Building on Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love this book takes up the "question of the Other" and argues that through the interpretive activities of the amorous imagination lovers come to experience one another as the Beloved.

The world is disenchanted. Rationalization, intellectualization, and scientism rule the day. We used to see the world as a magical place, but now it's just a material space. How did we get here? The shift comes in part from the rise of a certain kind of secularism, one that reduces human experiences to whatever is explainable through observation. Love? It's just a biological drive. Joy, a rush of adrenaline. Beauty, an influx of dopamine. If you can't test it, it isn't (...) true; or so the thinking goes. The Romantic Life draws upon eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romanticism to provide five strategies to re-enchant the world, five ways to imbue the world with meaning, truth, and beauty. According to the Romantics, far from being useless, encounters with impractical things like the imagination, nature, symbolism, sincerity, and the sublime give our lives a richness and depth that cannot be attained on a purely material account of the world. By learning from their example, we can come to see into the life of things, as William Wordsworth called it. We can be re-enchanted" -- taken from back cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Primacy of God: The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology by R. Jared StaudtD. C. SchindlerThe Primacy of God: The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology. By R. Jared Staudt. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2022. Pp. xii + 409. $49.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-64585-167-7.Echoing and amplifying a theme from his predecessor, Benedict XVI was known for insisting that the deepest problem of our age, which has not only (...) distorted the culture of the West but has indeed in some ways infected the life of the Church itself, is the forgottenness of God. Recalling the “memory of God” is arguably what Benedict conceived to be the central mission of his papacy, and by that he meant recovering a sense of the primacy of God, not just in matters of private faith, but as a fundamental principle ordering the whole of human existence. In this respect, one can imagine that Benedict would have been heartened to see the new book by R. Jared Staudt, The Primacy of God: The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology, which draws not only on Joseph Ratzinger, but also Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christopher Dawson, and, most fundamentally, Thomas Aquinas, to show, indeed, that there is nothing more fundamental than religion.What prompts the need for such an effort is the pervasive sociological reduction of religion in the contemporary imagination to a culturally conditioned set of beliefs and practices that concern God, the divine, or in any event the “afterlife.” In other words, religion is wholly immanentized, understood as an essentially human contrivance, by which man attempts to relate himself to what he takes to be God. It is just this interpretation that lies behind the general assumption of the phenomenon of “religious pluralism”: the world is made up of a potentially infinite number of “different religions,” all of which must be “tolerated” (i.e., must be relegated to a circumscribed social space that renders them more or less politically innocuous) because they offer no rational basis for any sort of arbitration. In contrast to the more typically Protestant response to this “humanistic” reduction of religion, exemplified by Karl Barth, which would insist that Christianity is not “a religion,” Staudt attempts to recover a more robust tradition that recognizes both the deep natural roots of religion and the supernatural distinctiveness of Christianity. To do so, he wisely adopts what he calls a “ressourcement Thomist” approach, but what we might call a genuinely Catholic—and catholic—perspective, namely, one that affirms Thomas Aquinas as a culminating figure of the classical Christian tradition, rather than as one [End Page 685] current of that tradition that defines itself principally in contrast to other currents. In other words, Staudt reads Aquinas in light of Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and classical philosophy, on the one hand, and in positively disposed engagement with more recent thinkers, such as Ratzinger and Balthasar, on the other. In treating such a fundamental theme as religion, it is especially fitting to attempt to take a fundamental, rather than a “partisan,” approach.The book falls into three basic parts. The first part seeks, in three chapters, to lay out the basic principles of the argument. In chapter 1, Staudt contrasts the opposition Barth presents between religion and the revelation of Scripture, to Aquinas’s interpretation of religion, which integrates philosophy—in this case, Cicero—with Scripture. Chapter 2 considers another objection to Christian religion, this time from the other side, namely, Kant’s attempt to rethink religion from within the limits of reason, and therefore in separation from God. The third chapter sets up the book’s second part by considering religion “as an unfolding of law” (11), specifically, as a matter that, while rooted in natural law, must contend, in its historical enactment, with the distorting reality of sin and the redemption of grace. In other words, religion must be considered in its fundamental expression in the Old Law, and in its fulfillment in the New.The second part of the book investigates in more depth the specifically Christian reality of religion, again in three chapters. Chapter 4 presents religion as exemplified in the... (shrink)

:In this essay I begin with Foucault's theorization of the convulsive body of the possessed as a site of struggle. Next, I amend this perspective with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion that “the concept is not object but territory” 101). That is, rather than looking at convulsive bodies as objects through which actors struggle, I approach convulsions as evidencing acts of territorialization. Instead of a corporeal object over which actors struggle for ownership, this perspective reframes convulsions as a process (...) of space-making that is constitutive of the space-makers. Amending Foucault's take on convulsions with Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory allows for analysis of “techno-horror” popular entertainments as constitutive processes in the unfolding of new reproductive masculine subjectivities. (shrink)

Presents testimonials and scholarly appraisals of one of the most influential Americans in the field of liberal Christian theology and practice.

In «The Normativity of Meaning», Eric Gampel argues that the capacity to justify a linguistic usage is essential to meaning and suggests that this fact entails that naturalistic theories of meaning must take a non-reductive form if they are to be viable. I will argue that reductive and non-reductive naturalisms stand or fall together in the face of Gampel's argument that meaning plays an essential justificatory role. I will further argue that, if they fall, the lesson to be learned is (...) not that we should avoid reductionism, but rather, that we should steer clear of physicalism in our meaning theory; if Gampel's argument is cogent, any theory of meaning will have to make reference to at least some abstract objects. (shrink)

Books reviewed: Colin McGinn, Consciousness and its Objects, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2004, 256 pp. Reviewed by D. W. Hamlyn, Birkbeck College, University of London 38 Smithy Knoll Road Calver Hope Valley Derbyshire S32 3XW.

We examined if cancer patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores on the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-C30 are affected by the specific time point, before or during treatment, at which the questionnaire is completed, and whether this could bias the overall treatment comparison analyses. A 'completion-time window' variable was created on three closed EORTC randomised control trials in lung (non-small cell lung cancer, NSCLC) and colorectal cancer (CRC) to indicate when the QLQ-30 was completed (...) relative to chemotherapy cycle dates, defined as 'before', 'on' and 'after'. HRQoL mean scores were calculated using a linear mixed model. Statistically significant differences (P < 0.05) were observed on 6 and 5 scales for 'on' and 'after' comparisons in the NSCLC and two-group CRC trial, respectively. As for the three-group CRC trial, several statistical differences were observed in the 'before' to 'on' and the 'on' to 'after' comparisons. For all three trials, including the 'completion-time window' variable in the model resulted in a better fit, but no substantial changes in the treatment effects were noted. We showed that considering the exact timing of completion within specified windows resulted in statistical and potentially clinically significant differences, but it did not alter the conclusions of treatment comparison in these studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for an extension of relational accounts of the imago Dei which includes a kind of priestly relation to the created order. In this relation, humanity is intended to ensure the independent flourishing of creation in a way reflective of the kind of communion we ought to have with one another. Through an analysis of the brokenness of these relationships, I argue human oppression of other humans and ravaging of creation are born of the same brokenness (...) in such a way that they contribute to one another as distortions of human teleological communion. By drawing on Social Identity Approach in group psychology, I can offer an account of shared human identity out of which humanity acts in distorted ways as a group. By describing oppression and ravaging in terms of broken communal telos and group action, I offer a way forward for relating humanity to the created order in a way that neither instrumentalizes creation, nor flattens the distinctiveness of human creation in the image of God. (shrink)

For many years there has been discussion regarding the problems confronting our current ethics review system. Commentators have identified numerous issues that threaten the sustainability of Australia’s voluntary HREC system. Various ad hoc solutions to these problems have been posed, but have not resulted in any significant advances. However, in recent years, discourse regarding research governance has become prominent in the Australian research environment. The application of research governance principles is gaining momentum amongst the regulators of research, including research institutions (...) and their governing bureaucracies. We argue that this is potentially the most significant development in several years towards creating a sustainable HREC system in Australia. The recognition by research institutions and their governing bureaucracies that the responsibility for overall research governance lies with them, rather than solely with their HRECs, is leading to a range of initiatives which should significantly lessen the burden on Australian ethics committees, and improve their ability to undertake their core task of reviewing the ethical aspects of research proposals. (shrink)