Professor J. L. Austin published only reluctantly during his life time so that we are getting much of his major work after his death. I think this an enormous pity as there would be much to be learned from his answers to the criticisms which have already been given to his books by critical reviewers. I differ from many of the reviewers in that I think How To Do Things With Words is one of the most important books, if not the most important, to come out since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Like the Investigations, to a superficial glance it exists in isolation. That is, in it there is little discussion of current or traditional philosophical problems and the application of what is said to these problems is a matter, in large part, for the reader. The book itself consists in a set of relatively simple sentences, almost all of them about some aspect of the English language; it therefore represents not so much a problem of interpretation as the problem of which way up we shall look at it. The obvious way to look at it, the way Austin explicitly offers us, is as the Pursuit of the Performative. For reasons I shall give later, I do not think this is the best way to look at it but it is the way with which I shall start.

Prise sens éroit l'écriture automatique serait un mode d'expression basé sur l'activité subconsciente, dont se réclament plusieurs écoles d'art et de littérature contemporaines.

A dire vrai on pourrait réquire certaines formes psychologiquement inexpliquées de l'inspiration à l'écriture automatique — et ce tout au long de l'Histoire — quand les cadres logiques sont dépassés à l'insu de l'auteur ou abolis par l'interprète de l'æuvre.

Professor Sellars has invited comment on his recent article in Dialogue dealing with the problem of perception. In brief, I believe that he has formulated the question in the right way, but has reached too facile an answer to it. To begin with the area of agreement, Sellars is surely correct in rejecting the empiricism of Locke, Hume, Dewey, Russell and the rest because they either end up with sensations or ideas from which we cannot get back to the real world or else have to reduce the latter to a bewildering proliferation of sensibilia. Second, no theory of perception can be regarded as satisfactory which leaves out of account the physiological data. In this Sellars echoes the complaint of the distinguished neurologist, Russell Brain, that realist philosophers have notably neglected the part played by the body in our perception of the external world. Third, perception results from the dynamic interplay of subject and object in which sensation performs a key role. Sellars recognizes the weakness in most empiricist theories that the activity of the subject is virtually read out of the situation in order to preserve something like the common sense account of the external world.

Is Perception a form of judgment? The importance of this question is that it brings to the fore a crucial issue for modern perceptionempiricism. If perception is not a form ofjudgment, it is possible o t maintain, though still with considerable difficulty, that the senses acquaint us directly with the physical world and that a metaphysical account of reality can be excluded without undermining what the ordinary layman and the scientist alike claim to know. Judgment can then be discussed from the linguistic standpoint without raising any serious ontological questions. If, on the other hand, perception is judgment, or if in perceiving we inevitably go beyond that which is presented to the senses, then metaphysics is unavoidable unless we are prepared to abandon the hope of knowing anything at all.

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, K. R. Popper says that he has A. provided “a mathematical refutation of all those theories of induction which identify the degree to which a statement is supported or confirmed or corroborated by empirical tests with its degree of probability in the sense of the calculus of probability.” He tells us that “those who identify, explicitly or implicitly, degree of corroboration, or of confirmation, or of acceptability, with probability [are] Keynes, Jeffreys, Reichenbach, Kaila, Hosiasson, and, more recently, Carnap.”

The problem which Professor Décarie has chosen for investigation can be briefly sketched, since it is familiar. In indicating the superiority of the highest kind of contemplation to the departmental studies and to the arts, Aristotle terms it at one time ‘wisdom’, at another ‘first philosophy’, at another theology. The difference between the names seems not to be verbal, but to be accompanied by a real fluctuation of emphasis. So one question above all obtrudes itself upon the reader and is, indeed, propounded within the treatise itself in E I ( = K 7). Is the supreme theoretical science particular, being focussed upon the highest order of reality, upon pure form, upon the divine ? Or is it a comprehensive study of being qua being, which will not only consider the lesser categories of being (because these are held to be derivative from ousia), but contemplate more than one grade of ousia itself? On the one hand, the supreme science is occasionally called theologikê. On the other hand, it is also declared to ‘contemplate being qua being’, a phrase commonly understood to mean that it surveys from a certain aspect all that is real, leaving other aspects to other sciences.

C'est peut-être faire un faux pas que de placer une pensée d'Aristote en épigraphe à un essai sur un livre dont l'auteur est partisan de l'empirisme logique. Que les adhérents de l'École de Vienne veuillent bien excuser notre manque de tact, mais le mot du Stagirite nous semble tout indiqué pour servir de pensée liminaire au thème que nous nous proposons d'aborder.

As philosophers attempt to treat aesthetic evaluationof some distinctive use sentences are put to, a prime model in terms suggested for offering a “value-judgment” has been that of rendering a verdict. Collingwood, for example, some time ago wrote that the critic and civil magistrate are alike in their use of language, for judgment “means” verdict. More recently, Arnold Isenberg and Frank Sibley have agreed that at least some aesthetic judgments are verdicts, and the late Margaret Macdonald has written a widely anthologized paper defending in detail this conception. In spite of its currency, the model has fatal deficiences and rather than illustrating important aspects of our critical talk, succeeds only in revealing some dubious assumptions at work in the search for special sentence uses. Since Miss Macdonald has offered the most extensive and subtle suggestions on this topic, I will concentrate on her paper, “Some Distinctive Features of Arguments Used in Criticism of the Arts” to illustrate the points I wish to make.

Une analyse minutieusen du XXVIe discours de Thémistius, philosophe néo-platonicien et commentateur des œuvres d'Aristote qui fonda une école de philosophie à Constantinople vers 345 ap. J.-C., a fait découvrir à l'auteur qu'il s'agit d'une œuvre d'un socratique du IVe siècle av. J.-C. Ce discours aurait été écrit contre a l conception de la rhétorique exposée par Platon dans le Phédre. Thémistius non seulement s'en serait inspiré, mais I'aurait copié d'un bout à l'autre (p. 143). Dans un ouvrage antérieur (Antisthène. De la Dialectique. Université de Louvain, Recueil de travaux, Conférence d'Histoire et de Philologie. 2e s., 31e fasc, Louvain, 1935.) l'auteur avait suggéré le nom d'Antisthfène. Les critiques de E. De Strycker l'ont fait reculer. Dans cet ouvrage, il laisse tomber le nom d'Antisthène pour se rallier à un socratique anonyme, adversaire de Platon.

Les rencontres de Royaumont sur le thème de « La Philosophic analytique » ont fourni l'occasion de mettre en relief très accusé, tant par les rapports présentés que par les discussions, les tendances de l'école anglaise d'Oxford et celles de diverses écoles « continentales », pour reprendre un terme favori de Grande-Bretagne. Le colloque aura été, en définitive, une invitation à briser, de part et d'autre, l'attitude « insulaire » qui menace réellement tout courant de pensée qui se refuse pratiquement à reconnaitre les dimensions multiples des problèmes et de l'activité philosophiques.