Father Raphael C. McCarthy Doctor of Philosophy of London University and Professor of Experimental Psychology at St. Louis University, contributes this paper as a general estimate of the influence which one man has exerted upon the vast and complex network of scientific world thought. We also acknowledge our indebtedness for this paper to Mr. William J. Miller of the School of Philosophy, who prepared it for those pages.

On the basis of a definition of God as “love”, human philanthropy is derived from Divine philanthropy, and therefore extends to all human beings. Because Divine philanthropy is most centrally expressed in Christ's incarnation and resurrection, Christ's identification with all who suffer presents the strongest motivation for human philanthropy. After a short review of the Romanian Orthodox Church's development after 1989, the author turns to his special case study, the Social-Medical Day-Care Christian Centre for older citizens. He describes the wan (...) in which Church-based philanthropy can integrate social-medical with Christian pastoral care, and how this work draws the local communities into assuming a shared responsibility. (shrink)

In Volume Two of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, Fortin deals with the relationship between religion and civil society in a Christian context: that of an essentially nonpolitical but by no means entirely otherwordly religion, many of whose teachings were thought to be fundamentally at odds with the duties of citizenship. Sections focus upon Augustine and Aquinas, on Christianity and politics; natural law, natural rights, and social justice; and Leo Strauss and the revival of classical political philosophy. Fortin's treatment of these (...) and related themes betrays a keen awareness of one of the significant intellectual events of our time: the recovery of political philosophy as a legitimate academic discipline. (shrink)

Locke was the first to develop with profundity and defend the thesis that we are all responsible for our believings, and that to do one’s duty with respect to one’s believings one must, at appropriate junctures and in appropriate ways, listen to the voice of Reason. Reason must be one’s guide. Locke had forebears and cohorts in this line of thought; I want not only to concede but to insist on this. Nonetheless, Locke was the great genius behind our modern (...) ways of thinking of rationality and responsibility in beliefs. And Locke’s vision became classic: for many, compelling; by some, contested; by no one, ignored. Locke, on this issue, is the father of modernity. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, one of the richest depositories of rabbinic reflections on the study of the Torah. It is the earliest commentary on Abot, the only tractate of the Mishnah that does not deal with legal matters but exclusively with "agada," an unlimited variety of religious, ethical, and edifying subjects.

A propos de : Thomas G. WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap., «The Father's Spirit on Sonship. Reconceiving the Trinity», Edinburgh : T&T Clark, 1995.

A thoroughly researched biography of Henry James, Sr., the father of author William, philosopher Henry Jr., and diarist Alice, presents an in-depth portrait of a complex, brilliant man whose restless and driven life had a great effect on his children.

Arthur Ruppin was the central figure in the Zionist colonization project in Palestine-Land of Israel in the decades preceded the establishment of the state of Israel. Ruppin's immense contribution gave him in Zionist historiography the title of ‘The Father of Jewish settlement in Palestine.’ Nevertheless, in spite of the title ‘Father’, Zionist historiography actually treats him as a ‘Zionist clerk,’ diminishing his role to an apolitical expert on bureaucracy and the economy. Exploring the reasons for his ambiguous position (...) in Zionist historiography and memory, the historical account in the following article reveals how formative were his activities not only in the establishment of the bureaucratic field of the Yishuv (pre-state of Israel), but also in producing and disseminating the modern Hebrew identity models, consequently the article analyzes the relation of these models to the German-social Darwinist perceptions and practices, which shaped Ruppin's cultural identity, weltanschauung and actions. (shrink)

Early life in Athens -- Plato's education in philosophy -- A departure from Socrates -- The Academy and Plato's last teachings.

Informing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus that the cornerstone of the Jesuit mission in China – that is, Father Matteo Ricci – had passed away on 3 May 1610, Father Pasio wrote:Fu servito Nostro Signore di chiamare al paradiso il buon P. Matteo Ricci, tanto antico nella Cina, e che accreditò molto la legge di Dio e la Compagnia con la sua santità, prudentia e patientia, aprendo il cammino agli altri Padri in quella folta selva (...) di gentilità.Approximately three centuries later, a man whom Father Delattre unhesitatingly called “our indefatigable Sinologist” – Father Léon Wieger – also died on Chinese soil. (shrink)

The ambiguity of August Strindberg’s approach to women has engendered varying interpretations, including accusations of misogyny. Among his allegedly misogynistic plays is the 1887 naturalistic masterpiece, The Father. Chronologically coinciding with the rise of the women’s movement in Sweden, The Father, rather than endorsing a misogynistic culture, allows for an alternative reading that contributes to the destabilisation of gender binaries and an understanding of gender identities as relational and performative. In its portrayal of a fierce struggle between a (...) seemingly diabolic wife and a supposedly tyrannical husband, the play delves deeply into the dynamics of gender and the subversion of normatively established orders. This article analyses Strindberg’s play in relation to Slavoj Žižek’s conception of the ‘femme fatale’ and Judith Butler’s account of gender performativity to illustrate how the play’s central characters performatively subvert the hegemonic norms by which they are constituted. (shrink)

Offers a robust, full-orbed theology of beauty, showing how it has functioned as a theological concept from biblical times to the present day.

Informing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus that the cornerstone of the Jesuit mission in China – that is, Father Matteo Ricci – had passed away on 3 May 1610, Father Pasio wrote:Fu servito Nostro Signore di chiamare al paradiso il buon P. Matteo Ricci, tanto antico nella Cina, e che accreditò molto la legge di Dio e la Compagnia con la sua santità, prudentia e patientia, aprendo il cammino agli altri Padri in quella folta selva (...) di gentilità.Approximately three centuries later, a man whom Father Delattre unhesitatingly called “our indefatigable Sinologist” – Father Léon Wieger – also died on Chinese soil. (shrink)

This contribution discusses the expression ‘Image of the Father’ as a case in point to Aquinas's approach of naming Christ: Christology and Trinitarian theology, as well as the discussion of analogical naming in divinis, need to be taken together. ‘Image’ and ‘Father’ are predicated differently of Christ and God the Father than of human beings. Moreover, God is ‘Father’ in a different way towards the Son than regarding human beings. Christ is the unique image of the (...) Father: the invisible image of the invisible Father. (shrink)

Son of Athens -- Plato and Socrates -- The philosopher -- The teacher.

The career of the father of Claudius Etruscus is of special importance in the history of the Imperial administration in the first century A.D. In the course of a long life he rose from slave status under Tiberius to be head of the Imperial financial administration and to equestrian status under Vespasian. He was one of the most important, wealthy, and influential of the Imperial freedmen in the first century when their influence was at its peak; he is one (...) of the best documented of their number outside the pages of Tacitus; yet we do not know his personal name—he has to remain simply ‘the father of Claudius Etruscus’ —and even his nomen gentilicium and the date of his appointment to be the secretary a rationibus are subject to disput. (shrink)

The Russian Free Orthodox church, a church that preferred martyrdom, ostracism, and the underground to serving the Bolshevik regime, is now emerging from the catacombs and returning from exile. We heard in D.E. Furman's talk that among respondents there were more persons expressing their adherence to the Russian Free Orthodox church than those expressing their adherence to the Patriarchy. I, too, think that this is a reaction to the combination of the words "freedom" and "Orthodox," but this is a very (...) significant reaction and tells something about our potentialities. It seems very important to me that a correct understanding now be established about what our church is. (shrink)

Whether Trinitarianism is coherent depends not only on whether some account of the Trinity is coherent, but on which accounts of the Trinity count as "Trinitarian." After all, Arianism and Modalism are both accounts of the Trinity, but neither counts as Trinitarian (which is why defenses of Arianism or Modalism don’t count as defenses of Trinitarianism). This raises the question, if not just any account of the Trinity counts as Trinitarian, which do? Dale Tuggy is one of very few philosophers (...) to give explicit definitions of Trinitarian (versus Unitarian) theology. But they are no mere formalities. They are essential to his central criticisms of both historical and contemporary forms of Trinitarianism. In this paper, I offer my own definitions of Trinitarian and Unitarian theology, contrast them with Tuggy’s, and argue for the superiority of my definitions to Tuggy’s. If Trinitarianism and Unitarianism are what Tuggy says they are, the outlook for Trinitarianism is bleak indeed. If they are what I say they are, Tuggy’s central objection to Trinitarianism fails. To show what is at stake in these pairs of definitions, I examine a doctrine much neglected in Analytic Theology, but central to Nicene Trinitarianism—the Monarchy of the Father. (shrink)

The purpose of the present systematic and critical review was to assess the findings and to identify the gaps in the literature concerning gay and bisexual fathers. A comprehensive search of relevant literature using electronic databases and reference lists for articles published until December 2016 was conducted. A total of 63 studies, spanning from 1979 to 2016, were collected. More than half of the studies were published after 2011 and the overwhelming majority were conducted in the United States. Nine themes (...) were identified in the studies reviewed: (1) Pathways to fatherhood; (2) Motivations for fatherhood; (3) Parenting experiences and childrearing; (4) Family life and relationship quality; (5) Gender and father identities and gender-role orientation; (6) Disclosure of sexual identity; (7) Social climate; (8) Father’s psychosocial adjustment; and (9) Children’s psychosocial adjustment. It was found that research on gay fatherhood appears to be more heterogeneous than on lesbian motherhood, perhaps because of the variety of pathways to parenthood (via co-parenting, adoption, fostering, or surrogacy). Two-father families are becoming more visible in research on sexual minority parenting and gradually transforming the conceptualization of parenting in family research. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Translation Over eighty years ago Solomon Schechter published a second version of Abot de Rabbi Nathan1 ...

This paper examines the historical claims about philosophy, dating back to Parmenides, that we argue underlie Jacques Lacan’s polemical provocations in the mid-1970s that his position was an “anti-philosophie”. Following an introduction surveying the existing literature on the subject, in part ii, we systematically present the account of classical philosophy Lacan has in mind when he declares psychoanalysis to be an antiphilosophy after 1975, assembling his claims about the history of ideas in Seminars XVII and XX in ways earlier contributions (...) of this subject have not systematically done. In part iii, focusing upon Lacan’s remarkable reading of Descartes’ break with premodern philosophy—but touching on Lacan’s readings of Hegel and the early Wittgenstein—we examine Lacan’s positioning of psychoanalysis as a legatee of the Cartesian moment in the history of western ideas, nearly-contemporary with Galileo’s mathematization of physics and carried forwards by Kant’s critical philosophy and account of the substanceless subject of apperception. In different terms than Slavoj Žižek, we propose that it is Lacan’s famous avowal that the subject of the psychoanalysis is the subject first essayed by Descartes in The Meditations on First Philosophy as confronting an other capable of deceit that decisively measures the distance between Lacan’s unique “antiphilosophy” and the forms of later modern linguistic and cultural relativism whose hegemony Alain Badiou has decried, at the same time as it sets Lacan’s antiphilosophy apart from the Parmenidean legacy for which thinking and being could be the same. (shrink)

A boy from Stagira -- In the shadow of Socrates and Plato -- The student becomes the teacher -- New ideas in science, logic, and politics -- The rise and fall of Aristotle's legacy.

In this paper, I examine how Scotus and Ockham try to solve the following problem. If different kinds of constituents contribute some difference in kind to the things they constitute, then the divine Father and Son should be different in kind because they are constituted by at least some constituents that are different in kind (namely, fatherhood and sonship). However, if the Father and Son are different in kind, the Son's production will be equivocal, and equivocal products are (...) typically less perfect than their producers. Therefore, the Son must be subordinate to the Father. In response, Scotus argues that different kinds of constituents do not necessarily result in different kinds of things, but Ockham rejects this, arguing instead that although the Father and Son are different in kind, they are still equal in perfection because of their identity with the divine essence. (shrink)

The positions of Brandom and Millikan are compared with respect to their common origins in the works of Wilfrid Sellars and Wittgenstein. Millikan takes more seriously the “picturing” themes from Sellars and Wittgenstein. Brandom follows Sellars more closely in deriving the normativity of language from social practice, although there are also hints of a possible derivation from evolutionary theory in Sellars. An important claim common to Brandom and Millikan is that there are no representations without function or “attitude”.

Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart were exponents of the experimental philosophy of mind in the Scottish Enlightenment. The unique character of their philosophical project lies in the adoption of the mind-matter dualism as a necessary condition for the study of mental phenomena. This fact led them to recognize the importance of Descartes, both for being the first to clearly delimit the mental and material realms and for emphasizing the relevance of reflection as an instrument for the study of (...) mind. But at the same time, the Frenchman was also the target of their criticism for dismissing the value of experimentation and appealing to hypotheses to explain natural behaviour. This paper aims to review this group of Scottish philosophers’ views of the mind, explaining, at the same time, the reasons for their ambivalent attitude towards Descartes. In order to make sense of this ambivalence, I will argue that it is useful to bear in mind two different aspects of the methodology that the Scots put forward to study mental phenomena: firstly, the one between analogy and reflection and, secondly, the one between induction and hypothesis making. (shrink)

A biography treating the philosophy as well as the life of the great Athenian thinker.

The period in the history of blood transfusion that I discuss is roughly 1628, the date of publication of Harvey’s work on blood circulation, De Motu Cordis, and 1668, the year of the first allegedly successful transfusion of blood into a human subject by a French physician Jean Denis, and the official order to prohibit the procedure. The subject of special interest in this history is Robert Desgabets, an early defender and teacher of the Cartesian philosophy at St. Maur, in (...) the region of Lorraine, France. Desgabets’ Discourse de la communication ou transfusion du sang Communication or Transfusion of Blood contains a defence and description of the procedure. This three page manuscript is a lecture delivered at one of the meetings held at M. de Montmor in July 1658. Letters and documents which describe the events of these conferences during Desgabets’ eight month stay in Paris in 1658, indicate that he had numerous discussions with the Cartesian physicist Jacques Rohault and also with another leading Cartesian scientist, Gerauld Cordemoy. In addition, Desgabets is said to have frequently attended the meetings where he showed his interest in many scientific questions. I provide evidence that Desgabets was not an arm-chair scientist: he performed experiments, and he designed and created an apparatus to carry out the procedure of blood transfusion. I show how Desgabets’s Cartesian conception of mechanism and body had theological as well as epistemological underpinnings and consequences. For Desgabets, experiments on blood transfusion were as much demonstrations of the truth of the Cartesian metaphysics as they were demonstrations of the possibility of transubstantiation. The role of experiment was to provide demonstrations of the first principles or truths of physics and theology by connecting them to the way God actually made the world. The upshot of Desgabets's treatment of expérience is that it is integral to the knowledge of essences, and hence to the discovery of the truth of things. In placing expérience at the very foundation of true knowledge, Desgabets reconstructs Cartesianism on an empiricist foundation. (shrink)

This is the 5th volume in the series of popular, small volumes by the well-known philosophy Professor Kreeft in which the "Father of Philosophy," Socrates, cross-examines various other important philosophers and thinkers In this work, he states that Socrates and Descartes are probably the two most important philosophers who have ever lived, because they are the two who made the most difference to all philosophy after them. The two of them stand at the beginning of the two basic philosophical (...) options: the classical and the modern. Kreeft focuses on seven features that unite these two major philosophers and distinguish them from all others. So this dialog between Socrates and Descartes is a dialog between the fundamental stages in the history of philosophy, the history of consciousness, and the history of Western culture. (shrink)

The essential mission of the church is evangelization (EN 14). She establishes her own schools to accomplish this mission. Evangelization aims at the formation of the whole person. In this complete formation, the religion or faith dimension plays an important role in the development of the other aspects of one’s personality in the measure in which it is integrated into general education. The extent to which the Christian message is transmitted through education depends not only on content and methodology but (...) also on the teacher, usually the lay. The Catholic Schools and the lay educators receive from the Church, through the Bishops, this “mandate” of “an apostolic undertaking”. Religious instruction in the Archdiocese of Cebu rests on the religious congregations spread across the province. The congregations pursue mainly their vision, mission, and thrusts. This study sought to review the Catholic Life Formation (CLF) content and strategies of ten representative schools from the Catholic Church and the Catechism for Filipino Catholics to ensure the inclusion of basic doctrine and Faith essentials, evaluate the qualifications and the teaching performance of teachers CLF or Christian Living and propose a model for Cebu Catholic Life Formation Program Scope and Sequence and a corollary Facilitators Formation Program needed to implement it. CLF curriculum of the 10 schools varied greatly in catechetical focus. Review of curriculum content revealed that the essentials of the Faith lacked in organic and systematic manner of presentation. The 10 schools had variance in elements, systems and sequence of exposition, faith exposure and prayer forms lack in connectivity to Church prescriptions. Thus, a Model Cebu CLF Program Scope and Sequence is proposed for the utilization by the Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Cebu. Keywords - Cebu Catholic Life Formation, Archdiocese of Cebu. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist and Catholic Monks Talk about CelibacyThomas Ryan, CSPThe electronic sign at the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport was flashing "Orange Alert" as a dozen Buddhist monks arrived in their burnt orange robes from around the country for three days of dialogue on celibacy with a similar number of Catholic monastics come together from various monasteries at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. As he opened the October 26–29, 2006, meeting, (...) Rev. William Skudlarek, executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID), said, "You (Buddhists) have been at this for some five-to-seven hundred years longer than we have. We have something to learn."This was the second Monks in the West interreligious dialogue. The first took place in 2004 at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in northern California. On the Catholic side, the participants came from the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Camaldolese monasteries. On the Buddhist side, they came from the Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan traditions. Through the event, participants began the day with an hour of quiet sitting in meditation and joined the monastic community at St. John's for their rhythm of daily prayer.The first session dealt with theory, the "why" of celibacy. Buddhist participants explained that their teachings focus on seeing how suffering is created and cured. Attachments give rise to suffering, so advancement in the spiritual life requires letting go of one's attachments. Attachment to desires, among which are sexual desires, is a hindrance to spiritual progress. "Raging desire takes away choice, freedom," said Rev. Kusala Bhikshu, a Buddhist chaplain at UCLA, in his opening presentation. "The senses must be controlled in order to be free."Brother Gregory Perron from St. Procopius monastery in Indiana spoke of how monastic life demands a profound understanding and acceptance of solitude. "Celibacy is a tool," offered Perron, "a skillful means like intentional simplicity of life, by which our heart is burrowed out and the core of our being laid bare. By embracing it, the monk accepts the aloneness that characterizes every human being."In response to Buddhist reflections on the illusory nature of the body, Catholic participants pointed out Christianity's remarkably positive evaluation of the [End Page 143] body in the doctrines of the Incarnation, the bodily Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Both sides acknowledged balancing points of reference as well, such as, in Christianity, Paul's "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). Though humankind ranks eighth from the bottom in Buddhism's thirty-two-realm cosmology, that level is the only one where spiritual growth can happen. Thus human form is in the end praised by the Buddha.In the second session, the participants moved from theory to practice. Rev. Jisho Perry from the Shasta Buddhist Abbey in California said that "the whole thrust of training is not to give in to desire that arises." He described the Buddhist method of accepting sexual feelings without either acting on them or repressing them, but just letting them pass through. "The right use of will is willingness, not willpower—the willingness to sit there and let that feeling pass through," he said.Fr. Skudlarek expressed appreciation for this Buddhist approach to transforming the sexual energy. "I never got a sense in our training of accepting the feeling with awareness and letting it pass without acting on it. You had to fight it! And the more you resisted, the stronger it got!"Rev. Heng Sure, who teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, presented celibacy as the first step in a three-step process that goes from celibacy to stillness to insight. "It should not be seen just as a difficult adjunct to the spiritual path, but as essential to it," he said. The practice of meditation represents daily periods when the senses are stilled and not allowed to pursue sense objects. "Something happens to the energy in the stillness; the pressure goes away." In married life, he explained, spiritual practice is "partial and piecemeal," making celibacy a more effective means to move toward insight and the peace and happiness that flow from it. In the discussion, Benedictine Fr. Mark... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gethsemani II:Catholic and Buddhist Monastics Focus on SufferingThomas Ryan, CSPApproximately twenty Benedictine, Trappist, and Camaldolese men and women monastics met 13-18 April 2003 with an equal number of Buddhist monastics at the Trappist Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky for five days of dialogue on the causes of suffering. The encounter, Gethsemani II, was a sequel to a similar 1996 meeting at the monastery made famous by the monk Thomas Merton, (...) a noted twentieth-century contemplative and peace activist who died in 1968. Merton's friendship with the Dalai Lama served as seminal inspiration for these two Buddhist-Christian dialogues. In a ritual at the opening of the Gethsemani II meeting, the participants, joined by a few advisors and observers to the dialogue, hung a wreath of flowers around the cross marking Merton's grave.Each day speakers from both sides initiated a conversation on a particular cause of suffering, such as greed and consumerism, personal and structural violence, sickness and aging. "I do not do well at conferences, and I came prepared to be bored," said John Daido Loori, abbot of the Zen Mountain monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, on day three, "but the level of honesty and depth of sharing in these exchanges has ripped open my heart." It is not possible in this forum to synthesize the penetrating reflections and stories on suffering offered by the participants. What may be even more important is the window offered by this dialogue into the dynamics of interfaith encounter no matter where it takes place.By sharing times of prayer, talk, meals, and rituals appropriate to each tradition, the participants became friends. They came for one thing—to talk about suffering—and in the process found another: an experience of community. They began each conversation with the musical and meditative interlude of a recorder, but the openness and sensitivity of the conversation itself became the real music. They didn't solvea single problem, but they kindled a vital force—friendship—with which to confront problems together in the future. Each brought passion for their own tradition, the gospel on the one hand and the dharma on the other, and each ended by recognizing in the other a powerful resource for healing the world.Evident in this dialogue was the emergence of a Euro-American Buddhist voice, deeply respectful of the Asian tradition inherited, yet willing to think creatively about possible bridge points of understanding, of comparison, of ways of reformulating set [End Page 249] patterns of saying things so as to better get at possible common meanings. One example of this will suffice. Suffering is at the heart of the Buddha's teachings in the Four Noble Truths, the first teachings he gave after his experience of enlightenment. First, all existence is dukkha, unsatisfactory and filled with suffering. Second, dukkha arises from tanha, a craving or clinging, which means a constant effort to find something permanent and stable in a transient world. Third, dukkha can cease totally, and this is nirvana. Fourth, this can be reached by following the Eightfold Path described as "right" or samma: right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In short, the first three wisdom sayings relate to the existence, the cause, and the cessation of suffering. The fourth offers a clearly laid out plan for liberation from suffering.The Christian approach could be typified in Pope John Paul II's 1984 Apostolic Letter "On the Meaning of Christian Suffering," which was distributed to all the participants. In reflecting on Jesus nailed to the cross, the pope observes that "in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the resurrection. This means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open, to the working of the salvific powers of God offered humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering... and wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self" (p... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother‐infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother‐infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the (...) mother‐child dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way. (shrink)

The intellectual relationship between Henry James and his father, who was a philosopher and theologian, proved to be an influential resource for the novelist. Andrew Taylor explores how James's writing responds to James Senior's epistemological, thematic and narrative concerns, and relocates these concerns in a more secularised and cosmopolitan cultural milieu. Taylor examines the nature of both men's engagement with autobiographical strategies, issues of gender reform, and the language of religion. He argues for a reading of Henry James that (...) is informed by an awareness of paternal inheritance. Taylor's study reveals the complex and at times antagonistic dialogue between the elder James and his peers, particularly Emerson and Whitman, in the vanguard of mid nineteenth-century American Romanticism. Through close readings of a wide range of novels and texts, he demonstrates how this dialogue anticipates James's own theories of fiction and selfhood. (shrink)