Volume 88, Issue 1

Aristotle's notion of experience plays an important role in his epistemology as the link between perception and memory on the one side, and higher cognitive capacities on the other side. However, Aristotle does not say much about it, and what he does say seems inconsistent. Notably, some passages suggest that it is a non-rational capacity, others that it is a rational capacity and that it provides the principles of science. This paper presents a unitary account of experience. It explains how experience grows from perception and memory into a rational capacity, and in what way it provides the principles.

Kant's discussion of the feeling of respect presents a puzzle regarding both the precise nature of this feeling and its role in his moral theory as an incentive that motivates us to follow the moral law. If it is a feeling that motivates us to follow the law, this would contradict Kant's view that moral obligation is based on reason alone. I argue that Kant has an account of respect as feeling that is nevertheless not separate from the use of reason, but is intrinsic to willing. I demonstrate this by taking literally Kant's references to force in the second Critique . By referring to Kant's pre-critical essay on Negative Magnitudes (1763), I show that Kant's account of how the moral law effects in us a feeling of respect is underpinned by his view that the will is a kind of negative magnitude, or force. I conclude by noting some of the implications of my discussion for Kant's account of virtue.

This paper reconstructs Reid's responses to regress arguments against the possibility of free will, highlighting the role played by long-term decisions (“general fixed purposes”) in the explanation of paradigmatic free actions on Reid's account. In addition to reconstructing Reid's response to the two versions of the regress argument that he explicitly discusses, I also construct a Reidian response to Galen Strawson's contemporary version of the regress argument. The depth of Reid's position is most apparent in the resources it provides for responding to this sophisticated articulation of a traditional argument against freedom of the will.

Martial Gueroult (1891–1976) and Victor Goldschmidt (1914–1981) are two major figures in French history of philosophy during the second half of the last century. The latter has often been described as one of the former's “disciples”, on the basis of their common opposition to the “geneticist” approach in the study of past philosophers, and their common support for a “structuralist” one, which was an influential paradigm in various fields of French thought at the time of their activity. A detailed study of their methodological principles and their concrete practice shows that their relationship was much more complicated.

Robert Wisnovsky: Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context . London: Duckworth 2003, 305 p. (Frank Griffel, New Haven) Arbogast Schmitt: Die Moderne und Platon . Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 2003, XII, 584 Seiten. (Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Bochum/Bonn) Gyburg Radke: Die Theorie der Zahl im Platonismus. Ein systematisches Lehrbuch . Tübingen / Basel: Francke 2003, VII, 885 Seiten. (Christoph Helmig, Leuven)