Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 72-74.

Noted Hungarian historian Karoly Szerencses provides brief, steam-of-consciousness essays to accompany each photo. Acting as the photographer's fictive guide, Szerencses introduces "Margaret" to each of her photos, providing her with an encapsulated historical background of the subject and in the process revealing the soul and conscience of the nation in 1938. As he says in farewell to Margaret at the end of their "tour": "... please remember us, our terrible fears; recite a prayer for us so that we may say, (...) for the very last time: they caught us by surprise, they meant to annihilate us, yet we managed to survive." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

Next SectionIn order to cope with the imperfective paradox, the assumption that the event in progress must get completed, if not in the actual world, then in a counterfactual world or worlds, has been a part of the standard modal approach to the progressive since Dowty (1977). This is generally coupled with the further assumption that some variant of normalcy should be used to single out the relevant counterfactual continuations. Recently, however, Bonomi (1999), Gendler Szabó (2004, 2008) and Wulf (2009) (...) have argued against these assumptions. The present paper suggests that the counter-arguments give compelling evidence that the truth-conditions of the progressive are weaker than is assumed by the standard approach, and that the normalcy requirement should be replaced by reference to the conditions necessary for the completion of the event. (shrink)

The text develops the ideas of philosophical application, taking into account various philosophical traditions, the most significant ones being the hermeneutical and the postmodern tradition. Therefore, the author’s conclusion is that the hermeneutical practice of application has the chance of bringing philosophy closer to human condition in the most adequate form for present-day conditions, as applied philosophy.

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)

Christian spirituality is often “activist.” It consists in the performance of various actions through which a faithful person attempts to secure the presence of God. The argument of the present essay is that spiritual “activism” cannot actually accomplish this goal. For this reason, it is necessary to seek a foundation for all spiritual activism in spiritual “inactivism.” This means that all Christian spiritual activity must be reconceived as a response to and celebration of a prior presence of God that comes (...) before any performance. The phenomenological philosophy of Michel Henry makes it possible to appreciate how God is so present in the very fact of being alive. This can make the whole of Christian spiritual practice a Eucharist—a perpetual thanksgiving. (shrink)

The author of this paper presents the main interpretative orientations regarding the concept on the minority being of the reformed Transylvanian bishop Makkai Sándor who lived in the inter-war period. The author tries to point out the philosophical, moral, and existential sides of this problem which has become deep-rooted and permanent in the consciousness of the Hungarian intellectuals from Transylvania, and which has been known as the problem of the minority existential paradox. To accomplish this, the author relies on the (...) theoretical and methodological possibilities provided by the philosophical hermeneutics. (shrink)

Proponents of “early high Christology” maintain that the New Testament teaches that God created the world through Jesus (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16–17; Heb. 1:2, 10). Contemporary philosophical theologians sympathetic to Nicene orthodoxy appeal to this trend in order to justify their understanding of the person and nature of Jesus as divine. This article argues from the logic of the word “through” that the belief that God created the world through Jesus is incompatible with the Nicene doctrine of (...) the consubstantiality of Father and Son, and considers what options remain for pro-Nicene theologians. (shrink)

This article argues that the claim of traditional Christian theology and religion to be in possession of supernatural revelation cannot be substantiated in a valid and non-circular manner in principle. It then notes the consequences for theology if the notion of supernatural revelation is abandoned. It proposes agnosticism about unknowable matters as a way of exercising faith or trust in the limits God’s providence has established for human knowledge.

In this article, using the recent work by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age as my point of departure, I will argue that Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to think past the competing binary of atheistic and religious experience and allows us to surpass the present narratives of secularism. In A Secular Age, Taylor himself seeks a middle ground between atheism and religion, arguing that it is possible to open ourselves to the cross-pressures of modern existence that find us caught between (...) scientific atheism and a need for spiritual and religious guidance. Here, Taylor finds a way of picturing ourselves within a secular age, remaining faithful to scientific rationalism, but still open to religion and a sense of a higher good. However, as I shall demonstrate, in his thesis Taylor misrepresents the Continental philosophical tradition (particularly Nietzsche and post-structuralism) that has itself sought to understand these cross-pressures of existence. Taking this misrepresentation, and specifically his reductive and colloquial analysis of Nietzsche, Camus, and Derrida, as my point of departure, I provide an alternative manner of thinking through the work of these writers, one that leads to a detailed analysis of Jean-Luc Nancy and his project the deconstruction of Christianity. In this analysis I argue that Nancy provides a manner of thinking that remains open and allows an experience of freedom, without seeking to close that sense of openness with explanation, nor maintaining that sense of openness with a conception of the divine. (shrink)

In my paper I examine the question of tolerance. In the first part of the discussion I follow up the process in the course of which the problem of tolerance appearing in connection to the practice of religious freedom in the 17th-18th centuries leaves the territory of religious morality and the relation of church and state, and is placed into the empirical sphere of a general human relation to the otherness of the other, and with it to the private sphere (...) of the individual. However, the intolerance continuously present in our life world still keeps the question in the forefront of theoretical interest. In the second part of the paper I examine the relationship of tolerance and intolerance, proving that the tolerance conceived as the experience of being tolerated induced intolerance. This situation can be exceeded by a change of attitude outlined by philosophical hermeneutics, the essence of which is the practical and behavioral application of the principle of “being thoughtful of the other”. (shrink)

Today’s philosophical thinking mostly deals with the problem of sin from a religious, phenomenological or ethical point of view. This paper is an attempt to find hermeneutical points of view for the possibility of an interpretation of sin which can be opened by philosophical hermeneutics with reference to our historical being, the linguistic form of experience and the experience of finitude. The train of thoughts takes us from the analysis of the concept “original sin” to the disclosure of the speculative (...) structure and existential meaning of the original sin. Throughout this examination, the essence of original sin is revealed as the medium and the universal experience-horizon of the history of human being and of meaning. (shrink)

The doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture maintains that the meaning of Scripture is clear to those who are enlightened by the Holy Spirit through faith. But this definition provides no way to know whether one has true faith or has been so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, a problem accentuated by persistent disagreement among persons who claim to be Christians of good will. This is a specific instance of a more general problem afflicting “closed” theological epistemologies. This essay provides (...) an exposition of Kevin Diller’s synthesis of the “closed” theological epistemologies of Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga and critiques it on phenomenological grounds. It then concludes with a phenomenologically redefined description of Christian faith which entails rejecting the doctrine of the claritas scripturae and motivates an “open” theological epistemology. (shrink)

Florea Lucaci: Avatarul ideii de absolut. De la Kant la filosofia limbajului. Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2008.

One might think at first glance that naturalism excludes any form of theism by definition. This article argues to the contrary that proper scientificity requires that a naturalist remain open to the possibility of the truth of the classical theistic conception of God in particular. The only alternative is for naturalism to devolve into an anti-theistic bias and ideology, forsaking the claim to being properly scientific.

The subject of this study, the step forward—which the author felt to be ‘of evolutionary value’—was occasioned by a Delphi discussion. The debate was opened by Varga's (2003, 2006a) contrastive exposition of diagnoses of present history with respect to Hungary's accession to the European Union, offered by some leading Hungarian sociologists (Henrik Kreutz, Kálmán Kulcsár, Iván Szelényi, Iván Vitányi), in which he tried to place the views of these authors in a value sociological system by Charles Morris (1956, 1964) and (...) Geert Hofstede (1991). In Morris’ case, this involved recourse to his combination of two systems: one semiotic, the other axiological; in Hofstede's, to his system of ‘software of the mind’ embracing axiology and organizational psychology. This synthesis was opposed by Kreutz (2006a) who offered a new ordering principle which he advanced as truer to life. The present confrontation between the value sociological synthesis advanced by Kreutz, on the one hand, and the trends hallmarked by the names of Morris and Hofstede, on the other hand, provided the author with an opportunity to find a resolution of the tension between desired and desirable, for which he has gained some side light from Robert K. Merton's (1957) theory of the different degrees of insulation of role–activities from observability by members of the role–set (and which has derived further refinement from Jean–Paul Sartre's conception of ‘glance and shame’). (shrink)

The semantics of progressive sentences presents a challenge to linguists and philosophers alike. According to a widely accepted view, the truth-conditions of progressive sentences rely essentially on a notion of inertia. Dowty suggested inertia worlds to implement this “inertia idea” in a formal semantic theory of the progressive. The main thesis of the paper is that the notion of inertia went through a subtle, but crucial change when worlds were replaced by events in Landman and Portner :760–787, 1998), and that (...) this new, event-related concept of inertia results in a possibility-based theory of the progressive. An important case in point in the paper is a proof that, despite its surface structure, the theory presented in Portner does not implement the notion of inertia in Dowty ; rather, it belongs together with Dowty’s earlier, 1977 theory according to which the progressive is a possibility operator. (shrink)

ABOUT WEAK AND STRONG EMPIRICAL NECCESSITY. CATEGORICAL, DISPOSITIONAL PROPERTIES AND LAWS OF NATURE Pohľady na empirickú nevyhnutnosť možno rozdeliť do dvoch skupín: teórie slabej nevyhnutnosti a teórie silnej nevyhnutnosti. Do prvej teórie patria koncepcie, ktoré uvažujú svet zložený z pasívnych vlastností, akými sú kategorické vlastnosti. Za zmeny vo svete sú zodpovedné zákony prírody, ktoré sa od možného sveta k svetu líšia, a preto aj prejavy týchto vlastností sú odlišné. Druhú teóriu, teóriu silnej nevyhnutnosti, zastávajú filozofi, ktorí predpokladajú existenciu silovo aktívnych (...) vlastností, dispozícií. Práve tieto sú zodpovedné za zmeny vo svete, a vo všetkých možných svetoch sa prejavujú nevyhnutne rovnako. Autor argumentuje v prospech existencie dispozičných vlastností a tvrdí, že dispozičný výklad sveta netrpí modálnymi absurdnosťami, ktorými trpia teórie slabej nevyhnutnosti. Hoci aj dispozičné teórie majú svoje problémy a hlavne mysterióznosti, ktoré môžu viesť až do metafyziky dispozičných monád. Kľúčové slová: dispozičné vlastnosti, kategorické vlastnosti, modality, nevyhnutnosť, zákony prírody. (shrink)

Proposing a radical critique of the method and dualistic onto-epistemology of the catholic tradition, Steven Nemes draws from the thought of Michel Henry and Huldrych Zwingli in the pursuit of developing a post-catholic Protestant restatement of the Christian faith as a theology of the manifest.

With the arrival of biological evolutionism and behaviourism, the concept of human nature has become very unstable. The proposed method for detecting the features of human nature based on discomfort allows us to reconsider human nature and regard the species as ontological entities. The human species is represented by biosubstrates that instantiate essential universals. When society restricts fundamental behavioural expressions, individuals experience discomfort, which leads to rebellion. These expressions of discomfort lead us to recognise the basic universals of human nature. (...) Discomfort arises from the disruption of the symmetrical relationship between nature and nurture. These propositions are also supported in fiction, as seen in Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Men Like Gods, Abduction and Childhood’s End. (shrink)

As an exercise in the ‘theology of disclosure’, the present essay proposes a kind of phenomenological analysis of the act of reading the Bible as Scripture with the goal of bringing to light the theoretical commitments which it implicitly demands. This sort of analysis can prove helpful for the continuing disputes among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox insofar as it is relevant for one of the principal points of controversy between them: namely, the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church as theological (...) authorities. It proceeds by analyzing both the objective and subjective ‘poles’ of the act, and it illuminates the presence of the Church and her Tradition on both sides. The Church—i.e., the community of God’s people—is both that which is immediately encountered in the text, as well as the factor which enables scriptural reading in the first place. The article terminates with an application of the insights of the preceding discussion to the controversy about icons. (shrink)

Oliver Crisp proposes “chastened theism” as a theologically realist alternative to classical theism and theistic personalism. I critique his chastened theism and propose the alternative of Christian Pure Act theism, a “chastened” version of theological nonrealism.

The object of the present essay is to establish the possibility of “theology without anathemas.” First, an argument is given for the conclusion that infallible knowledge in matters of theology is not now possible. Both the Protestant doctrine of claritas scripturae and the Roman Catholic understanding of the Magisterium of the Church are rejected. Then, an alternative, “fallibilist” ecclesiology is proposed, according to which to belong to the Church is a matter of having been claimed by Christ as His own. (...) When combined with a universal doctrine of election and a highly objective and actualized doctrine of the Atonement, such a conception of the Church makes it possible to understand theology as a collaborative and cooperative effort on the part of all to understand better this Christ to whom they all always already belong. (shrink)

This essay argues that Jesus’s confession of ignorance about the day and hour of his return (Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32) is logically inconsistent with the Nicene-Constantinopolitan doctrine of his “consubstantiality” (homoousia) with God the Father. The essay first defines “consubstantiality”, then presents three formulations of the argument, and finally rebuts a number of possible responses: from the textual originality of the phrase “nor the Son”; from the reinterpretation of “knows” as “makes known”; from the ideas of partitive exegesis and communicatio (...) idiomatum; and from the question of the Holy Spirit’s knowledge of the things of God. (shrink)

The present essay is concerned with the question of whether analytic theology can be properly phenomenological. Both analytic theology and phenomenology are defined by reference to leading practitioners of both, and responses are given to objections to both approaches. The critique of analytic theology recently proposed by Martin Westerholm is considered, as well the objections to phenomenology brought forth by Tom Sparrow. The compatibility of analytic theology and phenomenology is argued on the basis of the definitions provided. Four brief arguments (...) are given for establishing why an analytic theologian might consider adopting a phenomenological method. The essay concludes with a demonstration of a properly phenomenological analytic-theological treatment of the question of the relationship between Scripture and ecclesial tradition in dialog with the canonical _sola scriptura_ of Kevin Vanhoozer and John Peckham. (shrink)

One can discern passages in the writings of the Scholastic doctor Thomas Aquinas and the contemporary French phenomenologist Michel Henry which can be interpreted as putting forth very similar ways for grasping the existence of God. These “ways to God” can be fruitfully compared from the point of view of their philosophical starting points as well as of their consequences for theological epistemology. The purpose of the present essay is to pursue this comparative work and to see what philosophical-theological fruit (...) it can yield. (shrink)

The problem of justice lies at the heart of the philosophy of jurisprudence. Then what justice does, the purpose for which a legal system exists, the central principle of jurisprudence, is to provide, for concrete cases, a basis for decisions as to what is just. In the lecture I will first of all deal with Kant's ideas about justice, as shown in his works. They can also be seen as examples of a concept of justice from a previous epoch. The (...) magnitude of these distances will become apparent when one bears in mind what Kant meant, and in what context, when he used this concept. At the same time Kant is the thinker who is most often mentioned in the contemporary discourse on justice. This is for two reasons. Firstly, Kant's position is exemplary for that position that holds that justice is the trancendental centre of any theory of jurisprudence; secondly, Kant is seen as the most significant thinker of that epoch, which is seen as the starting point for the present: the modern European Enlightenment. Finally I would like to contrast the concept of justice which has been developed in this way with the concept that seems fitting for the concrete situation of the Istanbul Congress of 2003. (shrink)

My article – as a first step in a comprehen- sive research program – attempts to verify the hypothesis according to which M. Eliade’s morphologi-cal and historical investigations of archaic religious- ness reveal the outlines of an archaic ontology. For this purpose, the article focuses upon Eliade’s conception of religious tradition as the carrier of the indivisible unity of sacred existence and religious experience. The ontological difference found in religious existence and revealed by religious experience is rooted in the essentially (...) hermeneutic nature of religious tradition. Therefore the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics proves very productive in the investigation of this problem. (shrink)