If axiarchism is the theory that the world is ruled by value, extreme axiarchism is the theory that some set of ethical needs is itself creatively powerful (Mackie 1982). Both views go back to Plato's claim in The Republic that the Form of the Good gives us knowledge and creative energy on analogy with the sun giving us vision without itself acting in the world. Insofar as this way of thinking obviates the need for a creative God, extreme axiarchism is a rival to traditional theism; if there is a God he was called into existence by virtue of his ethical requiredness.

Peut-on s'entendre en matière d'esthétique? Y a-t-il une objectivité possible des jugements dans ce domaine marginal de la philosophie? La question du sens commun dans la Critique de la faculté de juger, semble, aux dires de certains, mener directement à cette problématique contemporaine. Nous ne reprendrons pas ici les multiples articles et ouvrages sur le sensus communis parus dans la dernière décennie à la suite de l'impact conceptuel du thème de la rationalité communicationnelle. Notre intention est plutôt, au-delà de la “dérive” du célèbre paragraphe 40 vers une idée plus actuelle (et aussi plus banale) de “consensus”, de repérer les tensions entre le versant transcendantal et le versant empirique du sens commun qui surgissent significativement à l'occasion de cette dérive. Avant d'aborder le sens esthétique défini dans la troisième Critique et de le confronter aux interprétations qui nous semblent plus déterminantes comme celles de L. Ferry de J.-F. Lyotard ou de J. Habermas nous voudrions d'abord examiner l'usage général de cette notion dans l'histoire de la philosophie précritique pour vérifier ensuite la spécificitÉ qu'elle acquiert chez Kant.

Richard Wollheim (1962) provided an acute formulation of the problematic situation of an outvoted democrat. We are invited to consider an individual who endorses the democratic procedure, or ‘democratic machine’. Furthermore, this person prefers policy A, and has voted for it. “He chooses A or prefers A to B, because he thinks that A is the best policy, is the policy that ought to be enacted, or, alternatively, that A is a better policy than B or ought to be enacted in preference to B” (pp. 77–78). Now, how does this person react when it turns out that the democratic decision was in favour of B? “How can the citizen accept the machine's choice, which involves his thinking that B ought to be enacted when, as we already know, he is of the opinion, of the declared opinion, that A ought to be enacted?” (p. 78).

Epistemologists have known for two-and-a-half centuries that there are serious difficulties surrounding non-demonstrative inference. The best-known problem, the problem of induction, was first diagnosed by Hume (1739) in the Treatise. In our own century, several more problems were added, e.g., by Hempel (1945)—the paradox of the ravens—and by Goodman (1955)—the “new,” or exacerbated, problem of induction. But an even greater blow lay ahead: within the decade after Goodman's problem appeared, Gettier (1963) was to publish his famous challenge to the traditional analysis of knowledge which, again, underscored how problematic inductive inferences are.

Plusieurs raisons invitent à s'interroger sur la nature des constantes logiques. La première, et assurément la plus importante, tient à la place éminente que ces syncatégorèmes, qu' Aristote a été le premier à isoler dans le discours, occupent en logique. Si donc, par exemple, un logicien veut savoir ce qu'il fait, il lui sera difficile de ne pas se demander, à un moment ou à un autre, ce qu'est une constante logique, et la vive controverse qui oppose aujourd'hui encore les partisans de la logique classique et les intuitionnistes montre que la question n'est toujours pas résolue. Mais pour qui est plus familier avec la philosophie et son histoire, le problème se laisse encore aborder par un autre biais. Tous ceux qui ont approché Wittgenstein ont été frappés par le don qui était le sien de discerner ce qui est essentiel dans un problème. Il n'est donc pas étonnant que, dans son projet de refonte de la logique, l'auteur du Tractatus ait pris comme fil conducteur le thème des constantes logiques. Au paragraphe 4.0312 nous lisons en effet: «Mon idée principale, c'est que les constantes logiques ne représent rien». C'est de cette deuxième approche, historique, qu'il sera exclusivement question ici.

Did Leibniz invent or, if you prefer, discover topology with his analysis situs? Yes, urge Nicholas Rescher (1978, p. 70), George MacDonald Ross (1984, p. 29) and Ian Hacking (1984, p. 213). No, urge Hans Freudenthal (1954/1972), Benson Mates (1986, p. 240) and Michael Otte (1989, p. 24). James Alexander (1932/1967, p. 249), drawing a distinction between point set and combinatorial methods, cautiously remarked that combinatorial topology “is more nearly a development of Leibniz's original idea.” Less cautiously, Morris Kline (1972, p. 1163) remarked that “to the extent that he was at all clear, Leibniz envisioned what we now call combinatorial topology.” Louis Couturat (1961, p. 429), Rudolf Carnap (1922, p. 81) and Ernst Cassirer (1950, p. 49) proposed projective geometry as the realization of Leibniz's project. Dennis Martin (1983, p. 5) sees topology as a development from analysis situs. Javier Echeverria (1988, p. 218), reporting on his archival research, argues that Leibniz “successfully introduced very general geometrical notions that boil down to what is known today as topology.” And a good many others, for and against, might be cited.

The strong intuition that the facts concerning the subjectivity of consciousness are simply beyond the grasp of objective science is the highest barrier to an intuitively convincing materialism in the philosophy of mind. We are steeped in a tradition which has it that there is, to state it from the first-person point of view, an epistemic difference in principle between my introspectible experience, which only I can apprehend and know, and the things which everyone can apprehend and which form the domain of the natural sciences. This contrast is sometimes cast as that between the subjective stuff of first-person introspectible consciousness and the objective stuff of the natural sciences. In this essay, I will try to budge the view of the subjective-objective distinction which underlies this tradition from its position as tacit dogma.

The central tenet in the ontology Sartre describes and seeks to defend in Being and Nothingness is that being divides into the for-itself and the in-itself. Self-consciousness characterizes being-for-itself and distinguishes it from being-in-itself. What it means for a being to exist for itself is that it is self-conscious. How Sartre characterizes self-consciousness in Being and Nothingness is, however, a question that remains to be asked. There is no simple answer to this question. For Sartre, there are really several levels of self-consciousness: the self-consciousness of consciousness at the pre-reflective level, at the level of reflection (both pure and impure) and at the level of being-for-others. There is a profound difference between the self-consciousness of being-for-others and impure reflection, on the one hand, and the self-consciousness of reflection and pre-reflective consciousness, on the other. With being-for-others and impure reflection, self-consciousness involves the attempt to grasp the self as an object for consciousness. Although the nature of this attempt and the reasons for its ultimate failure differ at each level, these levels are bound together by a common sense of self-consciousness as a consciousness of the self as an object.

It is sometimes thought that it is part of the notion of morality that moral norms are backed up by sanctions of some special sort. This view is sometimes explicitly argued for, as by T. L. S. Sprigge, and sometimes appears in the background of discussions that are centered around other issues, as in Narveson's The Libertarian Idea. The aim of this paper is to show that difficulties in attempts to analyze the notion of morality by appealing to moral sanctions go much deeper than is usually realized.

Mane Hajdin advances a not unfamiliar criticism of a certain type of analysis of the notion of morals, namely, one holding that “it is part of the notion of morality that moral norms are backed up by sanctions of some special sort,” and he lists a work of my own as exemplifying this type of analysis. Since I am accustomed to applying a generally similar criticism to various theories, most notably to unreconstructed Stevensonian emotivism, I should like to think that my own theory is not subject to it. Though not altogether new, it is an important criticism, and Hajdin advances it in a particularly clear and elegant way. If we cannot answer him acceptably, things look bleak for proponents of the general line in question. So let's see.

La thèse centrale de van Fraassen dans son dernier ouvrage est que son interprétation modale de la mécanique quantique (MQ) constitue une variante admissible de l'interprétation de Copenhague et que cette variante est résolument empiriste. Les moyens mis en œuvre pour défendre la thèse sont considérables – l'auteur fait appel à toutes les ressources de la littérature contemporaine sur la MQ et discute la plupart des auteurs pertinents – et le résultat est à la hauteur (considérable aussi) des promesses de l'ouvrage. Mais la thèse, abritée sous le couvert d'un œcuménisme herméneutique (p. viii), ne parvient pas à dégager du dogme empiriste une interprétation de la MQ suffisamment radicale pour lui assurer un statut indépendant. C'est sous le signe du rationalisme cartésien que van Fraassen a d'ailleurs voulu placer son entreprise, puisqu'il cite dans l'épigraphe de son ouvrage (aussi p. 335–336) le Descartes des Principes de la philosophie (IV, 204): «Que touchant les choses que les sens n'aperçoivent point, il suffit d'expliquer comment elles peuvent être […]». Et Descartes d'ajouter: «C'est tout ce qu'Aristote a fait».

Henry Allison's very challenging and very rewarding book provides an analysis and defence of Kant's theory of freedom in both its theoretical and practical dimensions. His defence is qualified, acknowledging some “details” which are not defensible and some inconsistencies; however, “given a sympathetic understanding of transcendental idealism, a good case can be made for Kant's incompatibilistic conception of freedom” (p. 3). In addition to arguing that the notion of transcendental freedom is intelligible, Allison seeks to show that it is essential to Kant's theory, taking issue with those who would replace it with a more palatable, compatibilist conception. He thus has two targets: those who doubt the profundity and coherence of Kant's theory of freedom, and those who seek to defend Kant by trying to “gain a hearing for his views by depicting him as anticipating contemporary forms of compatibilism” (p. 249).

It is a curious feature of Hegelian studies in English that its practitioners seem incapable of tackling their subject without first disclaiming any adherence to the more metaphysical side of Hegel's thought, be it called “speculative metaphysics,” “dialectical logic” or whatever. I say “curious” because I doubt that the same scholars would feel obliged to enter an equivalent disclaimer at the head of a study on, say, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza or even Newton—even though all of these classics have a metaphysical side at least as abstruse as any of Hegel's worse romantic excesses. Hegel himself, if he could witness the practice, would be flattered by it. He would not see it as an indication that “the problems of [his] logic remain alien and artificial to us in ways that the problems of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy do not” (p. 5) but, on the contrary, as a hidden acknowledgement that, whether for good or bad, his philosophy is still alive, still so close to our culture that we instinctively feel the need of exorcizing it ritually, like a demon capable of frightening us.

Hubert Dreyfus's commentary on Being and Time has been a long time in preparation but it has also been worth the wait. Dreyfus limits his account to the first division of Part I of Being and Time with some passages from Division II brought into the discussion. For Dreyfus, the first 230 pages of Being and Time comprise Heidegger's most important metaphysical innovations, while Division II, the “existentialist” side of Heidegger, contains discussions of death, guilt, resoluteness and Angst rarely, if ever, mentioned in any other works.