It is nearly ten years since Quebec held its referendum on Sovereignty Association and time, perhaps, for a retrospective. There were winners and losers in 1980, but the real winner may have been the idea that sovereignty may be established democratically. Governments, of course, are quick to agree that people have the right to determine their sovereignty democratically—so long as this takes place in the State of Nature invented by Hobbes for just such august occasions. Only thrice to my knowledge, however, have governments actually allowed anything even remotely close to a social contract, once in Norway in 1905, once in Wales in 1979 and again in Quebec in 1980.

Dans son article nécrologique sur Abraham Robinson, Simon Kochen consignait une impression de Gödel qui ne manquera pas d'intéresser un grand nombre de spécialistes de Leibniz. Gödel, dont il faut rappeler l'intérêt particulier pour les travaux philosophiques de Leibniz, pensait en effet que, de tous les logiciens modernes, Abraham Robinson était celui qui avait le mieux réalisé l'idéal leibnizien d'une logique constituée en ars inveniendi pour les mathématiques. Nous voudrions examiner ici à quel aspect de l' ars inveniendi selon Leibniz ce jugement rend justice et quelle caractéristique de la logique contemporaine il fait ressortir. S'agissant des travaux d'Abraham Robinson, nous nous intéresserons surtout au secteur de la théorie des modèles, bien que celui-ci n'ait pas l'exclusivité de mettre en oeuvre l'idée que les résultats logiques sont propres à faciliter la découverte mathématique.

Twenty-three years after its publication, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible remains a philosophical enigma. Consider, for example, the curious niche the work occupies within the body of phenomenological literature. The Visible and the Invisible is frequently cited for its study of the residual problem areas of phenomenology—the relationship of consciousness to the perceptual milieu and, more recently, the relationship of language to the world—while its proposed solutions to such problems remain largely ignored.

The problem I want to raise in this paper will not be a problem for anyone who does not share both the following concerns or prejudices. The first is that we should take a materialist, extensional approach to linguistic meaning, specifically, the approach that is suggested by the work of Donald Davidson. The second is that social analysis must be emancipatory, and that this requires the conceptual possibility of postulating social structures that are in some sense hidden by discourse. The problem I want to address lies in a possible conflict between these concerns, both of which I will clarify, though not justify (except in so far as we take their compatibility to be apart of their respective justifications). The problem is this: Does the methodological core of Davidson's semantics—the principle of charity—permit interpretation informed by a concept of ideological concealment?

As with many of our philosophical problems, the existence of this one is quite precarious. We can avoid avoiding it only if we move along a rather specific route, which, I am afraid, will constitute a good chunk of my paper.

Suppose that we have negative, natural rights to our lives, liberty, and possessions and that these rights are absolute or indefeasible. Then at best only minimal states will be legitimate, where such are states that restrict their activities to the enforcement of the basic rights of individuals and the like. (Indeed, it is possible that no actual states, minimal or not, will be legitimate.) Such appears to be the consequence of absolute natural rights. When made aware of these implications of absolute natural rights, many philosophers deny their existence. In the absence of a convincing defense of absolute natural rights, the defense of the minimal state thereby loses force.

Si les interprétations de ce qu'il est convenu de nommer la « dernière philosophie » de Heidegger sont aujourd'hui monnaie courante, non sans risque d'inflation parfois quand on les lie sans précaution à l'engagement politique de l'auteur de Sein und Zeit, personne pourtant n'avait jusqu'ici pris le risque d'aborder la question controversée du « tournant » de front. Les différences évidentes entre un Heidegger I, parti de la phénoménologie pour revenir à une « ontologie fondamentale », et relevant encore à ce titre de la philosophie, et un Heidegger II, voué désormais à une « autre pensée » réfractaire à l'élaboration conceptuelle, sinon à une sorte de mysticisme poétique, paraissent si tranchées à la plupart des commentateurs qu'ils entérinent sans plus attendre une telle division. Celle-ci a d'ailleurs été accréditée par l'auteur lui-même qui, le premier, mentionna l'existence d'un « tournant » (Kehre) de sa propre pensée, en termes réservés toutefois, sinon énigmatiques.

Central to our conception of courage is the idea of bearing up under formidable circumstances or acting in the face of a grave risk to oneself. Let us call this feature the condition of formidable obstacles. Everyone agrees that this much is characteristic of courageous behaviour. After that, however, there is considerable disagreement regarding two other issues in particular. Is courage a virtue, by which Walton means (52–55): Is a courageous act always one which the agent justifiably believes serves a moral or noble end? Is a courageous act necessarily one where the agent has to overcome fear in order to act? The correct approach to answering these two questions and, more generally, to constructing an account of courage is to canvass a wide range of real-life cases which are (widely) regarded as courageous. This is the approach which Douglas Walton takes in his fascinating book Courage: A Philosophical Investigation. His very nuanced discussion of courage is rich with examples.

Thomas' remarks raise some interesting questions about the courage and cowardice of soldiers who happen to be fighting on the wrong side. These are interesting and complex questions of moral philosophy in their own right, and I did not feel that it was appropriate in Courage to dwell on them in too much detail. However, Thomas should have read more closely before declaring that “Walton does not even consider” cases of whether actions “on the part of the Axis soldiers would count as courageous”. For there is a substantial discussion in Courage of the case of the actions of Field Marshal Erwin Rommell for which he was decorated in both World Wars. But Thomas is surely right that further discussion of other cases of this type will help to advance our understanding of problems in ethics of courage.

This is the first volume in the Collected Papers which deals exclusively with Russell's non-technical writings and, chronologically, it is the immediate successor of volume 1. Volumes 2 through 7 cover roughly the same span of years as volume 12 (1902–1914) but are devoted to his technical writings on mathematics, logic and philosophy. Of this group, however, only volume 7 has so far been published. The contents of volume 12 are intended to show two contrasting sides of Russell's highly complex character: the contemplative (but nonacademic) side and the active. The latter is much easier to delineate and much more widely known. During 1904, Russell rose to defend traditional Liberal principles of free trade and to assail the British government's protectionist proposals for tariff reform. His various articles, book reviews, critiques and letters to editors are gathered here. Three years later, he campaigned for election to Parliament from Wimbledon as the Women's Suffrage candidate against a staunch anti-suffragist. The outcome was never in doubt, not even to Russell, since Wimbledon was a safe seat for the Conservatives, and in the end Russell lost by a margin greater than 3-to-l, but his fight had been vigorous and had managed to gain national attention.

In Patterns of Moral Complexity, Charles Larmore describes three related ways in which moral and political theory are more complex than is often allowed. He objects to three parallel simplifications: that moral decision making largely consists in the application of rules to particular situations; that the ideals by which we are guided in our personal (private, social) lives should also do service as political ideals, a simplification which he calls “expressivism”; and that there is but a single source of moral value (that we must be either consequentialists, or deontologists, or endorse the “principle of partiality”). Against these simplifications he argues in a sort of Aristotelian way for (1) the centrality of judgment in moral reasoning; (2) for the liberal principle that the state should not strive to express our highest personal ideal; and (3) for the, I suppose eclectic, view that partiality, deontological reasons, and consequentialist reasons all have a place in moral reasoning and that therefore the moral person may well be caught in conflicts that present him or her with tragic choices. These are the three “patterns of moral complexity” that the title of the book refers to.

Although it is acknowledged that Hume's matters of fact are established by inductive reasoning, it is not always clear which inferences may be called reasonable. In deductive reasoning, it is only reasonable to admit true conclusions of valid arguments. However, in an argument which uses probability as Hume's inductive arguments do, the criterion for reasonableness is not as clear.