This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

This interdisciplinary and ecumenical collection of essays honors the transformative work of Margaret A. Farley, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School, using it as a starting point for reflection on the contribution of feminist method to theology and ethics. Through a variety of perspectives, contributors show that by resisting classical oppositions between “interpersonal” and “social” ethics and by insisting that social, economic, and political realities be taken seriously in considerations of justice, feminist concerns challenge the (...) very categories of Christian ethics. With essays ranging from sexual ethics to human rights, medical ethics to freedom, _A Just and True Love_ offers a broad perspective on the last twenty-five years of feminist innovation in Christian ethics and a glimpse of its global future, particularly in continents such as Africa. “This book brings together a number of the most prominent thinkers in Christian theology and ethics today in a justly deserved tribute to the work and influence of Margaret Farley. The essays explicitly acknowledge and engage Farley in various degrees; one comes away appreciating both the integrity of her work and its versatility.” —_Darlene Fozard Weaver, Villanova University _ “Inevitably while listening to or reading Margaret Farley, we find her refrain, ‘I want to ask all over again.’ Reexamining, reframing, and rethinking is Farley’s method of engaging anew human experience and relationality. The authors of these essays capture that method as they reconsider feminism and sexuality, love and freedom, justice and truth, contraception and women’s rights. Like her own work, they reset the ethical agenda to recapture a more loving truth. A very successful collection for a most admired colleague. Ryan and Linnane are to be congratulated!” —_James F. Keenan, S.J., Boston College_ “In_ A Just and True Love,_ a host of distinguished scholars consider fundamental themes of feminist theological ethics and their significance for global justice, the meaning of Christian love, creative casuistry, and truthful life in the Church. I can imagine no higher praise than to affirm that these authors have succeeded marvelously in doing exactly what they set out to do: to produce a volume worthy of the theological work and wisdom of Margaret Farley.” —_William Werpehowski, Villanova University_. (shrink)

What are physical quantities, and in particular, what makes them quantitative? This book presents an original answer to this question through the novel position of substantival structuralism, arguing that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces.

Recent literature on causation invokes a distinction between deviant and default behavior to account for token causation. Critical examination of two prominent attempts to employ a distinction between deviants and defaults reveals that the distinction is far from clear. I clarify and develop the distinction by appeal to the notion of a modally robust process, and show how the distinction can be employed by causal process theorists to respond to cases of causation by omission. This shows that the default/deviant distinction (...) is not so much a tool for counterfactual accounts of causation, but rather for causal process theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 155-157 [Access article in PDF] Dispensing With the Dynamic Conscious J. Melvin Woody FREUD'S THEORY OF UNCONSCIOUS mental processes depends upon an extremely narrow conception of consciousness. O'Brien and Jureidini rightly focus attention on the limitations of that conception and argue that it is time to dispense with the resultant conception of the unconscious. Of course, scientists often give narrower, technical meanings to (...) ordinary words like matter and space, but in the midst of all the recently revived psychological and philosophical debates about the nature and existence of consciousness, the persistence of Freud's way of distinguishing the two can only breed confusion. Attempts to shore up or defend the dynamic unconscious of psychoanalytic theory by appeal to discussions of unconscious rules and processes in cognitive psychology attests to the potential for confusion thus spawned. In an early issue of this journal, James Phillips and I charted the differences between the neurophysiologic, cognitive, and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious (1995). Like O'Brien and Jureidini, we concluded that the evidence of a cognitive unconscious does not support the postulation of a dynamic unconscious. O'Brien and Jureidini go further in arguing that the two are incompatible. Elsewhere, I have argued that the Freudian unconscious is a hermeneutic myth, the result of a misunderstanding of the nature of interpretation (2003). Because I am in substantial agreement with them and already on record with arguments convergent with theirs on both these fronts, I will focus here on the source of confusion in the dynamic conception of consciousness and on their illuminating exploration of its limitations.Toward the end of his 1915 essay, "The Unconscious," Freud explains that the difference between conscious and unconscious thought hinges on the role of language: What we could permissibly call the conscious idea of the object can now be split up into the idea of the word (verbal idea) and the idea of the thing (concrete idea)... It strikes us all at once that now we know what is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious idea. The two are not, as we supposed, different records of the same content situate in different parts of the mind, nor yet different functional states of cathexis in the same part; but the conscious idea comprises the concrete idea plus the verbal idea corresponding to it, whilst the unconscious idea is that of the thing alone.... Now too, we are in a position to state precisely what it is that repression denies to the rejected idea in the transference neuroses—namely, translation of the idea into words which are to remain attached to the object. The idea which is not put into words or the mental act which has not received hyper-cathexis then remains in the unconscious in a state of repression. (pp. 201-202) This restriction of consciousness to verbal thought processes is not simply an innocent stipulative definition. It has perniciously misleading implications. For one thing, as Antonio Damasio points out in The Feeling of What Happens, it means that all other animals are unconscious for want of any language. Damasio recalls that when he asked what produces consciousness while he was a medical student, [End Page 155] Curiously, I always got the same answer; language did it. I was told that creatures without language were limited to their uncognizant existence but not we fortunate humans because language made us know... The answer sounded too easy, far too simple for something which I then imagined unconquerably complex, and also quite implausible, given what I saw when I went to the zoo. (Damasio 1999, 107) As Damasio notes, the trouble with explaining consciousness as a function of language is not just that it denies awareness of experience to all other animals, thus perpetuating the Cartesian view of animals as automatons, but that for all its complexities, language is far too simple to encompass the full complex range of conscious experience. O'Brien and Jureidini do well to highlight how much of our conscious experience never finds linguistic expression, indeed, how much experience seems to... (shrink)

In the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth thematic resemblances to the Roman elegists in Paulus Silentiarius were explained as the result of the poets' reliance on a common Hellenistic source – usually this was identified as the so-called ‘subjective Alexandrian love elegy’ – and this represented a departure from the views of earlier scholars such as Hertzberg and Postgate, who had maintained that Paulus knew and imitated the elegists. In recent years the pendulum has swung (...) back , and the prevailing opinion seems to be that the Roman elegists were known to Paulus. This is the view of, for instance, Giovanni Viansino in his edition of Paulus, of Elmar Schulz-Vanheyden in his important work on Propertius' relationship to Greek epigram, and of Hermann Beckby in his edition of the Greek Anthology. Recently, too, Gordon Williams has put forward a very strong case for earlier epigrammatists like Antipater and Crinagoras imitating the Augustan poets. (shrink)

Literature on testimonial injustice and ways that perpetrators might combat it have flourished since Miranda Fricker’s ground-breaking work on testimonial injustice. Less attention has been given, however, to the role of bystanders. In this paper, I examine the accountability that bystanders may have for their omissions to redress testimonial injustice. I argue that bystander accountability applies in cases where it is opportune for bystanders to intervene, and if they are also sufficiently equipped and able to redress the testimonial injustice. Moreover, (...) I recommend that we move beyond virtue responsibilism for ameliorative thinking about testimonial injustice. (shrink)

Woodger discusses what he claims to be haldane's misunderstandings about his article "what do we mean by unborn?" these include primarily the structure of woodger's definitions. (staff).

In recent years a novel picture of Mably's thought has begun to emerge within Anglo-American scholarship, suggesting perhaps a constructive alternative to both the �radical� and the �conservative� interpretations. On this reading, Mably should be seen as neither a proto-socialist nor a reactionary thinker, but as a republican -- a classical republican, in fact, whose writing represents a later Gallic contribution to the political tradition founded by Machiavelli and Harrington.3 In fact, nothing is more obvious to any reader than the (...) absolute centrality of the reference to Graeco-Roman antiquity in his writings, from beginning to end -- with precisely that celebration of the �mixed governments� of Sparta and Rome, and intense preoccupation with the politics of �virtue�, that we have come to associate with the civic humanist tradition. The object of this essay is to provide a brief introduction to this �new� Mably. It will do so chiefly through an examination of a single work, albeit a pivotal one in Mably's career. Entretiens de Phocion, a dialogue first published in 1763, introduced in print for the first time most of the major themes of his mature thought; and it remained by far the most popular work to appear in his lifetime. A brief look at it should give us the opportunity to test the cogency of the civic humanist reading of Mably's thought, as well as to suggest something of thespecific character of the French contribution to the �Atlantic republican tradition�. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe Blackboard’s Online Journal program and explain how we use the online journal in a variety of philosophy courses. We outline our pedagogical motivation for using online journals and analyze how online journals help to improve our students’ ability to read, write and think philosophically. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of online journals in comparison to online discussion boards. Finally, we address several concerns that philosophy teachers may have about using online journals.