James Mark Connelly

This volume is devoted to a critical discussion and re-appraisal of the work of Anglo-American Idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain and the entire English-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The British Idealists made important contributions to logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Their legacy awaits further exploration and reassessment, and this book is a contribution to this task. The essays in this collection display many aspects of contemporary concern with idealistic philosophy: they range from treatments of logic to consideration of the Absolute, personal idealism, the philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the work of the Anglo-American Idealists has once again been widely discussed and re-considered, and new pathways of research and investigation have been opened.

This volume is devoted to a critical discussion and re-appraisal of the work of Anglo-American Idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain and the entire English-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The British Idealists made important contributions to logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Their legacy awaits further exploration and reassessment, and this book is a contribution to this task. The essays in this collection display many aspects of contemporary concern with idealistic philosophy: they range from treatments of logic to consideration of the Absolute, personal idealism, the philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the work of the Anglo-American Idealists has once again been widely discussed and re-considered, and new pathways of research and investigation have been opened.

Descartes and Augustine. Stephen Menn. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. xvi + 415. £40.00. ISBN 0 521 41702 3 The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr Henry More: Religious Meaning and the Psychology of Delusion. Daniel Fouke. E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1997. $93.50 hb. ISBN 90 04 106006 The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. Edited by Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp. xi + 428 with bibliography and index £40.00. ISBN 0–521–47151–6 Carnap's Construction of the World: The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism. Alan W. Richardson. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. pp. χ + 242. £35.00 hb. ISBN 0 521 43008 9 An Essay on Metaphysics. R. G. Collingwood. Revised edition, edited with an introduction by Rex Martin. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998. cv + 439 pp. £48. ISBN 0–19–823–561–5 Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined Histories. Dominique Colas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. pp. xxx + 480 [orig. Le Glaive et le fléau: Généalogie du fanatisme et de la société civile. Paris, Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1992]. £40.50 and £14.95. ISBN 0–8047–2734–1 cloth; ISBN 0–8047–2736–8 pb.

There are strong grounds for believing that Collingwood cannot have been the author of "The Theory of History." First, the "Theory of History" is a typescript, and while Smith had papers typed up from time to time, Collingwood generally did not. Second, Collingwood, who kept good records, did not refer to "The Theory of History" either in his Autobiography or in his detailed "List of Work Done." Third, Collingwood always held the firm belief that good philosophy could only arise out of a reflection upon the philosopher's own personal experience, yet the work, written in 1914 when Collingwood was busy working on archaeological excavations at Ambleside, contains no archaeological references. Fourth, the philosophical content of "The Theory of History" is anachronistic for the young Collingwood writing in 1914, for at that time he had no marked interest in the philosophy of history. Fifth, the semi-colon, used quite frequently by Collingwood and indicating a genuine stylistic characteristic, is used at a much less frequent rate by the author of the "The Theory of History."

This paper considers whether respect is a concept that can be applied fruitfully and cogently to nature and the environment. Through an examination of the idea of nature, respect and an analysis of Paul Taylor’s book Respect for Nature, it argues that, despite the attractiveness of the idea, the concept of respect cannot be coherently and systematically applied to the natural world and that, if a reasoned justification for a non-instrumental view of nature is to be sought, it must be sought elsewhere, perhaps in the notion of care rather than respect per se.

abstract In what follows I respond to Henry Shue's paper by focusing on three principal themes. The first is the relation of philosophical theory to practice, in which I agree that philosophers have to run the risks attendant upon applying reason to concrete cases. The second is the use of examples in moral philosophy, in particular the example used in the justification of torture as an exception; here I draw distinctions between different types of examples in philosophy and the uses to which they are put. Thirdly, in a brief consideration of our responses to climate change I suggest that, contra Shue, we are not being asked to go beyond a normal requirement so much as to re-establish the boundaries of what counts as normal.