This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Critics of Rorty’s views on truth, objectivity, and value often take them to imply some form of untenable relativism.1 While it would be worthwhile to investigate whether Rorty is in fact committed to what might be called global relativism, or relativism in most if not all domains of investigation, for our purposes in this paper we must proceed more selectively. By focusing on Rorty’s view of moral objectivity, we can hopefully shed some new light on the now stale charge of (...) Rortian relativism. In the process, we can also go quite a long way towards articulating what a Rortian approach to meta-ethics might look like. (shrink)

Organizational deviance represents a costly behavior to many organizations. While some precursors to deviance have been identified, we hope to add to our predictive capabilities. Utilizing social cognitive theory and psychological contract theory as explanatory concepts, we explore the role of moral disengagement and turnover intentions, testing our hypotheses using two samples: a sample of 44 nurses from a hospital system in the Southwestern United States (Study 1), and a sample of 52 working adults collected from an online survey (...) system (Study 2). Results strongly supported our hypotheses in both samples, indicating that the self-regulatory deactivation inherent in moral disengagement led to increased organizational deviance; effects that were much more pronounced when turnover intentions were high. Our findings support the increased role of cognition in determining behavior when environmental pressures stemming from the psychological contract have been altered, leading to a number of theoretical and practical implications, particularly in industries with high turnover rates. (shrink)

Constructivist positions in meta-ethics are on the rise in recent years. Similarly, there has been a flurry of activity amongst theistic philosophers examining the relationship between God and normative facts. But so far as I am aware, these two literatures have almost never intersected with each other. Constructivists have said very little about God, and theists working on religious ethics have said very little about constructivist views in meta-ethics. In this paper, I draw some connections between the two literatures, and (...) hopefully will inspire others to continue to investigate this sadly neglected area. My main conclusion will be that theists should be hesitant about accepting any of the leading versions of constructivism in the contemporary meta-ethics literature. (shrink)

In the middle of the 19th century a new value began to appear in Western Europe - the belief that (in the words of Matthew Arnold) 'the exercise of a creative activity is the true function of man'. This book gives an account of the stages by which, and the reasons why, this development occurred at that time. In so doing it reveals a historical puzzle, for the main factors which can be seen to have given rise to the new (...) value - mainly scientific, technological, economic and political - were not reflected in the value itself, for that was applied almost exclusively to artistic and cultural activity. John Hope Mason sets out to explain this puzzle by showing how throughout European history there have been two radically different views of the creative attribute. An early example of one view was the character of Prometheus in Greek mythology; influential examples of the second were the figures of God the Creator in Judaeo-Christian theology and the neo-Platonic One in Hellenistic philosophy. The book shows how the contrast represented by those figures informed discussions of genius in the 18th century and indicates why the notion of creativity which came to prevail then assimilated it with purely aesthetic and moral concerns. Combining a broad perspective with a close analysis of key figures - from Adam Smith, Rousseau and Kant, to Arnold, Marx and Nietzsche - this book casts a new light on a central value of the modern world. (shrink)

Most atheists are error theorists about theists; they claim that theists have genuine beliefs about the existence and nature of a divine being, but as a matter of fact no such divine being exists. Thus on their view the relevant theistic beliefs are mistaken. As error theorists, then, atheists need to arrive at some answer to the question of what practical course of action the atheist should adopt towards the theistic beliefs held by committed theists. The most natural answer and (...) the one that we see being implemented by many prominent atheists today, can be stated roughly as follows: -/- (1) Theistic Eliminativism: Atheists should marshal the best arguments at their disposal and present them to theists in the hopes that theists will come to appreciate that their religious beliefs are systemically erroneous. Furthermore, on coming to this realization, a theist should abandon not just his specific religious beliefs, but also more generally his religious practices and theistic framework for viewing the world, and adopt a secular point of view instead. -/- One of the main goals of this paper is to show that, despite its popularity, eliminativism is not the only option for the atheist to adopt. In order to do so, I draw on recent work in meta-ethics on moral error theories, work which has helped to outline a number of alterative courses of action that someone might take towards a group which is said to have widespread erroneous beliefs. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfectionssuch as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed worksworldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the (...) preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Geschichte Der Entwickelungen Der Griechischen Philosophie Und Ihrer Nachwirkungen Im Romischen Reiche, Volume 2 Christian August Brandis Reimer, 1864 Philosophy; History & Surveys; Ancient & Classical; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

The premise of this article is that the political import of Deleuze and Guattari’s “micropolitics of desire” has been obscured and as such remains underdeveloped. The micropolitics of desire is here reproduced to provide a Nietzscheo-Marxian critique of capitalism and resistive politics of the future. This entails an entirely different understanding of the nature of power and resistance, as compared to prevalent views. Power is not negative or anti-energy, but a socially productive force operating on, with and through the productivity (...) of desire, delineating an immanent, quantitative and “fusional multiplicity” of a producing-production. Resistance is a matter of recomposing this producer-produced relationship in a manner problematic to and in excess of the very productive core of capitalism. In terms of praxis, this amounts to experimental practices that resonate into a viral though non-teleological “revolutionary-becoming”, delineating a form of a-systematic and post-identity resistance. The underlying thesis is that we must change our “desire”, before we can hope to change our politics. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill had strong sympathies with a liberal form of market socialism based on worker-owned and worker-managed firms. He thought that only very few government interventions were needed to trigger a peaceful and spontaneous transition to such an economic system. This article recapitulates his thesis and argument by focusing on his major workPrinciples of Political Economy, which is rather neglected by philosophers, especially in the German-speaking world. I will argue that Mill was too optimistic in his hope for (...) a spontaneous transition without government intervention. Since it is possible to reconstruct how Mill thought this transition would proceed, it is also possible to identify at what point the transition did not advance in the way envisioned by him, but was blocked by antagonistic forces. I will argue that this insight is not only of historical value, but still poses a serious problem for John Rawls’s theory of justice. Rawls follows Mill closely in his discussion of the proper economic system and he faces the same problem of transition. (shrink)

There have only been three articles in mainstream philosophy journals going back at least to the 1970s on generosity. In this paper, I hope to draw attention to this neglected virtue. By building on what work has already been done, and trying to advance that discussion along several different dimensions, I hope that others will take a closer look at this important and surprisingly complex virtue. More specifically, I formulate three important necessary conditions for what is involved in (...) possessing the virtue of generosity, and consider other contenders as well. (shrink)

Our aim in this brief essay is not to defend a particular policy or attitude toward lockdown measures in the United States or elsewhere, but to consider the scope and limits of different types of arguments that can be offered for them. Understanding the complexity of these issues will, we hope, go some way to helping us understand each other and our attitudes toward state responses to the pandemic.

This chapter explores Gottlob Frege's contribution to logic. Frege has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, but he failed to gain influence on the mathematical community of his time and the depth and pioneering character of his work was acknowledged only after the collapse of his logicist program due to the Zermelo–Russell antinomy in 1902. Frege, by proving his theorem χ without recourse to Wertverläufe, exhibited an inconsistency in the traditional notion of the extension of a concept. He prompted (...) our awareness of a situation the future analyses of which will hopefully not only deepen our systematic control of the interplay of concepts and their extensions but also improve our understanding of the historical development of the notion of “extension of a concept” and its historiographical assessment. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

In this paper, I hope to provide an account of the conditions of moral realism whereby there are still significant metaphysical commitments made by the realist which set the view apart as a distinct position in the contemporary meta-ethical landscape. In order to do so, I will be appealing to a general account of what it is for realism to be true in any domain of experience, whether it be realism about universals, realism about unobservable scientific entities, realism about (...) artifacts, and so forth. (shrink)

In this essay I aim to illuminate the nature of Christian hope by looking at the tradition’s answers to three philosophical questions and then comparing them to those of contemporary secular accounts. First, What are the possible objects of hope? Next, What are the psychological conditions a person must meet to have hope? Finally, What makes a hope rational and what makes it good for human life? I conclude by suggesting that the role of hope (...) in bringing about social goods (or evils) might be reconsidered in light of challenges presented by recent secular work on the social dimensions of hope. (shrink)

The central question of this conference is whether the media can contribute to high quality social dialogue. The prospects for resolving that question positively in the “sound and fury” depend on recovering the idea of truth. At present the news media are lurching along from one crisis to another with an empty centre. We need to articulate a believable concept of truth as communication's master principle. As the norm of healing is to medicine, justice to politics, critical thinking to education, (...) craftsmanship to engineering, and stewardship to business, so truth-telling is the news profession's occupational norm. Truth-telling is the ethical framework that fundamentally reorders the media's professional culture and enables them to enrich social dialogue rather than undermine it.Historically the mainstream press has defined itself in terms of an objectivist worldview. Centred on human rationality and armed with the scientific method, the facts in news have been said to mirror reality. The aim has been true and incontrovertible accounts of a domain separate from human consciousness. In Bertrand Russell's formula, “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact” . In the received view, truth is defined in elementary epistemological terms as accurate representation. News corresponds to context-free neutral algorithms, and ethics is equated with impartiality.The attacks on this misguided view of human knowledge had already originated in Giambattista Vico's fantasia and Wilhelm Dilthey's verstehen in the counter-Enlightenment of the 18th century. They have continued with hermeneutics, critical theory in the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy, Gramsci, and in their own way, Lyotard's denial of master narratives and Derrida's sliding signifiers; until the anti-foundationalism of our own day indicates a crisis in correspondence views of truth. Institutional structures remain Enlightenment-driven, but in principle the tide has turned currently toward restricting objectivism to the territory of mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences. In reporting, objectivity has become increasingly controversial as the working press' professional standard, though it will remain entrenched in our ordinary practices of news production and dissemination until an alternative mission for the press is convincingly formulated.The demise of correspondence views of truth has created a predicament for the notion of truth altogether. However, instead of appealing to coherence versions or abandoning the concept, truth needs to be relocated in the moral sphere. Truth is a problem of axiology rather than epistemology. With the dominant scheme no longer tenable, truth should become the province of ethicists who can reconstruct it as the news media's contribution to social dialogue.When truth is articulated in terms of a moral framework, we can mold its richly textured meaning around the Hebrew emeth , the Greek aletheia . In Serbo-Croatian the true is justified as with plumbline in carpentry. In the powerful wheel imagery of the Buddhist tradition, truth is the immovable axle. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa presumes that sufferings from apartheid can be healed through truthful testimony. In Ghandhi's “satyagrapha,” the power of truth through the human spirit eventually wins over force . Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics contends correctly that a truthful account lays hold of the context, motives, and presuppositions involved .Telling the truth depends on the quality of discernment so that penultimates do not gain ultimacy. Truth means, in other words, to strike gold, to get at “the core, the essence, the nub, the heart of the matter” . For Henry David Thoreau – though addressing a different issue – when we are truthful, we attempt to “drive life into a corner and¼if it proves to be mean, why then to get the genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by personal experience and be able to give a true account of the encounter” . For the former secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, “the most dangerous of all moral dilemmas is when we are obliged to conceal truth in order to help the truth be victorious” . In the Talmud, the liar's punishment is that no one believes him.Augustine , professor of rhetoric at Milan and later Bishop of Hippo, illustrates a non-correspondence view of truth. His rhetorical theory is a major contribution to the philosophy of communication, contradicting the highly secular and linear view of the ancient Greeks. As with Aristotle, rhetoric entails reasoned judgement for Augustine; however, he “break[s] away from Graeco-Roman rhetoric, moving instead toward ¼rhetoric as aletheiac act” . Rhetoric for him is not knowledge-producing or opinion-producing but truth-producing . The Epistolae Doctrina Christiana scourges the value-neutral, technical language of “word merchants” without wisdom.Truth is not fundamentally a prescriptive statement. The aletheiac act in Augustine “tends to be more relational than propositional, a dialogically interpersonal, sacramentally charitable act rather than a statement¼taking into account and being motivated by [the cardinal virtues] faith, hope, and charity” . The truth for him does not merely make things clear, but motivates us to belief and action. In truthful communication for Augustine, “it is not enough to seek to move men's minds, merely for the sake of power; instead, the power to move is to be used to lead men to truth”. (shrink)

This chapter explores Gottlob Frege's contribution to logic. Frege has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, but he failed to gain influence on the mathematical community of his time and the depth and pioneering character of his work was acknowledged only after the collapse of his logicist program due to the Zermelo–Russell antinomy in 1902. Frege, by proving his theorem χ without recourse to Wertverläufe, exhibited an inconsistency (or at least an incoherence) in the traditional notion of the extension (...) of a concept. He prompted our awareness of a situation the future analyses of which will hopefully not only deepen our systematic control of the interplay of concepts and their extensions but also improve our understanding of the historical development of the notion of “extension of a concept” and its historiographical assessment. (shrink)

Paper presented at the Heidegger Circle 2011. Although Aristotle’s influence on young Heidegger’s thought has been studied at length, such studies have almost exclusively focused on his interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, physics and metaphysics. I will rather address Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s ontology of life. Focusing on recently published or recently translated courses of the mid 20’s (mainly SS 1924, WS 1925-26 and SS 1926), I hope to uncover an important aspect of young Heidegger’s thought left unconsidered: namely, that (...) Dasein’s existential structures – Befindlichkeit, Understanding and being-with-one-another through language – arose from his close reading of Aristotle’s ontology of life, of animal life. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce the theory of judgment aggregation, a growing interdisciplinary research area. The theory addresses the following question: How can a group of individuals make consistent collective judgments on a given set of propositions on the basis of the group members' individual judgments on them? I begin by explaining the observation that initially sparked the interest in judgment aggregation, the so-called "doctinal" and "discursive paradoxes". I then introduce the basic formal model of judgment aggregation, (...) which allows me to present some illustrative variants of a generic impossibility result. I subsequently turn to the question of how this impossibility result can be avoided, going through several possible escape routes. Finally, I relate the theory of judgment aggregation to other branches of aggregation theory. Rather than offering a comprehensive survey of the theory of judgment aggregation, I hope to introduce the theory in a succinct and pedagogical way, providing an illustrative rather than exhaustive coverage of some of its key ideas and results. (shrink)

The link between justice and climate change is becoming increasingly prominent in public debates on climate policy. This clear and concise philosophical introduction to climate justice addresses the hot topic of climate change as a moral challenge. Using engaging everyday examples the authors address the core arguments by providing a comprehensive and balanced overview of this heated debate, enabling students and practitioners to think critically about the subject area and to promote discussion on questions such as: Why do anything in (...) the face of climate change? How much do we owe our descendants – a better world, or nothing at all? How should we distribute the burden of climate action between industrialized and developing countries? Should I adopt a green lifestyle even if no one else makes an effort? Which means of reducing emissions are permissible? Should we put hope in technological solutions? Should we re-design democratic institutions for more effective climate policy? With chapter summaries, illustrative examples and suggestions for further reading, this book is an ideal introduction for students in political philosophy, applied ethics and environmental ethics, as well as for practitioners working on one of the most urgent issues of our time. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfectionssuch as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed worksworldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the (...) preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Geschichte Der Entwickelungen Der Griechischen Philosophie Und Ihrer Nachwirkungen Im Romischen Reiche, Volume 2 Christian August Brandis Reimer, 1864 Philosophy; History & Surveys; Ancient & Classical; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical. (shrink)

Proceedings from the ninth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Chriatian Studies (ENBCS) held at Liverpool Hope University, England, in 2011.

Unlike our basic theories of space and time, quantum mechanics is not a locally causal theory. This well known fact was brought forth by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935. Today it is widely believed that any hopes of restoring local causality within a realistic theory have been undermined by Bell's theorem and its supporting experiments. By contrast, we provide a strictly local, deterministic, and realistic explanation for the correlations observed in two such supporting experiments performed at Orsay and Innsbruck. (...) To this end, a pair of local variables is constructed to simulate detections of photon polarizations at various angles, chosen freely by Alice and Bob. These generate purely random outcomes: A = +/-1 and B = +/-1. When these outcomes are compared, however, the correlation between them turn out to be exactly equal to -cos2, with the corresponding CHSH inequality violated for the polarization angles alpha, alpha', beta, and beta' in precisely the manner predicted by quantum mechanics. The key ingredient in our explanation is the topology of 3-sphere, which remains closed under multiplication, thus preserving the locality condition of Bell. (shrink)

This book marks the beginning of a new phase in the philosophical investigation of classical and contemporary accounts of the self: canonical boundaries have been crossed and doctrinal justification abandoned in favor of a cosmopolitan ideal of syncretic, theoretically perspicuous, and historically informed systematic reflection. That such reflection bears on so central a concept as the self is only fitting given its implications for a broad range of questions concerning agency, the mind-body problem, and self-knowledge that are now pursued across (...) a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. But Ganeri is not simply interested in bringing the wealth of Indian speculations on the self to bear on contemporary discussions, in the hope of supplying a much-needed corrective lens, fill in some important lacunae, or bring another voice to the table. Rather, the goal is to think with these classical Indian thinkers (of which, no less than 21 are debated at length .. (shrink)

Why do so many people think Ken Wilber is one of the most important thinkers of our time? Why are so many disturbed by what he writes? In this review of his work, I hope to throw some light on both questions.

The theological virtue of hope has long been neglected in Christian ethics. However, as social, civic and global anxieties mount, the need to overcome despair has become urgent. This book proposes the theological virtue of hope as a promising source of rejuvenation. Theological hope sustains us from the sloth, presumption and despair that threaten amid injustice, tragedy and dying; it provides an ultimate meaning and transcendent purpose to our lives; and it rejoices and refreshes us 'on the (...) way' with the prospect of eternal beatitude. Rather than degrading this life and world, hope ordains earthly goods to our eschatological end, forming us to pursue social justice with a resilience and vitality that transcend the cynicism and disillusionment so widespread at present. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics, the book shows how the virtue of hope contributes to human happiness in this life and not just the next. (shrink)

In this article, I am interested in forming an account of how an atheist (which I define as someone who believes that God does not exist) might have faith in God. Assuming an involuntarism position regarding the nature of belief, I examine whether an atheist could have non-doxastic propositional faith in God, but conclude that this is not possible since it would force an individual to believe that_ p_ might exist and that _p _does not exist at (what I call) (...) a first-order level, which is impossible. I then examine accounts of objectual faith (faith in _S_) and suggest that they may offer hope for the faithful atheist. Specifically, it appears that, in certain limited cases that I refer to as _objectual roles_, the object of one’s faith may shift (a phenomenon that I call a “transfer”) depending on who or what brings a given state of affairs about (so long as the enactor of this state of affairs meets the requirement of the role). This strange feature of objectual faith allows for one to have faith in someone or something even if one does not believe in its existence. I conclude by examining how the possible implications of this project may impact Christian theology in particular. (shrink)

Previous ed.: Basingstoke: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1984.

Deepfakes raise various concerns: risks of political destabilization, depictions of persons without consent and causing them harms, erosion of trust in video and audio as reliable sources of evidence, and more. These concerns have been the focus of recent work in the philosophical literature on deepfakes. However, there has been almost no sustained philosophical analysis of deepfakes from the perspective of concerns about honesty and dishonesty. That deepfakes are potentially deceptive is unsurprising and has been noted. But under what conditions (...) does the use of deepfakes fail to be honest? And which human agents, involved in one way or another in a deepfake, fail to be honest, and in what ways? If we are to understand better the morality of deepfakes, these questions need answering. Our first goal in this paper, therefore, is to offer an analysis of paradigmatic cases of deepfakes in light of the philosophy of honesty. While it is clear that many deepfakes are morally problematic, there has been a rising counter-chorus claiming that deepfakes are not essentially morally bad, since there might be uses of deepfakes that are not morally wrong, or even that are morally salutary, for instance, in education, entertainment, activism, and other areas. However, while there are reasons to think that deepfakes can supply or support moral goods, it is nevertheless possible that even these uses of deepfakes are dishonest. Our second goal in this paper, therefore, is to apply our analysis of deepfakes and honesty to the sorts of deepfakes hoped to be morally good or at least neutral. We conclude that, perhaps surprisingly, in many of these cases the use of deepfakes will be dishonest in some respects. Of course, there will be cases of deepfakes for which verdicts about honesty and moral permissibility do not line up. While we will sometimes suggest reasons why moral permissibility verdicts might diverge from honesty verdicts, we will not aim to settle matters of moral permissibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are the fruit of a (...) conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)

Nietzsche hat Herder bekanntlich nur geringe und vor allem polemische Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. Wie Nietzsche verstand jedoch schon Herder den Menschen und seine Kultur betont aus Analogien mit natürlichen Prozessen; beiden ging es - mit Nietzsches Begriff - um eine 'Vernatürlichung' des Menschen. Dabei nimmt der ursprung der Sprache eine Schlüsselstellung ein, und hier untersteichen widerum beide die Rolle unbewusster Instinkte und Triebe, die zur Produktion von Analogien und Metaphern führen. Da sie sich aber dessen bewusst sind, dass auch ihre Ursprungsdiskurse (...) an die Sprach gebunden bleiben und keine wissenschaftlichen Theorien sein können, werden diese Instinkte und Triebe, jenseits jeden biologistischen Reduktionismus, nur als heuristische Zeichen kenntlich. Während Herder jedoch an der Rolle des Bewusstseins bei der Sprachgenesis festhält, macht Nietzsche, auch hier noch konsequent pragmatisch ansetzend, die Entstehung des Bewussteins selbst von der Kommunikation abhängig.As is well known, Nietzsche gave Herder's thought only cursory attention, and the few remarks he did make were usually polemical and often dismissive. Nevertheless, both Herder and Nietzsche understood humans and their culture on the analogy with natural processes. Both thinkers are concerned with the, to use Nietzsche's phrase, "Vernatürlichung" (naturalization", of human beings. Moreover, both emphasize the importance of understanding the origin of language, especially the way in which instincts and drives lead to the production of analogies and metaphors. Because they are aware that their own discussion of the origin of language remains bound to language and cannot hope to attain the status of scientific theories, since these instincts and drives can only be knowable as heuristic signs. While Herder held that consciousness plays a role in the origin of language, Nietzsche rather sees the origin of consciousness itself dependent on communication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 146-149 [Access article in PDF] Gianluca Mori. Bayle philosophe. Paris: Champion, 1999. Pp. 416. Paper, N.P. Stefano Brogi. Teologia senza verità: Bayle contro i "rationaux." Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1998. Pp. 306. Paper, N.P. Why do professional philosophers spend so much time on Descartes and so little time on Pierre Bayle, when Bayle was clearly the better philosopher? I hope that the (...) real answer is not that Bayle wrote too much that is too hard to survey and synthesize, whereas Descartes wrote short works that are easy to teach to undergraduates. Of course, part of any answer will turn on what is meant by "the better philosopher," and [End Page 146] we will return to this issue. If the two books reviewed here get the attention they deserve, Bayle may begin to get more of the attention he deserves.Bayle is well-known for his attacks on Pierre Jurieu, but less well-known are his fights with the 'rationalist' theologian-philosophers Jean LeClerc, Jacques Bernard, and Isaac Jaquelot. They reveal that Bayle was not the automatic supporter of "Enlightenment" of later legend. Stefano Brogi explores these attacks in three of Bayle's last works, the Continuation of the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet (1705; very different from the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet of 1683), Response to Questions of a Provincial (1704-1707), and Conversations between Maxime and Thémiste (1707). Regrettably, none of these—nor any of the works of LeClerc, Bernard, and Jaquelot—have been translated. Greater attention to Descartes may derive from the excellent translations of his work, contrasted with the absence of translations of much of Bayle.Brogi begins with Bayle's reconstruction of "Pyrrho's theology." Faith, in Bayle's hands, is almost completely non-cognitive, accepting the Scripture without understanding it. Rationality, to Bayle, is a second Penelope, unraveling all that it makes. Then Brogi explores what Bayle could have meant by praising Simonides, the ancient Greek who, asked to define God, always asked for more time. He also reviews Bayle's views on euhemerism and the theory of impostorship, and cannot believe Bayle's pretended unawareness of some of the implications of his arguments.The third section, "Ethics against religion," tackles the paradox that Bayle fiercely attacked reason and the argument from consensus for the existence of God, but then invoked reason and consensus as proof of moral claims. In ethics, Bayle's skepticism evaporates. That leads to the further paradox that his rigorous moral evaluation of religion leads to atheism. The ostensible argument is that pagan religions have such immoral gods that it is better not to believe in them; the implication is that the same goes for Judeo-Christianity.It all comes together in Brogi's discussion of "Theology without morality." In his controversies with LeClerc about Origenism (universal salvation) and evil, Bayle brings out the dubious moral consequences of both Origenism and Augustinianism. There is no rational way of saving God's goodness. Then Bayle simply declares his faith in revelation. LeClerc thinks this is bad faith, but he ends up relying on blind faith. Jaquelot argues that God's glory requires the world as it is, but when Bayle asks what glory could come from human suffering, Jaquelot also takes refuge in the inscrutability of God. If anyone thinks these were insignificant controversies, remember that they provoked Leibniz's Theodicy (1710). Austin Farrar once pronounced, exignorantia, that Bayle was "hopelessly confused" ("Introduction," Routledge edition of Leibniz's Theodicy, 1951; now Open Court edition, 35), but Leibniz knew better.Gianluca Mori's book ranges far more widely than Brogi's. It is the best all-around book on Bayle's philosophy in twenty years. Mori begins with a chapter on interpretation, pointing out that everything that Leo Strauss said about encoded language can be found in Bayle. Using Bayle's own claims about such artifices to interpret his work, he explores the writer's ironies, dissimulation, self-censorship, and implied meanings. The interior thoughts of Bayle are unreachable... (shrink)

What does it mean to be a peacemaker in a polarized world? It can feel as if the world-and the church-has never been more polarized. But when we feel worn down by the chasms dividing us, we can take hope from the early Christian vision of God uniting all things in Christ, a hope that can lead us to act. Stuck Together explores Bible stories and narratives ancient and modern that inspire us to open hearts and minds to (...) persons with whom we disagree as we gain confidence in our own convictions. Drawing from Scripture, from his own life journey, and from the witness of others, author J. Nelson Kraybill demonstrates how even small steps of reconciliation by confessionally grounded Christians can have big effect and give loving Christian witness in a polarized church and society. (shrink)

The growing concentration of wealth has acquired a new urgency in recent years. One particular view in this context is developed by Ingrid Robeyns in her ground-breaking work on limitarianism. According to this view, no one should have more than a certain amount of valuable goods, such as income and wealth. The contributors to this symposium, Brian Berkey, David Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen, Jessica Flanigan and Christopher Freiman, and Lena Halldenius, critically examine various aspects of limitarianism. In particular, they examine (...) how limitarianism should be interpreted and developed as a principle of justice, on what reasons speak in favour and against limitarianism, and on how limitarianism relates to other principles of distributive justice. Our hope is that this symposium will contribute to the ongoing debate in political philosophy about the concentration of wealth and economic justice. (shrink)

My initial hope when I first saw Miller’s book was that here at least would be a work which satisfies the long standing need for a comprehensive introduction to contemporary metaethics which is accessible enough to be employed in advanced undergraduate courses and introductory graduate seminars. This hope was only partially realized, however, as Miller ends up oscillating between clear presentations of extant debates in the recent literature and his own extended attempts to determine where the truth of (...) the matter lies. The result is an interesting book that likely will appeal both to those looking for a classroom text in metaethics as well as to experts on the relevant issues. (shrink)

Education and cognition research today generally recognize the tri-dimensional nature of reasoning processes as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, there is so far no theoretical framework articulating these three dimensions from a descriptive perspective. This paper aims at presenting a first model of how group emotions work in collective reasoning, and specifies their social and cognitive functions. This model is inspired both from a multidisciplinary literature review and our extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus of videotaped (...) student debates. The cognitive function of emotions is defined in reference to the process of schematization and associated emotional framing. On the other hand, the social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk, implying specific politeness rules or face-preservation systems. We believe that our multi-dimensional and multi-level approach to group reasoning, which mostly employs a linguistic perspective, can be applied to a diversity of contexts. We hope it will serve as a basis for further discussion on the role of emotions in reasoning among the interdisciplinary community of argumentation studies. (shrink)

The paper attempts to show that Christian hope is not a product of religious fantasy. It finds today an ally in the dialogue with the natural sciences which started in recent years on the topic of the ultimate destiny of the world. The natural sciences have confirmed that the universe is doomed to physical annihilation. Humanity with its cultural riches, scientists say, is only an episode in universal history and doomed to perish. Hence, if the Earth is nothing more (...) than an island of rationality in a cosmic void, then the only thing we can do is to keep up a heroic attitude worthy of human beings towards our own fragile existence. Contemporary science’s visions of the future are pessimistic: abundant, though short-lived, evolution culminating in a sense of final futility and the ultimate destruction of all life in the universe. Such forecasts question religion’s claims for the eschatological transformation of all creation. Christian eschatology does not accept, however, reductionist presuppositions about the very nature of reality. The universe contains levels of meaning far richer than what we have been able to discover sofar. Theology’s task is not to provide easy consolation, or generate false hopes. It has a good reason to avoid catastrophism, and maintain calm in its strivings to keep up our faith in God’s concern for the destiny of all His creatures. Theologians have to take a serious stand on the very concept of finitude, furthered by natural and social sciences. This, in turn, will require critical review of such concepts as the world’s future in God, hope and new creation. This effort must be undertaken in dialogue with the scientific views of the world’s finitude. Both sides are prone to stereotype judgements and shallow answers which must be corrected in consideration of the complexity of the issue at hand. Christian theology has to justify its claim to truth, but certainly not by launching battles with science. Christian hope shows the new creation not as annihilation and destruction of the old but as its ultimate transfiguration and salvific transformation. It speaks about the paradox of continuity/discontinuity in this new universe’s emergence. Special attention is paid in the paper to the “logical” structure of matter. If the world ofultimate events is, in fact, to be a new world of the resurrection, created by transition into new reality, then certain scientific suggestions and data on the present world’s processes could prove helpful in grasping the truly cosmic dimensions of Christian hope. Crucial here will not so much be particular data but rather a sort of meta-science allowing the deduction of general concepts from the detailed achievements of scientific research. Such generalized insights include today the following elements: 1) the dynamic concept of physical reality, 2) the relationality of its processes and, 3) a deeper understanding of the complexity of matter/energy as carriers of a specific information-bearing pattern. It appears that there are some similarities in science’s and theology’s strivings for a deeper understanding of the truth of reality, which continues to evade our theories and teaches us modesty. Neither method nor concept has yet managed to explaineverything. There exists no universal key to a comprehensive interpretation. The postulate to avoid reductionism in approaching the manifold richness of reality is addressed to scientists and theologians alike. (shrink)