Philosophical Notebooks Research Articles

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in the “Philosophical Notebooks” of B. D. Dandaron

This article presents a previously unpublished manuscript of a lecture on Schopenhauer's philosophy from archival materials of the famous Russian Buddhist scholar and Buddhist teacher B.D. Dandaron (1914–1974). It is part of a series of texts containing notes from lectures and books, his own notes as well as translations that are referred to as his “philosophical notebooks.” They date from 1953-1954, the time when B.D. Dandaron was in a Gulag camp in Taishet (Irkutsk region). This text is part of the materials of a philosophical seminar held by prisoners in their free time from work. The active participants of the seminar were B.D. Dandaron and V.E. Sesemann (1884-1963), a historian of philosophy, follower and colleague of L.P. Karsavin in the Eurasian movement. Sesemann was known for his work in Kantian philosophy and aesthetics. The manuscript argues that Schopenhauer's philosophy represents a unique attempt to combine Kant's epistemology with the ethics and metaphysics of Buddhism. The author notes that an attempt to synthesize such disparate principles should have led to significant intentional reinterpretations of these two very different systems of thought. The content of the work is to determine what new elements Schopenhauer (who considered himself a follower of Kant) introduced into Kant’s philosophy, on the one hand; and the fundamental differences between his philosophy and the teachings of Buddhism, on the other. The text will be of interest both to researchers of V.E. Sesemann (as the probable author or co-author of the work) and B.D. Dandaron. It allows us to understand the philosophical background of the religious and philosophical teaching of neo-Buddhism that they created, which had a great influence on the revival of Buddhism in Russia in the second half of the twentieth century.

David Riazanov and the Leninist stage of Soviet Marxism

Focusing on David B. Riazanov career and his pioneering efforts in producing a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels, the article explains why Riazanov’s variety of Marxism was unacceptable to the Soviet regime, and why from 1924 Lenin was credited with being an outstanding Marxist theoretician, whereas previously he had been regarded only as a skilled political activist. The concept of Leninism as a new stage of Marxism was put forward by Bukharin and elaborated on by Stalin and Zinoviev. Georg Lukács attempted to show that Lenin’s thought had the internal coherence that Bukharin postulated. In support of Lenin’s theoretical credentials, his ‘Philosophical Notebooks’ began to be published from 1925. However, neither Riazanov nor his associate Abram M. Deborin subscribed to the official doctrine that Leninism was a new and higher stage of Marxism. For this stance they fell victim to Stalin’s repression.

Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks: Existential History and Metapolitics

Philosophers actively discuss Black Notebooks – Martin Heidegger’s philosophical notebooks. Their publication opened for researchers a new field in the concept of existential history. The Notebooks are a good example of how closely related philosophical thought and the political atmosphere of time can be. Heidegger witnessed events that caused him to be confused. He had certain ideas about the reorganization of a German university, the formation of “aristocracy of spirit,” which is why he became involved in the National Socialist Party. Of course, this period of his activity and work should be carefully analyzed by many historians of philosophy in order to have a broad and well-founded idea of the motives of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20 th century, to realize the degree of solidarity with the policy of the Nazi party, and, most importantly, to grasp philosophical content in politically biased texts of those years. History knows examples when a philosopher, in his desire to influence reality, collaborated with government, but such collaboration hardly ever turned fruitful for his philosophical research. The article contains an analysis of Heidegger’s text as well as a review of contemporary discussion on the Black Notebooks . The author gives his assessment of the evolution of the political and philosophical views of Heidegger from 1931 to 1948. It can be concluded that Heidegger was never the ideologist of the Third Reich and his works must be considered primarily as the result of a philosophical comprehension of the events taken place in the world, in the country, in the academic sphere.

The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin by Nicholls Simon (review)

REVIEWS 781 Nicholls, Simon and Pushkin, Michael (trans). The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin. Annotations and commentary by Simon Nicholls. Foreword by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2018. xxi + 263 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Biographical Notes. Bibliography. Index. £53.00. Amidwarandrevolution,admirersofcomposerAleksandrSkriabin(1872–1915) compiled his philosophical notebooks from fragmentary sketches, preserving a creative world threatened by oblivion after his untimely death. Published in Russian in 1919, the mystical striving and thirst for unity expressed in these notebooks found little resonance within the newly formed Soviet state. Meanwhile, English-language scholarship was until recently dominated by Faubion Bowers’s unreliable biography of Skriabin (1969/1996), which luxuriated in an exoticized image of the composer as an extreme solipsist with delusions of godhood. In contrast to this caricatured image, music theorists tended to divorce study of the composer’s music from his cultural context and philosophical views (Baker, 1986). While recent studies have offered a more nuanced reading of the composer by situating his music and ideas within the historical context of the Russian Silver Age (Taruskin, 1997; Morrison, 2002; Gawboy, 2010; Smith, 2013; Mitchell, 2015; Ballard/Bengtson, 2017), Nicholls and Pushkin’s translation of Scriabin’s philosophical notebooks finally makes the composer’s meditations available in their entirety for an English-language audience. The task of this volume ‘is to present as clearly and fully as possible the documents that record the development of [Skriabin’s] world view’ (p. 1). Because any detailed analysis of the eclectic range of influences on the composer would threaten to be disjointed, Nicholls provides a brief overview as a launching point for scholars, musicians and audiences to delve deeper into the composer’s creative world. In his carefully crafted introduction and commentary, Nicholls contextualizes key concepts within Skriabin’s worldview , including the mystical calling for art to spiritually unify humanity, the apocalyptic expectation of a new era to be sparked by artistic creation, ecstasy as the basis of artistic creation, and the dual equation of the individual self with the divine principle and the artist’s creative work with the creation of the cosmos (p. 4). Skriabin’s philosophical directions creatively synthesized German idealism, Eastern philosophy (read largely through the prism of Russian émigré Helena Blavatskii’s theosophical writings), and contemporary trends in Russian Silver Age thought. Nicholls highlights the importance of religious philosopher Vladimir Solov´ev’s ideas about the theurgic power of art and their reception amongst Russian Symbolist poets (particularly Viacheslav Ivanov, Valerii Briusov and Konstantin Bal´mont), as well as other members of the cultural elite whose career paths intertwined with Skriabin (Boris Shletser, SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 782 Leonid Sabaneev, Mikhail Gershenzon). Particular aspects of the Russian intellectual tradition with relevance for Skriabin’s creative world-view are highlighted, including an emphasis on feeling over thought, the ‘Russian idea’ (the claim that Russia has some unique spiritual task to fulfil in world history) and the importance of the concept of ‘unity’ (edinstvo). The heart of the book is a translation of the 1919 Russian-language publication of Skriabin’s notebooks alongside selected additional texts illustrating the composer’s evolving creative world. Many of the translated texts are fragmentary, representing less a well-reasoned world-view than a series of creative explorations. After a naive celebration of Orthodox Christian faith at age 16 (p. 49), a number of poetic texts and a libretto for an unfinished opera demonstrate an embrace of a Nietzschean world-view in which art is celebrated as a source of triumph over the sufferings of the physical world (pp. 50–61). These are followed by philosophical musings on questions of experience, knowledge, striving, the essence of space and time, ecstasy, creativity and the place of individual consciousness (pp. 61–115). Following this are two poetic texts with direct connection to musical works: the ‘Poem of Ecstasy’ (related to the symphonic work of the same name) (pp. 115–25) and ‘The Preliminary Action’ (the composition that Skriabin was working on at the end of his life) (pp. 125–73). Also included are excerpts from several letters and texts that shed further light on Skriabin’s philosophical development (pp. 231–44). Nicholls and Pushkin’s...

Trotsky as a Marxist Theoretician: The Evidence in the Notebooks

Trotsky’s Philosophical Notebooks is one of the most important discoveries to emerge out of the wealth of material included in the Trotsky archives at Harvard. They were accidentally discovered by Philip Pomper while he was embarked on a project for a book about Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. Pomper, a historian affiliated with Wesleyan University, had previously written several books on Russian revolutionary history. The Notebooks were translated and eventually published by Columbia University Press in 1986, with a lengthy introduction by Pomper and annotations in Russian by Yuri Felshtinsky. The volume is entitled Trotsky’s Notebooks, 1933–1935: Writings on Lenin, Dialectics, and Evolutionism. While Trotsky is today widely recognized as a great revolutionary practitioner, his standing as a Marxist theoretician has been called into question. Indeed, he has often been falsely labelled as a vulgar Marxist. This paper will argue that a close examination of Trotsky’s unpublished Notebooks, interpreted in the context of his other writings, offers a unique insight into the range and the depth of his philosophical concerns. As such Trotsky should be considered a major Marxist theoretician of the 20th century.

Lênin e a unidade dialética na teoria do partido e da revolução

O objetivo geral de nosso artigo é o de verificar nossa hipótese preliminar, fundamentada nos estudos de Hector Benoit, de que, longe de uma ruptura definitiva, explícita e radical, de um primeiro leninismo “pré-dialético” (antes de 1914) e de um segundo leninismo “dialético” (após 1914), existe unidade permanente (lógico-histórica) na teoria de partido e na estratégia do programa revolucionário em Lênin, desde as palavras aparentemente burocráticas de O Que Fazer? e Um passo em frente, dois passos atrás, até as palavras libertárias pronunciadas às vésperas da insurreição de 1917; desde a ditadura democrática do proletariado e dos camponeses (defendida em Duas Táticas) até o poder aos sovietes (sintetizadas a partir de suas célebres Teses de Abril, por sua vez, desenvolvidas com o auxílio de seus estudos contidos nos Cadernos). Nossa orientação metodológica não leva em consideração somente o conteúdo filosófico de algumas obras específicas, como também o de suas circunstâncias histórico-biográficas e o de suas consequências políticas. Assim, concluímos que ao não ignorar O Capital de Marx e avançar a sua compreensão sobre Hegel (e a dialética) em um momento histórico crítico, Lênin fortaleceu sua teoria do partido e da revolução.

Lekcje rewolucjonisty: Lenin czyta Hegla

The essay aims at investigating the mutual, dialectical mediation between Hegelian speculation and Leninist theoretical practice. It was inspired by the anecdote about Lenin who, having seen all European Social Democratic parties adopting the “patriotic line” that condemned proletarians to fratricidal violence after the outbreak of World War I, decided to retreat to countryside to read Hegel‟s Logic. In desperation, during intense theoretical work on Hegel, Lenin was able to recognize the unique chance for revolution (a fact that belied the evolutionary historicism of the Second International). This brings up certain questions: how far did Lenin‟s reading of Hegel influence his own heterodox theory of revolution (“the weakest link in the chain”)? Did this return to Hegel open the way to the Leninist event? The attempt to address these questions will be supplemented with reflections on the other side of the dialectical interaction, namely, on the Lenin‟s lessons for understanding Hegel‟s philosophy. Lenin in the Philosophical Notebooks tried to read Hegel in materialistic manner, anticipating Lukacs‟ interpretation of Hegel‟s dialectic and even contemporary readings (for example SlavojŽižek‟s or StathisKouvelakis‟). Perhaps it was Lenin, not Marx, who “discovered the rational kernel within the mystical shell” of Hegelian dialectic, and showed more understanding of it than his great predecessor. I will combine these two moments of dialectical equation and try to deduce what lessons Hegel-Lenin gives us concerning the possibilities of radical social change in the epoch of late neoliberal capitalism. Ultimately, the old Leninist question of “what is to be done?” remains. Maybe the answer is: go to countryside to read Lenin?

Did Lenin Refound Marxist Dialectics in 1914?

During the twentieth century a number of competing accounts of Lenin’s theory and practice have sought to reclaim its true meaning from ossification under Stalinism. One account popular today is the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks written in 1914 and 1915. According to thinkers such as Raya Dunayevskaya and Kevin Anderson, Lenin’s notebooks on Hegel’s Science of Logic represent a radical break from classical dialectical materialism. For these Hegelian-Marxists, Lenin’s acerbic remarks on Engels’s and Plekhanov’s dialectics reveal him as the forerunner of Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse and represent a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the dialectics of revolution. In this article I submit these arguments to the test of a fine grained textual analysis. I conclude, opposite to the Hegelian-Marxist narrative, that Lenin neither intended to nor accomplished a refoundation of Marxist dialectics in 1914. The notion of quantity-quality leaps Lenin adds to his works from 1914 onwards show him less as an innovator in Marxist philosophy and more as a keeper of the flame of dialectical materialist orthodoxy.

Martin Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism: Philosophy of Technology and the Media in the Light of the "Black Notebooks". Implications for the Reception of Heidegger in Media and Communication Studies

“Heidegger is the petty bourgeois of German philosophy, the man who has placed on German philosophy his kitschy night-cap […] When I see that even super-intelligent people have been taken in by Heidegger, […] I feel sickened to this day. […] Heidegger used to hold court at Todtnauberg and at all times would allow himself to be admired on his philosophical Black Forest plinth like a sacred cow. […] They made their pilgramages, as it were, into the philosophical Black Forest, to the sacred Martin Heidegger and knelt down before their idol”--- Thomas BernhardAbstract:In spring 2014, three volumes of the Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks), Heidegger’s philosophical notebooks, were published in the German edition of his collected works. They contain notes taken in the years 1931-1941 and have resulted in public debates about the role of anti-Semitism in Heidegger’s thought.This article asks: What are and should be the implications of the publication of the Black Notebooks for the reception of Heidegger in the study, theory, and philosophy of media, communication, and technology? It discusses Theodor W. Adorno’s and Moishe Postone’s contributions to the critical theory of anti-Semitism and applies these approaches for an analysis of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks.The analysis shows that the logic of modern technology plays an important role in the Black Notebooks. The paper therefore also re-visits some of Heidegger’s writings on technology in light of the Black Notebooks. There is a logical link between the Black Notebooks' anti-Semitism and the analysis of technology in Being and Time and The Question Concerning Technology. The first publication provides the missing link and grounding for the second and the third.Heidegger’s works have had significant influence on studies of the media, communication, and the Internet. Given the anti-Semitism in the Black Notebooks, it is time that Heideggerians abandon Heidegger, and instead focus on alternative traditions of thought. It is now also the moment where scholars should consider stopping to eulogise and reference Heidegger when theorising and analysing the media, communication, culture, technology, digital media, and the Internet.Image source: By Willy Pragher (Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lenin and Philosophy: The Historical Context

The article follows the development of Lenin's philosophical conceptions and the historical context in which they emerged. It examines how Plekhanov's interpretation of Marxist philosophy was assimilated by Lenin. In the dispute between Plekhanov and Alexander Bogdanov Lenin took Plekhanov's side and in defence of Plekhanov wrote Materialism and Empiriocriticism. A major influence on Lenin was the correspondence between Marx and Engels published in 1913, which prompted him to study Hegel and other writers mentioned in the correspondence. Although Lenin's commentaries on Hegel and other philosophers were published as ‘Philosophical Notebooks’, the notes Lenin made on the Marx–Engels correspondence were not, owing to Stalin's peculiar requirements of the Lenin cult.

An Interview with Darko Suvin

AL: I would like to locate your ideological position in literary theory. I suppose that you feel close to Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson (even Slavoj Zizek). Moreover, I suppose that you disagree with aesthetic purism (Harold Bloom) or certain relativisms (Stanley Fish and his interpretative communities, poststructuralism and deconstruction). I would like to know your reflections on current literary theory - for instance what about the New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt?DS: I remember a splendid note of Lenin's in his Philosophical Notebooks, where he says that to an intelligent materialist critic an intelligent idealist critic is nearer than a stupid materialist one. So allow me to begin by doubting, not the existence or importance of, but the exclusive nature of ideological kinships. For example, I've followed step by step almost the whole of Jameson's opus, especially since we collaborated in the journal ScienceFiction Studies and other venues, while I have used Eagleton's Theory of Literature as the best introductory survey in my graduate teaching at some point but otherwise not learned too much from him. On the contrary, I've been deeply influenced by and am still writing in the wake of his teacher, my friend Raymond Williams.I loved some of Bloom's early works, say on Romanticism, but when he became an ideologue pure and simple, that stopped. This is the problem with most postmodernists: while declaiming against absolutisms, their supposed relativism is more absolute than that of most modernists. I do make an exception for some so-called deconstructionists such as most Guattari and the later Derrida (after the Marx book). My criterion is simple: what can I learn and build upon from any critic? A little from Greenblatt, almost nothing from Fish, a lot from the materialist feminists, how to charm people by bringing together philosophy and pop culture from Zizek (and of course how to fight against the prohibition against talking about communism).AL: Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is a masterpiece. I think that the first world edition was in 1977. We have lived through a lot of events since then: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Dayton agreement, September 11 attacks, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial and economic crises, Wikileaks' revelations, and so on. Also literary theory has changed: the rise of feminism (Nancy Armstrong, Elaine Showalter, etc.), the rise of gay, lesbian and queer theory (Judith Butler), and so forth. What would you change of your book in order to update it? Or perhaps you would prefer not to add or modify anything (I see there is a Croatian version in 2010, maybe that is the answer to my question).DS: It was published in 1979 but written in the preceding ten years. I don't think the book can be updated: it should remain as it is, branded (as Brecht said, like calves on the ranch) by its historical date: the epoch of hopeful High Modernism. What must and therefore can be updated are some of my views - though NOT my values. I dislike renegades. I have done this, as concerns both my epistemological approach and, in particular, some aspects of the Fantasy genre, in numerous articles of the last fifteen years, the longest of which is the Afterword to the Festschrift for me edited by Patrick Parrinder, Learning from Other Worlds (Liverpool University Press 2000). …

Meditationes philosophicae de Deo, Mundo, Homine, and Meditationes, Theses, Dubia philosophico-theologica (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 311 centrality of antiabstractionism to his program. However, it appears that Muehlmann's stated goal of showing that Berkeley's idealism is well grounded (l 9) has not been met. The second half of the book focuses on a second puzzle: "How does Berkeley manage to convince himself that this astonishing thesis [idealism] can rest tensionless, or at least without contradiction, side by side with common-sense realism?" (3). Here, one might object that Muehlmann has overemphasized Berkeley's commitment to the dictates of common sense. Most of Berkeley's claims about the commonsensical nature of his philosophy are essentially comparative: his system is more commonsensical than materialism because it is not subject to a similar collapse into scepticism. Many of Berkeley's efforts to reconcile his system with the "plain man's view" appear simply to be damage control. However, Muehlmann provides a useful inventory of the resources Berkeley provides for accommodating realism and, when he finds them wanting, supplies an ingenious Berkeley-esque account of the nature of bodies and our perception of them, designed to secure realism. According to this account, bodies are constitutedby objective laws of nature, and our awareness of bodies is notional. Muehlmann argues that for this account to be workable, notions must be acts of the mind, distinct from their objects but intrinsically directed towards them, a conclusion that he suggests is incompatible with Berkeley's nominalism. The focus of the book is intentionally narrow, surveying only Berkeley's ontological views in the early (pre-i 714) works, and its treatments of Berkeley's attack on mechanism and his views on causation are disappointingly brief. However, Muehlmann mines Berkeley's philosophical notebooks to good effect, and packs his chapters with provocative theses, metaphysical analyses, and significant criticism of other commentators (sometimes to the point that the reader may temporarily lose sight of the central thread). Lls^ DowNInG University of Pennsylvania Theodor Ludwig Lau. MeditationesphilosophicaedeDeo,Mundo, Homine, and Meditationes, Theses, Dubia philosophico-theologica. Philosophische Clandestina der deutschen Aufkllirung. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 199~. Pp. 378. Cloth, DM 245. Had Theodor Ludwig Lau published his Meditationes de Deo, Mundo, Homine (1717) a century earlier, he probablywould have suffered the same fate as Giordano Bruno or Giulio Cesare Vanini. But the righteous citizens of Frankfurt am Main contented themselves with execrating, confiscating, and burning Lau's little treatise and with banishing its author. In his introduction, Lau himself had foreseen the risks, yet proceeded to publish a scathing socio-political critique even as he sought employment with the new Elector of the Palatinate. Moreover, he afterwards submitted a somewhat disingenuous appeal of his condemnation to the faculty of the University at Halle, only to respond intemperately to their judgment. Two years later he published a second, no 312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:9 APRIL 199 4 less obnoxious, if redundant, treatise, the Meditations, Theses, Dubia philosophicotheologica . Lau's treatises have now been reprinted as the first volume of the series "Philosophische Clandestina der deutschen Aufkl~irung," which will also include the clandestinely circulated works of Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch, Gabriel Wagner, Urban Gottfried Bucher and Johann Georg Wachter. Martin Pott, author of this volume's introduction, regards Lau as perhaps the most important of this group of freethinkers and seeks to rescue him from both contemporary and later misrepresentation, misinterpretation and neglect. Supporting documents include: the retraction exacted from Lau by the Consistory at K6nigsberg in 1728; Christian Thomasius's history of Lau's dealings with the University of Halle, Elender Zustand einesin dieAtheistereyverfallenenGelehrten;and a refutation of Lau's first treatise by the theologian Johann Konrad Arnold. By the standards of clandestine literature, Lau offers few original ideas? His materialist physics, belief in the plurality of worlds, rejection of the biblical account of the Creation and Fall, denial of the priority of Christianity, adoption of a pantheistic and deistic theology, and demands for a "rational" religion--these are all familiar motifs. His theories of religious impostorship and the political uses of religion had already been forcefully expressed and were being widely disseminated via the clandestine classic, The Treatiseof the ThreeImpostors. Lau's originality lies in how he embeds his socio...

Dialectical Method in the Political Writings of Lenin and Bukharin

Les universitaires et les hommes de lettres occidentaux ont traité Bukharine avec une considération empreinte de respect et de sympathie en partie à cause du rôle tragique qu'il joua dans les purges de Staline et en partie à cause d'une mauvaise compréhension de son importance en tant que théoricien marxiste. Dans son testament politique, Lénine avait accusé Bukharine de ne pas avoir compris la méthode dialectique. Le présent essai, qui a pour objet de vérifier la validité de cette proposition en comparant la méthodologie de Bukharine à celle de Lénine, en vient à la conclusion que celui-là n'était pas en fait un dialecticien, mais un penseur libéral et qu'en conséquence, on devrait le juger camme tel.

The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley (review)

398 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Equally the specialist may feel that the analysis of the Scottish rhetoricians is not everything it could be. That the lectures of Adam Smith and Hugh Blair were far-reaching and of enormous cultural importance goes without saying, as is testified by a number of articles and books on the subject, as well as the transmission of their ideas from one generation to the next by the economical expedient of fathers saving for their sons their own manuscript lecture notes and passing them along. Blair had himself responded to this practice by publishing his lectures and thus setting, as the first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in Britain, a precedent that may have had unfortunate consequences. Be that as it may, one has to regard the presentation of the new rhetoric in Howell's book as largely invitational and summary. Once again, in a book of this length it would be unnecessarily and uncharitably fractious to ask for an extended inquiry. Basically, then, the faults of this book are much the same as its virtues. One wishes it longer and more comprehensive than it is but at the same time realizes that it is a book and not an encyclopedia. Of necessity, the author has had to digest and to summarize a great deal of information and a great number of ideas. This is percipiently done, and without that numbing enormousness of quotation that tempts most scholars when trying to write in such a manner. It is a tribute to Professor Howell's powers of synthesis and awareness of what is relevant that he is able to make coherent shape out of an otherwise unwieldy mass of material. I suspect that readers of this book will more often be acquainted rather than reacquainted with authors and ideas they are unfamiliar with, and the revitalization of certain reputations and uncertain ideas will owe much to this work. As it is, this book is unique in its field, a point which the author acknowledges. Some other and earlier studies are noted, but no other author has attempted a book of this kind on the subject of logic and rhetoric in eighteenth-century British thought. Inevitably, then, such a book is likely to be regarded as an extremely useful source book and reference work. Just as inevitably, a reader, whether he be experienced scholar or novitiate, is going to expect certain minimum standards of references to be met. In one way the book is most admirable in this respect: the footnotes (all 1720 of them) are precise and to the point, although one does get a little tired of seeing so many Ibid.s. But in a book of this sort and of this length, surely, there ought to be a bibliography. One knows they are tedious and dull things to compile, but how very useful they are for almost any reader. To some extent , the index makes up for this deficiency, and a fairly careful check reveals it to be accurate and thorough. Still, I feel that an index of 24 pages cannot be adequate for a book over 700 pages long. Aside from this minor carping (though the lack of a bibliography I don't regard as minor), I can imagine few books likely to be more useful to the eighteenth-century scholar. The generalizations are sound, the digests to the point, the style serviceable, and the scholarship massive. We are not likely to have an improvement on this book, and Howell has pointed the way for other scholars and commentators. It is a pleasure to conclude by noting that so valuable a book has been so attractively and impressively printed. JOHN VALDIMIRPRICE University o~ Edinburgh The Moral Philosophy o/George Berkeley. By Paul J. Olscamp. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970. Pp, 241. Gld. 34.20) "Banishing Metaphisics etc. and recalling men to Common Sense" was Berkeley's aim, as his philosophical notebooks attest. In the course of striving to achieve these goals, the Bishop managed to outrage common sense as much as any philosopher has ever done, which is saying a good bit. Given his avowed purpose and his religious interests, one might have expected...

On the Distinctive Characteristics of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks

We know that the Philosophical Notebooks do not constitute a finished work, but are working digests done by Lenin, not for publication but only for himself, and as a basis for further work on questions of dialectics. This circumstance must always be remembered when one turns to the Philosophical Notebooks. Here are recorded and collected Lenin's remarkable thoughts as they developed upon reading the works of Hegel and other philosophers as well as certain natural scientists, and Lenin's exceedingly valuable plans and notions pertaining to further work on theoretical problems of the materialist dialectic. But, at the same time, the Philosophical Notebooks contain numerous passages copied by Lenin as he did the digests of the philosophical works he read. Moreover, it is sometimes difficult to say for what purpose and toward what end Lenin did this copying: was it in order subsequently to adduce these extracts and quotations in support of his own views and postulates; was it for purposes of criticism — to de...

De la distinción entre lógica formal y lógica dialéctica

Resumen

Philosophy in Russia

In U.S.S.R. dialectical materialism is still the only subject discussed by writers on philosophy. Philosophical publications during the last year include Lenin’s Philosophical Note-books; Dialectical Materialism and the Theory of Balance, by Selektor; Marx’s Philosophical Development, by Lipendin; A Course of Dialectical Materialism, by Markuse; Dialectical Materialism and Social Democracy, by Rudash; The Idealistic Dialectic of Hegel and the Materialist Dialectic of Marx, by L. Axelrod. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Marx’s death the Communist Academy Institute of Philosophy has published a Symposium containing papers on materialistic dialectics, on the relation of Marxism-Leninism to culture and natural science, and discussion of those papers. A number of small textbooks on dialectical materialism, or Diamat as it is called for short, are issued for university schools not only in Russian but also in some of the languages spoken in the Soviet Union.