The Review of Metaphysics back issues from June 2003:
Leibniz without physics.
Jun 01, 2003; ... THIS ESSAY IS ABOUT PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS in Leibniz and Aristotle. More generally, it concerns the relation of early modern philosophy to the preceding traditions. The inquiry is conducted by way of a review of Christia Mercer's Leibniz's Metaphysics: It's Origins and Development. (1) ...
How religious experience "works": Jamesian pragmatism and its warrants.(William James, 'Varieties of Religious Experience')
Jun 01, 2003; ... THIS ESSAY IS A RECONSIDERATION of William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, a work intended by James as a study of the more revealing features of human nature. Significant among James's contributions, the Varieties integrates the widest range of his psychological and ...
Doing philosophy historically.
Jun 01, 2003; ... QUINE IS SAID TO HAVE JOKED THAT "there are two sorts of people interested in philosophy, those interested in philosophy and those interested in the history of philosophy." (1) Though many of us would bristle at Quine's joke, it makes a straightforward point: that there is a distinction to ...
The activity of happiness in Aristotle's Ethics.
Jun 01, 2003; ... I THERE HAS BEEN A LONGSTANDING DEBATE about the relation of virtue and happiness in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle seems to have two contradictory positions. One position is found in book 1, chapter 7, where happiness is the highest good, an activity of soul in ...
Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on the will.
Jun 01, 2003; ... ONE OF THE MORE INTERESTING IF TROUBLESOME DEBATES within medieval philosophy is the paradoxical question of whether St. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the most influential theologian the medieval Catholic Church produced, defends an account of moral responsibility that is consistent with the ...
Alexandrakis, Aphrodite, editor. Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics (Studies in Neoplatonism: Ancient and Modern, Vol. 12).(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. xi + 254 pp. Cloth, $71.50; paper, $23.95--This is a very useful collection of papers on a highly significant topic, one that up to now has not received the attention it deserves. It is divided into four sections, and these make sense. They ...
Bonnette, Dennis. Origin of the Human Species.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B. V., 2001. xv + 202 pp. Paper, $38.00--That Darwinism has been immune generally from philosophical and scientific criticism says something about its iconic status as a paradigm. As Alvin Plantinga has said, "Darwinian evolution has become an idol of the ...
Bracken, Joseph, S.J. The One and the Many: a Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. xii + 234 pp. Paper, $22.00--Bracken offers two new approaches to the God-world relationship. He replaces substance metaphysics (individuals as units of reality) with Whitehead's field metaphysics or social ontology "in which societies or structured fields of ...
Changeux, Jean-Pierre, and Paul Ricoeur. What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature and the Brain.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. x + 335 pp. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $17.95--Centered on the question of normativity and ethics, neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur engage in a lively and informative dialogue. They share ...
Deleuze, Gilles. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Introduction by John Rajchman. Translation by Anne Boyman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. 104 pp. Cloth, $24.00--The gift of this slender book, beautifully translated by Anne Boyman, lies in a single but crucial suggestion: the originality of Gilles Deleuze's philosophical contribution is to ...
Ferreira, M. Jamie. Love's Grateful Striving: a Commentary on Kierkegaard's "Works of Love.".(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xi + 316 pp. Cloth, $45.00--M. Jamie Ferreira's Love's Grateful Striving is a noteworthy contribution to Kierkegaard studies. Her informed and insightful explication de texte brings Kierkegaard into dialogue with his better known critics, such as ...
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J. Acts Amid Precepts: the Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001. xxiv + 325 pp. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $39.95--Through textual analysis and an exposition of Aristotelian mathematics and logic, Acts Amid Precepts makes two points essential to a proper consideration of Thomistic moral theory ....
Foot, Phillippa. Natural Goodness.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. 136 pp. Cloth, $22.00--Natural Goodness is an important new book from Phillippa Foot, a central figure in the revival of ethical naturalism and character-based ethics. A longstanding critic of the emotivist and prescriptivist theories that arose following ...
French, Peter A. The Virtues of Vengeance.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. xii + 248 pp. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $14.95--In this volume Peter A. French sets out to resurrect the role and meaning of vengeance. For French, vengeance is a fundamental aspect of morality that has "fallen into disrepute without being seriously ...
Goldman, Alan H. Practical Rules: When We Need Them and When We Don't.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Cambridge Studies in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xi + 210 pp. Cloth, $55.00--The field of contemporary ethics has been dominated by two opposite but equally extreme positions regarding the function of rules in moral reasoning. According to the first of these ...
Grant, Edward. God and Reason in the Middle Ages.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ix + 397 pp. Cloth, $64.95; paper, $22.95--Perhaps a more exact title for this book might have been God and Reason in Medieval Universities, for its major focus is on the way that reason, especially in the form of logic and natural philosophy, ...
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Schriften und Entwurfe (1799-1808).(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... G. W. F. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 5. Edited by Manfred Baum and Kurt Rainer Meist in collaboration with Theodor Ebert. Hamburg: Meiner, 1998. viii + 827 pp. Cloth, 236.00 [euro]--Hegel scholars have been waiting two decades and a half for this book to appear. It contains the ...
Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ix + 242 pp. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $22.00--This is an interesting, sophisticated collection of philosophical essays on the hiddenness of God, in the specific sense that God (if such there be) has not made his existence sufficiently clear. The ...
Kaczor, Christopher. Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002. x + 228 pp. Cloth $49.95--Modern versions of utilitarianism have been called consequentialism: in order to evaluate the goodness or badness of human actions one must consider--in one way or in another--their consequences. This ...
Klement, Kevin C. Frege and the Logic of Sense and Reference.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... New York: Routledge, 2002. xiii + 260 pp. Cloth, $70.00--This book is in the Studies in Philosophy: Outstanding Dissertations series. Its central theme is that Frege's concept-notation is inadequate because it does not formalize his semantic theory after the introduction of the ...
Kontos, Pavlos. L'action morale chez Aristote.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. vi + 174 pp. Paper, $20.00--In this monograph Pavlos Kontos of the University of Patras in Greece develops a phenomenology of human actions against the background of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The first part of his study is centered ...
Mahdi, Muhsin S. Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Foreword by Charles E. Butterworth. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. xvii + 264 pp. Cloth, $37.50--In this long-awaited treatise, the pre-eminent scholar Muhsin Mahdi gathers the finest findings of four decades of path-breaking research and teaching to reveal Alfarabi (d ....
Mancini, Daniele. Peregrinazioni di una coscienza inquieta per il ritorno della guerra in Europa.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Rome: Nuova Editrice Spada, 1999. 182 pp. Paper, 12.91. [euro]--This book is dedicated to the Kosovo conflict, from 24 March to 20 June 1999, which Mancini (an expert of strategic studies who has been in the Italian foreign service since 1978) had the chance to follow in its entirety while ...
Montag, Warren. Bodies, Masses, Power, Spinoza and His Contemporaries.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... New York: Verso, 2000. xxi + 136 pp. Cloth $35.00--Warren Montag's book is a fine analysis of the ways in which Spinoza's materialism, as it was formulated in The Ethics, affects his political theory. Even though Montag's analysis is historical, and sensitive to the theoretical and ...
Moreiras, Alberto. The Exhaustion of Difference: the Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. x + 350 pp. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $19.95--This book is a collection of articles previously published in various literary and cultural journals. It deals with a large number of topics including "magical realism," "auratic practice" ("that which consists ...
Pini, Giorgio. Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus: an Interpretation of Aristotle's "Categories" in the Late Thirteenth Century.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Bd. 77. Leiden: Brill, 2002. viii + 230 pp. Cloth, $86.00--In this clearly written and impressive volume, Giorgio Pini has provided the first systematic book-length study of Duns Scotus's doctrine of the categories and an extremely ...
Rist, John M. Real Ethics: Rethinking the Foundations of Morality.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. vii + 295 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper; $23.00--Real Ethics is a hard-hitting critique of contemporary moral theory from a realist point of view by John M. Rist, Professor Emeritus of philosophy and classics at the University of Toronto. His previous ...
Robinson, Daniel N. Praise and Blame: Moral Realism and Its Application.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xi + 225 pp. Paper, $29.95--Robinson brings to his defense of moral realism credentials in both philosophy and psychology, honed over a lifetime of learning. The former chairman of the Psychology Department and Distinguished Research Professor ...
Rosen, Stanley. The Elusiveness of the Ordinary: Studies in the Possibility of Philosophy.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. vii + 327 pp. Cloth, $37.50--Stanley Rosen ranks among the two or three most serious philosophers of the last several decades. For more than forty years, Rosen has broken significantly new philosophical ground with his careful considerations of the ...
Velkley, Richard. Being After Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. x + 192. Cloth, $40.00; paper, $18.00--Richard Velkley's new book, Being After Rousseau, is a critical study of four of the most important "late" modern philosophers, Rousseau, Kant, Schelling, and Heidegger. As the title suggests, however, it ...
Wagner, Michael F. Neoplatonism and Nature: Studies in Plotinus' "Enneads.".(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. viii + 338 pp. Cloth, $73.50; paper, $24.95--Little attention has been directed to Plotinus's philosophy of nature in contemporary scholarship, and we applaud in principle this attempt to investigate Plotinus's understanding of the natural ...
Winfield, Richard D. Autonomy and Normativity: Investigations of Truth, Right and Beauty.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Brookfield: Ashgate, 2001. xi + 250 pp. Cloth, $74.95--Truth, right, and beauty are normative. In other words, our theoretical, practical, and aesthetic judgements are founded only if they correspond to standards for truth, rightness, or beauty respectively. The book at hand is not ...
Young, Julian. Heidegger's Later Philosophy.(Book Review)
Jun 01, 2003; ... Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xi + 132 pp. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $20.00--This is the third and final volume of the author's "attempt to understand and communicate the insights of Martin Heidegger ... the most important philosopher of modern times" (p. 1). It is a discussion ...
Recent titles in philosophy *.
Jun 01, 2003; ... ALLINSON, ROBERT ELLIOT. Space, Time, and the Ethical Foundations. Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002. 203 pp. Cloth, $69.95. ANDERSON, CHARLES W. A Deeper Freedom: Liberal Democracy as an Everyday Morality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. xi + 208 pp ....
In memoriam.(Seth Benardete (1930-2001))(Obituary)(Biography)
Jun 01, 2003; ... SETH BENARDETE (1930-2001) Seth Benardete was born in Brooklyn, where he grew up with his older brother Jose. His father, Mair Jose, born in Istanbul, was a professor of Sephardic Studies and Spanish at Brooklyn College; his mother Doris taught in the English department ....