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o the abstract ideas resident in the intellectual aculty (p. 54). Descartes may have realizedthat abstract reason, not imagination, should dominate in ordering the mind.

This crisis spawned what Statiles ourth chapter calls the quaestio crucis , the crucial

problem, an expression that primarily re ers to Descartess need to examine critically thesupposed use o the aculties in the acquisition o knowledge. This examination led himto reject the idea o discrete aculties altogether, as though the knowing power dividedinto parts. Still, he was haunted by the limits o the imagination in the Regulae . Descartesbelieved it was demonstrable that reason could know things that imagination could not. Inother words, reason apprehends clear and distinct ideas. This standardclear and distinctideaswas something that Descartes groped or in the Regulae s judgment that intuitionsare oundational to knowledge. This appreciation o intuitions and the need to re-think the

oundations and methods o knowledge in the wake o the Regulae s shipwreck on the rock o the imagination is the bridge between the Regulae and Descartess later work. The Cogito becomes the new standard or knowledge and the cornerstone o method. This standard,combined with an account o the proper exercise o the will, de nes Descartess project inthe Discourse , The Meditations , and the Principles .

In the nal three chapters Statile deals with the three central rules (numbers ve, six,and seven). Rule ve anticipates the distinction between analysis and synthesis, whichmeans so much to the philosophical method outlined in the Discourse . Rule six presagesthe principles o simplicity, to which Descartes appears committed in later comments onscience and mathematics. Statile re ers to the Geometry as a case in point. Rule seven as-serts enumeration as a principle o rightly ordered thinking in some contexts. This ruledirects the mind toward managing pluralities o in ormation so as to uni y them accordingto a relevant order: A su cient enumeration or induction or Descartes thus unctioned as

a kind o pragmatic compromise in relation to the innumerable di culties and possibilitiesposed by scienti c problems (p. 121).Statile has clearly accomplished his task here by showing that the Regulae is relevant

to Descartess ormation over his li etime as a philosopher. His arguments are compellingand his research is impressive or its thoroughness. By this account o the Regulae one canappreciate all the better that questions o method were Descartess concern since his youth.Moreover, the importance o method in early modern philosophy invites us to reconsider

or our own time the potential power and poverty o method.

Rockhurst Jesuit University Curtis L. Hancock

Heideggers Concept of Truth . By Daniel Dahlstrom. Cambridge UK:Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 492. $90.00 cloth.

This book is a translation and an expansion o a work published in German in 1994 that isdevoted to the early Heideggers refections on truth. Dahlstrom argues that those refec-tions can be seen as oriented around an attack on what he calls the logical prejudice(LP), the tendency to conceive o truth in terms o a speci c orm o discourse, namely,in terms o claims, assertions, and judgments, that are ormed as indicative, declarativesentences (p. 17). Dahlstrom places that attack within the context o Heideggers better-known attacks on conceptions o being (as the on-hand) and intentionality (as, roughlyspeaking, representationalist) with which, Dahlstrom suggests, the LP is bound up. Thebook ocuses its attention on Being and Time and the series o lectures that Heidegger gavein the summer semester o 1925 (translated as History of the Concept of Time ) and the

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winter semester 19251926 ( Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit , an English translationo which is to be published in the next year or so).

According to Dahlstrom, Heidegger argues that a truth more undamental than any

propositional truth is the disclosedness o being-here ( Da-sein ), or more precisely, thedisclosure o the timeliness o being-here (p. xviii). In his lectures, Heidegger traces theemergence o this insight through a reading o Lotze, Husserl, and Aristotle. Dahlstrom ar-gues that the persuasiveness o much early twentieth-century anti-psychologistic refection(including Heideggers own in his Ph.D. and Habilitationschrift ) derived rom the infuenceo Lotzes understanding o truth as validity. That understanding, which Heidegger presentsas providing LP with an ontological ramework (p. 30), marks o , with a super cial clarity,the empirical act o thinking [and] the ideal content o thought. But as Heidegger cameto see the matter by the mid-1920s, it does so at the cost o any urther inquiry into . . . theontological status o truth (p. 44), and indeed that o the psychological (p. 55).

Heidegger credits Husserl with opening the way to such an inquiry. Husserls anti-representationalist understanding o intentionality leads to a notion o truth as the ul ll-ing o empty intentions, as experience[s] o identity (quoted on p. 65) in which anobject initially meant in its absence is seen as one and the same as an object intuited inperson, that identi cation not needing to be established a ter the act by a second act(p. 64). Through his concept o categorial intuition, Husserl develops urther this notion o truth as something experienced prejudgmentally and prethematically. Courtesy o thisdevelopment, philosophically problematic objects such as universals, logical orms, and(importantly or the LP) states o a airs come to be seen as unthematically experiencedin what we might otherwise take to be pure sensory intuition.

But Heidegger believes that Husserl does not see the depth o his own break-through,

a ailure that Dahlstrom traces partly to a residual infuence o the LP. Husserl retains a ten-dency to conceive o truth as on-hand states o a airs and o intentionality in terms o adualism o being as consciousness and being as thing (quoted on p. 115); in both respectshe shows himsel to remain in a certain sense Lotzes disciple (p. 126). Dahlstroms discus-sion here is distinguished not only by its attention to the detail o what Heidegger actuallysays about Husserl in the Marburg lectures but also by its care ul exploration o the extentto which Husserl had anticipated Heideggers criticisms.

Nonetheless, Dahlstrom sees Heidegger as pushing on beyond Husserl in arguing or aconception o truth that is not only prejudgmental and prethematic but even preintuitive,yielding a notion o a primary understanding that develops urther into the ontology o Being-in-the-world amiliar rom Being and Time . The third chapter sets out Heideggersclaim that Aristotle anticipated that understanding, though on the basis o a reading thatDahlstrom describes as characterised by audaciousness, . . . violence, and even rapacious-ness (p. 218). Assertions, which the LP take to be the genuine locus o truth (quotedon p. xvii), are ounded within an ontological context that cannot be understood as on-hand and that Heidegger, in some sense, articulates in his analysis o Being-in-the-world,

Dasein s capacity or authenticity and indeed its distinctive timeliness. I say in somesense because a distinctive theme o Dahlstroms reading is that Heideggers attack on theLP also raises important questions about the character o philosophical refection.

Dahlstrom argues that attacking the LP leads naturally to what he calls the paradox o thematization (PT): i such an attack insists that there is more to truth and being than that

which assertions reveal (i , or example, as Heidegger sometimes seems to claim, assertionsonly reveal the on-hand), then how is one to describe or convey that something (withinwhich Heidegger sees Dasein , the ready-to-hand, the world, original time, etc. as alling)

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i not by using assertions? It seems that one must modi y signi cantly either the above claimabout assertionson this, see (iii) belowor the assumption that one is o ering assertionsthat articulate such a claim. Dahlstrom argues that Heideggers refections on ormal indica-

tions explore this second avenue.In those refections on philosophical method, Heidegger is struggling with the PT, hisview unsettled (pp. 435, 455). Perhaps unsurprisingly, quite what Dahlstroms own nalview o Heideggers early metaphilosophy is, I ound, di cult to assess: the dialectic inthe important, concluding section in particular is hard to ollow. I also ound Dahlstroma little too willing to see Heideggers discussions o conscience and being-towards-deathas speaking or themselves; Dahlstrom illuminates a number o well-known issues orHeideggers philosophy ( or example, their juxtaposition with the PT give questions con-cerning Heideggers view o the status o science new li e here). But, as his attention turnsto some o the murkier themes in the discussion o authenticity, I elt that once again thelightsand again perhaps unsurprisinglyseemed to dim.

But there is a great deal to get ones teeth into here, and I will end by mentioning just threethemes. (i) Unlike most historicist approaches to reading Heidegger, Dahlstroms engagesuse ully with analytically-minded readings o Heidegger and analytic work on truth, and indoing so reveals philosophical riches in texts by the early early Heidegger that the audienceraised on that analytic literature rarely sees. (ii) A notion that Dahlstrom pursues to an unusualextent is that o inauthenticity as being crucial or understanding the orm o benightednessthat philosophy seeks to combat, not just as a cause o some o the con usions in questionbut as the very orm that those con usions take. This strikes me as an important idea worth

urther exploration. (iii) Illustrating (i) above, Dahlstrom unearths rom the Logik lecturesa discussion o assertion more nuanced than that in Being and Time . The lecture discussion

points to a variety o orms that assertions can take, including the circumspectively-thematic,which are distinguished rom the theoretically-thematic (p. 204). Given Heideggers imageo philosophical refection not as external to but as retrieving our understanding o be-ing (pp. 444, 436), the proposal that one might see philosophical assertions as analogous tothe circumspectively-thematic might be worth pursuing. Dahlstroms nal section includessuggestive refections with a bearing on issues that would be crucial or that proposal, includ-ing how thematizing relates to objecti ying and how precisely one ought to characterizethe problematic notion o the on-hand. For example, might bivalence be associated withinnocent notions o the on-hand? But I remain unsure o his overall view here.

Dahlstroms work raises, but leaves unanswered, some important questions; but many o these strike me as questions about which readers o Heidegger need to think.

University of Southampton Denis McManus

Aquinass Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays . Edited by Brian Davies.Lanham MD: Rowman & Little eld, 2006. Pp. 270. $29.95 paper.

This collection brings together eleven previously published essays on various aspects o St. Thomas Aquinass Summa theologiae by very notable Aquinas scholars, past and pres-ent. The aim o the volume is to provide an introduction to a range o important topics inthe Summa by ocusing on, as editor Brian Davies puts it, sections o the work in whichAquinas is not dealing with uniquely Christian notions (p. xii). The essays are all rst-rate,more expository than critical (despite the title), and interesting as an expert introduction toSt. Thomass philosophical work overall rom some o the leading scholars in the eld.