ambitions, but also by rival conceptions of freedom. It is often pointed out that whereas the Anglo-American liberty, won chiefly through victories of dissenting religious sects, was mainly attentive to the rights of minorities, the French conception, owing much to Rousseau's theory of the General Will, and to the drastic course of revolution, put the emphasis on the sovereignty of the people and majority rights. In England the battles for (...) freedom were won, not on the barricades, but in Parliament, and not wholesale but bit by bit. However much the West may have ironed out in practice the discordance between these rival conceptions, the impact on the twentieth century has been momentous; for Hegel took over Rousseau's General Will. Marx and Engels adopted Hegel, somewhat inverted, and the Soviets built on Marx and Engels. This lineage of theory, as Edward Hallett Carr has pointed out, provides a background and a rationale for the Soviet emphasis on political solidarity and unanimity, and the corresponding neglect of individual and minority rights. For the backward and colonial nations today the Soviets, therefore, represent the ideal of popular unity to carry out large-scale economic plans, which usually require a drastic break with the past and new leaders; whereas the United States symbolizes economic aid with competition and opposition rights upheld. (shrink)