My objective here is to sketch a proposal against the many who insist on reading Rorty as arguing within traditional philosophy, in spite of his contentions to the contrary. I want to suggest that Rorty should be read as importantly outside the philosophical tradition and as an external critic. My proposal turns on roughing out how Rorty's brand of prag- matism differs from more familiar sorts.

Plusieurs ont pu dire de Heidegger qu'il était résolument contre la technique. Et—il faut bien le reconnaître—beaucoup de choses dans ce qu7apos;il a écrit ou exprimé permettent effectivement d'avancer une telle thèse, quoique Heidegger ait lui-même protesté contre cette simplification de sa pensée. L'on pourrait citer ici un auteur, dont la critique touchant cette question ne présente rien de vraiment original, mais quijustement par son manque d'originalité traduit assez bien l'opinion la plus largement répandue, et aussi la plus facilement acceptée

The relation of will to belief is an issue of perennial philosophical and religious interest. Most of the classical accounts of religious belief, both ancient and modern, have accorded the will an important, if not the decisive, role. In the philosophy of mind, the issue has traditionally been one of the major dividing lines, some philosophers arguing a position near that of Descartes, that the will is a constituent element of belief, others siding with Spinoza and Hume, arguing that it is not. But what really is the issue? Much recent discussion of belief and will has been devoted to the question whether we can believe at will apart from any sort of evidence—what has been called belief by fiat. While it may be that this is the most natural interpretation of the claim that belief is based on will, it is certainly not the only one. What is more, most of those who have argued for the importance of the will in belief have never really asserted it. No doubt, one can glean statements from their writings that seem to suggest it; but with due allowance for rhetorical excess, a careful reading of their positions will, I think, show that they were really dealing with other issues. What I hope to accomplish in raising again the issue of will and belief is to advance and defend a set of claims that gets at these other issues. Throughout, my concern will be primarily with religious beliefs, and this not simply out of personal and professional interest, but because the issues I want to discuss arise more clearly (though by no means exclusively) in relation to beliefs of this sort.

Les questions fondationnelles en logique et en mathématiques (ou encore en physique), les questions de fond et de fondements sont-elles des questions qui relèvent de la foi ou de la croyance ou des questions susceptibles d'analyse rigoureuse et philosophiquement décidables? C'est cette interrogation que je veux développer et à laquelle j'apporterai une réponse personnelle.

Cet article s'ajoute à la liste déjà longue de ceux qui traitent des rapports entre la théorie russellienne des descriptions définies et la théorie ramifiée des types. Seule la prétention d'aborder cette question dans une perspective nouvelle justifie ici sa présence: d'une part, la théorie des descriptions définies sera resituée dans le contexte initial et souvent méconnu de la théorie des expressions dénotantes et d'autre part, c'est à la logique intensionnelle de Russell, objet d'une méconnaissance au moins égale, que nous nous intéresserons. De plus, c'est du point de vue de la théorie de la signification et non pas du point de vue ontologique, génético-historique ou logico-mathematique que nous nous proposons de traiter de ces rapports.

In the sixth chapter of his Theory of Knowledge Roderick Chisholm refers to an example suggested by Alexius Meinong in order to show that the traditional definition of knowledge is in need of some modification. In this paper I should like to show that Chisholm's argument rests on a mistaken assumption as to what an individual's doxastic responsibilities are.

As is well known, the Humean account of causal inference gives a central location to inference habits. Some of these habits one can discipline. Thus, one can so discipline oneself as to reason in accordance with the “rules by which to judge of causes and effects” (173ff.), that is, one can discipline oneself to think scientifically, rather than, say, in accordance with the rules of prejudice (146f.), or of superstition (271). All such judgments, even those of science, are, however, upon the Humean account fallible. Some, or rather very many, have raised the issue about how any such causal judgment or inference is justified. That is, how can such inference habits be justified, shown to be reasonable. Hume meets this challenge by arguing that there are some habits all men do and must have. Because we must have them we ought to have them. They are, therefore, justified.

To speak of hybris in the case of Parmenides seems hardly justified. He is addressed by the unnamed goddess to whose abode he journeys as κoũρε, “youth” or “initiate”, hardly a term of great respect in Greek usage. He is guided on his path, i.e., he has not found it by himself, and he receives a truth he never claims as his own. Could a mortal show greater awareness of his limitations? Yet, in an oddly disturbing way the distinction between the divine and the human is obliterated—the worst kind of hybris for Greek thought and feeling.

It is commonly agreed that Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence is hard to understand. The difficulty lies not so much in any great complexity or highly technical character as in uncertainty over what kind of doctrine it is intended to be. Without knowing this we are in no position to agree upon the guidelines for assessing its validity or invalidity. In this discussion I intend to suggest an approach to the problem which will help us to answer these questions—and to avoid some of the difficulties encountered by previous interpretations.

William Newton-Smith is a fine young Canadian philosopher of science who has spent the last decade in productive thought at Balliol, Oxford. His new work, The Rationality of Science, follows hot on the heels of his other book, The Structure of Time (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). And with them he establishes himself as a major force to be reckoned with in philosophical circles.

For some time now ethical debates have been fought on a field whose boundaries are the historical theories of Kant's deontology and Mill's utilitarianism. Recently, however, several have chosen to leave the battlefield entirely—to suggest, in various ways, that both of the major ethical theories share a common, flawed outlook. Thomas Nagel, for example, has argued that founding ethics on the sole ground of interpersonal obligations (a common feature of Kantianism and utilitarianism) unnecessarily “fragments” human value. Such an account has the effect of pitting one species of human value (duties to others) against other quite legitimate values (personal goals and special relationships). Or approaching the matter from quite another direction, Philippa Foot also holds that morality, as a system of interpersonal obligations, is too limiting. However, she proposes to counter the advancing forces of modern ethics by championing an Aristotelian doctrine of virtue.

I offer here an interpretation and defense of John Stuart Mill's qualitative hedonism. One of the results of Mill's well-known mental crisis was a concept of utility substantially different from the orthodox Benthamite quantitative hedonism which Mill came to regard as being fraught with difficulties. He saw Bentham's concept as being excessively narrow, and he sought to overcome its limitations by enlarging his own concept of utility. He did this by including the quality of pleasures along with the quantity in the estimation of their worth. At the same time, Mill was highly critical of the intuitionist ethical theories of his day, and propounded utilitarianism as the rational, objective, and scientific alternative. So if Mill is to succeed in his enterprise of countering intuitionism while avoiding the pitfalls of Benthamite utilitarianism, he must retain the objectivity of Benthamism while repudiating its narrowness. Mill's critics have argued that when he opened up his concept of utility to include quality, he modified his theory so radically that he can no longer be called a hedonistic utilitarian, and that he relinquished the consis- tency and objectivity of Benthamite utilitarianism along with its weak- nesses. I argue here that Mill abandons neither hedonism nor utilitarianism, and that the objectivity and consistency of his theory are not undermined.

Scientific realism at least in large measure reflects the conviction that physics limns the true nature of reality; that it is the right metaphysical picture of things. This conviction is in turn a product of the failure of positivism's attempt to expunge metaphysics from the corpus of philosophically respectable activities. Since natural science is objective knowledge of the world par excellence post-positivists have embraced it as the ontology which their predecessors had failed to make unnecessary. Scientific realism is metaphysics, shameless or unashamed.

This book deserves far more attention from philosophers and from the general public than it has so far received. Perhaps it is too much to hope that the hoary old myths about Philosophy having no practical relevance will ever be completely exploded. But if a sizeable number of thinking adults were to read this succinct and readable work, it might go a long way towards their demolition.

In the first chapter of Karl Marx's Theory of History, G. A. Cohen contrasts Marx's image of history with Hegel's, contrasts, that is, a powerful form of historical idealism with historical materialism. Historical idealism stresses the “dominion of thought” (Gedankenherrschaft); social change, on such an account, is to be explained principally in terms of changes in consciousness, the course of history being determined by fundamental ruling ideas and conceptions. This view is to be contrasted with historical materialism. The central vision of history in Hegel is formulated as follows by Cohen, “History is the history of the world spirit (and, derivatively of human consciousness) which undergoes growth in self-knowledge, the stimulus and vehicle of which is a culture, which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain” (26). Marx's vision, a historical materialist vision, is identical in structure with Hegel's, but endows the structure with a new content. This can be seen from the parallel formulation of it, given by Cohen: “History is the history of human industry, which undergoes growth in productive power, the stimulus and vehicle of which is an economic structure which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain (26).

Ce nouvel examen des Fragments et Témoignages de/sur Zénon d'Elée, Maurice Caveing l'a entrepris pour combler et les deficiences des études sur Zénon inspirées par la science moderne qui font peu de cas de l'histoire de la philosophic grecque, et celles des travaux d'héllenistes qui n'ont aucune idée des solutions modernes apportees au problème du continu.

Gallop's criticisms are so extensive and so vigorous that one may wonder how he could mean it when he praises my book in the ways he does at the beginning and end of his notice. In the hope of making it believable that some at least of the praise is deserved, I will try to show that much of the criticism is not as damaging as it may at first appear. Most of what I say will be of a rather general nature, and that is perhaps unfortunate when Gallop has gone into so many interesting questions of detail; but one of my general defences will be that this discussion of particular questions not only does not, but could not, support the objection that the decision procedure that is illustrated in the book is incapable of dealing with all too many of the moral dilemmas an average person is likely to have to face.