Review of Thinking and Being, by Irad Kimhi

Abstract

First paragraph: This is a very important book. It discusses some of the most fundamental issues in philosophy. And in its course, it challenges assumptions that have dominated, and defined analytic philosophy since its inception. Every serious philosopher should read it, and it is hard to believe that those who do will not be changed by it in some way. The book comprises three essays, and an introduction. The first essay (‘The Life of p’) treats of the idea that the principles of logic ‘govern’ thinking, and—through drawing on the Kantian idea of self-consciousness—challenges the widespread belief that this is a matter of the principles serving as norms to which thinking is answerable. The second (‘The Dominant Sense of Being’) seeks to defend Aristotle’s remark in Metaphysics Theta 10 that ‘being’ in the sense of being true is the most proper, or the dominant sense of being, through developing an insight into the character of truth that it finds both in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, and in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. And the third (‘The Quietism of the Stranger’) offers a new reading of Plato’s Sophist, which sees its account of judgment as embodying a similar insight, and seeks to show this account to be superior to those of Frege, and Russell. But the essays are not self-contained: they need to be read together. And together they communicate a compelling, and distinctive philosophical vision.