In this brief and powerful book, Diana Fuss takes on the debate of pure essence versus social construct, engaging with the work of Luce Irigaray and Monique ...

A critical analysis of Diana Fuss's Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference and Elizabeth Grosz's Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists.

Luce Irigaray's fearlessness towards speaking the body has earned for her work the dismissive label “essentialist.” But Irigaray's Speculum de l'autre femme and Ce Sexe qui n'en est pas un suggest that essence may not be the unitary, monolithic, in short, essentialist category that anti-essentialists so often presume it to be. Irigaray strategically deploys essentialism for at least two reasons: first, to reverse and to displace Jacques Lacan's phallomorphism; and second, to expose the contradiction at the heart of Aristotelian metaphysics (...) which denies women access to “Essence” while at the same time positing the essence of “Woman” precisely as non-essential. (shrink)

In recent years quantum probability models have been used to explain many aspects of human decision making, and as such quantum models have been considered a viable alternative to Bayesian models based on classical probability. One criticism that is often leveled at both kinds of models is that they lack a clear interpretation in terms of psychological mechanisms. In this paper we discuss the mechanistic underpinnings of a quantum walk model of human decision making and response time. The quantum walk (...) model is compared to standard sequential sampling models, and the architectural assumptions of both are considered. In particular, we show that the quantum model has a natural interpretation in terms of a cognitive architecture that is both massively parallel and involves both co-operative and competitive interactions between units. Additionally, we introduce a family of models that includes aspects of the classical and quantum walk models. (shrink)

The observation that men reveal their distinctive identities as human beings in what they do and say seems neither very original nor very controversial. But consider the following set of implications: that men are more likely to reveal who they uniquely are when they act and speak spontaneously, than when they labor to maintain biological subsistence or work to produce a tangible world of human artifacts; that action and speech together make up a “web of human relationships” that forms the (...) intangible but vital substance of human community; that, paradoxically, when they act and speak in human community men are most truly free and yet least in control of their own destinies; that when deprived, as they can be, of human community men quickly lose the sense of their own reality as well as that of a world experienced in common; that the Athenian citizenry of Pericles’ time, fully aware of all this, constituted the greatest and possibly the last authentically “political” community in Western history; and that Pericles’ faith in the power of the Athenian polis to actualize and to sustain human greatness was, for understandable reasons, so short-lived that political thought and political decision from Plato to the present day might well be regarded as an escape from “politics” altogether. (shrink)

The question of what it means to be human has never before been more difficult and more contested. The human, with a complicated social history that his rarely been examined, remains entrenched in traditional Enlightenment thinking. Human, All Too Human considers how we might radicalize our notion of the human. Can the human be thought outside humanism? Any rethinking of the human places us immediately inside an ever-widening field of contrasting labels: animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, living and dead, (...) organic and mechanistic. These and other boundary confusions at the frontier of the human are the subject of this volume, as each essay takes up one of three disputed border identities: animals, things or children. Human, All Too Human examines how we explain our interest in anthropomorphism and our fascination with species categorizations. Essays explore what we mean by "things" and how the integrity of the human may already be compromised by them. The nine essays in this volume all attempt to rethink the category of the human, challenging some of our most cherished cultural classifications. By inviting us to place the traditions subject of knowledge in the unsettling position of object, these writers interrogate the boundary distinctions that, until now, have exempted the human from the vigilant analysis it so urgently requires. Contributors: Nancy Armstrong, Rey Chow, Drucilla Cornell, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Barbara Johnson, Cora Kaplan, James Kincaid, Harriet Ritvo, David Willis. (shrink)

The thesis pursued here is that Madison, in articulating the principles of political philosophy underlying his defense of the proposed constitution in his contributions to the Federalist Papers of 1787-8, can best be understood as at once invoking, enriching, and on several key points all but abandoning the “classical republican” or “civic humanist” tradition. I analyze the ambivalent character of Madison’s response to Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli and Rousseau with respect to the quality and complexity of the body politic, the (...) principle of representation, the containment of factionalism, and the nature of political legitimation and renewal. (shrink)

Die Beurteilung von Handlungen als ethisch erlaubt gehort zum moralischen Bewusstsein und zur moralischen Verstandigung. In der theologischen Ethik gab es jedoch Kritik an der Kategorie des ethisch Erlaubten, am grundsatzlichsten bei Friedrich Schleiermacher. Die Kritiker vertraten die These, dass sich alle moglichen Handlungen als entweder moralisch geboten oder verboten ausweisen liessen und dass eine mittlere Kategorie des bloss Erlaubten die Klarheit ethischer Verbindlichkeit trube. Fuss analysiert die Argumentationen reprasentativer evangelischer Ethiker vor allem des 19. und fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts, die (...) einerseits fur die Kritik am Begriff des Erlaubten und andererseits fur seine Rehabilitierung stehen. Dabei wird das Erlaubnisproblem in seiner Beziehung zu anderen ethischen Kontroversthemen gesehen, wie etwa den Problemen des supererogatorischen Handelns oder der Adiaphora. Das Schlusskapitel beschreibt den Begriff des Erlaubten im Kontext einer Lehre von elementaren Pflichten. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 273 my judgment, in the fact that he has limited the historical inquiry to the scholarly study of documents and discussions without showing those cultural, social, psychological, and economic motivations which formed an accompaniment to the individual protagonists of the discussions. The motivation for what a philosopher says is not justified by revealing only his most immediate opponent's name and ideas, but by showing, as Goldmann (La (...) communautd humaine chez Kant, Paris, 1948) and, very briefly, Stark (The Sociology of Knowledge) did, the reason for his thinking and his presuppositional needs. In the case of Kant, it is obvious that we cannot leave out his pietist formation, the fears about the French Revolution and Hume's scepticism. The historicity of a study cannot be limited to the history of polemics or to the discovery of documents which, theoretically, add nothing to what an author has already stated in his works. The vast philological material Pupi has gathered, seems to me very good, and it represents, I think, the greatest value of Pupi's work, because of its usefulness in the field of the sociology of knowledge. And to this field I take the liberty of referring Pupi for an example of a method that is historical and not tautological. ANTONELLA GUARALDI Kant und der Friede. By Wilhelm Miiller. (Diisseldorf: Monitor-Verlag, 1962. Pp. 16.) Perpetual Peace records the noble and humane dream of an old man. Such dreams are not without historical precedent, but rarely have they been invested with the earnestness and the conceptual rigor of a Kant--even of a Kant in his declining years. This short essay is at the very least a minor but noteworthy contribution to political theory. Its main thesis call be simply stated. A truly lasting peace can be achieved only through the agency of a world federation of states operating under moral law. The moral law in question is an extension of the guiding principles of Kant's ethics from the private to the public sphere. It is contrary to the dictates of reason as well as of moral conscience to suppose that political order may be conceived or established apart from or even in opposition to moral law. A state or nation, Kant declares, is a free moral person, possessed of an inviolable integrity, not to be exploited as a thing for purposes of aggrandizement on the part of other states. Were that all that Perpetual Peace contained, the essay would stand as testimony to Kant's political idealism. But he pursues with equal seriousness the question of how such an ideal might be realized in practice. Underlying Kant's federalism is his republicanism, his insistence that the only sound civil constitution is one in which each citizen is free, equal, and fully represented under common law publicly promulgated. It is Kant's contention -perhaps less naive today than it might have seemed earlier in this century--that where the consent of the subjects is required, as it is under a republican form of government, to decide whether or not there shall be war, they may be expected to think twice before bringing such sufferings upon themselves. Further, Kant sees in the ever-tightening and expanding web of international relations a natural deterrent to war, since any war will increasingly involve most if not all of mankind. Both considerations appeal, not to the questionable good will of politicians, but to enlightened self-interest. Finally, Kant lays down a series of "preliminary articles" whose purpose is to specify the conditions without which perpetual peace, as things stand, will not even become a real possibility. Among the principles here formulated are that a peace treaty is invalid if made with secret reservations, that the autonomy and constitutional integrity of independent states must be preserved, that standing armies must gradually be abolished, that national debts shall not be contracted externally, and that in the event of war "dishonorable stratagems" such as assassination, 274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY poisoning, spying, etc., which would render postwar mutual confidence impossible, shall not be countenanced. It is mainly with an eye to these preliminary articles that Professor Wilhelm Miiller argues for Kant's relevance to contemporary... (shrink)

In recent years there has been widespread agreement among Bishop Butler's commentators and critics concerning the nature of his “official” position as a moral philosopher. His moral epistemology is a form of moral sensism, its cognitive aspect best described, after Sidgwick, as perceptual intuitionism. His normative theory is strongly deontologistic in character, and as a moral psychologist he is still celebrated as a devastating critic of psychological egoism and hedonism. Understandably enough, there has been a tendency to discount those remarkable (...) passages in Sermons XI and XII in which Butler seems to be defending an almost diametrically opposed position, compounded of a rationalistic epistemology, a hedonistic-utilitarian normative theory, and a form of psychological egoism. Thus G. D. Broad finds flatly inconsistent those passages in which Butler seems to make self-love coordinate with conscience in its moral authority. When Butler asserts that on calm reflection one is unable to justify any course of action contrary to one's own happiness, Broad maintains that in context this statement must be understood not as a presentation of Butler's own view, but as “a hypothetical concession to an imaginary opponent.” Butler, Broad thinks, is merely once again trying to convince people that reasonable self-love and the dictates of conscience do not conflict. Similarly, A. Duncan-Jones argues that the apparent inconsistency in the passage in question is removed once we understand that Butler is only refuting the egoists' contention that self-love and virtuous benevolence are necessarily opposed. (shrink)

Recollection is an intellectual activity through which fundamental differences of experience, either between a plurality of individuals or within one individual at different stages of development, are comprehended and internally resolved. Together with the process of natural dialectic, recollection is the basis of Hegel’s theory of education and cultural solidification. It would, of course, be quite impossible in a single essay to enter into all the details and ramifications of this theory, and so we shall deal only with the basic (...) concept. Moreover, we shall emphasize the role of the individual, not so much to counter the gross miscomprehensions of Hegel’s thought which result when the activity of cultural enlightenment is generalized and ascribed to conceptually mystified world-historical processes, but simply to provide the proper arena for the functioning of this activity. For it is always the individual who internalizes the elaborated wealth of human spiritual capacities as best he can, and who through so doing is materially empowered to promote the education of others in turn. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is inexhaustible: it has to do with the nature of the human self. Moreover, it seeks to explore not just one but several of the more distinctive activities of the self: thinking, judging, and responding to the voice of conscience. My plea for so ambitious an undertaking in a single essay is that the self is, after all, endlessly fascinating, profoundly paradoxical, and philosophically as challenging as any object of reflection could be. And the (...) activities I want to examine are so intimately bound up with one another that any attempt to deal with them in isolation seems futile. (shrink)

Pothos & Busemeyer (P&B) argue that quantum probability (QP) provides a descriptive model of behavior and can also provide a rational analysis of a task. We discuss QP models using Marr's levels of analysis, arguing that they make most sense as algorithmic level theories. We also highlight the importance of having clear interpretations for basic mechanisms such as interference.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 189 titative n'est pas pos~ entre les deux termes. Sujet et objet ne peuvent donc ~tre pos6s sans cette difference qui seule les distingue, ce qui veut dire que l'actualit~ de l'identit6 absolue implique la diff6rence quantitative qui par son d~s~quilibre engendre les choses particuli~res darts la pluralit~ finie; l'identit~ absolue implique par sa forme le fini. Tout ~tre particulier est par consequent une d~termination non de (...) l'essence, mais de la forme de la totalitY, de sorte qu'il y a entre l'id~alit6 absolue et la chose finie qui est posse par los d~!terminations quantitatives de sa forme une relation positive d'analogie. Le particulier par rapport ~. lui-m~me est une totalit6 analogue de l'absolu. L'unit6 et la difference des contraires sont int~gralement maintenues au sein de l'absolu m~me dans une tension unitive permanente ce qui se r~alise dans une unit~ vivante. Donc strueturellement l'essence de l'absolu consiste uniquement en une relation unitive. L'unit~ des deux termes opposes, ~ savoir, l'infini et le fini trouve sa r~alit~ existentielle dans l'id~e. L'id~e est une individualit~ concrete et formelle qui comporte l'ins~parabilit~, donc la contemporan ~it6 de l'infini et du fini--~tat de chose qui est connu imm~diatement dans l'intuition intellectuelle, ce qui eonstitue l'essence de l'esprit. Aussi l'unit6 absolue des choses et des concepts se trouve-t-elle r~alis~e dans les idles absolues des choses, qui sont des individualit6s, des concrete absolus. La r~alit6 absolue est donc celle des idles et l'absolu, comme idle des idles ou expression formelle de la relation immediate qui les constitue, est lui-m~me une individualit6 qui est l'objet ad~quat de la philosophie. Le fini r~el est incorpor~ ~ l'infini r~el de facon organique. L'organicit$ de la totalit$ absolue o~ tout ~tre fini est simultan6ment donn~ sans aucun rapport ~ la causalit~ et au temps dans une presence int~grale et individuelle traduit l'unit~ vivante et individuelle des opposes dans la r~alit~ spirituelle de l'id~e. ARS~NE ROEMER Mainz, Germany Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary. By Walter Kaufmann. (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965. Pp. 498.) "The aim of this book is as simple as its execution is difficult: to establish a comprehensive reinterpretation of Hegel--not iust of one facet of his thought but of the whole phenomenon of Hegel." This is the opening sentence of the preface. In view of its ambitiousness, to say that the book partially succeeds in fulfilling its objective is to recognize that it is a considerable achievement. Walter Kaufmann's outstanding virtue as a Hegel scholar is that, unlike most of his Anglo-Ame.rican predecessors, he works with Hegel the man, the thinker, and the writer at close quarters. The author has mined unpublished manuscripts, letters, and other documents with the skill of a professional historian and the discerning eye of a storyteller. One maior consequence of this method of approach is that Kaufmann is able to explode the myth of the arrogant Prussian drillmaster philosopher, marching an army of dialectical propositions heavenward in snappy triadic array. On May 1, 1807, upon completion of the Phenomenology, Hegel wrote Schelling" I am curious what you will say about the idea of [the] 1st Part, which is really the introduction -for I have not yet got beyond introducing, in mediam rein. Getting into the details has damaged, as I feel, the synopsis of the whole; but the whole is by its nature such an interlocking hither and thither that, even if it had been formed better, it would still take me a lot of time before it would stand there clearer and more finished. --That single parts, too, would require a lot more work in many ways to be really mastered, I need not say.... --Regarding the greater deformity of the later parts, be considerate also because I finished the editing around midnight before the Battle of Jena (p. 319). This letter, to be found in Kaufmann's "documentary" chapter... (shrink)

In a companion volume on Schelling published by Yale in 1983, Alan White had considerable success in tracing the tortuous path of Schelling’s lengthy philosophical career. Here his project is even more ambitious: to rescue metaphysics from the widespread contempt and neglect that has befallen it by recasting and vindicating it in terms of Hegel’s “transcendental ontology.” This White interprets as continuing Kant’s “critical philosophy” insofar as it presents foundational categories of thought as conditions of the possibility of experience rather (...) than making dogmatic pretensions to knowledge of supersensible entities—and as overcoming the limitations of the Kantian enterprise insofar as it “grounds knowledge in the realms of the transcendental and the practical as well as in that of the empirical.” Two strategies are employed. One is to abjure trying to force from Hegel’s often ambiguous texts a consistent transcendental ontology to the exclusion of the theology of Absolute Spirit commonly said to be found there. “I rather attempt to establish that if and only if the fundament of his system is so interpreted can it stand as a consequent first philosophy.” The other is to use Schelling as foil. Schelling, after all, was Hegel’s first critic, made or anticipated all the major objections to Hegelianism developed since then, and inspired the fundamentally anti-philosophical, praxis-oriented reaction of Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, and the Marxists—a mind set that still prevails. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 261 de Descartes," he writes, "n'est pas une th~se sur la philosophie de Descartes." Alqui6 here (and only here) excludes not only all purely mathematical texts but also those on mechanics, optics, acoustics, hydraulics, automata, etc., and even epistemologically significant items like "hi omni questione debet dari aliquod medium," "Si funis," and the full text of the ars memoriae passage. The only exception is Descartes' answer to (...) Beeckman's problem regarding free fall, truncated at the point where Descartes with the characteristic dlan of these years continues: "Ut autem hujus scientiae fundamenta jaciam...". AlquiCs general justification for the exclusion of "mathematics" rests upon the evidence that Descartes himself considered his "philosophy" autonomous. But this was the view of the mature Descartes who had a philosophy, not that of the young French officer who had just been shocked out of his pleasant intellectual dolce far niente by the encounter with Isaac Beeckman, the embodiment of the new spirit of "physico-mathematics," who suddenly showed Descartes a revolutionary alternative to Scholastic speculation. The Cogitationes privatae are the record of an awakening; "philosophical" texts among them, which Alqui6, accepting Henri Gouhier's brilliant hypothetical reconstruction, presents as "Praeambula" and "Olympica," mark the turning point: Descartes accepts, in the wake of his Dream, from the "Spirit of Truth" the mission to philosophize. The notion of philosophizing is still nebulous; of the new lands to be conquered, only "physico-mathematics" is already widlin his grasp. Of this impact of "physico-mathematics" almost nothing survives in the new edition. The "philosophical" items stand alone as if this were all that was philosophically significant at this starting point of a great itinerary. This imbalance (which half a dozen added pages could have redressed) is apt to affect the reader's judgment concerning the bigger question of the role of physics in the formation and direction of Descartes' thought. It also prevents him from recognizing how many lifelong concerns appear already at that first stage. With no early texts pointing forward toward it, the Trait~ de la m(canique of 1637 now stands forlornly at the end of the volume, and the reader may well wonder what it is doing there. This is the only point where Professor AlquiCs editorial principles work against instead of for him. Once the edition passes beyond these years of turmoil and self-discovery, it does full justice to the philosopher and the reader. Professor Alqui6's introductions are models of brevity and firm scholarship, and his annotations could hardly be more helpful. Difficult terms are patiently explained, including the seemingly simple ones which easily trip the reader; complex matters are admirably disentangled. These annotations, a running commentary, are a contribution to Descartesian scolarship in their own right. When this edition is complete it will supersede all currently available study editions. The near-perfect first volume is unique in organization and scope; as a tool of study to serve alongside AT and AM it does not have its like. GREGOR SEBBA Emory University Descartes und die Neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft. By C. F. yon Weizs~icker. (Hamburg: Selbst-verlag der Universit~it Hamburg, 1962. Pp. 30. DM 2.) The primary aim of this brief and lucid essay is to clarify the precise sense in which Descartes sought to establish physical science on a firm mathematical foundation. In light of the development of post-Cartesian science, it is commonly supposed that Descartes helped pioneer the conception that science is a domain in which mathematics may be fruitfully applied. Professor Weizs~icker emphatically rejects this watered-down interpreta- 262 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY tion of Descartes' intentions. According to Descartes, physical science is mathematics. For only then can it consist of clear and distinct concepts wrought out of pure 9 9Descartes' argument, as Weizsiicker interprets it, is as follows. Physical science is a domain of certain knowledge only in so far as it has for its subject matter clear and distinct concepts. But apart from thought itself, our clear and distinct concepts are confined to mathematics. Thus if physics is to be a science in the strict sense, it must be mathematics. Now physical science can be mathematics if it is geometry. If nature... (shrink)

In this compact, well written essay Professor Bencivenga goes to great lengths to make Hegel both intelligible and plausible to a skeptical Anglo-American reader. For the most part he succeeds. First Bencivenga contrasts Aristotelian “analytic” with Hegelian “dialectical” logic. Next he demystifies Hegel’s idiosyncratic use of terms such as “concept”, “sublation,” “absolute”, “truth,” “necessity”, “spirit,” and “eternity”. In what is perhaps his exegetical capstone the author then leads his reader by the hand from a commonplace intuition of “the wholeness of (...) things” to absolute idealism’s conviction that all reality is a coherent and closely knit unity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY weapons," the emotive meanings of propaganda (p. 168). Thus his main distinctions between understanding and will, science and art, knowing and doing, civil and penal, were repeatedly blurred as his tactics shifted. Bentham's originality, says Mack, "lay just here, in putting moral insights to use by first incorporating them in a systematic analytic structure." Yet he "never fully explained what he intended to include under (...) a 'logic of the will.' He began with individuals, their immediate pleasures and pains, and a Utilitarian rationale or consideration of consequences..." but the essential connective tissues were never sufficiently supplied (pp. 160-161). But at least the logic of the will and Bentham's bitter frustrations as a reformer combined to make him a radical democrat by 1790, and not, as the author clearly and for the first time demonstrates, because of the influence of James Mill some twenty years later. With a wealth of detail the author accompanies Bentham just beyond the mid-point of his odyssey, and fully justifies her admiration for what he attempted to do. She recognizes the obvious "gap between his ambition and his achievement," to which must be added the distance between his psychology and sociology and ours. Many of the questions he raised are still with us, and have even been sharpened, as the late David Baumgardt pointed out, by the logical positivists and the emotivists. In today's discussions, as he indicates, we are often confronted with a choice between but two alternatives: uncritical normative ethics and ethical or non-ethical psychology. Bentham offers at least the possibility of "basing ethics critically upon psychological observations." And Stevenson speaks of attitudes which can be "supported" by some "reasoned argument " (David Baumgardt, Bentham and the Ethics oI Today [Princeton, New Jersey: 1952], pp. 137-150). Nothing in this excellent beginning leads the reader to expect the second volume to portray the completion by Bentham of the majestic structures which he planned and replanned. But a case has been made for a reassessment of Bentham as an adventurer, if not as a builder in philosophy, so that one looks forward to the next installment of his odyssey. HAROLD A. LARRABEE Union College,Schenectady,New York Positives Antichristentum: Nietzsches Christusbild im Brennpunkt nachchristlicher Anthropologie. By Hermann Wein. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962. Pp. 114. 9.50 G.) For understandable reasons, a definitive study of the philosophy of Nietzsche has never been written-and may never be written. Nietzsche's predilection for dialectics, the restless to-and-fro with which he at once affirms and negates virtually every cultural and intellectual phenomenon of the western world, including some products of his own creative imagination, is the despair even of those commentators who would heed his warning that there is no fixed center to his thought. Thus we have had interpretations of Nietzsche as atheist, as secular eschatologist, as nihilist, as cultural relativist, as Dionysian yea-sayer, as Darwinian eugenicist, and the like--none of them altogether mistaken, all of them, singly and collectively, beset by a frustrating one-sidedness. It would be too much to say that Professor Wein has succeeded where all others have [ailed. But he has managed to present more of a "whole" Nietzsche than have his prede- BOOK REVIEWS 121 r He has honored his own sound methodological precept that "only in a farspanning synopsis of what constitutes the aphoristically dispersed Nietzschean corpus does the contrapuntal order of this open, nonsystematic philosophy become apparent" (p. as). Nietzsche, Professor Wein insists, was not an out-and-out nihilist. But in the face of his wholesale negations of what the West has traditionally understood by and accepted as real, true, and valuable, what was left for Nietzsche to affirm? By way of answer, Wein devotes more than half of his book to a multiperspectival exegesis of Nietzsche's briefest and best-known pronouncement: "God is dead." In the first place, the pronouncement is an historical report. "God," a shorthand expression for the hierarchized meanings and values developed by the Judeo-Christian tradition, is all but extinct. Thus for Nietzsche the contemporary era is the epoch of the ascendancy of nihilism. In the second place... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 115 analytical surveys of important Rousseau themes (though their connection with the main theme is sometimes weak) : Rousseau's attitude to love, his philosophy of language, his notion of a Golden Age and Terrestrial Paradise, and his views of personal immortality. Chapter 4 ("L'amour et le pays des chim~res") shows Rousseau recoiling from love fulfillment, "rejet6 dans I'imaginaire par l'~chec de sa passion," finding satisfaction only in (...) the imagination (hence his fear of "soiling the purity" of the beloved, with some strange consequences for his concept of personality). The chapter on Rousseau's philosophy of language is detailed and richly documented, as all these chapters are; it shows him struggling to free the theory from the grip of sensualism, and anticipating in intuitive flashes some very modern notions. Chapter 5 goes to the roots of Rousseau's almost delirious happiness when he finds Paradise in an isle that is both symbol and incarnation of attunement with vegetative nature (Freudians may see a good deal more in this). The last chapter brings together the texts on personal immortality, the certainty of which Rousseau derived from his personal need for compensatory justice, while admitting that there was no objective proof of it. Eigeldinger works strictly from the sources. Some naive expressions, an occasional lack of technique in handling the texts, a tendency towards poetic language and enthusiastic overstatement are easily compensated by his sensitivity, intellectual curiosity, and conscientiousness. His results are not unfamiliar, but it is good to have such rich material brought together and so well presented in these compact chapters. This is not an academic exercise but a work of love, and it is none the worse for it. GR~con SEBBA Emory University Kants These iiber das Sein. By Martin Heidegger. (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1962. Pp. 36. Paper, DM 3.80.) This little essay continues the "destruction of the history of ontology" which Heidegger originally projected as the second part of Sein und Zeit but never published under that title. The "destruction," as Heidegger readers are aware, is by no means an attempt to repudiate the metaphysical tradition of the West. Its aim instead is to re-think the question of being on a more fundamental level--to focus on the ground of being, being as such (Das Sein), rather than on this or that mode of being or on the totality of what is (Das Seiende). Hence Heidegger's claim that he is laying the groundwork for something that has never really been undertaken previously in Western thought, namely, "fundamental ontology." In Kant und alas Problem der Metaphysik (1929), Heidegger repudiated the NeoKantian interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason by insisting that the thrust of that work is primarily ontological, not epistemological. Focusing his analysis on Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories and the doctrine of schematism in the first edition of the Critique, Heidegger argued that the transcendental imagination must stand at the center of ontological knowledge and that its subordination to the understanding in the second edition constitutes a "recoil" on Kant's part from his earlier and deeper insights. Moreover, Heidegger found in Kant the seeds of his own doctrine of temporality as the basis of human being, knowing, and acting--a doctrine from which once again Kant "recoiled." 116 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY These themes are echoed in the present essay, but a different portion of the Critique comes under scrutiny. In his discussion of the ontological proof for the existence of God, Kant writes: 'Being' is evidently not a real predicate, i.e., it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is simply [bloss] the placing [Position] of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. (A598,B626) Heidegger, armed with an impressive correlation of texts, finds in this passage a negative and an affirmative thesis. The negative thesis denies to being the character of a "real" predicate, but does not deny that it is a predicate in some sense. By "real" we are to understand, not actual, but having a reference to things. Thus interpreted, the negative thesis asserts that being is not... (shrink)