The curious case of Bronze Age Pervert (BAP, for short), of unfortunate name, or “handle,” in his world. Author of the self-published Bronze Age Mindset (2018), BAP is present in 4Chan discussion threads and on YouTube, and he produces weekly subscription-only podcasts with approximately 6,500 paying clients (I am among them). He was banned from Twitter but reinstated in December 2022, and he now has over 100,000 followers. A Google search turns up scores of articles addressing or discussing his work, (...) all written in palatable forms. But BAP’s own subjects and rhetoric are for adults only. Who is BAP, what does he espouse, and what compels the attention of orthodox Catholics? (shrink)

Overcoming Uncertainty in Ancient Greek Political Philosophy makes an historical and theoretical contribution by explaining the role of opinion in ancient Greek political philosophy, showing its importance for Aristotle’s theory of deliberation, and indicating a new model for a deliberative republic. Currently, there are no studies of opinion in ancient Greek political theory and so the book breaks new historical ground. The book establishes that opinion is key for the political theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics because each sees (...) uncertainty as a problem that needs to be overcome if one is to establish a virtuous polity. Since they have different notions of the nature of the uncertainty of opinion, they develop very different political strategies to overcome it. The book explains that Plato’s and the Stoics’ analyses of uncertainty support oligarchy and monarchy, respectively, and that theoretical support for deliberate politics requires a more nuanced understanding of uncertainty that only Aristotle provides. (shrink)

The lay follower Citta’s debate with Mahāvīra in the _Nigaṇṭha Sutta_ reflects not just simple polemic, but a fundamental epistemological division between Early Jains and Buddhists. A close reading of the _Ācārāṅga Sūtra_ shows that the Jains see the truth as a property of the self-knowing purified soul that knows all things. For the Buddhists, consciousness is conditioned and dependent. If truth is a property or relation of consciousness, then it too is conditioned and dependent. In order to maintain that (...) truth is the end of the Buddha’s path, Buddhists sever the connection between consciousness and truth by formulating a negative definition of truth. Truth is that which lacks a deceptive nature and accordingly, Nirvāṇa is the ultimate truth. The Buddha’s path culminates in the discovery of truth through the elimination of deception by the annihilation of consciousness, which the Jains hold is impossible because knowledge is essential to the soul. (shrink)

Aristotle’s brief considerations concerning how we perceive that we perceive led to a long and wide-ranging discussion of the problem by his commentators, one that extended over several centuries. From the second century to the sixth, Aristotle’s ancient Greek commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Pseudo-Simplicius, and Pseudo-Philoponus, offered various interpretations of apperception. The discussion of the problem is historically revealing, for the commentators did not so much attempt to write historically accurate interpretations of the texts upon which they commented; rather, (...) they used the text as an occasion for their own active philosophical reflection. They sought to extract the truth from a revered text. Hence, their commentaries are very helpful in reconstructing the development of philosophical views representative of their own times. Their discussions of self-awareness in perception are of particular interest, because in them we can witness changes in the broader questions of the nature of the self and truth. (shrink)

For Plotinus, although the One and the Intellect are transcendent sources of the cosmos, they are also omnipresent within it. At first, the mutual omnipresence and transcendence of the One and the Intellect seem contradictory, but their omnipresence and transcendence are perfectly consistent outcomes of the relation of the cosmos to the One and the Intellect. For the perfection of the One entails both that the One has power to generate and that it is mutually transcendent and omnipresent in the (...) universe. Plotinus extends his principles of perfection, transcendence, and omnipresence to include the relation of the body to the soul by explaining that the soul can transcend the body while the body is within it. Hence, Plotinus is able to fashion an efficient and consistent metaphysics in which Godcontains the universe and the soul contains the body without denying the transcendent perfection of either. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 25-41, January 2022.

In a 2014 paper in this journal, I put forward two objections to a version of divine simplicity I call ‘Divine Truthmaker Simplicity’. James Beebe and Timothy Pawl have come to Divine Truthmaker Simplicity’s defense. In this paper, I respond to Beebe and Pawl, consider an overlooked way of defending Divine Truthmaker Simplicity, and conclude by outlining an alternative account of God’s simplicity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Basic Theatrical Understanding: Considerations for James HamiltonNoël Carroll (bio)The publication of The Art of Theater by James Hamilton is a seminal event in the philosophy of theater.1 As the first book-length study of theater in the analytic tradition of philosophy, it will be a touchstone for many years of future discussion and debate. Anyone interested in the philosophy of theater will need to address Professor Hamilton’s accomplishment.The (...) leading idea in The Art of Theater is that theatrical performance is an independent art form. That is, theatrical performance, as such, is not, as Aristotle suggested by his demotion of spectacle, a mere adjunct to literature, or essentially a medium for illustrating dramatic and comedic texts. Theatrical performance itself is an art in its own right. This view of theater art has been increasingly apparent in the practices of modern theater in the West, but these practices—as exemplified by Gordon Craig, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jacques Copeau, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, and, more recently, Robert Wilson—merely revealed what has always been the case: that theater is at root a performing art.Although for centuries theater in the West had been conceptualized as a text-based art, Hamilton maintains that this tradition is local. Theatrical performances in other cultures need not be the enactment of antecedently written-out texts. Furthermore, even within Western culture, most of us see and discuss plays without ever reading the texts upon which they are based. Hamilton takes these facts to support his view that theatrical performance is an autonomous art form. Among other things, this means that the critical model that presumes that the success of a theatrical performance must be assessed against the effectiveness of its implementation of the pertinent preexisting literary text is a misguided one. Although a preexisting literary text may be an ingredient in the production of a theatrical performance, fidelity to the aforesaid text is not mandated by the art of theater. [End Page 15]Insofar as theatrical performance is an art in its own right, it may—and quite clearly, as in the cases of the Performance Group, Kraken, Mabou Mines, etc., often does—adapt written texts for its own purposes. Moreover, refashioning the text, where there is one, is not simply an avant-garde practice; most productions edit the text for their own purposes. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, which omitted no word from the accepted version of the text, was the exception to the rule. Thus, what Hamilton calls the ingredients model of the relation of texts to theatrical performances has the advantage on its side of better corresponding to actual practices, as compared to the notion that a theatrical performance is to be understood as a matter of bringing a literary text to life.Of course, one apparent advantage that the text-implementation model of theatrical performance might seem to possess is that it appears to have a way ready-to-hand for identifying theatrical performances. Gielgud’s performance, Olivier’s performance, and Burton’s performance are, ex hypothesi, all performances of Hamlet because they are all performances of Shakespeare’s text to which they all roughly comply. If, following Hamilton, we sever the relationship to the play-text, how can we account for the way in which we identify theatrical performances?2 That is, independently of reference to texts, how do we identify a theatrical performance as another instance of Hamlet?In order to solve this problem, Hamilton introduces the idea of “a basic understanding” of a theatrical performance. The basic understanding of a theatrical performance is, on Hamilton’s account, said to involve no more than comprehending on a moment-to-moment basis the ongoing bits of dialogue and stage action as they evolve, as well as understanding the transitions from one scene to another while also responding physically in a suitable manner to the evolving story (for example, laughing where laughter is appropriate) or emoting responsively to what is happening onstage. So, one has a basic understanding of a scene if, when the Musketeer says “On guard,” the spectator takes this to be an invitation to a duel; and when a rival character draws his sword, the... (shrink)

James Shelley has raised the important question of whether it is possible to have aesthetic experiences of imperceptible artworks. This issue is important for determining whether or not the aesthetic theory of art can deal with certain cases of conceptual art. Shelley has argued that it is possible to have aesthetic experiences of imperceptibilia. And in this article, I concur with him, though for reasons different from his. Nevertheless, I go on to argue that this still fails to vindicate (...) the aesthetic theory of art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Necessity of TheaterNoël CarrollDespite the fact that theater was the first art form to be examined in depth by Western philosophers, it has not received a great deal of attention by contemporary philosophers of art. Essays on literature, music, and cinema are more likely to appear in journals such as the British Journal of Aesthetics and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism than are articles on (...) theater. But with the publication of Paul Woodruff's The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched, James Hamilton's The Art of Theater and the recent anthology Staging Philosophy, edited by David Zucker Saltz and David Krassner, the tide seems to be turning. Philosophers are interested in theater again. Perhaps some lovers of theater may regard this as bad news, recalling what Plato, Augustine, and Rousseau attempted to do to theater. But contemporary philosophers of theater belong more to the school of Aristotle than to that of Plato.Of these recent contributions to the philosophy of theater, Paul Woodruff's book is the one that most resembles Aristotle's Poetics, especially in terms of its analyses of plotting, characterization, conflict, choice, and mimesis. This is maybe no surprise, since Paul Woodruff is not only a professor of philosophy, but also a professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin. [End Page 435]One thing that is immediately striking about The Necessity of Theater is the elegance of its intellectual design. Woodruff begins with the hypothesis that theater is the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching in measure time and place. That is, theater is art of being watched and watching. This distinction between being watched and watching, then, provides Woodruff with the means to, on the one hand, examine the elements that go into making theater, and, on the other hand, the elements that go into watching or appreciating theater.Creating theater involves making something worth watching—something that will hold the audience's attention. What sorts of things command our attention? Human action, notably as it is organized in terms of a plot which Woodruff, like Aristotle, emphasizes must be of a magnitude sufficient to be cognitively manageable. Since actions require choices, Woodruff follows his analysis of plot, naturally enough, with a discussion of the choices that give rise to those actions for much the same reason that Aristotle includes dialogue as one of the components of tragedy.In order to be worth watching, Woodruff recommends that these choices be free and coherent. Since choices derive—or are thought to derive—from character, theater, in order to hold our attention, needs characters. These characters must be agents and, in addition, they must be capable of engaging our emotions, not just pity and fear, but the gamut of emotions, although the most important of these, on Woodruff's view, would appear to be the elicitation of care on the part of the audience on behalf of the characters on stage. Woodruff contends that care for a character is engendered by giving the character a past as well as hopes for the future (an aim, a project, a problem) and by making that person a center of love (that is, someone who loves and/or is loved by or who cares and is cared for by other people).Theater primarily makes us interested in watching people by encouraging us to respond to characters emotionally. It is able to do this because it traffics in mimesis. Woodruff understand mimesis as a matter of a mimetic object, a theater piece, bringing to the fore certain effects of the object of which it is a representation. With respect to a theater piece, the relevant effects are emotional effects. Because mimesis is selective, it may be able to achieve those effects more intensely than its off-stage model can; the selectivity of the theater piece both places greater emphasis on the emotion-provoking features of situations while also blocking out otherwise [End Page 436] interfering detail. However, theater does require the complicity of the audience who must fill-in the model imaginatively.The introduction of the role of the audience's... (shrink)

The Enron debacle, the demise of Arthur Andersen, questionable practices at Tyco, Qwest, WorldCom, and a seemingly endless list of others have pushed public regard for business and business leaders to new lows. The need for smart leaders with vision and integrity has never been greater. Things need to change-- and it will not be easy. We can take a first step toward producing better business leaders by changing some of our own ideas about what it means to "win." (...) class='Hi'>Noel M. Tichy and Andrew R. McGill have brought together a stellar group of contributors from a variety of perspectives-- including General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and renowned management gurus Robert Quinn and C. K. Prahalad, among others-- to offer insights that will help build better leaders, communities, and organizations. They show how to present a "Teachable Point of View" about business ethics that will help all leaders within an organization: Internalize core values Build a values-based culture across the organization Become engaged to teach the same values lessons to their staff Take action and raise the ethical bar Successful business leaders must be able to articulate their own unique Teachable Point of View on business ethics and drive it through their organization to ensure that everyone knows the ethical line and is neither shy nor silent if others risk crossing it. (shrink)

James offers ways for escaping pessimism: i) leaving "the bare facts by themselves" - in construing the scientific order of nature - or permitting ii) a "religious reading to go on" by postulating "supplementary facts which may be discovered" or iii) "believed in". Adopting ii), we can trust the idea that "a still wider world may be there" as a "maybe" and then act as if the invisible world thereby suggested was real, enabling us "to live in the light (...) of " our "religious demands". One way of approaching Bloch's philosophy is to see him as dealing with James's three ways. A case can be made for Bloch's naturalism, phenomenologically understood, akin to James's second way. Yet, Bloch could also be regarded as adopting something like James's third way in terms of a teleologism messianically understood needed to ground the idea of Hope. But can Bloch's reconcile these two conceptions successfully? (shrink)

Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines. Edited by James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry Harootunian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 518pp. $45.00 cloth $19.95 paper. The Creation of Scientific Effects: Heinrich Hertz and Electric Waves. By Jed Z. Buchwald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 428pp. $32.95 paper $75.00 cloth.

Book Review of: Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, By Rob Henderson, Publisher: Gallery Books, Pages: 336, Price: $28.99. Review Author: James Noel Ward.

Jeffrey Brower has recently articulated a way to make sense of the doctrine of divine simplicity using resources from contemporary truthmaker theory. Noël Saenz has advanced two objections to Brower’s account, arguing that it violates constraints on adequate metaphysical explanations at various points. I argue that Saenz’s objections fail to show that Brower’s account is explanatorily inadequate.

The following paper continues discussions within this journal about how the work of Delueze and Guattari can inform radical pedagogy. Building primarily on Noel Gough's 2004 paper, we take up the challenge to move towards a more creative form of 'becoming cyborg' in our teaching. In contrast to work that has focused on Deleuzian theories of the rhizome, we deploy Guattari's work on institutional schizoanalysis to explore the role of group creativity in radical pedagogy. The institutional therapies of Felix (...) Guattari's schizoanalytic practice in the 1950s and 1960s and, before him, the Francophone educationalist Celestin Freinet, who founded the Modern School Movement, are explored and used to illuminate examples of some of our own attempts to set the classroom up as a space for collective engagement. We conclude by exploring how this understanding of the class as subject group may be used to mobilise action and de-stabilise the coordinates of existing academic divisions of labour. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Replies to CriticismsJames R. HamiltonI am grateful to Noël Carroll, David Davies, Sherri Irvin, Aaron Meskin, and Paul Thom for stimulating discussions of The Art of Theater over the past year, culminating in these carefully crafted critical comments on various aspects of the book.1 I especially appreciate the efforts of Sherri Irvin, who edited this special issue and without whose encouragement, enthusiasm, and careful editing this would not have (...) happened.Whenever the central proposals made in The Art of Theater were made by theater people during the past hundred years, they were greeted with a kind of baffled outrage by many traditionalist literature scholars who had taken it as an obvious fact that theatrical performances are nothing more than illustrations or interpretations of works of dramatic literature, at best requiring artistry for performance but not issuing in independent works of art. Quite a few contemporary literature and theater scholars have seen errors in the traditionalist view and proposed that theatrical performances are capable of even great artistry and, perhaps, of being works of art in their own right. It must be said, however, that they will not find my defense of that position congenial. Indeed, it will seem worse still from their point of view because my defense of the position does not require semiotic analysis, let alone any sort of poststructuralist thinking about theatrical performances that depends on seeing performance as a novel kind of text—a “theater text.” This will disappoint because, unlike many contemporary literary theorists (and even some theater theorists), I do not think of theatrical performances as something to be read and, further, as something that falls within the purview of literary scholarship after all. Performances are actions and are to be understood in the ways we understand all other actions.I knew the central proposals in The Art of Theater would seem a little strange to philosophers. Some of the strangeness that they have felt about the view—if not the baffled outrage felt by literary theorists—can be mitigated, I believe, by considering three facts that served as motivations for making the proposal. I encountered these facts while teaching experimental theater techniques in a workshop format. Only gradually did I come to realize they are facts about any theatrical performance—its presentation, its [End Page 80] preparation, and its reception. It was only after I realized how general these facts are that I began to wonder why the view they seem to suggest is not more widely held, or even discussed, among philosophers working on the performing arts. My book was designed to get that discussion going. And, to judge by the quality of the discussion in this volume, it has succeeded admirably in meeting that goal. I think the book is also largely correct, however, so it is worth beginning at the beginning, with the basic facts I encountered in teaching experimental theater.First, it is undeniable that what typical spectators for any theatrical performance grasp is delivered to them entirely during the time of the performance itself. The typical spectator—which excludes academics and professional critics—is usually unfamiliar with what she is about to see and hear, in content if not in kind. Nevertheless, most spectators are successful in tracking most theatrical performances, even some in wildly unfamiliar styles and traditions. This is an important fact. Its importance lies in the implication that spectators do not need to recognize anything beyond what they see in the performance to regard the event as something they can assess aesthetically and artistically.Second, rehearsal processes for theatrical performances involve a lot of experimentation that focuses on how to make features of actors’ bodies and voices render clearly what the audience is supposed to see and hear and on how to make the sights and sounds generated by the ensemble, the set, the lighting, and so on focus audience attention in the places that will best enable them to understand what the company is presenting. This too is an important fact, for it highlights what any spectator has to know something about in order to make cogent artistic assessments of the event she has witnessed.Finally, consider the following case... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSherri Irvin, Guest Editor (bio)The idea for this special issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education had its origins in the December 2007 event “The Art of Performance: Symposium in Honor of Jim Hamilton,” organized by Sandra Lapointe and Marcelo Sabatés and hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Kansas State University with the kind support of President Jon Wefald and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and (...) Sciences. The symposium was designed to celebrate the 2007 publication of Jim Hamilton’s The Art of Theater by Blackwell, as well as his many years of leading experimental theater programs for Kansas youth. Noël Carroll, David Davies, Aaron Meskin, and I were critics in an author-meets-critics session on The Art of Theater at the symposium, while Paul Thom was a critic for a session on the book at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics.The Art of Theater bears the stamp of Hamilton’s dual roles as a philosopher and an avid participant in contemporary theater practice. It is a philosophically sophisticated and richly informed treatment of the theoretical issues surrounding the practice of theater. It contributes greatly to filling what was a rather glaring hole in the philosophical literature: whereas music has received quite extensive treatment in recent decades, only a few philosophers have ventured into the complex territory of theater.Hamilton holds that theater is an independent form of art: theatrical performances are artworks in their own right, not subsidiary to or derivative of works in any other form (particularly literature). The process by which a theatrical performance is constructed, he suggests, involves such an extensive array of decisions by the performing company—including decisions about whether and how to make use of any preexisting text in the performance—that no text or literary work can be thought of as “the work” that is performed. Instead, the company’s activities generate the only work [End Page 1] at issue: namely, the performance itself. When a performance seems to bear a special relation to some repeatable entity, such as Hamlet, we should understand this as a relation the performance bears not to some literary text but to a tradition of other performances that have been collected under the Hamlet rubric. Accordingly, basic understanding of a theatrical performance does not require prior acquaintance with a text or literary work; spectators can have basic understanding of a performance as long as their responses demonstrate that they have followed what is happening as the performance itself unfolds. Spectators lacking extensive acquaintance with recent text-based theatrical practices, then, need not be stigmatized as lacking the resources to appreciate works of theater.In this issue Hamilton’s précis of the book is followed by the contributions of five critics who challenge the book’s central theses. The critics ask, Does Hamilton provide sufficient reason to reject the claim that at least some performances are of literary works, and can a satisfactory ontology of theater be developed if this claim is rejected? Even if theatrical performances are not of some text-based literary work, could they be of some other work, perhaps a work of theater that is generated through the performance practices of a company? Should spectators who follow what is happening moment-to-moment in a given performance, but fail to recognize that the performance parodies or satirizes some literary work, be said to have even basic understanding of what they have seen?Hamilton’s extensive replies to the critics will, I think, serve as a valuable supplement to the book, clarifying some of its central arguments and, in some instances, supplying new arguments for its theses. In particular, he points out that he did not intend for the book to provide a definitive argument for the thesis that theatrical performances are never performances of some other work; instead, he takes this thesis to emerge from a careful examination of theatrical practice. The aim of the book is to explore the implications of the thesis and to show how identification and appreciation of theatrical performances are possible if it is true. In this spirit, many of his claims should be given... (shrink)

The editing of the correspondence of major figures in intellectual history is an essential scholarly activity. Yet in this country in recent years it has neither been the priority it should be, nor has it received the support that it deserves. Of course there have been exceptions to this, perhaps notably – for the early modern period – the epic one-man effort of Esmond de Beer in his later years in producing The Correspondence of John Locke (though this regrettably, and (...) frustratingly, lacks a composite index). A further exception, the edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg by A. R. and M. B. Hall, was unfortunately flawed by the need to change publishers midway in the series, which has led to a marked disparity in the availability of the latter part of the set compared with its early volumes. In any case, like the Locke edition, this was conceived in the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, and few have ventured such enterprises since. Virtually the only exception is Noel Malcolm's edition of the manageable-sized Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (two volumes, 1994). Moreover, it is revealing of the acute need to justify the publication of such material felt by editors and publishers alike that the promotional leaflet for this edition went so far as to claim that it was ‘one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century’ – a claim that is the more ironic in view of the quite significant shortcomings in its method of presenting the material that it contains. (shrink)

The past few decades have seen an explosion of research on causal reasoning in philosophy, computer science, and statistics, as well as descriptive work in psychology. In Causation with a Human Face, James Woodward integrates these lines of research and argues for an understanding of how each can inform the other: normative ideas can suggest interesting experiments, while descriptive results can suggest important normative concepts. Woodward's overall framework builds on the interventionist treatment of causation that he developed in Making (...) Things Happen. Normative ideas discussed include proposals about the role of invariant or stable relationships in successful causal reasoning and the notion of proportionality. He argues that these normative ideas are reflected in the causal judgments that people actually make as a descriptive matter. Woodward also discusses the common philosophical practice-particularly salient in philosophical accounts of causation--of appealing to intuitions or judgments about cases in support of philosophical theses. He explores how, properly understood, such appeals are not different in principle from appeals to results from empirical research, and demonstrates how they may serve as a useful source of information about causal cognition. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works (...) with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of aesthetics has explored to what extent ordinary people are committed to aesthetic realism. Extant work has focused on attitudes to normativism – a key commitment of realist positions in aesthetics – the claim that aesthetic judgments/statements have correctness conditions, invariant between subjects, such that there is a fact of the matter in cases of aesthetic disagreement. The emerging picture is that ordinary people strongly and almost universally reject normativism and thus there is no strong realist tendency in (...) ordinary people’s thinking about the aesthetic. This has been taken to dissolve the traditional puzzle in aesthetics of how to best account for the fact that (a) aesthetic judgments seem intersubjectively valid, while (b) aesthetic experience seems subjective. This paper presents studies which further enrich our understanding of ordinary thinking about the aesthetic: ordinary thinking about the aesthetic may not be so vehement in its rejection of normativism; and where previous results suggested that, in many cultures, the dominant trend is to reject correctness conditions for aesthetic judgments, the current results suggest participants think aesthetic judgments have correctness conditions (albeit perhaps very finely relativized to specific circumstances of judgment). (shrink)

Cultural theories of art were developed to account for the arthood of nonaesthetic and nonimitative artworks. Historical theories such as those proposed by Jerrold Levinson, James Carney, and Noël Carroll fail to account for the arthood of first art and ethnological objects, as does the disjunctive theory of Stephen Davies. An institutional (artworld-based) theory, such as George Dickie’s 1977 version, can account for the arthood of art made within the context of an artworld. But what of objects that are (...) art now but were not made in an artworld context? I add a supplement to Dickie’s institutional theory: the concept of art by proxy. (shrink)

The essays in this volume commemorate the 70th anniversary of Jacques Maritain's Pour la Justice, in which the French Thomist and future drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grappled with the moral, political, and religious challenges facing Europe in the aftermath of World War II. During this time Maritain reflected on humanism, Christian philosophy, the relation between freedom, religion and politics, and increasingly, on education. Several scholars reflect on the historical impact of Maritain's own writings during World War (...) II, Vatican II, and the Spanish Civil war. In other sections, contemporary Thomists suggest ways a resurgent Thomism can engage with the pressing issues of our own day. Essays on Thomistic ethics address problems in bioethics, the philosophy of love, and the foundations of Natural Law, while others tackle perennial problems in metaphysics and epistemology, such as the problem of free will, subjectivity, and the role of creative intuition in aesthetics. Still other essays apply Maritain's work on education to current challenges facing religious universities today. The contributors to this volume include: Noel Adams, Florian Michel, Sr. Anne Frances Ai Le, Brian Kemple, Stephen Chamberlain, Walter Schulz, Francisco Eduardo Plaza, James Jacobs, John Dunaway, Greg Kerr, Megan Furman, Karen Chan, Justin Gable, Federico Tedesco, Michael Torre, Richard Schenk, OP, and Gregory Reichberg. (shrink)

Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; military leaders waging endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. "Men, not walls, make a city," as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild their city, and their civilization, by transforming the moral character of (...) its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft. A dazzlingly ambitious reappraisal of Renaissance political thought by one of our generation's foremost intellectual historians, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming laws or institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than constitutions, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the humanities. We owe liberal arts education and much else besides to the bold experiment of these passionate and principled thinkers. The questions they asked-Should a good man serve a corrupt regime? What virtues are necessary in a leader? What is the source of political legitimacy? Is wealth concentration detrimental to social cohesion? Should citizens be expected to fight for their country?-would have a profound impact on later debates about good government and seem as vital today as they did then. (shrink)

"This volume contains two brief works by Isaiah Berlin, an acclaimed philosopher and thinker of the 20th century. "The first" is a short fictional piece he wrote when he was twelve reflecting his belief that the idea of a perfect society cannot justify the cruelties he saw in the Russian Revolution. "The last" is an essay he wrote the year before he died synthesizing his thoughts on topics such as freedom, determinism, and pluralism. Also included are several tributes to Berlin's (...) friendship, conversation, and thought."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

With the centenary of the publication of William James's Pragmatism (1907) fast approaching, this paper explores two questions. First: what role did James's volume play in the development of the Pragmatic movement?; second: how powerful a force was that movement within American academic philosophy? With regard to the first question, this paper suggests that Pragmatism was not the font of the movement, but in fact appeared near its end; with regard to the second question, this paper suggests that (...) the Pragmatic movement, while of great importance in American society, was itself only a minor moment within professionalizing American philosophy. (shrink)

Strevens’s Thinking Off Your Feet promises to vindicate philosophical analysis. My comments take a narrow, critical focus. I argue that Strevens doesn’t deliver on this promise. Given my understanding of (i) what is required from a vindication of philosophical analysis and (ii) Strevens’s grounds for ‘optimism’ about philosophical analysis, Strevens hasn’t done enough to vindicate philosophical analysis. Indeed, Strevens’s supposed grounds for optimism about armchair philosophy in fact provide motivation for philosophical analysis to give up some ground to experimental philosophy. (...) Although my comments are critical, my overall view of the book is not. Strevens does important and interesting work presenting and analysing various models of how armchair philosophy might work and what it might achieve. The book deserves a central place in future discussions about these issues. (shrink)

It may seem reasonable, even inevitable, that architectural practice should be based on an understanding that architects, like lawyers and doctors, should discover their clients' needs and accommodate them to the best of their abilities. But current discussion within the legal and medical professions of the conflict between service to private individuals who can pay, and to the public who cannot, suggest an expanded or altered definition of professional responsibility. Actually, the conflict between public and private interest may be more (...) acute in architecture than in other professions: the kind of buildings architects design are costly and are made possible only by the wealth of a small segment of the population or the state, yet every one raised affects the lives of people other than the one who makes the program and pays the architect for his services. Furthermore, the decisions of architects are embodied in buildings that last for generations, even for millennia, so that the overwhelming majority of people in our culture live and work in places designed not only for other people but for other times and conditions. For this reason, even the "private" practice of architecture involves responsibilities to a widespread constituency. James S. Ackerman is the author of The Architecture of Michelango, Art and Archaeology, The Cortille del Belvedere, Palladio and Palladio's Villas and is professor of fine arts at Harvard University. He has contributed "On Judging Art without Absolutes" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MAN BLIND FROM BIRTH AND THE SUBVERSION OF SIN: SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT FUNDAMENTAL MORALS1 James Alison I would like to undertake with you a reading of a passage from the Bible, John Chapter 9. I hope that we will see this chapter yield some interesting insights in the light of my attempt to apply to it the mimetic theory ofRené Girard. I'm not going to expound mimetic (...) theory for you: there is no shortage of books in which such expositions are to be found.2 I'mjust going to put the theory to work, with minimal recourse to technical jargon, in a reading from Scripture, hoping that it will be something like an exercise in publicity for the fecund use to which any of you might put mimetic theory. The reading will not be a simple commentary, but an attempt to experiment with the perspective of the reading. That is to say, we're asking "Who is reading this passage?," "With whom do we identify?" And the reason for this approach is to nudge us into beginning to raise certain questions of fundamental morals, how 'This paper was first published in Theology andSexuality 6, March 1997, and appears here by kind permission ofthe editor. With minor alterations this is the author's translation and adaptation ofa talk given at the Instituto Teológico de America Central (ITAC) in San Pedro Montes de Oca, San José, Costa Rica in May 1995. For instance: R. Schwager, Must there be Scapegoats? Violence andRedemption in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987); R. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic ofthe Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992); J. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred: Liberationfrom the Myth ofSanctioned Violence (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 1995)—this is the most accessible ofthe accounts. James Alison27 we talk about them, or live them in a more or less coherent and convincing way. I can't promise you any great conclusions, because I'm only just beginning to get into this subject. For that reason, I'll begin by saying that what follows is somewhat experimental, and will end with a few hints as to possible future paths to follow. I should also begin by saying that my intention is not to cause scandal, but to provoke a discussion which allows a fuller way ofliving a Christian life. In this sense what I'm trying out is an attempt at a search for a theological method which I have not yet mastered and which, if developed, will, I hope, prove somewhat emancipatory for all ofus. Miracle or theological debate? Let us begin our reading of John 9. At first sight we have an account of a miraculous healing. It is the story of a man blind from birth who receives his sight from Jesus one Sabbath, and then of the consequences of this healing among the people who witness, or hear about, the matter. Ifthe account were to be found in one of the synoptic Gospels, perhaps it might remain at that—there is no shortage of such stories. I have no doubt that in the background to the story we're dealing with an historical incident of a healing carried out by Jesus on a Sabbath. However, here the "miraculous healing" element doesn't receive much emphasis, nor does the Sabbath or rather, the matter ofthe Sabbath does receive a certain weight, as we will see later on, but with some very idiosyncratically Johannine touches. In any case, the purpose of this Chapter is determined by the debate about sin, sight, blindness and judgement within which it is set: these are the jeweller's artwork which show forth, and make sense of, the gem ofthe healing. Let us look at the beginning of the story. Jesus sees a man born blind, and his disciples ask him: "Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answers them: "Neither this man nor his parents. He is blind so that the works of God may be made manifest in him." That is to say, the whole story which follows comes as an illustration... (shrink)

Catholic social teaching is the Church’s “best-kept secret,” as the saying goes, but is it becoming literally true? This paper tests the proposition that the US bishops are developing a pattern of obscuring or, in effect, hiding particular social teachings of the popes. The instances examined include the ideological error of single-issue advocacy; the meaning of the right to form labor unions; and the intrinsic value of nonhuman species and ecosystems. It would be true irony if the “best-kept secret” were (...) that the bishops were actually keeping a secret. The paper contends that this expression, now more than a metaphor, has acquired a double meaning to which one ought to attend, for papal social teaching should be openly embraced and handed on to the faithful. (shrink)

In order to consider the question of whether empire is a subject for philosophy, I do three things. I sketch an original typology of three types of state, which I call polis, imperium and cosmopolis, in order to show that the second is an important philosophical conception which lies behind the terminology of empire and imperialism. I also consider modern theories of empire and imperialism in order to indicate some of their limitations as theories. And finally I indicate that it (...) is important even for philosophers to recognise that all imperial terminology emerges out of a very complicated history in which the concept of imperium has been extended and distorted in meaning, so that, at best, any good theory of empire or imperialism can only be some sort of recapitulation of that history. Neither the second nor the third of these claims undermines the claim of imperium to be a concept of the state which is of great political and philosophical significance. (shrink)