Linda Morrison brings the voices and issues of a little-known, complex social movement to the attention of sociologists, mental health professionals, and the general public. The members of this social movement work to gain voice for their own experience, to raise consciousness of injustice and inequality, to expose the darker side of psychiatry, and to promote alternatives for people in emotional distress. Talking Back to Psychiatry explores the movement's history, its complex membership, its strategies and goals, and the (...) varied response it has received from psychiatry, policy makers, and the public at large. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Recognize the Person: Learning from Narratives of Psychiatric TreatmentLinda J. MorrisonTo know what patients endure at the hands of illness and therefore to be of clinical help requires that doctors enter the worlds of their patients, if only imaginatively, and to see and interpret these worlds from the patient’s point of view(Charon, 2006, p. 9).These narratives of psychiatric hospitalization are rich and evocative. We are fortunate to have (...) twelve descriptions appearing side-by-side, each unique in its focus, outlook, detail and narrative tone. Together their interwoven contexts describe personal and work relationships, internal and external help-seeking, encounters in community and hospital settings, and experiences of the psychiatric (psychiatrized) self as supplicant, victim, recipient, participant, product, and active agent over time (Morrison, 2005).Through their collected narratives, the authors create a distinct counterpoint to the more familiar clinical narratives of psychiatric encounters. Ordinarily the professional narrative drives interpretation of a clinical experience, whether medical or psychiatric. The caregivers populating these narratives would probably tell different stories, and the hospital notes and treatment records yet another (Hinsby & Baker, 2004; VanDerNagel et al., 2009). The disjunction between professional and patient narrative is especially true for psychiatric hospitalizations, in which the inpatient’s active narrative becomes a part of the diagnostic and treatment process (Steslow, 2010).In this symposium, the patient’s narrative is a window for interpretive insights into personal experience of the process. Each is a situated retrospective, in which added dimensions of feeling, thought and interaction provide the reader a fuller and more complex awareness of the experience of psychiatric hospitalization. The narratives provide insights about choice and agency, control and harm, safety and strength, hope and frustration, resilience and recovery, empathy and humanity; they also reveal various ethical issues related to the experience of help-seeking and treatment.It is vital to consider what each person wrote: what choices they made in representing their experience; what aspects they focused on, and what they (we imagine) left out. The authors used their own voices to create their own representations. In each narrative, “the person” provides an important standpoint. Who is this person, what is his or her experience? Where is the person in the situation; in what way does he or she appear to those who provide treatment or care? How, if at all, is the treatment pertinent to the person’s concerns? Does it feel helpful or harmful? How does the person find a way to continue, to push through, with the help of (or in spite of) those we hope are providing care? This is the first sign of agency, of choice, of “dreaming.” [End Page 35]As V. Barnard writes in Dreaming: A Recovery Story, “to make a film, one has to dream it first.” All of the authors in this symposium took the risk and the opportunity to create their own stories: what to include, what to leave out, how to tell what they wanted to say. These choices gave them the power to dream: how it was, how it might have been; how it felt, good and bad; the chance to represent their own reality—to themselves, and to unknown others (Morrison, 2006).Dreaming, Choice and Agency“My psychiatric illness is only one part of me. I am a person with hopes, dreams, love, an artist and a fellow helper of my peers.” V. BarnardV.’s narrative describes the potential for positive action, of dreaming herself as a whole into existence. Her themes of choice and agency emphasize the importance of autonomy and the capacity for autonomous action. On the farm, V. was free to choose and take risks, to take on responsibilities, to be “treated with respect as a human being trying to get better rather than a criminal suffering from something that was optional.” From disconnection, she was able to find connection, on her own terms.The support of peers adds a valuable dimension. Being recognized as a peer, a person who shares similar psychiatric experiences and respects the challenge of everyday life, brings another level to supportive relationships. Negative judgments and stigma are reduced by mutual support and acknowledgement of common goals. Mental health... (shrink)

Special volume of "Thaumàzein - Rivista di Filosofia" dedicated to the theme of Socratic Eudaimonia and care for others. It is a multilingual volume comprising twenty papers divided into six sections with an introduction by Linda Napolitano. Edited by Santiago Chame, Donald Morrison, and Linda Napolitano. -/- Despite the appearances given by certain texts, the moral psychology of Socrates needs not imply selfishness. On the contrary, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato, Meno (...) 77-78; Protagoras 358; Gorgias 466-468; Euthydemus 278; Lysis 219; Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9, 4-5) suggests that the “egoist”’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others (i.e. family, friends or the whole city). Since the welfare of his family, friends and city is part of his own eudaimonìa, the “egoist” (phìlautos) has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others. -/- This multilingual issue explores the role that other peoples’ welfare plays in Socratic ethics. Special attention is paid to test-cases in which the principle that moral action is always good only for the agent seems to have no validity. I.e., under which circumstances is the self-sacrifice for the sake of others (such as the soldier’s self-sacrifice on the battlefield) good for the agent (as in Alcibiades I 115a-116d)? Essays deal with contradictions or tensions of this sort, and relate them to more general views on eudaimonìa held within Socratic literature. Comparison between different Socratic authors is used as a means to identify the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonìa if compared to other Greek theories of happiness, such as the Aristotelian theory of philautìa (NE IX, 1166a-1166b; 1168a-1169b). (shrink)

According to evolutionary theory, emotions are psychological mechanisms that have evolved to enhance fitness in specific situations by motivating appropriate (adaptive) behavior. Taking this perspective, a previous study examined the relationship between mood and preference for natural environments. It reported that participants’ anxiety level was associated with a preference for landscapes offering what Appleton called "refuge," while participants’ anger and cheerfulness were both associated with a preference for landscapes offering what Appleton called "prospect." We attempted to replicate these results and (...) to improve on the study by experimentally manipulating mood. Using a between-subjects design, 80 participants were instructed to self-induce one of four moods: anger, sadness, anxiety, or joy. After the mood induction, they viewed fourteen landscape photographs and recorded the seven most preferred. It was hypothesized that subjects experiencing anger or joy would prefer landscapes rich in "prospect" features, whereas participants experiencing sadness or anxiety would prefer landscapes rich in "refuge" features. In contrast to the previous study, the predictions were not supported: artificially induced moods may not provide ecological validity as a test of the "mood as motivator" model; alternatively, the first study may have reported an alpha error. To see whether the model has practical value, we recommend a study of landscape preference using participants with clinically significant levels of mood dysphoria. (shrink)

A satisfactory contextualist theory of knowledge must provide an account of how knowledge varies across contexts. There are three contextualist proposals for developing such an account. This paper demonstrates that all of them are unacceptable. Contextualists have therefore failed to provide a satisfactory theory of knowledge.

How do we perdure when we and everything around us are caught up in incessant change? But the course of this change does not seem to be haphazard and we may seek the modalities of its Logos in the transformations in which it occurs. The classic term "Metamorphosis" focuses upon the proportions between the transformed and the retained, the principles of sameness and otherness. Applied to life and its becoming, metamorphosis pinpoints the proportions between the vital and the aesthetic significance (...) of life. Where could this metaphysical in-between territory come better to light than in the Fine Arts? In this collection are investigated the various proportions between the vital significance of the constructivism of life and a specifically human contribution made by the creative imagination to the transformatory search for beauty and aesthetic values. Papers by: Lawrence Kimmel, Mark L. Brack, Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, William Roberts, Jadwiga Smith, Victor Gerald Rivas, Max Statkiewicz, Matti Itkonen, George R. Tibbetts, Linda Stratford, Jorella Andrews, Ingeborg M. Rocker, Stephen J. Goldberg, Leah Durner, Donnalee Dox, Catherine Schear, Samantha Henriette Krukowski, Gary Maciag, Kelly Dennis, Wanda Strukus, Magda Romanska, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Ellen Burns, Tessa Morrison, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gary Backhaus, Daniel M. Unger, Howard Pearce. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Socrates is a collection of essays providing a comprehensive guide to Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher. Because Socrates himself wrote nothing, our evidence comes from the writings of his friends (above all Plato), his enemies, and later writers. Socrates is thus a literary figure as well as a historical person. Both aspects of Socrates' legacy are covered in this volume. Socrates' character is full of paradox, and so are his philosophical views. These paradoxes have led (...) to deep differences in scholar's interpretation of Socrates and his thought. Mirroring this wide range of thought about Socrates, this volume's contributors are unusually diverse in their background and perspective. The essays in this volume were authored by classical philologists, philosophers, and historians from Germany, Francophone Canada, Britain, and the United States, and they represent a range of interpretive and philosophical traditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface Sometimes, even those of us who have organized our entire lives around the transformative possibilities of Black feminist thought can sit back in wonder at the expansiveness of this intergenerational transnational practice.Thisspecialissuetakesamomenttoimbibewhere we have been, where we are, and where we have yet to journey. The contributors to this special issue on, or more precisely, of Black feminist thought find Black feminist thinking in a wide range of (...) times, places, and forms. Each of the contributors invites us to bear witness in a distinct way to the pushes and pulls of critical engagement with Black feminist thought. Biomythic origin point “mitochondrial eve” brainstorms the archive and admonishes those of us looking back to “be a forest of your own / dreams.” Gladys Bentley sends unrequited texts to... Gladys Bentley. Everything is possible here, even what should never have happened. In If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday, Farah Jasmine Griffin, one of the most dedicated and prolific stewards of Black feminist thought as a liberatory practice, cites Rita Dove’s poem “Canary” to evoke the protective strategies Black women employ to hold something (ourselves, each other) sacred in an unfree world.1 The lineage we participate in through our Black 1. Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), 155–56. “Be a Mystery”: (The Infinity of) Black Feminist Thought 8Preface feminist intellectual labor is sacred to us. For generations, even before the name “Black Feminist,” it has existed as a form of love, communion, protest, and prophecy, often far from the spotlight. Nurtured by the warmth of imagination, practices became praxis. Griffin and others have ensured a tradition wherein, to invoke Griffin’s paraphrase of Toni Morrison in her tribute to Nellie McKay, “the mothers may soar and the daughters may know their names.”2 We are some of the daughters. But we are living in times that neither we nor our mothers would hardly recognize. Abolitionist queer Black feminists are topping the New York Times bestseller lists. Our scholars and experts speak on the nightly news. Some of what were once our most marginalized proposals have become policies, funding keywords, and even memes. The Movement for Black Lives, one of the largest and most visible social movements of our time, or any time, explicitly connects its vision to the foundational Combahee River Collective statement. We do this work now in the light of recognition. Masses of people think they know what Black feminism is, and yet, this is not the world that we dreamed. We, the current generation of practicing Black feminist thinkers, are faced with the consequences of Black feminist practice feeling like less of a mystery. We celebrate the legacy our foremothers have made possible, and we must also think creatively, lovingly, and sometimes even cryptically about what this moment can and must mother—or bring into being. It has to bring into being something we cannot describe from here, something we have not yet known. It is exhilaratingly beautiful to look upon what’s been made possible, but we know there is so much more than recognition. Undaunted by a world still hellbent on not caring for or loving us, even as it consumes our insights, theories, and modes of organizing, we create worlds filled with an abundance of joy, affirmation, and ingenuity. It is from this robust, ancestral practice of world-making that this special issue emerges. The pieces found here provide insight into one of the most dynamic aspects of Black feminist thought: its generative power. The range of topics included in this special issue encapsulates the breadth of this interdisciplinary, transnational, multimodal, and 2. Farah Jasmine Griffin, “That the Mothers May Soar and the Daughters May Know Their Names: A Retrospective of Black Feminist Literary Criticism,” Signs 32, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 483–507. Preface 9 intergenerational practice. Given the seemingly infinite nodes and entry points of Black feminist thought, it is befitting that this issue coheres because of an unboundedness and porousness among the pieces. The art essays, articles, field reviews, and conversations converse, dance, and harmonize with... (shrink)

In this paper we investigate how different discourses on frugal innovation are articulated, and how the dynamics between these different discourses have led to a certain dominant understanding of frugal innovation today. We analyse the dynamic interactions between three discourses on frugal innovation: innovations for the poor, grassroots innovations by the poor, and more recently co-creating frugal innovations with the poor. We argue that this latter discourse is articulated as a hegemonic project as it is designed to accommodate demands from (...) both business and poor communities. We draw on Laclau and Mouffe’s concepts of ‘chain of difference’, ‘empty signifier’ and ‘floating signifier’ to explain the advent of the hegemonic discourse on co-creating innovations with the poor. We show how a floating signifier with radical potential, frugal innovation, has been hijacked and co-opted in a hegemonic project that has leveraged powerful ambiguous signifiers, with co-creation acting as an empty signifier. To clarify what is problematic in this hegemonic intervention, we expose how contemporary frugal innovation discourse contributes to a project of governing and exploiting rather than helping the poor, in ways that benefit formal economic actors while further worsening global inequalities. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Value Problem Sosa's Solution Epistemically Valuable False Beliefs Organic Unities Gettier.

In this paper I present an argument that there can be no more than one God in a way which allows me to give the doctrine ofthe Trinity logical priority over the attributes traditionally used in arguments for God’s unicity. The argument that there is at most one God makes no assumptions about the particular attributes included in divinity. It uses only the Identity of Indiscemibles and a Principle of Plenitude. I then offer a theory on the relationship between individuals (...) and kinds which allows me to offer an interpretation of the Trinity. (shrink)

This essay presents a moral argument for the rationality of theistic belief. If all I have to go on morally are my own moral intuitions and reasoning and those of others, I am rationally led to skepticism, both about the possibility of moral knowledge and about my moral effectiveness. This skepticism is extensive, amounting to moral despair. But such despair cannot be rational. It follows that the assumption of the argument must be false and I must be able to rely (...) on more than my own human powers and those of others in attempting to live a moral life. The Christian God has such a function. Hence, if it is rational to attempt a moral life, it is rational to believe in the Christian God. (shrink)

It may appear that there are grounds for an alliance between opponents of enhancement and disability advocates. People from both camps condemn parents who aspire to improve the physical and psychological traits their children would otherwise be born with, a condemnation often expressed as an accusation of eugenics. Despite these superficial appearances, the author will argue that disability advocates have nothing to applaud in Michael Sandel’s critique of enhancement, which is based on false and sometimes pernicious claims about the value (...) of ‘normal’ human beings. However, they will also argue that disability advocates fail to provide convincing reasons for condemning parental decisions to avoid or eliminate certain traits their children would otherwise be born with. Contrary to what disability advocates and opponents of enhancement suggest, it is often a violation rather than an instantiation of parental virtue to abandon judgements about whether one’s children’s biological givens should be changed. (shrink)

One of the hallmarks of Kantian philosophy, especially in connection with its characterization of scientific knowledge, is the importance of unity, a theme that is also the driving force behind a good deal of contemporary high energy physics. There are a variety of ways that unity figures in modern science—there is unity of method where the same kinds of mathematical techniques are used in different sciences, like physics and biology; the search for unified theories like the unification of electromagnetism and (...) optics by Maxwell; and, more recently, the project of grand unification or the quest for a theory of everything which involves a reduction of the four fundamental forces under the umbrella of a single theory. In this latter case it is thought that when energies are high enough, the forces , while very different in strength, range and the types of particles on which they act, become one and the same force. The fact that these interactions are known to have many underlying mathematical features in common suggests that they can all be described by a unified field theory. Such a theory describes elementary particles in terms of force fields which further unifies all the interactions by treating particles and interactions in a technically and conceptually similar way. It is this theoretical framework that allows for the prediction that measurements made at a certain energy level will supposedly indicate that there is only one type of force. In other words, not only is there an ontological reduction of the forces themselves but the mathematical framework used to describe the fields associated with these forces facilitates their description in a unified theory. Specific types of symmetries serve an important function in establishing these kinds of unity, not only in the construction of quantum field theories but also in the classification of particles; classifications that can lead to new predictions and new ways of understanding properties like quantum numbers. Hence, in order to address issues about unification and reduction in contemporary physics we must also address the way that symmetries facilitate these processes. (shrink)

We begin by treating the antinaturalism of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, and follow that by considering the recent project of “naturalizing phenomenology.” As a transitional figure, we treat Hans Jonas and the weakly emergent status he allows organismic life. In a section on “affirmative naturalism,” we treat Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, and Gilles Deleuze, emphasizing their relation to Spinoza's ethics of joy. We conclude by considering the antinaturalism of continental philosophy positions in critical race theory (Linda Alcoff), gender theory (Judith (...) Butler), and disability studies (Shelley Tremain). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Serene Khader’s effort to develop a decolonized approach to transnational feminism takes a helpfully nonideal approach. Much of decolonial theory has criticized universalism in order to espouse pluralism. Khader attempts to develop a form of minimalist universalism compatible with a significant dose of pluralism in regard to how we understand liberation from gender-based forms of oppression, and she effectively shows how the nonideal, meliorative approach can do this. I address three issues here: (1) the serious challenge her universalist account (...) poses to critical theory and some other trends in continental philosophy; (2) the persuasive analysis of, approach to, and critique that she makes of ‘gender role eliminativism’ and (3) the epistemic and dialogic questions left remaining in her defense of feminist universalism, in relation to who can theoretically formulate the universal. (shrink)

This book examines the works of major artists between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, as important barometers of individual and collective values toward non-human life. Once viewed as merely representational, these works can also be read as tangential or morally instrumental by way of formal analysis and critical theories. Chapter Two demonstrates the discrimination toward large and small felines in Genesis and The Book of Revelation. Chapter Three explores the cruel capture of free roaming animals and how artists depicted their (...) furs, feathers and shells in costume as symbols of virtue and vice. Chapter Four identifies speciest beliefs between donkeys and horses. Chapter Five explores the altered Dutch kitchen spaces and disguised food animals in various culinary constructs in still life painting. Chapter Six explores the animal substances embedded in pigments. Chapter Seven examines animals in absentia-in the crafting of brushes. The book concludes with the fish paintings of William Merritt Chase whose glazing techniques demonstrate an artistic approach that honors fishes as sentient beings. (shrink)

The influence which the Pythagorean society and its leading doctrines exercised upon Athenian intellectual and political developments in the late fifth century leads us to seek in Pythagoras a figure of greater stature and more clear-cut features than modern scholarship is prepared to allow. To us he is a great name but little more, the large body of detailed information about his life which is available in later writers being dismissed as fabulous. This scepticism was reasonable enough when the reader (...) was faced with the garbled hotchpotch of an Iamblichus or a Porphyry. But since the task has been put in hand of determining what portions of this tradition can safely be attributed to the various authorities who concerned themselves with the Pythagorean story in the fourth century, and of considering the respective historical value of these authorities, the scepticism of, for example, Burnet's account becomes unjustified. It is now possible to present a fairly detailed account of Pythagoras' activity, which has at least as much claim to credence as a great deal of what we now readily accept as ancient history, and is furthermore consistent with the general picture of the man that emerges from a careful scrutiny of classical sources. Not only for its own sake, but in the context of the increasingly fruitful investigation of fifth-century Athenian movements, I feel that it may be useful to put together such an account of Pythagoras. It will certainly be regarded by some as mere fiction, but may nevertheless provide others with a convenient summary of what the fifth- and fourth-century writers thought and believed about a man and a movement that had profound influence upon their times. I hope at the same time to suggest some links between what Pythagoras thought and did and the main tradition of Greek social behaviour. If Pythagoras was, as I believe, not so much an innovator as a reformer and developer of some of the central institutions of Greek life, the possibility will be opened of regarding various phenomena in mainland Greece which we have been asked to call Pythagorean, e.g. the Socratic phrontisterion as it appears in the Clouds, not as deriving from Pythagoras but as a parallel growth to the Pythagorean synedria and nourished by the same root. (shrink)

I point out a sign mistake in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating the GHZ's claim that the premisses of the EPR argument are inconsistent for systems of more than two particles in entangled quantum states.

Residents are important participants and stakeholders in destination development. Identifying factors that assist in predicting resident pro-environmental behavior (PEB) may contribute to enhanced sustainability. Based on a traditional Chinese culture, this research constructed a model of resident PEB by introducing pro-environmental destination image (PEDI) and Confucianism as the independent and moderating variables, respectively. The structural equation modeling for 402 residents indicated the model had a satisfactory level of predictive power for PEB. The results showed that: (1) PEDI positively affected residents’ (...) environmental identity, pro-environmental attitudes, and PEB; (2) environmental identity and pro-environmental attitudes completely mediated the impact of PEDI on residents’ PEB; and (3) Confucian culture had a positive U-shaped moderating effect in the relationships among these four variables. Overall, these findings advance the understanding of the formation of PEB in Confucian culture and provide theoretical and practical implications for fostering residents’ PEB. (shrink)

The discipline of parallelization in the manifold of all possible measurement results is shown to be responsible for the existence of all quantum correlations, with the upper bound on their strength stemming from the maximum of possible torsion within all norm-composing parallelizable manifolds. A profound interplay is thus uncovered between the existence and strength of quantum correlations and the parallelizability of the spheres S^0, S^1, S^3, and S^7 necessitated by the four real division algebras. In particular, parallelization within a unit (...) 3-sphere is shown to be responsible for the existence of EPR and Hardy type correlations, whereas that within a unit 7-sphere is shown to be responsible for the existence of all GHZ type correlations. Moreover, parallelizability in general is shown to be equivalent to the completeness criterion of EPR, in addition to necessitating the locality condition of Bell. It is therefore shown to predetermine both the local outcomes as well as the quantum correlations among the remote outcomes, dictated by the infinite factorizability of points within the spheres S^3 and S^7. The twin illusions of quantum entanglement and non-locality are thus shown to stem from the topologically incomplete accountings of the measurement results. (shrink)

The medical ethicist is a fairly recent addition to the clinical setting. The following four potential roles of the clinical ethicist are identified and discussed: consultant in difficult cases, educator of health care providers, counselor for health care providers and finally patient advocate to protect the interests of patients. While the various roles may sometimes overlap, the roles of educator and counselor are viewed as being more congruent with the education and training of medical ethicists than are the roles of (...) consultant and patient advocate. (shrink)

Protagoras, of all the ancient philosophers, has perhaps attracted the most interest in modern times. His saying ‘Man is the measure of all things’ caused Schiller to adopt him as the patron of the Oxford pragmatists, and has generally earned him the title of the first humanist. Yet the exact delineation of his philosophcal position remains a baffling task. Neumann, writing on Die Problematik des ‘Homo-mensura’ Satzes in 1938,2 concludes that no certainty whatever can be reached on the meaning of (...) the dictum, since ‘man’, ‘measure’, and ‘things’ are all ambiguous, nor can we tell which of the three is the predicate. The time is past when it was believed that a man's philosophy could be understood apart from the events of his life and the circumstances of his age: yet in the case of Protagoras the historical method of approach has hardly been attempted, although the impact of environment was perhaps more decisive in the formation of philosophical concepts in the Greek world than anywhere else. The reality about which the Greek philosopher spoke had three aspects: it was either the one universe of physics, or the political unity, or God. For example, the book of Heracleitus Περ φσεως was divided into three chapters or logoi, About the Whole, a political, and a theological. Neither physics nor theology supplies from its own subject-matter the form in which this reality was described. (shrink)

Spinoza claims that a person's body can be numerically identical over time, despite changes in its size, shape, and speed. This chapter argues that he would reject the Indiscernibility of Identicals. The Indiscernibility of Identicals is often taken to have profound implications for one's view of change. Spinoza seems to deny the existence of times, because he similarly classifies them as “beings of reason”. As Spinoza understands instantiation, whenever a property is instantiated by an object, it metaphysically depends on that (...) object. As Spinoza understands instantiation, the existence of a property causally depends on whatever instantiates it. Spinoza says that the mind, and therefore the body, can “undergo great changes, and pass to a greater, to a lesser perfection”. Spinoza is committed to saying that all bodies are capable of change, even the shortest‐lived. Spinoza can deny that the non‐identity of Downstairs Peter and Upstairs Peter is due to their conflicting properties. (shrink)

In his epistles, St. Paul sounded a universalism that has recently been taken up by secular philosophers who do not share his belief in Christ, but who regard his project as centrally important for contemporary political life. The Pauline project—as they see it—is the universality of truth, the conviction that what is true is true for everyone, and that the truth should be known by everyone. In this volume, eminent New Testament scholars, historians, and philosophers debate whether Paul's promise can (...) be fulfilled. Is the proper work of reading Paul to reconstruct what he said to his audiences? Is it crucial to retrieve the sense of history from the text? What are the philosophical undercurrents of Paul's message? This scholarly dialogue ushers in a new generation of Pauline studies. (shrink)

It is evident that disunity is a reality wherever we look in the world today. Even within the Body of Christ there is a lack of unity that is appalling. The universal church needs to develop a greater urgency about it and at the same time, do more about it than most are doing. If the universal church comes to a realization that genuine Christian unity is already ‘an established reality and can progressively be realized and brought into the actualities (...) of life’, perhaps then the universal church would strive harder to create and maintain a sustainable Christian unity making it a ‘lived reality’. As a Reformed family, we believe in the creative and redemptive activity of God, inaugurated in Jesus Christ but not yet completed. The Kingdom of God is a present reality, which will be expressed anew in all its fullness. This is our Christian hope, which is fundamental to our Christian faith and Christian faith is expectant faith. The universal Church therefore must offer the image of a people who are mature in faith and capable of finding a meeting-point beyond denominational barriers and not the image of a people divided and separated because of ecclesiastical differences. It is hoped that the Global Christian Forum will continue to reflect that image. (shrink)