Niebuhr saw that several paragraphs had been lost from the beginning of the Caesar; Ziegler suggested that the lacuna extended to the end of the Alexander. Both hypotheses are confirmed, if the identification of two new fragments is admitted.At 10. 11 p. 368, Zonaras is epitomizing the text of Caes.; he recounts the Story of Caes. 60. 3, and continues: Editors leave the provenance of the passage unspecified: ‘addita sunt pauca de nomine Caesaris‘. The correction of the vulgar error might (...) perhaps be an inference of Zonaras himself—though such an original contribution to historical polemic would be unique; but the erroneous version, at least, must come from somewhere. It is not found in any of Zonaras' sources for this period, nor in any surviving book which he certainly knew. Nor is it likely to be an addition from his own general knowledge. (shrink)

Description: The book presents a systematic view of the landmark developments in analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. It highlights the development of the concepts such as language, meaning, truth, reference, necessity, analyticity, etc. which have been central to analytic philosophy. The book consists of four parts, namely: Part I The Linguistic Revolution; Part II The Logic of Language; Part III The Primacy of the Semantical and Part IV Language, Mind and Metaphysics. Part I discusses the nature of the linguistic (...) revolution and the analytic method. Part II presents a panoramic view of the fall of formal language philosophy and the rise of the ordinary language philosophy in the west. Part III brings out the semantic issues like the problems of truth, meaning, reference, etc. Part IV attempts to discuss the nature of language-reality relationship, the nature of mental representations and the concept of mind and also the metaphysical issues of realism and anti-realism. Finally, it brings out the metaphysics of freedom, value and reason. The author has attempted to bring out the issues of analytic philosophy in a systematic and coherent fashion. Analytic philosophy, in spite of the appearances to the contrary, is a systematic philosophy with a built-in metaphysics of man and the universe. The book will be of interest to the general students of philosophy as well as the specialists in philosophy working in the areas of philosophy of language and meaning. (shrink)

The title may be understood in three ways. Firstly, the truth under study is the truth about freedom. We speak of the truth of something, in as much as we presume that there are many misconceptions about that something, and it stands in need of clarification. Thus, the many misconceptions about freedom will have to be divested, if freedom is to be rightly grasped. Secondly, in the sense that there is a truth in the core of freedom, indeed, truth is (...) the essence of freedom. If truth is to be rightly grasped, its core has to be penetrated. Thirdly, there is a deeper relation between truth and freedom. Freedom cannot be understood, much less rightly practised, if we do not comprehend the necessary relation that freedom bears to truth. This essay purports to study all three senses, not quite generally, but with special reference to Ratzinger, the German theologian-cum-phenomenologist of religion, who also happens to be the current pope Benedict XVI of the Catholic Christianity. The study proceeds in three stages. First of all, I will give the statement of the problem. Secondly, I will briefly dwell on the modern Western history of freedom. Thirdly, I will study the interface between freedom and truth, highlighting the nature of human freedom, the relation between freedom and responsibility, and the relation between freedom and the truth of human existence itself. The essay is more interpretive than evaluative, with an eye to be as close to the insightful thoughts of Ratzinger as possible. (shrink)

As everyone knows, since the end of the Second World War there has been a sensational revival of interest in the non-Christian religions particularly in the United States and in this country. The revival has taken two forms, the one popular, the other academic. The first of these has turned almost exclusively to Hindu and Buddhist mysticism and can be seen as an energetic reaction against the dogmatic and until very recently rigid structure of institutionalised Christianity and a search for (...) a lived experience of the freedom of the spirit which is held to be the true content of mysticism, obscured in Christianity by the basic dogma of a transcendent God, the ‘wholly Other’ of Rudolf Otto and his numerous followers, but wholly untrammelled by any such concept in the higher reaches of Vedanta and Buddhism, particularly in its Zen manifestation. On the academic side the picture is less clear. There is, of course, the claim that the study of religion, like any other academic study, must be subjected to and controlled by the same principles of ‘scientific’ objectivity to which the other ‘arts’ subjects have been subjected, to their own undoing. But even here there would seem to be a bias in favour of the religions of India and the Far East as against Islam, largely, one supposes, in response to popular demand. (shrink)

pt. 1. De dicto: Necessary and contingent truths, by G. W. Leibniz. New essays concerning human understanding, by G. W. Leibniz. Introduction to the critique of pure reason, by Immanuel Kant. On the nature of mathematical truth, C. G. Hempel. Two dogmas of empiricism, by W. V. O. Quine. In defense of a dogma, by H. P. Grace and P. F. Strawson. The a priori and the analytic, by A. Quinton. The truths of reason, by R. Chisholm.--pt. 2. De re: (...) Reference and modality, by W. V. O. Quine. De re et de dicto, by A. Plantinga. World and essence, by A. Plantinga.--Bibliography (p. 200-202). (shrink)

Excluding only pure nominalists and "imagists" he includes in the classical theory "almost everyone who lived before the second decade of the twentieth century." This of course covers most of the other general types of theory found in the epistemology textbooks: that concepts are in the mind, that they are also in the thing, and finally that they are fundamentally prior to the thing. These types may be exemplified by Locke, Aristotle, and Plato, respectively. The controversy between these three schools (...) Price feels can for his purposes be regarded as a "domestic difference within the classical tradition." His subsidiary discussions of these differences he confines almost entirely to the first two. The Platonic theory he handles very lightly and gingerly; "it is a sufficiently difficult task in these days to convince people that there is any sense in talking of universals at all, even in the mild and moderate Aristotelian way". (shrink)

Advances in transplantation have extended the life and relieved the suffering of thousands of individuals. The prospect of being able to use tissues from embryos, as well as from anencephalic newborns, offers the promise of further relief of suffering. However, these possibilities raise significant moral and public policy issues. The question arises of the extent to which those who disapprove of abortion may make use of tissues derived from abortion in order to treat serious diseases. This essay argues that, with (...) proper safeguards, such tissue can be used without cooperating in abortion. That is, even those who oppose abortion can benefit from the use of tissue procured during abortion. Questions also arise regarding the probity of maintaining a pregnancy in order to produce an anencephalic newborn whose biological existence will be maintained so as better to secure organs once death is declared. It is argued that, since no harm can be done to a being that has neither a sense of self or the capacity to feel pain, and since women have a right to forego abortions, there is no legitimate ground for opposing women's seeking meaning in their pregnancy through maximizing the opportunity of others to use the organs of their anencephalic newborn once death has been declared. Finally, it is argued that, since the capacities for sentience, a minimal condition for personhood, are never realized by an anencephalic, the entity has never been alive as a person. Therefore, there should be no opposition in principle to aborting anencephalics nor, after proper declaration, to making their organs available as one would after whole-brain death, despite the continued functioning of the brain stem. (shrink)