neo-Kantian Epistemology Research Articles

MAXWELL’S UNIFICATION OF OPTICS AND ELECTROMAGNETISM AND THE INCOMMENSURABILITY TENET

It is contended that one of the promising directions for solving the problem of incommensurability of paradigms, coined by T. Kuhn and P. Feyerabend, can be associated with the trend of advancement of neo-Kantian epistemology, presented by the writings of Ernst Cassirer. According to Cassirer, the statements fixing connections and relationships between mathematical ideal constructs form a “neutral language” that can serve as a firm ground for comparing the “old” and “new” paradigms. A case study of the genesis and functioning of a neutral mathematical language related to the Maxwellian synthesis of optics and electromagnetism isprovided. It is elicited that its basis is constituted by the mathematical language of continuum mechanics. The main function of the neutral language was to project the consequences of all the unified theories onto the mathematical model, “rewrite” all known laws in this mathematical language, compare their conclusions with each other to eliminate contradictions and generalize the stuff in a self-consistent system of equations.

Jonasian Gnosticism

AbstractThis article proposes that Jonas’s understanding of gnosticism differs substantially from the account typically associated with him. That standard account takes the basic tenets of existentialism as the foundation to its discussion of alienated individuality, whereas Jonas’s system uses neo-Kantian epistemology to construct both alienation and individuality out of a unified field of human interaction. Within his framework, gnosticism is a single historical-philosophical episode of inauthenticity, highly influential yet isolated in time, unlike the ubiquitous understanding of it. This article reviews Jonas’s system, elements of its early and later acceptance, along with selected issues raised by critics, from Heidegger and Scholem to Colpe, Yamauchi, Williams, and King.

Ernst Cassirer on historical thought and the demarcation problem of epistemology

ABSTRACT Cassirer’s neo-Kantian epistemology has become a classical reference in contemporary history and philosophy of science. However, the historical aspects of his thought are sometimes seen to be in some tension with his defence of a priori elements of knowledge. This paper reconsiders Cassirer’s strategy to address this tension by positing functional dependencies at the core of the notion of objectivity. This requires the epistemologist to account for the determination of the objects of knowledge within given scientific theories, but also for conceptual changes over time.

A TEORIA DA PRÁTICA DE PIERRE BOURDIEU À LUZ DA NOÇÃO WEBERIANA DE TIPO IDEAL


 O artigo apresenta uma intepretação da teoria da prática e da epistemologia de Pierre Bourdieu a partir da pressuposição realista e da epistemologia neokantiana de Max Weber. Para isso, o trabalho expõe a noção de tipo ideal – sobretudo enquanto a forma conceitual por excelência das ciências sociais – no interior mais amplo da teoria do conhecimento weberiana. Num segundo momento, o artigo interpreta, com Vandenberghe (2011), a epistemologia bourdieusiana como uma espécie de síntese sofisticada do racionalismo de Bachelard com o relacionismo de Cassirer. Por fim, o artigo defende a tese de que tanto a epistemologia weberiana quanto o recurso de Bourdieu à “filosofia do como se” devem ser interpretados a partir da pressuposição realista de que as (re)descrições científicas podem corresponder (em medidas
 variáveis) à realidade empírica. Com isso, o artigo procura ler a sociologia bourdieusiana menos como uma teoria da reprodução e mais como uma aposta na reflexividade e na mudança social.
 
 
 Palavras - chave: Epistemologia. Teoria da Prática. Max Weber. Pierre Bourdieu
 
 

Launching Paul Natorp’s Sozialpädagogik in Japan in the early twentieth century

ABSTRACT Paul Natorp is better known as a key figure of Neo-Kantian epistemology than as a great educationist. This paper discusses the affinity for Natorp’s theory of education in Japan in the first decades of the twentieth century. It presents an overview of Natorp’s educational way of thinking and analyses the interest of Japanese educationists in the educational thought encapsulated in the conception of Natorp’s educational theory, which he called Sozialpädagogik. Addressing the debate around Natorp’s Sozialpädagogik within the Japanese national community of scholars, key points of the inception of the theory in Japan are examined, central scholars involved are identified, and the impact of Natorp’s conception on the Japanese philosophy of education and educational practice is considered.

«Поворот к онтологии» в русском неокантианстве в конце 1910-х - начале 1920-х гг. (Л. П. Салагов и Н. В. Болдырев)

The period between the late 1910s and early 1920s saw the emergence of onto-epistemological philosophical projects in Russia that was determined by criticism and attempts to overcome the domination of epistemology in philosophy which was the result of the intensive development of Neo-Kantianism and the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology. Attempts to turn towards ontology were made both by Russian religious philosophers and by Russian Neo-Kantians. I look at the little-studied philosophical projects of the Russian Neo-Kantians Lev Salagov and Nikolai Boldyrev. Their philosophical concepts share the tendency to transpose epistemological problems to ontology, and to identify and bring closer together epistemology and ontology. Russian philosophers ontologise the theory of cognition through the analysis of subjectivity, the complete elimination of psychological motives and the separation of transcendentalism from transcendentism. These principles enable Salagov to ground a three-part structure of cognition (consciousness, being, committing to consciousness) and to assert that the main task of genuine epistemology is exclusively the study of the cognitive relationship, committing to consciousness. They enable Boldyrev, proceeding from the separation of reflection and sensibility, to build a doctrine on the self-unfolding of being. Similar tendencies — a turn towards ontology — were observed in the same period in West European philosophy, including German Neo-Kantianism. However, the concepts of Russian Neo-Kantians, which imply a new orientation towards ontology, are fairly independent, and not only on account of the original interpretation of Kantian critical philosophy and Neo-Kantian epistemology, but also on account of internal discussion with the Russian philosophers belonging to other movements (for example, intuitivists). The analysis of the onto-epistemological projects of Russian Neo-Kantians makes important additions to the picture of the reception of Neo-Kantianism in Russia.

Translation of Tanabe Hajime’s “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools”

This article provides the first English translation of Tanabe’s early essay, “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools” (1914). The key notion that the young Tanabe seeks to define in relation to his detailed analyses of contemporary Neo-Kantian epistemology is the notion of “pure experience” presented in Nishida’s philosophy. The general theory of epistemology shared among the thinkers from these two prominent schools of philosophy in early 20th century Germany aimed to eliminate the empirical residues in Kant’s theory of knowledge while opposing naive empiricism and the uncritical methodology of positive science. Their “logicistic” approach, according to Tanabe, seems to contradict Nishida’s notion of pure experience, for it cannot allow any vestige of empiricism in its systematic framework, which is specifically designed to ground scientific knowledge. Yet given that the Neo-Kantian configuration of epistemology does not create the object of knowledge, it must face sensation or representational content as its limiting instance. Thus, to ground a Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge while taking account of this limit of logicism involves explaining their understanding of the unity of subject and object in human knowing. For this, Tanabe argues, recourse to Nishida’s notion of pure experience is indispensable.

Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art by Sebastian Zeidler

Reviewed by: Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art by Sebastian Zeidler Joyce Suechun Cheng Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art. Sebastian Zeidler. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 306. $99.95 (cloth); $35.00 (paper). The German-Jewish poet, critic, and philosopher Carl Einstein (1885–1940) was a reluctant practitioner of the “paraphrase,” his name for the practice by which writers and academics reduce concrete, sensuous realities to abstract ideas. But not only did Einstein himself produce an impressive body of critical and theoretical texts on art, thus becoming an art paraphraseur à contrecœur, his own elliptical, hermetic language had subsequently subjected scholars to the same embarrassing predicament. If all serious students of Einstein have wrestled with the intractable yet necessary task of paraphrasing Einstein, Sebastian Zeidler has done so with exceptional vigor. Informed by Zeidler’s PhD dissertation and containing previously published articles, Form as Revolt is a theoretically oriented reading of Einstein’s philosophy of art through select texts, specifically Einstein’s seminal Negerplastik (on African sculpture) and his writings on cubism, Pablo Picasso’s surrealist period, and Paul Klee’s 1920s work. The reader should therefore not expect an intellectual biography or an historical-contextualist study of this major figure of the European avant-garde. Acknowledging the intertwinement between writing and activism in Einstein’s life in a brief biography at the outset, Zeidler nevertheless concludes that “Einstein’s exploits during [events like the Spanish Civil War] are . . . redundant for an account of Einstein as a writer or art critic” (54). Unlike most Einstein scholars to date, Zeidler has no interest in Einstein’s relationship to expressionist circles and Berlin Dada in his native Germany, or his participation in the dissident surrealist group in interwar Paris, which Zeidler deems “anecdotally entertaining but critically negligible” (158). Claiming that “the contexts through which Einstein kept moving never grounded his texts,” Zeidler insists instead on Einstein’s singularity as the “lost wanderer,” whose life and thought reflect “a modern ontological condition” that Zeidler terms “groundlessness” (9). In the first, most philological of the chapters, “The Lost Wanderer,” Zeidler reads Einstein’s early writings as exercises in the “style of nonessence (Unwesen).” This refers to Einstein’s skepticism in regard to language’s ability to capture the essence of things, which for Einstein “is both assumed and not assumed to be ‘given’” (40). Attributing Einstein’s “nonessentialism” to the influence of German Romantic thought, Zeidler shows the extent to which Hegel’s philosophy and Novalis’s Mathematical Fragments informed Einstein’s negative conception of language and his interest in form as an “equation” rather than mimetic representation. The second chapter, “Sculpture Ungrounded,” concerns Einstein’s 1915 treatise on West African sculpture, in which he polemicizes against post-baroque European sculpture’s over-reliance [End Page 891] on the pictorial. Epitomized by the neoclassical sculptor and theorist Adolf von Hildebrand’s advocacy for the sculptural relief, “pictorial” sculpture becomes for Einstein the foil for African sculpture’s unique capacity to convert material mass into “cubic form,” which Einstein deems “objective” in contrast to the “subjectivism” of European art. Zeidler does not as much take issue with this standard reading as he complicates it (though the interested reader can find in the footnotes his energetic reactions to previous scholarly discussions). He first enlists more potential targets for Einstein’s polemic: the physiological optics of Hermann von Helmholtz (an acquaintance of Hildebrand, but not of Einstein), and Georg Simmel’s texts on Auguste Rodin (to which Einstein alludes in passing). Zeidler argues that these two figures—representatives, respectively, of neo-Kantian epistemology (Helmholtz) and Bergsonian vitalism (Simmel)—coincide in their advocacy for “a temporalized sculptural experience” (82). To this Zeidler opposes Einstein’s concept of sculpture as “totality” and “simultaneity,” which while equally indebted to Bergson is for Zeidler more akin to “the Bergsonism of Gilles Deleuze” (86). This theoretical manoeuver allows Zeidler to develop a Deleuzian reading of African art: “It is . . . as an actualization of the virtual, in Deleuze’s reading of Bergson, that the totality of Einstein’s Chokwe [Angola] figure confronted the Western viewer in 1915” (86). Given...

GEORG JELLINEK ON VALUES AND OBJECTIVITY IN THE LEGAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES

Georg Jellinek was one of the legal theorists who brought a new level of methodological sophistication to German public law scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century. Where previous research has called attention to his theory of conceptual “types” and his application of contemporary neo-Kantian epistemology to the law, this article explores his thinking on the nature of values and value judgments, and the possibilities for objectivity in the legal and political sciences. Jellinek sought to open an increasingly calcified legal positivism to the findings of the social sciences and to an inherently pluralistic, changing world of subjective values, but without abandoning the positivist ideals of legal certainty and the exclusion of political and other value judgments. Analyzing his response to this challenge opens a window onto his broader work in public law and political science, illuminating doctrines like the “two-sided” theory of the state and the “normative power of the factual,” which have achieved a lasting place in German legal and political theory. It also shows why Jellinek put aside the traditional ideal of bias-free objectivity for a surprisingly modern vision of a process of intersubjective agreement, driven by the institutions of free and open scholarly debate.

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Deductive Reasoning

This article introduces the first English translation of one of Tanabe’s early essays on metaphysics. It questions the relation of the universal to the particular in context of logic, phenomenology, Neo-Kantian epistemology, and classical metaphysics. Tanabe provides his reflections on the nature of the concept of universality and its constitutive relation to phenomenal particulars through critical analyses of the issue as it is discussed across various schools of philosophy including: British Empiricism, the Marburg School, the Austrian School, the Kyoto School, and Platonism. In this essay, Tanabe reveals his ability to think metaphysically the ground for the possibility of (deductive) reasoning and dares to voice his own thought beyond references to the most prominent thinkers of his time from distinct intellectual traditions in both the east and the west. This essay, therefore, demonstrates that his strong tendency to move beyond the received epistemology and phenomenology of the European intellectual tradition to metaphysics was already present in the early days of his academic life and thereby marks a more general contribution of the Kyoto School of Philosophy to distinct European schools of thought in the early twentieth century.

How Is Critical Ontology Possible? Toward the Foundation of the General Theory of the Categories, Part One (1923)

This is a translation of an early essay by the German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950). In this 1923 essay Hartmann presents many of the fundamental ideas of his new critical ontology. He summarizes some of the main points of his critique of neo-Kantian epistemology, and provides the point of departure for his new approach in an extensive criticism of the errors of the classical ontological tradition. Some of these errors concern the definition of an ontological category or principle, and others concern the relations among categories themselves. The outline for the new ontology is sketched through the correctives Hartmann appends to the treatment of each error, prefiguring his mature ontological system.

The Phenomenological Life-World Analysis and the Methodology of the Social Sciences

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz’s work. I have set two major goals in this lecture. The first is to scrutinize the postulate of adequacy, as this postulate is the most crucial of Schutz’s methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate ‘adequacy of meaning’ in analogy to the postulate of ‘causal adequacy’ (a concept used in jurisprudence) and regarded both as complementary and, in the context of sociological analysis, critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality, and reduced Weber’s two postulates of adequacy into one, namely, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem, in my view, is that Schutz’s reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber’s ‘causal adequacy’. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz’s conception of social science) are considered to be adequate if they are ‘understandable’ to an everyday actor, even when they are based on the most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber’s empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy that links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz’s phenomenological life-world analysis. My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology in which a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz’s analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue ‘adequate’ empirical research. This lecture focuses on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics.

Carl du Prel (1839–1899): explorer of dreams, the soul, and the cosmos

Nineteenth-century spiritism was a blend of religious elements, the philosophy of mind, science and popular science and contacts with extraterrestrials were a commonplace phenomenon during spiritistic séances. Using the example of Carl du Prel (1839–1899) I show how his comprehensive mystic philosophy originated in a theory of extraterrestrial life. Carl du Prel used a Darwinian and monistic framework, theories of the unconscious and a Neo-Kantian epistemology to formulate a philosophy of astronomy and extraterrestrial life. He claimed that the mechanism of Darwinian selection is responsible for the distribution of stars and the orbits of the planets. In his speculations on the nature of extraterrestrial life he used the concept of organ projection to argue that technical solutions on earth will be realized organically on other planets and claimed that superior extraterrestrials have quantitatively and qualitatively different senses and thus different forms of intuition. A comparison with Camille Flammarion, spiritist and populariser of astronomy, demonstrates the contextual complexities of spiritism. In contrast to du Prel’s sober Neo-Kantian philosophical speculations, Flammarion was a late proponent of a French esoteric tradition that was rooted in romantic socialism, painted grand cosmological vistas and emphasized reincarnation. I put forward the hypothesis that current discourses on extraterrestrial life are affected by the spiritist tradition mainly through the ‘Golden Age’ science fiction literature of the 1940s and 50s and its successors. However, neither Carl du Prel nor Camille Flammarion contributed significantly to this tradition, which is mainly shaped by the psychical research of J. B. Rhine.

The Man of Faith and Religious Dialogue: Revisiting "Confrontation"

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993) was the undisputed leader of Modern Orthodoxy for more than forty years. As the scion of an elite Lithuanian rabbinic family, he became the brilliant carrier of the analytic method of Talmud study pioneered by his grandfather, Hayyim of Brisk; and as a recipient of a doctorate in neo-Kantian epistemology from the University of Berlin, he developed a mastery of the classics, philosophy, and theology of Western literature. R. Soloveitchik's remarkable intellectual biography combined with his personal charisma enabled him to shape Modern Orthodoxy's ideology, religious philosophy, rabbinic education, law, and politics. He taught both Talmud and Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University, the intellectual center of the movement, where he is said to have ordained more rabbis than any person in Jewish history. For the Modern Orthodox community, he functioned as the master of both the philosophy of halakhah and its practical decisions. He left such a potent legacy of students and writings that more than a decade after his death he remains the unrivaled spiritual guide of Modern Orthodox Jews. No writing or oral discourse by R. Soloveitchik achieved more practical impact than his essay Confrontation, first delivered at the 1964 Mid-Winter Conference of the Rabbinical Council of America

The Justification of Concepts in Carnap's Aufbau

This paper concerns the recent debate on the nature and motivations of the epistemological project advanced in Rudolf Carnap's (1891–1970) Aufbau. Much of this debate has been initiated by Michael Friedman and Alan Richardson who argue (against the received view of the Aufbau as a foundationalist defense of empiricism) that Carnap's epistemological project is located in the tradition of neo-Kantian epistemology. On this revisionist reading of the Aufbau, Carnap's project is not motivated to address traditional empiricist problems regarding the justification of knowledge, but rather to show how objective knowledge is possible. A central aspect of the Aufbau that is neglected in the revisionists' analysis is the role of epistemic justification in Carnap's project. The aim of the present study is to argue that although the general epistemology in the Aufbau can be cast as neo-Kantian, Carnap's method of construction theory (or rational reconstruction) is formulated precisely as an empiricist method for the justification of conceptual knowledge. Construction theory radically redefines ‘empirical justification’ into a formal-conventional notion, and is part of Carnap's more general agenda of redefining epistemology as a purely formal discipline.

Georg Simmel as an Eidetic Social Scientist

The article shows the affinity of Simmel's formal sociology with Husserl's notion of eidetic science. This thesis is demonstrated by the corroboration of Simmel's revision of neo-Kantian epistemology for sociology with Husserl's phenomenology, and the parallel discussion of Simmel and Husserl concerning cognitive levels and exact and morphological eide. Simmel's analysis of dyads is explored as an exemplar of his eidetic insights. An important consequence of this demonstration is the vindication establishing the scientific legitimacy of Simmel's methodology regarding the sociology of the forms of association. Woven throughout is discussion concerning the doctrine of the complementarity of eidetic and empirical science. Simmel's methodology is shown to have been ahead of its time through conjoining these two modes of scientific investigation.

Bogdanov and Lenin: Epistemology and revolution

This paper explains how A. Bogdanov changed from a left Bolshevik impatient for armed insurrection into a moderate proponent of revolution through cultural transformation by placing him in the context of a debate over epistemology among Russian Social Democrats in the early twentieth century. By relying on neo-Kantian epistemology to justify socialist revolution, N. Berdyaev actually began to turn away from Marxism. Lenin espoused a naive realism that was consistent with scientific socialism, but which did not satisfy Bogdanov. Empiriomonism, Bogdanov’s neo-Positivist epistemology, led him away from violent revolution and toward a proletarian cultural revolution.

Religious Pluralism and the Divine: a Response to Paul Eddy

In ‘Religious Pluralism and the Divine: Another Look at John Hick's Neo-Kantian Proposal’ [Religious Studies, xxx, 1994) Paul Eddy argues against the ultimate ineffability of the Real, and claims that a neo-Kantian epistemology leads to a Feuerbachian non-realism. In response I stress (a) the impossibility of attributing to the Real the range of incompatible characteristics of its phenomenal (i.e. experienceable) manifestations, so that it must lie beyond the range of our human religious categories, and (b) the distinction, which Eddy fails to observe, between grounds for believing in the Divine, and reasons for thinking that the Divine can be differently conceived and experienced.

H. R. Mackintosh's Contribution to Christology and Soteriology in the Twentieth Century

Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936) was Professor of Systematic Theology at New College, Edinburgh, for 32 years until his sudden death on 8th June 1936. Regarded as one of the foremost theologians of his day, he was awarded honorary degrees from Oxford and Marburg, and left profound impressions on the countless students from Scotland and around the world who came to hear his lectures. Mackintosh was a formidable scholar; it was said that he had read every important theological book published in Britain and Germany, and he skilfully translated Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation and Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith. He possessed a discerning eye and a gift for lucid exposition which made him an authoritative interpreter and commentator. A keen student of philosophy, Mackintosh studied its relationship to theology closely; much of his early work dealt with the neo-Kantian epistemology of Herman Lotze that formed the philosophical basis for Ritschlian theology.

The New American Philosophers by Andrew J. Reck

BOOK REVIEWS 739 believe that the Messiah has come while Jews still await His coming-is neither exact nor complete. While the traditional Jew hopes that the Messiah will come, so does the Christian who expects Christ's return in splendor and majesty, when the full glory of God will be disclosed and the rich first fruits of our redemption made manifest, when a new heaven and a new earth will be a reality and the petition, " Thy kingdom come," lastingly fulfilled. Thus Christians and Jews are bound together, not only by their faith in the one living God and their love for him but also by their hope in the ultimate realization of God's reign. They are an ecumene, a brotherhood, sharing in this eschatological hope. A greater or mere appealing theme cannot be imagined for our despairridden age, and this volume admirably and beautifully continues the conciliatory work of its predecessors. Saint John's University Jamaica, New York THOMAS P. MALLAGHAN, c. M. The New American Philosophers. By ANDREW J. REcK. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Pp. 349. $8.95. A sequel to his Recent American Philosophy (New York, 1964) which treated of American philosophy between the two world wars, Reck's The New American Philosophy concentrated on American philosophy since World War II. While the latter book stands on its own, it is nonetheless similar to its predecessor in purpose and format. In each case Reck's aim is to " demonstrate the richness, diversity and originality of American philosophy during the Twentieth century." And in each book he accomplishes his end by expounding in general terms the thought of well-known American philosophers who have expressed their views on a variety of philosophical fields and in a number of book-length works. Moreover, his general purpose is served by keeping criticism to a minimum. For Reck feels that to pause to criticize is to interrupt the process of revealing the total development of the thought of the philosopher under consideration. In The New American Philosophy Reck presents essays on no less than twelve philosophers. These are: C. I. Lewis, Stephen Pepper, Brand Blanchard, Ernest Nagel, John Herman Randall, Justus Buchler, Sidney Hook, F. S. C. Northrop, James K. Feibleman, John Wild, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. We shall here comment on just three of Reck's essays, namely, his expositions of the philosophies of C. I. Lewis, Brand Blanchard and John Wild respectively. The author's account of C. I. Lewis's "conceptualistic pragmatism" has 740 BOOK REVIEWS much to recommend it. While correctly classifying Lewis as a logical empiricist, Reck takes pains to show not only how Lewis's account of analytic truth differs from that of the Vienna Circle version of logical empiricism but also how this difference is rooted in Lewis's rather sophisticated neo-Kantian epistemology. As Reck fully recognizes, analytic statements for Lewis are true not by reference to linguistic meaning but by reference to what Lewis calls sense meaning. And this sense meaning of an analytic statement is something akin to Kant's concept of a schema. Further, Reck ably unfolds the pragmatic feature in Lewis's analysis of meaning as well as the paradox which attends that feature. For on the one hand, the relation between the sense meanings of an analytic statement. are necessary and unalterable according to Lewis; but on the other hand, it is, for Lewis, we human beings who for our own purposes decide what characteristics are to be packed into these meanings. But this paradox is not an inconsistency. In Reck's essay on Blanchard two items especially stand out for the insight they provide into Blanchard's thought. First is the account given of Blanchard's concept of the teleological relation between idea and object and the relationship that that account has both to the Platonic paradox of knowledge and to Blanchard's overall rationalism. This important aspect of Blanchard's philosophy is not often stressed. To the extent that an idea is its object in posse, the two are both identical and different. But this identity in difference is exactly what is called for to explain the fact of knowledge...