Determinism
The centerpiece of this collection of works is the opening title entry. “Freedom and Resentment” is ultimately Strawson’s most significant and influential contribution to the persistent theme of philosophical determinism. Strawson’s addition to the ongoing debate is situated in the chasm existing between optimism and pessimism in the nature of reactive emotional responses. The particular focal emotion in this case being an analysis of the stimulation of expressions of resentment caused by the behavior of others or, more specifically, the ways in one responds with resentment to the behavior of others.
Perception
Three different entries in the collection include the word perception in their titles: “Imagination and Perception,” “Causation in Perception,” and “Perception and Identification.” Much like determinism, perception is another thematic topic around which millions of words have been expended on analyzing throughout the long history of philosophy. Among the means in which this theme is explored across the three related essays are the contributions to spatial positioning to perception of an object and the problem of communicating the existence of that which cannot be perceived visually.
Language
One of the papers published in this collection is titled “Wittgenstein’s `Philosophical Investigations.’” Wittgenstein is a philosopher obsessed with the concept of language as it relates to philosophical discourse to the point that he is most closely associated with the concept of “language games.” It should come as little surprise that several of the papers are exclusively devoted to themes relate to the nature of language as it relates to philosophical investigations, but the theme is hardly limited to those. The significance of how language is related to themes of perception and determinism is of almost equal important.
