On tente ici de mieux cerner la légitimité de la désobéissance civile en démocratie, car ces deux concepts et les réalités correspondantes paraissent incompatibles de prime abord. We try here better to understand the legitimacy of civil disobedience in a democracy, since those two concepts and their corresponding realities seem so incompatible at first.

Some feminist discourses blame some men for gender inequality, gender domination, and gender-based violence. Some women use such discourse as a perfect scenario to criticize some men’s behavior. Indeed, they usually do so with Oppressed Traditional Masculinities but not with Dominant Traditional Masculinities, who are the men who were violent with those women and with whom some of those women chose to have relationships. However, there have always been men who have been on the side of women and have never (...) committed violence against them. Therefore, New Alternative Masculinities reject being indicated as guilty of the violence committed against women by DTM. Through a communicative approach, applying six semi-structured interviews with a communicative orientation and a communicative data analysis of all information, this article explores both women’s communicative acts that blame OTM for what DTM have done to women and NAM’s reactions to these accusations to stop such blaming to make it possible to overcome hegemonic discourses. (shrink)

Consolation is needed when a human being suffers (i.e. feels alienated from him-or herself, from other people, from the world or from his or her ultimate source of meaning). The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of consolation. Tape-recorded narrative interviews were carried out with 18 professionals from various spheres. The transcribed interviews were interpreted hermeneutically. A model of consolation is outlined in a drawing. It states that the mediator and the receiver of (...) class='Hi'>consolation must become ready for consolation before it can take place. To be ready means to be present and available. Availability means expressing suffering and listening respectively, and thereby opening up for communion and consoling dialogue. Communion brings about contact with the sacred dimension that human beings share and thus with goodness, light, joy, beauty and life. Consolation involves a shift of perspective and an experience of meaning in spite of suffering. (shrink)

Boethius composed the Consolatio Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture. He had been condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, (...) and Dante were inspired by it. In England it was rendered into Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the `Menippean' texture have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and of literature ever since. Professor Walsh has included an introduction and explanatory notes which combined with his new translation make the text accessible to general readers and scholars alike. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the Stoic view on attachment to external goods, or what the Stoics call “indifferents.” Attachment is problematic, on the Stoic view, because it exposes us to loss and exacerbates the fragility that comes with needing others and things. The Stoics argue that we can build resilience through a robust reeducation of ordinary emotions and routine practice in psychological risk management techniques. Through a focus on selected writings of Seneca as well as Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and (...) Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, I nonetheless ask whether Stoicism leaves any room for grief and distress. I argue that it does, and that consolation comes not from a retreat to some inner citadel, but from the support and sustenance of social connections. (shrink)

Although consolation is one of the classic religious subjects it plays no role in the current debate about religious emotions. One reason for this neglect could be that this debate is mostly based on classical emotions such as joy and fear, love and hope, and that consolation is not understood as an emotion. This paper tries to show that consolation in fact can and should be seen as an emotion. After naming and refuting some reasons that speak (...) against taking consolation to be an emotion, I will explain how consolation can be positively conceptualized as an emotion within a recent theory of emotions. It will be decisive to see that the experience of consolation can be understood not only hedonistically-qualitatively, but also intentionally. This structural conception allows for a differentiated description of various types of consolation as an emotion, also, in the tradition of William James, of a secular as well as a religious form of consolation. (shrink)

The article focuses on the argumentative character of the eulogy, a speech that is part of a funeral ritual and serves to console the community of the bereaved. It aims to contribute to the understanding of eulogy as a specific argumentative practice by identifying the argumentative patterns that occur in it. A pragma-dialectical approach to the study of argumentation is used, allowing for the description of prototypical (theoretically expected) and stereotypical (frequent in use) argumentative patterns. To probe the empirical plausibility (...) of the argumentative character of eulogy, the research is limited to a type of secular eulogy that was historically established in Czechoslovakia during the communist period (1948–1989). This type is chosen here for pragmatic reasons (easy access to data and researcher’s familiarity with the language of the data). It is shown that in secular eulogy, arguments in favour of reconciliation with death and honouring the deceased are typically presented. Prototypical and stereotypical patterns are examined with concern for the structure of these arguments, and the argumentative and content analysis is extended by identification of specific propositional content of sub-arguments. It is also proposed examining the variability of argumentative patterns with respect to the type of the deceased (male/female, short/long life experience, significant/insignificant social status). (shrink)

Psychiatric nurses frequently encounter suicidal patients. Caring for such patients often raises ethical questions and dilemmas. The research question for this study was: 'What understandings are revealed in texts about consolation and psychiatric nurses' responses to suicidal patients?' A Gadamerian approach guided re-interpretation of published texts. Through synthesizing four interpretive phases, a comprehensive interpretation emerged. This revealed being 'at home' with self, or an ethical way of being, as a hermeneutic understanding of a way to become ready to mediate (...) consolation with suicidal patients. Trustworthiness was addressed by means of the qualities of auditability, credibility and confirmability. This re-interpretation adds to nursing knowledge, enhances understanding of previous research findings, provides pre-understanding for further research and reveals the value of hermeneutic inquiry in nursing. It also deepens understanding of a published model of consolation. These understandings may help to guide nurses who are struggling with suicidal patients. (shrink)

This essay places More's Sadness of Christ in the ancient genre of consolatio. Arising out of Socrates’ use of philosophy as a means of consolation in the Phaedo, the genre was epitomized in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. In the genre, philosophy, with the help of poetry and rhetoric, provides moral remedies to suffering man with the hope of reordering his passions, intellect, and will to their true good. In other words, the genre of consolatio is philosophy's attempt to (...) provide a solution to the moral problem of evil. Thomas More's Sadness of Christ is a Christian version of this ancient genre. While appropriating philosophical principles and images, More recasts those principles and images in the light of faith, and gives the Christian martyr's proper preparation for death and suffering by reordering his passions and intellect to their proper good through consolation in prayer and meditation on the sufferings of Christ. (shrink)

The purpose of this phenomenological-hermeneutic study was to illuminate the meaning of being in ethically difficult care situations. The participants were 20 enrolled nurses employed in six intensive care units in Sweden. The results reveal a complex human process manifested in relation to one’s inner self and the other person, which transforms desolation into consolation through becoming present to the suffering other when perceiving fragility rather than tragedy. The main point of significance here is for all health professionals to (...) create an ethical work environment and strive for praxis that fosters ‘athomeness’, which renders us free to transform desolation into consolation. Consolation is of significance in ethics because it makes us available and helps us to fulfil the demands of life, while desolation makes us unavailable to others. (shrink)

Boethius was a Roman senator who rose to high office under the Gothic king Theoderic the Great. He translated into Latin all he knew of Plato and Aristotle, and was profoundly interested in the issues of theology and philosophy. The Consolations were written while he awaited the execution of a tyrannical death sentence. The Consolations of Philosophy have been translated into English by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I. This scholarly study by Henry Chadwick, the first this century (...) since the War, has stimulated new interest in these remarkable works. (shrink)

George McClure offers here a far-reaching analysis of the role of consolation in Italian Renaissance culture, showing how the humanists' interest in despair, and their effort to open up this realm in both social and personal terms, signaled a shift toward a heightened secularization in European thought. Analyzing works by fourteenth-and fifteenth-century writers, from Petrarch to Marsilio Ficino, McClure examines the treatment of such problems as bereavement, fear of death, illness, despair, and misfortune. These writers, who evinced a belief (...) in the legitimacy of secular sadness, tried to forge a wisdom that in their view dealt more realistically with the art of living and dying than did the disputations of scholastic philosophy and theology. Arguing that consolatory concerns helped spur the revival of classical schools of psychological thought, McClure reveals that the humanists sought comfort from once-neglected troves of Stoic, Peripatetic, Epicurean, Platonic, and Christian thought. He contends that the humanists' pursuit of solace and their duty as consolers provided not only a forum but perhaps also an incentive for the articulation of prominent Renaissance themes concerning immortality, the dignity of man, and the sanctity of worldly endeavor. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In the Consolation of Ontology, Czech poet-philosopher Egon Bondy examines the substantial model of reality — the notion that there is some sort of substance, some "thing", idea, being, or principle that creates, underlies, transcends, or gives meaning to the universe in which we live. He shows how the substantial model, in both its theistic and mechanical materialist versions, is logically untenable and dangerous in its consequences. From there, Bondy shows how the nonsubstantial alternative — prefigured in the thinking (...) of cultures that developed independently of Greece — is simpler and more logically consistent. More importantly, it is free from the negative consequences of the substantial model and instead opens the way toward genuine human freedom, creativity, and responsibility, toward a corresponding and supportive form of social organization, and toward an unclouded understanding of ontological reality. Previously untranslated, the book asks that we leave behind comfortable assumptions and understand how the struggles for a genuinely human future and for ontological clarity presuppose each other and are mutually interdependent. (shrink)

The first collection of philosophical essays devoted to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most widely read and influential texts in medieval Europe. Thirteen essays, reflecting the diverse approaches taken in contemporary scholarship, attend to its literary features and philosophical content, and demonstrate its ongoing vitality.

In seventeen secular sermons, composed in a style at once grave, elegant, and concise, Ignatieff offers us his digest of the wisdom—the wisdom of consolation—that he has sought to find in writings as old as the book of Job and as recent as some of the letters of Václav Havel. Concluding the book, Ignatieff says of the authors he has surveyed that the “consolation they offer, it seems to me, lies in their example, in their courage and lucidity, (...) and in their determination to leave something behind that might console us.” Reduced to its basic argumentative structure, then, the book is about the ways in which the desire to find consolation could itself be consoling.This self-reinforcing rhetorical maneuver, not wholly reassuring, is undermined by what some of the selected writers actually believed. Michel de Montaigne, for instance, came in his later years to think that, provided we have the consciousness of simply being alive, “we would have no need for consolation at all.” David Hume, noting the debilities of reason and seeing much of the world as beyond the grasp of human understanding, concluded that “we should abandon the ground of consolation altogether.” Karl Marx, his mind fixed on a post-revolutionary world, envisioned a “utopia beyond the need for consolation.” Abraham Lincoln, whom Ignatieff presents in the most saintly and tragic of colors, had “no secure footing in faith,” but turned to biblical traditions calling for us “to forswear vengeance and judgment.” And what is consoling about such traditions? “That we are not condemned to live imprisoned in the rhetoric, foolishness, and mendacity of the present.” But that is where Lincoln lived, inconsolably, and where we too live.Ignatieff begins his book, and his most complex of sermons, with Job. Rendered truly miserable by God—his crops and animals destroyed, his family annihilated, his body burning with pain—Job never wavers in his faith. The God who had made him suffer is the God in whom Job places all his trust. Despite advice from friends to confess his wrongs, Job admits of nothing. He wants only to understand, and from God himself, why he suffers. The answer he gets is that he has no right to ask, for to ask is to challenge the almighty authority of God. Ignatieff writes that “God demands absolute obedience as the condition of consolation,” but the text nowhere has God offering consolation of any kind on any terms to Job. His lands and animals are returned to him and he is given a new family, but his inquiries to God go unanswered. Negotiation is out of the question. Compensated, he is not consoled.Wherever he looks—and he looks far and wide in his reading—Ignatieff wants to find consolation. But when in this book he comes to the heroic figure of Primo Levi, who saw with utmost clarity the power of humankind to do evil, Ignatieff at last acknowledges the elusiveness of consolation: “History has no consolations to offer because it never ends and its meaning is never settled.” Nonetheless, he goes on to say, of the writers he has presented, that “we should keep faith with them and defend the truths they bequeathed to us.” Alas, that legacy leads us again and again to see, despite Ignatieff's valiant efforts, just how much of life is inconsolable. (shrink)

Addresses the argument of Boethius's masterpiece, the Consolation of Philosophy. It shows that Boethius, the author, juxtaposes a complex view of happiness in which it is vulnerable to fortune, with a monolithic view in which it is identified with the highest good – God. It also considers the treatment of divine providence and how it can be reconciled with the existence of chance and with human freedom.

Devoted to a detailed discussion of Boethius's later treatment, at the end of the Consolation of Philosophy, of the problem of divine prescience and human free will. It analyzes Boethius's conception of eternity and argues that it need not involve timelessness: what is important, rather, is that God lives in an eternal present. It argues that Boethius was blind to the distinctions of scope within propositions that many later thinkers saw as the heart of the problem of prescience.

_A penetrating and provocative exploration of human mortality, from Epicurus to Joan Didion_ For those who don’t believe in an afterlife, the wisdom of the ages offers four great consolations for mortality: that death is benign and good; that mortal life provides its own kind of immortality; that true immortality would be awful; and that we experience the kinds of losses in life that we will eventually face in death. Can any of these consolations honestly reconcile us to our inevitable (...) demise? In this timely book, Andrew Stark tests the psychological truth of these consolations and searches our collective literary, philosophical, and cultural traditions for answers to the question of how we, in the twenty-first century, might accept our mortal condition. Ranging from Epicurus and Heidegger to bucket lists, the flaming out of rock stars, and the retiring of sports jerseys, Stark’s poignant and learned exploration shows how these consolations, taken together, reveal death as a blessing no matter how much we may love life. (shrink)

In the Consolation of Ontology, Czech poet-philosopher Egon Bondy examines the substantial model of reality — the notion that there is some sort of substance, some "thing", idea, being, or principle that creates, underlies, transcends, or gives meaning to the universe in which we live. He shows how the substantial model, in both its theistic and mechanical materialist versions, is logically untenable and dangerous in its consequences. From there, Bondy shows how the nonsubstantial alternative — prefigured in the thinking (...) of cultures that developed independently of Greece — is simpler and more logically consistent. More importantly, it is free from the negative consequences of the substantial model and instead opens the way toward genuine human freedom, creativity, and responsibility, toward a corresponding and supportive form of social organization, and toward an unclouded understanding of ontological reality. Previously untranslated, the book asks that we leave behind comfortable assumptions and understand how the struggles for a genuinely human future and for ontological clarity presuppose each other and are mutually interdependent. (shrink)

Jerome is best remembered as the author of the Vulgate translation of the Bible. But he was also an untiring letter-writer. Among the many letters which have survived are several written to friends who have suffered recent bereavement. In the most impressive of these, Letter 60, Jerome consoles Heliodorus, Bishop of Altinum in north-east Italy, on the early death of his young nephew Nepotianus. The letter is composed from a thoroughly Christian perspective; but it belongs to a tradition of consolatory (...) literature that reaches far back into the pagan world. In this commentary, Professor Scourfield places the letter in the context of this consolatory tradition, showing how in the late fourth century a highly literate Christian author could take over pagan ideas and put them to Christian use. The commentary also includes a full discussion of matters of language and style, theology and exegesis, as well as the historical background. There is a freshly revised text, as well as a completely new translation of the Letter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 173 ducente un monde interamente unificato dall'azione divina. Ma, come egli stesso ritiene di avere mostrato nell'altro sue libro, Le probl~raede l'ttre chezAristote, questo fu soltanto l'ideale di Aristotele, mentre la sua filosofia effettiva ne rimase infinitamente Iontana. L'etica di Aristotele si pu6 definire allora un umanesimo tragieo: umanesimo, in quanto presuppons la fiducia nell'uomo, nella sua ricerca e nella sua azione; tragieo, in quanto si costituisce (...) proprio nella distanza che separa l'uomo da Die: Aristotele invita l'uomo a volere tutto il possibile, ma solo il possibile, e a lasciare il resto agli dei (pp. 174-177). Nell'appendice, dedicata al tema dell'amieizia in Aristotele, I'A. mostra come anche questa virtfl, analogamente alla prudenza, sia espressione dell'imperfezione dell'uomo, il quale, non potendo trovare la propria felicit~ nella contemplazione e nelI'amore dise stesso, come Die, la cerca nel riconoscimento e nell'amore degli altri (pp. 179-183). Nel complesso si deve ammettere che lo studio dell'A. ~ il tentative pifl interessante e pih moderno che sia state fatto per collegare logicamente l'etica di Aristotele con la sua metafisica, e si deve riconoscere che tale tentative, nonostante qualche affermazione discutibile, ~ perfettamente riuseito. Esso infatti conserva all'etica aristotelica quel carattere di problematicit~ e di asistematicit~ che ne costituisce la pifi genuina natura e che altri tentativi analoghi finiscone invece inevitabilmente col sopprimere. Ci6 che rende possibile la sua riuscita b la nuova interpretazione della metafisica aristotelica, che I'A. ha sviluppato nella sua opera precedente ed in base alla quale anche la metafisica, come l'etica, lungi dal presentarsi come una costruzione sistematica e rigidamente dimostrativa, rivela una natura essenzialmente problematica. L'unica riserva di fondo che ritengo di dover muovere a tale interpretazione, ~ quella a cui he avuto occasione di accennare recensendo Le probl~me de l'$tre chez Aristote (cf. "Giornale di Metafisica", XVIII, 1963, 266-271), e cio~ che la problematicit~ della metafisica aristoteliea non significa rinunzia ad affermare con certezza razionale la trascendenza di Die, ma anzi si risolve proprio in questa affermazione, la quale, lungi dall'essere uno scacco o un insuccesso, 6, al contrario, la pifi esaltante delle certezze. Analogamente la problematicit~ dell'etica arlstotelica non significa rinunzia all'affermazione di un valore supreme, ma riconoscimento della sua necessitY, anche se l'uomo non giunger~, mai ad attuarlo. Come nella metafisica il sapere dell'uomo si risolve in definitiva nslla continua ricerca del sapere, cio~ nella consapevolezza dell'esistenza di un sapere superiore a quello puramente umano, cosi nell'etica la perfezione dell'uomo si risolve nella stessa aspirazione alla perfezione, cio~ nell'ineessante sforzo di autoperfezionarsi. Tale precisazione, a mio avviso, ~ necessaria, per evitare chela metafisica di Aristotele venga interpretata come una forma di scetticismo e la sua etica come una forma di relativismo. ENRICO BERTI Perugia, Italy Consolation ]or the Tribulations o] Israel (Consola~am as Tribula~oens de Israel). By Samuel Usque. Translated from the Portuguese by Martin A. Cohen. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1965. Pp. xiii + 354. $6.00.) This work, the first in a new scholarly series of translations of texts, is a fascinating document. It was probably written in Italy around 1550 and was first published in Portuguese in Ferrara in 1553. Although it was not widely read at the time, it was republished around the end of the sixteenth century in the Netherlands. By now it is a Portuguese classic, and a unique document in Jewish intellectual history. Usque, whose biography is almost unknown except for clues found in the Consola~am, was apparently a Portuguese New Christian (a forced convert) who fled during the persecutions of Judaizers by the Inquisition in the 1530's. He wandered in Europe and the Levant, visited Palestine, and settled down in Italy, probably in the entourage of Samuel Abravanel (the brother of Leon Ebreo), Dona Gracia Nasi (the aunt and mother-in-law of the Duke of Naxos), and Hercules of Este, the Duke of Ferrara. His book, addressed "to the gentlemen of the Diapora of Portugal" is a pastoral and a dialogue, dealing with Israel's fate. Writing just 174 HISTORY OF... (shrink)

This booklet contains teachings and instructions selected from the letters of Swami Ramakrishnananda which provide the much needed consolation for the struggling spiritual aspirants. The author, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna is a great thinker, forceful speaker, and above all, an illumined soul.

Composed while its author was imprisoned, this book remains one of Western literature’s most eloquent meditations on the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the superiority of things of the mind. Slavitt’s translation captures the energy and passion of the original. And in an introduction intended for the general reader, Seth Lerer places Boethius’s life and achievement in context.

An original and constructive African though system with universal reach. Existence and consolation transcends the ethno-philosophies the dominated in the post-colonial period. While the African experience might lead one to say human life is pointless, the author argues that meaning comes in the form of consolation and is rooted in mood.

The F-twist is giving way to the methodology of scientific research programs. Milton Friedman's “Methodology for Economics” is being supplanted as the orthodox rationale for neoclassical economics by Imre Lakatos' account of scientific respectability. Friedman's instrumentalist thesis that theories are to be judged by the confirmation of their consequences and not the realism of their assumptions has long been widely endorsed by economists, under Paul Samuelson's catchy rubric “the F-twist.” It retains its popularity among economists who want no truck with (...) methodology, but among the increasing number of able economists who are writing on methodology the F-twist has been surrendered, not so much because these writers have decided it is false, as because something better has finally come along. (shrink)

Boethius and the ideology of the Roman Senatorial aristocracy -- The illness and the healer -- How does Philosophy convey her therapy? -- Christianity and the Consolation.

Boethius composed the De Consolatione Philosophiae in the sixth century AD whilst awaiting death under torture, condemned on a charge of treason which he protested was manifestly unjust. Though a convinced Christian, in detailing the true end of life which is the soul's knowledge of God, he consoled himself not with Christian precepts but with the tenets of Greek philosophy. This work dominated the intellectual world of the Middle Ages; writers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Jean de Meun, and Dante (...) were inspired by it. In England it was rendered in to Old English by Alfred the Great, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer, and later Queen Elizabeth I made her own translation. The circumstances of composition, the heroic demeanour of the author, and the 'Menippean' texture of part prose, part verse have combined to exercise a fascination over students of philosophy and literature ever since. (shrink)

A historical understanding of the virtue of consolation, as contrasted to empathy, compassion, or sympathy, is developed. Recent findings from neuroscience are presented which support and affirm this understanding. These findings are related to palliative care and its current practice in bioethics.

This chapter examines the notion of being in the Consolation of Philosophy and contrasts it with modern notions of existence. The notions in the Consolation relevant to this inquiry are those expressed by the verbs esse and exsistere. The chapter argues that the basic notion of exsistere in the Consolation should be understood as “to be manifest,” while the basic notion of esse should be understood as “to be something or other” or “to be intelligible.” Furthermore, the (...) chapter demonstrates that the notion of esse in the Consolation differs from typical modern notions of existence in two significant ways. First, unlike modern notions of existence, according to which there are things that do not exist, the notion of esse or being in the Consolation has no contrary. Everything that can be spoken of or thought about “is” in some way. Second, the notion of esse in the Consolation, as in Aristotle, is “said in many ways.” In this it differs from modern notions of existence, which tend to be univocal. The chapter shows that once the notions of exsistere and esse are properly understood, certain arguments in the Consolation that might initially appear confused turn out to be quite clear and highly plausible. (shrink)

abstract: This article compares and contrasts the Ignatian concept of consolation without previous cause with the Zen Buddhist concept of satori. The aim is to underscore a unique but not commonly recognized characteristic of Ignatian contemplation and promote interreligious understanding. I argue that Ignatian prayer methods, though primarily kataphatic in their approach, share common features with apophatic spirituality and Zen meditation, even though Zen does not make any reference to God. This article consists of three main parts: In the (...) first part, I delve into Ignatius's own religious experience, particularly the experiences he had during eleven months in Manresa, and interpret these experiences from the lens of the Ignatian consolation without previous cause. In the second part, I explore the overall goal of Zen, focusing on the discussion of Zen sunyata and satori. In the final part, I draw out points of contact and differences between the Ignatian concept of consolation without previous cause and Zen satori with an aim toward better appropriating the Ignatian consolation without previous cause from Zen satori. In doing so, I hope to make Ignatian spirituality more appealing and available to spiritual seekers across religious traditions. (shrink)

Abstract: Reflecting on the practice of being a Spinoza scholar and Spinozist in Trump's Pandemic America, I argue that we can find consolation in Spinoza's insistent norm -- to understand rather than to blame, to banish free will as explanans so we can fully understand the explanandum. Just as Boethius reflected on human misunderstanding of luck, so Spinoza teaches that we need, in moments of despair, to look not to superstition, but to the recognition of the causal forces that (...) yield our triumphs and failures, and to understand them. While we are unmoored in the chaos of Trump's America, in the joyful expression of popular emancipatory power in the Black Lives Matters mass demonstrations and marches through American cities and suburbs, and the nightly horror of demonstrators murdered by police, I reach back to another moment of chaos with liberatory and nightmarish potential -- the years just after the U.S. Civil War described in Leaves of Grass. We can find Spinozist moments in Whitman's poem and philosophical memoir -- a kind of American Spinozism. As he travels among the horrors and the new possibilities of American life, Whitman insists on seeing and feeling the world as it is -- terrible, wonderful, in all its fleshy imperfection, while finding hope in these same flawed particulars. In 2020, Trump's America, Spinoza and Spinozism are not just relevant, are not just consolations in the Boethian sense, but they are essential epistemic survival tools for a world quite obviously in motion. (shrink)

Brutus’ De virtute, a lost work that had important but overlooked influence on Cicero’s ethical dialogues, is more dependent on Antiochus’ ethics than has been recognized. In reviewing the sources for De virtute, I arrive at a conception of Brutus’ work as a consolation written in a fundamentalist—rather than ecumenical—mode that focalizes its arguments and commonplaces from the perspective of Antiochus’ philosophical system. This conception is supported by the only other testimony for Brutus’ consolatory writing.

The book called The Consolation of Philosophy was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholars familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfreds paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.

In light of the environmental pressure humans are currently placing on the biosphere, there is overwhelming evidence to think that we have entered the early stages of a major extinction event. Inde...

Like many other Christian philosophers, past and present, Descartes envisions an "afterlife" for the soul after bodily death. Some, both Christian and non-Christian, including Geach, Strawson and Williams, have argued that the afterlife Descartes envisions is far from the attractive state heaven is supposed to be. Others, including Leibniz, Russier, and Cottingham, have argued that a Cartesian afterlife represents a state of existence that cannot even be rationally desired. But I shall argue in this paper that both criticisms fail to (...) appreciate fully the details of Descartes' doctrine of immortality. (shrink)