Spinoza semble adopter une position pleinement nominaliste lorsqu'il discue des notions universelles dans YEthique, mais on y trouve aussi plusieurs arguments ou, semble-t-il, des universaux sont presupposes. La solution avance par plusieurs commentateurs, y compris Haserot, est que le systeme spinoziste est d'inspiration platoniste, et qu'il faut reinterpreter les passages d'apparence nominaliste pour les accorder avec le platonisme ou l'essentialisme. J'argumente qu'un tel procede n'est justify ni par le texte ni par la structure du systeme de Spinoza. L'interpretation du spinozisme que je propose le place dans le cadre logique du nominalisme contemporain, k l'instar du systeme de Nelson Goodman, par exemple.

A common theme of libertarians is that there is a conflict between the values of liberty and equality. Achieving equality, so libertarians often argue, would require frequent interference in individuals’ lives, creating constraints on freedom and obstacles to the development of individuality. Although not himself endorsing a libertarian conception of liberty, Oxford philosopher G.A. Cohen recently has advanced the surprising thesis that there is a tension in Marxist normative thought that in an interesting way parallels the often heard libertarian challenge to egalitarianism.

The sort of knowledge we have with regard to the nature and kind of our own phenomenal states has enjoyed considerable prestige in the history of philosophy. Hume claims that ‘The only existences, of which we are certain, are perceptions, which being immediately present to us by consciousness, command our strongest assent, and are the first foundation of all our conclusions’ (A Treatise of Human Nature, I 4.2). In the New Essays (II 27.238), Leibniz remarks that ‘if the immediate inner experience is not certain, we cannot be sure of any truth of fact.’

Human folly, it seems, traces not only to ignorance and impulsiveness but also to the power of wishes that the erring agent acknowledges as unfit to motivate him. The possibility of genuinely perverse preference can be either denied or explained. To explain it, sense must be made of how a person’s understanding of the choices before him could fail to decide his preference—how what convinces could fail to persuade. The question is how the influence a given consideration has over a person’s choice can be other than a function of the beliefs he holds about its merits, so that as between competing considerations the one esteemed best doesn’t win, despite continuing to be esteemed best.

In a recent paper, Bar-On and Risjord (henceforth, ‘B&R’) contend that Davidson provides no good argument for his (in)famous claim that ‘there is no such thing as a language.’ And according to B&R, if Davidson had established his ‘no language’ thesis, he would thereby have provided a decisive reason for abandoning the project he has long advocated — viz., that of trying to provide theories of meaning for natural languages by providing recursive theories of truth for such languages. For he would have shown that there are no languages to provide truth (or meaning) theories of. Davidson thus seems to be in the odd position of arguing badly for a claim that would undermine his own work.