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Lectures on Philosophy (review)
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 6, Number 2, April 1968
- pp. 182-183
- Review
- Additional Information
182 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Finally, it might be said that by writing such a book Professor Reseher has disproved conclusively Russell~ charge that Leibniz had two philosophies--a good one he kept mostly to himself, and a bad one he used to placate others and gain admiration for himself. The cloth is of one piece. WALTERH. O'BR~-ANT University o] Georgia, Athens Lectures on Philosophy. By G. E. Moore. Edited by Casimir Lewy. (New York: Humaniti~ Press, Inc. 1967. pp. ix ~ 197. p. $6.00.) Selections from three sets of lecture notes are collected here, reproducing Moore's own abbreviations and other notational devices. In a way these peculiarities convey something of the style of the man, as do the substance of the notes themselves. The first two sets (from 1928-29, and from 1925-26), Lewy tells us, were intended for students preparing fur Part II of the Moral Science Tripos, and were entitled "Metaphysics." They deal, respectively, with problems connected with reality and perception, and logical concepts--classes, necessity, propositions and truth. Part I covers the ground of many of Moore's most celebrated writings on sense data and related topics. Part II finds him struggling with real and profound difficulties in philosophical logic, particularly the views of Russell. Many of his remarks have a surprising Wits flavor. For example (pp. 124ff.) he considers the claim "There are no classes," saying of it: Thi:s is a prop. about symbols.... One has to consider: What is the view wh.[ich] Rlussell] is opposing.... R. is, in fact, using the term "class" in a sense wh., when you realize it, will seem I think to be a very queer one; viz. a sense such that every pred[icate] dvtermines a class. This contrasts with the ordinary use, iu which a class is an aggregate. And so Moure is finally led to ask whether Russell's special use has application as it stands to classes in the ordinary sense, which, he thinks, it does not. There are, here and elsewhere in the book, many such hard questionings of Russell's views, some of them reminiscent of the sport of linguistic philosophers of the post-war period, but clearly advanced with the sense that what Russell was doing, if true, was terribly important. Part IH (trom 1933-~), intended for Part I of the Moral Science Tripos and entitled "Elements of Philosophy," continues the struggle with Russellian doctrines, and particularly with Ramsey's claim that the theory of descriptions is the paradigm of philosophical analysis. It is in many ways the most interesting of the three sets of lectures, as it contains an attempt by Moore to state what he means by philosophy, and his many misgivings about it. One line sounds terribly familiar, perhaps from derivative sources: that metaphysical questions are really epistemologieal questions in disguise, what is real being a way of recording what we know for sure. Generally familiar also is the view that the object of philosophy is to clear up puzzles that are themselves philosophical. In a characteristic passage he disclaims any practical advantage coming from doing critical philosophy; his ordinary use of definite descriptions is not a whit clearer or less clear in virtue of Russell's analysis, and it is only with respect to the way in which it makes philosophical conundrums dissolve that justifies its use. Here is another sample of Moore at work: [Broad's] first example is: Suppose we are asked: 'In what place is the mirror image of a pin? And is it in this place in the same sense in which the pin itself is in its place?' He sas we find ourselves puzzled by such questions; and suggests our puzzlement will certainlyY ;artly be removed, if Critical Philosophy gives us an analysis of what's meant by 'being in a place'.... BOOK REVIEWS 183 Moore goes on to provide an analysis, all of which goes to support the contentions (1) that, except in philosophy, there is no puzzle ("In the first place: Are you puzzled? ...I am in a way, in spite of all the Critical Phil. I've done. But I'm not sure my puzzlement is...