It was a little over ten years ago, 1967–8, that H. D. Lewis delivered the first series of Gifford lectures, The Elusive Mind, in the University of Edinburgh. It was my privilege that year to be an auditor in the Seminar at King's College that Professor Lewis was conducting with his students in the area of this topic. I had already read the works in which, in the midst of neo-orthodox and existentialist religious movements, he had devoted himself to critical (...) valuation of those doctrines - witness his Morals and the New Theology, and Morals and Revelation. This earlier work prepared for a comprehensive interpretation of religious experience in his book in 1960: Our Experience of God. (shrink)

I shall propose that the unlearned motives of persons are primary emotions. I am not surprised that many informed readers will wonder where I have been for the last five decades when even the conception of unlearned motives (instincts, drives, urges) has been shown to be little more than the result of undisciplined investigation? And here I am proposing that in the nature and dynamics of some emotions that persons experience we can gain more adequate understanding of human motives at (...) the unlearned level. During the last five decades I have spent most of my time teaching the histlDry of philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics and theory of value, the psychology of personali ty, and th~ philosophy of personality. Increasingly I have paid special attention to the ways in which claims about ~the nature of man I influence the theory of motives, emotions, and feelings. What kept impressing me is the way in which the viii interpretation of the "findings" about motives, feelings, and emotion reflect unargued conceptions of human nature, or that the views of fundamental motives, feelings, and emotions unduly dominate the underlying conception of the person. In focusing attention first on the essential nature of a person I shall be discussing issues that are actually basic to our more analytical interpretation of the nature and dynamics of the primary motives or primary emotions. (shrink)

Agreeing that being is becoming, that personal identity is noninstantaneous, the temporalistic personalist argues that the identity of the person is not, as hartshorne holds, linear, or a cumulative route of unit-occasions in which the past comes into the present. there cannot be a succession of experiences without a self-identifying active person able to maintain himself through change and interaction with his ambient, natural or divine.

While I cannot conclude that Langer is successful so far in this formidable undertaking, I find myself not only resonating to much that she sets out but also applauding the attempt to develop a philosophy of mind in a new key. Surely, to decide what we mean by mind without reference to the mind-in-art is myopic philosophizing. No systematic metaphysician can but be grateful for the attempt to show that in the nature of feeling as found in art there is (...) a kind of organization that will enable us to get beyond the persistent frustrations created by a dualistic view of mind and body, and will possibly give us a clue even to the dynamics of physical beings. (shrink)

James Martineau's revolt against sense-bound empiricism.--The conflict of the empirical and non-empirical in Andrew Pringle-Pattison's theism.--The halting empiricism in James Ward's theistic monadism.--William R. Sorley's moral argument for God.--Frederick Tennant's teleological argument for God.--An empirical view of the goodness of God.

Peter A. Bertocci; XI—Descartes and Marcel on the Person and his Body: A Critique, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pag.

“Know thyself!” This dictum in the Upanishads is also that of the Greeks 2000 years later. But what is meant by “know” and by “self” is different. The Biblical counsel, “Know thyself as created in the image of God,” also reminds us that man’s conception of himself is influenced by his conception of his relation to his ultimate environment. In fundamental terms, there is no East and West when reflective men ask: What is the essence of man? I cannot in (...) this paper pay adequate respect to certain historic approaches to the answer, but they are in mind as I develop a personalistic, temporalistic view of man. (shrink)

For a response to be personal, then, is for it to be a total response in which aesthetic, moral, perceptual, rational, and religious dimensions may be discriminated, though one particular dimension may be in focus or dominant at any one moment. In the remainder of this paper we shall focus on that abstract phase of the total response which we call perceptual, without prejudice to evaluative responses accompanying it. The "situation experienced," to use E. S. Brightman's terminology, is an undeniable (...) complex within which most of these factors-in-response can usually be distinguished. (shrink)

In the time at my disposal I limit myself to tenets distinctive of a system of idealism founded by Borden P. Bowne. Two years before his death, in 1908, Bowne wrote Personalism, a condensed epitome of works that in themselves are worthy of a distinctive place in late nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophy. Bowne’s system was to be powerfully elaborated by Edgar S. Brightman, the first holder of the Borden Parker Bowne Chair in Philosophy in Boston University, which I (...) was to hold from 1953 to 1975, and followed by John N. Findlay since 1978. Professor J. Cook Wilson of Oxford, writing four years after Bowne’s death, said that he “always urged ‘the study of Bowne as the most important of the modern American philosophers.’” This is not the place to record the admiration of William James and of William E. Hocking, among other admirers in America and abroad, or to identify contemporaries and recent scholars as well as pupils of Bowne and Brightman. But Bowne’s disciple, Ralph Tyler Flewelling, who founded The Personalist, and Robert N. Beck, Brightman’s pupil, who established Idealistic Studies, cannot go unmentioned. (shrink)

Creative change characterizes the nature of god, And a temporalistic form of personalistic theism can illuminate human experience. To establish this thesis, The author first discusses the logical, Metaphysical, And religious bases for the traditional view that ultimate being must be perfect and unchanging. He then proposes an alternate model of reason, Presents a concept of persons as active unities capable of maintaining their self-Identity through change, And argues for the possibility of creation ex nihilo. Finally, After discussing valid classical (...) emphases, The author formulates his personalistic notion of God as creator and considers god's relation to human beings. (staff). (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I am, however, not interested in rescuing words. My underlying concern is so to distinguish between "person" and "personality" that the relation of each to the other and to environment is adequately clear. After indicating why the theory of personality development in the social sciences requires the reintroducing of the person, I shall outline a conception of the person that eases theoretical difficulties both in the philosophy of the person and of personality.

Study on the concept of jiva in Śaktiviśiṣṭādvaitavedānta philosophy and also in Indic philosophy.

Elementary Buddhist logic and dialectical studies.

Explanation of the philosophical position (siddhānta) of the Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Yogācārya, and Mādhyamika schools of Buddhism.

Text with commentary of Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan's Theg dgu spyi bciṅs kyi ʼgrel bshad nyi maʼi ʼod zer on general perspective of the philosophical concept of Buddhist doctrine.

Study on Buddhist philosophy and logic of affirming and non-affirming negative.

What are the conditions that make understanding of a disturbed person possible? It is by no means easy to restrict oneself to this question after analyzing the first three studies in psychopathology before us. But it is important for philosophers to take note of the new question that phenomenological and existential psychopathologists are asking. Should we assume, as philosophers usually do, that the understanding of disturbed persons ought to proceed by the rules that presumably apply to the experience and knowledge (...) of bodies, minds, and values enjoyed by "normal" persons? Or should understanding of "the world" of disturbed persons lead us to reconsider some of the epistemic analyses that have been all too dominant, and prematurely so? (shrink)

On Buddhist logic and dialectical studies.