Review of Metaphysics, The

Poincaré, Kant, and the Scope of Mathematical Intuition

In a series of important monographs and articles, Michael Friedman has helped us to appreciate this disjunction as philosophically deep and as historically momentous. [...] in Dynamics of Reason (2001), Reconsidering Logical Positivism (1999), and elsewhere, Friedman argues that, as a matter of intellectual history, Poincaré's refusal to extend Kant's account of mathematical synthesis from arithmetic to geometry contributed to the collapse of Kant's distinction between forms of intuition and...

Absolute Identity/Unity

[...] this terminological coinage is questionable because "absolute" means "without relation," and Leibniz's Law rests on the relation between numerical and qualitative identity. [...] in what follows the notion of "absolute identity" shall be reserved for an even ontologically stronger understanding; (5) finally there is the strong ontologica! notion, which can be found in the monism of Parmenides and Spinoza, of an all-identity, an identity of everything with everything in the form of one ...

Aquinas On Limits to Political Responsibility for Virtue: A Comparison to Al-Farabi

Natural make-up and character determine the capacity of a people or nation to receive a religion. Since a ruler has a responsibility for moral virtue that is not limited by city or even by nation, and since virtue is inseparable from religion, an obligation for jihad in the sense of offensive war has to be weighed against the capacity of a people to receive a religion.

The Sovereignty of the Metaphysical in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Though there have been a variety of valuable studies of the interrelationship of Hegelian metaphysics and politics, the philosophical problem of the universal11 and its becoming, one which Hegel witnesses in the Logic as originating with Eleatic "Being," has not been integrated into the mapping of his political thought.12 Hegel's primary quest to fully articulate the transformation of being out of itself- a project initiated out of "being" as the preliminary phase of both the major and minor ...

Liberalism in Retreat

By contrast, ordinary moral norms, which depend critically on choice and circumstance, are suited to nonconstructivist approaches to norms. Because political theorists often act as if ethical norms are all of one type, they are forced on the one hand to cycle between, a kind of pure Kantian constructivism which reduces every moral norm to a law, and, on the other extreme, a form of pure Hayekianism where there are no ex ante principles not themselves the result of an evolutionary process.

Tayloring Reformed Epistemology: Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga and the de Jure Challenge to Christian Belief

Reformed epistemology endeavors to show that theists suffer from no epistemic defect because no argument or evidence is required in order for religious belief to be rational. According to Wolterstorff, epistemic entitlement comes from engaging in doxastic practices that constitute doing one's epistemic duty.

Aristotle's Ethics As First Philosophy

[...] Baracchi argues that we cannot give an adequate account of the theoretical disciplines without reference to practice, nor can we fully grasp what is distinctive about the practical disciplines without appreciating their theoretical dimensions. First philosophy is not to be confused with episteme (science): it is intrinsically ethical.

Heidegger and Aristotle. Philosophy As Praxis

Bowler shows how specific formulations and criticisms in Heidegger's lectures from the Freiburg and Marburg periods relate to the themes of philosophy as an ideal task in Rickert, Husserl's development of a phenomenology of the environing world, Natorp's Heidegger-like formulation of science as a project (Vorwurf), and Dilthey's grounding of the human sciences in a nonnaturalistic reliving of the connectedness (Zusammenhang) of the world in which meaning is historically constituted. [...] Bo...

A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism

Braver means to achieve his goal of preparing the ground for a meaningful and profitable dialogue between the two traditions by reworking a "commensurable vocabulary" so as to make continental thought more readily intelligible to analytic thinkers; the greater part of the book is dedicated to tracing the history of anti-realism in continental philosophy, beginning with Kant, through Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and ending with Derrida.

Nietzsche's Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography

Brobjer's method of research includes an intensive examination of Nietzsche's notebooks, his letters, his personal library, and the record of his borrowings from libraries and purchases from booksellers. Brobjer concludes his book with three very useful tables: 1 a chronological listing of Nietzsche's philosophical reading, with helpful annotations about ramifications and references in Nietzsche's writings; 2 philosophical titles in Nietzsche's library about which it is unknown if and when h...

Human Rights Ethics: A Rational Approach

If I want the best criticism from others, I must do whatever is necessary to maximize their ability to think and to participate in the discussion. [...] the catalogs of rights found in such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are to be understood as an account of the causally necessary conditions for the maximally effective exercise of the right to freedom of thought and speech. [...] we should expect that there will be more, perhaps many more, such conditions that we hav...

Contract, Culture, and Citizenship

The author's mantra, "contract makes citizens, not the other way around," mentioned throughout the book's five chapters - one devoted to each theorist, except for Locke, who earns two - is meant to convey this abiding theoretical concern for what happens the day after the social contract and the need for norms, habits, and spaces of public reason that foster civic skills, but this book also shows how important the day before is, how certain kinds of political culture are required for contract...

Becoming a Subject: Reflections in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Characterizing emotions as "total orientations to the world," she emphasizes how they express what one cares about. [...] she addresses the role of social interaction in the development of the child's emotional repertoire.

Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida

In the course of the dialogue, Chérif tells us that Islamic scholars, unlike Samuel P. Huntington and Bernard Lewis, reject the notion that there is a clash of cultures between Islam and the West. The silent majorities of moderate Muslims, he is convinced, condemn the use of religion for political purposes and are opposed to the misguided and fanatical extremists who act in the name of Islam.

Religion and the American Future

[...] Habermas asks whether secularists have the moral strength to countenance the view of believers. [...] this discussion dealt solely with the judicial interpretation of religious principles.

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

Chapter 4 examines the philosophical psychology of St. Thomas and Aristotle, considering the immateriality of the human soul, the critical distinction between primary and secondary actuality, and the impossibility of explaining human rationality by an absurd, Dawkins-like appeal to evolutionary materialism. Citing Ockham's infamous razor as a certain skeptical preparatory formulation for later modern errors, for instance, the author notes that Christopher Hitchens, while praising Ockham's sk...

Experience and the World's Own Language. A Critique of John Mcdowell's Empiricism

The basic problem of such a theory, he claims, is to specify the meanings of declarative sentences, and this problem can be solved, primarily, by admitting propositions as the referents of such sentences. [...] in explaining meaning, understanding, and communication, Gaskin assigns primacy to an ontologically substantial world of referents, including propositions, objects, concepts, universals, and functions.

What Is Analytic Philosophy?

Chapters 3 through 7 evaluate proposed definitions of analytic philosophy. [...] in chapter 3 Glock addresses a number of geolinguistic definitions, arguing they fail for both historical reasons and because of the diverse geolinguistic orientations of contemporary analytic philosophers.

Partisans of Allah

Jalal declares the perception by Muslims and non-Muslims of the notion of jihad in the Qur'an as "ideological warfare against nonMuslims," to be "a hopeless distortion of a concept that is the core principle of Islamic faith and ethics" (pp. 3-4). While the book is replete with examples of what the author describes as "deviations" from Qur'anic ethical purity concerning jihad, it is light on convincing argument that the Kharajites [whom she blames for muddying the waters of jihad] were wrong...

The Philosophy of Karl Popper

Cloth, $70.00- Karl Raimund Popper is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. [...] unlike Wittgenstein and Heidegger he was given the privilege of being "schillped," that is, of being presented with one of the volumes, in his case the fifteenth, of the "Library of Living Philosophers" The Philosophy of Karl Raimund Popper, 1974 - the series has been continued by Peter Caws and has reached volume thirty-two by now.

An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy: Basic Concepts

Regarding the sixth theme, "cosmos and nature," Koterski explains how, by assimilating Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic philosophies, traditional Roman jurisprudence, and the Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomical models to their own religious belief in divine creation and redemption, medieval philosophers were able to sustain a concept of "nature" as the "structuring element" built by God into each creature to facilitate realization of its full potential.

A La Recherche de L'Humanité. Science, Poésie Ou Raison Pratique Dans La Philosophie Politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss Et James Madison

Marshall describes the unfolding of modern thought in terms of the application of each mode of reasoning in political life. [...] under the aegis of the Enlightenment, politics was perceived largely through the lens of science.

Doubt Truth to Be a Liar

[...] by embracing the correspondence theory of truth and combining it with dialetheism one is committed to the view that reality which makes our statements true is to some extent inconsistent or contradictory. [...] there is a visual afterimage of a certain kind which, after a considerable period of gazing at continuous motion, makes a stationary scene to appear to be moving, without any change of place.

Perspectival Thought: A Plea for Moderate Relativism

When the self does not figure in the explicit content, the thought is implicitly de se - like when I come to know that my legs are crossed "from the inside." Since there is no explicit selfidentification in implicit de se thoughts, they are immune to error through misidentification while explicit de se thoughts are not.

On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy

[...] the syllogism Singular (S) Particular (P) Universal (U) clearly shows, according to Ross, the formative process which civil society must exercise on individuals, in order to prepare them for their political life. [...] the nature of state intervention in the economic activity of civil society, Ross argues, is distinctly reflected in the syllogism S-U-P.

The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion

Other discussions are somewhat selective. [...] in discussing Hume's general empiricist orientation, Russell draws upon the dispute over whether empiricism undercuts any conception of God we may have.

The Verge of Philosophy

[...] these topics do not exhaust the philosophical scope of this fine book. What I find of primary interest here is the juxtaposition of penetrating insights which Sallis provides us concerning the multiple and logically evasive nature of philosophical beginnings, not to mention that Heidegger himself had quite a lot of speculatively creative things to say about the Platonic turn in the history of metaphysics.

The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

Apart from him, some philosophers of science claim that Renaissance humanism delayed the advent of modern science by breaking the scholastic tradition of exact logic and rigorous demonstration. Santayana tells us, "The humanists of the Renaissance were lovers of Greek and good Latin, scornful of all that was crabbed, technical, or fanatical; they were pleasantly learned men, free from any kind of austerity, who, without quarreling with Christian dogma, treated it humanely, and partly by tole...

Torts and Rights

Stevens, in a comparison of common law of torts with the civilian law of derelict, reminds his reader that common law is judge-made law whereas codes of civil law are not although it remains true that the civil law cannot be understood without the clarifications and developments by the courts. While the subject matter and many distinctions made within the volume are second nature to the student and to the practitioner of law, the book, written for the novice, may have value to the profession...

The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

Teichmann's review of major themes in her thinking has four aims: (1) "to present Anscombe's thought in as clear a way as is possible without falsifying or simplifying it"; (2) to bring out "the manifold connections between her thoughts on different topics"; (3) "to engage with what Anscombe says, as opposed to merely expounding it"; and (4) to develop or apply "her ideas beyond the limits of her original discussions" (pp. 1-2). No major theses or theories emerge, but here, as later (reflect...