BOOK REVIEWS 811 considerable body of literature available on the subjects he deals with in languages other than French. There are a few English titles in his bibliography (as often as not by Dutch authors) but almost none in his footnotes, and the only works of such writers as Husserl, Hegel, Gurwitsch, and even Chomsky which are listed are those which exist in French translation. Does the author of this work feel that the discussions of these problems which can be found in English, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian, to go no further, are irrelevant to his investigation? In asking this question I am not suggesting an impossible extension of his panorama; I am speaking only of those specific issues in the philosophy of language and in the relevance of linguistic structuralism for philosophy which concern Merleau-Ponty, Martinet, and their possible dialectical confrontation. This book, therefore, presents us with an interesting and stimulating discussion of topics which are of central relevance to contemporary philosophy, but it can be recommended to other scholars only with reservations. Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois JAMES M. EDIE Logic Matters. By P. T. GEACH. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Pp. 347. $11.50. This collection anthologizes articles published during the last twenty-five years by P. T. Geach, Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds and Fellow of the British Academy. There are forty-nine articles all together, ranging in scope and content from brief discussions originally published in Analysis-there are fourteen articles reprinted from Analysis-to extended treatments on various structural and historical topics relating to what scholastic philosophers would call formal and material logic. Professor Geach states that this collection contains all of his articles not previously collected or edited in any of his other works such as Reference and Generality , Three Philosophers: Aristotle, Aquinas and Frege and Mental Acts. Geach has arranged the articles not in a chronological fashion but rather topically under ten different headings. With the exception of a major rewriting of his 1963 article, "Quantification Theory and the Problem of Identifying Objects of Reference, " each article appears as it had been published originally, except for, Geach notes, the incorporation of some " stylistic changes " and the removal of some " incidental errors." As would be expected in a collection of articles representing nearly a quarter century's work of an exceptional philosopher, the breadth and scope of this anthology is vast. There are studies providing in-depth elucidation of problems in the structural history of logic (e. g., "Aristotle on Con- 812 BOOK REVIEWS junctive Propositions," "Plato's Euthyphro," "A Medieval Discussion of Intentionality," and Geach's 1968 inaugural lecture on being the first recipient of the Chair of Logic at the University of Leeds, " History of the Corruptions of Logic " ) , insightful if not generally accepted discussions into the weaknesses of traditional logic (e. g., "Distribution: A Last Word?" and "Strawson on Symbolic and Traditional Logic"), and brief and extended discussions illustrating Geach's contention that the mathematical logic instituted by Frege and Russell is a necessary condition for solving some old philosophical chestnuts (e. g., "Some Problems about Time, " and " The Identity of Propositions ") . In reference to the last point, passages found in many of the articles illustrate Frege's contribution to the development of mathematical logic. Of particular interest to scholastic philosophers will be Geach's claim asserting that tremendous structural similarities exist between Frege and St. Thomas. I will develop this point later. There are four articles dealing with the "ascriptivism " of the Oxford philosophers and Geach's elucidation of the logic of moral discourse (e. g.," Imperative and Deontic Logic" and" Kenny on Practical Reasoning"); obviously, R. M. Hare's The Language of Morals provides the background for the Geach's discussion on these questions of modal logic. Finally, there are articles dealing with the role of logic in ontology and theology (e. g., "Nominalism" and "God's Relation to the World"). In all of these essays Geach is determined to convince his readers that in doing philosophy indeed logic does matter, I think it fair to say that the over-riding theme of Geach's philosophy is, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, that all logical...
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Jun 1, 1980
Joseph Margolis 
Open Access