Margaret Van De Pitte

Nicholson's goal is to show that interpretation of a text can be done rigorously and be true. He argues this by showing that perception also has an interpretative dimension yet we usually accept claims rooted in perception as true. This effort to show the soundness of hermeneutical criticism is in fact an attempt to show that anti-foundationalism does not default to relativism. I trace his well-prosecuted argument for the truth of interpretation to the point where it becomes opaque. The argument is nonetheless instructive and helps to better see the conundrum that anti-foundationalists create for epistomologists and perhaps for themselves.

Jones sketches a theory of interpretation of literary works and tests it on Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, Brothers Karamazov and A la recherche du temps perdu. The theory centers on creativity and the strong parallelisms between artistic and critical production. The result is that the critic is shown to have considerable latitude in reading a text--perhaps too much. Jones acknowledges the danger of stressing inferred rather than observed features of texts. He sees his sketch of a theory of interpretation as a creative process as a corrective to historical interpretation which has the reader uncover the author's meaning embedded in the text. A fuller account of his theory might skirt the radical subjectivism of criticism beyond the traditional boundaries.

This essay seeks to see if one side or the other in the hunting debate gets more purchase if we first ask what gives the state the moral right to promote sport hunting when the practice is in deep decline. We look at the dominant economic and political reasons for state support, none of which settle the moral matter. We then look at various state appeals to moral justification (ethical hunting, the right to hunt, the value of heritage, etc.) and determine that they beg the same prior questions that hunters beg--questions about the new scientific understanding of animal cognition and about the ideal individual and society in the 21st C. Neither side in the philosophical debate is helped by state promotion of hunting, given that anti-hunters also often dispense with the deeper questions and the relevant science. Conclusion: the debate should be based on the new scientific understanding of animals' capacities and on current ideals of the individual and society. State policy should reflect that. thehe state should see that it is on slippery ground when it devises programs to gratify hunters and to encourage the innocent, the reluctant, and the lapsed to take up the practice.

I review ornithological literature in order to demonstrate that conventions of description and illustration, as well as some aspects of biological theory relating to birds, put a strong focus on male birds. I criticize the sexist aspects of ornithology from the standpoint of recent feminist philosophy of science, establishing connections between the ways in which we view animals and the ways in which we viewourselves and arguing that it is costly to humans, specifically women, to suggest that females of the nonhuman species are biologically inadequate in relation to their male counterparts. Finally, I note that failure to notice and excise residual sexism in animal science also encourages people to be inattentive to and less considerate of a large and significant part of nature. I conclude with some suggestionsfor reform.

This is yet another attempt to indicate a fatal flaw in modern philosophy, and to suggest a framework for a viable and constructive “postmodern” philosophy. It is a well-reasoned, well-written book, enjoyable to read despite its density and the doggedness of the sometimes surprising argument. The book’s surprises come from the fact that its core ideas derive from a “postmodernized” Aristotle, and that an odd lot of modern philosophers are constructively put to work showing the cogency of Aristotelian insights one would have expected them to reject.