If Hegel's philosophy were to be characterized by a phrase, it might be “The Dialectical System of Absolute Spirit.” The phrase would seem formidable to some but merely pretentious to others. There are recent signs of an exhumation of the systematic features of Hegel's philosophy in the English-speaking world, and it is to be hoped that the durable clichés of an earlier English period will not prevent a fresh look at Hegel's philosophy. There is, of course, no denying his systematic ambitions, nor any wish on my part to do so. It is just these that I find fascinating. He sought to bring within a comprehensive intellectual order the whole of reality—and a little more besides, say his detractors. In the Phenomenology of Spirit by a turbulent dialectic he scrabblesup to the top of Mount Parnassus in order to clutch the petticoats of the Absolute. In the Science of Logic and in the first part of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences he lays out the logical paradigm of intellectual necessities which are subsequently exhibited in the philosophy of nature and of concrete spirit.

The mainstream of the philosophy of science in the second quarter of this century—the so-called “logical empiricist” or “logical positivist” movement—assumed that theoretical language in science is parasitic upon observation language and can be eliminated from scientific discourse by disinterpretation and formalization, or by explicit definition in or reduction to observational language. But several fashionable views now place the onus on believers in an observation language to show how such a language is meaningful in the absence of a theory.

In the present paper, I propose to show why logical positivism failed to do justice to the basic empirical and logical problems of philosophy of science. I also wish to consider why the drastic reaction, typified by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, fails t o provide a suitable alternative, and to suggest that the radical approaches of recent writers such as Mary Hesse and Dudley Shapere hold out a genuine promise of dealing effectively with the central tasks that face the philosopher of science today.

Inl recent textbooks on moral philosophy Sir David Ross's theory of prima facie duties is usually presented as the main current alternative to utilitarianism as an account of the nature and basis of moral duties and obligations. The theory of prima facie duties is usually regarded as a more plausible version of the anti-utilitarian views put forward in H. A. Prichard's famous Mind article of 1912, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”. Ross himself always acknowledged this debt; in addition, he presented his own theory in both his books as a reaction to, and a corrective of, Moore's ideal utilitarianism. In this paper, I wish to suggest that Ross's theory is in reality an unsatisfactory compromise between the views of Moore and Prichard, and that a satisfactory anti-utilitarian theory can only be achieved by throwing out the Moore elements, and returning, in effect, to Prichard. To accomplish this I first present a brief critique of Moore's ideal utilitarianism, and then discuss Ross's theory of right and wrong in some detail.

In his discussion of Plato's treatment of education in Republic II–III, Mr. Crombie writes that the Platonic Socrates “assumes that we tend to become like the characters in the books which we admire; and this,” he adds, “will never do.” He attributes this alleged assumption to a “simple-minded psychology”, but it is not clear what he thinks the psychology is. His words suggest that we are supposed to become like all of the characters in any book we admire, but since these characters are certain to be unlike each other this cannot be what he means. Again, it is odd that it should be admiration of a book that moves us to become like the characters in it, rather than the fact that it has excited or moved us. The notion one would have expected Crombie to attribute to Plato is rather that we tend to become like characters we admire in books that move us; and perhaps this is what he means. Even so, there is something odd in the notion of admiring a character in a book, since such a character is not a real person. What is really meant must be, I think, that books that move us in certain ways tend to arouse in us admiration for character traits of the kinds typified by the characters sympathetically or powerfully portrayed in those books, and that this admiration then leads us to assume those traits ourselves.

Pour le philosophe intéressé aux structures et aux fondements du savoir théorétique, à la constitution d'une « méta-théorétique «, θεωρíα., qui, mieux que les « Wissenschaftslehre » fichtéenne ou husserlienne et par-delà les débris de la métaphysique, veut dans une intention nouvelle faire la synthèse du « théorétique », la logique mathématique se révèle un objet privilégié.

The Humean tradition claims to show that the direct perception of causal power is in principle impossible. One argument for this conclusion is very simple: One cannot perceive what is not there; ‘causal power’ entails ‘necessary connection’; there are no necessary connections between matters of fact; therefore one cannot perceive causal power. The heart of this argument, of course, and the backbone of the Humean tradition, is that there are no necessary connections between matters of fact. This contention is supported by the familiar Humean dialectic. If there were a necessary connection of any kind between C and E, then the conjunction of C · ˜ E would be self-contradictory. However, all events are complete in themselves and never alone require that any other event will or must result from them. It is very strange to think of water freezing when heated or air pressure decreasing with depth, but no matter how foreign these conceptions may seem there is nothing self-contradictory about them. Since the assertion of C · ˜ E is never self-contradictory, it follows that there can be no necessary connection, logical or “causal”, between them, and hence there is no causal power that we could directly perceive.

L'Existence de choses telles que des propositions, conc,ues comme distinctes des phrases qui les expriment et dont elles constituent comme le sens — cela que l'on comprend en entendant une phrase — a été mise en question, par Quine, en particulier, et aussi défendue. Ce débat fera l'objet de ce texte.

La proposition, comme on l’entendra ici, se définit essentiellement comme une synthèse de concepts. Cette définition en a été donnée par G.E. Moore, un peu avant que Russell ne la reprenne dans trois grands articles publiés dans Mind en 1904, sous le titre de « Meinong’s Theory of Complexes and Assumptions ».

Bergson raconte que pour remédier à l'insufisance de l'évolutionnisme de Herbert Spencer, il s'était d'abord tourné vers l'histoire de la philosophie depuis ses origines. Il dut alors se rendre à l'évidence, dit-il, que, pas plus que celui de Spencer, aucun des systèmes n'avait tenu compte du temps réel. On avait étudié les propriétés de l'espace pour appliquer directement ensuite ses conclusions au temps en se contentant de remplacer l'idée de juxtaposition par celle de succession. Ainsi serait né ce que Bergson appelle le temps homogène ou temps-espace auquel la durée concrète échappe tout à fait.

La distinction de deux Wittgenstein est-elle mythique, ainsi que le voudrait R. J. Bernstein? Mythe créé involontairement par un penseur aussi peu mythomane que possible, B. Russell, quand, dans sa préface au Tractatus, il assigna à l'auteur l'intention d'établir les « conditions d'un langage logiquement parfait ». Prenant le contre-pied d'un Wittgenstein-I lancé à la poursuite d'un langage idéal, Wittgenstein-II aurait, dans Investigations philosophiques, opéré un retour au langage naturel et au sens commun.

Il est sans doute possible d'exagérer la distance qui sépare le Tractatus des Investigations philosophiques (dorénavant dénotés par T et IP). Mais on ne saurait la nier. Quelques rétractations expresses enregistrées dans le second ouvrage nous en empêcheraient (par exemple IP 23, 46, 97, 114). Le problème est plutôt de déterminer l'ampleur et la nature de la transformation, de la mesurer.

George Berkeley and Martin Buber are philosophers whose views one might not expect to find being discussed in one and the same essay. Nevertheless, in what follows I hope to show that a comparison of their epistemologies reveals substantial similarities, both methodological and doctrinal. The ground for such a comparison lies in the religious orientation of these two very different philosophers. It is an orientation each has emphasized more than once, both in his philosophical and in his less formal writings.

LES pensées ont-elles une patrie ? Cela semble universellement admis. Sans autre inquiétude, on parle de philosophie grecque, de philosophie allemande.

De ce point de vue, qu'en est-il de Hegel? Impossible de contester le caractère profondément allemand de ce penseur, si le mot allemand garde un sens! Cet ancrage national rend compte, du moins en partie, de sa démesure spéculative. C'est l'Allemagne qui l'appelle à la philosophie, et cette vocation lui impose un souci théorique qui s'emparera aussi, plus tard, de Marx.

I see someone who looks vaguely familiar. I wonder if he could be the same person I had a fight with on my birthday ten years ago. I hear that some scientist has received the Nobel prize in chemistry for some work very similar to that which interested the brightest boy in my chemistry class twenty years ago. I wonder if that scientist and the brightest boy might be the same person. What facts, if they could be discovered, would be decisive in answering these questions? Are there any facts that, if it turns out that they do not obtain, would show conclusively that the two people are not the same person? That is, are there any necessary conditions for personal identity? Are there any facts that, if it turns out that they do obtain, would show conclusively that the two people are the same person? That is, are there any sufficient conditions for personal identity?

Marcel Proust dit dans son grand roman — À la recherche du temps perdu — que si le mystère est trop impérieux il faut se taire. Ce serait tout de même une erreur de prétendre que le silence est synonyme de l'inactivité et du repos; au contraire, on ne se tait que pour mieux vivre, vivre plus intensément le mystère. Mais pour savoir ce que c'est que le mystère, il faut rompre le silence. Pour ce faire, il faut regarder en arrière — tout comme l'aventurier de la Nausée. Ainsi nous constatons que quelque chose nous a forcés de nous taire — et c'était justement le mystère. Nous ne partons pas pour une aventure, mais nous en revenons. Alors, c'est seulement quand la parole cède la place à ce qui s'exprime en allemand par le mot Erlebnis (expérience vécue, éprouvée) que cet Erlebnis acquiert le caractère du mystère.

One cannot determine whether a book is a work of political philosophy merely by glancing at its contents. Heidegger's Being and Time is a case in point. It offers no discussion of the topics which are commonly thought to constitute political philosophy—the state, the nature of law, human rights, and so on. But particular themes such as these reflect in large part the actual conditions which prevailed at certain times and places, fourth-century Athens and seventeenth-century England, for example, so they must not be thought to constitute an outline of the eternal problems of political philosophy. When a philosopher embarks upon a new line of thought at a different time and under novel circumstances, he may find himself instituting a new vocabulary for the problems of the human community.

Le point de départ est logique. Et la logique signifie pour Bolzano une théorie et une méthodologie des sciences. Son œuvre maîtresse, la Doctrine de la Science (WL) est ainsi un livre de logique. Lorsqu'il examine les fondements de toute science, c'est-à-dire, lorsqu'il les définit comme un ensemble de lois analytiques et universelles qui, à leur tour, constituent une science en soi, Bolzano fait bien une analyse de type spécifiquement logique, mais dans le même moment, c'est véritablement sa philosophie qu'il réalise, à savoir, la philosophie des fondements objectifs et a priori de la réalité concrète.

If, as Wittgenstein remarks, ‘the meaning of the word “length” is learnt among other things by learning what it is to determine length’ (Philosophical Investigations, p. 225), must we conclude that part of what one knows in knowing the meaning of this word is that length is determined in certain ways, and hence that we should explain the meaning partly by explaining how we determine length, and that the meaning consists partly in certain ways of determining length?

It is not easy to construct a clear argument to that effect, and yet we might naturally so conclude, perhaps on the grounds that generally what we learn in learning X and what we know in knowing X are the same. We learn the names of the professors by learning that that is Professor Jones, that is Professor Smith, etc., and that is also what we know in knowing the names of the professors.