The Trouble With Principle, by Stanley Fish

Consumed by Argument?

Mises Review 6, No. 3 (Fall 2000)

THE TROUBLE WITH PRINCIPLE
Stanley Fish
Harvard University Press, 1999; 328 pgs

 

I expected to dislike this book. Stanley Fish, the author of distinguished books on Milton and George Herbert, long ago found the world of literary scholarship too confining. He obtained a law degree and frequently comments on public affairs, usually from a leftist point of view.

Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience, by Frank Cioffi

Interpreting Freud’s Dreams

Mises Review 6, No. 3 (Fall 2000)

FREUD AND THE QUESTION OF PSEUDOSCIENCE
Frank Cioffi
Open Court, 1998, ix + 313 pgs.
 

The validity of Freud’s theories seems at first sight far removed from the usual concerns of The Mises Review. In fact, it is not. Freud mounted a strong attack on morality and tradition. If, as Freud believed, conscience arises through irrational and bizarre unconscious processes, what grounds have we to pay heed to its dictates?

From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays, by Peter Bauer

The Poverty of Envy

Mises Review 6, No. 4 (Winter 2000)

FROM SUBSISTENCE TO EXCHANGE AND OTHER ESSAYS
Peter Bauer 
Princeton University Press, 2000; xi + 153 pgs.
 

Peter Bauer possesses a rare ability: he can see the obvious. Several philosophers discussed in this issue-Rawls, Dworkin, and Cohen -rail on and on about equality. Capitalism must be condemned, they tell us, because of inequality. However productive the system, it fails the test of ethics.