This book presents extracts from Leibniz's letters to Newtonian scientist Samuel Clarke.

In this paper we provide frame definability results for weak versions of classical modal axioms that can be expressed in Fitting's many-valued modal languages. These languages were introduced by M. Fitting in the early '90s and are built on Heyting algebras which serve as the space of truth values. The possible-worlds frames interpreting these languages are directed graphs whose edges are labelled with an element of the underlying Heyting algebra, providing us a form of many-valued accessibility relation. Weak axioms of (...) the form we treat here have been examined from the completeness perspective and further explored for applications in non-monotonic reasoning. Here, we introduce more weak many-valued modal axioms and prove a frame correspondence result for all of them. The classes of corresponding labelled frames possess algebraic properties which are strongly reminiscent of many classical ones, such as the Church-Rosser property, reflexivity, transitivity, partial functionality, etc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:French Philosophical Thought: Present Trends of French Philosophical Thought *Alexandre Koyré*This is a rather large subject, so you will not be astonished that I shall not treat it in its entirety. French philosophy during the years of war and occupation was pretty active. Though there were some heavy losses: the death of Brunschvicg, posthumous book [...], Héritage de mots, héritage d’idées, 1 a book written when (...) Brunschvicg was in hiding, and a book as “clear and serene as that of Condorcet,” has appeared after the liberation of France; the death of Halbwachs, of Politzer, of Cavaillès, of Lautman shot by the Nazis, of others less well known...; there was the ban on publications by Jewish authors, yet, in spite of this, there has been a surprising number of interesting and even important publications, both during and after the war.It seems that for the elder generation of French philosophers—and that applies not only to philosophers, but to scholars in general—for the generation of men too old to take an active part in the underground move-ment—work, as if nothing happened, has been in the same time a means of escape and a means of resistance. They felt themselves asserting a spiritual tradition that could not be destroyed, and should not be destroyed, and should not be endangered by such contingent “accidents” as Vichy government or even the Gestapo.Thus there have been a new translation of Plato by Robin, books on Plato, on Aristotle, on the medieval (Gilson) and modern philosophy etc., books on philosophy of science, books on sociology, psychology, logic (Méray, Serrus), 2 philosophy of religion, translations of philosophy classics. At the first glance the bibliography of this period (Lavelle, Le Senne, Bachelard, Gilson, etc.) you could have the impression wander in a familiar landscape: yet this would be a completely false impression, because as a matter of fact, this familiar landscape has been completely upturned by the upsurge of existentialism and the revival of Catholic philosophy [End Page 531] (Fessard, 3 De Lubac, Blondel, Nedoncelle, G. Marcel). Under this double impact everything—even the “climate” of philosophy—has changed. Philosophy has become a socially phenomenon.Neither Catholicism nor existentialism are, of course, specifically French intellectual movements. Catholicism is universal ex definitione, and as for existentialism, though French existentialism possesses some specific fea-tures that distinguish it from and even oppose it to the German one, fea-tures that can probably be explained by different national traditions—Descartes, Pascal—it, too, is no more French than it is German. Existen-tialism as such is European by-phenomenon, a definite phase of Western philosophical thought (and European thought, European civilization, at least until the recent—perhaps successful—attempts to destroy it, has been a unity). It originates more than a hundred years ago with Maine de Biran and Kierkegaard, and only has been rediscovered by the twentieth century now. Two thinkers that have been nearly completely neglected by the 19th century—but the 19th century, at least the second part of it, has been a dark age for philosophy—and after the rediscovery or simply the discovery of Kierkegaard in the 20th, it spreads, in Kierkegaard’s wake, from country to country with the usual speed or delay with which ideas travel today. Thus existential philosophy has been, first, developed in Germany in the ‘20s and ‘30s by Heidegger and Jaspers, then—Kierkegaard having been translated into French during the long armistice between the World Wars—in France, some 15 years later. 4 I have heard, by the way, that Kierkegaard has been, or is in the process of being translated into English. So, it is possible that in some 15 or 20 years you will have an existentialism in this country.But to return to France, the rise or upsurge of existentialism has been extraordinarily rapid. It was simultaneous with Husserl’s phenomenolo-gy becoming known in France (Husserl’s last work, Meditations Car-tesiennes, being the text of the lectures he gave in the Sorbonne in 1929, which is now available only in the French translation): from Husserl to... (shrink)

When Empires Collide is a history of the famous encounter between the French philosopher Denis Diderot and his patron, Empress Catherine II of Russia, in 1773. The book begins many years earlier and traces the life of Diderot and Catherine in alternating chapters, painting a vivid and complex portrait of eighteenth-century Europe where new Enlightenment thinking co-existed with old monarchical systems. Robert Zaretsky has written an intellectual and political history of the time by spotlighting the exchange of ideas between (...) a philosopher who reflected on the nature of power and a ruler who excercised it. In the autumn of 1773, taking up residence in Saint Petersburg at Catherine's invitation, the two met every third day for Catherine's instruction in various philosophical and political subjects. Zaretsky describes the scene: "For each 'lesson,' he prepared a series of notes on a particular theme, from which he would read at the start of the session. Having thus introduced the theme, Diderot then engaged Catherine in conversation. This made for a stunning tableau: the conversations were freewheeling, free of the protocol that reigned elsewhere in the palace. Catherine frequently knitted or embroidered during these sessions, while Diderot, caught up in the excitement of an idea, would whirl his hands to emphasize points, often reaching out and grabbing Catherine's leg or arm. Zaretsky pieces together their conversations from letters to each other and to other correspondents, as well as from Diderot's (still untranslated) memoirs. The influence seems to run in both directions; however, as the author concludes, this extraordinary friendship reveals two individuals aware of the power of ideas, but who have very different understandings of the use of ideas. (shrink)

Fifteen essays are contained in this collection, all relating to Heinz Post ’ s article ‘ Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics ’, also reprinted. In this article, written in the heyday of the post - positivist movement, Post aims to convince his fellowphilosophers of science to bring the issue of heuristics back to the philosophical stage. Examining a wealth of theories and models from the physics and chemistry of the last 300 years, Post extracts several strategies of theory construction of which (...) he considers the General Correspondence Principle to be the most important. According to this principle, any acceptable newtheory should explain the well - confirmed part of its predecessor. Later Post states the General Correspondence Principle more precisely and uses it with what he considers its de facto validity to argue against incommensurability, Kuhn - losses, 1 and relativism. Post himself seems to support a kind of convergent realism which is most notably expressed in his credo that science progresses linearly. (shrink)