PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRY, to remain vital, must turn up new subject matters, or must formulate in new ways the problems that old subject matters suggest, using new methods to solve them. To find unfathomed seas is not easy, nor is it easy to invent new and more precise methods to fathom them. Nevertheless, the present Series is founded upon the conviction that from time to time books are written that have something new to say. The first in the list of Philosophical Explorations is, I think, a work of this sort.
Dr. Edward Pols deals with important parts of the time- honored subject matters of metaphysics and theory of knowledge, but he is clearly impatient with the ways, traditional or recent, of dealing with the topics customarily suggested by them. The Recognition of Reason implies a criticism of the ways in which reason has been conceived by thinkers from Kant onward: some men have unduly exalted reason even when they have detached its object while others have arrogantly criticized it, at the same time allowing its solid base to remain untouched. The philosophical predicament (which is not fundamentally different from that of common sense, although more interesting to pursue at length) arises from the