The theme of this essay centers on the ways in which the theology of St. Bonaventure, who lived in the thirteenth century, can truly enhance the theological thinking of the twenty-first century. Bonaventure’s theological approach is fundamentally inter-relational, and inter-relational ways of thinking dominate the cultures of today’s world. Are these two forms of inter-relational perception compatible with one another? In this lecture, I attempt to show that the Franciscan world-view, especially as formulated by Bonaventure, offers a major format that (...) unites our current world with a current and deeply respected religious way of thinking. The basis for this inter-connection can be stated in a succinct way: in.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. ROBIN DARLING YOUNG Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its History and (...) Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper). In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate "lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the ministry of the Church. Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative might be condensed as follows. The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion : Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good. Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does BOOK REVIEWS 333 not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church. This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which, while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus, and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship " (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship " (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:7 Franciscan Studies 62 (2004) THE FRANCISCAN INSTITUTE HONORS GIOVANNI MICCOLI On July 16, 2004 Professor Giovanni Miccoli, a respected scholar of medieval, Church and Franciscan history, received the Franciscan Institute Medal from St. Bonaventure University during its celebration of the Feast of St. Bonaventure. University president Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., and Fr. Michael Cusato, O.F.M., director of The Franciscan Institute and dean of the School of Franciscan Studies, (...) presented the medal during an Academic Convocation at 7 p.m. in The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. A reception followed in the Dresser-Rand Atrium. During the Convocation, Giovanni Miccoli gave a presentation, “A Reading of the Christian Proposal of Francis According to His First Biographers,” continuing a longtime focus on the study of Francis of Assisi and his contributions to the Church. Professor Miccoli, who was born in Trieste, Italy, in 1933, studied in Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Università, in Munich at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and London at the Warburg Institute. He has taught in Pisa, Venice and his native Trieste, where he is now a professor emeritus at the Università di Trieste. A historian of the Middle Ages and of the Roman Catholic Church, he has combined those loves to specialize first in the Gregorian Reformation, reforms undertaken within the Church under Pope Gregory VII at the end of the 11th century. Turning his eyes to more modern times, he is also an expert on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Fascism in Italy, including the questions related to Pius XII’s pontificate during World War II. His study of the Church in Italy during the Middle Ages led to a focus on Francis of Assisi and his impact on the Church, which led to his becoming one of foremost Franciscan scholars of modern times. Miccoli is particularly known for his contribution to 1974’s “La Storia Religiosa” (Religious History of Italy), which is the second volume of “Storia d’Italia” (History of Italy). In “La Storia Religiosa” he examined how Francis and his movement influenced the history and development of the Church in Italy. 8 GIOVANNI MICCOLI Since that time, he has published several major articles on Franciscan issues, largely drawing from early Franciscan documents and sources, which have been translated from Italian to English and published in Greyfriars Review, a publication of the Franciscan Institute. One essay, “Francis of Assisi’s Christian Proposal,” was published in Italian in 1983 and in Greyfriars Review in 1989; another, “A Christian Experience Between Gospel and Institution,” appeared in Italian in 1992 and in Greyfriars Review in 1997; while a third, “The Writings of Francis,” was published in Italian in 1997 and in Greyfriars Review in 2001. The Franciscan Institute established the medal in 1987 to honor scholars who have made outstanding contributions to Franciscan studies in the areas of philosophy, theology, history and spirituality. Giovanni Miccoli was the 16th recipient of the medal. Recent honorees have included Fr. Clément Schmitt, O.F.M., Sr. Ingrid Peterson, O.S.F., Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., and Fr. Zachary Hayes, O.F.M. THE FRANCISCAN PROPOSAL OF GIOVANNI MICCOLI Giovanni Miccoli was born a little more than seventy years ago in the city of Trieste in northern Italy. He studied at the Scuola normale superiore of Pisa, the most prestigious school in Italy, where he was taught by renowned professors, particularly Arsenio Frugoni. He also received scholarships to study in Munich, Germany, and in London, England. Although he was offered a wide variety of important research and teaching positions in the major cities of Italy, he chose scholarly authority over academic power, and decided to return to his home town and join the university of Trieste, where he taught until his recent appointment as professor emeritus. Trieste is a city at the crossroads of the Latin, Germanic and Slavic worlds. Although largely ignored nowadays, in the past it was the harbor of Austria and, more recently during the Cold War, the last city of Western Europe facing the communist world. It is an enigmatic, fascinating city. This evening we honor Giovanni Miccoli as one of the greatest... (shrink)

In this work, Kenan Malik explores the history of moral thought as it has developed over three millennia, from Homer's Greece to Mao's China, from ancient India to modern America. It tells the stories of the great philosophers, and breathes life into their ideas, while also challenging many of our most cherished moral beliefs.

Analogy among characters is not the only structural device which blurs the boundaries of the self. The very repetition of the act of narration, involving a chain of quotations, makes the story a perfect example of what Jakobson calls "speech within speech"1 and divorces the various characters from their own discourse. In addition to the real author's speech to the real reader, crystallized in that of the implied author to the implied reader, the whole story is the speech of an (...) extradiegetic-heterodiegetic narrator who, in the footnote, calls himself "editor" and who sums up Liddell Hart's account and juxtaposes it with Yu Tsun's dictated statement. Just as the editor quotes Tsun, so Tsun, an extradiegetic-homodiegetic narrator, quotes Albert who in turn quotes Ts'ui Pên, sometimes verbatim, as in the case of the crucial letter, sometimes by conjecture, as in the instance of Pên's supposed declarations about the book and the maze. Quotation, then, is a dominant narrative mode in this story, and quotation is the appropriation by one person of the speech of another. Since a person is to a large extent constituted by one person of his discourse, such an appropriation implies, at least partly, an interpenetration of personalities. Thus both repetition through analogy and repetition through quotation threaten the absolute autonomy of the self. · 1. Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in Essays on the Language of Literature, ed. Seymour Chatman and Samuel R. Levin , pp. 296-322. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan is a senior lecturer in the department of English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The author of The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James, she is currently writing on the poetics of repetition and, in collaboration with Moshe Ron, on contemporary narrative theory. (shrink)

The paper analyses the concept of rationality as developed in the philosophical considerations of Robert Brandom. It is the analysis of Brandom's pragmatically-oriented discourse concerning the issue of rationality from the perspective of human being's linguistic practices, where only upon meeting the other members of specific linguistic community the aspects of human nature we may characterise by the term rationality are manifested. The central part of this paper treats Brandom's normative idiom that he postulates as explanatorily most suitable for understanding (...) the linguistic practices and the idea of rationality based upon them. (shrink)

The principle of moderation can be regarded as an ethical principle of virtue or as a principle of government. On the basis of the former, moderation has a personal, ethical sense—not to go towards extremes. The latter model is more generalized and impersonal: moderation as the limitation of power by power. Both conceptions actually meet, though with the latter model more salient, in the work of Montesquieu. This article outlines Montesquieu’s view of moderation emphasizing the extent to which this view (...) cannot be understood apart from his concept of despotism. It shows that Montesquieu’s understanding of moderation entails the balancing and interaction of different powers in a State. As such, his view is more “dynamic” and relational than “substantive.” By exploring the interaction between the models of moderation as virtue and moderation as government in Montesquieu’s work, I then develop the notion of “ruling fear” in considering the continuing relevance of Montesquieu’s perspective for current understandings of moderation and political power. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

Bu çalışmada, Türkiye’de 1963 ile 2012 yılları arasında din psikolojisi alanında yapılan ve hala devam eden yüksek lisans ve doktora tezlerine ilişkin analizler yer almaktadır. Bunun yanında din psikolojisinin Türkiye’de akademide yer alışına dair kısa bir tarihçe vardır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, din psikolojisi doktora tezlerine ilişkin bir bibliyografya oluşturarak, araştırmacılara ve lisansüstü öğrencilerine bir katalog sunmaktır. Ayrıca, tezlere ait verilerin analizleriyle, yapılacak yeni çalışmalara yol göstermek amaçlanmıştır. Yöntem olarak literatür taraması yapılmış, farklı kurumların katalogları taranmış ve alandaki akademisyenlerle görüşülmüştür. Elde (...) edilen bilgiler doğrultusunda tezler, yüksek lisans ve doktora tezleri olarak tasnif edilmiş ve yazar referans alınarak alfabetik sıraya göre dizilmiştir. Tez başlıklarının içerdikleri konular tespit edilmiş ve bu veriler analiz edilmiştir. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's moral (...) thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

Are we humans destined to become ‘posthuman’? In this paper, we question the claims of posthumanism, accepting some of its broader insights whilst proposing a more empirically and ethically appropriate ‘vitalist’ response. We argue that despite recent changes in styles of thought that question the uniqueness of ‘the human’, and despite novel technological developments for augmenting human bodies, we remain – fundamentally – persons. Humans, as persons, are constitutively embedded in and scaffolded by the material, social, semantic and cultural niches (...) they have constructed for themselves. An ‘ethopolitical’ response to our present that recognizes this fact not only requires us to engage with the consequences of making lives in the unequal niches that restrict and stunt the personhood of so many human beings at present, but also requires us to broaden the bandwidth of those who are recognized fully as persons. In our conclusion we briefly develop the theme that this emphasis on personhood can be seen as a vitalist – rather than a humanist – stance. (shrink)

In the Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5, art. 4, Thomas argues that the good has the ratio of the final cause.1 This thesis is problematic because there seems to be a difference between the definitions and uses of “good” and “final cause.” If Thomas is arguing that the good and the final cause are in no way distinct, then why might we plausibly describe something as good even if it has no causal role? If not, then what does it mean (...) for the ratio of goodness to be the same as that of final causality? Later Thomists disagree over the precise relationship between goodness and final causality, and their disagreement is reflected in their different interpretations of the argument and conclusion of this text. Few hold that Thomas merely means to say that goodness is the fundament of being an end, or that being an end is something like a proper passion of goodness. But they disagree over what the additional connection between the two might be. (shrink)

The death anxiety is one of the leading existential problems. Religiosity, on other hand, plays an important role in coping with death anxiety. However, studies on the relationship between death anxiety and religiosity have revealed conflicting results. The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between religiosity and death anxiety and to identify possible causes of conflicting results. The study used a systematic review method to examine both correlational and experimental studies. The studies reviewed draw attention to (...) two important results. First, although there are generally inconsistent relationships between religiosity and death anxiety, especially intrinsic religious orientation is negatively associated with death anxiety. Second, mortality salience increases the religious beliefs of the religious while producing inconsistent results for the nonreligious. On the other hand, these studies have some critical limitations. One of these limitations, the measures of religiosity and death anxiety used in studies wide variety, and their reliability and cross-cultural validity can be problematic. Implicitly measuring religiosity and death anxiety can help solve this problem. Another limitation is that the experimental studies were very few and those that did were mostly done with participants from the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Therefore, there is a need to conduct studies (especially experimental) from different religious and cultural traditions to overcome this limitation. The current review is essential to have better understanding the relationship between religiosity and fear of death and guiding future studies. (shrink)

This paper concerns Aristotle and Galen’s scientific method and the place of philosophy in their natural scientific endeavors as manifested in their discussions on the role of the heart in the formation of the embryo. I will begin first by discussing Aristotle’s conception of natural sciences and his discussion on the role of the heart in the body and embryo. Following this is Galen’s critique of the role of the heart in the formation of the embryo. Galen had considerably more (...) knowledge about anatomy and the construction of the embryo, yet his scientific method is not radically different from Aristotle’s as he also utilizes both logical arguments and observational data. Nevertheless, he attempts to banish philosophers from discussing anatomical issues, thus opening the path to specialization. (shrink)

Post-classical period witnessed intense debates on aspects of the Avicennan theory of science. Among them one set of discussions concerned the issue of subject matter (mabāhith al-mawdūʿ) in a science. They were raised by Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa (d. 747/1346) in the introduction of his al-Tawḍīh, a commentary on his legal theory text al-Tanqīḥ. Therein, he raised three questions: (1) whether the subject matter of a science can be multiple, (2) what restricting subject matter of a science means, and (3) whether one (...) thing can be the subject matter of multiple sciences. Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390), a proponent of the Avicennan theory, objected to Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa’s positions in his al-Talwīḥ, the most well-known supercommentary on al-Tawḍīh. The paper analyzes this debate on the issue of subject matter in sciences, and thus sheds light on the reception of an important aspect of the Avicennan theory of science in the postclassical period. (shrink)

This paper connects the debate regarding perceptual representation of high-level properties and the debate regarding non-conceptual perceptual representation. I present and defend a distinction between representationally-complex properties and properties that are simpler to represent and offer ways of assessing whether a property is representationally complex. I address conditions under which such a property might be non-conceptually represented and conclude that most representationally-complex properties are simply too complex to be non-conceptually represented. Thus, most mental states that represent representationally-complex properties must be (...) conceptual. This conclusion is relevant for a variety of philosophical theories (perception, ethics, emotions, pain) and is especially dramatic with respect to accounts according to which a mental state can non-conceptually represent such properties. As a test case for applying my argument I consider a group of such accounts: non-conceptual perceptual views of emotions, which my argument entails are false. I end by considering the implications my argument has for different theories. -/- . (shrink)

What, if anything, do we epistemically owe to each other? Various “traditional” views of epistemology might hold either that we don’t epistemically owe anything to each other, because “what we owe to each other” is the realm of the moral, or that what we epistemically owe to each other is just to be epistemically responsible agents. Basu (2019) has recently argued, against such views, that morality makes extra-epistemic demands upon what we should believe about one another. So, what we owe (...) to each other is not just a matter of word and deed, but also of belief. And in fact, Basu argues, sometimes those moral demands require us to believe in ways that cut against orthodox epistemic norms. This paper has three aims. First, to offer two strategies for accommodating the kinds of cases Basu discusses while nonetheless holding that only epistemic normativity makes demands on belief. Second, to offer an alternative account of what we owe to each other that does not hold that morality demands that we sometimes believe against our evidence or in violation of epistemic norms. And third, to give a brief diagnosis of why it seems intuitive that morality makes extra-epistemic doxastic demands on us. Ultimately, I argue that what we epistemically owe to each other does not require us to violate orthodox, invariantist epistemic norms. Morality demands that we have a proper regard for others, not that we sometimes believe against our evidence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 63-82 [Access article in PDF] Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence Thomas Osborne Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 Bruce D. (...) Marshall argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used late medieval philosophical techniques. Although I agree with this scholarship that Luther's thought must not be understood in isolation from late medieval thought, I will argue that Luther uses philosophical ideas in a way which conflicts with that of the scholastic tradition. The focus here is on Luther's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason in the context of Luther's controversy over the Eucharist with the Swiss sacramentarians, among whom Zwingli and Oecolampadius were the most prominent. 4 Although Luther uses philosophical [End Page 63] distinctions to argue against what he thinks are misinterpretations of the Bible, he does not in any explicit and systematic way use philosophy to arrive at a theological understanding of the Eucharist. Luther differs from his scholastic predecessors in that he uses philosophy not to develop theological conclusions but only to attack errors about the Bible, and so the concern here is with Luther's use of Nominalist doctrines about presence in his attack on the sacra-mentarians' belief that Christ cannot be present both at the right hand of God and in the Eucharist at the same time.In his discussion of the Eucharistic doctrine which is presented in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Luther not only argues against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice but also against transubstantiation. 5 Luther explicitly states that he was influenced on this issue by Peter D'Ailly, a Nominalist follower of William of Ockham. D'Ailly and other Nominalists thought that transubstantiation was not the only possible way that Christ could be present in the Eucharist, since if God wished he could also make Christ present along with the substance of the bread and wine. 6 From a Nominalist [End Page 64] perspective transubstantiation requires two actions of God, namely, the annihilation of the substance of the bread and the placement of Christ's body under the species. Therefore, consubstantiation would be a simpler account of Christ's Eucharistic presence. If Christ's body were present along with the substance of the bread annihilation would not have to occur. But D'Ailly and the Nominalists argue that we know from Church authority that the real presence occurs through transubstantiation. On this issue the Nominalists differ from Thomas Aquinas, who gives philosophically-based arguments against consubstantiation. 7 When Luther attacks Thomas, he attacks not so much the use of philosophy in theology as Thomas's philosophy: "But this opinion of Thomas hangs so completely in the air without support of Scripture or reason that it seems to me he knows neither his philosophy nor his dialectic." 8Since the Nominalist belief in transubstantiation rather than consubstantiation rests on an acceptance of Church authority, the rejection of such authority would seem to lead to a rejection of transubstantiation. If Luther had assented to traditional Nominalist theology with the sole exception of its reliance on Church authority, one would expect him to argue for the necessity of consubstantiation. However, Luther sees himself as rejecting an unnecessarily philosophical theology in a return to a more biblical faith. 9 Luther claims that he argues for a particular understanding of the Eucharistic presence but rather "that every one may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation." 10 Although Luther's training in Nominalist theology leads him to think that consubstantiation is possible, he at no point argues that a belief... (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe contemporary debate over responsibility for belief is divided over the issue of whether such responsibility requires doxastic control, and whether this control must be voluntary in nature. It has recently become popular to hold that responsibility for belief does not require voluntary doxastic control, or perhaps even any form of doxastic ‘control’ at all. However, Miriam McCormick has recently argued that doxastic responsibility does in fact require quasi-voluntary doxastic control: “guidance control,” a complex, compatibilist form of control. In this (...) paper, I pursue a negative and a positive task. First, I argue that grounding doxastic responsibility in guidance control requires too much for agents to be the proper targets for attributions of doxastic responsibility. I will focus my criticisms on three cases in which McCormick's account gives the intuitively wrong verdict. Second, I develop a modified conception of McCormick's notion of “ownership of belief,” which I call Weak Doxastic Ownership. I employ this conception to argue that responsibility for belief is possible even in the absence of guidance control. In doing so, I argue that the notion of doxastic ownership can do important normative work in grounding responsibility for belief without being subsumed under or analyzed in terms of the notion of doxastic control. (shrink)

Considerable attention in bioethics has been devoted to moral expertise and its implications for handling applied moral problems. The existence and nature of moral expertise has been a contested topic, and particularly, whether philosophers are moral experts. In this study, we put the question of philosophers’ moral expertise in a wider context, utilizing a novel and global study among 4,087 philosophers from 96 countries. We find that despite the skepticism in recent literature, the vast majority of philosophers do believe in (...) moral expertise and in the contribution of philosophical training and experience to its acquisition. Yet, they still differ on what philosophers’ moral expertise consists of. While they widely accept that philosophers possess superior analytic abilities regarding moral matters, they diverge on whether they also possess improved ability to judge moral problems. Nonetheless, most philosophers in our sample believe that philosophers possess an improved ability to both analyze and judge moral problems and that they commonly see these two capacities as going hand in hand. We also point at significant associations between personal and professional attributes and philosophers’ beliefs, such as age, working in the field of moral philosophy, public involvement, and association with the analytic tradition. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate about moral expertise. -/- . (shrink)

By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in so far as his vitalism is a means of signalling the (...) refusal of the supposition that all of the dimensions of life are or might be in our possession. Michel Foucault’s project, though directed for the most part to very different subject-matter, worked out a similar logic in the historical problematology of the sciences of ‘man’ and mentalities of government and power; and the results were equally ethical in so far as Foucault’s nominalist historical problematology entailed the refusal of any idea that all of the dimensions of our anthropological ‘essence’ are, or could be, likewise, in our possession. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues by Angela McKay KnobelThomas M. Osborne Jr.KNOBEL, Angela McKay. Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. 214 pp. Cloth, $65.00This book is the first substantial English monograph on Aquinas's account of the infused virtues in many years, and the most significant treatment of the issue since Gabriel Bullet, Vertus morales infuses et vertus (...) morales acquises selon Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1958). The infused virtues are about, or they are intrinsically ordered to, the supernatural end of human beings. Aquinas was among the first to argue that the infused virtues include not only the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, but also supernatural counterparts to the acquired virtues, which are proportionate to the natural end of humans. These infused moral virtues are infused with charity and lost with mortal sin. Aquinas never addressed at length the relationship between acquired [End Page 144] and infused moral virtues, and many theologians rejected Aquinas's position that there are infused moral virtues.Knobel's book has two parts. The first part of the book consists of three chapters about Aquinas's own views. Chapter 1 is on natural virtue, which can be acquired through the agent's own efforts. Knobel emphasizes the way in which this virtue is proportionate to the natural end and abilities of humans. She correctly notes that Aquinas thinks that humans can perform such virtuous acts without grace. However, since she does not distinguish between morally good acts and morally good agents, she does not adequately address Aquinas's view of how sinners without grace might possess acquired virtue. Additionally, although she correctly notes the way in which moral virtue orders the agent to the end, it is often unclear whether she is discussing the proximate end of the will (which is an object), a further end (as when someone steals to commit adultery), or the ultimate end (which is God as the object of charity or the self as an object of disordered love). For example, she writes, "[I]f an act is not sinful, it cannot be ordered to an evil end." She might be making the uncontroversial claim that good acts are made evil when directed to a bad end, but in her argument she seems to be making the stronger claim that someone with a disordered ultimate end cannot habitually order good acts to such an end.Chapter 2 is on the infused virtues. Knobel notes that for Aquinas synderesis, which is a habit of grasping first practical principles, is a seed of the natural virtues, and that faith, which grasps revealed principles, plays this role in infused virtue. She shows how infused moral virtues, which share the same matter as the acquired moral virtues, have different ends and rules than the acquired virtues. Chapter 3 concerns Aquinas's account of the relationship between the acquired and infused virtues, and in particular the infused moral virtues. Knobel draws attention to texts in which Aquinas argues that the two coexist in someone who has grace, but she states that this coexistence is contradicted in the discussion of Macrobius's fourfold division of virtue in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 61, a. 5). In this article, she thinks, acquired virtue is political virtue, and a stage toward infused virtue. She does not address how Aquinas uses the term "political virtue" differently in different texts, and how the schema of four virtues in this text might be read as describing both four stages of acquired virtue and four stages of infused virtue. Knobel supports her view—that those with grace lack acquired virtue—by claiming that Aquinas consistently states that there is no acquired virtue in heaven. This view only tenuously (at best) supports her point that acquired virtue does not exist in this life among those in a state of grace. Moreover, Aquinas seems to suggest that acquired virtue persists in the next life in ST I-II, q. 67, a. 1-2.The second part of the book is a criticism of contemporary interpretations of Aquinas, and an exposition of... (shrink)

In this paper, I examine several commentaries and glosses on the prolegomenon of Najm al-Dīn al-Kātibī’s (d. 675/1276–77) Shamsiyya that relate to debates on the Aristotelian and Ibn Sīnān theory of science in the postclassical period. Chief among the commentaries of the Shamsiyya is Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 766/1365) Taḥrīr al-qawāʿid al-manṭiqiyya. This commentary, rather than the base text of the Shamsiyya, set the stage for later interpretations by Mirak al-Bukhārī (fl. 733/1332), Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Qāshānī (d. 755/1354), Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (...) (d. 792/1390), al-Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413), Dāwūd al-Khwāfī (fl. 839/1465) and ʿIṣām al-Dīn Isfarāyinī (d. 945/1538). I focus on three issues that were raised in these interpreta­tions of the Shamsiyya’s prolegomenon: (1) the place of the elements of sciences in logical corpus, (2) the notion of the prolegomenon and its content, and (3) the real essence of a science. I attend to the particular debates and contentions on these issues to reveal the general idea of science at that time. (shrink)

Located in the northwest of the Lake Van basin, the city of Malazgirt was an important area of the kingdom of Urartu from its earliest period due to its stra- tegic location. Inscriptions of king Minua (810–785/80 BCE) mention important construction projects, including fortresses, temples, and irrigation canals, in and around Malazgirt. This article deals with the Urartian presence in Malazgirt, presents new Urartian inscriptions, and considers their significance for historical geography. Particularly important is the Leter stele, which informs us (...) of the correct reading of the name of the irrigation canal built by King Minua—Mezaiani, the antecedent form of Malazgirt. Another stele documents the agricultural activities of King Argišti (780–756 BCE). (shrink)