Charles Taylor begins his essay “Kant's Theory of Freedom” by stating that in the last three centuries people have sought recognition, equality and justice as corollaries of “liberation”. The process, he says, “has been punctuated, and partly shaped, by paradigm statements by major thinkers …. Among these statements, Kant's has been very important. It marked a crucial step on the way.” Similar sentiments are expressed by Hayek, Rawls and others.

In his thoughtful paper, “The Liberal Tradition, Kant, and the Pox”, Rolf George joins the venerable argument about whether Kant should be accounted friend or foe of liberals. But this is not just a rehearsal of the debate over the compatibility of the Old Jacobin's defense of civil liberties and government by consent with his notoriously unpleasant doctrines of the absolute duty to obey the law or his ruthlessly retributive view of punishment. George advances the debate by suggesting that elements of Kant's moral theory are deeply incompatible with liberalism. And this is particularly striking when liberals like John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Robert Nozick are quick to invoke Kant's name in defense of their own views. The attraction of Kant for these modern (and American) liberals is clear, for they hold individualistic moral theories and they reject utilitarianism. But, if George is right, there are aspects of Kant's thought which make him an unsuitable mascot.

A paper which succeeds in being erudite, yet lively, and which tells an amusing tale without digressing from its theme, deserves great admiration. Such is Professor George's discussion of Kant and liberalism. He first points out briefly that in fact Kant exercised small influence on liberal thought in the nineteenth century. The bulk of his paper is devoted to the question of whether Kant was a liberal at all and to justifying his unconventional negative answer. In the course of so doing he presents the diverting tale of the ingenuous young aristocrat who solicits Kant's opinion as to whether one's wife should be inoculated against the pox. But the diversion is pertinent. Kant's two answers to the question reveal two different ways in which the Kantian moral theory, sententiously expressed in the so-called “categorical imperative”, might be incompatible with liberal opinion.

L'histoire de la philosophie voit d'abord en Hobbes un spécialiste de la philosophie politique, au point qu'on en oublie souvent l'importance du reste de son oeuvre. Sans doute, il n'est pas faux d'insister sur la contribution hobbienne à la philosophie politique. Et de l'avis de Hobbes lui-même, c'est dans ce domaine qu'il avait été particulièrement novateur. Cependant, son ambition était plus large: il voulait construire un système entier de philosophie, dont la politique ne devait représenter que la dernière partie. En effet, selon l'ordre de sa grande oeuvre, les Eléments de la philosophie, l'exposé du système total se divisait en trois grands livres: Du corps, De l'homme et Du citoyen. Apparemment, le système devait donc se composer des trois parties suivantes: une physique, une anthropologie et une science politique. En fait, le premier volume, sur le corps, comporte également la méthodologie, la logique et la philosophie première. La division en trois a pourtant sa vérité, et même une vérité troublante si l'on prend au sérieux la volonté hobbienne de constituer un système rigoureux dans lequel les sciences de l'homme et de la politique résulteraient de celle des corps en général, en ce sens du moins que les dernières sciences supposeraient les principes des premières. Car il semble que Hobbes ait admis une certaine autonomie des trois grandes parties de son système, au point que, par exemple, la politique paraît pouvoir trouver son propre fondement en elle-même, sans référence particulière aux développements de la physique.

David Gauthier distinguishes maximizing given the actions others do from maximizing given the happiness others get, and maintains that universal conformities to the first rule coincide with equilibria in utility spaces of possible interactions, whereas universal conformities to the second coincide with optima. In Part One of the present paper some of his views concerning these matters of technical detail are tested under a variety of interpretations, and against a range of situations including most prominently situations in which actions of agents are interdependent. Several limitations and needed qualifications are discovered.

Sir J. C. Eccles nous propose dans The Self and Its Brain une théorie ternaire et interactionniste fort controversée dont il avait déjà posé les bases auparavant.

La présente réflexion vise l'examen du bien-fondé neuropsychologique des principales thèses de cette théorie, à la lumière de données cliniques récentes dont l'auteur ne semble pas avoir su tirer toutes les conséquences.

In Part 1 of this paper I will define a sense of “person” which is importantly connected with ordinary notions of personhood. It is a consequence of my definition that each person exemplifies a specific “egoicity”. In Part 2 I will argue, on the basis of empirical facts about monozygotic (“identical”) twins, that egoicity is not determined by bodily constitution. In Part 3 I will conclude with a brief discussion of implications for The Mind-Body Problem.

In the etiology of teleological functions, what role can be played by accidental occurrences? Douglas Ehring's essay “Accidental Functions” constructs a theory of ideological functions which makes it possible for objects to have functions even when their causal origins are due entirely to accident—be they natural functions (the function of the heart) or artifact functions (the function of a watch). Ehring constructs this view on the basis of a set of putative counterexamples aimed largely at the theories of Enc and Adams. Both of these theories block the attribution of ideological function to structures with entirely accidental causal histories—accidental in origin and in the way their effects are causally sustained.

Anyone interested in the development of analytic philosophy will likely find Russell's Theory of Knowledge a work of great importance in itself; but anyone who, in addition, is fascinated by scholarly mystery and the psychology of philosophers will certainly regard its publication at last, nearly three-quarters of a century after Russell abandoned it unfinished—principally because of the young Wittgenstein's virulent criticisms—as an event nothing short of momentous. Theory of Knowledge may well have played as important a role in Wittgenstein's early work (from the Notebooks to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) as the Tractatus itself did in his later writings—each representing for Wittgenstein an attitude, a philosophical method, and above all a theory of propositions, against which he was driven to react. But it would be a sad irony if renewed interest in Wittgenstein's early work were to eclipse all over again the very piece of writing which helped move him to creative rebellion. Unlike the two previous volumes in the Collected Papers (numbers 1 and 12), which broaden rather than deepen our knowledge of his philosophical growth, Theory of Knowledge deserves to become a standard text in Russell studies. It contains crucial material not found elsewhere in his writings and hence it fills a gap—ironically,, a gap Russell himself created—in what we know of his thought in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I, when his career at Cambridge was at its apogee.

En plus d'être partout présente dans l'expérience et le discours ordinaires, la culpabilité a fait l'objet des discours traditionnels que sont le discours religieux et le discours philosophique. Voici qu'avec Freud et la psychanalyse apparaît dans notre culture une interprétation qui se veut nouvelle de ce spectre qui hante notre vie individuelle et collective. Quelle est donc l'originalité et la fécondité de cette approche? Quelle place occupe la culpabilité dans la théorie psychanalytique? Comment sont conçus dans cette perspective les rapports et les différences entre se sentir coupable, se sentir inférieur, éprouver de la honte et éprouver de l'angoisse? Sur chacun de ces problèmes, J. Goldberg analyse et discute les principales thèses avancées par la psychanalyse depuis sa fondation jusqu'à nos jours. Voilà un livre extrêmement riche, subtil et complexe. Il n'est pas aisé d'en faire brièvement état sans le trahir, d'autant plus qu'il se déploie dans le double registre de la clinique et de la théorie métapsychologique. Notre souci premier ici sera de montrer à des philosophes en quoi la psychanalyse se différencie du discours philosophique ou religieux. Si notre présentation de cet ouvrage se veut néanmoins une étude critique de type philosophique, c'est par les questions épistémologiques qu'elle pose et non par une confrontation des théories de Goldberg avec une théorie philosophique de la culpabilité.

The study of philosophy has no leading edge. Scholars may fruitfully explore past eras and superceded theories, revise their views of historic figures, modify inadequate theories, defend successful yet overlooked ideas, salvage the wheat from the chaff. A novel defense of previously discredited arguments could lead to new insights, and this is so even if that defense proved ultimately unsuccessful. But, I believe, one can profitably defend some perhaps too hastily condemned view only if one meanwhile keeps a watchful eye on contemporary problems and theorizing. Fred Wilson's monograph, Explanation, Causation and Deduction, attempts just such a defense, while steadfastly ignoring much of contemporary theory. The lack of a sympathetic ear to recent critics of empiricism is the largest single failing of this attempt, and it is this failing which has prevented Prof. Wilson from seeing the poverty of his position.