A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, Second Edition (46 page)

15    Marx

Confusion in the texts of Marx's principal works, while less than that which still prevails in the case of Leibniz, is great enough to cause me not to give a proper bibliography. There is another reason for this, namely that many of the writings are fragm entary, and almost all stand in need of an editor.The task of editor has been ably accomplished by David McLellan, in
Karl Marx: Selected Writings,
Oxford, 1977, and by Allen W.Wood,
Marx: Selections,
London, 1988. Both contain all the important philosophical writings, together with a guide to
Capital,
selections from which they reprint.

Commentaries: Elementary—Peter Singer,
Marx,
Past Masters series, Oxford, 1980. Advanced—G.A.Cohen,
Karl Marx's Theory of History,
Oxford, 1979. Both of those concentrate on the mature theories of Marx; the second is unique in Marxian scholarship, in that it treats its subject matter entirely from the methodological standpoint of analytical philosophy. The best short commentary on Marx's immediate predecessors is W.T.Brazill:
The Young Hegelians,
New Haven and London, 1970. For the latter-day followers of the early Marx see George Lukacs:
History and Class Consciousness,
tr. R.Livingstone, London, 1971, in which the theory of alienation and the later theory of 'false consciousness' are combined to form the idea of 'reification' ; and also the writings of philosophers of the 'Frankfurt School' , in particular Herbert Marcuse,
Reason and Revolution,
Oxford, 1941; and Jürgen Habermas,
Theory and Practice,
tr. J.Viertel, London, 1974.

16 Utilitarianism and after

A new standard edition of Bentham's works is in the course of preparation. Meanwhile the basic text is J.Bowring (ed.),
The Works of Jeremy Bentham,

11 vols, Edinburgh, 1838-43 (incomplete).
The Fragment on Government
and
Introduction
exist in several reliable popular editions, as does Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations.

J.S.Mill, 4
System of Logic,
London, 1843;
Utilitarianism, On Liberty
and the
Autobiography
exist in many popular editions.

FH.Bradley,
Ethical Studies,
Oxford, 1876;
The Principles of Logic,
Oxford, 1883;
Appearance and Reality,
Oxford, 1893.

R.L.Nettleship,
The Works of Thomas Hill Green,
London, 1885-8.

On utilitarianism in general the best modern commentary is by J.J.C.Smart and Bernard Williams,
Utilitarianism: For and Against,
Cambridge, 1973.

On Bradley the most interesting commentary is that by Richard Wollheim, Harmondsworth, 1959; see also A.Manser and G.Stock (eds),
The Philosophy of F.H.Bradley,
Oxford, 1984.

17    Frege

Frege,
The Foundations of Arithmetic,
tr. J.L.Austin, Oxford, 1950;
Philosophical Writings,
ed. M.Black and P.T.Geach, Oxford, 1952, 3rd edn 1980.

Commentaries: W. and M. Kneale,
The Development of Logic,
Oxford, 1962, chapter 8. (This book provides an unsurpassed history of the subject of logic, and makes the revolutionary character of Frege's logic easy to grasp.) Also M.Dummett,
Frege: Philosophy of Language,
London, 1973: a diffuse and difficult work, which nevertheless has done much to impress on the philosophical public the importance of Frege. The
Begriffsschrift
is translated in Frege,
Philosophical Writings.
Michael Dummett has continued his commentaries on Frege with
Frege and Other Philosophers,
Oxford, 1991, and
Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics,
Oxford, 1991.

18    Phenomenology and existentialism

FBrentano,
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,
tr. L.McAlister et al., London, 1973.

E.Husserl,
Logical Investigations,
tr. J.N.Findlay, 2 vols, London, 1970;
Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology,
tr. W.R.Boyce Gibson, London, 1931;
Cartesian Meditations,
tr. D.Cairns, The Hague, 1960;
Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness,
tr. J.S.Churchill, ed. M.Heidegger, The Hague, 1964.

M.Heidegger,
Being and Time,
tr. J.Macquarrie and E.S.Robinson, New York, 1962.

J.PSartre,
The Psychology of Imagination,
tr. B.Frechtman, New York, 1948;
Being and Nothingness,
tr. Hazel E.Barnes, New York, 1956.

M.Merleau-Ponty,
Phenomenology of Perception,
tr. Colin Smith, London, 1962;
Signs,
tr. R.C.McCleary, Evanston, 1964.

A general, but uncritical and obscure, survey is contained in H.Spiegelberg,
The Phenomenological Movement,
2 vols, The Hague, 1960. There is an excellent introduction to Husserl by David Bell:
Husserl,
London, 1990. On Heidegger it is worth reading the famous paper by Rudolf Carnap: 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical Analysis of Language' (1932), published in A.J.Ayer (ed.),
Logical Positivism,
Chicago, 1959. There is, however, no balanced commentary, to my knowledge, on this philosopher. Sartre has the benefit of Mary Warnock's
The Philosophy of Sartre,
London, 1965, and also Iris Murdoch's
Sartre: Romantic Rationalist,
New Haven, 1953, and Arthur Danto's
Sartre,
London, 1975 (Modern Masters Series, Fontana). Perhaps the best account, however, is that by David Cooper,
Existentialism,
Oxford, 1990. There is also a
Cambridge Companion to Sartre,
ed. C.Howells, Cambridge, 1992. On Wilhelm Dilthey, see H.PRickmann (ed.),
Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Writings,
London, 1980.

19 Wittgenstein

Bertrand Russell, 'On Denoting', the article which presents the theory of descriptions, is collected together with other expressions of Russell's logical atomism in
Logic and Knowledge,
ed. R.C.Marsh, London, 1956.

Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
German text with translation by D.F.Pears and B.F.McGuiness, London, 1961;
Philosophical Investigations,
tr. G.E.M.Anscombe, Oxford, 1953;
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics,
tr. G.E.M.Anscombe, Oxford, 1956.

Commentaries: On atomism and positivism generally see J.O.Urmson,
Philosophical Analysis,
Oxford, 1956, a lucid but dated book, written from the standpoint of Oxford linguistic philosophy. See also D.F.Pears,
Bertrand Russell,
London, 1967. On Wittgenstein see Anthony Kenny,
Wittgenstein,
London, Penguin, 1973, which is perhaps the least misleading among the short commentaries on the later work. Among more advanced commentaries, the following deserve mention: Saul Kripke,
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language,
Oxford, 1982, and David Pears,
The False Prison,
2 vols, Oxford, 1987.