Thornton on McDowell, and some other reviews

Tim Thornton has written a review of the two new McDowell collections for The Philosophers’ Magazine. There is a copy on his blog, which you can read here. He ends with a tribute to McDowell, which might seem a little gushing to some, but with which I am in full agreement:

I know of no contemporary philosopher whose work repays as handsomely careful and repeated study, no philosopher more likely to shed original and yet fundamentally revealing light on a difficult subject, no philosopher whose ‘philosophical ear’ or ‘philosophical sense’ is more worthy of respect.

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Below are some recent reviews, from the NDPR, which readers might also be interested in:

Paul HurleyReview of Michael Thompson, Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought.

Daniel D. HuttoReview of John Preston (Ed.), Wittgenstein and Reason.

Andrew JaniakReview of Daniel Garber, Béatrice Longuenesse (Eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns.

Richard KrautReview of Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality.

Michael LeBuffeReview of Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza.

Peter C. MeilaenderReview of Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics From Aristotle to Macintyre.

Karl SchaferReview of Henry E. Allison, Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise.

Robert M. WallaceReview of Frederick C. Beiser (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy.

Christopher GaukerReview of Jeremy Wanderer, Robert Brandom.

Joseph MendolaReview of Joseph Heath, Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint.

Corey W. DyckReview of Scott Stapleford, Kant’s Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason.

Ronald E. HustwitReview of Roger Teichmann, The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe.

Terry PinkardReview of Béatrice Longuenesse, Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysics.

Sanford ShiehReview of Robert B. Brandom, Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism.

Grundlegung in print

When a man asks for a royal road to science, no more convenient and comfortable way can be mentioned to him than to put his trust in “healthy common sense”. And for the rest, to keep abreast of the times and advance with philosophy, let him read reviews of philosophical works, and even go the length of reading the prefaces and first paragraphs of the works themselves; for the latter give the general principles on which everything turns, while the reviews along with the historical notice provide over and above the critical judgment and appreciation, which, being a judgment passed on the work, goes farther than the work that is judged. This common way a man can take in his dressing-gown.

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface

Hegel and his sarcasm can stick it because I’ve got two book reviews out at the moment. The first is on an excellent collection called German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives edited by Espen Hammer. It appears in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and subscribers can access it here. The second is a review of Robert Pippin’s Hegel’s Practical Philosophy and which is in the latest issue (n.45) of The Philosophers’ Magazine. I’m not sure what the copyright situation is, but I will post them here if I find out that I can.

Update: You can read my review of the Pippin book on The Philosophers’ Magazine website here.