Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 46, Issue 1, pp 70 - 97 In 1946 Heidegger suffered a mental breakdown and received treatment by Dr. Viktor Emil Freiherr von Gebsattel. I explore the themes of health and help in Heidegger’s work before and after his treatment. I begin with Heidegger’s views on health while Rector in 1933–34 and his abandonment of these views by war’s end. A short while later, Heidegger’s breakdown occurs and the treatment under Gebsattel begins. Soon after his treatment, Heidegger (...) lauds what he terms a “broken-down” thinking, and I examine his contribution to a 1958 _Festschrift_ for Gebsattel to better articulate such a thinking. Lastly, I take up Heidegger’s remarks on the role of the medical profession in a technological age from a 1962 speech. In presenting this material, I hope to shed new light on a little known aspect of Heidegger’s career and biography and to situate philosophically his relationship with Dr. Gebsattel. (shrink)

Amyloid β peptide (βA4) accumulates as plaques in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer's disease and Down's syndrome, and may contribute to the cognitive decline that is a feature of these diseases. βA4 is a normal product of cell metabolism, derived from the amyloid precursor protein (APP), but the biological functions of these molecules are not fully known. A hypothetical, descriptive model of the biological interrelationships between βA4 and APP is presented. APPS, the soluble form of APP, which is released (...) at the neuronal surface, and βA4 are envisaged as physiological ligands which have reciprocal paracrine effects on neuronal growth and neurite extension. Differential expression of these factors, manifest as changes in the APPS:βA4 ratio, may therefore have growth‐promoting or growth‐inhibiting effects on neurons. These effects may be mediated through separate cell‐surface interactions but common intracellular effector systems, such as calcium and protein kinase C. In turn, the intracellular events may control the relative production of each ligand from APP through negative feedback loops. Disturbances of these control mechanisms may permit pathological overproduction, and hence accumulation, of βA4. Such a model may also have therapeutic implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Pyrrhus Perplex: A Superficial View of Mimesis Andrew J. McKenna Loyola University Chicago In the interest of knowledge conveyed as experience, a teacher of literature likes to begin with a story: A man sets out to discover a treasure he believes is hidden under a stone; he turns over stone after stone but finds nothing. He grows tired of such futile undertaking but the treasure is too (...) precious for him to give up. So he begins to look for a stone which is too heavy to lift—he places all his hopes in that stone and he will waste all his remaining strength on it. This exquisite little parable from René Girard's Deceit, Desire and the Novel (176) awaits correlation with Kafka ("Before the Law"), but it can also remind us ofthe passionate imbroglio we find in Racine's Andromaque. I will dwell on the stage play on the assumption that we are even more confused about love than about legal affairs. The play embodies an essential paradox by dramatizing relations in a way that is contrary to our normal expectations of order and conduct: Mais parmi ces périls où je cours pour vous plaire, Me refuseriez-vous un regard moins sévère? (I.iv) (But among the perils I risk to please you, Would you refuse me a gaze less severe?) This is not a vassal or a servant appealing to his master, but a sovereign, Pyrrhus, appealing to his captive female slave, Andromache. Our routine categories are turned upside down. 32Andrew J. McKenna Pyrrhus has everything going for him: he is the son ofAchilles, known to his world (and ours) as the world's greatest warrior, and after his conquest of Troy he is betrothed to Hermione, daughter of Helen, the world's most beautiful woman. There is no matter for tragedy in this, a happy conclusion to the Trojan war. But Pyrrhus spurns Hermione in amorous pursuit of Andromache, whom he counts among plunder of the city he has destroyed. She is the widow of Hector whom his father has slain, which makes her the last person in the world disposed to favor his suit. Andromache is very like the stone which is too heavy to lift, for all the leverage Pyrrhus exercises by threatening to deliver her son Astyanax for slaughter by the still vengeful Greeks. And Racine makes us understand that it is not in spite of Andromache 's resistance to his appeals butjust because ofthem that Pyrrhus wastes his life trying to move her. The treasure that Pyrrhus pursues, which as the son of Achilles he has no choice but to pursue, is "la gloire," the recognized and incommensurate superiority over other mortals. Yet he describes himself plaintively to Andromache as "Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé" (vanquished, in chains, tormented by regret). For four acts of the play Pyrrhus mostly cultivates "enslavement, failure, and shame," which is how Girard describes the masochist in the parable he invented to depict him, and in the fifth act he is slain by his Greek allies at the jealous instigation of Hermione, who then stabs herself over his body. Orestes, who lead the Greeks to the assault in amorous obedience to Hermione, goes insane. The quest for glory is a recipe for disaster. A masochist is someone whom we may describe as preferring pain to pleasure, failure to success, and when I review Pyrrhus's conduct with students, they never fail to arrive at this diagnosis. Then the task is to unpack this reductive term, which since Freud has served to label a clinical perversion. In my experience, this task is more successfully accomplished with undergraduate students, who are likely to seek an explanation in terms of the information at hand, if only because they are too distracted, too harried to do otherwise. Graduate students, on the other hand, are committed to advanced professional research, which in literature departments typically sends them in quest of the mythological roots of such a story, and no less often favors the kinds of explanations we find in Freudian psychoanalysis. I take it as a measure of the intellectual confusion of our times that we encourage... (shrink)

ai Diminished gaze fixation is one of the core features of autism and has been proposed to be associated with abnormalities in the neural circuitry of affect. We tested this hypothesis in two separate studies using eye tracking while measuring functional brain activity during facial discrimination tasks in individuals with autism and in typically developing individuals. Activation in the fusiform gyrus and amygdala was strongly and positively correlated with the time spent fixating the eyes in the autistic group in both (...) studies, suggesting that diminished gaze fixation may account for the fusiform hypoactivation to faces commonly reported in autism. In addition, variation in eye fixation within autistic individuals was strongly and positively associated with amygdala activation across both studies, suggesting a heightened emotional response associated with gaze fixation in autism. (shrink)

J. Baird Callicott has thrown down the gauntlet once again in the monism?pluralism debate in environmental ethics. In a recent article he argues that his ?communitarianism? (combined with a limited intertheoretic pluralism) is sufficient to get the advantages of pluralism advocated by his critics, while at the same time retaining the framework of moral monism. Callicott's attempt to set the record straight on the monism?pluralism debate has once again derailed us from answering the most important question in this discussion: how (...) do we achieve a compatibilism among ethical theories which will inform better environmental practices? But if Callicott got it wrong, then who is getting it right? Arne Naess, whose work has heretofore been excluded from the mainstream discussion of this issue, has all along understood the heart of the monism?pluralism question. This paper updates the current state of the monism?pluralism debate, provides an answer to Callicott's latest challenge, and advances the thesis that all involved in this argument would do well to take a look at what Naess has to say on this issue. (shrink)

Understanding consciousness is one of the central scientific challenges of our time. This book presents Andy Ross's recent work and discusses a range of perspectives on the core issues. The chapters are based on texts written for a variety of occasions and audiences. Reading them in order, one senses a growing clarity in the articulation of the new ideas, some of which are deep and rather subtle, and glimpses the outlines of a dynamic field. Ross has taken pains to unify (...) the collection and make the main thread clearly visible. His new ideas are of fundamental importance, and readers who grapple with them should gain insight that amply rewards the effort. (shrink)

& Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala activation. In (...) the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cor-. (shrink)

This essay draws a new picture of the science of bacteria in its 'golden age', circa 1880-1900: the organization of its knowledge and practice, its germ theory of disease, the difference between its two major research traditions, and, above all, its place in life science in this period that bristled with theories and debates over inheritance, variation, selection, evolution and that witnessed the transition from natural history to laboratory biology. Pasteur and Koch's science acquired this biological dimension not despite being (...) outside academic biology, nor despite the limitations of its applied, medical matrix, but rather because of that framework. The very practices of vaccine development constituted, at the same time, a new biological model of bacterial species and variation, which aligned them with other living things. Finally, the new picture reveals unsuspected continuity to later microbiology and molecular biology. In illuminating the self-perceptions of these sciences in relation to the past, it situates and opens a critical perspecive on writings by bacteriologists such as Ludwik Fleck, François Jacob and René Dubos, which have widely informed how we understand science. (shrink)

This is a review of an extraordinary tome by Charles Taylor, A secular Age. The book contains about 800 pages of intricate analysis and debate.1 This review attempts to summarise the author’s discussion of secularism under a few key headings and then offers a brief discussion of the material in each case. In the final section, it offers some personal reflections on the missiological implications of his main themes.

Wood informs the reader that Buber rejected "isms," hard and fast rules and principles, and systems, but he goes on to systematize Buber's thought nonetheless. The result is often enlightening. I and Thou, which Wood considers the central work of the philosopher's thought, is finely broken down and analyzed in its component parts. In this manner it is less formidable to the uninitiated, and the reader who is puzzled by a particular passage can find in Wood's book an authoritative, well-researched (...) explanation. There are also excellent biographical data woven in with glimpses of Buber's voluminous works and the influences on them, and a complete bibliography that is as definitive as any published to date. But Buber's thought does not lend itself to systematization. One cannot substitute Ontology for Metaphysics and then proceed to dissect a philosophy which declares itself to be beyond metaphysics, and which points to the existential meeting of a person here and now with another person and/or with God. Wood provides a diagram showing the structure of I and Thou which may be useful for locating selections in the book as they relate to a certain code, but at the same time it illustrates what Buber describes as objectification, an I-it relationship with a person or his work, which is far from the I-Thou relationship.--S. J. B. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Who or What is the Preembryo?S.J. Richard A. McCormick (bio)IntroductionAlthough widely used by scientists, the term "preembryo" has raised some suspicions. Histopathologist Michael Jarmulowicz (1990), for example, asserts that the term was adopted by the American Fertility Society (AFS) and the Voluntary Licensing Authority (VLA) in Britain "as an exercise of linguistic engineering to make human embryo research more palatable to the general public."I cannot speak for the VLA, (...) but I can clarify that this was not the motive of the AFS. As a member of the AFS ethics committee that discussed and adopted this terminology, I know that our discussion was not tied to embryo research or moral issues. The term "preembryo" was adopted because the earliest stages of mammalian development primarily involve establishment of the nonembryonic trophoblast, rather than the formation of the embryo. As Clifford Grobstein (1988, p. 61), a distinguished basic scientist who also sat on the AFS committee notes:The scientific rationale for the term preembryo... is its greater accuracy in characterizing the initial phase of mammalian and human development.... The status implications of such a change in terminology were not at issue in the discussion.This is not to say that the moral status of the preembryo is not a concern worthy of independent consideration. It is an important question with significant practical implications, especially in the context of in vitro fertilization. At stake are issues such as: (1) what may be done to preembryos before transfer; (2) whether all preembryos must be transferred; and (3) what may be done to preembryos that are not transferred (Ethics Committee of the American Fertility Society (AFS) 1986, p. 29S). Furthermore, emergency treatment of rape cases may also depend on such a determination. [End Page 1]Cryopreservation, which entails freezing unused preembryos for possible later use, is one example of a procedure that raises issues associated with the moral status of the preembryo. Cryopreservation decreases the number of stimulated egg recovery cycles a woman must undergo and increases flexibility in transfer protocols. But thawing of the preembryos is not a completely benign process; significant numbers of the preembryos die in the process and injury cannot be excluded.In addition, down the road a year or so lies preimplantation genetic diagnosis, now being tested in several centers of reproductive research. This would involve the removal of one or more cells from a preembryo developing in vitro. The DNA from these cells would be studied and then only genetically normal preembryos would be transferred. With the growth in knowledge about single gene defects and the rapid advance of amplification technology, which allows gene visualization, it is not difficult to imagine scientists embarking on a variety of micromanipulations of the preembryo for the sake of gaining knowledge.Not all research with gametes involves preembryos, but clearly some experiments and procedures await resolution of the moral status of the preembryo. I contend in this paper that the moral status—and specifically the controversial issue of personhood—is related to attainment of developmental individuality (being the source of one individual). This contrasts with the view that holds that personhood occurs earlier, at the point of genetic uniqueness. I believe that an embryo that has developed to the point where it can be one individual and one individual only, differs in moral status from a preembryo that has not, even if in many cases we may choose to treat them similarly.The Scientific UnderpinningsTwo things must be kept in mind—and in a sense, in tension—in turning to science for help in assessing the status of the preembryo. First, science is not competent to decide the question of personhood or ensoulment. As the Catholic document, Declaration on Procured Abortion, which I will return to later, notes: "It is a philosophical problem" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) 1974, p. 10, endnote 19). On the other hand, another Catholic document, Donum vitae(CDF 1987), notes that the conclusions of science provide a "valuable indication" for reason's deliberations about personhood. We might say that if science cannot decide the question of personhood, neither can it be decided without science.For my review of embryological science... (shrink)

Even though since 1965 the Great Cultural Revolution was basically an internal struggle in Mainland China, it coincided with a high tide of criticism toward Russian revisionism and therefore constituted a struggle for defining the ideological line of the Chinese Communist Party. As an internal struggle, the Great Cultural Revolution subjected all phases of cultural activity and personnel to a severe political grinding down so that a more uniform political consciousness of Maoism was generated as the guiding principle of the (...) nation; as an attempt to repudiate Russian revisionism and to assert the ideological identity of Maoism, the Great Cultural Revolution has helped in practice to provide a model of continuing revolution for a genuinely pursued Marxist society. In his long article, Chou Yang, who himself later became a target and victim of the Great Cultural Revolution, spelled out the latter message and hinted at the former possibility. What is even more significant is that he stressed repeatedly the importance of the role philosophy workers and social science workers must play in waging an ideological struggle against both Marxist revisionism and capitalism, on the one hand, and the importance of political leadership in the studies and works of philosophy and the social sciences, on the other. (shrink)

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of (...) restricted treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)

Methods to facilitate co-production in mental health are important for engaging end users. As part of the Technology for Healthy Aging and Wellbeing initiative we organized two interactive co-production workshops, to bring together older adults, health and social care professionals, non-governmental organizations, and researchers. In the first workshop, we used two activities: Technology Interaction and Scavenger Hunt, to explore the potential for different stakeholders to discuss late life mental health and existing technology. In the second workshop, we used Vignettes, Scavenger (...) Hunt, and Invention Test to examine how older adults and other stakeholders might co-produce solutions to support mental wellbeing in later life using new and emerging technologies. In this paper, we share the interactive materials and activities and consider their value for co-production. Overall, the interactive methods were successful in engaging stakeholders with a broad range of technologies to support mental health and wellbeing and in co-producing ideas for how they could be leveraged and incorporated into older people’s lives and support services. We offer this example of using interactive methods to facilitate co-production to encourage greater involvement of older adults and other under-represented groups in co-producing mental health technologies and services. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

This chapter suggests that descriptive epidemiological studies like the Global Burden of Disease Study can usefully be divided into four tasks: describing individuals’ health states over time, assessing their health states under a range of counterfactual scenarios, summarizing the information collected, and then packaging it for presentation. The authors show that each of these tasks raises important and challenging ethical questions. They comment on some of the philosophical issues involved in measuring health states, attributing causes to health outcomes, choosing the (...) counterfactual against which to assess causes, aggregating and summarizing complex information across multiple domains, discounting, age-weighting, handling fetal deaths, measuring health inequalities, representing uncertainty, and assessing personal responsibility for health outcomes. (shrink)

Collingwood argues that art is a remedy for what he calls a “corrupt consciousness.” Consciousness becomes corrupted when agents do not admit that they are starting to experience an emotion. Instead of becoming conscious of the emerging emotion, which is usually a difficult one, agents become conscious of an emotion that is easier to handle. Collingwood sees the corruption of consciousness as epistemically and morally problematic mainly because it is a form of dishonesty that infects the activity of the imagination (...) and the intellect. While highlighting the importance of Collingwood’s notion of the corruption of consciousness, this paper argues that this notion would benefit from being situated in an explicitly top-down model of attention and emotion as opposed to the bottom-up model that Collingwood proposes. This shift preserves the central insights of Collingwood’s aesthetics – most especially his emphasis on the specificity involved in the expression of emotion – while ironing out some of the implausibility in his underlying analysis. (shrink)

The winning of the ultimate military honour of spolia opima, spoils taken personally from an enemy commander killed by a Roman commander, traditionally occurred only three times in Roman history, the winners being Romulus in the legendary period, A. Cornelius Cossus in either 437 or 426 and M. Claudius Marcellus in 222 B.C.1 The dedication-place of these special spoils was the temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol, traditionally founded by Romulus for the purpose, and considered the oldest temple in (...) Rome : the god was said to draw his name either from the fact that the spolia opima were carried up to the Capitol by the victorious general in person, or from the fact that the general had to strike down his opposite number before such spoils could be won. (shrink)

Epode 10: the Mystery of Mevius' Crime Horace's tenth Epode, an inverse propempticon, calls down dire curses on the head of a man named Mevius as he leaves on a sea-voyage.1 Scholars have naturally been interested in what Mevius had done to merit such treatment, but answers have been difficult to find, for nothing explicit is said on this topic in the poem; as Leo noted, ‘[Horatius] ne verbo quidem tarn gravis odii causam indicat’. This is in direct contrast with (...) the Strasbourg epode usually attributed to Hipponax , which served as Horace's model in this poem; there it is clear that the similar curses on a departing sailor are caused by his breaking of oaths to the poet and betrayal of their previous friendship . One might expect Horace to give some kind of indirect suggestion of the nature of Mevius’ offence, but even this is despaired of by Fraenkel: ‘There is no hint at the sort of crime which Mevius is said to have committed, nor is anything said about the man himself; he remains an entirely shadowy figure’. The best that scholars have been able to do is to follow the ancient commentary of Porphyrio in suggesting that Horace's Mevius is to be identified with the poetaster attacked by Vergil in Ecl. 3.90 ‘qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mevi’. Though it is pleasant to think of Vergil and Horace, perhaps by now friends in the circle of Maecenas, ganging up on a luckless hack, there is, as Fraenkel points out, no mention in the tenth Epode that Mevius is a poet, and his literary incompetence, assuming he is Vergil's poet, does not seem to underlie or indeed warrant the bitter imprecations of the poem: Catullus might wish a dire fate on the works of a bad poet , but to long for their author's shipwreck and consumption by gulls might indeed seem excessive. (shrink)

In the beginning Weiss had no intention of publishing his journal, at least not during his lifetime. But urged by friends, colleagues, and an inspired press director, he has so far published two volumes of his journal, exceeding 1500 pages, and he promises still more. Unrevised, except for minor corrections of typography, grammar, and rhetoric, Weiss's daily jottings began in 1963 to appear quarterly as fascicles, bearing the title, Philosophy in Process. Each fascicle was 64 pages in length, and consisted (...) of dated entries of varying length, some fascicles beginning and ending in the middle of sentences. Twelve fascicles were published; these were subsequently collected and, in early 1966, were published in hardcover format as Philosophy in Process: Volume 1: 1955-1960. Volume 2: 1960-1964, published in late 1966, appeared all in one piece. In the Preface to Volume 2 Weiss says that, while writing the journal was initially incidental to writing books, it had become, at least during the composition of the second volume, his "major concern." Consequently, the second volume, in contrast with the first, "consists of sustained discussions carried out almost daily.". (shrink)

Ushenko's speculative vision opened on the problem of time and its relation to logic. Profoundly concerned about the theme of time--the theme that intrinsically defines romantic irrationalism--he yet endeavored to vindicate within the bounds of temporality the sovereignty of logic so essential to the continuance of classical philosophy. The dual preoccupation with time and logic urged him into the fields of symbolic logic and relativity physics. From the flux of unrepeatable events he disengaged the laws of logic and the propositions (...) of scientific discourse, while at the same time he sought to keep both orders of entity united without injury to either. He ventured into nature as disclosed by contemporary physics and selected the category of event to supplant substance. He undertook to expound a metaphysics of events, grappled with the problem of the unity not only of nature but of the singular events that make up nature, and fixed upon the overarching structure of the space-time of relativity physics to resolve the problem. But this did not suffice. The metaphysical vision at work in these early books glimpsed at moments a principle beyond time, beyond propositions, beyond events--the principle of power. Power and Events: An Essay on Dynamics in Philosophy focused on the principle of power, integrating the other themes in terms of it. As the mature work of a significant and original thinker, Power and Events posed the principle of power as the central idea for the future course of philosophical investigation. In pursuit of its implications Ushenko embarked upon the philosophy of art in his last book Dynamics of Art and in a consistent yet startling fashion advanced the thesis that the substance of art is in effect a dynamic equilibrium of powers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E. HochschildJoseph T. Lienhard, S.J.Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology. By Paige E. Hochschild. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 251. $125.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-964302-8.When students of St. Augustine consider his teaching on memory, they turn instinctively to the Confessions, book 10, and to On the Trinity, books 11 and 12. The lyrical passage in the Confessions is easy to teach and (...) intriguing in its contents. Paige Hochschild paints a much larger picture, drawing on far more sources. She also sees memory as a central category in Augustine’s thought. In the opening paragraph of the introduction, she describes memory (for Augustine) as the way the mind meets the world, as the way things external to the body are apprehended, as the way intelligible objects are known, and as what it means to be constituted in the image of God. This is a big order. And “order,” in Augustine’s sense, is key: the mind, as memory, brings order to the natural world, but also brings to light a providential order that is implicit in the sensible.The book is divided into three parts: (1) the philosophical tradition (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), (2) Augustine’s earlier writings (from the Cassiciacum dialogues up to De magistro and De musica), and (3) the Confessions and De trinitate. The conclusion of this complex study is that memory is salvific: it accounts for the soul’s progress by the dialectical play of the knowledge and love of what is possessed, yet not possessed. The lifelong process of healing in which memory functions is fulfilled in contemplation.Two characteristics of Hochschild’s book can be mentioned at the outset. First, she studies each author diachronically, measuring progress and growth in the author’s thought, and particularly in his understanding of memory. Second, she readily invokes a wide range of categories to explain and illuminate her main topic. The book is anything but an extended encyclopedia article on “memoria in Augustine.” The two principal terms in the title, “memory” and “theological anthropology,” are richly developed and elaborated.Chapter 1 begins with a short note on Augustine’s knowledge of Plato. It is generally admitted that Augustine read some of the dialogues of Plato in translation: the Timaeus, the Republic (albeit only parts of it), the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus. Some of these works, at least, may have come down to him through doxographers. But Plato’s influence on Augustine remains shadowy. It is “Platonism,” and particularly Plotinus, that influences him so clearly, a point made memorably in Confessions 7.9.13-15, and its intriguing reference to the libri Platonicorum. Before all else, Platonism delivers Augustine from the bondage of materialism.Hochschild treats Plato’s doctrine of memory under four headings: sense perception, knowledge as recollection, divisions in the ways of knowing, and the practice of dialectic. In regard to sense perception, the sharp distinction (found in the Republic) between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (epistêmê) [End Page 144] needs to be refined, Hochschild avers. At least in some later works, the sensible is an image of the intelligible, and hence some sense perception can be infallible. On the next topic, Plato invokes recollection to explain direct apprehension of the forms, but recollection does not recall what was perceived in the past but is a restoration of a clear, logical relationship. The Republic introduces a new element, “the illuminative power of the Good” (21). The final section of chapter 1 treats dialectic, concluding that “knowledge is fulfilled in virtue, and the art of dialectic is not merely an exercise in definition, but a hexis, and a way of living” (27).Chapter 2, on Aristotle, begins with the observation that, if Plato’s influence on Augustine was indirect, Aristotle’s was even more indirect, reaching Augustine through Plotinus. Most familiar, of course, are Augustine’s account of reading Aristotle’s Categories during his days at Carthage (Confessions 4.16.28-31) and his later use of the categories of substance and relation in his understanding of the Trinity, creating the category of “substantial relation,” which would... (shrink)

These six lectures from the twentyfirst Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures, an annual series exploring various dimensions of Roman life, provide an invaluable reflection on the relationship, Pelikan’s “counterpoint,” between Genesis and the Timaeus down through the ages. How did the only Platonic dialogue known in its entirety during the Middle Ages influence Judaeo-Christian cosmology? Pelikan chooses to answer this question by first discussing “Classical Rome: ‘Description of the Universe as Philosophy’” and Lucretius’ theological and literary contributions to the history of (...) cosmogonic speculation. In rejecting divine causality, Lucretius’ atomism made room for natural science and for a teleology without explicit reference to direct heavenly agency. Talk of the divine was thus interpreted apophatically and the poetry of de Rerum Natura allowed the truths of what remains for us a “likely story” to be conveyed without a historical or anthropomorphic literalness. Lucretius’ indebtedness to Epicurean materialism is obvious and as Pelikan stresses, “it was from Athens that classical Rome learned to think philosophically about cosmogony”. In “Athens: Geneseôs Archê as ‘The Principle of Becoming’,” Pelikan poses the fundamental questions: Why was the cosmos created? And according to what model had it been created? Plato’s answer is of course that the world of becoming is an image of an immutable and perfect model. This patterning is due to God as Goodness and his willing that all things act together for a purpose. Chapter 3 continues this inquiry with “Jerusalem: Genesis as a ‘Likely Account’ of One God Almighty Maker.” Here Pelikan focuses in on Jerusalem’s contribution of the imago Dei. While the Timaeus defines “the terms of the counterpoint,” Genesis sets “the outline and sequence” of creation, the crowning achievement of which is the rational and sovereign human person. Therefore, whereas Plato may have understood the entire universe to be in God’s image, Moses reserved this exalted position for humanity alone, a dignity Pelikan treats in his discussion of free moral choice. (shrink)

Ushenko presented his philosophy of logic in vehement opposition to "the postulationist theory." In the endeavor to amputate logic from philosophy and absorb it within mathematics, the postulationists viewed logic as an isolated object-logic to be discussed in meta-logic and construed its symbolic formulas as a game played according to arbitrarily established rules. The objections Ushenko raised are no longer novel, but twenty years ago the entire controversy was new. Above all, he stressed the numerous difficulties entangling the meta-logic. He (...) scored the menace of an infinite regress of meta-logics, and insisted that the consequences of Gödel's work necessarily frustrate the initial great expectations of the postulationists. No purely formal system can be internally proved to be self-consistent and certainly no formal language can ever become as comprehensive as English, though the price of such comprehensiveness is the inevitable occurrence of contradictory sentences. Moreover, he argued that, despite the postulationists' pretense that rules like the principle of non-contradiction were mere conventions for playing the game of logic, these rules proved ubiquitous by trespassing from the object-logic and intruding into the ultimate reaches of the meta-logic. (shrink)

-- A ground-breaking exploration of Steiner's thought-- One of the most important philosophers of the last 150 years-- Vast legacy of practical work with world-wide supportersThe Austrian-born philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) created a vast legacy of practical work in Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, Camphill communities for adults and children with special needs, as well as in many other artistic and scientific areas.The foundation of all these approaches is a highly developed system of thought with which Steiner addressed philosophical issues. Many (...) of these issues were also tackled by a number of contemporaries, notably the phenomenological school represented by Edmund Husserl and others.Seeking to clarify his moral thinking which he termed 'ethical individualism', Steiner offered a challenging view of knowledge, not as an abstract and objectified reality, but as a form of relationship between the knower and the known. By this measure, all genuine knowledge is experiential and thus intimately involved with, and capable of changing, the world. Equally, there is no world 'out there', since every individual is a participant in reality, and there are no morally neutral acts or thoughts.Andrew Welburn presents a fascinating insight into the radical nature of Steiner's thinking. Welburn examines his inheritance of ideas from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, his attempt to break out of Cartesian dualism and Kantian idealism, and his challenge to the conventional framework of European philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference by Andrew Lazella Christopher Cullen S.J. Andrew Lazella, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference. Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. Pp. x + 260. $72.00. ISBN: 9780823284573. John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) is aptly called the Subtle Doctor. His thought is filled with (...) subtleties and distinctions that embody medieval Scholasticism's attempt to master the science of metaphysics, especially as it had been recast by the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics—a text that Scotus wrote about at length. Andrew Lazella's book, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference aims precisely at presenting the subtleties of Scotus' answer to Parmenides with the Eleatic's denial of the reality of the multiplicity of beings and of change. Lazella first illumines in detail Scotus's central metaphysical doctrine, namely, that the mind attains a univocal concept of being. But the problem then becomes, as Lazella rightly perceives, that this "univocity of being" might seem to be in danger of collapsing being into a Parmenidean monism. Hence, the urgency for Scotus "to divide being at its joints" (as Lazella refers to the task; 2). Scotus has to find the ultimate differences that demarcate the multiplicity and divisions of being, if his univocity of being is not to collapse being into a false unity. Lazella shows how Scotus attempts to escape the monism of Parmenides while also avoiding a Heraclitean flux and multitude that destroys the possibility of knowledge and science. For Scotus, only the univocal concept of being is adequate to this task. An analogy of being is inadequate, primarily because it is on the side of equivocation. The univocal concept is "the singular voice of being" that illumines the unity of the finite world, with its vast multitude of things, and that also grounds the concepts of a natural theology of the infinite God. Lazella insightfully begins the book by presenting Scotus's work as an answer to Parmenides and thus to the most basic of all metaphysical questions, as discussed above. Part 1 of the book includes three chapters: the first two discuss in detail the univocal concept that unites beings, and [End Page 237] chapter 3 outlines the concept of the ultimate difference that divides being. Lazella highlights a threefold taxonomy of ultimate differences that are found in the modes, species, and individuals of being. Part 2 of the book includes three chapters, one on each of the "regions" of ultimate difference: chapter 4 treats the intrinsic modes of being; chapter 5 the ultimate specific differences that account for the diversity of species; and chapter 6 presents the ultimate individual difference, i.e., "thisness" or haeceitas, which accounts for the reality of the individual substances. A helpful conclusion summarizes the argument of the book as a whole."In his early Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis, Scotus says that things are univocally named when they share not only the same term (vox) or name (nomen) but also the same account (ratio)" (17). The opposite extreme from univocty is equivocity. Equivocity obtains when things only share a name but have different accounts. In between these two extremes is analogy: "Analogical names require that the name signify multiple rationes, which are unified according to some order or relation" (17). This account of these three terms is uncontroversial. Lazella thinks that Scotus's turn to univocity, as the ground of metaphysics, is driven largely by his epistemology. For Scotus, "cognition is rooted in sensible accidents and is unable to gain access to the real essences of substances themselves" (6). Hence the isomorphism between mind and reality cannot be secured without a univocal concept of being, contra the views of the majority of his fellow thirteenth-century Scholastics, such as Bonaventure and Aquinas. A key point is that, for Scotus, the intelligible species, or likeness, abstracted from the phantasm by the agent intellect, is not understood as a mirror that re-presents the form found in the concrete substances of the world. For Scotus, the intelligible species is no longer understood as a formal sign that... (shrink)

This important handbook provides a comprehensive, authoritative review of achievement motivation and establishes the concept of competence as an organizing ...

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Keith Hutchison has advanced the thesis that the Mechanical Philosophy represents a shift towards supernaturalism in our conception of the physical world. This paper concentrates on one of the great problems of seventeenth-century biological theory — animal generation — to illustrate (and modify) Hutchison's thesis, thereby also serving to locate one role of the life sciences in the Scientific Revolution. This choice of focus enables us to draw heavily on Jacques Roger's seminal work on animal generation (...) to illuminate the change that occurs, within the Mechanical Philosophy, between Descartes and Malebranche. Once the necessary distinctions have been drawn, it is argued, it will be seen that (in one important sense) this is a shift from naturalism to supernaturalism, brought about largely by problems native to the life sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The ritual analysis (at Mimamsa Sutra 1.1.2) (...) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

This volume consists of two lecture series given by Heidegger in the 1940s and 1950s. The lectures given in Bremen constitute the first public lectures Heidegger delivered after World War II, when he was officially banned from teaching. Here, Heidegger openly resumes thinking that deeply engaged him with Hölderlin's poetry and themes developed in his earlier works. In the Freiburg lectures Heidegger ponders thought itself and freely engages with the German idealists and Greek thinkers who had provoked him in the (...) past. Andrew J. Mitchell's translation allows English-speaking readers to explore important connections with Heidegger's earlier works on language, logic, and reality. (shrink)

THE REVIVAL OF ONTOLOGY, the study of being, is a conspicuous feature of the present philosophical scene. Analytic philosophers and phenomenological researchers concur in admitting the validity of ontological questions, although they disagree about the manner in which these questions may be expressed and answered. Few philosophers in ancient or modern times have matched Paul Weiss in the field of ontology, and I esteem it a privilege, for which I wish to state my thanks, to have been invited here to (...) participate in this symposium in Weiss's honor and to have as my topic for discussion his concept of being. (shrink)