668 MARY ELIZABETH TETZLAFF AND STAFF In chapter eight, Rescher notes that philosophical contentions are numerous, varied, and often incompatible. The work of determining what is and is not philosophically acceptable, then, is an extremely difficult one. The philosophical data, from whatever sources, must be set in as inclusive and cohesive a system as is possible. Noting that the result is not relativistic, but contextual, he concludes with a caution about the limits of philosophical verification. In chapter nine, Rescher briefly takes note of the difference between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, with the former supplying a metaphysical basis for the ordinary world and the latter coming to terms with the often counter-intuitive findings of the natural sciences. Rescher’s point is that descriptive metaphysics is logically presupposed to the revisionist sort. In chapter ten Rescher addresses the question of the nature of philosophy itself. After pointing out philosophy’s two types of inquiry (clarifying and explaining), he sets down several marks distinguishing philosophy from others types of discourse, noting that the reasoning of prominent philosophers of all ages have included them. In chapter eleven Rescher weighs in on the realism/idealism debate, taking note of our common admission that we will never finally know things as they are, insisting all the while that there must be such things. Seeing this as an “inherent presumption” of our own way of thinking, Rescher argues that a realist presumption is a pragmatic necessity which becomes validated only retroactively, by dint of our continued experience. Chapter twelve takes note of the addresses given by past presidents of the American Philosophical Association, with a view to determining whether philosophy has made progress over the years. Rescher reports that even the question of philosophy’s progress, let alone any consensus upon what that might mean or how it might be measured, has ceased to figure into presidential addresses in the last part of the twentieth century. The final chapter is concerned with laying out some of the characteristic aspects of Greek philosophizing, working through such phases as aporetics and dialectics, up to the ideals of contextualization and systematization.—Jean Rioux, Benedictine College. SIMPSON, Peter L. P. The Eudemian Ethics of Aristotle. Translation and Commentary. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013. xx + 411pp. Cloth, $89.95—Modern scholarly interest in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics has been stymied by serious manuscript difficulties paired with suspicions that the form and content of the text either call its authenticity into question or reflect Aristotle’s earlier and less sophisticated ethical views. For these reasons there have been only a