This volume brings together eleven essays that address a range of issues extending from broader questions of social justice to the sexual intimacy that bears the mark of our fleshly existence. Collectively, these essays extend the reach of Paul Ricoeur’s early to late works by taking up some of the major social, political and religious challenges facing us in a postmodern, ultrapluralistic world.

The general pattern of Christian children’s ministry has been for adults to deliver structured programs to children. Drawing on the biblical imperative of hospitable space, a more profound understanding is to provide bounded opportunities for children themselves to engage in missional ministry. Implications are suggested for local church ministry and Christian parenting.

Confusion concerning the issue of universality of colour categorization would greatly diminish if context regains its fundamental status in psychological research and we give up on the reductionist notion that biological universality implies behavioral universality.

This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take (...) the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later. (shrink)

Erving Goffman's distinctive contribution to an understanding of others was grounded in his information control and ritual models of the interaction process. This contribution centered on the forms of the interaction order rather than self-other relations as traditionally conceived in phenomenology. Goffman came to phenomenology as a sympathetic but critical outsider who sought resources for the sociological mining of the interaction order. His engagement with phenomenological thinkers (principally Gustav Ichheiser, Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Schutz) has to be understood in these (...) terms. The article traces basic differences in analytical focus through a range of phenomenological critiques of Goffman and a comparison of salient aspects of Schutz's and Goffman's writings. While the contrasts have perhaps been overplayed, I conclude that Goffman's thinking about others probably owed more to his pragmatist roots than to his later encounters with phenomenology. (shrink)

David Hume is the greatest figure in the empiricist tradition in philosophy and was a particular source of inspiration for the logical positivists (see logical positivism). Hume was born in 1711 and entered Edinburgh University at the age of 12. After graduating, he had a varied career in commerce, diplomacy, as a librarian, and as a writer of history. Twice he was secretary to General St Clair and on one occasion set off with him on an expedition to drive the (...) French out of Canada. Forced back by the wind, it was decided instead to make a brief incursion on the coast of Brittany. This failed, for the expedition had maps of Canada, but none of Brittany. During a three‐year stay in France he wrote his major philosophical work Treatise of Human Nature. It appeared in 1739 and, in his own words, “fell dead‐born from the Press.” His Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which was intended to be a more popular version of book I of his Treatise, was published in 1748 but was only a little more favorably received. His six‐volume History of England, on the other hand, was a great success. He died in 1776, never having succeeded in his ambition to be appointed to a professorship of philosophy in Scotland, due to his religious skepticism. (shrink)