Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (2002), 207–222 FACTS AND UNIVERSALS1 Fraser MacBRIDE University of St Andrews Introduction Successively a student, collaborator and then interlocutor and critic of Gustav Bergmann, Herbert Hochberg has emerged as one of the most distinctive and thoroughgoing of contemporary ontologists Deeply inßuenced by the history of early analytic philosophy, with a profound sense of the abiding importance that the ontological and logical themes played there continued to bear, there can be few other philosophers whose work rest upon so intimate or longstanding an acquaintance with the systems of Moore and Russell In recent years the study of the history of analytic philosophy has undergone something of a revolution; ever-greater depths of historical knowledge and philosophical sophistication have been brought to bear to interpret the texts, even the individual sentences, of the fathers and grandfathers of our discipline — the book length treatments of Frege, Moore and Russell by Weiner, Baldwin and Hylton provide representative examples of the trend.2 And, of course, the study of ontology has made great advances under the inßuence of Armstrong, Mellor and Lewis (amongst others) But still the philosophy of Herbert Hochberg — someone whose own focused attention to the history of our subject and to ontology antedates current popular interest — stands apart from the rest His interest in the history of analytic philosophy ßows not from any kind of tantalizing suggestion that we have misplaced the importance of the work of our predecessors, assigned philosophical signiÞcance where there is none, or that somehow the act of becoming self-conscious about our intellectual origins is itself philosophically meritorious For Hochberg the signiÞcance of our predecessors’ work remains just where traditionally it has been Review of Herbert Hochberg Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein: The Revival of Realism (Frankfurt, a.M.: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 2001) ISBN 1-58750-606-8, 334 pp / Hardcover See T Baldwin G.E Moore (London: Routledge, 1993), P Hylton Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytical Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) and J Weiner Frege in Perspective (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990) maintained to be — in an appreciation of the theory of descriptions, the irreducibility of external relations, the reality of logical form and so on Hochberg conceives of these interrelated themes broadly along lines with which we are more or less familiar (although he certainly adds Þne-grained details that are not familiar) But what is distinctive about his view is that for Hochberg the writings of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein on these issues serve not only as “paradigms of philosophy” (as Ramsey once described Russell’s theory of descriptions) but also as an enduring source of philosophical insight that the contemporary ontologist neglects at his or her peril In his Þrst book (Thought, Fact and Reference: The Origins and Ontology of Logical Atomism (Minnesota University Press: Minneapolis, 1978)) Hochberg assessed the contributions of Moore and Russell to the development of analytic philosophy.3 In a subsequent volume of essays (Logic, Ontology and Language (München: Philosophia Verlag, 1984)) Hochberg went on to develop and apply the techniques and insights he found in Moore, Russell and others (notably Bergmann) to a wide range of issues concerning ontology, language and intentionality If one theme dominates these earlier essays it is a concern to expose the errors in the extreme (“ostrich”) nominalism advocated by Quine and Sellars Hochberg has now published a second volume of essays (Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein: The Revival of Realism, hereafter “RMW ”) This collection ranges as widely as its predecessor, engaging with overlapping themes in ontology, language and the history of analytic philosophy RMW resists general description; its concerns lie with a series of particular historical episodes and philosophical problems But if one distinctive theme is to be singled out for attention — one that distinguishes RMW from its predecessor — it is the sustained effort to overcome the obstacles that lie in the path of a convincing realism about facts and universals Overview The eighteen self-standing papers assembled in RMW are drawn from across the spectrum of American, Australian and European journals and other scholarly collections The earliest papers — that date back to the 1950s — originally appeared as contributions to Analysis and Mind The most recent Hochberg is also the author of two other volumes The Positivist and the Ontologist: Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Realism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, B.V., 2001) that draws from many of the papers assembled in RMW charts the intellectual development of Bergman and the weaving together of realism, positivism and phenomenology that constituted Bergmann’s distinctive vision Complexes and Consciousness (Stockholm: Thales, 2000) investigates the ontology and philosophy of mind of Ivar Segelberg 208