Editorial: Scholarly Class

‘It follows from the laws of the order of rank that scholars, in so far as they belong to the spiritual middle class, can never catch sight of the really great problems and question marks; moreover their courage and their eyes simply do not reach that far—and above all, the needs which led them to become scholars in the first place ... come to rest and are satisfied too soon.’

Thus Nietzsche (in The Gay Science 373). Nietzsche goes on to castigate those scientifically minded philosophers who would divest existence of its rich ambiguity. A scientific interpretation of the world might be the stupidest one, the poorest in meaning, an essentially mechanical world being an essentially meaningless one. It would tell us no more of the value of the world than would a scientific account of a piece of music tells us about music.

Many, particularly perhaps readers of Philosophy, may warm to Nietzsche's words. It is also true that in courses of philosophy we hear far more about science and philosophy disguised as science than we do about music. It may, indeed, be possible to do a degree in philosophy without learning anything about the values of music at all; strange, given that for most young people, including many students of philosophy, a particularly mechanical form of music is both narcotic and more meaningful than language.

But, let us go back to ‘scholars’. Nietzsche himself might avoid the tu quoque. Certainly he wasn't an institutional scholar. Nietzsche's weapons, though, have a habit of being two-edged in the hands of his followers, doing as much damage to those who wield them, as to those at whom they are waved. In any case, if scholars are members of the spiritual middle class, their critics are not, just because they are critics, members of the upper class. Their courage and their insight can be as limited and derivative as those they criticize. This is the real problem posed by scholars of the middle class.

The gist of these objections to the possible world account of necessity is that, for it to be true, ‘possible’ would have to be a name for an attribute. But to say that something is possible is not to describe it, but to say that there could be such a thing. And possibilities are not classes of entities. Possible worlds have been described as ways, but a way of getting to London from Cambridge is not an entity, and that there is a way is entailed by facts such as that if you travel south along the M3, you will get there.

Analytic philosophy's characteristic downgrading of literature's putative concern with truth, and envisaging of its interest to philosophy merely in terms of material for logical analysis, was prefigured by Frege. The initial plausibility of this approach was in part a function of certain preferred models of philosophy as analysis which were themselves deeply flawed. An exploration of their weaknesses in the light of more adequate theories of language, truth and logic enables us to give proper weight both to rhetorical and imaginative aspects of philosophical discourse, and to the capacity of works of literature to bear on issues of truth—and thereby contribute to philosophical understanding.

Talk about time travel is puzzling even if it isn't obviously contradictory. Philosophers however are divided about whether time travel involves empirical paradox or some deeper metaphysical incoherence. It is suggested that time travel requires a Parmenidean four-dimensionalist metaphysical conception of the world in time. The possibility of time travel is addressed (mainly) from within a Parmenidean metaphysical framework, which is accepted by David Lewis in his defence of the coherence of time travel. It is argued that time travel raises formidable difficulties which are not satisfactorily resolved by Lewis's ingenious defence of time travel. Objections to time travel considered include: (1) travel to other times is impossible because there is nowhere (or “nowhen”) to go to; (2) the problem that upon setting out on a journey to the past a time machine will collide with itself; (3) time travel generates a mysterious temporal dualism between experiential time and physical time; (4) travel to the past permits reverse causation, raising the possibility of causal loops and attendant problems arising, for example, from the prospect of empirical contradiction and the possibility of someone being one of their ancestors.

This paper claims as erroneous the current widespread representation of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) as primarily condemning as intrinsically bad actions involving intentional harm. The DDE's Four Conditions are in fact used solely for justifying certain intrinsically good actions with both intended good and unintended bad effects. Though contemporary writers assign a minor justificatory role to the DDE this is incompatible with their attribution to it of a primary prohibitive role. Not only is the conduct cited by these writers as justifiable under the DDE so morally innocuous as to require no justification, but any attempt to justify it by appeal to the DDE leads to incoherence. We finally suggest reasons for this misinterpretation in current concerns with the structure of deontological moral theories.

There is a dichotomy in the Humean thought that morality is more properly felt than judged of. The idea of a moral sensibility with an epistemic and rational content is grounded in the experience of the state of nature, and a distinction made between a defensive and a constructive morality, constituted by a set of motivations, against the law of the strongest, and protective of the relationships of education and creative work, exclusion from which undermines the conditions for a constructive morality. Aesthetic education is a means of overcoming the sectarianism of defensive morality.

This paper attempts to summarise the philosophical career of Bertrand Russell, concentrating in particular on his contributions to logic and the philosophy of mathematics. It takes as its starting point Russell's conception of philosophy as the search for foundations upon which certain knowledge might be built, a search which Russell, at the end of his career, declared to be fruitless. In pursuing this search, however, Russell was led to develop lines of thought and techniques of analysis that have had a profound and lasting influence on the philosophy of the twentieth century.

A play's text is nearly all talk, and in the performance of a play the physical activity is sparse and exceedingly limited. Used of a play, the term ‘action’ does not mean what it normally means. Its true meaning is illuminated by reference to J. L. Austin and his doctrine of speech-acts. Dramatic action is, for the most part, speech-action. And a skilful manipulation of speech-acts enables the gifted dramatist not only to tell a story but to communicate what is going on below the surface.