Plato was the first feminist. In the Republic he puts forward the view that women are just the same as men, only not quite so good. It is a view which has often been expressed in recent years, and generates strong passions. Some of these have deep biological origins, which a philosopher can only hope to recognize and not to assuage. But much of the heat engendered is due to unnecessary friction between views which are certainly compatible and probably correct. And here a philosopher can help. If we can divide the issues neatly, at the joints, then we need not quarrel with one another for saying something, probably true, because what is being maintained is misconstrued and taken to mean something else, probably false.

My goal in this paper is to elucidate a problematic feature of Newton's metaphysics of absolute space. Specifically, I argue that Newton's theory has the untenable consequence that God depends on space for His existence and is therefore not an independent entity. I argue for this conclusion in stages. First, I show that Newton believed that space was an entity and that God and space were ontologically distinct entities. Part of this involves arguing that Newton denies that space is a divine attribute. I then show that Newton endorsed a principle according to which the existence of space is a necessary condition for the existence of any other entity. Following this, I discuss the ways in which this makes God depend on space for His existence and the reasons why this is unacceptable for traditional conceptions of God. Specifically, I show that it is incompatible with the orthodox position that God be entirely independent and self-determining. Finally, I offer two considerations which, I hope, make the problem seem less serious than it first appears. The first consideration has to do with Newton's polemical context and the second has to do with the nature of his theological thought.

Professor D. Z. Phillips in ‘Bad Faith and Sartre's Waiter’ (Philosophy56, 1981) assigns to Sartre the view that ‘waiters are necessarily in bad faith’, i.e. the profession of waiting as such is in bad faith. What could this mean in the context of Sartre's philosophy? That waiters as a class seek to flee their freedom by adopting that vocation? It must mean something on those lines since, for Sartre, to engage in bad faith is (in a certain mode) to deny one's freedom. The question then arises: could Sartre have heldsuch a view ? And, if he could not have, how does Phillips manage tothink he did ?

It sometimes happens that a philosopher will develop a view on some topic and then later come to reject it. J. L. Austin was perhaps unique in that he not only rejected a philosophical view of which he himself was the author, he patiently developed the view and then showed it to be ultimately unsatisfactory within the compass of the same work. And he did this not once but three times, in material intended for publication. I am thinking, of course, of his notion of performative utterances: the view that there is a class of utterance, the members of which would on standard grammatical grounds be classed as statements, yet whose proper business is not to state anything but to perform some act. For example, to say ‘I promise to be there’ is to promise to be there, and not (or at least not merely) to state that one promises nor even to state that one will be there.

During the last few years many writers have pointed out that notions like ‘family resemblance’, ‘open texture’ and ‘systematic ambiguity’ which play a considerable role in contemporary philosophy are akin to Aquinas' concept of analogy. Yet no one has made a thorough comparison between modern linguistic philosophy and the Thomistic doctrine of analogy. In this article I want to explore their relationship and to assess the value of the latter. Just how much has Aquinas to contribute to modern discussions about the nature of language and about God's attributes? And does modern philosophy of language destroy Aquinas' case, or can it rather be used to supplement it?

In Germany the claim is sometimes made that National Socialism incorporates the best of Plato’s political theory. In this country, too, Bertrand Russell and Mr. R. H. Crossman have emphasized, but with a different intention, the fascist elements in Plato's thought. It has to be admitted that whereas it would be merely laughable to claim that Jesus or Kant were exponents of the fascist philosophy, there is no such glaring incongruity with regard to Plato. It may be of some interest, therefore, to examine anew the alleged likeness between the basic principles of fascism and the thought of Plato. No one would deny a strong likeness between some details of Plato’s

This paper presents a functional genealogy of essentialist authenticity. The essentialist account maintains that authenticity is the result of discovering and realizing one's ‘true self’. The genealogy shows that essentialist authenticity can serve the function of supporting continuity in one's individual characteristics. A genealogy of essentialist authenticity is not only methodologically interesting as the first functional genealogy of a contingent concept. It can also deepen the functional understanding of authenticity used in neuroethics, provide a possible explanation for the prevalence of the idea of an essentialist true self and justify the use of the ideal of authenticity. First, essentialist authenticity is defined and explained through the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Second, a general need to have steady characteristics is derived from basic human practices. Third, circumstances that make it more challenging to steady oneself are identified and shown to have become more prevalent in the age of modernity when the ideal of authenticity emerged. Finally, it is shown how essentialist authenticity helps to steady the self.

The philosophy department in Edinburgh is in David Hume tower; the philosophy faculty at Cambridge is in Sidgwick Avenue. In one way, no competition. Everybody (who's anybody) has heard of Hume, whereas even the anybody who's anybody may not have heard of Sidgwick. Yet in another way, Sidgwick wins this arcane contest. For if David Hume, contradicting the Humean theory of personal identity, were to return to Edinburgh, he would not recognize the tower. Whereas, if someone with more success in rearousing spirits than Sidgwick himself had could now produce him, Sidgwick would know the avenue. For he planned it; he partially paid for it; and he pushed it past the local opposition. He was its creator. And creator not just of the avenue: if Sidgwick is not quite the only begetter, it was he more than anyone who was responsible for building the school of philosophy in Cambridge which is being celebrated in this series of articles.

Professor Hamlyn (in ‘Unconscious Intentions’, Philosophy, 1971) defen the idea of unconscious intentions independently of its place in Freudian theory. If successful, his argument would show that arguments such as Frederick Siegler's (in ‘Unconscious Intentions’, Inquiry, 1967), would not succeed in demonstrating the incoherence of the Freudian notion(s) of unconscious intention. Further, if Hamlyn is successful, he provides conceptual grounds from ordinary, non-psychoanalytic cases from which the Freudian notion of unconscious intention could be reconstructed.

McTaggart′s father and mother were both members of a prosperous Wiltshire family, the Ellises: in fact they were first cousins, and this inbreeding may account for his premature death from a circulatory disease to which several Ellises succumbed. The Ellises were of yeoman stock, and had enriched themselves by West Indian enterprises; they had risen in the social scale via the practice of law. It is rather reminiscent of the The Forsyte Saga, a saga, as Galsworthy said, of the Sense of Property.

In discussing Disembodied Persons we need to confront two problems:

A. Under what conditions would we consider that a person was present in the absence of the normal bodily cues?

B. Could such circumstances arise?

The first question may be regarded as epistemic and the second as metaphysical.