v. 1. Le petit Hippias. Le grand Hippias. Ion. Protagoras. L'apologie de Socrate. Criton. Alcibiade. Charmide. Lachès. Lysis. Euthyphron. Gorgias. Ménexéne. Ménon. Euthydème. Cratyle. Le banquet. Phédon. La République.

Philosophical Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology explains how the topic of evolutionary psychology has developed from the contributions of philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Rene Descartes.

DigiCat Verlag stellt Ihnen diese Sonderausgabe des Buches "Das Problem des platonischen Symposion" von August Ritter von Kleemann vor. Jedes geschriebene Wort wird von DigiCat als etwas ganz Besonderes angesehen, denn ein Buch ist ein wichtiges Medium, das Weisheit und Wissen an die Menschheit weitergibt. Alle Bücher von DigiCat kommen in der Neuauflage in neuen und modernen Formaten. Außerdem sind Bücher von DigiCat als Printversion und E-Book erhältlich. Der Verlag DigiCat hofft, dass Sie dieses Werk mit der Anerkennung und Leidenschaft (...) behandeln werden, die es als Klassiker der Weltliteratur auch verdient hat. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Political Analogy: Fallacy or Analogy? ROBERT W. HALL THE INTERPRETATIONOf the familiar political analogy between the state and the soul is crucial to a proper understanding of Plato's conception of the individual and his relation to the polls. Interpretations which, consciously or not, tend to identify the justice of the individual with that of the state result either in a subordination of justice of the individual (...) to that of the state, or in endowing the ordinary citizen with an inferior justice. These interpretations of the political analogy have beert adequately dealt with? Recently, Vlastos has stressed what he considers to be the logical or deductive character of the analogy." He finds defects or fallacies in Plato's logic, which, while not necessarily fatal to the significance of the analogy, seriously impair its cogency. What is of particular interest is Vlastos' claim that the primary goal of the analogy is a demonstration, unknown to most scholars, albeit an unsuccessful one, that the justice of the individual necessarily instantiates or entails ordinary acts of justice,a Vlastos has thus raised the question of what kind of approach is most fruitful in unlocking the meaning of the political analogy. My own conviction is that the political analogy can best be understood through a careful examination or observation of the two wholes, the state and the individual, and the character of their relationship. A consideration of the essentials of Vlastos' outlook on the analogy will be a useful introduction to what may be termed a "phenomenological" approach. Such a perspective may provide a better understanding of what Plato is attempting to establish in the analogy, and of how he goes about it. Vlastos' interpretation of the political analogy is strongly colored by his assessment of the central concern of the Republic, the proof that justice "pays." By this Vlastos means that what he terms "psychological justice," the correct, hierarchical arrangement of the three parts or aspects of the soul, must be proven to result in acts of external justice. It is this relationship between psychological justice and ordinary or social justice which sets the problem of logical consistency in Vlastos' account of the political analogy. As the definition of justice of the individual or psychological justice, Vlastos offers Socrates' statement, "In the case of each one of us, whoever is such that each of the three [psychic elements] in him does its own, he is a just man." The social description of justice is: What we laid down at the start as a general requirement when we were founding the polls this, or some form of it, is justice. We did lay down, and often stated, if you recall, that every single person ought to engage in the social function.., for which his own nature is I For exponents of these positions and their critics, cf. my "Plato's Theory of Justice in the Republic," Bucknell Review, XV, 2 (May, 1967), 60, n. I. G. Vlastos, "Justice and Psychic Harmony in the Republic," The 1ournal of Philosophy, LXVI, 16 (August 21, 1969), 505-521. All further references to this article will be by page number. s 506, 515. [419] 420 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY best fitted.uWe did say this.--And indeed that to do one's own and not to be meddlesome is justice, this we have often heard from many others, and have often said ourselves.-Wc have said it.--This, then, my friend, if taken in a certain way, appears to be justice: to do one's own. (433A-B) 4 Vlastos admits that this social description is not really a definition of the justice of the individual, "that 'doing one's own' was not meant to constitute a definition of the justice of an individual person.''~ Nonetheless, this social description functions for him as a definition of the individual's justice, and plays a prominent role in the supposed fallacy of equivocation in the meaning of justice. Vlastos argues for this social description on the grounds that "/or Plato every just man must have the disposition named by the 'doing one's own' formula.''e The basis for this claim is Socrates' declaration that "the same (moral) characters... (shrink)

In his speech of welcome to the members of the Classical Joint Meeting at Cambridge in August, 1958, the Master of Peterhouse praised classical scholars for the detachment and pertinacity with which they continue their pursuits while the world is on the edge of the abyss. The remark might be taken to have one more edge than the abyss. At a time when it can no longer be assumed that a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics is part of (...) the learning of any man who has any learning at all, there are two opposite temptations which beset those whose profession is the study and teaching of the ancient classics. The first is the sentimentality which goes on singing dithyrambs to the Glory that was Greece and the Grandeur that was Rome, on the assumption that the relevance of ancient texts to modern perplexities is too nearly self-evident to need explaining. (shrink)

These notebooks were written during the years that F. W. J. Schelling spent as a student at the Tübinger Stift (1790–1795). From dates written by Schelling in the margins, we can surmise that the first portion (AA II/4: 15–28) was begun in August of 1792, and the latter portion (AA II/5: 133–142) was written in early 1794. To this latter portion is appended a substantial work, Schelling’s Timaeus-commentary, which is not included in the present translation. It appeared as “Timaeus (1794)” (...) (translated by Adam Arola, Jena Jolissaint, Peter Warnek) in Epoché 12: 2. These notebooks offer a window into Schelling’s philosophical development and proclivities, in light of his engagement with various Platonic dialogues, most notably the Ion, Theaetetus, Meno, Timaeus, and Philebus. They include discussions of divine power, rapture, and genius, especially as these relate to poetry, prophecy, and ordinary forms of human knowledge. These topics are discussed in the first portion (AA II/4: 15–25). In the latter portion, Schelling discusses myth, its function and relation to human greatness, Socrates’s daimonion, and the authority of tradition (AA II/4: 25–28; II/5: 133–142). (shrink)

Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Diogenes, Epicurus, St. Paul, Aurelius and Epictetus, Augustine, Maimonides, Machiavelli, More, Francis Bacon, John Locke's, Spinoza, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Vivekananda, Havelock Ellis, William James, Kropotkin, Croce, John Dewey.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

“Can Politics be Thought in Interiority” is an essay from The Intelligence of Politics, one of two book-length works published by French anthropologist and political theorist, Sylvain Lazarus. The English translation of Lazarus’ first book, Anthropology of the Name, is set to come out in August 2015, and while that work can rightly be considered his magnum opus, “Can Politics be Thought in Interiority” provides a comprehensive, yet succinct statement of the concepts outlined in this much longer text. Broadly speaking, (...) the central concern for Lazarus in this essay, as well as in his work as a whole, is to rehabilitate a form of leftist theory that maintains the radical edge of previous discourses, all without either descending into the violent pitfalls that plagued the various socialist and communist projects of the 20th century, or capitulating to the dominant neo-liberal or “parliamentary” regime. According to Lazarus, both the communist project and the current parliamentary-democratic project—though they espouse widely different ideologies—fall prey to and ultimately fail because of the same underlying structure. For Lazarus, this structure is what he terms “politics in exteriority,” which he defines as any mode of political organization that identifies politics in relation to a specific “object” or set of objects, whether they be conceptual or empirical. The task of contemporary politics is not, according to Lazarus, to find new “objects” for politics to identify with, but to move toward a non-dogmatic and praxis-oriented “politics in interiority,” which this essay outlines in detail. It is also worth noting that Sylvain Lazarus’ work has been of crucial importance to the developement of the philosophical and political project of Alain Badiou, and is, alongside with Lacan, Plato, and Sartre, one of the most important influences on Badiou’s thought. Key terms and phrases in Badiou’s project, such as “the name,” “politics without the party,” and “politics at a distance from the State,” as well as assertions such as “politics is rare,” are ideas that have been developed in concert with Lazarus, and in many cases, that have been culled directly from Lazarus’ body of work. As such, “Can Politics be Thought in Interiority”—outside of its substantial independent merits—will also be an invaluable resource for the ever-growing legion of Badiou scholars, who until now, have had almost no direct English-language contact with Lazarus’ work, and as such, have not been able to get a foothold on one of Badiou’s primary influences. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce was born in September 1839 and died five months before the guns of August 1914. He is perhaps the most important mind the United States has ever produced. He made significant contributions throughout his life as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, engineer, and inventor. He was a psychologist, a philologist, a lexicographer, a historian of science, a lifelong student of medicine, and, above all, a philosopher, whose special fields were logic and semiotics. He is (...) widely credited with being the founder of pragmatism. In terms of his importance as a philosopher and a scientist, he has been compared to Plato and Aristotle. He himself intended "to make a philosophy like that of Aristotle." Peirce was also a tormented and in many ways tragic figure. He suffered throughout his life from various ailments, including a painful facial neuralgia, and had wide swings of mood which frequently left him depressed to the state of inertia, and other times found him explosively violent. Despite his consistent belief that ideas could find meaning only if they "worked" in the world, he himself found it almost impossible to make satisfactory economic and social arrangements for himself. This brilliant scientist, this great philosopher, this astounding polymath was never able, throughout his long life, to find an academic post that would allow him to pursue his major interest, the study of logic, and thus also fulfill his destiny as America's greatest philosopher. Much of his work remained unpublished in his own time, and is only now finding publication in a coherent, chronologically organized edition. Even more astounding is that,despite many monographic studies, there has been no biography until now, almost eighty years after his death. Brent has studied the Peirce papers in detail and enriches his account with numerous quotations from letters by Peirce and by his friends. This is a fascinating account of a p. (shrink)

The genetically manipulated organism crisis demonstrated that technological development based solely on the law of the marketplace and State protection against serious risks to health and safety is no longer a warrant of ethical acceptability. In the first part of our paper, we critique the implicitly individualist social-acceptance model for State regulation of technology and recommend an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive analysis of the impacts and ethical acceptability of technologies. In the second part, we present a framework for the analysis (...) of impacts and acceptability, devised—with the goal of supporting the development of specific nanotechnological applications—by a team of researchers from various disciplines. At the conceptual level, this analytic framework is intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk. On a practical level, we present a reflective tool that makes it possible to take into account all the dimensions involved and understand the reasons invoked in determining impacts, assessing them, and arriving at a judgement about acceptability. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that the input-output behavior of some common machine learning classifiers can be captured in symbolic form, allowing one to reason about the behavior of these classifiers using symbolic techniques. This includes explaining decisions, measuring robustness, and proving formal properties of machine learning classifiers by reasoning about the corresponding symbolic classifiers. In this work, we present a theory for unveiling the _reasons_ behind the decisions made by Boolean classifiers and study some of its theoretical and practical implications. (...) At the core of our theory is the notion of a _complete reason,_ which can be viewed as a necessary and sufficient condition for why a decision was made. We show how the complete reason can be used for computing notions such as sufficient reasons (also known as PI-explanations and abductive explanations), how it can be used for determining decision and classifier bias and how it can be used for evaluating counterfactual statements such as “a decision will stick even if...because....” We present a linear-time algorithm for computing the complete reasoning behind a decision, assuming the classifier is represented by a Boolean circuit of appropriate form. We then show how the computed complete reason can be used to answer many queries about a decision in linear or polynomial time. We finally conclude with a case study that illustrates the various notions and techniques we introduced. (shrink)

Ostensibly a discussion about love, the debate in the Phaedrus also encompasses the art of rhetoric and how it should be practised. This new edition contains an introductory essay outlining the argument of the dialogue as a whole and Plato's arguments about rhetoric and eros in particular. The Introduction also considers Plato's style and offers an account of the reception of the dialogue from its composition to the twentieth century. A new Greek text of the dialogue is accompanied (...) by a select textual apparatus. The greater part of the book consists of a Commentary, which elucidates the text and makes clear how Plato achieves his philosophical and literary objectives. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of ancient Greek literature and philosophy, it will also benefit scholars who want an up-to-date account of how to understand the text, argument, style and background of the work. (shrink)

What knowledge is of most worth? / Herbert Spencer -- The basis of education / Robert M. Hutchins -- The ultimate aims of education / Edward L. Thorndike and Arthur I. Gates -- Aims in education / John Dewey -- Leviathan / Thomas Hobbes -- Of civil government, second treatise / John Locke -- Man and society : the art of living together / Reinhold Niebuhr -- Civilization and its discontents / Sigmund Freud -- Education and nationality / Giovanni Gentile (...) -- Education and social change / I.L. Kandel -- Education and social change / John Dewey -- Social reconstruction through education / Harold Rugg -- Protagoras / Plato -- Decisions of principle / R.M. Hare -- Reconstruction in moral conceptions / John Dewey -- Public education and the good life / William K. Frankena -- Metaphysics / Aristotle -- Hierarchy of the positive sciences / Auguste Comte -- Structure of the disciplines : meaning and significances / Joseph J. Schwab --. (shrink)

We outline an alternative to both scientific and liberal naturalism which attempts to reconcile Sellars’ apparently conflicting commitments to the scientific accountability of human nature and the autonomy of the space of reasons. Scientific naturalism holds that agency and associated concepts are a mechanical product of the realm of laws, while liberal naturalism contends that the autonomy of the space of reason requires that we leave nature behind. The third way we present follows in the footsteps of German Idealism, which (...) attempted to overcome the Kantian chasm between nature and agency, and is thus dubbed ‘post-Kantian.’ We point to an overlooked group of scholars in the naturalism debate who, along with recent work in biology and cognitive science, offer a path to overcome the reductive tendencies of empiricism while avoiding the dichotomy of logical spaces. We then bring together these different streams of research, by foregrounding and expanding on what they share: the idea of organisms as living agents and that of a continuity without identity between life and mind. We qualify this as a bottom-up transformative approach to rational agency, which grounds cognition in the intrinsically purposive nature of organisms, while emphasizing the distinction between biological agency and full-fledged mindedness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Raphael PAUL BAROLSKY The essence of all appreciation and analysis of art is the translation of visual perceptions into compelling verbal form. —Ralph Lieberman cultural unity Horace Walpole, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Balzac, Friedrich Hegel, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Renoir, Nathaniel Hawthorne, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, Franz Grillparzer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, George Eliot, Jean- (...) class='Hi'>Auguste Dominique Ingres, Roger Fry, Bernard Berenson, Theodor Hetzer, Roberto Longhi, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Stendhal are among the many essayists, critics, novelists, poets, painters and art historians who have responded to Raphael’s work as painter, architect or archeologist over the centuries. I can well imagine all of those listed above, among many others, united in an imaginary painting similar to the School of Athens—in other words, a vision that reconciles their various views of the world in a harmony analogous to the unity of philosophers in Raphael’s great fresco. Raphael is a towering figure in the history of European culture. The year 2020 was the 500th anniversary of the death of the great painter in Rome at the age of thirty-seven. In the wake of recent exhibitions that commemorated the artist’s achievement, I propose to touch briefly and lightly on a few aspects arion 28.2 fall 2020 100 reflections on raphael of Raphael’s life and works. Please think of these remarks as a series of suggestions, not attempts at definitive interpretation. I think of this essay as a rather experimental piece. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS i should like to begin with a few brief remarks on what must be Raphael’s most famous work of art. I mean his School of Athens (fig. 1), which is, like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Last Supper or like Michelangelo’s David and Creation of Adam, an image widely known and admired. What more is there to say about The School Of Athens, one of the central images in the Stanza della Segnatura? You might spend the rest of your life reading about this great work and never understand it fully. Nevertheless, I want to focus for a moment on a central detail of the work and, on the basis of my description, point to a significant aspect of the fresco that has been universally overlooked. First the description, then the aperçu. Fig. 1. School of Athens. Ca. 1510–1512. Photo Credit : Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Paul Barolsky 101 At the center of the School of Athens we behold the two great philosophers of classical antiquity: Plato and Aristotle. Plato holds a copy of his Timaeus, a dialogue that concerns the harmony of the heavens; Aristotle holds a copy of his Ethics, a work that pertains to human relations in this world. It was the goal of Renaissance thinkers to create a harmony or concord of the thought of these philosophers: a Concordia Platonis et Aristotelis. Raphael’s fresco, as is well known, presents the visual ideal of such harmony. Whereas Aristotle gestures downward, alluding to this world, in which his Ethics matter, Plato points heavenward, evoking the order of the cosmic realm described in Timaeus. Raphael makes visible the ideal of concordia when he movingly pictures the way in which the two philosophers gaze into each other’s eyes, as if to suggest this harmony. Borrowing from the language of Raphael ’s friend, Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael renders “the joining” of their souls. The monumental architecture of the scene, which echoes Bramante and has taproots in Piero della Francesca and Perugino, consists of three barrel-vaults beyond which we see patches of blue sky and puffs of cloud (fig. 2). The grandiose architecture of the image magnifies Raphael’s philosophers. Within this architectural framework, Plato’s gesture is deeply meaningful, since it prompts the viewer to look up and thus ascend toward the perfection of the celestial realm, beyond the imperfections of the physical world. Above the first barrel vault in the fresco we behold a section of the drum of a dome which is open to the sky. Within this section of drum there are two columns that are lined up directly... (shrink)

Leo Strauss is known primarily for reviving classical political philosophy through careful analyses of works by ancient thinkers. As with his published writings, Strauss’s seminars devoted to specific philosophers were notoriously dense, accessible only to graduate students and scholars with a good command of the subject. In 1965, however, Strauss offered an introductory course on political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Using a conversational style, he sought to make political philosophy, as well as his own ideas and methods, understandable (...) to those with little background on the subject. Leo Strauss on Political Philosophy brings together the lectures that comprise Strauss’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy.” Strauss begins by emphasizing the importance of political philosophy in determining the common good of society and critically examining the two most powerful contemporary challenges to the possibility of using political theory to learn about and develop the best political order: positivism and historicism. In seeking the common good, classical political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle did not distinguish between political philosophy and political science. Today, however, political philosophy must contend with the contemporary belief that it is impossible to know what the good society really is. Strauss emphasizes the need to study the history of political philosophy to see whether the changes in the understanding of nature and conceptions of justice that gradually led people to believe that it is not possible to determine what the best political society is are either necessary or valid. In doing so, he ranges across the entire history of political philosophy, providing a valuable, thematically coherent foundation, including explications of many canonical thinkers, such as Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant, about whom Strauss did not write extensively in his published writings. (shrink)

The author has made a detailed study, more detailed, he rightly claims, than hitherto attempted, of the concept of mimesis in aesthetic thought and has devoted equal space to Greek and Sanskrit writers... Wilamowitz, the doyen of modern classical scholars, describes mimesis as a 'fatal word' 'rapped out' by Plato. But the present author has demonstrated with great cogency that the word was not 'rapped out' by Plato at all, and that the concept and the word are both (...) as old as Greek thought. He shows too, once again with considerable scholarship and perceptiveness, how Greek art was bound to be sensuous, unmystical and also 'formal' in the best sense of the term. In the four long chapters of the first part of his thesis the author gives at every step evidence of deep study and illuminating insight, and can claim originality both in approach and argument... The chapter on Aristotle contains one of the best discussions of mimesis I have read... the most striking portion of his thesis is his elucidation of poetic truth according to Aristotle. -/- -- Prof. S. C. Sengupta, Jadavpur University -/- The author provides a faithful rendering of both Greek and Indian ideas. The work is valuable for its expositions especially of the Indian theories of art. -/- -- V. K. Chari, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JAAC), USA, Spring 1979 -/- ... A fairly exhaustive comparative study of the concept of mimesis in Greek and Indian aesthetics... wide ranging and at the same time well controlled acquaintance with this proliferating literature is revealed throughout... the co-relation of the Aristotelian linking-up of 'imitation' and 'completion' with Abhinavagupta's integration of imitation with completion is very suggestive and is a help towards the formulation of a universal aesthetic comprising body and soul, the immediate impact of Appearance and the slow revelation of Reality... (the author) has mastered the material and achieved a steady progression in argument so as to sustain the central thesis. -/- -- K. R. S. Iyengar, Professor of English and Vice-Chancellor, Andhra University -/- The book is a significant contribution towards understanding the essentials of Indian aesthetics apropos the Greek (and, through the Greek, the Western)... The author has surveyed the entire field in a masterly manner. His erudition and judgement are both commendable. -/- -- S. K. Ramachandra Rao, Deccan Herald (03.09.1978) -/- ...The author's views hold good even among modern critics including the ones known as 'the Chicago school' and experimental psychologists. -/- -- Indian and Foreign Review (August 1978) -/- The work is a valuable addition to the literature on aesthetics. -/- -- The Indian Express (12.03.1978) -/- The comparison is too smooth and sharply compartmentalized... The book is of great value to those who are interested in the comparative and historical evolution of a very important concept in aesthetics. -/- -- The Hindustan Times (31.12.1978) -/- The work is in two parts. The first part in four chapters examines the concept of imitation in Greek thought, and the second in three chapters explores the meaning of the term in Indian thought... the author offers a brilliant interpretation of Aristotle's theory in the fourth chapter (Pt. 1) which is the best one in the book... The work is a pioneering one and it repays a careful examination. It is probably the first of its kind and every student of aesthetics must read it. -/- -- Prof. P. S. Sastri, Nagpur Times . (shrink)

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegr ndet 1849, ist die weltweit lteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. S mtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische Praefatio erg nzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universit di Genova) Heinz-G nther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universit t G (...) ttingen) Dirk Obbink (University of Oxford) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universit t M nchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verf gbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die lteren B nde werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen m chten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] S mtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verf gbar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Misquotations from RealityAnn Lauterbach (bio)In the girdle of Aphrodite, in the crown, in the body of Helen and her phantom, beauty is superimposed over necessity, cloaking it in deceit. The necessary has a certain splendor, and behind any splendor one senses a metallic coldness, as though of a weapon poised to strike. The real split in Greek consciousness, like all other irreversible steps it took, comes when Plato (...) for the first time affirms, ‘How very different is the nature of the necessary from the nature of the good.’ And he means an immense, an unbridgeable distance—the same distance that made atheists of ‘those who study astronomy and other sciences of the necessary, when they see that what is, is so out of necessity and not out of any plan conceived by some will to accomplish the good.’ The Beautiful, in this scenario, must either be quickly reabsorbed into the Good—as its agent, instrument, and pedagogue—or left up in the air, like a malignant spell (goeteuma) bewitching the mind only to subject it even more helplessly to the fiat of necessity.—Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonyl. The Stranger’s HandOnce at the circus, when I was young we were strolling around in a throng of clowns and cotton candy, bright sun, I looked up to find that the hand I was holding was that of a stranger.Just before dawn, ejected from sleep, I am unraveled into another condition.The place between these two conditions is complex and difficult, a peculiar suspension between two exclusive frames for which there is no dialogue box. The familiar crosses into the unfamiliar and back again.What separates works of art from the fallible empirical world is not their higher degree of perfection but their ability to actualize themselves in a brilliant and expressive appearance just like fireworks. 1Fireworks! Temporality construed as ephemeral vision.And so: In every work of art something appears that does not exist. 2And so: The question of the truth of art comes into view when a non-existent is seen to rise as if it were real. In terms of its form, art promises what is not real. Objectively, it raises the claim, however obliquely this may come out, that just because something appears, it [End Page 143] must be possible to imbue it with being. The unquenchable longing excited by the beautiful is the longing for the fulfillment of a promise. 3The promise of meaning.One of my students writes, “We deem beautiful that which offers meaning to our meaningless lives.”I failed to draw a map and you followed it perfectly because the word for ‘cannot’ inscribes itself here to define an atmosphere of absolute trust which both fastens and unfastens us. 4Day unblooms into insatiable prerogatives vetoedsustained in their august sudden ramifications as if saying soEvery frame is danger and security. Poems that interest me are poems that show me how to proceed, not where to go or what to look at. They assuage the panic of the Stranger’s Hand by awakening curiosity rather than fear. The poem attests to the mobility of the frame, not to the totality of the picture.Thus the grip of realism has found a picture chosen to cover the space occupied by another picture establishing a flexibility so we are not immobile like a car that spends its night outside a window, but mobile like a spirit. 5* * * but we were not, we are not shadows; as we walk, heel and sole leave our sandal-prints in the sand, though the wounded heel treads lightly and more lightly follow, the purple sandals. 6 [End Page 144]2. The Real ThingA poet too has constantly to ask himself: “but is what I am writing really true?”—and this does not necessarily mean: “Is this how it happens in reality?” 7I do not remember when or why I became interested in looking at the ways in which notions of the truth and notions of the real had become blurred. Perhaps in the slogans of advertising. Perhaps it was the political discourse around the Vietnam... (shrink)

§ 1. “To the mind of the philosopher”, according to Plato,1 “there belongs a vision of all time and all being"; and certainly many of the great thinkers have made it their business to speculate about the omnitudo realitatis or the ens realissimum—about the universe as a whole and in its wholeness, or about that which is supremely real—in short about ‘ the Absolute ‘. It may be that this interest in the Whole lies at the heart of all (...) genuine philosophy, giving to it its distinctive inspiration and character. It may be, on the other hand, that it is a misdirected solicitude—an anxiety to solve the inherently insoluble. The Absolute, we shall perhaps be told, is a vox nihili—a name for that which, being nothing, has no attributes ; or we, at least, can never hope to characterize it. All our available predicates, being drawn of necessity from a limited field, must ‘ come short‘must prove inadequate for so immense and so august a subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 379 the minister of a very influential and liberal congregation. In 1860 he began publication in Cincinnati of The Dial, successor to the New England transcendentalist journal, and used its pages to promote religious liberalism, philosophical transcendentalism, and social reform. In 1863 he went to London where he became the head of the Ethical Society. Under the influence of Feuerbach and "left-Hegelians" he travelled widely in the (...) interests of "free thought." The most amazing of these four, however, is August Willich: an East Prussian soldier, ready to fight again to restore the 1848 revolution in Germany, discouraged by Marx from doing so, emigrating to Cincinnati to raise funds among the German 1848 refugees there and urging them to continue the lost cause in Germany, then wholeheartedly fighting for the Union Cause as a General in the Civil War, and finally joining the Populist revolt. As Easton points out, these four all illustrate the close relation between Hegel and the spirit of 1848. In addition to the stories of these men and their ideals, the volume contains a hundred pages of excellent specimens of their writngs, and copious references to obscure source-materials. The book is both a valuable reference work and an entertaining set of short stories. I--IERBERTW. SCHNEIDER Claremont, CaliJornia Theory of. Man. By Francisco Romero. Translated from the Spanish by William F. Cooper, with an Introduction by William J. Kflgore. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964. Pp. xxix + 324. $8.00.) The late Argentinian philosopher Francisco Romero, who died unexpectedly in 1962 after a brilliant career of more than thirty years of teaching and writing, was by common acclaim of his fellow-philosophers in Latin America their most distinguished philosopher in recent years. He received many honors and distinctions both at home and abroad, including the grand award of honor of the Argentinian Society of Writers. The most eminent philosophers in Latin American prepared a notable Festschri]t in honor of his 70th birthday, whose publication was unfortunately delayed and, therefore, could not be presented to him personally in his life time.1 Franci~o Romero was in fact as well as in acclaim the "Dean of Latin American Philosophy." It was high time that his central work Teorga del Hombre 2 should be translated. It is his magnum opus and represents the most comprehensive and systematic development of his philosophy. Romero was fortunate in having as his translator William F. Cooper who knew Romero personally, and was intimately acquainted with his philosophy. In addition, he had the unusual privilege of doing much of the translation in Romero's own library in Buenos Aires. In short, the translation is a labor of love and esteem.8 I myself had the privilege of coming to know Professor Romero in 1943, when as secretarygeneral of our Philosophical Association I was commissioned to make contact with our Latin American fellow-philosophers with a view to exploring the possibility of organizing InterAmerican congresses of philosophy and of forming an Inter-American society of philosophy, both of which projects, in due season, were accomplished. Romero welcomed these undertakings with characteristic enthusiasm and offered his fullest cooperation and support. He had always been a most active and indefatigable promoter of better understanding between North and South America and, especially, of closer cooperation between the philosophers of 1Homenaje a Francisco Romero, Faculdad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1952. 8In further attestation of Professor Cooper's special qualification for this translation it should be mentioned that he prepared for the Homenaje, already referred to, the most complete, up-to-date bibliography of Romero's extensive publications as well as an inventory of Romero's many works still in progress at the time of his death. 380 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the two Americas. All members of our association who came to know him in Buenos Aires were warmly welcomed, and no doubt also experienced, as I did, the warm and generous hospitality of Professor Romero and his wife in their home in Martinez. Francisco Romero was not only professor of philosophy at the Universities of Buenos Aires and La Plato, but was also... (shrink)

The concept of religion necessarily splits into two categories, the substantive principles that are polarized about the idea of the revered object, and the manner of' applying them in the private behavior of the worshiper or in the public institutions of the state. Theory and practice are not conflicting terms. Philosophy, however, has its roots in principles and hesitates to shape the external forms in which its counsels may be expressed. Therefore the studies here are confined to the didactic issues (...) at stake, and religion is not defined except as the thinker defines it himself. The philosophers appearing in this book are: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Leibniz, Spinoza, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte--ten thinkers of the western world, from many ages and diverse stocks, who offer us their beliefs and conclusions. Though many distinguished names could be added to this list, the philosophies here expounded will serve to reflect the unflagging interest of humanity in this subject. (shrink)

Republic is the central work of the western world's most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. It is also a literary masterpiece: the philosophy is presented for the most part for the ordinary reader, who is carried along by the wit and intensity of the dialogue and by Plato's unforgettable images of the human condition. This new, lucid translation by Robin Waterfield is complemented by full (...) explanatory notes and an up-to-date critical introduction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:New Rhetoric's Empire:Pragmatism, Dogmatism, and SophismRomain LauferPragmatism vs. RationalismThere are at least two reasons to devote some attention to sophism when dealing with the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in the context of Franco-American intellectual exchanges. The first reason is that it lies at the very origin of classical philosophy which could be described as resulting directly from the way in which Plato and Aristotle succeeded in separating (...) the realm of rhetoric from the realm of philosophy. The second reason arises out of the way in which Durkheim, the founder of French academic sociology, thought it necessary to establish a clear distinction between sociology and pragmatism. This was done in a course given at the Sorbonne during the academic year 1913–14. The course could be considered a direct answer to the lectures on pragmatism given by William James at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1906–7 (Durkheim 1955).From the very beginning of his talk, Durkheim expresses an extremely ambivalent point of view. On the one hand, pragmatism, better than any other doctrine, allows one to feel the necessity of reforming or renovating the type of "traditional rationalism" that dominated the French intellectual atmosphere of the time. On the other hand, it represents a real threat for this same rationalist tradition. Is it not a declaration of war that pragmatism launches on rationalism when William James writes that "against [End Page 326] rationalism as a pretension and a method pragmatism is fully armed and militant" (1975, 32)? In the face of this attack Durkheim declares that what is at stake are the very foundations of French culture: "Our whole French culture is essentially based on rationalism. Here the eighteenth century lives on. Thus, a radical negation of rationalism would constitute a danger: it would imply a complete disruption of our national culture. The whole French spirit would have to be transformed if the form of irrationalism that pragmatism represents were to be admitted" (1955, 28). Durkheim adds that this threat is not limited to the French tradition: "Not only our culture but the whole of the philosophical tradition has been, since the very beginnings of philosophical speculation—apart from a single exception that will be dealt with later—of a rationalist tendency. Therefore it is toward the disruption of all this tradition that one would have to proceed if pragmatism were valid" (1955, 28).Durkheim insists that what pragmatism tends to destroy is the "cult of truth," the fact that there are judgments that are necessary, which he will allude to throughout his analysis as corresponding to a dogmatic conception of truth that is repeatedly criticized by William James. James writes in his lectures on pragmatism that "rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions[;]... objective truth must be something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must be the absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally absolute reality.... Down with psychology, up with logic, in all this question!" (1975, 38).This allows Durkheim to declare that by stating that the human mind is free in front of the truth, pragmatism approaches the single exception he mentioned, namely, sophism, which in a similar manner negated truth. This connection is not arbitrary: it is avowed by the pragmatists themselves (1955, 28–29). Thus F. C. S. Schiller proclaims himself a "Protagorean" and recalls the axiom that "man is the measure of all things."Thus the debate between rationalism and pragmatism—between, according to Durkheim, a French philosophical tradition characterized by its link with a Cartesian dogmatic form of rationalism and an American philosophy characterized by its link with pragmatism—can be seen as the continuation of the debate between Plato and Aristotle, on the one hand, and the Sophists, on the other, at the origin of Western philosophy. Moreover, Durkheim tells us that the resurgence of the debate between pragmatism and philosophy corresponds to a historical transformation that affects the whole Western world. Pragmatism is becoming the only and dominant philosophy of the time. The central trait of this intellectual orientation is its [End Page 327] focus on action, a focus it shares with sociology itself: both are "daughters of... (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel reading of Schelling’s speculative physics in light of debates concerning the notion of emergence in philosophy of science. We begin by highlighting Schelling’s disruptive potential with regard to the contemporary philosophical landscape, currently polarized over a false dichotomy between reductionist Humeanism and liberal Kantianism. We then argue that a broadly Schellingian approach to nature is unwittingly being revived by a group of scholars promoting a non-mainstream process account of emergence based on the notion of constraint (...) and grounded in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics. Such an account, we argue, represents an effective theoretical platform to re-read Schelling’s philosophy of nature today. This reading provides a picture of life and mind as emerging out of self-organizing processes that take place through the self-inhibition of nature’s inherent tendency to disorder. (shrink)

The Phaedo is acknowledged to be one of Plato's greatest masterpieces, showing him both as a philosopher and as a dramatist at the height of his powers. For its moving account of the execution of Socrates, the Phaedo ranks among the supreme literary achievements of antiquity. It is also a seminal document for many ideas deeply ingrained in western culture, and provides one of the best introductions to Plato's thought. This new edition is a revised version of the (...) Clarendon Press translation, and is eminently suitable for readers new to Plato, and ideal for classroom use, thanks to the provision of Stephanus page and letter numbering. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)