In the present paper I wish to consider three important features of some or all “revisionary” aesthetic theories, which disqualify them as accounts of the nature of art. By ‘revisionary theory’ I mean a theory which overtly modifies, or altogether abandons, the ordinary meanings of the key terms it utilizes. The Expression theory, Intuitionist theories, Formalist theories and Symbolist theories are some of those I have in mind. There is one extremely important feature which these have in common with practically all other classical and current aesthetic theories, which I shall not consider.

La linguistique saussurienne paraît avoir exercé, spécialement au cours des années 1951 à 1954, une influence assez considérable sur la pensée de Merleau-Ponty. Un travail de portée plus générale nous ayant amené à mesurer l'importance de la chose pour Pensemble de l'œuvre de ce philosophe, nous allons seulement essayer ici de prećiser un peu le rôle d'une telle influence en nous appuyant sur une analyse de l'interprétation de Saussure par Merleau-Ponty.

Dans la Phénoménologie de la Perception, celui-ci avait déjà consacré un chapitre à l'étude de la parole conçue comme gesticulation ou expression corporelle. Quand, en 1953–54, il abordera le Problème de la Parole, dans un cours au Collège de France, c'est à Saussure lui-même qu'il attribuera des vues assez voisines: “Le cours cherchait à illustrer et é étendre cette notion saussurienne de la parole comme fonction positive et conquérante.

On pourrait multiplier indéfiniment les points communs et les possibilités de rapprochment entre philosophie et littérature. Tant qu'on s'en tient au plan théorique, la situation demeure è peu près inchangée. Le philosophe peut bien à l'occasion se distraire à quelque roman, le romancier ou le critique peuvent s'essayer à déchiffrer un ouvrage de métaphysique; les rapports n'entreront dans la phase d'efficacité réelle que lorsqu'une méthode adéquate permettra d'établir entre les deux modes d'activité un échange ordonné. C'est d'une telle méthode philosophique en littérature que je voudrais tenter d'établir une définition.

A Philosopher writes a book about ontology and the philosophy of language. That is, the first parts of his book talk explicitly about ontology; the latter parts, explicitly about language. And there are some propositions which are about both. It is a difficult book, and would-be commentators cast about for some way to approach it. In most cases, they will resolve their quandaries by plunging in at the beginning and doggedly making their respective ways to the end. But some may notice that the book as a whole is dominated by one key idea. And that, in turn, may lead them to reflect that perhaps it might prove more edifying to begin with language.

It is no easy matter for a teacher of aesthetics to make a choice among the many textbooks now available in that subject. I have been looking at fourteen books of “readings” in aesthetics, all of them in English, and all but one of them published during the past twenty years. Three were published within the past six months: how many more will arrive before we have to settle down to work on another choice?

There are two main reasons for this proliferation of anthologies or books of “readings”. One reason is that it is almost fatally easy for a busy academic to prepare an anthology rather than to write a book. Deans and presidents are as much impressed by the book a man edits as they are by the book he writes, although they are achievements of two very different levels. The other is that aesthetics is currently big in the booming textbook industry, and every commercial publisher wants a title on the subject in his catalogue.

Le problème de la vérité a toujours préoccupé l'esprit humain; il hante pour ainsi dire l'homme d'aujourd'hui. Dans les brèves réflexions qui vont suivre, nous nous proposons de présenter une approximation tres limitée de ce problème tel qu'il se pose à la philosophic traditionnelle, à savoir: Le caractère historique et relatifde la connaissance humaine est-il conciliable avec I'affirmation de vérites immuables?

In “Moral Responsibility for Dreams,” Harvey Mullane maintains that although there is something inappropriate about blaming people for their dreams, this is because we do not have very direct control over our dreams: but although this is the case, it is not the case that we have no control over them. We can work at having the right dreams, or not having the wrong ones, as we can work at blushing and not blushing and at loving our neighbour: and therefore presumably (although he does not say this) there must be a sense in which or a degree to which we can be responsible for what we dream. There are a number of aspects of this question, and of Mullane's treatment of it, which I would like to explore further.

Professor Braybrooke has presented some interesting and novel points in support of the emotive theory in his recent paper. I imagine that his points are designed to worry objectivists or antiemotivists. In this note I will try to show that they need not worry very much.

1. In addition to moral sentences and factual sentences (M-locutions and F-locutions) we should pick out for comparison a class of expressive sentences (E-locutions) whose function is to express or evince emotions. I much prefer “express” to Braybrooke's “display” here. Examples of expressive sentences are: “I am angry,” “I am afraid,” “I am furious,” “I am very pleased,” etc.

The philosophy of history has achieved, in the last decade or two, a place of importance in English-speaking philosophy which it has long had on the continent. Professor Dray has been one of the most active contributors to recent discussions on this group of related topics, first with his Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford University Press, 1957), later in articles published in journals or collections of essays, and most recently in Philosophy of History, an introduction to the subject published in the Prentice-Hall Foundations of Philosophy Series.

Once thought to be on the periphery of philosophical interest, the philosophy of history can no longer be so considered both because of the increasing importance and accuracy of historical knowledge—and the desirability of a correct analysis of it—and because the attempt to achieve this analysis raises problems in the philosophy of mind and epistemology which are generally admitted to be central philosophical interests.