Dermot Moran

Duns Scotus, Metaphysician. William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter. Purdue University Press 1995, pp. 224 £27.50 Hb. ISBN 1–55753–071–8 £13.19 Pb. ISBN 1–55753–072–6 Plato in Renaissance England. Sears Jayne. Dordrecht, Boston & London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, pp. 197 Dfl. 190.00, $122.00, £80.00 hb. ISBN 0–7923–3060–9 Mechanismus und Subjektivität in der Philosophie von Thomas Hobbes. Michael Esfeld. Frommann‐Holzboog, Stuttgart‐Bad Cannstatt 1995, pp. 434. ISBN 3–7728–1699–1 Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth‐Century Metaphysics. R. S. Woolhouse. London: Routledge, 1993. £11.99. ISBN 0–415–09021–0, ISBN 0–415–09022–9 pb. Descartes et Regius. Autour de l'Explication de l'Esprit Humain. Edited by Theo Verbeek. Studies of the History of Ideas in the Low Countries. Rodopi, Amsterdam‐Atlanta, 1993, pp. 114 $23.50 pb. ISBN 90–5183–375‐X The God of Spinoza. A Philosophical Study. Richard Mason. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. xiv + 272. £35.00. ISBN 0–521–58162–1 Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason. Jan Wojcik. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 243. £40.00. ISBN 0521–56029–2 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. John Locke. Edited and abridged by Kenneth P. Winkler. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1996, pp. 416. £27.95 hb; £6.95 pb. ISBN 0–87220–217–8 hb. 0–87220–216‐X pb. John Locke and the Eighteenth Century Divines. Alan Sell. Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. 444. £40.00 hb. ISBN 0–7083–1409–0 The Margins of Orthodoxy. Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660–1750. Edited by Roger D. Lund. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. xiv + 298. £35.00. ISBN 0–521–47117‐X The Enigmatic Parting Shot: What was Hume's ‘Compleat Answer to Dr. Reid and to That Bigotted Silly Fellow, Beattie'? James Somerville. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1995. pp. 424. £47.50. ISBN 1–85972–083–8 Discursus Praeliminaris de Philosophia in Genere. Christian Wolff. Ed. and trans. into German by Günther Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl. Forschungen und Materialien zur deutschen Aufklärung, Abt. I, Bd. 1. Stuttgart: Frommann‐hotzboog, 1996, pp. lxviii + 299. ISBN 3–7728–1523–5 Practical Philosophy. Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor, with a General Introduction by Allen Wood. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. xxxiii + 668. £50.00. ISBN 0–521–37103–1 Religion and Rational Theology. Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, £45.00, pp. xxiv + 518. ISBN 0–521–25416–1 Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Immanuel Kant. Translated by Paul Carus, with a collection of essays edited by Beryl Logan. London, Routledge, 1996. £45.00, hb. ISBN 0–415–11575–2 £14.99 pb. pp. 264. ISBN 0–415–11576–0 Kant: Philosophic de l'Histoire. Edited by Norbert Waszek. Revue Germanique Internationale 6/1996. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 220. ISBN 2–13–047698–8; ISSN 1253–7837 Johann Georg Hamann's Relational Metacriticism. Gwen Griffith Dickson.. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1995, pp. xix + 534. ISBN 3–11–014437–9 Frege. Anthony Kenny. London, Penguin Books, 1995, pp. xii + 223. £7.99 pb. ISBN 0–14–012550–7 Russell. A. C. Grayling. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. ix + 115. £5.99. ISBN 0–19–287683‐X

Edmund Husserl is the founder of phenomenology and the _Logical Investigations_ is his most famous work. It had a decisive impact on twentieth century philosophy and is one of few works to have influenced both continental and analytic philosophy. This is the first time both volumes have been available in paperback. They include a new introduction by Dermot Moran, placing the _Investigations_ in historical context and bringing out their contemporary philosophical importance. These editions include a new preface by Sir Michael Dummett

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 422-423 [Access article in PDF] Robin Small, editor. A Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Perspectives on a Philosophical Tradition. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001. Pp. xxix + 191. Cloth, $79.95.The stated aim of this collection of thirteen essays (mostly new—four are reprints) by philosophers resident in Australia is to offer selective perspectives on the phenomenological tradition, correcting misunderstandings and highlighting aspects overlooked in standard commentaries. Presumably, it also wants to exhibit contemporary Australian writing in the phenomenological tradition, and situate phenomenological claims in terms graspable by analytic philosophers.Robin Small's introduction, taking Husserl's conception of eidetic intuition as fundamental, sketches the rise of phenomenology. The collection is then divided into three parts. Part One ("Approaching the Sources") focuses on the sources of phenomenology (Husserl and Heidegger) and opens with a thoughtful essay by Max Deutscher, reprinted from the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1980), which is replied to by Maurita Harney. Three further, not particularly distinguished, essays deal with the issues of realism, relativism, [End Page 422] and the relation between Ryle and Husserl. Part Two ("Following the Tradition") deals with new themes arising in Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida, while Part Three ("Making Connections") explores the relation between phenomenology and other disciplines, chiefly sociology, anthropology, and literature. A final essay by Jocelyn Dunphy Bloomfield examines the relevance of phenomenology in the Australian context.The collection is interesting but uneven. Some of the essays are out of date: Small's essay on Ryle and Husserl originally appeared in 1981 and Purushottama Bilimoria's paper, "Heidegger and the Japanese Connection," first published in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1991), is in need of updating given the upsurge of interest in Husserl in Asia in recent years. Deutscher's "Husserl's Transcendental Subjectivity" is helpful in that it introduces Husserl's transcendental idealism through unusually prosaic analogies. He suggests that the transcendental attitude can be grasped in familiar experiences such as "keeping silence" during an awkward or embarrassing moment or adopting a detached or removed stance. An actor on stage can express anger without being angry. The transcendental attitude is such a detached spectator attitude; it is the capacity we have to judge and appraise ourselves (8). Moreover, it is in this attitude that we come to recognize our commitments to others. Deutscher resists the temptation to separate radically the ordinary living in the world from the detached contemplation of it. There never can be total but only intermittent detachment from the life-world; nevertheless the transcendental epoché is important in that it allows us the chance to gain self-awareness about our situation, about our "forms of life." While Deutscher does a terrific job demystifying one of Husserl's central and much misunderstood concepts, he is at risk of oversimplifying and worse of psychologizing Husserl's insights.Richard Campbell's essay on Heidegger's conception of truth as aletheia is also particularly noteworthy in that it is a philosophically sophisticated attempt to cut through Heidegger's somewhat inflated jargon and expresses his central intuitions about truth. Campbell goes to some trouble to elucidate and disambiguate what Heidegger is saying. Furthermore, he believes Heidegger is wrong in his interpretation of Plato; Plato is doing precisely the opposite of what Heidegger says he is doing. Deutscher's essay on Sartre, informed by an analytic rigor and sensitivity to ambiguity, gives a very clear account and partial defence of the relations between positional consciousness of the object and non-positional self-consciounsess. He is critical of Sartre's sweeping concept of the "in itself" and points out that in reality there are many diverse "in-itselves" with different real properties. Crittenden, too, has an interesting essay on Sartre's conception of "the look." Sartre understands the other as the one who looks at (and thereby seeks to objectify me) whereas for de Beauvoir, the other (in the particular case: woman) is the looked at and objectified. The article on sociology and phenomenology attempts to show the relation between their methods...