In this paper I wish to put forward and defend a certain candidate for—I borrow the expression from Kant—the supreme principle of morality, understanding by ‘morality’ moral requirement or necessity.

It is a matter of fairly general agreement concerning judgments of moral requirement (which I shall call deontic judgments) (1) that singular judgments are generalizable, and (2) that all nonanalytic deontic judgments have prescriptive force. To amplify: An individual act, if it is judged to be morally required or morally wrong (its omission required), is judged to be such as falling under some completely general description, i.e. a description containing no uniquely referring expressions, and a general judgment respecting acts as acts of that description is implied. And it belongs to the very nature of non-analytic deontic judgments, i.e. it is true as a matter of meaning, that they bear on questions of rational decision or choice. The latter is true, of course, of all moral and other practical judgments. The case for the prescriptive force of affirmative deontic judgments can be put even more strongly, since they are understood not merely to provide, or affirm the existence of, reasons for choice, but to provide, or affirm the existence of overriding or imperative reasons, reasons which are therefore normally sufficient or conclusive, regardless of what the agent's wants may otherwise be.

In recent years there has been widespread agreement among Bishop Butler's commentators and critics concerning the nature of his “official” position as a moral philosopher. His moral epistemology is a form of moral sensism, its cognitive aspect best described, after Sidgwick, as perceptual intuitionism. His normative theory is strongly deontologistic in character, and as a moral psychologist he is still celebrated as a devastating critic of psychological egoism and hedonism. Understandably enough, there has been a tendency to discount those remarkable passages in Sermons XI and XII in which Butler seems to be defending an almost diametrically opposed position, compounded of a rationalistic epistemology, a hedonistic-utilitarian normative theory, and a form of psychological egoism. Thus G. D. Broad finds flatly inconsistent those passages in which Butler seems to make self-love coordinate with conscience in its moral authority. When Butler asserts that on calm reflection one is unable to justify any course of action contrary to one's own happiness, Broad maintains that in context this statement must be understood not as a presentation of Butler's own view, but as “a hypothetical concession to an imaginary opponent.” Butler, Broad thinks, is merely once again trying to convince people that reasonable self-love and the dictates of conscience do not conflict. Similarly, A. Duncan-Jones argues that the apparent inconsistency in the passage in question is removed once we understand that Butler is only refuting the egoists' contention that self-love and virtuous benevolence are necessarily opposed.

Au point de départ de ces réflexions, il y a d'abord une constatation de fait sur laquelle il est bon de s'arrêter quelque peu, parce qu'elle n'est pas toujours assez nettement faite, à savoir qu'il existe maintenant une Cosmologie positive, scientifique, en donnant au mot ldquo;Cosmologie” le sens précis et limité de “Science de l'Univers physique considéré comme un tout”. Naturellement cette science occupc et occupera probablement toujours une place à part dans l'ensemble des sciences, pour de multiples raisons, dont celle-ci est la plus simple: plus nettement que les autres elle fait apparaitre les limites de fait de tout savoir scientifique, son caractère conjectural et provisoire.

C'est un fait que nous distinguons entre la connaissance quantitative et la connaissance qualitative. L'analyse de cette distinction remonte à l'Antiquité. Depuis Aristote, elle semble être acceptée comme définitive. L'épistémologie réaliste du Stagirite Justine la distinction par la différence objective entre les catégories de qualité et de quantité, irréductibles l'une à l'autre. Selon cette optique, les deux modes de connaissance nous offrent deux perspectives différentes sur le monde matériel. Ces deux perspectives se complètent l'une l'autre. Il faut tout de même se demander si les deux sont jugées également nécessaires pour la connaissance sensible du monde perceptible. La question est d'autant plus importante qu'on considère la connaissance sensible comme point de départ du processus intellectuel qui mène, ou doit en principe mener, à la connaissance substantielle de la réalité matérielle.

On tente souvent de calmer la frayeur de certains humanistes à l'égard de l'ordinateur en le qualifiant d' « infatigable idiot sans cervelle ». Je ne vois pas d'objection particulière à cette description sinon qu'elle suggère une fausse réponse à une question qui a troublé les philosophes récemment. Pour ma part, je m'intéresse très peu à la question très générale et, à mon avis, largement contrefaite de savoir si les ordinateurs peuvent « penser ». L'éventualité que dans un proche avenir l'ordinateur soit en mesure de résoudre les principaux problèmes de la philosophie ne m'effraie pas, mais, par contre, je suis heureux de profiter de toute aide là où je la trouve. Quant à moi, je ne me sens menacé ni en tant qu'individu ni en tant que philosophe. Ce n'est pour moi qu'une simple réalité de la vie contemporaine; un don de notre environnement technologique complexe; un outil passionnant dont nous pouvons profiter si nous sommes prêts à en payer le prix. S'il nous détruit dans l'avenir, éventualité concevable, ce ne sera pas parce que la machine est intrinsèquement mauvaise mais bien plus probablement parce que nous, les humanistes, aurons choisi de l'ignorer ou même de la mépriser plutôt que de nous en servir avec un esprit critique et constructif à nos propres fins. Ce sera parce que nous aurons préféré conserver notre virginité d'érudits plutôt que de nous mêler au tohu-bohu véritablement intellectuel et professionnel inhérent aux humanités les plus authentiques.

En musique, trois faits allaient de soi avant notre siècle, et ont cessé un beau jour d'aller de soi. Ces trois faits peuvent être exprimés de manière simple par trois phrases. Tout d'abord il allait de soi que la musique était tonale: l'histoire de la musique n'avait du reste jamais connu autre chose que la tonalité. En second lieu, il allait de soi que la musique s'exprimait dans des formes qui certes pouvaient évoluer, mais qui n'étaient pas problématiques: les possibilités du genre symphonique par exemple paraissaient inépuisables. Enfin il allait de soi que la musique avait pour tâche essentielle d'exprimer des sentiments humains.

Bertrand Russell was, I believe, the first English philosopher with the wit and the graciousness to realize that a history of philosophizing from Thales to Bertrand Russell was not a history of Philosophy but was simply a history of Western philosophy. Since the appearance of his book the term ‘Western philosophy’ has been fairly widely adopted without much evidence, however, that interest in philosophizing which is not Western has increased greatly. This is noteworthy, as virtually every other academic field has felt a post-war convulsion of interest in the cultures and civilizations outside of Europe and America. What anthropologist can hold up his head unless he is aware of relevant material from Asia and Africa? What student of religion can any longer ignore the radical insights of religions outside the Christian pale? What linguist can ignore Sanscrit? What historian (except perhaps the Upper Canadian) can ignore the human chronicle in Asia and Africa?

Dr. Desmond Paul Henry has recently published a systematic survey of his research on Anselm's logic which makes use of some of his previously published studies but includes much new material as well. Readers who know his earlier work will not be disappointed in this book. It evidences his usual combination of serious medieval scholarship, acumen in modern logic, and insight into the subtleties of logical problems new and old. It also demonstrates beyond doubt the remarkable skill exercised by St. Anselm in his discussions of a very wide range of logical problems involving such things as paronymy, modal arguments, moral reasoning, numerically definite reasoning, identity, forms of inference, and a variety of puzzles involving contrasts between real and apparent logical form. There is much here of very great interest to both the medievalist and the logician. Henry is also very careful and self-conscious about Anselm's methodology, and he attempts to locate Anselm's work within the general development of medieval logic. I hope that no one will feel excused from reading this book and will miss the rich results of Dr. Henry's studies from the fact that I intend here to argue that his view of the development of medieval logic is highly misleading and seems to involve the use of a distinction which, although it has twentieth-century analogues, is not applicable to medieval logic. First, I shall outline Henry's view; then I shall suggest some counter-evidence; finally I shall suggest that Henry's tools for bringing out and expounding Anselm's method have some problems of their own.