Über die weitreichende Bedeutung von Briefwechseln für die Formierung der frühneuzeitlichen Gelehrtenrepublik besteht seit längerem ein für geisteswissenschaftliche Verhältnisse ungewöhnlicher Konsens. Die großen Briefwechsel von Grotius, Leibniz oder Haller machen deutlich, dass die Innovationsdynamik der Gelehrtenkultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert im Wesentlichen auf Kommunikationsstrukturen zurückzuführen ist, die durch Korrespondenzen und durch die damit verbundenen Netzwerke etabliert wurden. Obwohl der in Halle lehrende Jurist und Philosoph Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) zu den,,schlechthin zentralen Persönlichkeiten" der deutschen und - über deren Rezeption - (...) auch der europäischen Aufklärung gehört, ist eine Edition seiner Korrespondenz zwar verschiedentlich als Desiderat benannt, tatsächlich aber noch nie in Angriff genommen worden. Die hier vorgelegte Ausgabe will diesem Desiderat abhelfen und bietet eine vollständige und kommentierte Edition der aktiven und passiven Korrespondenz von Christian Thomasius. Damit soll bislang unbekanntes Quellenmaterial erschlossen und über die Kommentierung ausgewertet werden, das einerseits der Erforschung des Oeuvre von Christian Thomasius und seinem Umfeld neue Impulse geben wird und andererseits geeignet ist, wichtige Aufschlüsse über die frühaufklärerische Gelehrtenkultur im Übergang vom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert zu verschaffen. Hierbei ist sowohl an die Veränderungen innerhalb der Kommunikationsstrukturen der Res publica litteraria zu Beginn der Aufklärung als auch - und zwar in erster Linie - an die Rekonstruktion der Genese und der Lösung von einzelnen theoretischen wie praktischen Problemen im Kontext der im ausgehenden 17. Jahrhundert sich vollziehenden sozialen und politischen Veränderungen zu denken. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of souls and (...) took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

How can qualitative research methods be a tool for social change? Echoing the 'scandal of particularity' at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline.

This essay offers a reaction to the recent resurgence of presentism in the philosophy of time. What is of particular interest in this renaissance is that a number of recent arguments supporting presentism are crafted in an untypically naturalistic vein, breathing new life into a metaphysics of time with a bad track record of co-habitation with modern physics. Against this trend, the present essay argues that the pressure on presentism exerted by special relativity and its core lesson of Lorentz symmetry (...) cannot easily be shirked. A categorization of presentist responses to this pressure is offered. As a case in point, I analyze a recent argument by Monton (2006) presenting a case for the compatibility of presentism with quantum gravity. Monton claims that this compatibility arises because there are quantum theories of gravity that use fixed foliations of spacetime and that such fixed foliations provide a natural home for a metaphysically robust notion of the present. A careful analysis leaves Monton's argument wanting. In sum, the prospects of presentism to be alleviated from the stress applied by fundamental physics are faint. (shrink)

Structural realist interpretations of generally relativistic spacetimes have recently come to enjoy a remarkable degree of popularity among philosophers. I present a challenge to these structuralist interpretations that arises from considering cosmological models in general relativity. As a consequence of their high degree of spacetime symmetry, these models resist a structuralist interpretation. I then evaluate the various strategies available to the structuralist to react to this challenge. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 9500 Gilman Drive, 0119, (...) University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093‐0119; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Christian Garves Texte wurden im späten 18. Jahrhundert als heraustragende Beispiele für eine gelehrte und populäre Schreibweise bewundert. Zugleich genoss der Breslauer Aufklärer auch unter Fachkollegen aus der Philosophie und der Philologie große Reputation. Mit seinen Übersetzungen und Kommentaren englischer Autoren und lateinischer Klassiker beeinflusste er Generationen von Literaten und Philosophen. Der Band bietet erstmalig eine zwiesprachige Edition seiner frühen Dissertation zur Logik sowie seine ebenso berühmte wie umstrittene Studie zum Verhältnis von 'Moral und Politik'. Ergänzt wird diese Auswahl aus (...) seinen monographischen Arbeiten durch kommentierte Editionen von Aufsätzen, dem Kommentar zur Fergussson-Übersetzung sowie repräsentative Rezensionen. (shrink)

The present volume collects essays on the philosophical foundations of quantum theories of gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and string theory. Central for philosophical concerns is quantum gravity's suggestion that space and time, or spacetime, may not exist fundamentally, but instead be a derivative entity emerging from non-spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. In the spirit of naturalised metaphysics, contributions to this volume consider the philosophical implications of this suggestion. In turn, philosophical methods and insights are brought to bear on the (...) foundations of quantum gravity itself. For instance, the idea of functionalism, borrowed from the philosophy of mind and discussed by several essays, exemplifies this mutual interaction the collection seeks to foster. (shrink)

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to (...) gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e. as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization. (shrink)

This article explores Muslim conversion to Christianity using a body of hagio-graphical sources in Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, and Latin. Through these lives of Christian martyrs, the article seeks to understand why Muslims undertook the surprising journey from “mosque to church” in the early centuries after the conquests. Many studies of Islamization are teleological, aiming to explain the large-scale conversion of the Middle East by the end of the Crusades. In contrast, this article aims to show why Islamization—especially in (...) the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid periods—could be highly contingent, even fragile, at a time when Muslims formed a numerical minority in many regions under their control. (shrink)

Defining ‘presentism’ in a way that saves it from being trivially false yet metaphysically substantively distinct from eternalism is no mean feat, as the first part of this collection testifies. In Wuthrich (forthcoming), I have offered an attempt to achieve just this, arguing that this is best done in the context of modern spacetime theories. Here, I shall refrain from going through all the motions again and simply state the characterization of an ersatzist version of presentism as it has emerged (...) from considerations there. Any acceptable formulation of presentism should remain neutral among competing spacetime theories in order to enable the present project of assessing the compatibility of presentism with various theories of modern physics, including both spacetime theories and theories of physical processes situated in a spatiotemporal setting. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of triviality (...) and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal set theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a (...) mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets. (shrink)

Wittgenstein wrote: “No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the brain correlated with associating or with thinking; so that it would be impossible to read off thought-processes from brain processes.” In general, he rejects what he calls “psycho-physical parallelism.” In Sect. 1, I explain Wittgenstein’s position on this topic and how his followers defend it. In Sect. 2, I argue against Wittgenstein, contending that there is “thought” in a wider sense and that it (...) can be “manifested” without expression. Thought does not need to be ordinarily expressed or even expressible, and it can be read off from the brain, provided one has sufficient technology, data, and understanding of the subject’s interaction with the environment. In Sect. 3, I offer results from brain-science in support of my claims. (shrink)

The situationist movement in psychology and, more recently, in philosophy has been associated with a number of striking claims, including that most people do not have the moral virtues and vices, that any ethical theory which is wedded to such character traits is empirically inadequate, and that much of our behavior is causally influenced, to significant degrees, by psychological influences about which we are often unaware. Yet Christian philosophers have had virtually nothing to say about situationist claims. The goal of (...) this paper is to consider whether Christians should start to be worried about them. (shrink)

This essay considers and evaluates recent results and arguments from classical chaotic systems theory and non-relativistic quantum mechanics that pertain to the question of whether our world is deterministic or indeterministic. While the classical results are inconclusive, quantum mechanics is often assumed to establish indeterminism insofar as the measurement process involves an ineliminable stochastic element, even though the dynamics between two measurements is considered fully deterministic. While this latter claim concerning the Schrödinger evolution must be qualified, the former fully depends (...) on a resolution of the measurement problem. Two alleged proofs that nature is indeterministic, relying, in turn, on Gleason's theorem and Conway and Kochen's recent 'free will theorem', are shown to be wanting qua proofs of indeterminism. We are thus left with the conclusion that the determinism question remains open. (shrink)

Ob die Kategorien schon bei der Wahrnehmung eine Rolle spielen, wird von Kant-Interpreten unterschiedlich gesehen. Peter Rohs etwa argumentiert für eine Unabhängigkeit und Selbständigkeit der Wahrnehmung gegenüber dem Verstand. Die intuitive Synthesis der Einbildungskraft müsse auf eigenen Füßen stehen können und Bilder und „singuläre Sinne“ der Anwendung der Begriffe vorausgehen. McDowell hingegen spricht sich gegen eine solche Selbständigkeit der Wahrnehmung aus. Setzte man sie voraus, käme der Verstand immer zu spät . Die Argumente beider Seiten sollen am Text Kants untersucht (...) werden . Es liegt hier ein echtes Sachproblem vor. Die gegenwärtige, hauptsächlich amerikanische Diskussion um eine etwaige Notwendigkeit kognitiver Funktionen bei der Wahrnehmung stößt auf ganz ähnliche Probleme wie wir sie schon bei Kant finden, nur daß man sich dieser Ähnlichkeit außerhalb von Kantkreisen oft nicht bewußt zu sein scheint. (shrink)

In recent centuries Christians of various denominations have endorsed many different political philosophies that they see as being truly biblical in their approach. Over this time there has been an increasing hostility, by some Christians, towards free markets and political philosophies that hold human liberty as the highest goal such as libertarianism and classical liberalism. This criticism is unwarranted and misplaced as libertarianism and free markets are not only compatible with Christianity, they are also the most biblically sound of (...) all economics systems and political philosophies endorsed by Christians today. Therefore, this paper will argue that Christians of all denominations should endorse free markets and libertarianism if they wish to create a world that follows biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus. (shrink)

In the moral and spiritual vacuum left in Russia by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, some of the thinkers who first opposed the Leninist revolution of 1917 have come to a new prominence, and among these is the religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). He expressed a passionate protest against the revolution and was clearly the most comprehensive contemporary critic of the revolutionary project from a Christian perspective. From his consistently religious perspective he foresaw with precision much of (...) the inhuman and tyrannical potential of the revolutionary project. (shrink)

The paper advances the conceptual understanding of responsible leadership and develops an empirical scale of discursive responsible leadership. The concept of responsible leadership presented here draws on deliberative practices and discursive conflict resolution, combining the macro-view of the business firm as a political actor with the micro-view of leadership. Ideal responsible leadership conduct thereby goes beyond the dyadic leader–follower interaction to include all stakeholders. The paper offers a definition and operationalization of responsible leadership. The studies that have been conducted to (...) develop the discursive responsible leadership scale validated the scale, discriminated it from other leadership scales, and demonstrated its utility in affecting unethical behavior and job satisfaction in organizations. Responsible leadership is shown to be first, dependent on the hierarchical level in an organization; second, capable of reducing unethical treatment of employees; and finally, a means of enhancing the job satisfaction of employees. The paper concludes with study limitations, future research directions and practical implications. (shrink)

What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical realism (...) and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive,_ What Is a Person?_ offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. (shrink)

Arab Christians and the Qurʾan from the Origins of Islam to the Medieval Period. Edited by Mark Beaumont. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 35. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xiv + 216. $120, €104.

Jean-Marc Rohrbasser propose une version française de la biographie post mortem de Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) rédigée par le philosophe allemand Christian Wolff (1679-1754), et originellement publiée dans les Actes des Savants (Acta Eruditorum) de juillet 1717. Cette version française a été établie à partir de la traduction allemande que l'on trouve dans le volume 21 des Oeuvres complètes de Wolff.

Wittgenstein in his later years thought about experiences of meaning and aspect change. Do such experiences matter? Or would a meaning- or aspect-blind person not lose much? Moreover, is this a matter of aesthetics or epistemology? To get a better perspective on these matters, I will introduce distinctions between certain subjective and objective aspects, namely feelings of our inner psychological states versus fine-tuned objective experiences of the outer world. It seems to me that in his discussion of meaning-blindness, Wittgenstein unhappily (...) floats between these two extremes, the subjective and the objective. I will also introduce some notions from Kant's aesthetics, to get a better understanding of the interplay between feeling and meaning. This will shed some new light on Wittgenstein's enquiry into meaning- and aspect-blindness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article discusses the reception of Schelling’s philosophy by the young Paul Tillich. During his study on the theological faculty of the University of Halle from 1905 until 1907 Tillich was influenced by the Fichte interpretation of Fritz Medicus. Tillich uses Fichte’s philosophy as a theoretical frame for a modern theology. The problems from this Fichte reception lay in the concept of freedom as autonomy. In Schelling’s philosophy, especially in his concept of freedom as the possibility to come into contradiction (...) with oneself, the young Tillich finds the solution for these problems. (shrink)

This article proposes a model for the project of integrating the field of clinical psychology with Catholic intellectual tradition. “Integration” here is understood as the project by which psychology’s understanding of the human person is illuminated and perfected by drawing on anthropological knowledge from outside psychology, specifically from Catholic philosophy and divine revelation. The article sets forth a definition of integration in the form of six principles. Ratherthan formulating the principles as descriptive premises, they are formulated as habits of mind, (...) intellectual qualities that one possesses, and when possessed, capacitate one to do Christian scholarly integration. The model is flexible enough to be adapted for use in integrating other social sciences, as well as, to some degree, the hard sciences. (shrink)

This paper first examines surviving testimonies on the doctrine of the Great Year in Heraclitus and attempts to demonstrate the reliability of Aëtius’ version handed down by the mss., according to which the Great Year is equal to 18,000 solar years. On the basis of such evidence it is also possible to newly examine Diogenes of Babylon’s views about this topic. In the second part, the paper better defines the relationship between the Great Year and the theory of cosmic conflagration. (...) It argues that in the sources at our disposal there are enough elements to credit Heraclitus with the doctrine of Ekpyrosis, although, in all probability, the philosopher never provided an in-depth description of it. Finally, the same problem is analysed in relation to Diogenes of Babylon. In the most mature phase of his career, this Stoic departed from the Ekpyrosis doctrine of the early Stoics and especially of his master Chrysippus. The paper formulates some hypotheses on the reasons for this choice (arguing that it most probably reflects an original attitude towards Heraclitus on Diogenes’ part) and highlights that it was hardly an isolated, ‘heterodox’ stance during the final phase of the early Stoa. (shrink)

Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

This is an edited transcript of a conversation to be included in the collection "Conversations on Rational Choice". The conversation was conducted in Munich on 7 and 9 February 2016.

Since a couple of decades, the notion of a precautionary principle plays a central and increasingly influential role in international as well as national policy and regulation regarding the environment and the use of technology. Urging society to take action in the face of potential risks of human activities in these areas, the recent focus on climate change has further sharpened the importance of this idea. However, the idea of a precautionary principle has also been problematised and criticised by scientists, (...) scholars and policy activists, and been accused of almost every intellectual sin imaginable: unclarity, impracticality, arbitrariness and moral as well as political unsoundness. In that light, the very idea of precaution as an ideal for policy making rather comes out as a dead end. On the basis of these contrasting starting points, Christian Munthe undertakes an innovative, in-depth philosophical analysis of what the idea of a precautionary principle is and should be about. A novel theory of the ethics of imposing risks is developed and used as a foundation for defending the idea of precaution in environmental and technological policy making against its critics, while at the same time avoiding a number of identified flaws. The theory is shown to have far-reaching consequences for areas such as bio-, information- and nuclear technology, and global environmental policy in areas such as climate change. The author argues that, while the price we pay for precaution must not be too high, we have to be prepared to pay it in order to act ethically defensible. A number of practical suggestions for precautionary regulation and policy making are made on the basis of this, and some challenges to basic ethical theory as well as consumerist societies, the global political order and liberal democracy are identified. (shrink)