Karl Marx. The Arguments of the Philosophers (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 403 function of terms, the translation makes quite clear that Hobbes is well acquainted with the distinction between extensional and intensional meaning. In fact, Hungerland and Vick argue that Hobbes's view is less troublesome and more insightful than even that of Carnap who, at least on one interpretation, posits a domain of extensional and intensional entities. There are no intensional entities for Hobbes, and this, of course, is consistent with his physicalism. A term can denote a set of objects, i.e., it can have an extension, but it is also used to convey the reason these objects are grouped together. Intensions allude to reasons and not to entities. "Triangle" denotes a certain mathematical figure, but it is also intended, by a user of the term, to communicate the implicit definition that all triangles have three sides. Similarly, any term, in its use, is intended to supply an implicit conventional definition alluding to the resemblances that unite a given group. Perhaps there is much in this notion of intension that requires unpacking. In what sense, for example, is an intension conventional and how would Hobbes deal with the (Fregean) need for intensions in explicating identity statements? But even with these reservations one can sympathize with the Hobbesian attempt to prohibit population explosions. Hobbes also apparently anticipates Grice's important distinction between sentence meaning and utterer's meaning. Using S. R. Schiffer's account of Grice, Hungerland and Vick proceed to examine Grice's view and then to indicate its simlarities to Hobbes's position. Hobbes, like Grice, distinguishes between signs that signify naturally and those that signify conventionally. Hobbes also makes intensional meaning rest on the intended use of expressions in inter-personal communication. The authors insist that they are not trying to "read into" Hobbes's writing a degree of sophistication and subtlety that is not really there. But the constant reference to Quine, Carnap and Grice gives the false impression that the step from Hobbes to Grice is a fairly simple one. Hobbes is clearly a seminal thinker but, just as clearly, there have been a few advances in logical and linguistic analyses in the more than three hundred years since Hobbes. In spite of its rather overdrawn attempt to "modernize" Hobbes, this book is a fine and noteworthy contribution to historical scholarship. It demonstrates once and for all that Hobbes's originality did not pertain solely to his political philosophy. JACK KAMINSKY State University of New York at Binghamton Allen Wood. Karl Marx. The Arguments of the Philosophers, edited by Ted Honderich. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Pp. xviii + 28~. $25.oo, cloth. Allen Wood's book is a welcome one, in a number of respects. That a book on Marx, by a respected member of the Cornell philosophy department, should appear in Routledge & Kegan Paul's fine "Arguments of the Philosophers" series, is a sign of how much times have changed. And this book should also help to change them further, not only owing to these circumstances, but also because it is a very good one. 404 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Wood knows Marx well, and is sympathetic to him as well as comfortable with him. And he admirably accomplishes his objectives, of showing that Marx's thought is of genuine philosophical interest and deserves the attention of philosophers, and of presenting it in a manner facilitating their reckoning seriously with it. Wood neither establishes nor claims that Marx had a fully developed and refined set of philosophical views of such power or subtlety that he warrants ranking alongside Hume, Kant and Hegel; but he does claim, and convincingly argues, that "Marx's early writings are original, provocative, profound, rich in both social and phiiosophcal insights" (5), that his later writings have much to offer along these lines as well, and that his views are by no means as vulnerable to criticism as is often supposed. The book consists of five parts, in which Wood deals with Marx on alienation, "the human essence," and capitalism; on historical materialism; on morality; on reality and knowledge ("philosophical materialism"); and on dialectic, both as it is generally to be understood and in Capital. The book could...