In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 91 The passage which permitted such an interpretation is the following: This self-command is very different at different times.... Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or a material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends...?" (...) (Enquiry, p. 68). This rhetorical question is, on the contrary, intended as the part of the third argument for the thesis "that even this command of the will gives us no real idea of force or energy" (Enquiry, p. 67). There is no evidence in the Enquiries that Hume concluded that self is a substance. On p. 45, Anderson "suggests that Hume employs 'impression'...in a less frequent usage, however.., to be a pressure, or pattern of light, or other means whereby objects are applied to the external organs of sense"t On p. 65 and also on p. 173, it is argued fallaciously that, "Hume considers mathematical ideas, like all other ideas, to be existences. If this be true, then the necessary relations ~mpposed to obtain among mathematical ideas cannot be discerned even though these ideas themselves be fully known." Now it is a matter of debate whether Hume believed that all mathematical ideas are derived from impressions (see my controversy with Flew on this issue, in Ratio, Vol. VI, No. 2, "Hume on Pure and Applied Geometry," and Flew's article, "Did Hume Distinguish Pure and Applied Geometry?," Ratio, Vol. VIII, No. 1). But even if we assume that this is his belief, it does not follow at all that the logical relations among these ideas are contingent. As Pap argued a long time ago, "A sensationalist might maintain that all the concepts that constitute a given proposition are derived from experience and might nevertheless admit that proposition itself is a priori in the sense of requiring no empirical verification in order to be assertable as true." Thus, Hume the sensationalist admitted that a priori knowledge is possible in mathematics, which is conversant exclusively about "relations of ideas" and not about "matters of fact." Finally, in the last chapter, it is argued that, "Hume's own suggestion concerning these three natural relations (resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect) is that they are fundamentally material--that they consist in a certain characteristic movement of the animal spirit in the brain" (p. 163)I1 That, "The necessity is the relationship between cause and effect, Hume's remarks suggest, is ultimately their identity in essence. One passage which we have noted indicates that cause and effect are inseparable, and by use of Hume's own maxims we may strictly infer from their inseparability their identity" (p. 165)II And that, "Although Hume's doctrine of matter is ultimately of central importance in his system, his beginnings in moral philosophy doubtless led him to turn his attention away from the topic of matter" (p. 175). This book, though replete with quotations from Hume's works and exhibiting a great amount of microscopic observations, represents a mistaken view of Hume's epistemology. ~ARHANG ZABEEIq Roosevelt University, Chicago Hegel's Phenomenology. Dialogues on the Life of Mind. By Jacob Loewenberg. (La Salle, Ill. : The Open Court Publ. Co., 1965.Pp. xv + 377.) Hegel's Phenomenology o] Spirit, intriguing in its richness, has long remained one of the most forbidding of philosophical classics. Unfortunately, commentaries, though altogether indispensable, are sparse. Heretofore, the reader found himself referred mainly to two foreign language studies, G. A. Gabler's Kritik des Be~usst~ein~ of 1835, and J. Hyppolite's Gen~se et structure de la Phdnomdnologie de l'esprit; no full-scale work in English was available. And 92 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY even the reader prepared to turn to these works might register disenchantment: Gabler deals with two fifths of the book only, and Hyppolite is at times too close to the text to be much help. What remains is comment in the framework of more general studies of Hegel's philosophy (Royce, Haering, Kroner, Stace, Findlay and others). In this situation Loewenberg's contribution marks a... (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of "De Anima II 5", led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming (...) like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from "Physics" III 1-3 and "De Generatione et Corruptione" I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

Few people have thought so hard about the nature of the quantum theory as has Jeff Bub,· and so it seems appropriate to offer in his honor some reflections on that theory. My topic is an old one, the consistency of our microscopic theories with our macroscopic theories, my example, the Aspect experiments (Aspect et al., 1981, 1982, 1982a; Clauser and Shimony, l978;_Duncan and Kleinpoppen, 199,8) is familiar, and my sirnplrcation of it is borrowed. All that is new here is (...) a kind of diagonalization: an argument that the fundamental principles found to be violated by the quantum theory must be assumed to be true of the experimental apparatus used in the experiments.. (shrink)

The old Analytical view that the union between the Journey of Telemachus and the rest of the Odyssey is post-Homeric, superficial, and incompetently effected is nowadays widely rejected, and rightly so. However, although many defences cumulatively, I believe, successful–of the content of the second divine assembly have been put forward in recent years, no adequate answer has yet been given to the objections raised against the allegedly anomalous language of Athene's speech of 5.7–20.

This chapter explores the concepts of ethnic identity, ethnogenesis, ethnonationalism, nationalism and multiculturalism, linking them to a critical analysis of the selective revival of the past. In particular, it looks at the meanings of the concept of ethnonationalism, and at its historical origins, in terms of how it relates to the history of nation building and national culture building, which ethnonationalism represents. Drawing on comparative ethnographic analysis, the chapter examines two opposite processes; the ways in which new ethnic groups are (...) created through a selective reading of the past, and the way in which larger polities are imposed on very different ethnic groups. (shrink)

El corpus epistolar de Focio, patriarca de Constantinopla en dos ocasiones (858-867 y 877-886), representa un documento significativo para la historia literaria no solo por su cantidad sino también por sus destinatarios y remitentes, que incluyen personajes importantes de su momento, así como amigos y familiares. A su vez, los contenidos son variados pues oscilan entre temas de corte personal, político, teológico y religioso. Entre las cartas se encuentra la 152, dirigida a su hermano Tarasio, en la que desarrolla la (...) cuestión del sentido que diversos Padres de la Iglesia dieron a la frase “ἐφ᾽ ᾧ” en Romanos 5:12, tanto aquellos que considera incompletos (pues sobreentienden “Adán” o “muerte”), como el más idóneo (“porque”). Sin embargo, debido a que Focio no especifica abiertamente ninguna de sus fuentes, desde la publicación de esta carta (1651) se han hecho intentos por ubicarlas y comentarlas. El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en analizar bajo una nueva perspectiva aquellas que han sido ubicadas, así como presentar otra que no ha sido considerada hasta ahora. (shrink)