Ultimism and the aims of human immaturity -- Faith without details, or how to practice skeptical religion -- Simple faith and the complexities of tradition -- The structure of faith justification -- How skeptical faith is true to reason -- Anselm's idea -- Leibniz's ambition -- Paley's wonder -- Pascal's wager -- Kant's postulate -- James's will -- Faith is positively justified : the many modes of religious vision.

At the end of the Sixth Book of the Republic Plato explains the Idea of Good by means of the Figure of the Sun. As the sun is the cause both of the becoming of that which is subject to becoming and of our apprehension of it and of its changes through the eye, so the idea of good is the cause of the being of that which is and also of our knowledge of it. As the sun is beyond (...) γxs22EFνεσις, so the Idea of Good is beyond Being. Glaucon says he does not understand. The simile is further elucidated by means of a line, divided into two parts, of which one stands for the νιητxs22EFν γxs22EFνος τε καxs22EF τxs22EFπος, where the Idea of Good bears rule, the other for the xs22EFρατxs22EFν γxs22EFνος τε καxs22EF τxs22EFπος, over which the sun is lord. The line is to be divided unequally , and subdivided in the same proportions. Thus we get a line consisting of four parts in the ratio 4 : 6 : : 6 : 9. Let us call the four parts A B C D respectively, A being the smallest, D the greatest, B and C necessarily equal. A stands for εxs1F31κxs22EFνες, shadows, images in water and on polished surfaces, and the like: B stands for animals, plants, and the creations of human industry: C for the objects of that enquiry in which the objects denoted by B are treated as images, i.e. mathematical enquiries: D for the objects apprehended by dialectic, the Ideas themselves. The first equation asserted is—The objects of opinion : objects of knowledge : : representation : original . There follows an explanation of the inferiority of mathematical to philosophical reasoning, and an explanation of the statement that the objects denoted by B are used as images or symbols by the enquiry concerned with C; as a result of which Glaucon perceives that the general distinction between C and D is that between the τxs22EFχναι , i.e. those sciences in which the Guardians were to be educated, and Philosophy or Dialectic. Finally a special πxs22EFθημα or affection of the soul is allotted to each of the four divisions of the line, to A εxs1F31κασxs22EFα, to B πxs22EFστις, to C διxs22EFνοια, to D νxs22EFησις, each πxs22EFθημα being clear in the same degree in which the objects it is concerned with are true. (shrink)

For Machiavelli, religion is valued not by the importance of its founder, the content of its teachings, the truth of its dogmas or the significance of its rites. It is not the essence of what really matters but its function and importance for collective life. Religion teaches to recognize and respect political rules through the religious commandments. This collective norm could assume the outer coercive aspect of the military discipline as well as the inner persuasive character of civic and moral (...) education for the production of collective consensus. -/- Para Maquiavel, o que confere valor a uma religião não é a importância de seu fundador, o conteúdo dos ensinamentos, a verdade dos dogmas ou a significação dos mistérios e ritos. Importa não a essência da religião e sim sua função e importância para a vida coletiva. A religião ensina a reconhecer e a respeitar as regras políticas a partir do mandamento religioso. Essa norma coletiva pode assumir tanto o aspecto coercivo exterior da disciplina militar ou da autoridade política quanto o caráter persuasivo interior da educação moral e cívica para a produção do consenso coletivo. (shrink)

In the midst of his fulminations against Cleopatra, Propertius denounces her land of Egypt in the following ‘wholly admirable parenthesis:’ Noxia Alexandria, dolis aptissima tellus Et totiens nostro Memphi cruenta malo, Tres ubi Pompeio detraxit harena triumphos! Toilet nulla dies hanc tibi, Roma, notam. Issent Phlegraeo melius tibi funera campo Vel tua si socero colla daturus eras.

We may look at the relation of will and motive from another side as follows: Will, we have said, is an individual response to an individual situation. Like the situation itself, it is not a fixed thing persisting through change, but involved in a continuous flow of change, re-adapting itself constantly in one respect or another to recognized changes of circumstance. It can have no more immutability than circumstance, and if it is not to be left behind in the march (...) of events and become old-fashioned, it should have the capacity for the same rapidity of change. Now motives also change, but in a different way. First one motive operates, then another, as circum-. (shrink)

This chapter suggests that descriptive epidemiological studies like the Global Burden of Disease Study can usefully be divided into four tasks: describing individuals’ health states over time, assessing their health states under a range of counterfactual scenarios, summarizing the information collected, and then packaging it for presentation. The authors show that each of these tasks raises important and challenging ethical questions. They comment on some of the philosophical issues involved in measuring health states, attributing causes to health outcomes, choosing the (...) counterfactual against which to assess causes, aggregating and summarizing complex information across multiple domains, discounting, age-weighting, handling fetal deaths, measuring health inequalities, representing uncertainty, and assessing personal responsibility for health outcomes. (shrink)

Seit dem 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert werden die Schriften von Aristoteles kommentiert. Diese Ausgabe enthält griechische Kommentare zu seinem Werk vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr., u. a. von Alexander von Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in griechischer Sprache.

Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on (...) a priori extension-fixers. This alternative explanation provides a vindication of our reliance on intuitions, while blocking Jackson’s abductive argument for a priori semantic knowledge. In brief, I argue that we should regard our armchair intuitions as providing an important, a priori source of evidence for hypotheses about the contents of our implicit referential policies with regard to our terms. But all such hypotheses have a potential falsifier that is only discoverable empirically. In other words, gold-standard evidence for such hypotheses is always empirical. (shrink)

In Ontology, quality determines beings. The quality-quantity bipolarity reveals that a conceptual logical comprehension that can include negation must be a dialectical logic. Quality is a precise characteristic of something capable of augmentation or diminution while remaining identical through differences or quantitative changes. Thus, quality and in opposition quantity are inextricably linked, giving definition to each other, so constituting a logical bipolarity. The theory is that a magnitude G is never separated from secondary qualities α and β, and therefore, a (...) measure depends on a concrete quality Gα or Gβ, that is to say on one pole of a logical bi-pole. However, the particular number, the unit, that expresses the result of a measure is the quality G alone. Examples drawn from physical and chemical experiments illustrate these ideas and elaborate the structure of the concept of opposition between the secondary qualities α and β of a magnitude G. (shrink)

Les principaux problèmes que Bultmann a posés au plan de l’exégèse historique des textes évangéliques étaient commandés par des positions théologiques et continuent pour ce motif à interroger les théologiens catholiques, qui parfois le rejettent dans le camp tantôt du scientisme tantôt du dogmatisme.Contre la théologie libérale des « vies de Jésus », il élève une double protestation, d’ordre christologique : il revendique le caractère historique de la foi chrétienne, et historique : il prend au sérieux la visée eschatologique de (...) la prédication de Jésus. Marquée en ses origines par un rationalisme dogmatique, l’exégèse historico-critique travaille à son tour la théologie, l’oblige à assumer sa propre historicité et à sortir ainsi de son propre positivisme dogmatique.Réservant – à juste titre – à la foi de dire le sens de la Croix, Bultmann semble séparer le fait et le sens et mettre l’historiographie et la théologie en rapport contradictoire de double vérité. Nous savons mieux aujourd’hui qu’il n’y a de faits qu’interprétés ; la foi atteint la vérité historique des faits, mais doit renoncer à demander de les établir « scientifiquement » à une historiographie censée « objectivement neutre ». En soutenant que le sens de la Croix relève d’une décision de foi, Bultmann nous rappelle utilement, ainsi que l’a reconnu R. Marlé, qu’on ne peut jamais évacuer le skandalon de la foi.The principal problems that Bultmann presented as regards the historical exegesis of evangelical texts were guided by theological positions and continued, for this reason, to question Catholic theologians, who sometimes put him in the camp of scientism and sometimes in that of dogmatism.Against the liberal theology of the “lives of Jesus”, he raised a double protest : of a christological nature and of a historical nature . Marked in its origins by dogmatic rationalism, historical-critical exegesis works in its turn on theology, obliges it to assume its own historicity and this to escape from its own dogmatic positivism.Allowing faith – and for good reason – to decide the meaning of the Cross, Bultmann seems to separate the fact and the meaning and to put historiography and theology in contradictory rapport of a double truth. We know better today that there are only interpreted facts ; faith attains the historical truth of facts, but must renounce the demand to establish them “scientifically” to a historiography believed to the “objectively neutral”. In holding that the meaning of the Cross depends on a decision of faith, Bultmann helpfully reminds us, as R. Marlé recognized, that one can never escape the skandalon of faith. (shrink)

Genealogía y lógica de la ratio imperial romana -- Racionalización ética judía y religión de salvación cristiana -- La revolución teológica de Pablo y sus consecuencias -- Teología política imperial y militancia cristiana -- La teología trinitaria y el destino de la teología imperial -- Hilario, Ambrosio y el camino del catolicismo en Occidente -- Mal y salvación: Augstín de Hipona.

Austin discusses the existence, origin, and resemblance of concepts, primarily by discussing the meaning of ‘concept’ and ‘universal’. He argues that, although sometimes it may not be harmful to talk about concepts, we neither understand the meaning of ‘concept’, nor the meaning of ‘acquiring and possessing concepts’, nor a view of concept resemblance as non-sensuous acquaintance or awareness, challenging philosophers who couch their theories in such terms to illuminating them first.

The Roman Inquisition against Heretical Depravity, also known as the Holy Office, established in 1542, and the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books, announced officially in 1572, undertook to protect Italy from ideas and practices that menaced the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in this world and the salvation of its members in the next. This grandiose public-health program required trained and dedicated thought police to receive and evaluate alarms from the public and, when business was bad, to (...) seek out sources of infection themselves. The resultant records of accusations, investigations, trials, condemnations, expurgations, and exceptions, if extant in its entirety, would go far to fill.. (shrink)