Peter (= Carl Gustav) Hempel and I projected something like this volume some six years ago as a representative selection of his earliest and latest philosophical writings, a companion piece to the familiar collection, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, of writings earlier and later than those. We began by translating his 1934 Berlin doctoral dissertation – a piece which I finally decided to leave out. (It is available in the Hempel collection in the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh.) Included in its stead are two articles (chapters 6 and 7) that are based on that dissertation, which was published in the 1930s. The first one, a translation from the German by Christoph Ehrlenkamp, has been revised by Peter's old friend and collaborator, Olaf Helmer. The only other paper we managed to translate was Peter's 1937 “Le problème de la vérité,” chapter 4 here. Other translators of essays here were Wilfred Sellars (chapter 9) and Christian Piller (chapters 10 and 14).

In this book Peter speaks for himself; I have kept editorial comment to a minimum. But I must give some account of his long and remarkable life. The following brief biography is adapted from Erkenntnis 47 (1997) 181–83, a nd it is reprinted here with permission.

CARL GUSTAV HEMPEL JANUARY 8, 1905–NOVEMBER 9, 1997

He lived in “interesting” times, which drove him out of Germany, first to Belgium and then to the United States – where he died sixty years later in Princeton, his adoptive home, much loved and full of honors.