In the face of the external challenge of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the internal threat of spiritual, moral, and disciplinary corruption, two Catholic saints worked tirelessly to reform the Church in different but complementary ways. Philip Neri (1515–95) and Charles Borromeo (1538–84) led the Catholic Counter–Reformation during the middle–to–late sixteenth century, placing their distinctive gifts at the service of the Church. Philip Neri used his personal humility, intelligence, and charisma to attract the people of Rome to Christ, (...) while Charles Borromeo employed his gifts for administration and his experience as a top aide to the pope to promote needed institutional reform. Both men achieved great personal holiness and moved others to holiness of life. It is their response to and sharing of the ‘universal call to holiness’, then, that constitutes the core of both of their approaches to ecclesial reform. Their focus on holiness, expressed in an emphasis on either the ‘charismatic’ or ‘hierarchical’ dimensions of the Church’s life, also provides a model for today’s Church, scarred as she is by scandal and in need of a new movement of reform. (shrink)

Chapter 5 of John Locke's Second Treatise, ‘Of Property,” is a text that undermines itself, stammering to an unresolved and irresolvable conclusion because the structure of conditions upon which most of its moral argument about private property is based cannot be stretched to encompass the sudden twist Locke tries to make at the end. The moral conditions by which Locke defines a virtuous private possession within God's gift of the world to all mankind in common resist being extended to include (...) an economy of money and limitless, unequal possession. The text comes to an end in total uncertainty, pointing simultaneously in two opposite directions. This paper explores just how deeply and hopelessly these distortions affect the text. (Published Online February 27 2006). (shrink)

Humanities Open Book Program, a joint initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Xenophon and the History of His TimesCharles D. HamiltonJohn Dillery. Xenophon and the History of His Times. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. xii + 337 pp. Cloth, $69.95.Xenophon is rarely portrayed as one of the leading literary figures, or thinkers, of his age: when viewed as a philosopher, he is overshadowed by his great contemporary Plato, and as a historian, he is inevitably, and unfavorably, compared with (...) Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Oxyrhynchus historian. Dillery has gallantly attempted an assessment of Xenophon, arguing that a consistent worldview can be constructed from his works (both historical and philosophical), and that the interpretation which thus emerges shows him to be a perceptive and intelligent, albeit disillusioned, observer of his age. As the author puts it, “I do not attempt to study him as a great, or even good historian. I mean instead to study him as an interpreter, a voice of his age; a thoughtful if not brilliant man who tried to understand his times” (196). The title should not mislead the reader into thinking that this book is primarily concerned with the Hellenica (the Penguin edition translates this text as A History of My Times); on the contrary, although his central burden is to elucidate a number of problematical aspects of the Hellenica, Dillery provides much discussion of the Anabasis, the Cyropaedeia, the Memorabilia, Agesilaus, and the Constitution of the Spartans as well.Dillery’s effort, a work essentially of literary analysis and interpretation, [End Page 167] focuses on the mind of Xenophon as revealed in his writings, and it carefully constructs an integrated reading of Xenophontic texts which, if not absolutely compelling, at least offers suggestive and intriguing insights into the author and his world. Xenophon is presented as a man whose personality and outlook were heavily influenced by three individuals: Socrates, his teacher and mentor; the Persian prince Cyrus, in whose service he marched with the Ten Thousand; and the Spartan king Agesilaus, whose lifelong friend and admirer he became. Disillusioned by the fate of each of his heroes—Socrates’ trial and conviction by the Athenian democracy, Cyrus’ death at the Battle of Cunaxa, and Agesilaus’ inglorious end as a mercenary commander after Sparta’s precipitous decline following Leuctra—Xenophon struggled to make sense of his world and the age through which he lived. This is the theme of the book, to offer an explanation of how Xenophon tried to understand the turbulent and dismally confusing events of the late fifth and early fourth century, which formed the core of his Hellenica.Two early problems addressed concern the beginning and the end of the history, and its composition. Dillery discusses the famous closing remark of the Hellenica, in which Xenophon expresses frustration that the Battle of Mantinea (362) did not produce order and stability in the Greek world, that it settled nothing, although apparently many expected that it would. Why then did Xenophon end his history at this point? Dillery suggests that this was a fitting conclusion precisely because it emphasized “a profound truth about the Greek world: disorder was the typical condition of Greece... a shattering realization for a man [Xenophon] committed to panhellenic ideals and to order in every facet of his world” (27). As for its opening, Dillery adopts the view that the text down to 2.3.10 was written early, was intended to complete Thucydides’ unfinished work, and was influenced by Thucydides’ methods. The second part, he argues, was written as a whole, more than twenty-five years later. Regarding the absence of a preface, he suggests that Xenophon may have wished to emphasize that the work was not unified by a single, central issue and therefore did not merit a formal introduction.Dillery also argues that Xenophon, especially as a result of his experiences with the Ten Thousand and then while in Spartan service under Agesilaus in Asia Minor, came to appreciate the necessity of good order in society, both in the military camp and on campaign as well as in the political community, and the importance of good leadership. Like others among his contemporaries, he also developed strong notions of utopianism and panhellenism, and the failure of... (shrink)

Re-examination of the manuscript of John Farey's unpublished mineral survey of south-east Sutherland, together with his published opinions on the significance of fossils from the Brora Coalfield and his interpretation of the stratigraphy of that coalfield, leaves no doubt that, contrary to the accepted view, Farey did not recognise the Mesozoic age of the Brora Coalfield but thought of it as Carboniferous. Farey was a Smithian geologist, and the difficulty he had in interpreting unfamiliar evidence from Brora illustrates the difficulties (...) experienced by bio-stratigraphers in the 1810s when fossil ranges were imperfectly understood. Evidence is presented which suggests that the first geologist to recognise the Mesozoic age of the Brora beds may have been John MacCulloch. (shrink)

Reprint, in paper covers, of the Columbia U. Press edition of 1990. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This chapter extends biogenetic structural theory to a consideration of the biopsychological principles underlying higher phases of consciousness, particularly those attained by the systematic exploration of consciousness called contemplation. The concepts of psychic energy, flow, centeredness, energy circulation, and dreambody are explored as presented in various mystical traditions, and a model of the underlying neurophysiology is presented in terms of ergotropic-trophotropic tuning. The psychophysiology of various forms of meditation together with emergent peak experiences is examined and integrated into the ergotropic-trophotropic (...) tuning model. Structural invariance of ergotropic-trophotropic tuning as well as invariant aspects of contemplation across different cultures and associated with different symbol systems is considered. Finally the nature and implications of Void Consciousness, God Consciousness, or Abssolute Unitary Being are examined. (shrink)

Peter Brooks, Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000, x + 207 pp.

The logic of Leviathan is formally made to derive commonwealth and the rights of sovereignty (the obligations of subjects, read the other way around) from an elaborate process beginning in the physiology of human perception and passions, through language and reason, into the state of nature (the war of all against all) and, finally, under the direction of the laws of nature, to a collective and formal resignation of all their natural rights to create an absolute sovereign. This process of (...) ‘instituting’ the sovereignty stamps the resulting sovereign with legitimacy. Early in the Second Part of Leviathan, however, Hobbes moves to attach all the rights and legitimacy of that instituted sovereignty onto what he calls ‘Despotical Dominion’, the power created when a conqueror exacts a promise from the conquered on pain of immediate death. The result is to translate all that Hobbes has said about sovereignty in general into a defence of the legitimacy of this crude force and violence. The whole of Leviathan's political argument is coloured, then, by this strategy and the best reading of it turns out to be the oldest one—that it is a defence of tyrannical power. (shrink)

The number of large research projects in the fields of identity, privacy and related topics has burgeoned in recent years. This is a development of great importance to academic scholarship but also to a wider range of audiences and ‘users’, including policy-makers and regulators, the information and communication technology industries, and the general public. New issues have been spotlighted as we move into what some call ‘surveillance societies’, along with a clearer sense of the problems created, and the advantages afforded, (...) by the ability of governments and businesses to identify people and groups, monitor and track their behaviour ad movements, provide them with services at home, in the workplace, online, and in the streets, and enable them to engage in important transactions involving flows of information as well as money. New ways of mitigating adverse effects and enhancing the benefits have been explored, although we are only near the beginning of thinking through and acting on .. (shrink)

In an article somewhat ironically entitled “Disambiguating Clinical Intentions,” Lynn Jansen promotes an idea that should be bewildering to anyone familiar with the literature on the intention/foresight distinction. According to Jansen, “intention” has two commonsense meanings, one of which is equivalent to “foresight.” Consequently, questions about intention are “infected” with ambiguity—people cannot tell what they mean and do not know how to answer them. This hypothesis is unsupported by evidence, but Jansen states it as if it were accepted fact. In (...) this reply, we make explicit the multiple misrepresentations she has employed to make her hypothesis seem plausible. We also point out the ways in which it defies common sense. In particular, Jansen applies her thesis only to recent empirical research on the intentions of doctors, totally ignoring the widespread confusion that her assertion would imply in everyday life, in law, and indeed in religious and philosophical writings concerning the intention/foresight distinction and the Principle of Double Effect. (shrink)

There often appears to be a striking correspondence between mythic stories and aspects of reality. We will examine the processes of creative imagination within a neurobiological frame and suggest a theory that may explain the functions of myth in relation to the hidden aspects of reality. Myth is peppered with archetypal entities and interactions that operate to reveal hidden processes in reality that are relative to the human condition. The imagery in myths in a sense “sustains the true.” That is, (...) mythopoetic imagery keeps the interpretive process in experience closer to the actual nature of reality than the rational faculties operating alone are able to do. Indeed, whereas rationalizing can easily lead us awry, genuine myth rarely does. Explanations of events offered by cultures around the world are frequently couched in terms of mythic themes and events. An important function of myth is to provide a “field of tropes” that in‐forms the lived experience of people. This paper focuses especially on those aspects of myth that represent facets of the quantum universe and give us clues as to the relationship between consciousness, symbolism, and reality. (shrink)

Biogenetic structural theory takes an entrainment view of the nature of consciousness. Human consciousness is a function of the brain and is mediated by networks of living neural cells that develop from initial, neurognostic models of self and world. Models interact or "entrain" as a constantly changing field of experience. The entire population of neural models that may potentially entrain within the field of consciousness is called the "cognized environment.” The organization of the network of cells (the "conscious network") mediating (...) consciousness operates according to a circadian cycle. Recurrent phases of consciousness are cognized and labelled. Transformations between phases of consciousness are often ritually controlled by society in order to control experiences that are in turn interpreted in terms of the society's cosmology. Recent developments in the biogenetic structural study of consciousness are summarized, including studies of transpersonal experiences, the development of consciousness in early life, and the advantages of neurophenomenology. (shrink)