In the literature and discussion on aesthetics there is a widespread failure either to recognize that there is any significant distinction between the aesthetic and the artistic, or to characterize the distinction adequately. While in some cases the conflation of the two concepts is of little or no consequence, in others it can lead to serious misconception. Although it is widely overlooked the distinction is often of central importance, and is more complex than is commonly supposed.

In 1942, replying to a criticism put to him by Langford, G. E. Moore confessed that he was unable to solve the paradox of analysis. But while conceding inability to solve the puzzle Moore offered the following suggestion, which he did not further develop: I think that, in order to explain the fact that, even if ‘To be a brother is the same thing as to be a male sibling’ is true, yet nevertheless this statement is not the same as the statement ‘To be a brother is to be a brother’, one must suppose that both statements are in some sense about the expressions used as well as about the concept of being a brother. But in what sense they are about the expressions used I cannot see clearly; and therefore I cannot give any clear solution to the puzzle.

In recent years, much uncertainty and outright scepticism surrounds the notion of character. In the arts—painting, the novel, drama, film—the notion of character has receded into the background. The loss of character is especially conspicuous in those artistic forms in which it traditionally occupied centre-stage: drama, the novel, films. The withdrawal of character from the arts has in fact become a topic of debate in the theory and criticism of the arts. In the arts themselves, the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of attaining character is a common subject. Since ordinary sentiments are readily reflected in the fine arts, it is natural to suspect that character is not held in high regard in everyday life. Even if we take a dim view of the suggestion that the arts mirror ordinary sentiments with little distortion, a decline in the importance of character is evident in other humane disciplines: history is a striking example. Indeed, if we attend to our major social institutions—the family, the courts, the bureaucracy—it would be difficult to point to any in which the question of character is more than a peripheral concern. Indeed, it appears that the appraisal of character is of central concern in modern society only when the individual is in some way beyond the pale: in institutions of punishment, rehabilitation, mental health.

Hegel, in offering his account of Other Minds, claims that his way of conducting the enquiry is the only philosophically significant way. I shall attempt to bring out certain profound insights in this area on Hegel's part, but I shall also argue that his view of Man leaves out of consideration some of the most important aspects of what is essentially human.

One minor problem in understanding Bradley's moral philosophy is that of how he manages to combine a reverence for the ordinary man's moral sense with what amounts almost to contempt for the actual precepts of popular morality. The reverence seems clear. At the outset of Ethical Studies Bradley appears as the great defender of the plain man against the depredations of theorizing and cultivation. Contemporary moral philosophers were too sophisticated, with their cavalier disregard of the moral feelings and convictions of uneducated people. Admittedly popular moral views had their limitations: they were neither all-comprehensive nor everywhere consistent. Still, ‘if we want a moral sense that has not yet been adulterated, we must not be afraid to leave enlightenment behind us’.

Russell said that physics drove him to a position not unlike that of Berkeley —by which he meant subjectivism or solipsism. ‘As regards metaphysics’, he tells us in his Autobiography, ‘when, under the influence of Moore, I first threw off the belief in German idealism, I experienced the delight of believing that the sensible world is real. Bit by bit, chiefly under the influence of physics, this delight has faded, and I have been driven to a position not unlike that of Berkeley, without his God and his Anglican complacency’.

In Chapters 6 and 7 of Language, Truth and Poetry I attempted to solve the ancient problem of fictional reference by claiming that a fictional construct (such as ‘Pickwick’ or ‘centaur’) ‘points’ or refers to certain features of reality in rather the same way as an abstraction like ‘gravitation’ or ‘cruelty’ does. I now believe that this theory of mine is unsatisfactory; and I should like to propose a new solution to the problem.

For extravagant young Fellows, that have Liveliness and Spirit, come sometimes to be set right, and so make Able and Great Men: but Dejected Minds, timorous and tame, and Low Spirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to any thing. To avoid the Danger, that is on either hand, is the great Art; and he that has found a way, how to keep up a Child's Spirit, easy, active and free; and yet, at the same time, to restrain him from many things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education.

Anthony Kenny concludes The God of the Philosophers by saying that ‘If the argument of the previous chapters has been correct then there is no such being as the God of traditional natural theology … There cannot, if our argument has been sound, be a timeless, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent all-good being’ (p. 121). According to Kenny