DiText
Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942.
A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M| N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z

R

Ramanuja: A renowned Indian thinker and theologian of the 11th cent A.D. who restated within the tradition of Vishnuism (q.v.) the doctrines of the Vedanta (q.v.) in that he assumed world and soul to be a transformation of God variously articulated. -- K.F.L.
Ramayana: (Skr.) An epic poem, ascribed to Valmiki, celebrating in about 24,000 verses the doings of Rama and his wife Sita and containing ethical and philosophic speculations. -- K.F.L.
Ramified theory of types: See impredicative definition, and paradoxes, logical.

B. Russell,
Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types, American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 30 (1908), pp. 222- 262.
L. Chwistek,
The theory of constructive types, Annales de la Societe Polonaise de Mathematique, vol. 2 (1924), pp. 9-48, and vol. 3 (1925), pp. 92-141.
W. V. Quine,
On the axiom of reducibthty, Mind, n. s. vol. 45 (1936), pp. 498-500.
F. B. Fitch,
The consistency of the ramified Principia, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 3 (1938), pp. 140-149.
Ramsey, Frank Plumpton: (1903-1930) In the light of Wittgenstein's work, he proposed several modifications in the Principia Mathematica treatment of functions. These, he urged, made possible the omission of the Axiom of Reducibility, a simplification of the Theory of Types and an improved definition of identity. In stimulating philosophical papers he denied any ultimate distinction between particulars and universals, defended a Wittgensteinian interpretation of general propositions, proposed a subjective theory of probability and a pragmatic view of induction, and offered a theory of theories and a theory of the nature of causal propositions. Most of his work is included in The Foundations of Mathematics, London, Kegan Paul, 1931. -- C.A.B.
Rasa: (Skr. sap, juice, nectar, essence, flavor, etc.) In Indian aesthetics (q.v.), pleasure, enjoyment, love, charm, grace, elegance, taste, emotion, sentiment, spirit, passion, beauty etc. -- K.F.L.
Ratio: According to St. Augustine, reason is the mind's capacity of distinguishing and connecting the things that are learned. Ratio est mentis motio ea quae discuntur distinguendi et connectendi potens. He also calls it an aspectus animi, quo per seipsum, non per corpus verum intuetur. It precedes the exercise of the intellectual capacity. He says of man: Nam ideo vult intelligere, quia ratio praecedit. Reason is, however, inferior to the intellect. Man possesses reason before he begins the activity of intellection, which is a contemplation. Action is rather the province of reason. -- J.J.R.

For Spinoza: Knowledge "of the second kind" (Ethica, II, 40, Schol. 2, cf. also De Em. Int., passim), to be distinguished from opinio or imaginatio and from scientia intuitiva (q.v.). This second type of knowledge is knowledge in the strict sense of the word since, as opposed to opinio, it is certain and true (Ethica, II, 41), and since by means of it, we perceive "under a certain form of eternity" (sub quadam aeternitatis specie, Ibid, II, 42, Cor. 2). Likewise, by means of reason (ratio), we are enabled to distinguish truth from falsity (Ibid, 42), and to master the emotions (Ibid, IV, passim). The objects cognized by reason are (primarily) "common notions" and their derivatives, reason cannot, however, accomplish or bring about the highest virtue of the mind, as can scientia intuitiva by which blessedness and true liberty are conferred (Ibid, V, 36, Schol.). -- W.S.W.

Ratiocination: (Lat. ratiocinatio, reasoning) Discursive reasoning, the third act of the intellect in the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, a process of intellectual demonstration involving the use of three terms. -- V.J.B.
Rationalism: A method, or very broadly, a theory of philosophy, in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Usually associated with an attempt to introduce mathematical methods into philosophy, as in Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. -- V.J.B.

The history of rationalism begins with the Eleitics (q.v.). Pythagoreans and Plato (q.v.) whose theory of the self-sufficiency of reason became the leitmotif of neo-Platonism and idealism (q.v.).

Rationalization: (Lat. rationalis, from ratio, reason) A psychological term to describe the mind's fabrication of rational argument to justify conduct of which one is really ashamed. -- L.W.
Rational Psychology: A speculitive and metaphvsical treatment of the soul, its faculties and its immortality in contrast to a descriptive, empirical psychology. -- L.W.
Ravaisson-Mollien, Jean Gaspard Felix (1813-1900) French idealistic philosopher who studied under Schelling at Munich, became Professor of Philosophy at Rennes in 1838 and later inspector of Higher Education. Although he wrote little, he profoundly influenced French thought in the direction of the "dynamic spiritualism" of Maine de Biran. He explored the spiritual implications of individual personality especially in the domims of art and morals. See Morale et Metaphysique in Revue de Met. et de Mor. 1893. -- L.W.
Real: (Lat. realis, of the thing itself) Absoluteness of being. The immediate object of that which is true. Invented in the 13th century to signify having characters sufficient to identify their subject, whether attributed by men or not. Sometimes, the existential as opposed to mere possibility, or the physical as opposed to consciousness. Syn. with external (q.v), actual. Opposite of: figment. -- J.K.F.
Realism: Theory of the reality of abstract or general terms, or umversals, which are held to have an equal and sometimes a superior reality to actual physical particulars. Umversals exist before things, ante res. Opposed to nominalism (q.v.) according to which universals have a being only after things, post res. Realism means (a) in ontology that no derogation of the reality of universals is valid, the realm of essences, or possible umversals, being as real as, if not more real than, the realm of existence, or actuality; (b) in epistemology: that sense experience reports a true and uninterrupted, if limited, account of objects; that it is possible to have faithful and direct knowledge of the actual world. While realism was implicit in Egyptian religion, where truth was through deification distinguished from particular truths, and further suggested in certain aspects of Ionian philosophy, it was first explicitly set forth by Plato in his doctrine of the ideas and developed by Aristotle in his doctrine of the forms. According to Plato, the ideas have a status of possibility which makes them independent both of the mind by which they may be known and of the actual world of particulars in which they may take place. Aristotle amended this, so that his forms have a being only in things, in rebus. Realism in its Platonic version was the leading philosophy of the Christian Middle Ages until Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) officially adopted the Aristotelian version. It has been given a new impetus in recent times by Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) in America and by G. E. Moore (1873-) in England. Moore's realism has been responsible for many of his contemporaries in both English-speaking countries. Roughly speaking, the American realists, Montague, Perry, and others, in The New Realism (1912) have directed their attention to the epistemological side, while the English have constructed ontological systems. The most comprehensive realistic systems of the modern period are Process and Reality by A. N. Whitehead (1861-) and Space, Time and Deity by S. Alexander: (1859-1939). The German, Nicolai Hartmann, should also be mentioned, and there are others. -- J.K.F.
Realism in Legal Philosophy: No connection with epistemological realism. Theory that law is not a system of rules but in flux, and part of actual social process. -- W.E.
Realm of ends: The cosmic order viewed as the means for the achievement by a Supreme Person of higher or spiritual purposes. Teleologicil Personalism. -- R.T.F.
Reals: Are atomic or monadic beings which underlie the phenomenal world. Alike in quality, not being points of self-directive force, they are conceived to be in a state of mechanical interaction, not in the realm of phenomenal space but in the realm of intelligible space. (Herbart.) -- H.H.
Reason: (Lat. ratio, Ger. Vernunft) In Kant:
  1. The special mental faculty (distinct from sensibility and understanding) which in thinking Ideas of absolute completeness and unconditionedness transcends the conditions of possible experience. See Ideas of Pure Reason.
  2. All those mental functions and relations characterized by spontaneity rather than receptivity In this sense, reason includes both reason (1) and the understanding, but excludes the sensibility.
  3. The source of all a priori synthetic forms in experience. In this sense, reason includes elements of sensibility, understanding and reason (1). When Kant says, "reason is a law-giver to Nature," he employs the term in the third sense. See Kantianism, Understanding, Ratio.
-- O.F.K.
Reasoning:

1. Discursive thought. Faculty of connecting ideas consciously, coherently and purposively. Thinking in logical form. Drawing of inferences. Process of passing from given data or premisses to legitimate conclusions. Forming or discovering rightly relations between ideas. Deriving properly statements from given assumptions or facts. Power, manifestation and result of valid argumentation. Ordering concepts according to the canons of logic. Legitimate course of a debate.

2. In psychology, the act or process of exercising the mind, the faculty of connecting judgments; the power and fact of using reason; the thought-processes of discussion, debate, argumentation or inference; the manifestation of the discursive property of the mind; the actual use of arguments with a view to convince or persuade; the art and method or proving or demonstrating; the orderly development of thought with a view to, or the attainment of a conclusion believed to be valid. -- The origin, nature and value of reasoning are debated questions, with their answers ranging from spiritualism (reasoning as the exercise of a faculty of the soul) to materialism (reasoning as an epiphenomenon depending on the brain), with all the modern schools of psychology ordering themselves between them. A few points of agreement might be mentioned here:

  1. reasoning follows judgment and apprehension, whichever of the last two thought-processes comes first in our psychological development;
  2. reasoning proceeds according to four main types, namely deductive, inductive, presumptive and deceptive;
  3. reasoning assumes a belief in its own validity undisturbed by doubt, and implies various logical habits and methods which may be organized into a logical doctrine;
  4. reasoning requires a reference to some ultimate principles to justify its progress

3. In logic, Reasoning is the process of inference, it is the process of passing from certain propositions already known or assumed to be true, to another truth distinct from them but following from them; it is a discourse or argument which infers one proposition from another, or from a group of others having some common elements between them. The inference is necessary in the case of deductive reasoning; and contingent, probable or wrong, in the case of inductive, presumptive or deceptive reasoning respectively. -- There are various types of reasoning, and proper methods for each type. The definition, discussion, development and evaluation of these types and methods form an important branch of logic and its subdivisions. The details of the application of reasoning to the various sciences, form the subject of methodology. All these types are reducible to one or the other of the two fundamental processes or reasoning, namely deduction and induction. It must be added that the logical study of reasoning is normative logic does not analyze it simply in its natural development, but with a view to guide it towards coherence, validity or truth. -- T.G.

Receptivity: (Lat. recipere, to take back) The collective name for receptive or sensory functions of the mind in contrast to its active or motor functions. In the Kantian terminology, receptivity is defined as the faculty of receiving representations in contrast to spontaneity, the faculty of knowing an object by means of concepts. See Kant, Critique of Pare Reason, A 50-B 74. -- L.W.
Receptor: The organ of sense considered as part of the total response mechanism of a human or animal organism. Receptors are classified as a) exteroceptars or receptors at the surface of the body, and b) propioceptors or receptors embedded in the muscles and bodily tissues themselves. The term interoceptors is sometimes applied to receptors embedded in the vital organs especially those of the digestive tract. -- L.W.
Recognition: (Lat. re + cognitio, knowledge) The knowledge of an object along with the realization that the same object has been previously known. Recognition may, but need not be, effected by a comparison of a memory image with recurring objects. See Familiarity, Feeling of; Memory. -- L.W.
Recursion, definition by: A method of introducing, or "defining," functions from non-negative integers to non-negative integers, which, in its simplest form, consists in giving a pair of equations which specify the value of the function when the argument (or a particular one of the arguments) is 0, and supply a method of calculating the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x+l, from the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x. Thus a monadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a dyadic function g -- the function g being previously known or given -- by the pair of equations,
f(0) = A,
f(S(x)) = g(x, f(x)),
where A denotes some particular non-negative integer, and S denotes the successor function (so that S(x) is the same as x+l), and x is a variable (the second equation being intended to hold for all non-negative integers x). Similarly the dyadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a triadic function g and a monadic function h by the pair of equations,
f(a, 0) = h(a),
f(a, S(x)) = g(a, x, f(a,x)),
the equations being intended to hold for all non-negative integers a and x. Likewise for functions f of more than two variables. -- As an example of definition by primitive recursion we may take the "definition" of addition (i.e., of the dyadic function plus) employed by Peano in the development of arithmetic from his postulates (see the article Arithmetic, foundations of):
a+0 = a,
a+S(x) = S(a+x).
This comes under the general form of definition by primitive recursion, just given, with h and g taken to be such functions that h(a) = a and g(a, x, y) = S(y). Another example is Peano's introduction of multiplication by the pair of equations
aX0 = 0,
aXS(x) = (aXx)+a.
Here addition is taken as previously defined, and h(a) = 0, g(a, x, y) = y + a.

More general kinds of definition by recursion allow sets of recursion equations of various forms, the essential requirement being that the equations specify the value of the function being introduced (or the values of the functions being introduced), for any given set of arguments, either absolutely, or in terms of the value (values) for preceding sets of arguments. The word preceding here may refer to the natural order or order of magnitude of the non-negative integers, or it may refer to some other method of ordering arguments or sets of arguments, but the method of ordering shall be such that infinite descending sequences ot sets of arguments (in which each set of arguments is preceded by the next set) are impossible.

The notion of definition by recursion may be extended to functions whose ranges consist of only a portion of the non-negative integers (in the case of monadic functions) or of only a portion of the ordered sets of n non-negative integers (in the case of n-adic functions); also to functions for which the range of the dependent variable may consist wholly or partly of other things than non-negative integers (in particular, propositional functions -- properties, relations -- of integers may receive definition by recursion).

The employment of definition by recursion in the development of arithmetic from Peano's postulates, or in the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, requires justification, which most naturallv takes the form of finding a method of replacing a definition by recursion by a nominal definition, or a contextual definition, serving the same purpose. In particular it is possible, by a method due to Dedekind or by any one of a number of modifications of it, to prove the existence of a function f satisfying the conditions expressed by an admissible set of recursion equations, and f may then be given a definition employing descriptions as the function f such that the recursion equations, with suitable quantifiers prefixed, hold. See the paper of Kalmar cited below.

See also the article Recursiveness. -- A.C.

L. Kalmar, On the possibility of definition by recursion, Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum (Szeged), vol. 9 (1940), pp. 227-232.

Recursion, proof by, or, as it is more often called, proof by mathematical induction or complete induction, is in its simplest form a proof that every non-negative integer possesses a ceirtain property by showing
  1. that 0 possesses this property, and
  2. that, on the hypothesis that the non-negative integer x possesses this property, then x+1 possesses this property.
(The condition (2) is often expressed, following Frege and Russell, by saying that the property is hereditary in the series of non-negative integers.) The name proof by recursion, or proof by mathematical or complete induction, is also given to various similar but more complex forms.

In Peano's postulates for arithmetic (see Arithmetic, foundations of) the possibility of proof by recursion is secured by the last postulate, which, indeed, merely states the leading principle of the simplest form of proof by recursion. In the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, the non-negative integers are identified with the inductive cardinal numbers (q.v.), the possibility of proof by recursion being implicit in the definition of inductive. -- A.C.

Recursiveness: The notion of definition by recursion, and in particular of definition by primitive recursion, is explained in the article recursion, definition by. An n-adic function f (from non-negative integers to non-negative integers) is said to be defined by composition in terms of the m-adic function g and the n-adic functions h1, h2, . . . , hm by the equation:
f(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = g(h1((x1, x2, . . . , xn),
h2(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = hm (x1, x2, . . . , xn)).
(The case is not excluded that m = 1, or n = 1, or both.)

A function from non-negative integers to non-negative integers is said to be primitive recursive if it can be obtained by a succession of definitions by primitive recursion and composition frorn the following list of initial functions: the successor function S, the function C such that C(x) = 0 for every non-negative integer x, and the functions Uin (i ≤ n, n = 1, 2, 3, . . . ) such that Uin(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = xi. Each successive definition by primitive recursion or composition may employ not only the initial functions but also any of the functions which were introduced by previous definitions.

More general notions of recursiveness result from admitting in addition to primitive recursion, also more general kinds of definition by recursion, including those in which several functions are introduced simultaneously by a single set of recursion equations. The most general such notion is that of general recursiveness -- see the first paper of Kleene cited below. Notions of recursiveness may also be introduced for a function whose range consists of only a portion of the non-negative integers (in the case of a monadic function) or of only a portion of the ordered sets of n non-negative integers (in the case of an n-adic function) -- see the second paper of Kleene cited.

Concerning the relationship between general recursiveness and the notion of effectiveness, see the article logistic system. -- A.C.

R. Peter, a series of papers (in German) (in the Mathematische Annale, vol. 110 (1934), pp. 612-632; vol. 111 (1935), pp. 42-60; vol. 113 (1936), pp. 489-527. S. C. Kleene, General recursive functions of natural numbers, Mathematische Annalen, vol. 112 (1936), pp. 727- 742. S. C. Kleene, On notation for ordinal numbers, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 3 (1938), pp. 150-155.

Redintegration: (Lat. re + integratio, from integer, whole) The integral reproduction of a total state of consciousness when an element of it is reproduced. -- L.W.
Reducibility, axiom of: An axiom which (or some substitute) is necessary in connection with the ramified theory of types (q.v.) if that theory is to be adequate for classical mathematics, but the admissibility of which has been much disputed (see Paradoxes, logical). An exact statement of the axiom can be made only in the context of a detailed formulation of the ramified theory of types -- which will not here be undertaken. As an indication or rough description of the axiom of reducibility, it may be said that it cancels a large part of ihe restrictive consequences of the prohibition against impredicative definition (q.v.) and, in approximate effect, reduces the ramified theory of types to the simple theory of types (for the latter see Logic, formal, § 6). -- A.C.
Reductio ad absurdum: The method of proving a proposition by deducing a contradiction from the negation of the proposition taken together with other propositions which were previously proved or are granted. It may thus be described as the valid inference of the propositional calculus from three premisses, B and B[∼A] ⊃ C and B[∼A] ⊃ ∼C, to the conclusion A (this presupposes the deduction theorem, q.v.). Such an argument may be rearranged so that the element of reductio ad absurdum appears in the inference from ∼A ⊃ A to A.

The name reductio ad absurdum is also given to the method of proving the negation of a proposition by deducing a contradiction from the proposition itself, together with other propositions which were previously proved or are granted.

The first of the two kinds of reductio ad absurdum, but not the second, is called indirect proof.

Whitehead and Russell give the name principle of reductio ad absurdum to the theorem of the propositional calculus:

[p ⊃ ∼p] ⊃ ∼p.
-- A.C.
Reductto ad impossible: The method of establishing a proposition by showing that its contradictory involves impossible consequences; also of disproving a proposition by showing that its consequences are absurd; reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). See Apagoge. -- G.R.M.
Reduction: (Ger. Reduktion) In Husserl: See Egological and Phenomenology. -- D.C.
Reduplicatively: (in Schol.) a term is taken reduplicatively or there is reduplication when to a term there is added as, just as, as though, inasmuch as, or some similar expression, either in order to double the same term, or in ordei to add another so as to indicate the meaning in which the first term is to be taken, or so as to indicate a reason why the predicate belongs to the subject. E.g. animal as animal cannot reason; Christ as man has suffered; Paul as a priest is worthy of honor. -- H.G.
Referend: The vehicle or instrument of an act of reference. Thus a percept functions as a referend in relation to the perceptual object (the referent). There still exists some confusion in the terminology of reference, and the term referend is used by some authors to denote the "object" instead of the "instrument" of the referential act. This usage, though it has some etymological justification does not seem likely to prevail. See Reference, Referent. -- L.W.
Referent: The object towards which an act of reference is directed. See Referend. -- L.W.

(1) That which is denoted by a word, sentence, utterance or judgment.

(2) A term used by adherents of a certain causal theory of meaning. That event to which a symbol is actually used to refer.

More explicitly: -- Let "context" be used to mean a set of events such that events of the same kind and in the same relations recur "nearly uniformly." Let a be an event such that the complex event a + b would be a context of character C. Let it be granted that a certain utterance (or expectation) is caused jointly by the occurrence of a and residual traces in the speaker of previous adaptations to contexts of character C. Then that event which, in conjunction with a constitutes a context of character C is called the i of the utterance in question. (This covers only true utterances. The 'referents' of false expectations and general beliefs require a separate account). See Ogden and Richards, Meaning of Meaning, passim.

(3) In any proposition of form 'aRb', where R is a propositional function of two variables, a is termed the referent by contrast with the relatum b. (Due to Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica). -- M.B.

Referential: Relating to an act of reference. See Referent. -- L.W.
Reflection: (Lat. reflectio, from re + flectere, to bend) The knowledge which the mind has of itself and its operations. The term is used in this sense by Locke (cf. Essay, II, 1, § 4) Spinoza (cf. On the Improvement of the Understanding 13) and Leibniz (cf. Monadology, and New Essays, Preface, § 4) but has now largely been supplanted by the term introspection. See Intelligence, Introspection. -- L.W.

In Scholasticism: Reflexion is a property of spiritual or immaterial substances only. It is, therefore, a capacity of the human intellect which not only operates, but knows of its operating and may turn back on itself to know itself and its performances (reditio completa). A particular kind of reflexion is, in Thomism the reflexio super phantasma, by which the intellect retraces its steps until it reaches the phantasm from which it originally derived the universal; this is, according to Aquinas, the way the intellect comes to know the particular which, because material, is otherwise inaccessible to an immaterial faculty. -- R.A.

Reflexivity: A dyadic relation R is called reflexive if xRx holds for all x within a certain previously fixed domain which must include the field of R (cf. logic, formal, § 8). In the propositional calculus, the laws of reflexivity of material implication and material equivalence (the conditional and biconditional) are the theorems,
p ⊃ p,
p ≡ p,
expressing the reflexivity of these relations. Other examples of reflexive relations are equality, class inclusion, ⊂ (see logic, formal, § 7); formal implication and formal equivalence (see logic, formal, § 3); the relation not greater than among whole numbers, or among rational numbers, or among real numbers; the relation not later than among instants of time; the relation less than one hour apart among instants of time.

A dyadic relation R is irreflexive if xRx never holds (e.g., the relation less than among whole numbers). -- A.C.

Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
Regressive: See Sorties.
Regulative Principles: (regulative Prinzipien) Though this term, in Kant's philosophy, is in one passage applied to the analogies in general, it is reserved for ideas of reason as opposed to the categories. They cannot be proved like the latter, but though not known, theoretically at least, to be true of anything, serve to regulate our thought and action. -- A.C.E.
Reichenbach, Hans: Born Sept. 26, 1891, Hamburg, Germany. Successively Privatdozent at the College of Engineering at Stuttgart, Professor of philosophy in the universities of Berlin, Istanbul (1933-1938), University of California at Los Angeles (since 1938); the leading figure of the Berlin group in the development of recent logical empiricism. See Scientific Empiricism.

Reichenbach's work has been devoted mainly to the philosophy of empirical science; for a brief general survey of the problems which have particularly attracted his attention, and of his conception of an adequate method for their solution, cf. his Raum. Zeit Lehre. His contributions center around (I) the problems of space and time, and (II) those of causality, induction and probability. His studies of the first group of problems include thorough analyses of the nature of geometry and of the logical structure of relativistic physics, these researches led Reichenbach to a rejection of the aprioristic theory of space and time. Reichenbach's contributions to the second group of problems pivot around his general theory of probability which is based on a statistical definition of the probability concept. In terms of this probabilistic approach, Relchenbach has carried out comprehensive analyses of methodological and epistemological problems such as those of causality and induction. He has also extended his formal probability theory into a probability logic in which probabilities play the part of truth values. -- C.G.H.

Other works Atom and Cosmos; Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre; Experience and Prediction.

Reid, Thomas: (1710-1796) Scotch philosopher. In his An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, he opposed the tradition of Berkeley and Hume and emphasized the common consciousness of mankind as basic. These ideas on the importance of self-evidence were further elaborated in "Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man" and "Essays on the Active Powers of Man." He was founder of the so-called Common Sense School, employing that term as here indicated and not in its present acceptation. -- L.E.D.
Relation: The same as dyadic propositional function (q.v.). The distinction between relations in intension and relations in extension is the same as that for propositional functions. -- Sometimes the word relation is used to mean a propositional function of two or more variables, and in this case one distinguishes binary (dyadic) relations, ternary (triadic) relations, etc.

If R denotes a (binary) relation, and X and Y denote arguments, the notation XRY may be used, instead of R(X, Y), to mean that the two arguments stand in the relation denoted by R The domain of a relation R is the class of things x for which there exists at least one y such that xRy holds. The converse domain of a relation R is the class of things y for which there exists at least one x such that xRy. The field of a relation is the logical sum of the domain and the converse domain.

See also Logic, formal, § 8. -- A.C.

Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica, 2nd edn , vol 1, Cambridge, England, 1925.

Relation-number: Dyadic relations R and R' are said to be similar (or ordinally similar) if there exists a one-one relation S whose domain is the field of R, and whose converse domain is the field of R', such that, if aSa' and bSb' then aRb if and only if a'Rb' . The relation-number of a dyadic relation may then be defined as the class of relations similar to it -- cf. cardinal number.

The relation-number of an ordering relation (see order) is called also an ordinal type or order type.

The notion of a relation-number may be extended in a straightforward way to polyadic relations. -- A.C.

Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica, vol. 2.

Relational Theory of Mind: The conception of mind as a relation between neutral entities (i.e. entities which are intrinsically neither mental nor physical) which was foreshadowed by Hume and developed by British and American New Realism. See C.W. Morris, Six Theories of Mind, Ch. III. See Neutral Monism. -- L.W.
Relative: A concept is relative if it is -- a word, if it denotes -- a polyadic propositional function, or relation, rather than a monadic propositional function. The term relative is applied especially to words which have been or might be thought to denote monadic propositional functions, but for some reason must be taken as denoting relations. Thus the word short or the notion of shortness may be called relative because as a monadic propositional function it is vague, while as a relation (shorter than) it is not vague.

Analogously, the term relative may be applied to words erroneously thought of or used as if denoting binary relations, but which actually must be taken as denoting ternary or quaternary relations, etc. E.g., the Special Theory of Relativity is said to make simultaneity relative because, according to it, simultaneity is a function of two events and a coordinate system or frame of reference -- -instead of a function merely of two events, as in the Newtonian or classical theory.

The adjective relative is also used in a less special way, to mean simply relational or pertaining to relations.

In connection with the algebra of relations (see logic, formal, § 8), Peirce and Schröder use relative as a noun, in place of relation. For Schröder, a relative (Relativ) is a relation in extension. Peirce makes a distinction between relative and relation, not altogether clear, many passages suggest that relative is a syntactical term, but others approximate the usage adopted by Schröder. -- A.C.

Relativism: The view that truth is relative and may vary from individual to individual, from group to group, or from time to time, having no objective standard. See Ethical relativism. -- W.K.F.
Relativism, Epistemological: The theory that all human knowledge is relative to the knowing mind and to the conditions of the body and sense organs. Relativism is usually combined with a subjectivistic theory of knowledge (see Subjectivism) but, in recent epistemology, a realistic or objectivistic relativism has been advanced. See Objective Relativism. Ethical relativism. -- L.W.
Relativism, Psychological: The psychologies principle that the character of any present conscious content is relative to and influenced by past and contemporaneous experiences of the orginism. The law of psychological relativity was prominent in the psychology of Wundt, and has recently been emphasized by Gestalt Psychology. -- L.W.
Relativity of Knowledge: Sec Relativism, Epistemological.
Relevance or Relevancy: (Fr. relevant) Relation between concepts which are capable of combining to form meaningful propositions or between propositions belonging to the same "universe of discourse." -- L.W.
Relativity, theory of: A mathematical theory of space-time (q.v.), of profound epistemological as well as physical importance, comprising the special theory of relativity (Einstein, 1905) and the general theory of relativity (Einstein, 1914-16). The name arises from the fact that certain things which the classical theory regarded as absolute -- e.g. , the simultaneity of spatially distant events, the time elapsed between two events (unless coincident in space-time), the length of an extended solid body, the separation of four-dimensional space-time into a three-dimensional space and a one-dimensional time -- are regarded by the relativity theory as relative (q.v.) to the choice of a coordinate system in space-time, and thus relative to the observer. But on the other hand the relativity theory represents as absolute certain things which are relative in the classical theory -- e.g., the velocity of light in empty space. See Non-Euclidean geometry. -- A.C.

Albert Einstein,
Relativity, The Special & The General Theory, A Popular Exposition, translated by R. W. Lawson, London, 1920.
A. S. Eddington,
Space, Time, and Gravitation, Cambridge, England, 1920.
A. V. Vasihev,
Space, Time, Motion, translated by H. M. Lucas and C. P. Sanger, with an introduction by Bertrand Russell, London. 1924, and New York, 1924.
Religion, Philosophy of: The methodic or systematic investigation of the elements of religious consciousness, the theories it has evolved and their development and historic relationships in the cultural complex. It takes account of religious practices only as illustrations of the vitality of beliefs and the inseparableness of the psychological from thought reality in faith. It is distinct from theology in that it recognizes the priority of reason over faith and the acceptance of creed, subjecting the latter to a logical analysis. As such, the history of the Philosophy of Religion is coextensive with the free enquiry into religious reality, particularly the conceptions of God, soul, immortality, sin, salvaition, the sacred (Rudolf Otto), etc., and may be said to have its roots in any society above the pre-logical, mythological, or custom-controlled level, first observed in Egypt, China, India, and Greece. Its scientific treatment is a subsidiary philosophic discipline dates from about Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft and Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, while in the history of thought based on Indian and Greek speculation, sporadic sallies were made by all great philosophers, especially those professing an idealism, and by most theologians.

With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.

With respect to the concept of God, a specific philosophy of religion may be a theism with its many forms of henotheism, monotheism, etc., a deism, pantheism, anthropomorphism, animism, panpsychism (all of which see), or the like, or it rmy fall into the general philosophic classification of a transcendentilism, immanentalism, absolutism, etc. By the term modernism is meant the tendency, subtended by the recent interest of science in religion (Sirs J. H. Jeans and A. S. Eddington, A. Carrell et al.) to interpret religious experience in close contact with physical and social reality, thus transforming the age-old personalism into a thoroughgoing humanism, thereby accomplishing an even greater attachment to social thinking and practical ethics and a trend away from metaphvsical speculation toward a psychologizing in the Philosophy of Religion.

Practically all philosophers of religion (to name in addition to thoce above only Schleiermacher, Lotze, Pfleiderer, Hoffding, Siebeck, Galloway, Ladd, Wundt, Josiah Royce, W. E. Hocking, Barth, and Hauer) are carried by an ethical idealism, being interested in the good life as the right relation between God and man, conforming by and large to the ethical citegories of determinism, indeterminism, mechanism, rationalism, etc. Buddhists, though not believing in God, profess an ethics religiously motivated and supported philosophically.

The scientific study of primitive leligions, with such well known names as E. B. Tylor, F. B. Jevons, W. H. R. Rivers, J. G. Frazer, R. H. Codrington, Spencer and Gillen, E. Westermarck, E. Durkheim, L. Levy-Bruhl; the numerous outlines of the development of religion since Hume's Natural History of Religion and E. Caird's Evolution of Religion; the prolific literature dealing with individual religions of a higher type, the science of comparative religion with such namea as that of L. H. Jordan, the many excellent treitises on the psychology of religion including Wm. James' Varieties of Religious Experience; the sacred literature of all peoples in various editions together with a voluminous theological exegesis, Church history and, finally, the history of dogma, especially the monumental work of von Harnack, -- all are contributing illustrative material to the Philosophy of Religion which became stimulated to scientific efforts through the positivism of Spencer, Huxley, Lewes, Tyndall, and others, and is still largely oriented by the progress in science, as may be seen, e.g., by the work of Emile Boutroux, S. Alexander (Space, Time and Deity), and A. N. Whitehead.

See, apart from the works of the authors named, George Trumbull Ladd, The Philosophy of Religion; Edwin A. Burtt, Types of Religious Philosophy, Edgar S. Brightman, A Philosophy of Religion. -- K.F.L.

Religion, Promethean: An anarchistic piety which refrains from making past or present revolutionary doctrine the basis of new tyranny. (Montague). -- H.H.
Religious A Priori: A separate, innate category of the human consciousness, religious in that it issues certain insights and indisputable certainties concerning God or a Superhuman Presence. Man's religious nature rests upon the peculiar character of his mind. He possesses a native apprehension of the Divine. God's existence is guaranteed as an axiomatic truth. For Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) this a priori quality of the mind is both a rational intuition and an immediate experience. God is present as a real fact both rationally and empirically. For Rudolf Otto this a priori quality of the mind is a non-rational awareness of the holy, mysterious and awe-inspiring divine Reality. Man posesses a kind of eerie sense of a Presence which is the basis of the genuinely religious feeling. See Numinous. -- V.F.
Religious Phenomenology: (in Max Scheler) The doctrine of the essential origin and forms of the religious, and of the essence of the divine, as well as of its revelation. -- P.A.S.
Renaissance: (Lat. re + nasci, to be born) Is a term used by historians to characterize various periods of intellectual revival, and especially that which took place in Italy and Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term was coined by Michelet and developed into a historical concept by J. Burckhardt (1860) who considered individualism, the revival of classical antiquity, the "discovery" of the world and of man as the main characters of that period as opposed to the Middle Ages. The meaning, the temporal limits, and even the usefulness of the concept have been disputed ever since. For the emphasis placed by various historians on the different fields of culture and on the contribution of different countries must lead to different interpretations of the whole period, and attempts to express a complicated historical phenomenon in a simple, abstract definition are apt to fail. Historians are now inclined to admit a very considerable continuity between the "Renaissance" and the Middle Ages. Yet a sweeping rejection of the whole concept is excluded, for it expresses the view of the writers of the period itself, who considered their century a revival of ancient civilization after a penod of decay. While Burckhardt had paid no attention to philosophy, others began to speak of a "philosophy of the renaissance," regarding thought of those centuries not as an accidental accompaniment of renaissance culture, but as its characteristic philosophical manifestation. As yet this view has served as a fruitful guiding principle rather than as a verified hypothesis. Renaissance thought can be defined in a negative way as the period of transition from the medieval, theological to the modern, scientific interpretation of reality. It also displays a few common features, such as an emphasis on man and on his place in the universe, the rejection of certain medieval standards and methods of science, the increased influence of some newly discovered ancient sources, and a new style and literary form in the presentation of philosophical ideas. More obvious are the differences between the various schools and traditions which cannot easily be brought to a common denominator Humimsm, Platonism, Aristotelianism, scepticism and natural philosophy, to which may be added the group of the founders of modern science (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo). -- P.O.K.

Cf. "Study of the Renaissance Philosophies," P. O. Kristeller and J. H. Randall, Jr. in Jour. History of Ideas, II, 4 (Oct. 1941).

Renouvier, Charles: (1818-1903) a thinker strongly influenced by Leibniz and Kant. His philosophy has been called 'phenomenological neo-criticism', and its peculiar feature is that it denies the existence of all transcendental entities, such as thing-in-itself, the absolute, and the noumenon. -- R.B.W.

Main works: Uchronie, 1857, Philos. analytique de l'histoire, 4 vols., 1896-98; La nouvelle monadologie, 1899; Le Personnalisme, 1903; Essais de critique generale, 1851-64.

Representative Ideas, Theory of: Theory that the mind in perception, memory and other types of knowledge, does not know its objects directly but only through the mediation of ideas which represent them. The theory was advanced by Descartes and the expression, representative ideas, may have been suggested by his statement that our ideas more or less adequately "represent" their originals. See Meditations, III. Locke, Hobbes, Malebranche, Berkeley subscnbed to the theory in one form or another and the theory has supporters among contemporary epistemologists (e.g. Lovejoy and certain other Critical Reilists). The theory has been severely criticised ever since the time of Arnauld. (See Des vrais et de fausses idees) and has become one of reproach. See Epistemological Dualism. -- L.W.
Representative Realism: The view that in the knowing process our ideas are representations or ambassadors of the real external world. (E.g. the view of John Locke.) -- V.F.
Res Cogitans: (Lat res, thing + cogitans from cogitare, to think) Descartes' designation for thinking substance which along with extended substance (res extensa) constitute his dualism. The term presumably designates not only the individual mind which thinks but also the substance which pervades all individual minds. -- L.W.
Retentiveness: (Lat. re + tendere, to hold) The mind's capacity to retain and subsequently revive earlier experiences. See Memory. -- L.W.
Revelation: The communication to man of the Divine Will. This communication has taken, in the history of religions, almost every conceivable form, e.g., the results of lot casting, oracular declarations, dreams, visions, ecstatic experiences (induced by whatever means, such as intoxicants), books, prophets, unusual characters, revered traditional practices, storms, pestilence, etc. The general conception of revelation has been that the divine communication comes in ways unusual, by means not open to the ordinary channels of investigation. This, however, is not a necessary corollary, revelation of the Divine Will may well come through ordinary channels, the give-and-take of everyday experience, through reason and reflection and intuitive insight. -- V.F.
Rhetoric: (Gr. Rhetor, public speaker) Art turned to the practical purpose of persuading and impressing. -- L.V.
Rhythm: (a) Harmonious correlation of parts in a work of art. (b) (Music) Systematic grouping of notes according to duration. -- L.V.
Rickert, Heinrich: (1863-1936) Believing that only in system philosophy achieves its ends, Rickert established under the influence of Fichte a transcendental idealism upon an epistemology which has nothing to do with searching for connections between thought and existence, but admits being only as a being in consciousness, and knowledge as an affirming or negating, approving or disapproving of judgments. Hence, philosophy is one of norms in which the concept of reality dissolves into a concept of value, while consciousness ceases to be an individual phenomenon and becomes impersonal and general. Value exists not as a physical thing but in assent and our acknowledging its validity. In this we are guided by meaning and obligated by the ought. Method distinguishes history as the discipline of the particular from science which must advance beyond fact-gathering to the discovery of general laws, and from philosophy which seeks absolute cultural values through explanation, understanding, and interpretation.

Main works: Die Crenzen d. naturwiss. Begriffsbildung, 1896; Kultur u. Naturtwissenchaften, 1899; Philos. d. Lebens, 1920. -- K.F.L.

Right: In an ethical sense an action conforming to the moral law. Also the correlative of duty.

In a legal sense, any claim against others, recognized by law. Political rights, the capacity of exercizing certain functions in the formation and administration of government -- the right to vote, to be elected to public office, etc. Natural rights, as against positive rights, those claims or liberties which are not derived from positive law but from a "higher law", the law of nature. The right to live, the right to work, the "pursuit of happiness", the right to self-development are sometimes considered natural rights. -- W.E.

Right action: (a) Teleologicillv defined as action such that no alternative possible under the circumstances is better. Cf. G. E. Moore, Princ. Ethica. -- C.A.B.

(b) Formalistically (or deontologically) regarded as not equivalent to the above, as perhaps, indefinable. For example, C. D. Broad holds that the rightness or wrongness of an action in a given situation is a function of its "fittingness" in that situation and of its utility in that situation. W. D. Ross holds that in given circumstances that action is right whose prima facie rightness in the respects in which it is prima facie right outweights its prima facie wrongness in the respects in which it is prima facie wrong to a greater degree than is the cast with any possible alternative action. -- C.A.B.

Right Reason: (Gr. orthos logos; L. recta ratio) The law or order exhibited in the constitution of the world, to which, according to the Stoics human law and human action should conform; the Law of Nature. -- G.R.M.
Rigorism: Any view according to which the ethicil life involves a rigorous treatment of the more natural or physical desires, feelings, and passions. -- W.K.F.
Ritschlianism: A celebrated school of 19th century Christian thought inaugurated by Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89). This school argued for God upon the basis of what is called the religious value-judgment. Two kinds of judgments are said to characterize man's reaction to his world of experience: (1) dependent or concomitant, those dependent upon perceived facts, such as the natural sciences; (2) independent or religious those which affirm man's superior worth independent of the limitations of the finite world and man's dependence upon a superhuman order of reality, God. God is not reached by speculation, nor by the "evidences" in nature, nor by intuitions or mystic experience, nor by a rational a priori or intimate feeling. God is implied in the religious value judgment: "though he slay me will I trust him." That man needs God as a deliverer from his bonds is the assertion of the independent religious value-judgment; the consequences following this judgment of need and worth sustain him with courage and victory over every obstacl.e Ritschlianism is notable in the emphasis it placed upon the category of value, an emphasis which has grown stronger in contemporary theistic belief. -- V.F.
Romanism: (Lat. Roma, Rome, the seat of Papal authority) The doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church; tendencies in members of other churches to favor Catholicism. -- V.J.B.
Romantic art: (a) Artistic era between the end of the 18th and middle of the 19th centuries. (b) A form closer to and less independent of emotions than classic form. -- L.V.
Romanticism: As a general philosophical movement, romanticism is best understood as the initial phase of German Idealism, serving as a transition from Kant to Hegel, and flourishing chiefly between 1775 and 1815. It is associated primarily with the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Fried, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, with Schelhng as its culmination and most typical figure. The philosophical point of departure for romanticism is the Kantian philosophy, and romanticism shares with all German Idealism both the fundamental purpose of extending knowledge to the realm of noumena, and the fundamental doctrine that all reality is ultimately spiritual, derivative from a living spirit and so knowable by the human spirit. The essence of philosophical romanticism as expressed by Schelhng, that which differentiates it from other types of Idealism, resides in its conception of Spirit; upon this depend its metaphysical account of nature and man, and its epistemological doctrine of the proper method for investigating and understanding reality. Romanticism holds that Spirit, or the Absolute, is essentially creative; the ultimate ground of all things is primarily an urge to self-expression, and all that it has brought into being is but a means to its fuller self-realization. If the Absolute of Fichte is a moralist, and that of Hegel a logician, then that of the romanticists is primarily an artist. From this basic view there springs a metaphysic that interprets the universe in terms of the concepts of evolution, process, life, and consciousness. The world of nature is one manifestation of Spirit, man is another and a higher such manifestation, for in man Spirit seeks to become conscious of its own work. The metaphysical process is the process by which the Absolute seeks to realize itself, and all particular things are but phases within it. Hence, the epistemology of romanticism is exclusively emotional and intuitive, stressing the necessity for fullness of experience and depth of feeling if reality is to be understood. Reason, being artificial and analytical, is inadequate to the task of comprehending the Absolute; knowing is living, and the philosopher must approach nature through inspiration, longing, and sympathy.

Romanticism was a healthy and necessary influence in reasserting the dignity of nature, in stressing the emotional factor in knowledge, and in emphasizing the concepts of process and evolution. It was an inadequate doctrine, in that it did not clarify the detailed movement of the process it posited, and could offer no positive advice for discovering this, other than to be inspired and intuit it. Romanticism is metaphysical expressionism, and like any expressionistic doctrine it is unable to give any concrete meaning to the concept of causality; it can therefore provide no categories under which to comprehend things, but can only say that things are because they have been expressed, and can be understood only by being re-expressed i.e., only by re-living the experience of their creator.

(In Aesthetics): A movement in both art and general aesthetic theory which was particularly widespread and influential in the last years of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries. So interpreted, it is especially associated with Novalis, the Schlegels, and Jean Paul Richter in Germany, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine in France; Blake, Scott, the Lake Poets, Shelley, and Byron in England. As a general attitude toward art and its function, as an interpretation of the goodness, beauty, and purpose of life, romanticism has always existed and can be confined to no one period. The essence of romanticism, either as an attitude or as a conscious program, is an intense interest in nature, and an attempt to seize natural phenomena in a direct, immediate, and naive manner. Romanticism thus regards all forms, rules, conventions, and manners as artificial constructs and as hindrances to the grasp, enjoyment, and expression of nature, hence its continual opposition to any kind of classicism (q.v.), whose formalities it treats as fetters. Romanticism stresses the values of sincerity, spontaneity, and passion, as against the restraint and cultivation demanded by artistic forms and modes. It reasserts the primacy of feeling, imagination, and sentiment, as opposed to reason. It maintains that art should concern itself with the particular and the concrete, observing and reporting accurately the feelings aroused by nature, with no idealization or generalization. It commands the artist to feel freely and deeply, and to express what he has felt with no restraints, either artistic or social. It seeks in works of art a stimulus to imagination and feeling, a point of departure for free activity, rather than an object that it can accept and contemplate.

Such a general attitude and purpose of course allow for vast specific differences, and under the term romantics must be included artists and theorists who stress varying aspects of nature and man. All have in common a rejection of formal restraints, an obseesion with their experience of nature, and the conviction that this felt quality of things is of ultimate value in its immediacy.

On the ambiguities of the term, as well as an analysis of one of its meanings as the characteristics of thought shared by some German thinkers from about 1790 to 1830, cf. A. O. Lovejoy, "Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas," Jour. Hist. Ideas (Jan. 1941), which refers also to Lovejoy's now famous articles on the subject. -- I.J.

Romero, Francisco: Born in 1891. Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Buenos Aires, La Plata, and the National Institute for Teachers. Director of the Philosophical Library of the Losada Publishing House, and distinguished staff member of various cultural magazines and reviews in Latin America. Francisco Romero is one of the most important figures in the philosophical movement of South America. He is the immediate successor of Korn, and as such he follows on the footsteps of his master, doing pioneer work, not only striving towards an Argentinian philosophy, but also campaigning for philosophy in the nations of Latin America through a program of cultural diffusion. Among his most important writings, the following may be mentioned:
Vteja y Nueva Concepcion de la Realidad, 1932;
Los Problemas de la Filosofia de la Cultura, 1936;
Filosofia de la Persona, 1938;
Logica (In collaboration with Pucciarelli), 1936;
Programa de una Filosofia, 1940;
Un Filosofo de la Problematicidad, 1934;
Descartes y Husserl, 1938;
Contribucion al Estudio de las Relaciones de Comparacion, 1938;
Teoria y Practica de la Verdad, 1939.
Three characteristic notes may be observed in the philosophy of Romero
  1. Aporetics or Problematics,
  2. Philosophy of Weltanschauungen,
  3. Philosophy of the Person.
The first has to do with his criterion of knowledge. Justice to all the facts of experience, over against mere system building, seems to be the watchword. The desirability and gradual imposition of Structuralism as the modern Weltanschauung, over against outworn world conceptions such as Evolution, Mechanism, Rationalism, etc., is the emphasis of the second principle of his philosophy. Personality as a mere function of transcendence, with all that transcendence implies in the realm of value and history, carries the main theme of his thought. See Latin American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.
Roscelin: (c. 1050-c 1120) born at Compiegne, France, probably studied in Soissons and Rheims. He taught as Canon of Compiene, and at Tours, Loches (where Abelard was his pupil) and Besancon. Noted in philosophy for his extremely nominalistic solution to the problem of universals. Theologically, he was accused of tritheism. No major works are extant and his views are known only through possibly biased accounts in John of Salisbury, (Metalogicus, II, 17, PL 199, 874), St. Anselm, Abailard and Otto of Freising.

J. Reiners, Der Nominalismus in der Frühscholastik, BGPM VIII, 5, 25-41 (Münster, 1910). -- V.J.B.

Rosmini, Serbati (Antonio): Born in Rovereto (Trento), March 24, 1797, died in Stresa (Milan), July 1, 1855. Ordained priest 1821. Founded the Institute for Charity. Influenced Italian Risorgimento, impelling Pope Pius IX towards liberalism.

His philosophy is a fusion of idealism and scholasticism, adhering to human experience. He maintained there is a distinction between the natural and the supernatural order, but emphasized that the supreme principle uniting all knowledge is universal being. -- L.V.

Cf. T. Davidson, Rosmini's Philosophical System, 1882.

Ross, (William) David: (1877-1940) Is principally known as an Aristotelian scholar. He served first as joint editor, later as editor of the Oxford translation of Aristotle. In this series he himself translated the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics. In addition he published critical texts with commentaries of the Metaphysics and the Physics, and also an edition of Theophrastus's Metaphysics. Besides enjoying a reputation as Aristotelian interpreter, Sir David has gained repute as a writer on morality and ethics. -- C.K.D.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques: (1712-1778), a native of Geneva, Switzerland, whose influence in France and throughout Europe was enormous for many a decade, thanks to his timely ideas and colorful and lucid style of writing. Particularly influential were his Emile, a book on education, and Social Contract, a work reviving an old political doctrine concerning the origin of human society, into which he introduced novel democratic ideas. His thought was characterized by skepticism and criticism of the Western civilization regarded by him as a sad deviation from natural conditions of existence, described imaginatively in his New Heloise. -- R.B.W.
Royce, Josiah: (I855-1916) Bom in California, taught philosophy at Harvard. Neo-Hegelian idealist, conceives Reality as the career of an all-inclusive absolute mind, of which our minds are fragmentary manifestations. Nothing short of such a mind can terminate the quest of each finite consciousness for the true and final object of its experience, which is found always in more experience fulfilling and giving significance to the experience in question. In an absolute experience alone, to which all things are present and by which all things are understood, can the ultimate explanation and meaning of any and all finite experience be revealed, all error be corrected, all impelfectlon be overcome.

Though fragments of the absolute experience, our minds somehow remain separate selves and persons. Though infinite and all-comprehensive in extent, and reviewing ad infinitum its own infinity in knowing that it knows that it knows, the Absolute is nevertheless a finished and closed whole. Though shot through and through with error and evil and sin and suffering, the Absolute is nevertheless perfect, and perfect because of them, since struggle with them and triumph over them is of the essence of its perfection. Though a temporal process, it is nevertheless overarches that process in a single act of comprehension in which past, present, and future are grasped, even as the successive notes of a musical phrase are grasped, as an eternally present completed fact.

The will, like the intellect, reaches after and finds its peace in the Absolute. The moral life lies in seeking the ever widening meaning of our individual lives and identifying ourselves with it. This self-identification with larger meaning is loyalty -- the basis and the essence of all human virtue. -- B.A.G.F.

Main works:

The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 1885;
The Spirit of Modem Philosophy, 1892;
The World and the Indidvidual, 1900;
Lectures on Modem Idealism, 1919.
Rule, ethical or moral: Any general ethical proposition enjoining a certain kind of action in a certain kind of situation, e.g., one who has made a promise should keep it. Rules figure especially in "dogmatic" types of deontological or intuitionstic ethics, and teleological ethics is often described as emphasizing ends rather than rules. Even a teleologist may, however, recommend certain rules, such as the above, as describing kinds of action which are generally conducive to good ends. -- W.K.F.
Rule of Faith: In general, an authoritative statement of belief. In historic Christianity such statements appeared out of existing formulae (e.g., the early baptismal confessions) or were formulated to meet existing heresies. In Catholic Christianity the Rule of Faith (Regula Fidei) includes the whole of apostolic teaching and its further elaborations. -- V.F.
Rule of inference: See logic, formal, §§ 1, 3, and logistic system.
Russell, Bertrand A. W.: (1872-) Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge, 1895; lecturer in philosophy, University of Cambridge, 1910-1916. Author of:
The Philosophy of Leibniz, 1900;
The Principles of Mathematics, 1903;
Principia Mathematica (in collaboration with A. N. Whitehead), 3 vols. 1910-13, (second edition, 1925-27);
The Problems of Philosophy, 1912;
Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914;
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1918;
The Analysis of Mind, 1921;
The Analysis of Matter, 1927;
An Outline of Philosophy, 1928;
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1940.
Also numerous other works on philosophy, politics and education, outrageously attacked by reactionaries.

Two aspects of Russell's work are likely to remain of permanent importance,

  1. his major part in the twentieth century renaissance of logic,
  2. his reiterated attempts to identify the methods of philosophy with those of the sciences.

(1) While the primary objective of Principia was to prove that pure mathematics could be derived from logic, the success of this undertaking (as to which hardly any dissenting opinion persists) is overshadowed by the importance of the techniques perfected in the course of its prosecution. Without disrespect to other pioneers in the field, it is sufficient to point out that a knowledge of the symbolic logic of Russell and Whitehead is still a necessary prerequisite for understanding contemporary studies in logic, in the foundations of mathematics, and tht philosophy of science.

(2) Flirtations with realism, neutral monism, positivism or behaviorism have never seriously interfered with Russell's attempt to establish philosophy as a science. The emptical data being supplied by the experimental scientist, the specifically philosophical task becomes the analysis of such deliverances (with the full resources of modern logistic). Unlike certain of his followers, Russell has never been strenuously anti-metaphysical. He has never held pragmatic, still less conventional, views with regard to the nature of logic itself. And his general empirical approach has been constantly modified by rationalistic views concerning the subsistence of universals. -- M.B.