Leonard Nelson – författare

This volume is being issued in the hope that readers of the addresses and lectures included in it may be induced to make further acquaintance with the works and thoughts of Leonard Nelson, and to exert themselves actively, in so far as they are persuaded of their validity, in bringing them to bear on the practice of social life. Interests which usually present themselves as detached from one another--philosophical, education, ethical, political interests, for example --may be expected to be attracted to various parts of the volume and to derive furtherance and elightenment from it; and to readers who are apt to be absorbed in abstract and austere philosophic argument the fifth section.

"The Moral and the Religious View of the World, " may be especially commended as suitable to be read first. But the satisfaction of isolated interests is not the aim fo the author or of his friends; it is obvious from Nelson''s example and from the whole tendendcy of the volume that he aims at a philosophic system which shall embrace and penetrate all out thoughts and action.

This volume is being issued in the hope that readers of the addresses and lectures included in it may be induced to make further acquaintance with the works and thoughts of Leonard Nelson, and to exert themselves actively, in so far as they are persuaded of their validity, in bringing them to bear on the practice of social life. Interests which usually present themselves as detached from one another--philosophical, education, ethical, political interests, for example --may be expected to be attracted to various parts of the volume and to derive furtherance and elightenment from it; and to readers who are apt to be absorbed in abstract and austere philosophic argument the fifth section.

"The Moral and the Religious View of the World, " may be especially commended as suitable to be read first. But the satisfaction of isolated interests is not the aim fo the author or of his friends; it is obvious from Nelson''s example and from the whole tendendcy of the volume that he aims at a philosophic system which shall embrace and penetrate all out thoughts and action.

Presented as a Vorlesung in the German philosophical tradition, this book presents the most detailed account of Nelson’s method of argument analysis, celebrated by many luminaries such as Karl Popper. It was written in 1921 in opposition to the relativistic, subjectivistic and nihilistic tendencies of Nelson’s time. The book contains an exposition of a method that is a further development of Kant’s transcendental dialectics, followed by an application to the critical analysis of arguments by many famous thinkers, including Bentham, Mill, Poincaré, Leibniz, Hegel, Einstein, Bergson, Rickert, Simmel, Brentano, Stammler, Jellinek, Dingler, and Meinong. The book presents a general theory of philosophical argumentation as seen from the viewpoint of the typical fallacies committed by anybody arguing philosophically, whether professional philosophers or philosophical laypeople. Although the nature of philosophy and philosophical argumentation is one of the most recurrent objects of reflection for philosophers, this book represents the first attempt at a general theory of philosophical fallacy. According to Nelson, it is in the shape of false dilemmas that errors in reasoning always emerge, and false dilemmas are always the result of the same mechanism--the unwitting replacement of one concept for another.