It must be acknowledged that the essays presented here do not constitute a systematic account of any sort but represent occasional forays. Some deal with matters that happened to evoke Rescher’s interest, others grew out of a chance encounter with a text he deemed to be of particular value. Throughout, challenges of the work itself more than compensated the author’s efforts. Logic has always been of crucially important concern to philosophers. Rescher’s own involvement with the history of logic goes back to his work on Leibniz in the 1950’s (represented by Chapter 8 of the present book). Thereafter, during the 1960’s he devoted considerable effort to the contributions of the medieval logicians of the Arabic-using world (here represented in Chapters 2-6). Moreover, Rescher have from time to time returned to the area to look at some aspects of the more recent scene, as Chapters 8-9 illustrate. In some instances the present essays have been overtaken by subsequent events-events which in fact helped to promote. This is true in particular in chapter 6’s work on Arabic work regarding temporal modalities, which was instrumental in evoking the important contributions of Tony Street of Cambridge University.

This translation of The Science of Logic (also known as 'Greater Logic') includes the revised Book I (1832), Book II (1813) and Book III (1816). Recent research has given us a detailed picture of the process that led Hegel to his final conception of the System and of the place of the Logic within it. We now understand how and why Hegel distanced himself from Schelling, how radical this break with his early mentor was, and to what extent it entailed a return (but with a difference) to Fichte and Kant. In the introduction to the volume, George Di Giovanni presents in synoptic form the results of recent scholarship on the subject, and, while recognizing the fault lines in Hegel's System that allow opposite interpretations, argues that the Logic marks the end of classical metaphysics. The translation is accompanied by a full apparatus of historical and explanatory notes.

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A new translation of the final work of French philosopher Jean Cavaillès. In this short, dense essay, Jean Cavaillès evaluates philosophical efforts to determine the origin—logical or ontological—of scientific thought, arguing that, rather than seeking to found science in original intentional acts, a priori meanings, or foundational logical relations, any adequate theory must involve a history of the concept. Cavaillès insists on a historical epistemology that is conceptual rather than phenomenological, and a logic that is dialectical rather than transcendental. His famous call (cited by Foucault) to abandon "a philosophy of consciousness" for "a philosophy of the concept" was crucial in displacing the focus of philosophical enquiry from aprioristic foundations toward structural historical shifts in the conceptual fabric. This new translation of Cavaillès's final work, written in 1942 during his imprisonment for Resistance activities, presents an opportunity to reencounter an original and lucid thinker. Cavaillès's subtle adjudication between positivistic claims that science has no need of philosophy, and philosophers' obstinate disregard for actual scientific events, speaks to a dilemma that remains pertinent for us today. His affirmation of the authority of scientific thinking combined with his commitment to conceptual creation yields a radical defense of the freedom of thought and the possibility of the new.

This book is a collection of rare material regarding logical and analytic-philosophical traditions in Central and Eastern European countries, covering the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. An encyclopedic feature covers the history of l...