Aesthetic theories, like theories of morals, are roughly divisible into those that maintain an analytic neutrality and those that attempt to arrive at “first-order”, practical judgments. A philo sopher of language may confine the legitimate task of aesthetics to the clarification of talk about works of art and about the fashioning of works of art. But other aestheticians, perhaps a more numerous group, see their study as far more intimately related to art criticism, and as able, without the committing of naturalistic or any other fallacies, to reach particular aesthetic value-judgments. Between these extreme positions lies a great diversity of theories which, while clearly differentiating aesthetics from art criticism, still carry practical implications of a general kind. The conceptual scaffolding into which they fit the art-forms, their notion of what is central to aesthetic experience and what peripheral, their account of artistic creativity-all these can be indirectly evaluative, can subtly influence and alter one's responses to actual aesthetic objects.

The word “beautiful” plays a surprisingly unimportant part in the language of sophisticated artistic appreciation; I mean in the informed criticism and comparison of specific works of art. Though in ordinary conversation it can be used naturally and easily, it does not serve readily as a technical term in expert writing or discussion. To become a technical term of this kind it would have to be definable, and definable in terms which commanded sufficient agreement: but attempts to define “beauty” and “beautiful” may well have become restrained by the popularity of philosophical discussion about the significance of these words. No philosophical question is discussed more commonly or from more firmly held opposite positions than the question whether beauty is “objective” or not. Discussion of this and related topics, however, not being the monopoly of professed philosophers but being familiar amongst artists and art critics themselves, tends to remove all shadow of technicality from the crucial terms discussed. Other terms come to serve for the “objective” features of works of art, and others again for the impressions which works of art may make upon us: “beauty” and “beautiful” tend to fall away between these two classes.

There is a common distinction between two aspects of history: history as the object dealt with and history as the way of dealing with the object. Within the “objective” aspect of history one may distinguish between the attempt to define the object as man and the attempt to define it as process. Within the “subjective” aspect there is the prevailing tendency to put forward the nature of the onceptual method as one employing individual concepts.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Professor Findlay's generally remarkable book is that it was written at all. Only a few years ago Hegel seemed to be the most discredited of philosophers: Professor Ryle was heard to say that he could not make sense of his writings “even as error”, and there were few avant-garde, or even moderately up-to-date, philosophers in Great Britain who were prepared to take them with any seriousness, let alone to give time to their elucidation. It is true that Popper's portrait of Hegel as not only intellectually disreputable, but morally dishonest as well, was received with some incredulity; people could scarcely bring themselves to believe that matters were as bad as that, even before Mr. Kaufmann showed conclusively that they were not. But it is one thing to acquit Hegel of the charge of being a conscious fraud and another altogether to view his work with positive admiration. Despite hints to the effect that Hegel and Wittgenstein had views in common, it was not to be expected that someone as fully conversant with, and as appreciative of, recent philosophical work as is Professor Findlay should devote himself to a full-scale reassessment of Hegelianism and come out with a verdict which is very largely favourable. Yet it is just this that we find in the present book.

The article on my theory of descriptions by Mr. Lejewski raises two points. One is as to the copula. I do not quite understand why it is thought that an ambiguity in the meaning of the word “is” is relevant in regard to my theory of descriptions. There are many problems in regard to which it is relevant. I have mentioned one of these in criticizing Hegel in Our Knowledge of the External World on p. 39n of the original edition (1914). But, although I have read Mr. Lejewski's argument several times, it still seems to me quite clear that in “Scott is the author of Waverley” the “is” is that of identity. Nor have I been able to understand why he considers his theory of descriptions preferable to mine. I am, however, quite willing to believe (and I say this in all sincerity) that there is some point that I have missed in his discussion.

Robert Oppenheimer tells the story about a group of Bible scholars who practised exegesis with grim determination. A visitor, admiring so much earnest learning, inquired whether they did not find certain texts supremely difficult. Answered one Bible student: “Indeed—but what we do not understand we explain to one another.”

In his article entitled “Moore and Philosophical Analysis”, Professor Morris Lazerowitz selects Hume's analysis of causality as an example of the way in which philosophers have in the past misleadingly stated what they were trying to do. Professor Lazerowitz asserts at least three things of Hume's analysis. (1)Since Hume insisted that there was no impression of necessary connection, it follows that Hume could not have been examining sequences of events. (2)Therefore, Hume must have been doing something else; namely, misleadingly calling attention to the fact that it always makes literal sense to say of any two supposedly causal events that they are only accidentally connected. Hume, in other words, deprived causal verbs of their use “by linguistic fiat” so that he could more pointedly illustrate the likeness between causal and accidental-occurrence statements.

The old controversy between the classical education in the humanities and the modern kind of education in the sciences is frequently before us in these times. Russia is rapidly gaining ascendancy in scientific achievement; England and the United States of America are urged to meet the challenge by increasing the pressure of a scientific training for all capable of it. Is such a policy really desirable? From one point of view it might seem merely a matter of changing the subjects to be studied at school and university. Instead of the talented youth reading Plato and Thucydides, he is to be directed to the Infini-tesimal Calculus and the Quantum Theory of Radiation. The former studies, the argument would run, are agreeable but barren; the latter are austere but fruitful.