Este artigo refere-se ao conhecido episódio da famosa novela "Gargantua", de Rabelais, e a sua intenção é mostrar que naquelas singulares sociedade e arquitectura se apresentam ou prefigu­ram, em larga medida, as questões que mais tarde foram exploradas no pensamento utópico oci­dental sobre o tema de "Antiutopia". Em particular, há a intenção de mostrar as relações entre as "Sociedades Ideais" e as "Arquitecturas Ideais"... Como se mutuamente se implicassem. – E, claro, os hilariantes equívocos relacionados com tal...

O campo interdisciplinar dos novos estudos sociais das infâncias parte de uma ruptura epistemológica com as abordagens clássicas das ciências que adotam visões biologizantes, essencialistas e universais da criança e encontra na etnografia uma possibilidade de conceituação de criança enquanto sujeito ativo e de infância enquanto categoria social geracional. O reconhecimento desses conceitos de criança e de infância pela etnografia na pesquisa com crianças implica voltar-se para a criança como o outro, o diferente, o estrangeiro. A proposta de ruptura teórico-conceitual (...) na investigação das infâncias exige a implementação de metodologias que focalizem as experiências, os pontos de vista e as vozes das crianças, compreendendo-as enquanto processo, em outras palavras, constante construção. Portanto, para essa perspectiva, a criança não é o objeto do estudo, mas é sujeito que interage com o pesquisador na construção dos sentidos e significados da pesquisa. O texto está organizado em três partes que abordam os aspectos epistemológicos, teórico-conceituais e metodológicos do debate proposto. Ao final, procura-se uma articulação entre os diferentes aspectos da discussão, propondo uma reflexão sobre a ética e a alteridade, reconhecendo que a diferença atravessa as relações humanas e, portanto, é o diferente, o incomum, o incompreensível, o oposto, o desigual, o inalcançável que marca e define a pesquisa com criança. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love, a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbor, has often been condemned by critics. Here, Ferreira seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. He shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics, including impartiality, duty, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Ferreira also argues that Works of Love bears on issues peculiar to a religious ethic, (...) such as the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation. (shrink)

This book examines the significantly similar, yet finally different, thinking of two nineteenth-century existentialist thinkers, Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Its focus is on the different ways each envisioned a joyful acceptance of life - a concern they shared. Each strove to give a place to this acceptance in his picture of life, but their conceptions of it are far apart.

Most studies investigating the relationship between cultural constructs and ethical perception have focused on individual- and societal-level values without much attention to other type of cultural constructs such as social beliefs. In addition, we need to better understand how social beliefs are linked to ethical perception and the level of analysis at which social beliefs may best predict ethical perceptions. This research contributes to the cross-cultural ethical perception literature by examining the relationship of individual-level social cynicism belief, one of five (...) universally endorsed social beliefs, together with individual social dominance orientation and the perception of unethical behavior. By means of two studies, we examine these relationships across societies that significantly differ on societal-level social cynicism belief. Using 371 business students from Russia and the U.S. in Study 1 and 268 professionals from Portugal and the U.S. in Study 2, we found that individual-level social cynicism belief was positively associated with social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, in turn, mediated the relationship between individual social cynicism belief and the perception of unethical behavior. Although we found significant societal-level differences in social cynicism belief in both studies, the relationships between individual-level social cynicism belief, social dominance orientation, and the perception of unethical behavior were structurally equivalent across societies in both studies, suggesting that societal-level differences did not significantly affect these relationships. Implications for cross-cultural business ethics research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Natural History: Religion and "Explanation" M. JAMIE FERREIRA HUME'S BOLDLYSIMPLESTATEMENTof the genesis of religion--that "the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst for revenge, the appetite for food and other necessaries" led humankind to see "the first obscure traces of divinity"--is supported by appeals to what he considers plain common sense.' For example, given that at "the first origin (...) of society" (e4) our ancestors were obviously "ignorant and barbarous" (23), anxiously helpless in the face of threatening natural events--hence, obviously with neither the leisure nor the impulse nor the aptitude for serious reflection--it was obviously passionate fears and hopes, not reason, which motivated their beliefs. Given that the mind obviously "rises from inferior to superior," and that humankind obviouslyhasn't "inhabited palaces before huts and cottages or studied geometry before agriculture" (~4), polytheism obviously antedated monotheism. In the course of detailing his commonsensical account of the origin and development of religion, Hume highlights a wide variety of natural tendencies, principles, and propensities which are operative. Keith Yandell offers a recent reading of one such propensity at work in the origin of religion--namely, what Hume calls the "propensity of human nature, which leads into a system, that gives them some satisfaction" (29)--and Yandell explicitly takes it to be a propensity to an "explanatory" system.2 I want to argue in what follows that any reading of Hume's account of religion which highlights an explanatory motivation can be significantly misleading insofar as it obscures the way in which Hume's account differs markedly from other classical genetic accounts which emphasize explanation. ' The Natural History ofReligion, ed. H. E. Root (Stanford, CA, 1956), 28. Further parenthetical page references in the text will be to this work. His later formulation--"The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events" (65)--recalls Philo's pithy version, namely, "terror is the primary principle of religion" (Dialoguesconcerning Natural Religion, XII). ~Hume's "Inexplicable Mystery": His Views on Religion (Philadelphia, 199o), 9. Hereafter HIM. [5931 594 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 In his account of the "propensity of human nature, which leads into a system, that gives them some satisfaction," Yandell admits that "no explanation is given of exactly what sort of satisfaction is in question," yet he goes on without a pause to speak of how "people accept different and various explanatory systems"; referring to a natural "propensity to understand," he concludes that "for Hume, we need not accept a religious system of explanation, but most of us in fact do so."s I suggest that Yandell's shift from "system" to "explanatory system," which is unheralded, is of crucial significance because the emphasis on explanation tends to call to a reader's mind just the sort of appeal which Hume decisively rejects. I shall argue that Hume draws our attention to and decisively excludes from his account a concept of explanation which actually does play an important role in other parallel accounts--namely, a concept which focuses on the integrity of a broad picture and an ultimate accounting; Hume points to such a concept in his references to the "frame of the universe," "final causes," and the "first rise of the visible system." Such a role might seem to elaborate Hume's appeal to common sense--after all, isn't the natural response to "unknown causes" to try to understand them, and isn't the attempt to understand them the same as looking for an "ultimate" explanation, however crude it might be at the outset? Although this might seem commonsensical to others (as we shall see), I want to argue that what Hume sees at work in the origin of religion is not a search for such an explanation, even a crude one. Rather, on Hume's view the only curiosity at work is a curiosity about how to cope: the propensity to a system is the propensity to the kind of determinacy which is expedient for control, and the only satisfaction the system provides is one in terms of a coping which is independent of truth-seeking... (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's view about the concept of love. It suggests that Kierkegaard's ideas about love can be found in Works of Love, which contains a series of deliberations on the Judeo-Christian commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself. The chapter also discusses episodes of the story of human love in Kierkegaard's earlier works, his Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and Philosophical Fragments. It also argues that Kierkegaard's philosophical, literary, and theological explorations reveal that love is filled with paradox.

Levinas himself raises the question: "why would I feel responsible in the presence of the Face" since "we are separate ontological beings?" This questions the character of our response to the other--both in terms of agency and motivation. While the general reception of Levinas's thought has focused on his description of us as "hostage"--that is, on the moment of assignation (or assignment) by the other--I suggest that Levinas himself also, though not as directly, addresses (as he needs to) the correlative (...) moment, the moment of response. My essay reconstructs Levinas's implicit understanding of the character of our initiative in the light of his concept of Desire. I explore the different dimensions of Desire as appetite and generosity, and I argue that the "transition to moral consciousness" that Levinas wants to "justify" is one from complacent happiness to "non-complacent happiness" and can be illuminated by the notion of "passion seeking its downfall.". (shrink)

The first comprehensive introduction to cover the entire span of Kierkegaard’s authorship. Explores how the two strands of his writing—religious discourses and pseudonymous literary creations—influenced each other Accompanies the reader chronologically through all the philosopher’s major works, and integrates his writing into his biography Employs a unique “how to” approach to help the reader discover individual texts on their own and to help them closely examine Kierkegaard’s language Presents the literary strategies employed in Kierkegaard’s work to give the reader insight (...) into subtext. (shrink)

Apresentam-se os resultados clínicos principais de uma primeira investigação efectuada a familiares de doentes sob tratamento paliativo no domicílio da área de Lisboa, com o instrumento de medida da satisfação SERVQUAL Modificado. Dos 58 familiares/doentes que responderam ao questionário apenas uma minona estava insatisfeita (uma classe de 5 indivíduos mostra-se francamente insatisfeita), uma classe de 15 estava moderadamente satisfeita, havendo 38 individuos fortemente satisfeitos com a qualidade e prontidäo dos serviços prestados. Porém urna percentagem elevada de doentes, segundo a opinião (...) retrospectiva dos cuidadores, faleceu com sintomatologia agravada, nomeadamente dores (60%), obstipação (67%) e depressão/ansiedade (43%). Discute-se a consistência e validade do questionáno SERVQUAL Modificado, contextualizam-se os resultados no que é o standard da prática da MCP e integram-se na promoção da dignidade humana no fim da vida. We present the main clinical findings of research on palliative home care, carried out among relatives of patients in the Lisbon area. An adapted version of SERVQUAL was used. Of a total of 58 carers surveyed only a small number (5) was unsatisfied 15 were only moderately satisfied. 38 family carers were strongly satisfied with the services. Yet, a high percentage of patients, as viewed in retrospect by their relatives died with some aggravated symptoms: 60% with more pain, 67% constipation, and 43% anxiety/depression. We discuss the consistency and validity of this adapted SERVQUAL tool and the main results are contextualized beanng in mind the standard practice of palliative medicine and the pursuit of human dignity in death. (shrink)

Apresentamos um resumo do desenvolvimento e do contexto institucional do Projecto Humanização dos Cuidados Paliativos em Contexto Domiciliário, aprovado e financiado pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Utilizam-se largamente os próprios documentos que o justificaram e os relatórios oficiais para dar uma imagem vivida, realista e técnica das dificuldades da profissionalização e reforma dos Cuidados Paliativos, mesmo quando integrada em acções de formação num serviço de um Centro de Tratamento Compreensivo do Cancro. We put forward a synopsis of the development and institutional (...) context of the Project Humanização dos Cuidados Paliativos em Contexto Domiciliário, approved and financed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The groundwork documents are widely used as well as official reports so as to convey a lively, realistic and technical image arising from professionalizing and reforming Palliative Medicine even when it is based on in-service training programmes in an Comprehensive Cancer Center. (shrink)

Much has been made of the Kierkegaardian flavour of Wittgenstein's thought on religion, both with respect to its explicit allusions to Kierkegaard and its implicit appeals. Even when significant disparities between the two are noted, there remains an important core of de facto methodological agreement between them, addressing the limits of theory and the dispelling of illusion. The categories of ‘nonsense’ and ‘paradox’ are central to Wittgenstein's therapeutic enterprise, while the categories of ‘paradox’ and the ‘absurd’ are central to much (...) of Kierkegaard's attempt to dispel religious illusion. Writing of how the ‘urge to thrust against the limits of language’ yields ‘nonsense’, Wittgenstein explicitly appealed to Kierkegaard: ‘Kierkegaard, too, recognized this thrust and even described it in much the same way ’. 1 I want to consider whether Kierkegaard's category of paradox of the absurd is assimilable to Wittgenstein's view of nonsense and paradox. I shall argue that a consideration of Wittgenstein's view of paradox can highlight contrasting strands in Kierkegaard's writings on religious faith, strands which take paradox more or less strictly – in particular, it can clarify several different opinions concerning the status of religious claims. My exploration will bring to the fore some implications of the attempt to make room, in the religious employment of language, for a ‘higher understanding’ of truths which we are said to be able to grasp but cannot express. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's "Works of Love" provocatively presses for a reconsideration of impartiality, partiality, and equality. Past readings of this text have typically (1) criticized its focus on the abstract category of "human being," ignoring its attention to distinctiveness and difference; (2) defended it from the charge of abstraction by accenting its treatment of distinctiveness and difference, playing down its assumptions about the "essentially" human; (3) acknowledged its emphases on both essence and difference, arguing that they are incompatible and irreconcilable; or (4) (...) acknowledged both emphases, assuming they are compatible without exploring or accounting for the apparent incompatibility. As a means of resolving this seeming inconsistency, I will focus on Kierkegaard's recommendation of moral blindness and its implications for moral vision, and I will argue that "Works of Love" contains resources for an understanding of impartiality that allows moral attention to concrete difference. (shrink)

Most studies investigating the relationship between cultural constructs and ethical perception have focused on individual- and societal-level values without much attention to other type of cultural constructs such as social beliefs. In addition, we need to better understand how social beliefs are linked to ethical perception and the level of analysis at which social beliefs may best predict ethical perceptions. This research contributes to the cross-cultural ethical perception literature by examining the relationship of individual-level social cynicism belief, one of five (...) universally endorsed social beliefs, together with individual social dominance orientation and the perception of unethical behavior. By means of two studies, we examine these relationships across societies that significantly differ on societal-level social cynicism belief. Using 371 business students from Russia and the U.S. in Study 1 and 268 professionals from Portugal and the U.S. in Study 2, we found that individual-level social cynicism belief was positively associated with social dominance orientation. Social dominance orientation, in turn, mediated the relationship between individual social cynicism belief and the perception of unethical behavior. Although we found significant societal-level differences in social cynicism belief in both studies, the relationships between individual-level social cynicism belief, social dominance orientation, and the perception of unethical behavior were structurally equivalent across societies in both studies, suggesting that societal-level differences did not significantly affect these relationships. Implications for cross-cultural business ethics research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Book Reviewed in this article: Israel's Prophetic Tradition: Essays in honour of Peter R. Ackroyd. Edited by Richard Coggins, Anthony Phillips and Michael Knibb, Pp.xxi, 272. Cambridge University Press, 1982, £21.00. Essays on John. By C.K. Barrett. Pp.viii, 167, London, SPCK, 1982, £10.50. The Letter to the Colossians. By Eduard Schweizer, translated by Andrew Chester. Pp.319, London, SPCK, 1982, £12.50. Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church. By Francis Schüssler Fiorenza. Pp.xix, 326, New York Crossroad, 1984, $22.50. The Darkness of God: (...) Theology after Hiroshima. By Jim Garrison. Pp.x, 238, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.95. Discerning the Mystery, An Essay on the Nature of neology. By Andrew Louth. Pp.xiv, 150, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983, £12.50. The Tao and the Daimon: Segments of a Religious Inquiry. By Robert C. Neville. Pp.xv, 281, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1982, $34.50 ), $11.95. Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World. By James Clifford. Pp.xi, 270, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982, £21.50. Transcendence and the Sacred. Edited by A.M. Olson and L.S. Rouner. Pp.xv, 230, University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, £10.75. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity. By Mircea Eliade. Translated by William R. Trask. Pp.xi, 565, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982, £17.50. Ordeal by Labyrinth: Conversations with Claude‐Henri Racquet. By Mircea Eliade. Translated by Derek Coltman. Pp.ix, 225, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982, £12.55. Religious Philosophy of Prince‐Bishop Njegosh of Montenegro. By Zika Rad. Prvulovich. Pp.xviii, 273, Birmingham, The Author, 1984, £12.50, £10.50. The Home of Meaning: The Hermeneutics of the Subject of Paul Ricoeur. By John W. Van Dengel. Pp.xxi, 333, Washington, D.C., University Press of America, 1982, $24.50, $13.25. Life Forms and Meaning Stucture. By Alfred Schutz, translated, introduced and annotated by Helmut Wagner. Pp.vi, 217, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, £11.95. The Shaping of Man: Philosophical Aspects of Sociobiology. By Roger Trigg. Pp.xx, 186. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, £12.50, £5.95. Marx and Marxisms: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series, 14. Edited by G.H.R. Parkinson. Pp.vi, 268, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £9.95. Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism. By Allen E. Buchanan. Pp.xiv, 206, London, Methuen, 1982, £12.95. Israel Satanter: Text, Structure, Idea. By Hillel Goldberg. Pp.xvii, 358, New York, Ktav, 1981, $17.50. Freud on Femininity and Faith. By Judith Van Herik. Pp.xiii, 216, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982, £17.50. Women, Reason and Nature. By Carol McMillan. Pp.x, 165, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, £12.50. Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory. By David Heyd. Pp.vii, 191, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £14.00. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Finborg. Pp.xi, 1035, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £40.00. St Thomas Aquinas. By Ralph McInerny. Pp.197, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1982, £4.50. Yves de Vallone: The Making of an Esprit‐Fort. By James O'Higgins, S.J. Pp.viii, 248, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, $35.00. Religion and National Identity. Edited by Stuart Mews. Pp.xvi, 618, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, £19.50. Mortmain Legislation and the English Church, 1279–1500. By Sandra Raban. Pp.xii, 215,, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £25.00. John XXIII, Pope of the Council. By Peter Hebblethwaite. Pp.viii, 550, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1984, £14.95.iCompiled by J.F. Púglisi and S.J. Voicu. Pp.260, Rome, Centro Pro Unione, 1984, $20.00. Ireland: A Bibliography of Material held at St Deiniol's Library. Compiled by Helen C. Price. Pp.iv, 136, Hawarden, St Deiniol's, 1984, £2.50. The Later Poems, 1972–1982. By R.S. Thomas. Pp.224, London, Macmillan, 1984, £4.95. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the 'leap' can illuminate Newman 's use of the metaphor of a 'polygon inscribed (...) in a circle', as well as the ways in which Newman 's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition. (shrink)

Charting the development of the British tradition of naturalism from the 17th to the 19th century, this book provides fascinating insight into a wide range of thinkers, both Catholic and Protestant, who explored the themes of proof, practice, and the role of common sense. Reappraising what these thinkers can teach us about the relations between belief, action, and skepticism, Ferreira contributes to the philosophical study of naturalist replies to skepticism, as well as to a deeper appreciation of this particular (...) segment of British intellectual history. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Practice in Christianity Discourses (1850, 1851) The “Attack” further reading.

David Hume’s critique of religion reveals what seems to be a vacillation in his commitment to an argument-based paradigm of legitimate believing. On the one hand, Hume assumes such a traditional model of rational justification of beliefs in order to point to the weakness of some classical arguments for religious belief, to chastise the believer for extrapolating to a conclusion which outstrips its evidential warrant. On the other hand, Hume, ‘mitigated’ or naturalist skeptic that he is, at other times rejects (...) an argumentbased paradigm of certainty and truth, and so sees as irrelevant the traditional or ‘regular’ model of rational justification; he places a premium on instinctive belief, as both unavoidable and more reliable than reasoning. On this view, a forceful critique of religion would have to fault it, not for failing to meet criteria of rational argument, but for failing to be the right sort of instinct. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Sickness unto Death Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays further reading.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Merold WestphalM. Jamie FerreiraMerold Westphal. Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript.” West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 261. Cloth, $32.95. Paper, $16.95.The Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy describes itself as attempting to provide insight into a philosopher by means of a focus on a single (...) major text. Such a focus is unusual for a series in the history of philosophy, and Westphal’s [End Page 144] accomplishment in this study is a fine example of how fruitfully this can be done. Commentary on over six hundred pages of Kierkegaard’s Postscript is presented in ten manageable chapters, which follow the order of the Postscript and deal with segments of it ranging from as few as twelve pages to as many as one hundred and seventy-five pages. The result is a commentary which can wonderfully guide students through the Postscript in its entirety, or through the assignment of individual chapters to accompany discrete reading selections. Westphal’s discussions are informed by an unusually wide-ranging knowledge of the history of philosophy—he considers the text not only in relation to Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, as others commentators have, but also brings to this work his clear strengths in phenomenological, existential, and postmodern thought (so we get useful comparisons with Gadamer, Derrida, Levinas, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, among others). Lying behind Westphal’s entire approach to the book is his desire to address the two most common major criticisms of Kierkegaard’s thought, namely, that it is individualist and irrationalist. Thus, the major perspective from which everything is approached is the tension between the fallible yet responsible self—more precisely, the tension between individual and society, and the tension between irrationalist (voluntarist, blind) and rationalist. Westphal does a superb job of laying out the diversity of protests Climacus is registering in the Postscript—against Platonic intellectualism, against systematic philosophical speculation, and against the rhetorical compromising embodied in the “priest-orator.” There are, of course (as one would expect), sensible, suggestive, illuminating, and detailed exegeses of passages concerning all the significant themes associated with Climacus (approximation, appropriation, leap, direct communication, second reflection, dialectic, etc). Westphal examines the Postscript in the light of the distinction between Socratic religion and the non-Socratic (Christian) alternative found in the earlier Philosophical Fragments, to which this Postscript is an admittedly peculiar postscript, and employs material from much of Kierkegaard’s other work, including journal entries. With respect to the (in)famous category of leap, Westphal incorporates contemporary discussions of volitionalism and presents a fine summary of ways in which willing (decision) can be viewed as indirect, yet allowing the relevance of an ethics of belief. In fact, regarding even the commentary on “Truth Is Subjectivity,” where one might feel nothing new could be said, he manages to be innovative, by identifying “four moments” in the presentation of a theory of subjectivity (a satire, a parable, a definition, and a portrait) which make the chapter much more manageable for teaching. After considering Climacus’s presentation of the relation between Religiousness A and Religiousness B, Westphal appends a discussion of his own creation, Religiousness C (Chapter XIV). But all of this discussion would be unhelpful to a reader who does not fully appreciate the role of pseudonymity and indirect communication in Kierkegaard’s works; so Westphal prefaces his entire discussion with a fine chapter on pseudonymity which can be used even in courses where the entire book is not required reading. This chapter, relating pseudonymity to twentieth-century discussions of themes such as the effacement of the author of a text and the forfeiture of the privilege of authorship, is part of a three-chapter introduction setting the Postscript in relation to Kierkegaard’s biography, pseudonymity, and the familiar theory of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages. This entire introduction is written in a remarkably [End Page 145] engaging style which will surely seduce readers new to Kierkegaard and his creation, Johannes Climacus. For example, Westphal announces that “the flow of Regina’s... (shrink)

Introduction There is faith in every serious doubt ... he who seriously denies God, affirms him . . . there is no possible atheism. ...

What has become known as the ‘faith/history’ problem for historical religions like Christianity centres on the attempt to combine the ontological decisiveness, for faith, of an historical event characterized as an actual Incarnation of God with the epistemological indifference, or irrelevance, of historical information about that event which is decisive for faith. Without the former there is nothing to be related to or personally appropriated; without the latter faith is rendered vulnerable to the vagaries of historical research. Soren Kierkegaard's Climacus (...) writings – the Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript – provide a classic formulation of the inherent tension. Twentieth-century variations on the same theme are found in the writings of Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, among others. In what follows I want to highlight an element in Kierkegaard's Climacus account which crucially distinguishes his attempt to deal with the faith/history relation from other attempts to deal with it, and thus offers what I suggest is a novel approach to overcoming the tension. This element – effectively a kind of a priori or conceptual proof – has been neglected, and whatever one's final judgement on its contribution to the problem as a whole, a consideration of it and its implications is, at the very least, integral to a full understanding of the thought-experiment in the Fragments . Moreover, in the process, useful light can be shed indirectly on twentieth-century attempts to deal with the faith/history problem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 331 The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy. By ROBERT PATTISON. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii +231. $29.95. This extremely provocative and elegantly written study of John Henry Newman's struggle with "liberalism" argues that Newman was a genuine rebel whose solitary voice needs to be heard, as much today as then, but whose project was, in the end, eminently unsuccessful. The (...) preface announces that the purpose of the book is to " establish Newman 's impeccable credentials as a failure," and the suggestion that " the totality of his failure is the measure of his grandeur as a critic of our culture" leads to the appraisal that Newman's true "intellectual counterparts " were Marx and Nietzsche and Lenin, rather than Arnold or Carlyle (vi-viii, 53). As "the single unwavering but articulate voice raised against liberalism in all its incarnations," Newman indirectly offers an " invaluable " description of the thought against which he battled, but his importance, the author suggests, lies in his utter failure to make a dent in the century of thought following him: " the victory of everything Newman despised makes his defeated and unfashionable view of Western civilization interesting not merely as a consistent critique of what has come to pass, hut as one of the few intelligible alternatives to the ideological monopoly of liberalism " (53). That alternative, a " consistent view of the world opposed to liberalism root and branch, sharing none of its premises and despising all of its works is an inestimable benefit, for no one more than the liberal himself," for without an "honest and unforgiving voice" like Newman's, the liberal " would smugly assume that the paradoxical tenets of his creed are... self-evident truths" (215). On the one hand, Newman's value lies in challenging liberalism's complacency, and treating "the ugliest manifestations of liberalism with the contempt they deserve but rarely provoke" (215). Moreover, Pattison allows that Newman offers an " acute refutation of its [liberalism's] major premises " (53) (if " refutation " is the ' achievement ' word I think it is, this seems inconsistent on Pattison's part). On the other hand, Newman's value lies precisely in failing to undermine liberalism-while he reminds liberalism that it is a heresy, thus provoking its vitality, it is only insofar as liberalism remains vital that " the possibilities of relative decency and tolerant forbearance remain alive" (216). The author argues, in other words, that Newman's attack on liberalism hits the mark with respect to liberalism's "ugliest manifestations," hut it is, unfortunately, tied to a theory of belief which entails an intolerant dogmatism. Newman is, in the end, a peculiar figure, described as 332 BOOK REVIEWS important and valuable (and even possibly correct-189), yet, none· theless, insignificant, "trivial" (8), and even "absurd" (143); like the Oxford Movement with which he is associated, he said to have made an "impression" without making an "impact" (25), and that, according to Pattison, is a blessing for those care about the liberal cause oftoleration (65, 178). Pattison begins in earnest his exploration of Newman's response to his age by examining his particular response to one critical, yet typical, opponent: "The combat with Renn Dickson Hampden epitomizes the process by which Newman determined the narrow compass of truth and formed his reply to the heresies of liberalism " (60). The " almost pathological detestation " of Hampden which the author attributes to Newman (77, n.40) is the response to principles put forth by Hampden which Newman saw as "the social expression of Socinianism," which was itself only a reincarnation of the Ari.an heresy (76). Hampden's heresy, on this view, grew out of Arianism-to understand that "is to see how Newman formed the standards of truth by which he condemned the modern world" (76). For Newman, "the modern world is a realization of Socinian beliefs," " the complex of contemporary civilization originated in the distorted beliefs of Arius" (198-99), and Arianism (Hampden's heresy, liberalism) raised the pressing question "what kind of truth could words express" (107). Pattison presents Newman's understanding of liberalism from two somewhat different perspectives-HberaHsm is not only anti-dogmatic, it also claims that one... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits Works Of Love: Some Christian Deliberations in the Form of Discourses Christian Discourses The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress The Point of View for My Work as an Author Three Godly Discourses further reading.