Bloomsbury Academic Collections: Philosophy – serie

The Need for Interpretation expresses the growing reaction within the ranks of analytically-trained philosophers against the professed aims of current Anglo-American philosophy. The contributors challenge received dogmas on different philosophical topics, covering central issues from both Anglo-American and Continental traditions. Written in non-sectarian language for non-specialists, students and professional philosophers, these reflections of philosophy concern not only how it is done, but how it ought to be done

D. Pole, whose Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein appeared in 1958, here makes a new attack on the problem of value-judgement by taking it out of its limited ethical context. Beginning with an examination and criticism of current views that base all moral and other principles on personal choice or decision, he finds a point of departure for his own account of the problem in the claim that rational inquiry of any sort rests on the possibility of evaluation. The place of the one process within the other is then worked out in some detail; and an attempt is made to show how inquiry, as a collective undertaking, involves the progressive search for and establishment of new principles.

This book is intended for the use of the candid student, devised as a monitory preparation for deeper study of the philosophy of Spinoza. By its means it is hoped that the student may avoid the chief pitfalls of Spinoza-interpretation, and be carried past many of the difficulties encountered by the modern mind in the study of his writings. To this end perhaps the greatest hindrance to be met by the beginner is the ‘popular’ exposition that attempts to expound the thought of one age in terms of the favoured categories of another. By providing the necessary safeguards against misinterpretations arising from such causes, the author has sought to awaken interest in the closely knit fabric of Spinoza’s doctrine of man and nature and God, and its practical import - and thus to revivify a specimen too long deprived of its native air.

'David Pole, in his The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein, makes an admirable attempt to clarify the central points of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in a straightforward manner. He approaches it from the outside with sympathy and good sense. And since he combines a clear head with a fluent style of writing – a combination that is rare among the initiated – his book will prove an excellent introduction for those who need a succinct account of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy without any mystical overtones.' - The Economist'There is now a real need for a commentary on what must in frankness be admitted to be an exceedingly difficult corpus of philosophy. Mr Pole’s little book is a response to that need; if small in bulk, it is rich in ideas… and all students of Wittgenstein will turn to it with gratitude.' - Sunday Times

Kepler is a key figure in the development of modern astronomy. His work is also important in the history of philosophy and methodology of science as a whole. The present study is concerned with one of Kepler’s major preoccupations, namely his search for the geometrical plan according to which God created the Universe. The author discusses how Kepler’s cosmological theories, which embrace music and astrology as well as astronomy, are related to his other work. The subject will be of great interest to historians of science, mathematicians and astronomers as well as to historians of the late Renaissance.

This book describes how the ethical conduct of business has become a topic of major interest in the USA and a subject for serious study in American universities and business schools. In Europe, including Great Britain, public concern is increasing about the moral aspects of business behaviour. Professor Mahoney shows how this growing concern is reflected in the programmes of business studies offered by various European universities and business schools. The results of a survey point to future developments in this area.

Looked upon in his day as the philosopher of the Utilitarians, James Mill was an independent thinker centrally concerned with problems of education. Professor Burston’s study places Mill’s Essay on Education, his contribution to the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the day, in its historical context and examines the views expressed in this and in other private and published writings, discussing in detail how Mill‘s view of ethics, psychology and theory of knowledge related to his theory of education, his practical experience as a teacher (especially of his own children) and to his philosophical position as a whole.This work will be of value to all interested in the interrelations of history, philosophy and education in the early nineteenth century.

If believers are right in the significance they claim for religion, how can they tolerate uncertainties, or preach a Gospel of good news if they are uncertain what they are to talk about? Is religious conviction something which no honest man can profess? Do believers in fact speak with one voice?These are some of the questions that prompted this book, which embodies the F.D. Maurice lectures delivered at King’s College London in 1961. It discusses topics that were causes of as much concern to Maurice as they are in our own day: ‘eternal’ punishment; Christian social duty; the problem of subscription ex animo to Articles. Professor Ramsay argues that it is reasonable to be sure in religion while being tentative in theology. In the course of his discussion he compares Maurice and Newman in relation to their views on theological certainty, and also considers the question whether the time has come for revision of the Thirty-nine Articles.

Over many years W. R. Matthews (who was successively Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at King’s College London, Dean of Exeter and Dean of St Paul’s) wrote copiously on both philosophy and theology in books, lectures and sermons. Although associated with the movements known as ‘modernism’ and ‘liberal Protestantism’ he was essentially a Christian Platonist who moreover was theologically orthodox on all vital points. Professor Owen quotes widely from Dr Matthews’ published writings on The Concept of God, Religion and Reason, and Christology and Ethics. He brings out their significance both for an understanding of the ways in which religious thought developed in the first half of this century and for the light they shed on questions discussed by theologians today.

Dr Bradley’s aim is to provide a work which will introduce readers to the philosophical standpoint employed by Mach in his expositions of physics. The author shows how Mach traces out the evolution of the metrical concepts of heat and mechanics, and includes a discussion of his reformulation of Newton’s dynamical principles. Mach’s view that we have a semi-awareness of both time and temperature is considered: there is no ‘Mach Principle’ in Mach’s writings; the use of the term by Einstein and others has led to confusion, which the author attempts to remove. The newcomer to the philosophy of science is led to an insight into the methods of one who has had a major influence on the subject.

This book makes an important contribution to the history of ideas in France in the century preceding the main manifestations of the Enlightenment. A number of detailed studies already exist which deal with special aspects of the thought of the period, and works abound on individual thinkers such as Descartes and Pascal. Professor Spink, however, has endeavoured to present within a single volume a full, coherent and balanced account of the radical inquiries in literature, philosophy, and the natural sciences that stemmed from the intellectual crisis of the 1620s. He analyses the content of this body of free-thought and devotes particular attention to the ways in which the new ideas were disseminated in the face of the hostility of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.

The central concern of this book, first published in 1966 and now reprinted, is to show the hard core of philosophic argument which runs through all Sartre’s works and which marks him, more than any other single feature of his writings, as one of the great figures of our time. Mr Manser’s critical exposition of Sartre’s thought seeks to avoid terms which bring with them pre-conceived attitudes and to help the reader to judge for himself the strengths and weaknesses of the ideas presented.

From 1789 onwards there sprang up a fervent revolutionary cult of Rousseau, and at each stage in the subsequent unfolding of the drama of the Revolution historians have seen Rousseau’s influence at work. Mrs McDonald seeks in this study to trace the development of the cult and to define the nature of the influence by means of a detailed survey of the appeals made to the authority of Rousseau in books, pamphlets and accounts of speeches put forth by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary writers between 1762 and 1791, and she reaches conclusions more complex than those which have been commonly accepted. She is able to show that most of the writers on the revolutionary side who invoked Rousseau’s name did so in order to put forward their own views and used arguments that were often in direct contradiction with those which he had formulated; the Social Contract was not widely read in these years, and those revolutionaries who did actually study it were often critical of what they found there. By contrast, the most careful analysis of Rousseau’s political theory is to be found in the pamphlets written by aristocratic critics of the Revolution in protest against the misuse to which his name had been put.