In medieval writers an important distinction was drawn between two applications of the term ‘logica’: there was logica utens, the practice of thinking logically about this or that subject-matter, and there was logica docens, the construction of logical theory. Of course the English word ‘logic’ and its derivative ‘logical’ have a corresponding twofold meaning, and we ignore the distinction at the risk of serious confusion. ‘Logical thought’ may mean thinking that is being commended as orderly, consistent, and consequent, whatever its subject-matter; or it may mean the thinking of logicians about logic, which alas has not always exhibited these virtues. Similarly for ‘teaching logic’: there is trying to get people, by precept and example, to be orderly, consistent, and consequent in their thinking, and there is the endeavour to train logicians for the next generation. In any respectable philosophy department there will be someone teaching logic in the first sense; in my own university there are very many first-year undergraduates who do a course called Reason and Argument with this aim. But we hold that the teacher of such logica utens must himself have a sufficient skill in logica docens if he is to do his job properly; and we undertake the further task of training people in logical theory so that some of them, who have sufficient native ability and motivation, may take up the torch from their teachers.

The political writings of Kant and of Hegel present two contrasts, whose connection and explanation have (so far as I know) never been adequately explored. The first contrast is in respect of the quality of their discussions of ‘home’ politics—in Kant's language, the ‘problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution’. Here Hegel shines. However much one may dislike the tone of voice, the vocabulary, the style and the arrangement of its arguments, his Philosophy of Right, especially when supplemented by his more topical political writings, presents an array of dicta, judgments and arguments of notable penetration, balance and prescience. Consider for instance his account of the very different political functions of free associations and of representative bodies, and his perception of the symbolic—but crucially symbolic—role of head of state. On these, as on many other issues, Hegel's views deserve the credit that has of late begun to be restored to them. Whatever his philosophical failings, he had a remarkable sense of the key junctures of different strands in the life of politics; so that, although the kind of state he describes and admires retains little practical relevance today, his exposition of it remains a valuable training-ground in political appreciation. By contrast Kant's philosophy of the state, as we find it in Part II of his Philosophy of Right (itself being Part I of his Metaphysics of Morals), in Part II of Theory and Practice and in Appendices I and II of Perpetual Peace, is at first sight little more than an academic exercise. It amounts to a restatement, in dehistoricized terms and in accordance with Kant's rationalist theory of morals, of Rousseau's central political teachings, viz. that an original, unanimous, unrescindable contract explains political allegiance, and that the idea of a General Will is a sufficient criterion of political justice within the state. From these two basic positions Kant develops a theory of civic obedience far more restrictive than that of Rousseau or indeed than that of Hobbes. Throughout, Kant accepts—in the spirit which one might accord to revelation—Rousseau's assumptions that government can be confined to issues that fall under a General Will, and that such a Will can be ‘found’ for the resolution of every political issue, so that honest men need never disagree about what the General Will is. But to say this is to say that Kant's concern with home politics is little more than academic.

Does Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics give one consistent answer to the question what life is best or two (at least) mutually inconsistent answers? In the First Book (E.N. I) he says that we can agree to say that the best life is eudaimonia or eupraxia (well-being or well-doing) but must go on to say in what eudaimonia consists (1097b22–24). By considering the specific nature of man as a thinking animal he reaches a conclusion: eudaimonia, the human good (agathon), is the activity of soul (psuchē) in accordance with virtue (aretē), and if there are more than one virtue in accordance with the best and most complete (teleia), and (since one swallow does not make a summer) in a complete life (1098a16–20). Aristotle states that his formula is no more than a sketch or outline (perigraphē), but that a good sketch is important since, if the outline is right, anyone can articulate it and supply details. He seems to be thinking here not just of the rest of his own treatise but of the work of pupils and successors; he speaks, as at the end of the Topics, of progress in a science.

The doctrine of a ‘state of nature’ is at best a metaphor. Nevertheless it enables us to describe with vividness the distinction between those goods which might precede, and those which can only result from, the formation of society. I suspect that the goods which establish our well-being as rational creatures (over and above whatever goods might benefit us as animals) belong exclusively to the latter class, so that a rational creature is necessarily a zōon politikon.

‘Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou … the Thou that by its nature cannot become It.’

The most innovative and important parts of Bertrand Russell's Human Knowledge were the result of his first attempt in three decades to come to grips with the problem of induction, or, more generally, ‘non-demonstrative inference’. My purpose here is to argue that that work constituted giant progress on the problem; if I succeed, something will have been done to restore this work to its proper place in the history of philosophy and, correlatively, to rearrange that history.

In a paper ‘Is it True What They Say About Tarski?’, Dr Susan Haack explicitly denies the truth of an implicit assertion of mine, by writing ‘… Tarski does not present his theory as a correspondence theory’. My reply is to quote two brief passages from Tarski's work.