For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

Cover title: Le salut du la'ic sur Herbert de Cherbury.

Christine Jackson has succeeded in writing the modern biography of Edward Herbert long sought by early modern scholars. Jackson’s Courtier, Scholar, and Man of the Sword paints a rich picture of Ed...

Described by one contemporary as the 'sweet singer of The Temple', George Herbert has long been recognised as a lover of music. Nevertheless, Herbert's own participation in seventeenth-century musical culture has yet to be examined in detail. This is the first extended critical study to situate Herbert's roles as priest, poet and musician in the context of the musico-poetic activities of members of his extended family, from the song culture surrounding William Herbert and Mary Sidney to (...) the philosophy of his eldest brother Edward Herbert of Cherbury. It examines the secular visual music of the Stuart court masque as well as the sacred songs of the church. Arguing that Herbert's reading of Augustine helped to shape his musical thought, it explores the tension between the abstract ideal of music and its practical performance to articulate the distinctive theological insights Herbert derived from the musical culture of his time. (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2019, Page 1057-1060.

The present paper investigates the seventeenth-century debate on whether the agreement of all human beings upon certain notions—designated as the “common” ones—prove these notions to be innate. It does so by focusing on Descartes’ and Locke’s rejections of the philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most important early modern proponents of this view. The paper opens by considering the strategy used in Herbert’s arguments, as well as the difficulties involved in them. It shows that Descartes’ 1638 (...) and 1639 reading of Herbert’s On Truth—both the 1633 second Latin edition and Mersenne’s 1639 translation—was instrumental in shaping Descartes’ views on the issue. The arguments of Locke’s Essay opposing Herbert’s case for innatism are thus revealed to be ineffective against the case which Descartes makes for this same doctrine, since Descartes had in fact framed his conception of innateness in opposition to the very same theses as Locke was arguing against. The paper concludes by explaining how two thinkers as antithetical as Locke and Descartes came to agree on at least one point, and a truly crucial one: namely, that universal consent counts as a criterion neither for innatism nor for truth. (shrink)

From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common--they all are wonderfully plausible at the start and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics--Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp--look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing. Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, contends that every utopia (...) is really a dystopia--a disaster in the making--one that overlooks the nature of humanity and the impossibilities of paradise. He traces the ideal in politics and technology and suggests that only in art--and especially in music--does the desire for utopia find satisfaction. Martin Marty examines several models of utopia--from Thomas More's to a 1960s experimental city that he helped to plan--to show that, even though utopias can never be realized, we should not be too quick to condemn them. They can express dimensions of the human spirit that might otherwise be stifled and can plant ideas that may germinate in more realistic and practical soil. And Herbert Muschamp, the New York Times architectural critic, looks at Utopianism as exemplified in two different ways: the Buddhist tradition and the work of visionary Viennese architect Adolph Loos. Utopian thinking embodies humanity's noblest impulses, yet it can lead to horrors such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Regime. In Visions of Utopia, these leading thinkers offer an intriguing look at the paradoxes of paradise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Oberlin's First Philosopher* EDWARD H. MADDEN ASA MAHANWAS THE FroST president of Oberlin College (1835-50) and professor of moral philosophy--the usual pattern during these years of "academic orthodoxy" when Christianity was purveyed in American colleges as the philosophy.1 The orthodox professors argued philosophical points very little but rather "presented" and "illustrated" their basic truths. 2 In some ways Mahan fit the stereotype. He did not always probe deeply (...) into questions or always offer reasons for his conclusions. His books are full of phrases like "it could not be otherwise", "no one, it is presumed, will deny that", "it is intuitively evident", "everyone cannot but know", and so on. And he frequently cited other philosophers, as well as the Scriptures, as "authorities." He even cited lengthy passages from Jonathan Edwards whenever he could, even though he differed with Edwards on almost every major point f In more important ways Mahan, however, does not fit the stereotype. Unlike Francis Wayland and most of the other academic orthodoxy before 1850, he had read, and been influenced by, German and French philosophers as well as the Scottish realists. Mahan was particularly influenced by Kant and Cousin. An astute contemporary reviewer remarked that Mahan, like Cousin, was an eclectic. "His eclecticism degenerates sometimes into the merely aggressive, and he delights occasionally in strange and incongruous combinations of Kant, Coleridge, Cousin and himself, but showing here and there great vigor and acuteness, and very considerable philosophical ability." a The aggressiveness of Mahan also sets him apart from the rest of the orthodoxy. He was too fiery by temperament to pass up polemics and hence got to the heart of some basic philosophical problems. He attacked the Edwardian doctrine of determinism and was led, by the vigor of his attack, into what many nineteenth-century Christians considered heresy3 He attacked utilitarianism in all its forms, including Paley's, in a far more consistent and thorough fashion than Francis Wayland and the other followers of Scottish realism and English intuitionism. And first and foremost he vigorously attacked the moral philosophy of his colleague Charles Grandison Finney, famous evangelist, professor of theology, and president-to-be of Oberlin. The spiritedness of his criticisms frequently aroused the ire of his Oberlin colleagues, but the spirited- *Research for some of the material in this paper was made possible by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the AmericanPhilosophicalSociety. ~Cf. Herbert W. Schneider, A History o] American Philosophy (2nd ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1963),pp. 195-220; and Joseph L. Blau, Men and Movements in American Philosophy (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1952). 2Cf. E. H. Madden, "Francis Wayland and the Limits of Moral Responsibility," Proceedings o] the American Philosophical Bociety, Vol. 106 (1962),pp. 348-359. *Quoted by R. S. Fletcher in his History o] Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio, 1943),II, 701. 4Fletcher, I, 223-231. [57] 58 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY hess fortunately was accompanied by a "considerable philosophical ability" that merits close attention. I Mahan's critique of Edwards appears in his Doctrine o] the Will, first published in 1844. According to Mahan, "Edwards stands convicted of a fundamental error in philosophy, an error which gives form and character to his whole workmthe confounding of the Will with the Sensibility, and thus confounding the characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty with those of the phenomena of the latter." 5 The trouble is that the whole of Edwards' work "is constructed without an appeal to Consciousness, the only proper and authoritative tribunal of appeal in the case." 8 If we attend carefully to consciousness, said Mahan, we can distinguish volition from the strongest desire and hence must distinguish between the separate faculties of will as personal activity and sensation as mere passive impression. The latter does not "act," it merely "suffers." The will is the moving force in life and unless it can be shown that there is some necessary connection between will and sensation--which, in fact, cannot be done--then it follows that the will is free, that is, the source of "personal activity." Mahan's rejection of universal determinism, of course, entailed the rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of election... (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethics in Social and Behavioral Research. By Edward Diener and Rick Crandall The Ethics of Social Intervention. Gordon Bermant, Herbert C. Kelman, Donald P. Warwick.

In this essay I discuss the idea of deploying workshops in phenomenology -- i.e., teaching the discipline by practising it. I focus on the model proposed by Herbert Spiegelberg, the first person to give systematic attention to this idea and the first to institutionalize it over a period of several years. Drawing on my experience in several of the workshops he led at Washington University, St. Louis, I detail the method he recommended in preparation for a workshop I ten (...) led at the inaugural meeting of To the Things Themselves at the University of New Hampshire. (shrink)

John Cowdrey was Anglican chaplain and medieval scholar at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His work Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 was hailed as a masterpiece. Obituary by Jean Dunbabin.

Dans son livre sur I' Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza, Richard H. Popkin présente la théorie de la vérité proposée par Edward Herbert de Cherbury dans le De veritate comme une machine de guerre lourde et impuissante dirigée contre le scepticisme religieux de l'âge classique. L'article entend montrer que le lourd dispositif conceptuel du De veritate ne constitue pas le coeur de la réponse cherburienne au scepticisme mais seulement le fondement théorique d'un perspectivisme religieux immédiatement corrigé par (...) la défense d'un credo minimum stable et universel. Par là, Cherbury accomplit le programme du pragmatisme religieux de Sextus Empiricus, en recherchant non pas la religion la plus vraie mais la meilleure pour permettre aux hommes de vivre en paix dans le respect mutuel de leurs croyances. (shrink)

Le De Veritate de Herbert de Cherbury (1624) et son idée d’un « consentement universel » ont fait l’objet, au xvii e siècle, d’une importante discussion. Après avoir examiné la critique, d’inspiration sceptique, voyant dans toute tentative de passer outre la diversité de l’« opinion commune » une forme d’intolérance épistémique, sont restituées les grandes décisions qui, dans le De Veritate, justifient le recours au consentement universel. Enfin, on montre que Descartes, ne trouvant pas chez Herbert de critère (...) suffisant pour distinguer une « notion commune » d’une erreur universellement partagée, substitue la « lumière naturelle » au consentement universel et l’idée d’un « sens commun à tous » à la tyrannie d’une opinion particulière se donnant l’allure de l’universel. (shrink)

A biographical account of Herbert Read's aesthetics. An excellent introduction to Read's work, it reveals a hidden order and presents a context which would have been familiar to Read's original readership but which is often indistinct today.

Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2024, Page 6-12.