Modernism's theological project was an attempt to explain two things: firstly, how faith might enable persons to experience their lives as hanging together, even in the face of disintegrating forces like injustice, tragedy, and luck; and secondly, how one could see such faith, and so a life held together by it, as self-expressive. Modern theologians such as Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Ritschl, and Tillich thus offer accounts of how one's life would have to hang together such that one could identify with (...) it; of the oppositions which stand in the way of such hanging-together; of God as the one by whom oppositions are overcome, such that one can have faith that one's life ultimately hangs together; and of what such faith would have to be like in order for one to identify with it, too. So understood, modern theology not only sheds light on faith's potential role in enabling persons to identify with their lives, but stands in unexpected continuity with contemporary 'contextual' theologies.This book offers clear, careful readings of modernism's key figures in order to explain their relevance to practical concerns and to contemporary understandings of faith. (shrink)

Therapy for metaphysics -- Concepts, rules, and the spirit of recognition -- Meaning and meanings -- Reference and presence -- Truth and correspondence -- Emancipating theology.

Contemporary theologians have enriched our understanding of the Holy Spirit's identity and broadened our grasp of the pneumatological tradition, but a crucial question has not been sufficiently addressed: while we have renewed understandings of who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does, very little has been said about how the Spirit works. On the basis of some clues from Schleiermacher, this essay elaborates and defends an answer to this question. According to this proposal, Christ's normative Spirit is mediated through (...) a process of mutual recognition which carries on the Spirit of Christ's beliefs and actions. (shrink)

A fundamental problem in Christian theology has been that of determining whether God can be an object of experience and how we should account for God's empirical availability to us. Can experiences of God serve to inform and justify our theological beliefs and practices? The central claim in this work is that there is a radical mistake in many contemporary accounts that require grounding a theological story of Gods availability to us in experience in a prior general philosophical theory of (...) perception. Instead, it is argued that the philosophical problem of perception is a pseudoproblem and that in virtue of their entanglement with that pseudoproblem, the influential accounts of Christian religious experience, such as in Jean-Luc Marion, Kevin Hector, or William P. Alston, are at bottom incoherent. The study concludes with a new reading of Gregory of Nyssa and his theology of the spiritual senses, which is free from the bewitchment of the problem of perception. This critical retrieval of Nyssen opens the path toward a viable contemporary theological empiricism, one that characterizes both tasks of theological contemplation and spiritual formation in terms of a receptivity and responsiveness to the perceptible presence and agency of God in the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 225-226 [Access article in PDF] John H. Zammito. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. x + 576. Cloth, $68.00. Paper, $29.00. Zammito's book continues two recent trends in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy, viz., the reassessment both of Kant's pre-Critical thought and of his contemporaries. Zammito situates Kant's later pre-Critical (...) work within the "popular philosophy" tradition, especially those elements of the tradition that could be broadly construed as anthropological in focus. If Zammito is correct, during the late 1760s Kant was a popular philosopher of a sort whose influence was greater than generally recognized. In this light, he reexamines Kant's influence on Johann Herder as well as Herder's reception of Kant. The terminus of the study is the emergence of anthropology as a discipline and the roles that Kant and Herder played therein.Zammito's interpretation of this period (roughly, 1762 to 1773) marshals a vast array of material (notes and a bibliography number nearly 200 pages), which sheds light on both the intellectual climate of the time and Kant's and Herder's place within the same. Beginning with a useful survey of the Aufklärung during the 1760s, Zammito focuses on the growth of "popular philosophy" (which opposed the "school philosophy" and focused on the ethical and socio-historical dimension of the Aufklärung). Popular philosophy emerged as a self-styled defense of enlightenment values at a time when both the university and scholar faced crises of self-image and self-justification. Zammito juxtaposes these crises with the breakdown of Kant's attempt to construct a system of metaphysics. His point is that an "altogether different Kant," to use Vorländer's expression, emerged during the mid and late 1760s, a Kant qua popular philosopher.Zammito's Kant of this period was an essayist more interested in the "vocation of man" than in traditional metaphysics. Focusing on the period from the Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and the Sublime to the curious Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, he outlines Kant's encounter with popular philosophy. The discussion of Rousseau's influence on Kant is both useful and fascinating, and supports Zammito's interpretation nicely. Furthermore, by placing Kant in the context of his contemporaries Zammito sheds light on the scope and originality of Kant's work of this period. But Zammito's point is also that Kant faced personal and professional crises that led to this experiment with popular philosophy. He discusses at some length Kant's relation with women and an alleged "repression" that was thereby produced. These are some of the weaker (because more speculative) sections of the book. [End Page 225] Zammito claims that we must read Kant's texts of this period with the eyes of a psychologist as well as those of a philosopher, but such excursions detract from the clarity of this effort at intellectual history.Kant's "critical turn" is given an interesting interpretation. His foray into popular philosophy seemed to be leading him toward anthropology as a foundational discipline. But, as Zammito claims, though this might have been the logical extension of Kant's focus during this period, Kant's more traditional interest in providing a foundation for metaphysics and meeting the skeptic's challenge won out. Zammito is deft in addressing the clash of these interests, and explicates how Kant's anthropology lectures from 1772-73 provide a touchstone for understanding why metaphysics trumped anthropology for Kant. As Zammito concludes, "Kant created the 'critical philosophy' at the cost of forsaking the 'science' of anthropology" (348).Herder's own development is discussed in the context of this Kantian backdrop. "It [is] possible," Zammito claims, "to see Herder as fulfilling the promise that Kant abandoned" (7). Indeed, Zammito sees in Herder's hermeneutic historicism a "road not taken" by Kant, a road that privileged anthropology over philosophy. The discussion of Herder is illuminating, and does a fine job of detailing his... (shrink)

Americans today don't trust each other and their institutions as much as they once did, fueling destructive ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. In Trust in a Polarized Age, political philosopher Kevin Vallier argues that to build social trust and reduce polarization, we must strengthen liberal democratic institutions--high-quality governance, procedural fairness, markets, social welfare programs, freedom of association, and democracy. These institutions not only create trust, they do so justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic rights.

The purpose of this work is to shed some light on some aspects of hermeneutic analysis, specifically with respect to the qualitative/quantitative distinction, conceptual elements regarding hermeneutics and some elements concerning its analytical and practical uses.

We have now provided an overall simple theoretical account of the structure of perceptual experience proto-philosophically examined in Part I. The next task is to find the proper logical machinery to formulatte those accounts rigorously.

Some concepts widely used in science are fundamental keys in the work of Mariano Artigas. Words like ‘order’, ‘dynamism’, ‘activity’, ‘chaos’, ‘randomness’, ‘patterns’, ‘structure’, ‘emergence’ or ‘complexity’, which are also used in other fields of thinking, have been used to build M. Artigas’ worldview. From this point of view, he presents the existence of philosophical bridges to overcome the methodological gaps between science and religion. Since the years in which Artigas wrote his work up to now, the scientific meanings of (...) many of these concepts have evolved until reaching today a better level of accuracy, maturity and stability. This article discusses the concept of worldview in M. Artigas related to some notions he used. It is important to remark that the change in the meaning of some words does not affect the general framework introduced by M. Artigas. His understanding of the relations between science and religion still preserves both validity and profit. (shrink)

McGovern, Kevin This is an edited record of the presentation given by Revd Kevin McGovern, Director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics, at the Centre's conference on palliative care on 3 October 2013. It explores the processes, challenges and benefits of Advance Care Planning. It also argues that Advance Care Planning will change the provision of health care significantly.

McGovern, Kevin After exploring the sources of Catholic teaching about tube feeding, this article summarises that teaching in four points. Because tube feeding usually offers little if any benefit in advanced dementia, as a general rule a feeding tube is not inserted into these patients.

McGovern, Kevin This article reviews three statements from the National Health and Medical Research Council on post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU). One of the functions of the NHMRC is to propose standards and guidelines for health care in Australia. The paper explores the causes and neuropathology of PCU, imaging and other tests and prognosis from unresponsiveness.

Nine essays based on a series of public talks held in Melbourne in 1988. The contributors and the editor are academics and writers. They look at the work of such people as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in terms of writing, reading and social context. Includes a symposium on uses of recent French theory and an index.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Shipwreck of the Richmond and the Duty to Rescue The Ethics of Global Access to Essential Medicines Conclusion References.

: Method in Catholic bioethics is distinguished by a specific philosophical and theological anthropology. Human beings are not to be considered simply as selves, but as selves in relation to God and each other. This essay reflects on that claim by reviewing four areas of concern from Catholic social teaching: common good, human dignity, option for the poor, and stewardship.

A number of recent legal cases in the United States have considered both disability‐based exceptions to Covid‐19‐related mask mandates and disability‐based claims to stronger masking rules in states restricting the abilities of local governments to enforce mask mandates. We argue that a proper legal and ethical analysis of such cases requires understanding the distinction between disability accommodations and disability modifications. Disability accommodations are individualized adjustments that enable qualified individuals to perform jobs or achieve access on terms comparable to those experienced (...) by others. Disability modifications are programmatic changes to structures or policies that increase accessibility. We contend that in the context of mask mandates, modifications rather than accommodations are ethically desirable because modification‐oriented policies promote disability access in a way that treats all individuals fairly, avoiding the risk of promoting misinformation and uncertainty about the health benefits of masking. (shrink)

Stochastic developmental variation is an additional important source of variance – beyond genes and environment – that should be included in considering how our innate psychological predispositions may interact with environment and experience, in a culture-dependent manner, to ultimately shape patterns of human behaviour.

This essay examines the theological and rhetorical concerns animating John Henry Newman’s evaluation of efforts to prove the existence of God and/or the truth of Christianity with philosophical arguments about the design of nature. Newman’s complex position on arguments from design ought to be interpreted in light of his broader theological understanding of the challenges posed to the practice of Christian faith in his nineteenth century context. These challenges required that apologetics first and foremost defend the truth of Christianity as (...) a religion of holiness, not as a religion of reasonableness. (shrink)

Job satisfaction is a core variable in the study and practice of organizational psychology because of its implications for desirable work outcomes. Knowledge of its antecedents is abundant and informative, but there are still psychological processes underlying job satisfaction that have not received complete attention. This is the case of employee emotion regulation. In this study, we argue that employees’ behaviors directed to manage their affective states participate in their level of job satisfaction and hypothesize that employee affect-improving and -worsening (...) emotion regulation behaviors increase and decrease, respectively, job satisfaction, through the experience of positive and negative affect. Using a diary study with a sample of professionals from diverse jobs and organizations, for the most part, the mediational hypotheses were supported by the results albeit a more complex relationship was found in the case of affect worsening emotion regulation. This study contributes to expanding the job satisfaction and emotion regulation literatures and informs practitioners in people management in organizations about another route to foster and sustain positive attitudes at work. (shrink)