Wittgenstein in his later writing often remarked on the negative influence of language on philosophy. Here, I call attention to a previously unnoticed but significant way that language has influenced philosophy: we use the very same vocabulary in two different ways, in philosophical talk and in our everyday interactive speaking-situations. Our propensity for using this double talk has prevented us from resolving most philosophical problems. Is our attraction to philosophical talk the result of our learning to use a phonetic alphabet, (...) so that words can be used outside of interactive situations? (shrink)

The interplay of Greek and Roman motifs in the Marcellus eulogy at the end of the Sixth Book of theAeneidpresents a complicated study in literary history. The association of roses with the dead is more Roman than Greek, but perhaps not so much so as one might imagine. Roses are not entirely absent from the Greek milieu, and in fact Vergil apparently drew on Greek rose motifs for the eulogy. Archaeology reveals that roses were an important symbol on tomb stelai, (...) along with the epigraphical references to roses. In general the rose in Greek inscriptions was reserved for girls, but at least one is for a boy, and another for a youth of twenty-two. Moreover, Vergil may well have been alluding to Bion's (?)Lament for Adonis, where the rose motif has striking importance. (shrink)

This collection contains many stimulating and important articles from the Plutarch renaissance, especially on the interaction between divine and human worlds, ...

Frank B. Ebersole died recently. Here I remind philosophers of the thinking of this reclusive philosopher who brought out the value of Wittgenstein's dictum that philosophers should "bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use." I illustrate Ebersole's singular thinking by focusing on his philosophical investigation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance metaphor.

Commentary on a previously published article: Brown, Patrick. “System and History in Lonergan’s Early Historical and Economic Manuscripts” The Journal of Macrodynamic Analysis 1:1 (Summer 2001) 32-76.

As soon as we attend to the subject, either by asking questions or by making statements about it, we ipso facto make the subject the object of our attention. The question then is whether we can get behind the subject as object and attain the subject as subject. Is the project not self-refuting? For an answer I invoke the parallel case of insight into insight. We cannot imagine the act of insight and so cannot understand it directly, but we can (...) construct symbols of insight, understand them, and thus indirectly achieve some understanding of it. Lonergan made five attempts to achieve insight into insight; the article examines them one by one and applies them to our parallel case in order to conclude that there is a meaningful sense in which we may attain and speak of the subject as subject. (shrink)

In his treatise On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch tries to explain the meaning of a statue or image of Zeus in Crete, which had no ears. An Egyptian or Egyptianizing image with separate ears, perhaps on a stele, incomprehensible to Greeks, but common in Egypt, might have given rise to Plutarch’s bafflement and fantasy interpretation.Dans son traité De Iside et Osiride, Plutarque essaie d’expliquer la signification d’une statue ou d’une image de Zeus en Crète, qui n’avait aucune oreille. Une image (...) égyptienne ou « égyptianisante » avec des oreilles séparées, peut-être sur une stèle, incompréhensible aux Grecs mais commune en Égypte, pourrait avoir provoqué la perplexité de Plutarque et son interprétation fantaisiste. (shrink)

A college-level introductory text in Christian social ethics that combines theory, cases, and analysis.

The topic of fictional objects and their nature is a familiar one, the topic of fictional properties less so. This article focuses on the way artefactualism – now arguably the most popular form of realism about fictional objects – might be extended to give an account of fictional properties. After describing what seems the most developed such extension, the article articulates a serious problem it faces, before showing how artefactualism about fictional properties would benefit from certain insights contained in an (...) alternative abstract-object version of fictional realism. (shrink)

Crowe presents the evolution of Lonergan's thinking on Christology in the context of the radical developments contained within his other theological writings.