Synopses & Reviews
This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation. The first part ranges over the last four hundred years of intellectual history, discussing such thinkers as Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Coleridge, Kant, Hegel, T. H. Green, Dewey, Quine, and Ayer. The subject of the second part of the volume is, broadly speaking, value in human society: Quinton discusses freedom, morality, politics, language, culture, and the relation between humans and animals. Together these writings demonstrate the enormous breadth of their author's learning, and the clarity, elegance, and urbanity of his style. Seven of the pieces are previously unpublished.
Review
"As [this book] combines a great number of challenging ideas with an extraordinarily clear line of argument, it certainly will play a major role in the discussion of social theories of reasoning and deliberation. It is an important contribution which will put a number of questions on the philosophical agenda for some time to come."--Titus Stahl, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
About the Author
Anthony Quinton (1925-2010) was a fellow of All Souls and New College, Oxford. From 1978 to 1987 he was President of Trinity College, Oxford, and President of the Aristotelian Society from 1975 to 1976. He is the author of numerous books, including
The Nature of Things (1973),
Utilitarian Ethics (1973),
From Wodehouse To Wittgenstein (1998),
Francis Bacon (Oxford, 1980), and
Thoughts and Thinkers (1982). He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1977, and made a life peer in 1983.
Table of Contents
OF MEN 1. Francis Bacon: How was he Possible?
2. Spinoza
3. Dr John Radcliffe
4. La Mettrie
5. Coleridge at Home
6. The Trouble with Kant
7. Hegel Made Visible
8. Richard Monckton Milnes
9. T.H. Green
10. John Dewey's theory of knowledge
11. T.E.Hulme
12. Bergson, Whitehead, and process philosophy
13. Schlick before Wittgenstein
14. Quine on doing without Meaning
15. Ayer's Place in the History of Philosophy
16. The Rise, Fall and Rise of Epistemology
OF MANNERS
17. The Varieties of Value
18. The Human Animal
19. The Past and Future of Freedom
20. A Cultural Crisis: the Devaluation of Values
21. A Revaluation of Values: Keeping Politics in its Place
22. Morals and Politics
23. Words about Words