The traditional problem of the social contract defies solution. Agents with the motivations traditionally assumed would not in the circumstances traditionally assumed voluntarily arrive at a contract or voluntarily keep it up, as we can now understand, more clearly than our illustrious predecessors, by treating the problem in terms not available to them: the terms of Prisoner's Dilemma and of the theory of public goods.

Maximizers in isolated Prisoner's Dilemmas are doomed to frustration. But in Braybrooke's view maximizers might do better in a series, securing Pareto-optimal arrangements if not from the very beginning, at least eventually. Given certain favourable special conditions, it can be shown according to Braybrooke and shown even without question-begging motivational or value assumptions, that in a series of Dilemmas maximizers could manage to communicate a readiness to reciprocate, generate thereby expectations of reciprocation, and so give rise to optimizing reciprocations which, in due course, would reinforce expectations, the net result of all this being an increasingly stable practice to mutual benefit. In this way neighbours could learn to be good neighbours: they could learn to respect each other's property, to engage in reciprocal assistance, and perhaps even to make and keep promises covering a range of activities. So maximizers are, Braybrooke holds, capable of a society of sorts. Out of the ashes they might build something. But even under favourable conditions they could not build much and most conditions would defeat them almost entirely, for many-person Dilemmas whether isolated or in series would be quite beyond them, question-begging motivational assumptions aside. In settings at all like those in which we live, utility maximization assuming only ‘traditional’ motivation is self-defeating without remedy, and most certainly not an adequate basis for social life.' The probable inference from as a conception of individual rationality: for surely truly rational agents would be if not perfectly well designed at least better designed for communal living than utility maximizers would be assuming only ‘traditional’, non-question-begging values or motivation. Or, if this inference is denied and maximization is not challenged as a conception of rationality, we can conclude instead, Braybrooke has more recently suggested (p. 34, this issue), that the advice, ‘Be rational,’ is incomplete, and when addressed to groups should be supplemented by, ‘And be somewhat ‘untraditional’ in your values; respect at least some rules that would make coordination and cooperation possible even in many-person interaction problems.’

In a Recent paper to The Joint Session of the AristotelianSociety and Mind Association Professor Neil MacCormick makes some interesting observations about the nature of promises and the source of the obligation to keep them. He rejects the view that an act can count as a promise only because a certain practice exists in a society. One may on the contrary well understand what promises are and know how to make them without there being any special convention making possible the speech act of promising which amounts to no more than …“an utterance of the speaker's about his own future conduct which is essentially characterized by the speaker's intending his addressee to take it as being intended to induce the addressee to rely upon the speaker's taking the action in question.” One needs no special rule to explain why promise-breaking is wrong for …“the fact of the addressee's reliance on the promisor is sufficient ground for asserting that the promisor has an obligation to keep his word.” To bring home the point, MacCormick contrasts promising with divorcing by the simple utterance of 'I divorce thee, I divorce thee.' This is intelligible as an act of divorcing only by presupposing a convention that allows a divorce to be effected in this way. In performing the act by the appropriate formula the person is invoking the conventional rules that must obtain in the society if the act is to be successful. Searle, we are told, fails to see that promises are quite different in that they …“are explicable in terms of an intention to bring about a specific perlocutionary effect, and an intention that that intention be recognized” It is neither here nor there to point out, as Searle does, that ‘I predict’ and ‘I intend’ like ‘I promise’ tend to create expectations for the effect a promise is intended to achieve is reliance and not simply an expectation.

Pour le Maître du Lycée, si la vertu intellectuelle s'enseigne, c'est qu'elle est objet de science et qu'à ce titre elle «peut s'apprendre»': en effet, d'aprés lui, «toute science est susceptible d'être enseignée». Seulement, une telle prise de position implique l'existence de rapports etroits éntre l'aréte et l'épistémé. Or, les relations «vertu-science», longtemps avant Aristote, avaient déjà coincé plusieurs moralistes grecs. Les Anciens, effectivement, tenaient pour scandaleux l'échec de l'éducation chez les enfants issus de parents vertueux. Aussi, s'étaient-ils appliqués a découvrir l'explication d'un phénomène qui, à leurs yeux, traduisait l'une des données les plus complexes de la nature humaine et qui, par suite, mettait en jeu la sauvegarde et le progrés de celle-ci par le biais de l'éducation.

Le manuscrit sur la Critique de la philosophie de l'État de Hegel fédigé par Marx à l'été de 1843 est demeuré inconnu de la tradition marxiste jusqu'en 1922, date ou le savant russe, David Rjazanov, l'a decouvert dans les archives du Parti Social-Démocrate à Berlin. Dans l'édition critique allemande de Dietz, le texte occupe 130 pages. II s'agit d'un texte ardu, difficile, voire meme rébarbatif. Marx recopie les paragraphes 261–313 de la Philosophic du Droit de Hegel pour en faire une critique détailléè, quelquefois brillante, souvent obscure et nebuleuse. Le texte peut etre divisé en quatre parties: la critique de la conception générate de l'État (Par. 261–274), la critique de la monarchic (Par. 275–286), du pouvoir exécutif (Par. 287–297) et du pouvoir legislatif (Par. 298–313). Mais comme l'écrit Marx dans une lettre en date du 5 mars 1842 à Arnold Ruge «le fond en est la réfutation de la monarchie constitutionnelle comme une chose bâtarde, contradictoire et qui se condamne elle-même». Notre propos prendra appui sur la premiere partie du texte, mais les conclusions auxquelles nous arriverons pourront s'étendre a l'ensemble du manuscrit.

En 1887, Nietzsche écrivait: «Lévénement le plus actuel, à savoir que Dieu est mort, commence à jeter ses premières ombres sur l'Europe». Ceux qui regardent le monde avec attention, avec une certaine suspicion même, remarquent que le soleil s'est couché, que la confiance de jadis s'est transformée en doute, que notre monde quotidien est devenu plus sombre, plus étrange, «vieux». Cependant cet evenement ne s'est pas encore annonce publiquement, continue Nietzsche, et on ne mesure pas encore les implications de la mort de Dieu: une longue suite de démolitions, de destructions, de déclins, de renversements. II y aura une «logique de terreur», comme on ne l'aura pas encore vu sur la surface de la terre.

In the Dialogue of December 1974, Eugene F. Bertoldi presents an analysis of Merleau-Ponty's dialectic of time. His article is stimulating and I am tempted to raise several issues, but in the context of this discussion I would limit myself to the dialectic of time only. Bertoldi concludes his investigation with the following criticism: “…Merleau-Ponty's investigation fails to achieve its stated goals: more specifically, as a result of the foregoing criticism, it becomes evident that the dialectical form of the investigation should be abandoned in favour of a rigorous phenomenological explication of temporal ex- perience…” (p. 785)

Jonathan Bennett has produced a sequel to his book on the first half of the Critique of Pure Reason. He does not try to cover all the rest of the Critique. He restricts himself to the Transcendental Dialectic. He rightly claims that his is the only book in English treating exclusively of the Dialectic as a whole. It is not written as a commentary dealing with passage by passage. Many passages are left untreated. A distinctive merit is his extensive comparison of Kant with Descartes and Leibniz.

Ce Livre de P. Ricoeur constitue, en fait, comme son titre l'indique une prise de position contre ceux qui, à l'instar de J. Derrida, font des concepts philosophiques des métaphores mortes, abolissant ainsi la spécificité du discours philosophique. Á la métaphore morte, «celle qui ne se dit pas, mais qui se dissimule dans la «releve» du concept qui se dit», P. Ricoeur oppose la metaphore vive qu'il définit ainsi: «La métaphore n'est pas vive seulement en ce qu'elle vivifie un langage constitué. La métaphore est vive en ce qu'elle inscrit l'élan de l'imagination dans un « penser plus » au niveau du concept. » Les positions sont done claires: d'un côté, la métaphore morte qui dissout le discours philosophique, et de 1'autre, la métaphore vive qui en constitue le fondement dynamique.