Logic or the Art of Thinking (review)

626 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:4 OCTOBER 1997 Descartes he reread his Ockhamism in a Cartesian manner, just as he and others were awakened by Descartes to the metaphysics (as opposed to theology) of Augustine. Steven Nadler shows that Arnauld was an occasionalist on mind-body interaction because he doubted such heterogeneous substances could interact; he contrasts this with Malebranche's radical occasionalism, derived from a denial of causal efficacy to all finite beings. Margaret Osler contrasts the positions of Descartes and Gassendi on the eternal truths, arguing Gassendi was a true voluntarist, but Descartes not--for, although Descartes made the truths depend on God's will, his position should, Osler thinks, be assimilated to Aquinas's position on suppositional necessity, so that Descartes would hold that God cannot change the eternal truths once he has willed them. Thomas Lennon explains the disagreement in the Fifth Objections and Replies over whether an idea must express the unitary essence of its object by contending that Gassendi the nominalist believed ideas of essences must be built up piecewise, whereas Descartes the realist thought any given idea, such as that of God, is not that idea unless it includes the unitary essence. Roger Ariew, using later Jesuit responses to Descartes, argues that in the Seventh Objections Pierre Bourdin was, as Descartes feared, speaking for the Jesuits as a corporate body. Grene's Epilogue endorses contextualist interpretation and commends a "dialogic" approach to early modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant. GARY HATFIELD University of Pennsylvania Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole. Logic or the Art of Thinking. Edited and translated byJill Vance Buroker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxxviii + 281. Board, $54.95. Paper, $a8.95. Professor Buroker provides a much-needed modern and accurate English translation of La Logique ou l'Art de Penser. The work, better known as The Port-Royal Logic, was coauthored by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole and first published in 1662. Englishspeaking scholars of this important and relevant work had to rely either on the three rare English translations successively done by "several hands" 0685), by Mr. Ozell (1717), and by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1850, or on the out-of-print and often inaccurate American translation of.James Dickoff and Patricia James (1964). Professor Buroker takes as the basis of her translation, La Logique ou l'Art de Penser, annotated by Pierre Clair and Frangois Girbal and published by Vrin, in Paris, in a965 (revised in 1981 ). This edition reproduces the 1683 fifth and final edition done by the two authors. The annotations include copious bibliographical notes and all variants from the previous four editions. Professor Buroker reproduces many, but not all, of these notes or variants. Professor Buroker follows the original paragraph divisions, stays close to the French sentence structures, and strives to be consistent in her translation of key terms. Her precision is manifest in the last three paragraphs of Book III, Chapter 1o (164). This is a crucial passage because it shows how a single general principle, intended to BOOK REVIEWS 6~ 7 eliminate the many rules of the syllogism, and based on the "comprehension" and "extension" (comprehensionand ~tendue)of Cartesian ideas, functions in evaluating arguments . The distinction between the comprehension and extension of terms triggers a slew of insights into issues of referentiality that are still debated. The French text requires approximately 400 words; Buroker's translation contains around 420, while Dickoff and James's, which turned the three paragraphs into one, contains about 200. Still, and much to her credit, Buroker's literalness is not carried out at the expense of literariness; her prose is crisp, lively, and fluid. Such balance is indeed remarkable. I only wish that Professor Buroker had applied the same degree of literal rigor to her translation of the Latin quotations as she did to the translation of the French text; some translations are too free (5 l, lo 5, 169) and cannot be used to recognize the point argued for by the authors. Also, the attempt to be consistent with key terms is not always successful; some key terms, such as enfermer, renfermer, contenir, comprendre,which are borrowed from geometry and are meant to...