ObjectiveThe goal of the study was to explore the relationship between parent–children relationships related to using the internet among kids and potentially associated factors.Materials and MethodsA sample of 1.216 Vietnamese students between the ages of 12 and 18 agreed to participate in the cross-sectional online survey. Data collected included socioeconomic characteristics and internet use status of participants, their perceived changes in relationship and communication between parents and children since using the internet, and parental control toward the child’s internet use. An (...) Ordered Logistic Regression was carried out to determine factors associated with parent–children relationship since using the internet.ResultsThe characteristics of the relationship between children and their parents since using the Internet were divided into three levels: deterioration, stability, and improvement. The topics that children most often communicate with their parents include learning, housework, and future directions. Two-way interactive activities, such as supporting parents to use the Internet, have a positive impact on the parent–child relationship. Stubborn parental control, such as establishing rules about contact or allowing Internet access and setting up global positioning system to track negatively affecting parent–child relationships.ConclusionFindings indicated that changes in the quality of the parent–child relationship were self-assessed by participants regard to kids’ internet use, especially in the COVID-19 epidemic context. Educational campaigns and programs to raise awareness of parents as to the dangers and negative influences that their children may encounter online, psychology of children’s behaviors and effects of different responding strategies are recommended. (shrink)

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization’s values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)

There is a prominent phenomenon in the religious life of Vietnam, which is the emergence of “new religions”. These phenomena have not only made the religious space of the nation more complex and multi-dimensional but also challenged stability and sustainable development within the religious communities in this key economic region. Having studied the new religious phenomenon in recent years, we have noted its progress and widespread characteristics within the ethnic communities. While it may appear that "new religion" is a simple (...) and gentle concept and practice, it is in fact, intrinsically related to and has significant implications on the social life of the community members. However, there is a growing concern, considerable suspicion and anxiety with regards to its impacts on individuals, families, social and cultural traditions, beliefs and religions; many have opined that it is radically changing the peaceful cohabitation of diverse religious traditions, revealing a potential for conflicts across groups. Based on the religious reality of the Southern region of Vietnam, the Center for Religion Studies has implemented a project regarding new religions in Ho Chi Minh City and the problems faced by the religious policy in Vietnam. This article is an overview of the results of this project. (shrink)

A framework that brings together cultural perspectives and behavior genetics has long been needed. To be successful, however, we need sophistication in the conceptualization of culture. Here, we highlight three imperatives to this end: the need for a clear definition of cultural traits, inclusion of the role of societal power, and recognizing the distinction between traits and characteristic adaptations.

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top (...) 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. (shrink)

The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization's values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

Even if religiosity has long been introduced as the major cause for backwardness by anti-religion philosophers, the divine religion has been an important source of value for individuals and society, encouraging them to shape economic and sociocultural outcomes. In this manner, religiosity and religious capital (RC) are the stimuli for society-wide development. Against this background, religion can have positive implications for enriching individual and social economy. Assigning tasks, providing guidance on productivity and more effort, living a purposeful life, establishing effective (...) socio-economic institutions and assessing functional behaviours in organisational settings are accordingly among the ways in which RC induces economic behaviours. On the other hand, job engagement (JE) has been one of the relatively common concepts within the novel approaches to human resource management. Considering employment and the promotion of standard Islamic culture, how religion and JE are associated is thus of utmost importance. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of RC on JE among 2500 Malaysian Muslim nurses working in Kuala Lumpur and Penang hospitals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2021, as the statistical population selected via random sampling. A standardised questionnaire was also administered as the data collection tool, whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The SPSS and LISREL software packages were further utilised to analyse the data. The study results revealed that RC had a significant positive effect on nurses’ JE in the course of COVID-19 (p = 0.83, t = 11.94).Contribution: The research findings suggest that reinforcing RC in Islamic societies, such as Malaysia, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, affects nurses’ sense of hope, faith and beliefs regarding their capabilities to achieve career success. (shrink)

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so in (...) the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally. (shrink)

This research proposes a modified metaheuristic optimization algorithm, named as improved stochastic fractal search, which is formed based on the integration of the quasiopposition-based learning and chaotic local search schemes into the original SFS algorithm for solving the optimal capacitor placement in radial distribution networks. The test problem involves the determination of the optimal number, location, and size of fixed and switched capacitors at different loading conditions so that the network total yearly cost is minimized with simultaneous fulfillment of operating (...) constraints. Also, the hourly on/off scheduling plans of switched shunt capacitors considering a modified cost objective function are obtained. The proposed ISFS algorithm has been tested on two IEEE 69-bus and 119-bus RDNs and a practical 152-bus RDN. For clarifying the effectiveness and validation of the ISFS, the simulated results have been compared with those of other previously utilized solution approaches in the literature as well as the original SFS. From result comparison, the proposed ISFS outperforms other previous approaches regarding solution quality and statistical performance for the compared cases, especially in the complex and large-scale networks. Notably, compared with the original SFS, the proposed ISFS shows a significantly better performance in all the tested cases. (shrink)

Three years of work with more than twenty scientists and high-level specialists: here are revealed the modern proofs of the existence of God. For almost four centuries, from Copernicus to Freud via Galileo and Darwin, scientific discoveries have accumulated in a spectacular way, giving the impression that it was possible to explain the Universe without the need to resort to a god. Creator. And so it was that at the beginning of the 20th century, materialism triumphed intellectually. In a way (...) as unexpected as it is surprising, the pendulum of science has swung back in the other direction, with incredible force. The discoveries of Relativity, quantum mechanics, the expansion of the Universe, its thermal death, the Big Bang, the fine tuning of the Universe or the complexity of living things, have followed one another. This new knowledge came to dynamite the certainties anchored in the collective spirit of the 20th century, to the point that we can say today that materialism, which has never been just a belief like any other, is on the way to become an irrational belief. In a language accessible to all, the authors of this book retrace the history of these advances in a fascinating way and offer a rigorous overview of the new proofs of the existence of God. At the dawn of the 20th century, believing in a creator god seemed to oppose science. Today, wouldn't it be the opposite? An invitation to reflection and debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dieu comme soi-même: connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin: l’herméneutique d’Ambroise Gardeil by Camille de BelloyThomas M. Osborne Jr.Dieu comme soi-même: connaissance de soi et connaissance de Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin: l’herméneutique d’Ambroise Gardeil. By Camille de Belloy, O.P. Paris: Vrin, 2014. Pp. 297. €32.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-2-7116-2605-2.This book is a discussion of La Structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique (1927) by Ambroise Gardeil (...) (1859–1931). In this two-volume work of mystical theology, Gardeil explains the material cause of the experiential knowledge that comes from the gift of wisdom, which is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. La Structure is the third book in a trilogy that focuses on the supernatural knowledge of God, beginning with apologetics in La Crédibilité et l’apologétique (1st ed. 1908), and continuing with the nature of revelation in Le Donné révélé et la théologie (1st ed. 1910). In La Structure, Gardeil develops the thesis that there is an analogy between experiential self-knowledge and the mystical experiential knowledge of God. In the course of his inquiry, Gardeil touches upon philosophical and theological problems concerning self-knowledge, intentionality, the structure of the mind (mens), God’s indwelling in the souls of the just, and the relationship between faith and the gift of wisdom. De Belloy’s new volume is on Gardeil’s presentation of this analogy and its reception by his contemporaries.De Belloy considers largely the issues that surround self-knowledge, the structure of the soul, and mystical experience. He draws together material from Gardeil’s own sources, Gardeil’s contemporaries, and subsequent Thomistic scholarship. He sheds light on the issues themselves, the historical context, and different hermeneutical strategies in Thomism. According to De Belloy, this twentieth-century Thomistic and largely Dominican discussion is important for contemporary philosophers and theologians. To shed light on the context, De Belloy considers a lengthy three-part “Examen de conscience” in Revue Thomiste (1928–29), in which Gardeil responded to published and unpublished comments by his fellow Dominicans Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (a former student), Marie-Dominique Roland-Gosselin (Le Saulchoir), and Albino González Menéndez-Reigada, as well as a young student, Jean Daujat. De Belloy remarks that Maritain’s discussion of Gardeil in The Degrees of Knowledge to some extent attempts to harmonize the substance of Gardeil’s work with Garrigou-Lagrange’s critical comments. De Belloy emphasizes the interaction between Gardeil and Roland-Gosselin, and at the end of his volume, includes their previously unpublished correspondence.Although De Belloy often notes the difficulty of reading Gardeil’s neo-Scholastic prose, it seems to me that the non-native French reader will find Gardeil more accessible than De Belloy, especially when the latter draws on writers such as Henri Bergson and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Moreover, De Belloy’s discussion is easier to follow if one has already read and is familiar with the four parts of Gardeil’s La Structure. In part 1, Gardeil addresses the structure of mind or spirit (mens), and in particular considers Augustine’s [End Page 472] three main, threefold divisions of the soul in De Trinitate (mens, notitia, amor; memoria [sui], intelligentia, voluntas; memoria [Dei], intelligentia, amor) and Aquinas’s own interpretation and appropriation of these divisions. In part 2, Gardeil describes the way in which sanctifying grace, a created quality that is distinct from the infused virtues, causes the soul’s conformity to God’s essence. In part 3, he discusses God’s presence within the souls of the just and agrees with previous Thomists that God is especially present to the just as an object of faith and love. In part 4, he applies the previous discussion to the structure of mystical knowledge. This last part is the culmination of the entire work, as it addresses the analogy between self-knowledge and the knowledge of God that was defended by earlier Dominican Thomists such as John of St. Thomas (1589–1644) and Thomas de Vallgornera (c. 1595–1665).Part... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:706 BOOK REVIEWS struments of redemption for others. Mary is the primary exemplar of receiving her Son's redeeming love in freedom and of wholeheartedly mediating his graces to all he has redeemed. The final essay, "Mary and Modernity," is most timely for American Christians and ecumenists. It is a very worthwhile attempt to compare and contrast the secular triad of virtues, liberty, equality, and fraternity with the Christian triad (...) of theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, especially as they are exemplified in Mary. Although this approach perceives Mary more as a " sign of contradiction " to our secularistic culture, she will help us to avoid the extremes of confusing true freedom with licence, genuine equality with egalitarianism, and authentic fraternity with collectivism by helping inspire in us the really liberating values of her Son's Gospel. Everyone can benefit immensely from the intelligent reading of this book. Mt. St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland FREDERICK M. JELLY, O.P. Dieu et l'etre d'apres Thomas d'Aquin et Hegel. By EMILIO BRITO. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. Pp. 422. 245 francs. Sprung from premature fears of post-modernity or from an ignorant nostalgia for a monoform Catholicism which never existed, universal dismissals of " modernity " still appear occasionally in Catholic j ournals. They recall,the neo-scholastic te:xitbooks prior to Vatican II in whose pages the " moderni " (among whom were numbered not only "Kantiani" but "Hegeliani ") were dismissed by authors who, having read a few pages, were incapable of grasping the basic directions of philosophy from Herder to Heidegger. Emilio Brito, S.J., however, follows in the line of the French and German Jesuits: through this century they have sustained a varied dialogue, in philosophy and theology, between Thomas Aquinas and the important figures of modern philosophy. His two works on Hegel's Christology, and a third large study of God and creation in Schelling are now followed by this comparative work. The theology of Aquinas and the philosophy of Hegel are like two galaxies. Do they move past each other at a distance, or do they move through each other guarding a proper identity with similar forces and shared motifs? Brito has chosen one theme within these two vast realms of thought: his topic (and the book's title can mislead) is God; 'being' BOOK REVIEWS 707 is present as a stimulus to our reflection about God. After an introduction on recent interpretations of Hegel, particularly by Catholics, pages which should be read by all interested in contemporary theology, there are three sections: " the knowledge and naming of God," " the divine substance and the cycle of its attributes," and " the operations of absolute spirit." The chapters in each of the three areas present Aquinas's and then Hegel's thought, and sometimes a section of further comparison. At the end of the work Brito offers a conclusion ("God's Goodness") and a postlude ("God's Beauty"). Finally there is a "Resume." According to Brito, Aquinas's thought is clear (his Aristotelian logic is readily understandable), and his emphasis lies with the divine transcendence. Despite the process-format of the Summa theologiae and the traces of history in the headship of Christ, the diversity of sacraments, and the theologies of faith and natural law, his modest description of movement in God and in God's world of beings stands in contrast to the unleashed and unresolved development penetrating Hegel's Geist. The concluding " Resume " of nine pages is particularly valuable as it brings together the author's synthetic insights into Aquinas and Hegel (one might hope that at least it would appear in translation). The following excerpt displays its balance and clarity. The God of the Summa tends to stay back from mediation, letting itself exist in a certain exteriority, while the Hegelian absolute " raises out" the determinations it posits only by also absorbing them negatively. In the same vein, the Hegelian parousia of the negative abolishes absolutely the distance maintained by the inexpressible in language. In an opposite direction, the originating positivity of the God of Thomas grounds the irreducible presence of a reality represented in discourse. If he is a stranger to this approach and more... (shrink)

Notre époque de culture sans Dieu, celle du « discours sur la mort de Dieu », provoque la théologie à se concentrer sur la Croix du Christ pour y reconnaître le lieu même de la révélation de Dieu et fonder du même coup le vrai sens de la « mort de Dieu ». Si l’athéisme est né de l’impuissance de la pensée moderne à concevoir la nécessité de Dieu , la théologie de la Croix en apporte la justification ; car (...) la connaissance naturelle de Dieu ne peut se réclamer d’aucune nécessité rationnelle, quand la révélation de Dieu sur la Croix — scandale pour la raison — échappe à toute évidence externe et fait savoir que l’existence de Dieu n’a pas de fondement dans ce monde.La gratuité est donc caractéristique de cette révélation, la marque de son humilité. L’événement de la Croix est l’avènement historique de la liberté de l’homme face à Dieu, liberté de croire et de ne pas croire, d’exister avec Dieu ou sans Dieu. Cette liberté est le don même de la foi et le salut offet à tous ceux qui vivent selon la gratuité de l’amour. En révélant que Dieu est amour, la Croix proclame que la gratuité est son être en soi et pour soi en même temps que son être « pour nous », à la fois existence trinitaire et relation à la créature.Our era of a culture without God, that of “discourse on the death of God”, provokes theology to concentrate on the Cross of Christ in order to recognize the center of God’s revelation and to establish, at the same time, the true sense of the “death of God”. If atheism is born of the weakness of modern thought to conceive the necessity of God , the theology of the Cross brings justification to it. For the natural knowledge of God can not claim for itself any rational necessity, when the revelation of God on the Cross — a scandal to reason — escapes all external evidence and shows that the existence of God has no foundation in this world.Gratuitousness, then, is characteristic of this revelation, the mark of its humility. The event of the Cross is the historical coming of mankind’s freedom before God, freedom to believe or not to believe, to exist with God or without God. This freedom is the very gift of faith and salvation offered to all those who live according to the gratuitousness of love. In revealing that God is love, the Cross proclaims that gratuitousness is his being in itself and for itself at the same time as his being “for us”. It is both Trinitarian existence and relation to the creature. (shrink)

L’article expose et discute l’un des plus importants livres récents dans le domaine de la philosophie de la religion : Perceiving God : The Epistemology of Religious Experience de William Alston. Parmi les principaux problèmes soulevés par la thèse de Alston – une défense «analytique» de l’expérience mystique de la perception de Dieu – la question de savoir si la notion de perception doit être prise littéralement ou comme une métaphore est fondamentale. À cet égard, l’article insiste sur l’ambiguïté de (...) la conception d’Alston. Dans la mesure aussi où la perception est conçue par Alston en termes de pratique établie, n’est-il pas possible de montrer que son analyse de la perception divine ne correspond qu’imparfaitement aux moments historiques où elle a joué un rôle théologique important, particulièrement dans la lignée platonicienne ? -/- This is an exposition and discusion of one of the most important of recent books in the area of philosophy of religion : Perceiving God : The Epistemology of Religious Experience, by William Alston. Among the principal problems he brings up in his “analytic” defence of the mystical experience of the perception of God, the question of knowing whether the notion of perception should be taken literally or in a metaphoric sense is fundamental. On this point, the article insists on the ambiguous nature of Alston’s concept. In that Alston thinks of perception as established practice, is it not possible to show that his analysis of divine perception corresponds rather imperfectly to the historic moments in which it has played an important theological role, particularly in the line of Platonism ? (shrink)

La peinture de Caravage occupe une position stratégique entre l'art religieux du XVIe siècle, dont le naturalisme, ainsi chez Carracci, est imprégné de présence divine, et le réalisme sécularisé qui triomphera au XIXe siècle. Aussi a-t-elle été l'objet d'incessants conflits d'interprétation, commencés déjà de son temps. Elle ne paraissait pas d'accord, en effet, avec les consignes d'orthodoxie données aux artistes par les théologiens de la Contre-Réforme, et clairement rappelées à Caravage dans le contrat qui lui avait été fixé en 1565 (...) pour représenter les scènes de la vie de S. Matthieu dans l'église S. Louis des Français à Rome. Il interpréta ce contrat selon des critères tout nouveaux et personnels. La composition de l'espace et de la lumière, la disposition des personnages et des clairs-obscurs sont significatives de la vision moderne du monde et de l'homme qui commence à se mettre en place à cette époque. Le rayon de lumière qui traverse une scène sans noblesse plongée dans l'obscurité immobilise un instant de vérité et de choix, l'événement de la rencontre de Jésus et de Matthieu, l'instant d'une communication de parole entre Dieu et l'homme, l'heure où chacun est appelé à décider du sens de son existence personnelle, sans autre intervention divine, dans la banalité de sa vie quotidienne. Ce monde n'est pas vide de Dieu, mais Dieu ne fait qu'y passer ; il se retire, pour laisser le monde à son autonomie, et l'homme à la conscience de sa liberté.Caravaggio's painting holds a strategic position between the religions art of the sixteenth century, the naturalism of which is pervaded by divine presence – e.g. in Carracci's art –, and the secularized realism which is to flourish in the nineteenth century. It has therefore been the subject of unceasing controversies in its interpretation, beginning in Caravaggio’s times already. Indeed, Caravaggio’s painting did not seem in line with the instructions given to the artists by Counter-Reformation’s theologians, urging them to follow the Orthodox line. Caravaggio had been clearly reminded of those instructions in the contract he had signed in 1565 to portray the scenes of Saint Matthew’s life in Saint Louis des Français’Church in Roma. He interpretated this contract according to very innovative and personal criteria. The composition of space and light, the layout of characters and chiaroscuros are revealing of the modern vision of the world and of the man that was emerging in those times. The light ray that crosses a scene devoid of nobleness and plunged into darkness, immobilises a moment of truth and choice : the event of Jesus meeting Matthew, the instant of an oral communication between God and man, the time when everyone is called to decide his of her personal existence in the triviality of his or her daily life, without God intervening in the process. This world is not void of God’s presence, but God only passes through it. He withdraws to let the world face its autonomy, and man face the awareness of his freedom. (shrink)

Notre vocabulaire dispose de deux mots : « foi » et « raison ». Et comme le pas est vite fait de l’existence des mots à l’existence des choses, la théorie commune nous dit d’une part que nous sommes doués de raison et d’autre part que la foi peut être éveillée en nous, et qu’il s’agit là de deux modes de connaissance distincts . Précisons. La théorie commune fait d’abord fonds sur une affirmation aussi vieille que la philosophie, et qui (...) est une affirmation philosophique : l’homme se définit spécifiquement par le logos, lequel se dit ratio en latin ; d’où « raison » et « rationalité ». En ses origines grecques et une fois devenue romaine, d’autre part, la rationalité est illimitée. Et de la sorte, une question ne se pose jamais : celle d’un acte de connaissance dans lequel l’homme excède sa définition d’ « animal rationnel ». Cette question se posa toutefois lorsque la connaissance de Dieu et des choses divines en vint, en monde chrétien, à être considérée comme excédant les prises de la raison. Que peut alors exactement la raison ?Our vocabulary has at its disposal two words: “faith” and “reason.” And since we are quick to move from the existence of words to the existence of things, common theory tells us first that we are endowed with reason, and secondly, that faith can be awakened in us, and that these are two modes of distinct but complementary knowledge. Let us explain. Common theory first depends upon an affirmation as old as philosophy, which is a philosophical affirmation: man defines himself specifically by the logos, which is called ratio in Latin; whence “reason” and “rationality.” In its Greek origins, and once it became Roman, rationality is unlimited. As a result, there is one question that is never raised: that of an act of knowledge in which man exceeds his definition of “rational animal.” The question did arise in the Christian world, however, when the knowledge of God and divine things came to be considered as exceeding the grasp of reason. What then can the reason do exactly? (shrink)

Spinoza, like the Judeo-Christian tradition, affirms divine omnipotence, but from a profoundly different perspective. Indeed, the traditional view that “God can do anything” assumes that God has the power to manipulate nature and circumstances as He pleases. This idea justifies the institution of worship by mankind in order to implore God’s mercy on their behalf. However, this interpretation of God’s power is no different from that of men of power, who can change a man’s situation at their pleasure. Spinoza criticises (...) this interpretation which attributes human behaviour to God. He starts from the idea of infinity, in the sense of that which cannot be hindered by anything else, to show that there is nothing outside of God capable of limiting it. The idea of infinity is supplemented by the understanding of the nature of God which determines the understanding of his power. This power, far from taking the form of an arbitrary action, follows the laws which are from the outset set by nature, of which it is the necessary, both complete and perfect, expression. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the study of the origins of Christian cosmogony. Christian authors of the 2nd century are known for their enigmatic or ambiguous positions on the issue. The problem concerns mainly the apologists, but it first appears in Ignatius of Antioch and continues in Bardesanes. Although they all confess God as the Creator, their ways of presenting the act of creation are strongly marked by philosophical doctrines, primarily by Platonism, or by Stoicism in the case of Bardesanes. (...) The Christian Creator receives the characteristics of a demiurge and an artisan. This approach has implications for the notions of universe and matter. But first and foremost, the idea of God as a demiurge and an artisan determines the role assigned to the Logos in the act of creation. Those concepts are later abandoned in favour of a doctrine based more on the Bible, but they give us a better understanding of the relationship between young Christianity and Platonism. (shrink)

The present volume is the successor to Dieu sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin (Paris, Vrin, 2006). In that book, the author examines Aristotelian metaphysics as an ontology of act-potency (energeia-dunamis). Her conclusion is that the act that is the life of the unmoved mover is pure or complete actualization, which means that it has no further actualizations. In that case, the effect of the unmoved mover as first principle of all can only be as (...) an ideal that... (shrink)

Nombreux sont les versets coraniques qui insistent sur la toute-puissance de Dieu : en maître absolu du Bien et du Mal, il fait ce que bon lui semble, égarant et sauvant qui II veut. Pris au pied de la lettre, ces versets ont inspiré une vision déterministe et fataliste dé l'homme et du monde qui exclut toute possibilité de fonder une éthique rationnelle : le bien et le mal sont entièrement déterminés par la seule volonté de Dieu et l'islam se (...) résume alors à une soumission aveugle aux décrets divins. Tenue pour responsable de l'ankylose de la pensée musulmane, voire des dérives obscurantistes de l'islamisme radical, cette position, qui résulte du triomphe de l'as'arisme dans le sunnisme postclassique, est de nos jours sévèrement critiquée par des théologiens soucieux de promouvoir un islam éclairé. Ceux-ci renouent souvent avec des doctrines mu'tazilites visant à atténuer, d'une façon ou d'une autre, la puissance divine et à reconnaître en Dieu une certaine « impuissance », afin de créer un espace pour l'homme. L'article retrace l'historique de ce débat, qui remonte aux origines mêmes de la théologie musulmane. Many verses in the Koran insist on God's omnipotence: as the absolute Master of Good and Evil, He does whatever he likes, condemning or saving whomever He decides. Understood literally, those verses have inspired a deterministic and fatalistic vision of man and the world, one which excludes any possibility of grounding a rational ethics. Both Good and Evil are totally determined by the will of God alone, and Islam may be summed up as a blind submission to divine decrees. This position, which results from the triumph of as'arism in post-classical sunnism, has been held responsible for the stagnation of Muslim thought, indeed for the obscurantist excesses of radical Islamism and is today severely criticized by some theologians concerned to promote an enlightened Islam. These scholars have often revived mu'tazilist doctrines whose aim is to weaken one way or another, notions of divine power and, by recognizing in God a certain « powerlessness », create a space for human action. This paper retraces the history of this debate which dates back to the very origins of the Muslim theology. (shrink)

Pendant presque deux millénaires, la toute‑puissance a été un attribut inséparable de Dieu et de la foi en Dieu. Depuis un certain temps, et en particulier au xxe siècle, cette toute‑puissance est contestée aussi bien depuis l’extérieur que depuis l’intérieur de la théologie. À l’intérieur de la théologie, on lui substitue volontiers une impuissance que Dieu assumerait délibérément. La question est de savoir si l’affirmation et la négation de cet attribut ne relèvent pas du même type de discours ; d’un (...) discours qui se prétend capable de savoir, d’affirmer, de contester, de dominer, de régler...Quel est ici le statut de l’homme et du langage humain? Face à la « problématique » de la toute‑puissance de Dieu, l’homme dispose‑t‑il encore de ses points de repère, de ses mots, de ses certitudes?For almost two millennia, omnipotence has been an attribute of God inseparable from faith in God. Recently, and in particular since the twentieth century, the notion of divine omnipotence has been contested from outside the field of theology as well as from within. Some theologians have preferred to substitute for omnipotence a notion of powerlessness deliberately assumed by God. One might question however whether either the affirmation or the denial of omnipotence do not arise from the same type of discourse: a discourse that claims the ability to know, to assert, to question, to dominate, to rule...What then can be said here of the status of man and of human language? Confronted with the issue of God’s omnipotence, what remains to man as points of reference, what is left of his words, his certitudes? (shrink)

The study of civilizations is largely motivated by a single question—what drives and defines a culture or civilization? In an effort to locate a civilization—or, in the case of this chapter, three civilizations—historically, perhaps the best way is to call this drive and defining quality the cultural “sovereign.” Historically, in almost every case, this sovereign takes on a spiritual and religious form in the earliest and most vitalized period of any civilization’s lifespan. Conceptualizing civilizations in two phases, this chapter will (...) seek to show that, as a rule, at some point this spiritual sovereign is usurped and replaced by a human and corrupted sovereign. This transition precipitates the decay of Civilization, first explored by Oswald Spengler, examined here with a focus on the point at which the original and eternal sovereign ceases to be the arbiter of moral and cultural questions, and the State takes over this sovereignty. To understand “sovereignty,” the chapter appeals to Schmitt; the sovereign is one who has the power “to decide the exception.” In this way, the ethos of a culture begins as something in which no exceptions can be made by a human being—the point at which the eternal is sovereign. As civilization declines, however, one witnesses human beings making exceptions,as morality ceases to be binding, social propriety becomes a luxury rather than a necessity, and religion becomes a fixture rather than the core of society. This state of collapse is highlighted in three separate civilizations—the Civic (i.e. Graeco-Roman), the Pharaonic (i.e. Egyptian), and the Ecclesiastic (i.e. Western). The viability of any project aimed at “revival” or “regeneration” is also examined and, the author hopes, soundly denied. (shrink)

In a work of foundational thinking of the first rank and perhaps his most important book to date, French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas attempts to establish the primordiality of ethics by exhibiting the structures of the ethical subject and distinguishing these from theoretical reason, even from a conatus towards the Good. In his earlier Totality and Infinity Levinas interprets this difference morphologically within the context of a Husserlian Lebensweltphilosophie as sensuous immediacy, habitation, fecundity and, beyond ontology, the commanding relation with the (...) Other. In the present work the focus shifts to discourse itself. This turn is a response to the problematic set forth in the later Heidegger as the ontological difference, the difference between Being and beings and the coming-to-pass of this difference in the Logos, as well as to French Structuralist and post-Structuralist thought which interprets language as a system of signs and meaning as arising within a field of intralinguistic difference. For both, the epistemological subject as it has been traditionally understood dissolves. But, Levinas argues, ethical subjectivity, a nul-site beyond ontology, more primordial than the ontological difference which exists as receptivity to and responsibility for the Other, remains. This work is a sustained meditation on the Good and the structure of responsibility which precedes Being and consciousness. (shrink)

Since 2019, Vietnam has witnessed a "reincarnation movement" characterized by the creation of new cultural products infused with folklore, encompassing various mediums like photography, cinema, and music.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 589-590 [Access article in PDF] Luc Foisneau. Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000. Pp. 424. Paper, FF 174. As a recent conference in London confirmed, Hobbes scholarship remains sharply divided, even precarious, with several plausible and diametrically opposed interpretations en jeu. This is especially true as to the question of Hobbes's religion in relation to (...) his political thinking. The famous "Strauss thesis" appeals to many, and, not long ago (Journal of the History of Philosophy 34, no. 2, 1996), this journal printed an exchange between Edwin Curley and A. P. Martinich that canvassed the old arguments and introduced many new ones. The issue seems to be whether Hobbes was sincere in making his theological arguments, prompting us to include them in his thought, or ironic, allowing us to pass them by.French philosopher Luc Foisneau has produced a carefully written, brilliantly crafted account of Hobbes's theory of political obligation that includes the theological elements and makes them central, but without resort to the difficult concept of authorial sincerity. Foisneau, who teaches at the Institut d'Études Politiques, Paris, finds his interpretive key in Hobbes's description of divine omnipotence. The concept, he claims, figures centrally in Hobbes's theory of knowledge. It grounds the theory of political obligation and provides a principal justification for sovereignty itself. Moreover, Foisneau draws a starkly moving picture of human mortality vis-à-vis God's "irresistible power," asserting that the secular or lay temper of modern moral and political theory stems less from a rejection of theology (certainly not in Hobbes's case) than from a sharpened awareness of human limitations. Foisneau gives an impressive and convincing answer to the abiding question: "Hobbes's theology: What does it matter?" Namely, Hobbes's theology is the core of Hobbes's politics.Before briefly considering one strand in the tissue of Foisneau's argument, let us consider two features of his work and the context of its production.The first is that the author's focus is securely on the text itself, recalling the French explication du texte tradition. According to its strictures, working in detail, the analyst of the text carefully unfolds its meaning, precisely contained in and coextensive with the text's form. Hobbes the man and his contemporaries recede as limiting cases or frames of reference, though they and the other Hobbesian texts do figure as material illustrative [End Page 589] of points made through textual interpretation. Indeed, the history of ideas serves to illuminate the text; see the potentia absoluta/ordinata distinction, below. This steady, ample focus on the text's possible coherence and the concern not to leave the four corners of the document bear comparison with the contextualism of Lucien Lefebvre and Quentin Skinner.The second feature is linked to the first, and it is Foisneau's association with the Centre Thomas Hobbes (CTH), at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris, headed by Prof. Yves Charles Zarka. The foremost academic institution devoted solely to the study of Thomas Hobbes, the CTH annually holds extended, international seminars, explicating two or three chapters of Leviathan. Several books and articles have appeared under CTH sponsorship, dealing with specific aspects of Hobbes's work, for example, detailed analyses of his philosophic vocabulary. The CTH's highly focused, on-going program of study gives promise that the rough places in Hobbes scholarship may one day be a bit plainer. Foisneau's book is a major contribution toward that end.Let us consider one particular, viz., Hobbes's modeling of the sovereign's power upon God's absolute power. Hobbes's long-time interlocutor, John Bramhall, is quick to detect and criticize this in De Cive, moving him to reprove both the theological and political deficiencies of Hobbes's conceptual translatio. Bramhall denies one can consider God's absolute power independently of His ordained power, expressed in the eternal laws He has ordained. Nor may one place the power of the sovereign beyond the reach of the law. Impressed... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Évangile et Providence: Une théologie de l’action de Dieu by Emmanuel DurandMichael J. Dodds, O.P.Évangile et Providence: Une théologie de l’action de Dieu. By Emmanuel Durand. Paris: Cerf, 2014. Pp. 345. €35.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-2-204-10201-8.Emmanuel Durand offers a refreshing perspective on the question of divine action, so much discussed in recent years in the dialogue between theology and science. While not neglecting the fruit of that discussion, his (...) framing of the question under the headings of “Gospel” and “Providence” opens a new vista that is evident in his opening question: “What theology of Providence is needed today for the Gospel of salvation?” (7).Although contemporary theology readily affirms the biblical proclamation of God’s universal offer of salvation, its account of God’s salvific action on behalf of each person has become “uncertain and problematic.” Discussions of divine “kenosis, self-limitation, retreat, and powerlessness” have led many to the conviction God’s action must somehow be “limited” (8). The result is the paradox of a limited God attempting to offer universal salvation. The remedy lies in the recovery of a correct understanding of “the sovereignty of God”—the God who acts not only in the “intimacy of human hearts” but also in and through the “happy and unhappy contingencies” of human life (8-9).Durand begins by placing the question of divine action in the context of contemporary theology and culture, considering first the relationship between divine and human action, then the question of God’s action in history, and finally the understanding of divine action that has surfaced in the dialogue between theology and science (chap. 1). His next task is to clarify the notion of “action” itself. This entails an account of analogy (chap. 2). The discussion then turns to the “creative reappropriation” (10) of three classical theologies of divine providence, those of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman. This involves a careful consideration of the Confessions of Augustine, the Summa contra gentiles of Aquinas, and the sermons of Newman (chaps. 3-5).The flip side of the question of divine action is of course the problem of evil and why a God who is capable of overcoming evil does not do so. Durand proposes not to “resolve” (résoudre) such problems here, but simply to help us “press” (serrer) them (11) as a preparation for listening to what revelation may say of them (chap. 6). The question of evil serves as the background for the discussion of Scripture that follows, where aspects of the books of Wisdom, Luke, and John are considered (chap. 7). Durand concludes with a [End Page 133] constructive proposal for understanding Providence in the world as we find it today, afflicted with evil (chap. 8).Durand begins his book with a discussion of the widespread opinion in contemporary philosophy and theology that divine and human action are somehow opposed to or in competition with each other. He traces this notion to Sartre, arguing that it now seems to pervade our culture despite the efforts of theologians such as Sertillanges to refute it. God’s action in the world is thought to diminish as humanity matures historically. The sovereign God gives place to the suffering God, who can act only through the actions of humans. The contemporary notion of history itself poses problems for divine action. It is difficult to affirm God’s saving and directing action in history, when history itself has lost its direction: “The loss of confidence in the intelligibility of history also jeopardizes the representation of God as sovereign, cause, author, director or guarantor of history” (29). Finally, the ability of science to explain natural events has led some to the conviction that there is simply no room for God to act in the world without interfering with the order of scientific laws. Durand presents a fine summary and critique of the responses to this dilemma that have surfaced in the ongoing dialogue between theologians and scientists, especially under the auspices of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (31-60).Durand... (shrink)

In this paper, I shall suggest that, what Descartes supported in his letter to More of August 1649, when he claimed that God’s essence might be present everywhere, was not that God can’t exist without being extended, i.e. being omnipresent, but that God has necessarily the disposition to be extended. If my interpretation is correct, then the claim that God’s essence is omnipresent is consistent with the thesis that God is omnipresent ratione potentiæ.

The ontological argument continues to draw the attention of philosophers of different persuasions. This is one of the latest works on the subject. In it the Anselmian proof as developed in the Proslogion is submitted to careful analysis and placed in relation to Anselm’s approach to God in the Monologion. Thus the title of the book seems to be justified, inasmuch as it is Anselm’s notion of God that is investigated from a rational viewpoint rather than the ontological argument alone. (...) Vuillemin divides his work into four parts, which are followed by a conclusion and seven appendices. In the first two parts he contends that the ontological argument as stated in the Proslogion is a rational proof based on rational data, even though faith may support those data, and that the proof therefore involves an illegitimate transition from the concept of God in our mind to his actual existence, a criticism that the author shares with Kant. The third and fourth parts of the book are Vuillemin’s personal contribution to the understanding of the argument and purport to show the epistemological and mathematical antinomies that result from the "negative" concept of a being than which nothing greater can be thought which is at the basis of the Anselmian proof. It is the author’s contention that reason can prove both the impossibility of conceiving the being in question and the inability of the human mind to argue to the existence of a transcendent being from concepts derived by abstraction from the beings of our experience. Thus Vuillemin would rule out not only the so-called argument a priori of the Proslogion but also the arguments a posteriori presented in the Monologion. To understand Anselm’s ontological argument correctly, it is necessary to view it in the light of Anselm’s belief and in the context of the ideological realism which he shared with the entire Augustinian school. By neglecting such considerations, Vuillemin, like many other interpreters before him, does not seem to have done justice to what has been called "one of the boldest creations of man’s reason and a credit not only to his inventor, but to human reason itself.".—B. M. B. (shrink)

Early writings of year 1750 to the ultimate bundle of Opus Postumum Kant remained preoccupied by the question of God. The genetic reconstruction of the theoretical writings of philosophy shows a certain degree how dogmatically asserting the existence of God, first, turns on has its epistemic status to the assertion of an ideal of reason while held constant, as transcendental theology and as physico-theology reflechissante, as to its systematic function, namely to serve as a foundation. It shows how the other (...) theological problematic, as the problematic foundation widens, the way, in the same considerations of theoretical philosophy, to moral theology to be understood as constituting the ultimate point of view the most pupil of a transcendental philosophy remains, it is true, the order of the unfinished. (shrink)

The scope of this article is to build a bridge between, on the one hand, the data of Trinitarian theology as it has been elaborated by the Church in the context of the controversies that arose through the centuries and which has been sanctioned by the authority of the councils, and, on the other hand, the same Trinitarian doctrine as source of the Christian experience, which finds its privileged expression with the mystics. The article places itself in the context of (...) the Thomist school. It thus enlightens the meeting-point constituted by reflection on the person of the Spirit. Two mediatory notions appear then fundamental: the first considers the particular relationship between the Spirit and the charity he spreads in our hearts, the other sends back to the idea of the invisible mission of the Spirit which testifies to the presence in us of the Father. This reflection on the Spirit takes into account, according to the thought of the Fathers, the continuous articulation between the invisible mission of the Spirit and the visible one of the Son in his incarnation and in his revelatory function. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of the existence of God has acquired a pressing importance from the force of contemporary atheism. Some twenty expert thinkers express their personal reflections in the papers presented in April 1960 to the seventh Rencontres doctrinales at the Dominican college of theology at La Sartre in Huy, Belgium. A ten-page annex of critical discussion on the relation between belief and proof, between metaphysical experience and its dialectic towards the explicit affirmation of God reveals a candid appreciation that (...) theological reflection must justify itself in terms of modern epistemology - in Canon Dondeyne’s words. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 123-124 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Textes philosophiques: conclusions philosophiques. Dissertation en deux parties sur la vision des vérités en Dieu et l'amour de la vertu. Régle du bon sens. De la liberté de l'homme Antoine Arnauld. Textes philosophiques: conclusions philosophiques. Dissertation en deux parties sur la vision des vérités en Dieu et l'amour de la vertu. Régle du bon (...) sens. De la liberté de l'homme. Épiméthée. Translated by Denis Moreau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001. Pp. xi + 333. Cloth, FF 198.00. This collection should prove useful to anyone doing research on Antoine Arnauld, or more generally on philosophical theology in seventeenth-century France. The collection contains excellent French translations of three Latin texts, and a scholarly, if not critical, edition of a fourth text that appeared originally in French. They are accompanied by helpful [End Page 123] introductions and copious scholarly notes. A bibliography of 533 secondary works on Arnauld is provided.Studies of Arnauld's philosophy have concentrated on his polemics with Malebranche and Leibniz. Moreau suggests that Arnauld's philosophy is worth studying in its own right, and the texts he has selected provide a start for such a study. The first text, Conclusiones Philosophicae, is a set of theses composed by Arnauld for defense by one of his students in 1641, when Arnauld himself was twenty-nine years old. It is our only record of Arnauld's early philosophical thought. Moreau points out that Conclusiones anticipates themes developed by Arnauld during the rest of his long career, and that the text is also valuable as an indicator of the sort of philosophical questions being discussed in Paris at the time that Descartes wrote the Meditations. The original Latin and Moreau's French translation are given on facing pages.The second and third texts in the collection, Dissertatio Bipartita and Régles du Bon Sens, were parts of a debate within Jansenist circles near the end of Arnauld's life. Arnauld's friend, and his collaborator in the Port-Royal Logic, Pierre Nicole, had introduced into Port-Royal the speculation that every human being receives a "grace générale" that makes it possible for her to perform morally good actions. Arnauld attacked this theory in the late 1680s. Given the Augustinian assumption that an action is morally good only if it is directed to God as the agent's final end, and given that some people have never thought about God, the theory of a grace générale raised a philosophical question: How could someone who has no knowledge of God act out of the love of God? Nicole's answer was that the grace générale given to every human being brings with it a sort of implicit, confused, and imperceptible knowledge and love of God. In defense of this answer, Nicole refers to a thesis written by the Louvain theologian Gommaire Huygens, also a friend of Arnauld's, and defended by one of Huygens's students in 1688. Huygens says that anyone who has knowledge of a necessary and immutable truth sees that truth "in the first and uncreated truth, which is God," and that anyone who loves chastity or any other moral virtue, by that very fact loves "the eternal reason of chastity, which is in God." These positions seemed to support the notion that everyone might have an implicit knowledge and love of God even if some have never consciously thought about God. Arnauld attacked these claims in 1692 in his Latin Dissertatio bipartita, of which Moreau provides a French translation. Nicole was impressed and disturbed by the Dissertatio, confessing that he did not know how to respond. He asked another mutual friend of his and Arnauld's, the Benedictine François Lamy, to answer Arnauld. In reply to Lamy, Arnauld wrote... (shrink)

Bringing together two aspects of Thomas Aquinas's thought that have been studied separately: his theory of God's concurrence and his theory of instrumental causality, I show how he uses the latter (which I discuss first) to clarify the Proclusian principle that the first cause has a greater influence on an effect than the proximate causes. Thanks to this theory, Aquinas accounts for the fact that it is God who confers existence to every new being that is produced by natural processes, (...) without however negating the agency of secondary, created causes. (shrink)

In his writings on the conception and the birth of the Son of God, Jacob of Sarug perceives Mary’s perpetual virginity as a mystery intimately linked to that of the Son of God. In fact, the Son of God has taken flesh from the Virgin for us men and for our salvation. Jacob presents two ways to describe the Incarnation : the conception of the Word of God through the ear, and his entrance in the world through the common door (...) of all men. This paper intends to identify the Mariological and Christological challenges of Mary’s virginal motherhood, according to Jacob of Sarug. For this purpose, it proposes to review both ways in the light of the two images of Mary : the sealed letter in which the Divine Word was inscribed, and the closed door of Ezekiel’s vision. (shrink)

Castelli has again managed to bring together in Rome some of the greatest specialists of mythology, biblical exegesis, of the different branches of linguistics, with a generous sprinkling of philosophers, theologians, and historians. From the very large number of contributions, especially important are E. Benveniste: Blasphemy and euphemy; K. Kerényi: The language of theology and the theology of language; D. McKinnon: The problem of "the system of projection" in reference to the Christian theological affirmations; R. Panikkar: Silence and word, The (...) smile of the Buddha; B. Bäumer: The secret name in Hinduism; E. Levinas: The name of God after some rabbinical texts; S. Cotta: The name of God in juridical language; P. Ric£ur: Paternity: from the phantasm to the symbol; A. de Waelhens: Paternity and the Oedipus-complex in psychoanalysis; S. Breton: Religious language, theological language; J. Brun: The pseudonyms of God; H. Bouillard: The name of God in the Credo; G. Vahanian: Writing and history; I. Manchini: A nonreligious interpretation of God; X. Tilliette: Attempt at a transition from the God of the philosophers to the God of the Christians; M. Olivetti: The beginnings of Jacobi's philosophy of language.--M. J. V. (shrink)

Un debat tres vif eut lieu parmi les commentateurs medioplatoniciens sur le rapport entre la forme du bien de la Republique et le demiurge du Timee. Certains d’entre eux, comme Plutarque et Atticus, parvinrent a identifier ces deux entites, d’autres, comme Numenius, a situer les deux principes dans une relation hierarchique, en attribuant au bien la qualification de ≪premier dieu≫ et de pere et au demiurge celle de ≪second dieu≫ et de producteur. Cet article se propose d’examiner la question de (...) l’identite de la forme du bien avec le demiurge sur des bases nouvelles, en prenant comme point de depart une interpretation metaphorique de la figure du demiurge, qui ne se presente pas comme un principe metaphysique independant, mais comme une description metaphorique de l’element causal‑efficient du monde des formes, c’est a dire du vivant intelligible. Le demiurge coinciderait donc avec la totalite active et dynamique du monde intelligible. Dans la seconde partie de l’article est prise en consideration l’hypothese que la superiorite de la forme du bien par rapport aux autres formes est du meme genre que celle du demiurge, dans la mesure ou le bien aussi peut etre compris comme la totalite du kosmos intelligible. Il s’agit d’une hypothese qui ne va pas sans difficultes, mais qui merite d’etre examinee jusqu’au bout. (shrink)

This interesting volume approaches Heidegger in a fresh and suggestive way. The author views Heidegger's thought as a confrontation with the history of metaphysics, an assumption which can hardly be contested. After a preliminary characterization of the essence of "metaphysics" as the later Heidegger understands that word, Laffoucreière reconstructs, chronologically, the history of metaphysics as Heidegger conceives it, studying in turn Heidegger's interpretation of: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Nietzsche. She approaches Heidegger's thought through the eyes (...) of his Nietzsche-interpretation. Heidegger sees the history of the west in profoundly Nietzschean tones: it is the history of nihilism and of the domination of western thought by Christian-Platonic metaphysics whose pivotal concept, God as the first cause, has deteriorated to the point of meaninglessness. The times are needy and it is only by a new turn, a new sending of Being as Mission, that nihilism can be overcome. Laffoucreière explains clearly and forcefully that Heidegger's Seinsdenken is not atheistic, except in the sense of the theos of western metaphysics. She shows that a major concern of Heidegger's thought is to overcome the God of metaphysics in favor of the divine God to whom man can bend his knee. She argues that Heidegger's attempt to retrieve the original sense of Being and man, far from being atheistic, aims in fact at making possible a renewed sense of the living God. The interpretation is sound and for those who doubt it there is a three sentence endorsement of the work by Heidegger himself in which he welcomes the publication of "a clear and pertinent exposition of my thought."--J. D. C. (shrink)

The dating of Islamic traditions has so far remained dependent on internal analyses of the hadith corpus. However, a comparison between this corpus and documentary sources appears possible. Invocations engraved on rocks during the first three centuries of Islam can be compared with those attributed to the earliest authorities of Islam. The new method I propose, based on an analysis of lexical convergences between inscriptions and hadith, allows to approach the time when traditions were first put into circulation and to (...) study the process whereby invocatory formulas were incorporated into the sunna and attributed to various authorities. In this way, it becomes possible to identify a historically plausible lexical nucleus in prophetic hadith and to understand how, by means of transmitters that I call “hubs,” ancient non-prophetic traditions became prophetic. (shrink)

If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, (...) especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu ( à dieu ), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God -- and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day. (shrink)

Divers ouvrages sur saint Augustin conduisent à reposer la question du temps et celle du sujet qui ont alors été réunies pour la première fois comme un unique problème : memoria, conscience et conscience de soi, sont pensées selon le temps comme un sentir primordial. Celui-ci suppose un lieu, le ciel des ciels, qui est le lieu temporel de l'homme auprès de Dieu. L'intériorité augustinienne a des antécédents dans la pensée antique ; elle a influencé la philosophie récente ; Heidegger (...) interprète l'ego de Descartes d'une façon augustinienne dans son herméneutique de la facticité. Les questions suscitées par ces ouvrages viennent du manque actuel d'une histoire spéculative de l'ego, en même temps que d'une résurgence évidente de celui-ci dans le champ de la philosophie contemporaine. Several books about Augustine lead to question once more the topic of time and of the subject which then were united for the first time as a single problem : memoria, conscionsness and self conscionsness are thought according to time as a prime feeling. The latter supposes a place, heaven in heaven, which is the temporal seat of man next to God. Augustinian interiority has its antecedents within classical thought. It influenced recent philosophy. Heidegger interprets Descartes' ego in an Augustinian way within his hermeneutics of facticity. The topics at stake from these books surge from the present lack of a speculative history of the ego, together with an obvious resurgence of the latter within the field of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Enracinée dans la prière, fondée sur la Bible seule, centrée sur le Christ, et insistant sur la lutte contre le Malin, sur l'engagement éthique et sur la proximité du Royaume de Dieu, la théologie de Martin Luther, soutenue par le courage et l'humour d'un écrivain hors du commun, rencontre maintes préoccupations théologiques actuelles ; mais elle interpelle aussi des théologies souvent embarrassées par le sola scriptura et le solus Christus, promptes à faire de l'homme une victime et limitant l'eschatologie à (...) l'avènement du Christ dans l'intériorité du croyant. De la théologie contemporaine, elle peut apprendre que toute exégèse est située, que l'assertion n'est pas le seul registre du discours théologique, que le dialogue religieux ne se réduit pas à l'anathème et que l'action de Dieu dans l'histoire n'est pas univoque. Martin Luther's theology is rooted in prayer, founded only on the Bible, and centred on Christ ; it lays stress on the struggle against the Devil, on moral commitment, and on the proximity of God's Kingdom ; it is kept up by the courage and humour of an extraordinary writer. As such, it meets with many modern theological preoccupations, but it also challenges theologies that are often embarrassed by the sola scriptura and the solus Christus, theologies that are ready to victimize man and limit eschatology to the coming of Christ into the believer's inner self. From contemporaneous theology it can learn that each exegesis has its context, that doing theology does not only consist of uttering statements, that the religious dialogue does not confine itself to the anathema, and that God's acts in history are not univocal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY he solved the problem of his own existence, this picture of an erudite scholar systematically and unemotionally peeling off the foibles of the learned world as the only solution for the perplexing problems of the life, seems credible and direct. Since the essay presenting it is brilliantly written, with some of Bayle's own penetrating analyses, we can be sure that it will have its day (...) in court. Is it out of place to announce with this review that the Soc/$tg Arigdoise des science, lettres, e$ arts has purchased the house where Bayle was born at Carla-Bayle, and plans to make it into a monument-museumhonoring the philosopher? The house is in bad repair and there is a great need for funds; gifts of any size may be sent to the Socigtd, C.C.P. Toulouse 114-19, France. I presume that they are deductible. JoH~ B. WOLF University o] Illinois, Chicago Circle Entretiens sur les sciences. By Bernard Lamy. Edition critique pr~sent~e par FranCois Girbal & Pierre Clair. (u 5 of the series Le mouvement des idJes au XVII ~ si~cle) (Paris, 1966.Pp. 448. F 36.--) Father Bernard Lamy, 1640-1715, an Oratorian who was a contemporary of Malebranche, wrote his Entreticns sur les sciences not for the savants but for young gentlemen of the time who might have wanted to enter into the intellectual world. The work was first written be= tween 1676-80, and published by 1684. It developed through three stages in Lamy's lifetime, and was a popular exposition of modem learning throughout the eighteenth century. (It was last published in French in 1768, and in Spanish in 1800.) Drs. Clair and Girbal have provided a most useful edition of this minor classic, giving the variants from the different versions done by Lamy. The editors, who know the Oratorian and Jansenist currents of the time well, have included lots of informative notes. In these they have stressed the possible influence of Lamy's text on two of its important readers, Montesquieu and Rousseau, providing many clues to be followed out. The editors have also republished in their introduction the original review of Lamy's work by Pierre Bayle from the Nouvells de la R$publique des Lettres of August, 1684. The Entretien8 should be of interest to anyone concerned with late seventeenth-century thought. Although Lamy was not a particularly original thinker, his presentation of what was known provides an important picture of the world of learning of his time. Lamy was a Malebranchist first of all, tremendously impressed by the metaphysics and epistemology of his colleague, by the relevance of this philosophy to mathematical and scientific studies, and by the religious orientation of Malebranche's scientific thought. Lamy was also a Cartesian with re= gard to method and logic, greatly influenced by Amauld's and Nicole's Port-Royal Logic. But Lamy was also an eclectic who saw merit in the empirical work of his time, admiring Gassendi's efforts as well as those of Galileo, Boyle and of the Royal Society. For Lamy there should be no conflict between science and religion. A good deal of the Entreticns is devoted to explaining what mathematics and the sciences are about, and how they should be studied. Lamy was a great advocate and popularizer of the 'new science', the mechanistic approach from Galileo down to Malebranche and Newton. For him scientific study should lead to a better understanding of the Divine World. "Nous lotions la Science... lots qu'elle est plac6es dans une gme qui aime Dieu, qui est la v6rit6, & par consequent le v6ritable objet de la Science" (p. 47). In a world in which it is alleged that science was at war with religion, Lamy along with his hero Malebranche, and the philosophical Jansenists, sought not only for a harmony of the 'new science' and a Christian world view, but for the religious use of this science in a religious understanding of the world. Lamy's presentation, in an unexciting dialogue form, reveals many interesting facets of both his own outlook as well as of that of his contemporaries. Lamy's Cartesian methodology clearly shows the... (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Dieu sans l’être in 1982, Jean-Luc Marion’s various pronouncements on the status and meaning of esse in Aquinas have excited a good deal of interest and controversy among Thomists. Marion’s evolving understanding of Thomistic metaphysics in general, and of Thomistic analogy in particular, has been commended for its openness to correction even as it has been criticized for what many still regard as its residual deficiencies. All such criticisms, however, neglect to take account of the (...) phenomenological provenance of Marion’s concerns, and to this extent they risk misunderstanding them. Ironically, Marion’s phenomenological approach to Aquinas intends to safeguard precisely what his Thomist critics think he has jettisoned: namely, our ability to speak about God in a way that says something meaningful—or perhaps better, reveals something meaningful—about God to us. The apophatic language Marionuses to make this point should be taken as a reminder to his fellow Christians who rightfully desire to speak of God about the danger that is involved in doing so. If we interpret Aquinas’s use of the divine names according to the phenomenological horizon of distance and thus think the various names of God “according to truly theological determinations,” Marion suggests, we can avoid the danger of lapsing into a conceptual idolatry of univocal predication that occludes their phenomenological disclosiveness. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion has become in our days a considerable part of philosophy. Alain 's books on religion, published in the early thirties, remain among the most valuable which have been ever written by philosophers on this subject, but unfortunately they are scarcely known to-day, at least in North America. The most important of them —-Les Dieu× —- has recently been translated in English: The Cods, Richard Pevear, New York, New Direction, 1974. Although inspired by Hegel, Alain 's method and (...) ideas really are very original as well as profound, because Alain 's style and doctrine deeply differ from Hegel's. They differ no less from analytical philosophers' models, because Alain never argues with religion but reflect on it, in order to draw a true picture of man. The following essay tries to indicate both the contents and the main features of this philosophy. (shrink)

Le cahier de notes de Schelling sur ses lectures de l'année 1809 peut être confronté avec l'agenda de Schelling de la même année. Il s'avère que des nombreuses lectures sur le problème du mal précèdent et suivent immédiatement la publication des Recherches sur la liberté humaine. La lecture de Jacob Böhme y est attestée; mais il s'agit d'une présentation populaire de la doctrine de Böhme. En fait, l'ouvrage annoté par Schelling est un gros opuscule intitulé Hirtenbrief an die wahren und (...) ächten Freymäurer alten Systems, anonyme paru en 1785, dont le contenu est une « mise en système » de la doctrine de Böhme, c'est-à-dire une rationalisation stricte de cette philosophie. Schelling, lisant cet opuscule en a supprimé tout élément proprement théosophique pour ne garder que le côté spéculatif, sans référence précise à la révélation chrétienne. Il n'y a encore aucune christologie chez Schelling, alors même qu'est présent le schème de la connexion de la liberté et du mal. Le mal est un moment nécessaire de la création car, sans lui, Dieu ne pourrait se manifester. Le mal est colère de Dieu, souffrance et maladie; il n'est pas voulu par l'homme, mais il est le révélateur de la triste mélancolie de l'existence créée. The Notebook of Schelling concerning his readings in the year 1809 is to be compared with the diary of Schelling in the same year. A number of readings about the problem of evil precedes and succeeds the publication of Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809). The reading of Jacob Böhme is attested in this Notebook; but it is a popular presentation of the boehmist doctrine. It is a fact that Schelling annotated a big opuscule called Hirtenbrief an die wahren und ächten Freymäurer alten Systems, anonymously published in 1785; the contents of this book is a systematisation of the boehmist doctrine, a strict rationalisation of this philosophy. Schelling, studying this opuscule, has suppressed any elements specifically theosophic, and has retained only the speculative elements without any references to the Christian Revelation. There is not yet any christology in Schellingian thinking, even if the scheme of the connexion of liberty and evil is present. Evil is a necessary moment in the Creation, because without it God cannot reveal himself. The evil is the anger of God, suffering and illness; it does not proceed from the man, but it reveals the unhappy melancoly of the created existence. (shrink)