Back
to Vietnamese Missionaries in Taiwan Home PageThe volume is intended as a festschrift in honour of Andre Mercier, one of the leading figures in the circle of philosophy of arts and philosophy of sciences, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Svilar has carefully selected and invited the contributors so that their contributions appear to be homogeneous, or at least systematical. though, this volume is far from systematical and homogeneous. The strong individuality and thinking of the contributors, especially of Gadamer, Bochenski and Pooper... makes the volume rather a collection of the works of independent minds on the same subject. Bochenski begins the volume with an article on the free society, b using mathematical logic to analyse it. Here he presents 12 types of societies and defends his thesis that the free society must satisfy the following conditions:
a) a society is free if there is at least one field of external actions in which all its members are free
b) all members are not only free in some field, but also not free in some (other) field.
c) all members of the free society must be free in all fields which are considered as being very important.
d) a free society is one in which all membvers, if they are not legal exceptions, are free in all essential fields and there is at least one field in which none of them is free.
Following is Gadamer"s discussion on the anthropological foundation of human freedom. As always, the father of modern hermeneutics seeks to clarify the concept of freedom in tradition, and to show that what the traditional cuture understood of freedom is not the same interpreted by later politicians. He gives e.g. an example on the concept of Herrschaft and Herrscher. They are not what we today interpret as Tyrany and the Tyrant but dominium and dominus. That is to say, any freedom is not absolute, but always connected with Umwelt, Aufgab... Jeanne Herch restricts her discussion to the notion of freedom understood from paradoxe and vitious circle. Hermann Lubbe gives some thought on the relationship between truth and freedom. He repeats what St. John has announced: 'Die Wahrheit wird euch frei machen'. Werner Marx returns to the fundamental problem in our non-metaphysical thinking of today: The question of freedom and the existence of the masse. Francisco Miro Quesada devotes more than thirty pages on the notion of freedom which consists of three problems in relation with metaphysical freedom (freedom and the conception ofthe world; freedom, omniscience and providence, freedom and the scientific conception of the world,). The Indian philosopher Raymundo Panikkar presents five crosscultural theses on Consciousness. That is the theme that he has harbored over twenty years. The last chapter written by Karl Popper on the theory of Democracy which consists of : Pooper's description of the classical theory of democracy, his more realistic theory of democracy and a practical application of his theorry. Bochenski concludes the volume with another article on the ontologyh of the system.
As we have stated, this is a beautiful colectioon, rich in thought, and provocative for all who are thinking with or against the authors. It is necessary for all livraries of philosphy, politics, sociology and anthropology.
John B. Tran Van Doan, Professor of National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Last Updated February 20,1997 by Steven Proulx
Back
to Vietnamese Missionaries in Taiwan Home Page