Recognising and responding appropriately to emotions is critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Psychopathic traits (e.g. callous, manipulative, impulsive, antisocial) are related to differences in recognition and response when emotion is conveyed through facial expressions and language. Use of emotional music stimuli represents a promising approach to improve our understanding of the specific emotion processing difficulties underlying psychopathic traits because it decouples recognition of emotion from cues directly conveyed by other people (e.g. facial signals). In Experiment 1, participants listened to clips (...) of emotional music and identified the emotional content (Sample 1, N = 196) or reported on their feelings elicited by the music (Sample 2, N = 197). Participants accurately recognised (t(195) = 32.78, p <.001, d = 4.69) and reported feelings consistent with (t(196) = 7.84, p <.001, d = 1.12) the emotion conveyed in the music. However, psychopathic traits were associated with reduced emotion recognition accuracy (F(1, 191) = 19.39, p <.001) and reduced likelihood of feeling the emotion (F(1, 193) = 35.45, p <.001), particularly for fearful music. In Experiment 2, we replicated findings for broad difficulties with emotion recognition (Sample 3, N = 179) and emotional resonance (Sample 4, N = 199) associated with psychopathic traits. Results offer new insight into emotion recognition and response difficulties that are associated with psychopathic traits. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula:From Studied Ambiguity to Saving MysteryBrian E. Daley, S.J.One of the central questions Christian theologians continue to ask themselves, as they confront the mystery of the person of Christ, is, what is the significance for us today of the Council of Chalcedon? For generations of modern scholars, especially those in the West, the dense and rather technical phrases forged at that fifth-century gathering of Christian (...) bishops and appended to a restatement of what we know as the “Nicene creed” represented a major milestone in the Churches’ ongoing clarification of how disciples are to understand the person of Jesus the Savior.In J. N. D. Kelly’s widely used survey, Early Christian Doctrines,1 for instance, Chalcedon’s “settlement” of the twenty-four-year dispute between Nestorius and his Antiochene supporters and Cyril of Alexandria and the Church of Alexandria was the culmination of “the decisive period for Christology”2 in the early Church, an attempt to define an understanding of Christ that could be accepted by all Christians throughout the Empire, but which nevertheless—surprisingly, perhaps—“failed to bring permanent peace.”3 Aloys Grillmeier, in his foundational study of the growth of early Christian understandings of Jesus, speaks of the years up to Chalcedon as [End Page 165] temporally defining “the development of belief in Christ from its beginning to its first climax in a council of the Church.”4 In an influential study of the theology of the seventh-century monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor, Hans Urs von Balthasar emphasizes the centrality of Chalcedon’s formulaic, classically dialectical picture of the person of Christ as central to Maximus’s whole approach to God, the world, and the human spirit. The reason, Balthasar argues, lies in Chalcedon’s ability to affirm both unity and abiding difference in Christ as the dominant pattern of God’s relationship to creation:From the moment that Chalcedon, in its sober and holy wisdom, elevated the adverbs ‘indivisibly’ (ἀδαιρέτως) and ‘unconfusedly’ (ἀσυγχύτως) to a dogmatic formula, the image of a reciprocal indwelling of two distinct poles of being replaced the image of mixture. This mutual ontological presence (περιχώρησις) not only preserves the being particular to each element, to the divine and the human natures, but also brings each of them to its perfection in their very difference, even enhancing that difference. Love, which is the highest level of union, only takes root in the growing independence of the lovers; the union between God and the world reveals, in the very nearness it creates between these two poles of being, the ever-greater difference between created being and the essentially incomparable God.5With a little help from German Romantic philosophy, and perhaps from his Jesuit confrère Erich Przywara, Balthasar here sees in the Chalcedonian picture of Christ not only Maximus’s central inspiration, but the early Church’s final paradigm for conceiving how the transcendent God can be present and crucially active in the world.One might multiply examples. But does this understanding of Chalcedon’s portrait of Christ really represent its intent or its lasting meaning? What led to its articulation? What was, one may ask, the real achievement of this gathering of over 500 Eastern bishops, mainly from the Greek-speaking East, called by the new emperor Marcian and his long-influential spouse, the [End Page 166] Empress Pulcheria, in a port suburb across the Bosporus from Constantinople, in October of 451? On the level of Church politics, at least, it was a step towards restoring a balance, however briefly, between major centers of influence in the Church of the mid-fifth century, and the theological traditions with which they had become associated: a balance precariously achieved in 433, after the bitter controversy over Nestorius’s views on how to conceive the person of Christ, by what is often called the “Formula of Reunion,” which sketched the outlines of traditional faith in the Savior—a formula apparently drafted at that time by Theodoret of Cyrus and proposed by the Church of Antioch, but which was also warmly embraced by Theodoret’s principal rival, Cyril of Alexandria. After heated debates between the bishop of Constantinople, the... (shrink)

There are good reasons for envisioning a global discourse about God, premised necessarily agreed upon perfections considered to be by definition proper to God, and for thinking through the implications of our understanding of God for morality. Philosophically, it makes sense to hold that claims about omnipotence, omniscience, and other superlative perfections are indeed maximal, and define “God” wherever the terminology of divine persons is taken up. Religiously too, it makes sense to assert that a deity possessed of perfections is (...) not just the deity of one’s own tribe or religion, but also the deity of the whole world, whether acknowledged as such or not. This essay delves into the larger set of rich complexities by three moves. First, I look into a single extended historical case of the extension of the discourse about God beyond the Christian West, the discourse on God proffered by Western Jesuit missionaries in India from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Second, I place next to that Jesuit learning the instance of a famed Hindu theologian’s discourse on God, God’s perfections, and their moral implications. Third, I briefly step back and assess the dangers and fruitful prospects inherent in thinking about God and morality in an interreligious context. (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Cicero's praise of Caesar in thePro Marcelloof September 46b.c.e.has been much discussed for its sincerity or otherwise. Here I would like to point out some unobserved literary colour which may make some contribution to the argument, namely Cicero's subtle evocation of Hercules in describing the achievements of the victorious Caesar. Such an analogy is not unlikely in the context of Roman military image-making: Sulla in 78b.c.e.and Crassus and Pompey in 70b.c.e.had earlier encouraged connections with Hercules in analogous victorious contexts, and (...) similar comparisons are later made between the foreign conquests of Augustus and those of Hercules in both Virgil and Horace. (shrink)

"This fine book is ideal for introductory courses in philosophy, and it is executed and backed up by careful, sophisticated philosophical analysis and insight." —_W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Fordham University_ _ _ _Human Knowing_ is a clearly written, brief introduction that guides the reader through an exploration of sense perception, ordinary knowing, scientific knowing, and philosophic knowing. This journey culminates in a justification of philosophy as a genuine form of knowing and thus a natural prelude to metaphysics. Though Felt manages (...) to avoid technical language, the development of his argument is a genuine exercise in philosophic thinking. The outcome is a contemporary expression of a position similar to that of Thomas Aquinas, significantly enriched by insights from Bergson, Whitehead, and phenomenology. (shrink)

This study of three central themes in the logic of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the ancient Aristotelian commentators, provides insight not only into Aristotle's logical writings but also into the tradition of scholarship which they spawned.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hereditary Eloquence Among the Torquati: Catullus 61.209–18S. J. HarrisonTorquatus volo parvulus matris e gremio suae porrigens teneras manus dulce rideat ad patrem semihiante labello.sit suo similis patri Manlio et facile omnibus noscitetur ab insciis et pudicitiam suae matris indicet ore. 1At the close of Catullus’ lyric epithalamium for a Manlius Torquatus, the speaker of the poem wishes for children from the marriage, a standard epithalamial topic in this position; (...) the wish for features in the final prayers of the wedding-speech according to Menander Rhetor (II.411.16, 20–21 Spengel). One interpretational problem here is that lines 215–18 seem to say the same thing twice—a double wish that the son of the marriage be easily recognisable through his physical features as the true offspring of his father. This problem can be solved by a closer consideration of the text and of the identity of the Manlius Torquatus involved.There seems to be general agreement that the most likely candidate for the bridegroom of Catullus’ poem is L. Manlius Torquatus, praetor in 50 or 49 B.C. and killed in the civil war in 47. 2 Cicero knew and admired this Torquatus, making him the Epicurean spokesman in the De Finibus, and giving him a fulsome notice in the Brutus (265). It is clear from the latter that this Torquatus was a leading public speaker of his time: Cicero speaks of his divina memoria, summa verborum et gravitas et elegantia. My contention is that this detail of Torquatus’ eloquence makes sense of Catullus 61.209–18. [End Page 285]The shape of the sentence seems to be as follows: the general idea that the son will resemble his father is put first (sit suo similis patri / Manlio), and then subdivided into two particular elements balanced and linked by et... et. In the usual interpretation, those two elements are identical—Manlius’ son will be easily recognised as his by all through family physical resemblance (ore). This seems unsatisfactory, given the apparent care taken to balance and differentiate them. But if we translate ore not as ‘face’ but as ‘mouth’, i.e., eloquence, a new and appropriate point emerges which is different from that of physical resemblance: as the son of a noted orator, it will be through his hereditary talent for public speaking as well as by his looks that the future Torquatus will be proved his father’s true child. Os is found elsewhere in poetry in this pregnant sense of ‘eloquence’: we may compare Ovid, Pont. 3.5.7 iuvenis patrii non degener oris (a similar context of hereditary eloquence, addressing Cotta Maximus, son of the great orator Messalla Corvinus), Silius, Punica 11.65 cunctis praecellens Virrius ore (the rhetorical skills of a Capuan delegate), and TLL 9.2.1081.54ff.It is interesting to note from two famous poems of Horace that Catullus’ prophecy about the eloquence of Torquatus’ son may have been fulfilled. It has been suggested that the Manlius Torquatus addressed by Horace in Epistles 1.5 and Odes 4.7 is a son of the consul of 65, 3 and therefore perhaps contemporary with or somewhat older than Horace, born in 65 himself. However, it is equally possible that he is a son of Catullus’ bridegroom, the praetor of 50 or 49, and therefore younger than the poet. 4 We should imagine a son of the praetor Torquatus being born in the mid-50s, the approximate date of Catullus 61; this would seem appropriate for the Torquatus addressed in Epistles 1.5, a rising advocate who looks to be in mid-career around 20 B.C., and for the addressee of Odes 4.7, fittingly addressed in around 13 B.C. with thoughts on mortality now he has reached forty and middle age in Horatian terms (cf. Odes 2.4.22–24). Horace’s Torquatus is clearly a prominent orator: the [End Page 286] epistle urges him to leave the law-courts, where he is in demand as an advocate, and come to a party at Horace’s house, while Odes 4.7 refers specifically to his facundia (23). This eloquent Torquatus could be following his father... (shrink)