In Educating Reason, Harvey Siegel presented the case regarding rationality and critical thinking as fundamental education ideals. In Rationality Redeemed? , a collection of essays written since that time, he develops this view, responds to major criticisms raised against it, and engages those critics in dialogue. In developing his ideas and responding to critics, Siegel addresses main currents in contemporary thought, including feminism, postmodernism and multiculturalism.

Christopher Southgate recognizes that the natural world is both ambiguous, mixing goods and bads, and simultaneously dramatically creative, such creativity resulting from just this ambiguous challenge of environmental conductance and resistance. Life is lived in green pastures and in the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps this is the only way God could have created the values found on Earth, by means of such disvalues, as a Darwinian natural selection account suggests. Generating Earth's biodiversity requires struggle, success, and failure—and (...) such an only way would constrain a powerful, loving God. But Southgate judges this too uncaring of suffering individuals, the products of evolution sacrificed to the systemic process. Perhaps God through Jesus redeems all the sacrificed individuals—pelicans in a pelican heaven—but redemption of all the bullfrogs and acorns becomes an incredible hope. Nature is a cruciform creation, where life persists in perpetual perishing. Life is forever conserved, regenerated, redeemed. (shrink)

Best known for having declared the death of God, Nietzsche was a thinker thoroughly absorbed in the Christian tradition in which he was born and raised. Yet while the atheist Nietzsche is well known, the pious Nietzsche is seldom recognised and rarely understood. Redeeming Nietzsche examines the residual theologian in the most vociferous of atheists. Fraser demonstrates that although Nietzsche rejected God, he remained obsessed with the question of human salvation. Examining his accounts of art, truth, morality and eternity, Nietzsche's (...) thought is revealed to be a series of experiments in redemption. (shrink)

"Redeeming Truth has as its overarching theme the redemption of truth looked at philosophically and theologically. This collection is notable in that it embraces a variety of approaches to its theme, from traditional forays to those that engage postmodernism and those that consider feminist theology. As many of the essays respond directly to other contributions, the volume reflects the vigor of the debate."--Jacket.

At a time of pedagogical exhaustion, this article wants to imagine ways to redeem education, to spare education from its unaccomplished promises, reinvent and renew its vows, and make it somehow work towards possible futures. But how can this be done when there is no longer the old inherited faith in a direction of history with an end, no ‘telos’ nor faith that educational institutions will inevitably move societies forwards? Is there any ‘after’ if the arrow of history points in (...) no direction? What can we collectively expect from education if we have no assurance that schooling can lead to anything better than what we are now, or that caring for truth will make people freer? In place of the modernist idea of progress, the alternative narrative that is being offered to school systems and teachers is what I will describe as the ‘innovation paradigm’. Within this framework what we are, what we have, and what is in place are presented as declining, inadequate, and unsatisfactory. This narrative has become so powerful that from a ‘pedagogical popular culture’ perspective it has turned into the mainstream way of thinking about our educational institutions, practices, and hopes. Would it not, however, be more pedagogically productive to speak of ‘variation’ instead of ‘innovation’? Might this be the potential path for redeeming education after progress? [Editorial note: this paper forms part of the suite of papers entitled ‘Education After Progress’.]. (shrink)

Within translation studies, functionalist translations and even more specifically, translations guided by Skopos theory are very much purposeful activities. Skopos theory applied to Bible translation, however, is sometimes met with resistance by practitioners who believe that Skopos theory betrays too much of the source text. This article began by outlining Skopos theory and the additional notion of loyalty as introduced by Christiane Nord. Even with loyalty applied to the theory, many Bible translation practitioners continue to fear it. After the initial (...) presentation of Skopos theory plus loyalty, the Hebrew lexeme חֶסֶד ( ḥesed ) was introduced in this article and discussed in relation to its biblical use. The discussion of ḥesed was then widened to functionalist Bible translation to redeem the loyalty notion as applied to Bible translation. This article claimed that ḥesed as loyalty further helps to protect both the source text and target audiences from radical or unacceptable translations. Contribution: Bible translation is a purposeful activity. This article attempted to allay the fears that some Bible translation practitioners have about the possibility of radical translations undertaken using Skopos theory. Loyalty as understood through the lens of the Hebrew חֶסֶד ( ḥesed ) was utilised afresh to allay these fears. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Redeeming the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Liberal VirtuesJudith W. KayRedeeming the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues Bruce K. Ward Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 230 pp. $26.00.Bruce Ward has written a remarkably rich intellectual history whose theological diagnosis yields refreshing interpretations of ethical norms. Each chapter treats one of liberalism’s cherished virtues (equality, authenticity, tolerance, and compassion) and argues for the Christian roots of each in order (...) to show how Christianity is “the fulfillment of what the Enlightenment, at its best, sought” (196).Ward uses the Christian humanism of Dostoevsky to redeem the equality espoused by Rousseau and Kant in light of Nietzsche’s attacks. Equality is grounded neither in a human capacity nor in obedience to a principle, but in the imago Dei. While hardly original, this foundation with attention to immanence can create an enlivened perception of others in their richness while being transformed by love from “the other world.” Ward redeems authenticity with agapic self-dispossession rather than self-assertion, which liberates it from individualism and opens it to the “call of God.” Liberal compassion finds its fulfillment in the love of particular, suffering humans, which requires discernment, respect, and effective action. Such compassion is rooted in and revelatory of divine love.Ward’s most compelling chapter, on tolerance, begins by noting how this ideal often inhibits moral judgment or promotes indifference. Ward is a student of neither Mill’s nor Nussbaum’s libertarian versions of tolerance. Instead, Ward draws upon René Girard to argue that tolerance must account for the perpetrator’s demonization of social outcasts that leads to the victim’s resentment. Victims must lead the way in exposing and then exiting this cycle. Dostoevsky recommends a practice of taking responsibility for all persecution (“all are guilty for all”) as an expression of active love. Such a practice forges points of human contact between groups in conflict, even if prejudices are slow to change. In response to intolerant religions, Christians should assume such universal responsibility rather than rely on the “restrained” violence of the liberal state. Although Ward derides multicultural versions of tolerance that “celebrate difference,” he observes that the universal human of Enlightenment ontology cannot exist except through the particularity of a lived story—precisely multiculturalism’s insight. [End Page 213]The deep lament motivating this book is that an inadequate Christian theology lost its power to explain the world. The resulting defense of humanism by Enlightenment philosophes was deeply shaped by Christian ideals, but they were unable to articulate a foundation for moral norms, which made Nietzschean nihilists appear sane. Both groups are ill equipped to respond to current religious terrorism. As Charles Taylor explores in The Secular Age, the third contenders are those who affirm a good beyond this world. Ward differs from Taylor by arguing that the problem is not a lack of transcendent grounding for norms but an inadequate conceptualization of immanence and transcendence. Ward uses the Trinitarian approach of Dostoevsky to reorder transcendence and immanence, which avoids translating “Christianity into liberalism” or injecting transcendence into secularism.Ward’s project succeeds if one accepts Nietzsche as the major critic of the Enlightenment. Readers who have accepted as legitimate other criticisms of the philosophes may be disappointed. His discussion of compassion lacks Catholic interlocutors such as Edward Vacek who argue that agape avoids the polarity between self-love and compassion; feminists who critique Enlightenment dichotomies between savage and civilized or reason and emotion; and Marxists who argue that capitalism denies human equality, thus making Ward’s “capitalist liberal humanism” sound naive. It is not clear how Ward would redeem the Enlightenment from such criticisms.Nevertheless, Ward’s rereading of the Enlightenment is majestic in its sweep, compelling in its close textual analysis, and brimming with fresh insights. The text assumes much familiarity with the philosophes; its pedagogical use is recommended for graduate students and scholars. [End Page 214]Judith W. KayUniversity of Puget SoundCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Redeeming a Prison Society: A Liturgical and Sacramental Response to Mass Incarceration by Amy LevadLloyd SteffenRedeeming a Prison Society: A Liturgical and Sacramental Response to Mass Incarceration Amy Levad minneapolis: fortress press, 2014. 233 pp. $39.00.Amy Levad (University of St. Thomas) has added a theological voice to the national conversation that Michelle Alexander opened with her devastating critique of the American criminal justice system in The New Jim (...) Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander showed how policies grounded in the war on drugs have disproportionately distressed racial and ethnic minorities—African Americans and Latinos—and the poor, destroying lives and communities. Incarceration in the United States is today a system that perpetuates what Alexander called a “caste” system from which escape is, especially among black males, virtually impossible. In this informed and well-presented study, Levad takes up Alexander’s social justice analysis, extending it in new directions, offering a creative theological contribution to the mass incarceration crisis in the world’s first “genuine prison society.”Levad observes that a limitation in the Christian response to mass incarceration is the “lack of Catholic voices” (47), which her book makes an effort to correct. She draws on core insights of Catholic tradition to address conditions that foster crime while also responding “to the ways in which the criminal justice crisis both reflects and sustains social injustices” (48). Her book offers a wonderfully clear analysis of mass incarceration and related issues such as recidivism strategies and policing policies. She advocates “pulling levers,” policing policies that aim at avoiding prison, versus harsh “window-breaking” policies that for deterrence reasons criminalize even minor offences. Levad addresses theories of punishment, proposes ideas for prison reform, and, while acknowledging a limited need for prisons, sets forth constructive suggestions for how best to decarcerate society through restorative justice and rehabilitation practices that reintegrate offenders into society.The study is a provocative interdisciplinary conversation between criminology and theology. Levad’s focus is on liturgy and sacrament, the central resources of Roman Catholic theology, finding in the Eucharist the theological [End Page 204] model for inviting the marginalized and dispossessed into the common fellowship of human dignity. She then argues that penance and reconciliation yield attitudes and behaviors that parallel secular restorative justice efforts. Advocating alternatives to prison while denying the effectiveness of punitive retribution, Levad critiques the approaches of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other Catholics. She highlights Kathryn Soltis as a Catholic scholar who uses theological resources to affirm the dignity of prisoners, attend to the common good, and seek ways to repair relationships between victims and offenders.Some of Levad’s ideas could be developed further. Pluralism, for instance, is mentioned as a contextual issue for her theological work but never thoroughly developed. Utilitarianism is denied a constructive ethics role, but Levad’s discussion of recidivism appeals to it as a marker of the common good (122). And Levad’s attention to the internal failures of the Church in confronting social justice issues leads one to wonder whether the decarcerated vision of society she desires is practicable.Levad speaks to the heart of the incarceration crisis in America, challenging the willingness of Americans to “throw people away” (198) through imprisonment—especially the young, the poor, and minorities. With her underlying question of “what kind of people we want to be and what we want our communities to be like” (43), Levad presents readers with a distinctive “vision of justice in God’s reign conveyed by liturgy and sacraments” (197). With that, she has accomplished what she set out to do: confront the social injustice of mass incarceration with the best insights of modern criminology but also with a theological perspective that embodies the struggle to realize an engaged Catholic praxis of justice.Lloyd SteffenLehigh UniversityCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In Redeeming "The Prince," one of the world's leading Machiavelli scholars puts forth a startling new interpretation of arguably the most influential but widely misunderstood book in the Western political tradition. Overturning popular misconceptions and challenging scholarly consensus, Maurizio Viroli also provides a fresh introduction to the work. Seen from this original perspective, five centuries after its composition, The Prince offers new insights into the nature and possibilities of political liberation.Rather than a bible of unscrupulous politics, The Prince, Viroli argues, (...) is actually about political redemption--a book motivated by Machiavelli's patriotic desire to see a new founding for Italy. Written in the form of an oration, following the rules of classical rhetoric, the book condenses its main message in the final section, "Exhortation to liberate Italy from the Barbarians." There Machiavelli creates the myth of a redeemer, an ideal ruler who ushers in an era of peace, freedom, and unity. Contrary to scholars who maintain that the exhortation was added later, Viroli proves that Machiavelli composed it along with the rest of the text, completing the whole by December 1513 or early 1514.Only if we read The Prince as a theory of political redemption, Viroli contends, can we at last understand, and properly evaluate, the book's most controversial pages on political morality, as well as put to rest the cliché of Machiavelli as a "Machiavellian."Bold, clear, and provocative, Redeeming "The Prince" should permanently change how Machiavelli and his masterpiece are understood. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical reflection on the nature of language by reading some exemplary works of literature. Drawing on the thought of philosophers—especially Plato, Kant, Hegel, Emerson, Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the author argues that language is the bearer of a utopian or messianic promise of happiness, and that by redeeming the revelatory power of words, the two writers in this study are contributing to the redemption of the promise of happiness in a world of reconciled antagonisms and (...) contradictions. (shrink)

_Probing study of how literature can redeem the revelatory, redemptive powers of language._.

Many philosophers endorse the view that global or “narrative” features of a life at least partly determine its value. For instance, a life in which the subject redeems her past failures and sacrifices with later successes is thought to be better, ceteris paribus, than one in which her later successes are unrelated to her previous failures. In this paper I distinguish some views about narrative value, including Fischer’s views about the importance of free will for narrative value, and raise a (...) number of problems for the idea of narrative value. (shrink)

The probing readings of Putting On Virtue offered by Sheryl Overmyer, Darlene Weaver, and James Foster provide a welcome opportunity for further reflection on key questions: Was Aquinas really concerned with the status of pagan virtues? Can we properly understand a thinker whose driving questions are not the same as our own without taking up a stance of pure deference? Can an inquiry into hyper-Augustinian anxiety over acquired virtue assist us in arriving at an account of positive self-regard? Can an (...) account that stresses the graced character of all virtue formation be coherent? And can it do justice to the ways in which Christians reached for accounts of infused virtue precisely in order to affirm how grace overcomes the ways in which fortune hounds acquired virtue? I respond affirmatively to all of the above. (shrink)

This article adopts Edwina Sandys’ Christa as a hermeneutical lens through which to expose new dimensions about the interplay between aesthetics and redemption in the Christian tradition. Contemporary theological aesthetic discourses have ignored ugliness and its causes, especially the patriarchal ways in which Christian tradition has been used to sanctify violence against women. The issue of gender injustice takes on a heightened significance in light of recent claims surrounding the beauty of the cross. As a subversive aesthetic feminist representation, Christa (...) exposes the patriarchal dimensions of such constructions and calls for a new vision of aesthetics – one that begins with women’s experiences of suffering and salvation. (shrink)

Critical social theory has an uneasy relationship with utopia. On the one hand, the idea of an alternative, better social order is necessary in order to make sense of its criticisms of a given social context. On the other hand, utopian thinking has to avoid ‘bad utopianism’, defined as lack of connection with the actual historical process, and ‘finalism’, defined as closure of the historical process. Contemporary approaches to critical social theory endeavour to avoid these dangers by way of a (...) post metaphysical strategy. However, they run up against the problem that utopian thinking has an unavoidable metaphysical moment. Rather than seeking to eliminate this moment, therefore, they should acknowledge its inevitability. The challenge is to maintain a productive tension between closure and contestability and between attainability and elusiveness. The paper outlines a strategy for meeting this challenge, a strategy that is based on a distinction between the metaphysical content of utopian projections and their fallible claims to validity. Key Words: critical social theory • fallibilism • metaphysical closure • postmetaphysical thinking • reflexivity • regulative idea • utopia. (shrink)

The nice thing about Telos 63 is that, as with most of its sixty-two predecessors, paradox and tension are not altogether foreign to it. So while the main drift of the contributions dealing directly with the journal's political reorientation is unfortunate, it is not the only drift there is. The remarkable lead article by Paggi and Pinzauti, for example, runs in many respects against Telos' recent grain. Its “non-political” and pacifist reinterpretation of the issue of peace and security manages, among (...) other achievements, to restore to these pages at least momentarily a politics of redemption, while Feher's “Redemptive and Democratic Paradigms in Radical Politics” and Whitebook's “Politics of Redemption” are aimed at purging from radicalism all redemptive residues. (shrink)

This essay employs Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as a vehicle to explore love in eighteenth-century French moral philosophy and theological ethics. The relation between love of self and love of God was understood variously and produced contrasting models of the relation between the public and the private. Rousseau, perhaps more than any other figure in the eighteenth century, wrestled with the complex, competing traditions of love, and in doing so he probed and articulated the tension between and the harmony of life (...) alone and life together. Using as ideal types a set of historical models of private and public vice and virtue, the author describes Rousseau's three contradictory proposals for dealing with the corruption of social institutions and the human heart and discloses their underlying cohesion. (shrink)

Rorty uses the private–public distinction as a conceptual tool to uphold the ideal of self–creation (Romanticism) simultaneously to the ideal of solidarity (Enlightenment liberalism). The difficulty of accommodating these two apparently opposing ideals has led Rorty to make inconsistent and contradictory claims about the private–public distinction. This article suggests a way of easing the tension that exists around Rorty’s formulations of the distinction. It does so by turning to the thematic of “self–enlargement” to be found in Rorty’s later writings. By (...) presenting self–enlargement as a common feature of self–creation and solidarity, this reading opens up a way of reconciling these two ideals and mitigating some of the difficulties in Rorty’s private–public distinction. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Dallas Willard's views on the relation of morality to spirituality by way of a critique of a recent article by John Coe–-or perhaps a critique of Coe by way of an interpretation of Willard. Coe has argued that a certain erroneous view of the relationship between moral and spiritual formation poses a serious threat to the latter by encouraging believers to hide spiritual and moral failures behind their moral successes. In this he is correct, (...) but his own approach to the matter poses an equally serious threat by obscuring the fact that moral formation is integral to spiritual formation. In order to address the matter successfully, we need an adequate view of the positive relationship between moral and spiritual formation. Such a view is implicit in the work of Dallas Willard. My aim is to make this view explicit. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Friedrich Nietzsche offers different opinions of the ancient Skeptics. On certain occasions, he praises them as philosophers of intellectual integrity, because they constantly question dogma and continue to inquire (ζητϵῖν) into the truth. He insists, however, that it is indispensable for every individual to adopt her own perspective in specific conditions, rather than suspend judgment as the Skeptics do. On other occasions, Nietzsche criticizes the ancient Skeptics because they separate their academic investigations from their philosophy of life and only (...) comply with conventions or apparent phenomena observed through sensations. Furthermore, he ridicules their ultimate goal – tranquility of mind (ἀταραξία) – as a product of feeble exhaustion. He himself is ready to embrace torments of life as part of the will to power. Although some similarities can be traced between Nietzsche and the ancient Skeptics, Nietzsche is more consistent in connecting his theoretical investigation and his philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

Taking its cue from this special issue on the interweaving of different types of time through science and museum collections, this epilogue gives an overview of what sorts of new insights seem possible when different temporal qualities embedded in all collections are allowed to come together? What can we learn from juxtaposing the timings of museums, laboratories, and clinics? Can they lead to better understands of the processes of decay, and the potential for reanimation, inherent in all museum objects?

Hume's political economy and his contributions to monetary theory are usually regarded as a minor part of his philosophic output. This paper argues that Hume's monetary ideas can, in fact, be read back into his moral and epistemological concerns so as to give the institution of money a larger significance for Humean social thought. In particular, the possibility of an abstract and entirely fiduciary money, like Hume's notion of sympathy, promises to transcend the entropic logic of representation that otherwise enervates (...) Hume's utilitarian sensationalism. At the same time, Hume's stress upon money as a social convention highlights the importance of _money illusion, and of commercial virtue more generally, as nonrational underpinnings of the capitalist ethos. (edited). (shrink)

I take up Richard Swinburne's point, in his "Responsibility and Atonement," Ch. 5, that although the past cannot be changed, wrongdoers may change its significance by 'disowning' their actions through atonement, just as their victims may do so through forgiveness. I argue that the point can and should be pressed much more strongly than it is by Swinburne within the terms of his own discussion; and that it has a much wider significance, transcending that discussion, for there is a constant (...) interplay between events, human actions, and our retrospective assessment of the past. Finally, I look tentatively at the question in an eschatological perspective. (shrink)

Chapter Redeeming the Present Elaine Graham What does it mean to do feminist moral philosophy with notions of utopia and transformation as points of..

I borrow an idea from the fiction of C. S. Lewis that future outcomes may affect the value of past events. I then defend this idea via the concept of a “temporal whole”, and show its promise as a partial theodicy and its resonance with both Christian theism and a robust personalism.

IN THIS ESSAY I BEGIN BY NAMING A "TURN TO CULTURE" THAT MARKS A wide range of works in contemporary theology and ethics. I describe how the turn plays out in books by Stanley Hauerwas and Delores S. Williams and argue that their idealist versions of the turn uncritically replicate core features of the dominant cultures they try to criticize. I explain how their idealism in conceiving the oppositional cultures to which they turn constructs those cultures as "others" to the (...) culture being criticized, wholes unto themselves, and symbols that directly participate in some ultimate good or truth. I then gesture toward a more critical, self-conscious performance of the turn to culture. I argue that turns to culture should not obscure but rather thematize the role of the critic in making the turn. I use the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Walter Benjamin to argue that self-conscious critique will involve a set of resignations to reflexivity rather than otherness, to a hodgepodge of highly mobile practices rather than a single, unified tradition, and to regarding cultural artifacts as mixed allegories rather than pure symbols. (shrink)