Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects (...) and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic. (shrink)

The 1973 archeological discovery of important documents of classical thought known as the Huang-Lao Boshu coupled with advancements in contemporary jurisprudence make possible a reassessment of the philosophies of pre-Qin and early Han China. This study attempts to elucidate the importance of the Huang-Lao school within the intellectual tradition of China through a comparison of the Boshu's philosophical position, particularly its understanding of the relation between law and morality, with the respective views of major thinkers of the period--Confucius, Han Fei, (...) Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and to a lesser extent, Shen Dao, Shen Buhai and the authors of the Guan Zi and He Guan Zi. So doing reveals Huang-Lao to be a unique and sophisticated social and political philosophy which, until its expulsion from court by Emperor Wu and subsequent adoption by Daoist religion, served as the ideological foundation for the post-Qin reforms of the early Han. (shrink)

Anton views the Aristotelian contraries as "principles of understanding, generic concepts, employed in the analysis of any determinate process whatever." He argues that the principle of contrariety simply renders process intelligible and is not, as it was for many of Aristotle's predecessors, a causal principle. In the course of his argument the author shows the use of this "formal demand for determinateness" in widely diverse areas, proceeding from the categories to ontology and language, and through psychology to ethics.--R. P.

This study of the Platonic prescription for ignorance reveals the author to be both an excellent writer and a sensitive reader of Plato. The Plato he reads is rather close to Socrates; the late dialogues, concerned as they are with the "development of a more capacious ontology," are for the most part left out of account.--R. P.

Jensen limits himself mainly to the early work of Hutcheson, i.e., Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil and Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with brief mention of his later work. This seems to be quite justified in that the more interesting and perhaps more creative work of Hutcheson appears in his earlier writings. The main thrust of this study is to examine Hutcheson’s theory of motivation and his moral sense theory, first individually and then (...) in their interrelationship. Jensen’s presentation of Hutcheson’s moral sense theory makes use of the work and scholarship of such writers as Broad, Frankena, Blackstone and Peach, although Jensen assesses these authors, and in the last chapter, offers his own suggestions for the improvement of Hutcheson’s theory. The real forte of this book lies in the author’s original examination and reflection upon Hutcheson’s theory of motivation. It is this theory, Jensen declares, which "... constitutes one of his most valuable contributions to moral philosophy." It seems to be by virtue of this theory that Hutcheson can be understood as stressing the practical and dynamic dimensions of morality. Yet coupled with the moral sense theory, the results, as Jensen takes care to show, are somewhat disastrous. Some of the problems arising from this union are the following: how the moral sense influences motivation, how "justifying reasons" relate to action, and how obligation relates to motivation. This book is a scholarly work in philosophy which illumines some perennial philosophical perplexities in the light of recent philosophical work, thus making these problems intelligible and meaningful to philosophers today.—P. R. (shrink)

A fascinating but stiffly written study in which the author convincingly argues that Spencer's work contrasts the Aristotelian and Christian views of temperance.--R. P.

A study in important aspects of the history of an idea from the 17th century to the present. The author believes that the Enlightenment founded progress on a natural law open to the rational powers of man. Following the work of Hobbes, Rousseau and Hume, progress could be justified only by reducing it to the status of an historical or sociological law, as in Hegel, Marx and Toynbee. The author's "sociology of historians" in the 17th century is especially well done.--R. (...) P. (shrink)

Although it now seems clear that no verificationalist [[sic]] account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for meaningful discourse is adequate, many philosophers still hope that some general criterion will be formulated. This book is an attempt to supply such a theory. It opens with a discussion of the various views of meaninglessness that have been proposed during this century. Taking operationalism, verificationalism, [[sic]] and the category mistake theory in turn, Erwin provides an analysis of their shortcomings. In addition to (...) the now stock criticisms of the verification theory, an argument is set out to the effect that no workable verificationalist [[sic]] position can theoretically be developed. Erwin also casts doubt on the view of meaninglessness as the lack of a truth value, and attacks Strawson's famous theory of reference failure and truth value gaps. The author's position emerges as equating meaninglessness with "a priori falseness." This would, of course, make all self contradictions meaningless, and the denial of any meaningless statement true. Both of these consequences, as well as the criterion from which they spring, are bound to be controversial. Perhaps the chief virtue of this book is that it succinctly presents all the opposing positions on the subject and gives a detailed analysis of each. Hence, even if Erwin's thesis is incorrect, his book is still worthwhile.--R. P. M. (shrink)

The author believes psychology is concerned with "the person's concrete historical engagement in his world". He carefully argues that abstract laws derived from isolated and fragmentary test situations are of little assistance in understanding the person in society. Rather, psychology must abandon the epistemology currently fashionable in the sciences and develop its own analogical laws, taking the person as its domain.--R. P.

This volume gives an overview of the subject of mathematical logic, placing primary emphasis on theory instead of the development of skills. It contains chapters on the history of logic, first and second order quantification theory, metatheory, and some of the philosophical implications of recent work in the field. Needless to say, none of these topics is treated in any great detail owing to the space limitations. Care has been taken by the author, however, to insure that his discussions do (...) not trade mistakes and clarity for brevity. Each section provides the reader with a grasp of the central issues and adequate information to approach more advanced literature with some confidence. The treatment of topics such as recursive functions, Skolem's paradox for set theory, and the place of mathematical logic in the study of philosophy is rarely found in introductory treatments. No special training in either mathematics or Logic is presupposed by any of the sections. Ample exercises are included which are, in some cases, quite challenging. Answers to many of these are provided. In addition, there is also a useful annotated bibliography.--R. P. M. (shrink)

This addition to the Comparative Studies of Cultures and Civilizations is more sharply focussed than its predecessor, Studies in Chinese Thought. Although the subject matters spans 2,500 years these twelve essays are primarily concerned with some aspect of the "use of Confucian ideas in political struggles and socio-political institutions." The authors are not so much contributing to the "history of ideas" as they are illustrating the relationships between thought and action in detailed studies of one non-Western culture. The editor's introduction (...) includes a helpful preview of the whole.--R. P. (shrink)

Not a conventional history, this work is organized in terms of the author's understanding of the developing ideas of philosophy from the Italian Renaissance to the twentieth century. The first part of the work is developed along the tensions between the empiricist and Platonic traditions; thus Berkeley is seen in relation to Locke and Hume but also to the Cambridge Platonists. A novel facet of the middle part of the work is the large section separating Leibniz and Kant, devoted to (...) the developing critical spirit in Les Philosophes from Bayle to the Encyclopedia and to Rousseau and Condillac, as well as Thomas Reid and the Scottish school of common sense. After the Hegelians the work closes with a brief discussion of the philosophies of action and process and existentialism. Boas gives to many of his subjects interesting and valuable reinterpretations within the perspective of a concern for the development of ideas.--R. P. (shrink)

Although Toffler has not written an in-depth philosophical analysis of social problems, he certainly has written a highly readable popular diagnosis of the phenomenon of cultural change which social philosophers should be considering, and has given a synoptic view of contemporary culture similar to Pitirim Sorokin's popular Crisis of Our Age in the forties. Toffler's thesis is "that there are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first (...) determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply cannot tolerate." Future shock is, therefore, both the physical and psychological impairment caused by reluctance and inability to absorb the rapid changes that an age of discontinuity produces. Psychic distress is identified in Leon Festinger's arresting phrase, "cognitive dissonance," the rejection or denial of information that challenges preconceptions. Physical distress is analyzed by such interesting research tools as the Rahe Life-Change Units Scale which attempts to correlate change factors with physical health. The philosophic base of modern life is seen in a Heraclitean or Bergsonian flux which ontologizes change itself and sees social and political conflict inevitably provoked by rapid change confronting an older society whose substantialist structures reflect more the stable and enduring values of an older culture. It is from the vantage point of change theory that Toffler explains the contemporary turmoil in domestic, social, political, and religious realms; and although he does not employ the more formal idiom of a Vico or Spengler in the discussion of Zeitgeist, he recognizes thought and life style as even more significant than ever in a culture in which communication is so widespread and immediate. He uses the imagery of eight hundred 62-year lifetimes to illustrate man's history of the last 50,000 years, noting the comparative stability of the previous segments and the bewildering rapidity of change cycle of idea, application, and diffusion in the last sixty-year period. He analyzes progressively the accelerative thrust that creates conflict between cultures and generations; describes the typical attitudes of citizens in an Age of Transience towards time, things, places, people, organization, and ideas; and sees "modular" man as a being for whom permanence of marriage, career, educational values, and convictions yields to "temporariness." Organizations in such a climate are characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical power relationships in which "super-industrial man," committed more to his craft than to his company, assumes more decision-making responsibility in an "adhocracy" of transient values and relationships. Toffler interestingly sees bureaucracy on the decline, technology as contributing to plurality of choice rather than to standardization, and to a kinetic imagery of impermanence in aesthetics. For the most part, Toffler, the diagnostician, resists the temptation to be the pleader. His happily infrequent divagations produce less than satisfactory critiques of family life, education, and genetic engineering. It is inevitable that this book will be criticized by specialists as bewilderingly diffuse, and verging at times on science fiction; it is possible too that the strategy of "social futurism" suggested by the author will elicit less than undiluted enthusiasm, and that inexact references to Toynbee and Maritain may be questioned. But the essential purpose of this volume to give a unified vision of contemporary culture in terms of the adaptive reaction to change--all this has been admirably realized. And one feels that the author indeed possesses the vision and research tools for particularized study in the areas treated here quite generally.--R. P. M. (shrink)

In this extremely well-written study, the author interprets man as striving towards the fullness of his personal freedom, which is achieved in the love of God. Werner's intimate familiarity with the history of philosophy and his awareness of the findings of biology and psycho-analysis enable him to develop his theme with rigor and depth. --R. P. I.

Perhaps no work since John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice has attracted as much recent attention as Robert Nozick’s case for a minimal state—an ingeniously argued critique, not only of antinomian individualism, but also of liberal and socialist contractualism. It might be added that the book is no solace either to more conservative political theorists, who lament state incursion into private life, but whose political structures exhibit either actual or potential constriction of human life. Nozick’s book is both a searching (...) examination of the limitations of utilitarian consequentialism and the redistributivism of Rawls. His essential theme is that "a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts etc., is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right." It is also Nozick’s contention that the coercive power of the state should not be used paternalistically to prohibit activities to people for their own protection, or to force some citizens to aid others. The last part of the book is a framework for Nozick’s utopia, and it is in this section that an essentially theoretical approach, amplified by little political or sociological data, exhibits its defects. One suspects that almost all states started with simplistic hopes for minimal coercive activity, and succumbed almost inevitably to the metastasis of function as socio-political life grew in size and complexity. Night watchmen become more than night watchmen when more than watching is needed. Moreover, Nozick’s utopia would seem to necessitate, at least by implication, coercive redistributivism and some kind of compensatory or levelling taxation process. This reviewer is not sure that he understands precisely what Nozick considers correct property theory in a state of nature. The author modestly asserts the tentative, incomplete, and conjectural nature of his work. But the taxed and manipulated citizen who grows in sympathy for the sentiments of Proudhon’s famous litany should welcome this highly literate and well argued case.—R.P.M. (shrink)

This edition makes available the author's privately printed Course of Lectures on Aesthetics, a 1920 article, "Mind and Medium in Art," in which appreciation and creation are sharply distinguished, and his well known, but already reprinted, article on "Psychical Distance." The author held that the future of aesthetics lies in psychology, and argues in his Lectures that aesthetics is the systematic attitude which "man takes up vis-à-vis human life."--R. P.

This work, which first appeared in 1936, offers in addition to an historical treatment displaying Cassirer's characteristic insight, an analysis of quantum mechanics largely unaffected by subsequent development in the field. The author argues, on the basis of epistemological considerations, that quantum mechanics necessitates no major revisions in our basic understanding of causality. The new laws simply refer to "definite collectives" rather than things or events and are no less determinate than the old. In the final part the author stresses (...) the independence of causality and continuity in nature and closes by sensibly warning the reader against attempting to establish ethical freedom within the gaps of physical law. Henry Margenau has expanded the bibliography and added a helpful preface which, in part, reports Cassirer's thoughts up to 1945.--R. P. (shrink)

A detailed analysis of Leopold Ranke’s blending of universal values with factual data in the writing of scientific history, especially helpful in explaining Ranke’s intellectual development, and showing that Ranke’s famous claim to portray what actually happened was much more than an unqualified commitment to factual history. The author suggests that, despite the formidable reputation of Ranke in giving to his discipline a new direction and a new role for history in culture, his was not any startling discovery of the (...) new, as much as an unprecedented way of combining notions and contexts. Ranke is seen as a complex character, committed to factuality, objectivity, the uniqueness of historical forms, the analysis of states as "ideas of God" representing collective destinies, but even more concerned with the connectedness of history in its universality and individuality. Ranke, though involved in epistemological questions, was wary of philosophy. He saw in the term "philosophy of history" a devious invention of philosophers for the enslavement of history. He was certainly wrong in his early appraisal of philosophy as "always negating." Yet for the general, abstract, and universal, Ranke developed a progressive sympathy in the important process of historical understanding, and in his later years he saw philosophy as more than the Fichtean romanticism which seemed so far removed from objectivity. He sided with his friends Schelling and Schleiermacher against Hegel at the University of Berlin. (shrink)

In 1938 Maurice Mandelbaum published his well-known work, The Problem of Historical Knowledge, an insightful study of relativism, judgments of fact and value, causation, and the philosophy of history. Consequent to the publication of this work, the author noted increased interest in these problems, beginning with Carl Hempel’s "The Function of General Laws in History," and R. Collingwood’s posthumous work, The Idea of History, muted interest in the "fact" and "value" problems of the 30s in favor of the kinds of (...) explanation that can be sought or found in history. (shrink)

The main thesis of this book is that Wittgenstein’s early philosophy is an exemplification of Newtonian physics, whereas the later philosophy exemplifies contemporary, relativistic physics. The reader may recall Wittgenstein’s insistence, during both major periods of his thought, upon the separation of philosophy from science. However, Bolton’s unstated premise is that Wittgenstein’s thought was unconsciously determined by two different conceptions of physics. Whatever one may think of this, it leaves a question unanswered. Since both periods of Wittgenstein’s thought follow the (...) development of relativistic physics, why was he initially influenced by Newtonian physics or its expression in modern philosophy? Was this a contingent error of the youthful Wittgenstein, or an expression of historical inevitability? We find no discussion of this difficult problem in Bolton’s book. Instead, he claims, and to some extent shows, that Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, crystallizes the axioms of modern philosophy, which is essentially Newtonian. At the historical level, this thesis is either wrong or uninformative. It is wrong because not all of modern philosophy can be explained on the basis of the peculiarities of modern or Newtonian physics. It is uninformative because to the extent that all modern philosophers took Newtonian physics for granted, the latter cannot account for the sharp differences between, say, John Locke and Hegel. Nevertheless, Bolton provides interesting and plausible reasons for regarding the Tractatus as an expression of that aspect of modern philosophy which may profitably be called "Newtonian." He fails to convince at least one reader that the repudiation of the Tractatus is a repudiation of modern philosophy for anyone other than Wittgenstein and his followers. On the other hand, once we discount, or even disregard, Bolton’s historical thesis, the more traditional virtues of his book come sharply into focus. Having recently reviewed the 686 page commentary by Baker and Hacker on the first third of the Investigations, as well as Wright’s 481 page essay on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, the author of this note is in a good position to appreciate the economy and lucidity of Bolton’s summary analysis of the main points in the Tractatus. As an example of my disagreement with Bolton’s interpretation, I begin with a brief citation from p. 86. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this book is to probe the "deep common sources" of Wittgenstein’s Investigations and Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics in his later philosophy of language. The question is whether Wittgenstein’s thought about mathematics can be presented sympathetically, and so defended from charges of superficiality or eccentricity which have often been levelled against it. There are other strands in this complex, simultaneously gripping and maddening work, including confrontations of varying extent with relevant doctrines of Dummett, Davidson, and (...) Quine, to cite the main cases. The character of Wittgenstein’s own thought was far from systematic, yet this does not seem to justify the virtual lack of systematic presentation of his defense by Wright. We can, nevertheless, pick out the main thrust of Wright’s case. The author takes his bearings by the quarrel within twentieth century philosophy of mathematics between platonism and intuitionism. Platonism may be briefly described as the view that, if p is a mathematical proposition, we know what would be the case if p were true, even if we can't show that p is true. For intuitionism, on the other hand, to know what would be the case if p were true, is impossible unless we can show that p is indeed true. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which (...) is sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

In Law's Empire, Ronald Dworkin advances two incompatible versions of law as integrity. On the strong thesis, political integrity understood as coherence in fundamental moral principles constitutes an overriding constraint on justice, fairness and due process. On the weak thesis, political integrity, while a value, is not to be privileged over justice, fairness, and due process, but to be weighed along with them. I argue that the weak thesis is superior on both of Dworkin's criteria: fit and justifiability. However, the (...) weak thesis must be amended to allow for coherence in policies as well as in principles: the social consequences of legal decisions must be taken into account. (shrink)

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the non transcendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei‐Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in termsof the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects (...) and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic. (shrink)

Following promulgation of the Nuremberg code in 1947, the ethics of research on human subjects has been a challenging and often contentious topic of debate. Escalation in the use of research participants in low-income countries over recent decades , has intensified the debate on the ethics of international research and led to increasing attention both to exploitation of vulnerable subjects and to considerations of how the 10:90 gap in health and medical research could be narrowed. In 2000, prompted by the (...) discussions over several years that led to the US NIH launching a capacity building programme on research ethics for members of research ethics committees in developing countries, we advanced a ‘new look’ for the ethics of international research.1 Since then progress has been made on several fronts.First, our ideas—considered somewhat radical and impractical at the time—have been provocatively addressed by scholars who have either contested them or advanced similar conceptions of what obligations international researchers have to research participants and communities in low income countries before, during and after clinical trials. Second, those researchers who have been sympathetic to our ideas have either endeavoured to put these into practice or have investigated the feasibility of doing so. Third, the intractability of the 10/90 gap and the escalation of interest in global health have sensitised many to the need to amplify the uptake of these ideas in practice.Here, we briefly review the conceptual and practical developments in international research ethics. While much conceptual progress has been made (and the concepts are now appearing …. (shrink)

Jensen limits himself mainly to the early work of Hutcheson, i.e., Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil and Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with brief mention of his later work. This seems to be quite justified in that the more interesting and perhaps more creative work of Hutcheson appears in his earlier writings. The main thrust of this study is to examine Hutcheson’s theory of motivation and his moral sense theory, first individually and then (...) in their interrelationship. Jensen’s presentation of Hutcheson’s moral sense theory makes use of the work and scholarship of such writers as Broad, Frankena, Blackstone and Peach, although Jensen assesses these authors, and in the last chapter, offers his own suggestions for the improvement of Hutcheson’s theory. The real forte of this book lies in the author’s original examination and reflection upon Hutcheson’s theory of motivation. It is this theory, Jensen declares, which "... constitutes one of his most valuable contributions to moral philosophy." It seems to be by virtue of this theory that Hutcheson can be understood as stressing the practical and dynamic dimensions of morality. Yet coupled with the moral sense theory, the results, as Jensen takes care to show, are somewhat disastrous. Some of the problems arising from this union are the following: how the moral sense influences motivation, how "justifying reasons" relate to action, and how obligation relates to motivation. This book is a scholarly work in philosophy which illumines some perennial philosophical perplexities in the light of recent philosophical work, thus making these problems intelligible and meaningful to philosophers today.—P. R. (shrink)

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects (...) and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic. (shrink)

We have here a skeletal but suggestive sketch of the author's rejection of historicism and of history as progress; the history of philosophy serves as paradigm.--R. P.