David Holdcroft

Albert Menne and Niels Öffenberger, Zur modernen Deutung der aristotelischen Logik. Band I:Über den Folgerungsbegriff in der aristotelischen Logik. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1982. 220 pp. DM 48.Klaus Jacobi, Die Modalbegriffe in den logischen Schriften des Wilhelm von Shyreswood und in anderen Kompendien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. Funktionsbestimmung und Gebrauch in der logischen Analyse. Leiden and KÖln: E.J. Brill, 1980. xiii + 528 pp. HFL 140.Nineteenth – Century ContrastsAnthony Manser, Bradley's Logic. Oxford; Basil Blackwell, 1983. x + 220 pp. £17.50.Gregory Currie, Frege. An introduction to his philosophy. Brighton: Harvester Press; Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books; 1982. xi + 212 pp. £18.95.Eike-Henner W. Kluge, The metaphysics of Gottlob Frege. An essay in ontological reconstruction. The Hague. Boston, and London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980. 296 pp, Dfl. 80/$35.00.Philosophy and LogicGeorg Henrik Von Wright, Practical reason. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. x + 214 pp. £15.00.Patrick Shaw, Logic and its limits. London and Sydney: Pan Books, in association with Heinemann Educational Books, 1981. 255 pp. £2.95.William S. Hatcher, The logical foundations of mathematics. Oxford, Toronto, Sydney, Paris and Frankfurt: 1982. x + 320 pp. £19.00/$38.00.E.N. Zalta,objects. An introduction to axiomatic metaphysics Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster: Keldei, 1983, xiil + 193 pp. $39.50.MiscellaneousR. Schacht, Nietzsche. London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. xxii + 546 pp. £18.50.V. Biryukov and A.G. Spirkina, Voprosy kibernetiki. Kibernetika i logicheskaya formalizatsiya. Aspekty istorii i metodologii. Moscow: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, ‘Kibernetika’1982. 191 pp. 2 rubles.

In ‘A Plea For Excuses’ Austin observes that there are many situations in which a person accused of doing an action A wishes to protest that it is not altogether accurate or fair to say that he did A. The person may wish to excuse himself from an accusation of doing A on the grounds that what happened was inadvertent, or the result of an accident, or done by mistake etc. etc. Moreover if he really has an excuse, then it will no longer be possible simply to say that he did A, because it will be seen that either it is not true that he did anything at all, or that whatever he did it was not A but something else, or that he did A in such a manner that simply to say that he did it would be misleading in the extreme

Bradley’s first work, The Presuppositions of Critical History, was published in 1874 when he was 28, and was followed shortly by the publication of Ethical Studies ‘in 1876. T.S. Eliot, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Bradley and was a great admirer of not only his philosophy but also his prose, described the British philosopher as a ‘master of style’; but that of The Presuppositions often seems over embellished, even a little pretentious. Moreover, though the argument is dense it is compressed into only forty five pages; and it has to be said that the text is not easy to follow, in part because it is dense, in part because of the style, and in part because it is not immediately apparent how to reconcile its two principal theses. The first of these maintains that historical testimony has to be evaluated from the standpoint of one’s personal scientific beliefs and judgments, so that if what is attested to conflicts with the latter, it cannot be accepted. The second thesis maintains that natural science and history are distinct, thereby denying the positivistic conception of history which is, at first sight anyway, implied by the first thesis.

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure has exerted a profound influence not only on twentieth century linguistics but on a whole range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. His central thesis was that the primary object in studying a language is the state of that language at a particular time – a so-called synchronic study. He went on to claim that a language state is a socially constituted system of signs that are quite arbitrary and that can only be defined in terms of their relationship within the system. This new perspective has changed the way people think about linguistics and has led to important attempts to apply structuralist ideas in anthropology, literary criticism, and philosophy. Professor Holdcroft's book expounds and elaborates Saussure's central ideas. It also offers a critical assessment of them, arguing that many of Saussure's claims are either questionable or have been misunderstood.