Arguing that a crisis is upon us, the Bush Administration has proposed an energy strategy remarkable in its scope and audacity. While much criticism has been directed towards the plan’s ecological impacts, it also guarantees the continuing collapse of communities tha stand in the way of the full realization of the current energy economy. This situation is best understood reference to evolving notions of environmental justice. Unfortunately, the variety of meanings attributable to environmental justice often times come into (...) conflict when applied to specific cases. Until a way is found to reconcile the idea’s many diverse meanings and to prevent one or another to be used in a specific institutional context to the exclusion of all others, environmental justice will, in a perverse way, be turned into yet another means to disregard society’s most vulnerable members. (shrink)

In this paper the author examines the key principles of Kant's conception of eternal peace and the possibility of an international legal order grounded in Reason. The central segment of the paper consists of an analysis of the problem of mediation between Kant's normative theory and political practice. U radu se razmatraju kljucni principi Kantove koncepcije Vecnog mira i mogucnosti umnog utemeljenja medjunarodnog pravnog poretka. Glavni deo ovog rada predstavlja analiza problema posredovanja izmedju Kantove normativne teorija i savremene politicke (...) prakse. (shrink)

William Hasker and I disagree over whether or not appealing to a particular understanding of divine eternity can reconcile divine foreknowledge with libertarian human freedom. Hasker argues that if God had foreknowledge of a particular future choice, that choice cannot be free with libertarian freedom. I hold, to the contrary, that, given a certain theory of time—the view that all times exist equally—it is possible to reconcile divine foreknowledge with libertarian freedom. In a recent article, “Can Eternity be Saved? A (...) Comment on Stump and Rogers”, Hasker makes it clear that one of the fundamental disagreements between us lies in what each of us takes to be required for libertarian free will. In the present paper I outline the version of libertarianism that I find plausible, then explain how a libertarian free choice can be foreknown by God. Then I will explain why Hasker finds this reconciliation unacceptable since it fails to do justice to what he takes to be required for libertarian freedom. Finally, I will argue that Hasker is wrong to insist upon his analysis of free will. (shrink)

This book, which inaugurates the Princeton Monographs in Philosophy series, starts from Plato's analogy in the Republic between conflict in the soul and conflict in the city. Plato's solution required reason to impose agreement and harmony on the warring passions, and this search for harmony and agreement constitutes the main tradition in political philosophy up to and including contemporary liberal theory. Hampshire undermines this tradition by developing a distinction between justice in procedures, which demands that both sides in a (...) conflict should be heard, and justice in matters of substance, which will always be disputed. Rationality in private thinking consists in adversary reasoning, and so it does in public affairs. Moral conflict is eternal, and institutionalized argument is its only universally acceptable restraint and the only alternative to tyranny.In the chapter "Against Monotheism," Hampshire argues that monotheistic beliefs are only with difficulty made compatible with pluralism in ethics. In "Conflict and Conflict Resolution," he argues that socialism, seen as the proposal of extended political solutions for natural human ills, is still a relevant, yet strongly contested, ideal. (shrink)

In “Omnibenevolence and Eternal Damnation”, I consider whether it is consistent to hold both that God is omnibenevolent and that he infinitely punishes human beings for the commission of finite transgressions. In exploring this problem, I discuss the utilitarian and retributive notions of punishment and justice, the possible mitigating effect of forewarning, and differing conceptions of the nature of the relationship of God to human beings. My conclusion is that it is inconsistant to hold both of these beliefs.

The purpose of the article is to study the importance of Pushkin's work in the age of scientific and technological progress, to identify and analyze the moral values that accompany the work and personality of Alexander Pushkin and are particularly relevant to our time. The article discusses the moral values of honor and dignity, the ratio between good and evil, concepts of duty, justice, love and friendship, happiness, freedom, creativity, patriotism, national idea, peoples’ friendship and the problem of preserving (...) Russian language in modern Russia. The article is written through the prism of interpretation of Pushkin’s creativity by Russian philosophers abroad and modern philosophers. The article deals with the problem of using neural networks that make it possible to reproduce the style of A. S. Pushkin. The author concludes about the relevance of the work of A. S. Pushkin in our days. The issues of preserving spirituality, moral values, national identity, and optimistic Renaissance perception of the world, of understanding the beauty of life, remain relevant and in demand in modern age of rapid scientific and technical progress, both in Russia and in the world. (shrink)

The question of beauty continues to engage humans, especially intellectuals, who inquire into its quintessence and the sources from which it derives. Does beauty consist in attaining geometric harmony of structure and shape, or in achieving numerical proportion in audio and visual? Or, does beauty transcend all that, to crystalize into an absolute essence that conforms to high values as justice, truth, and goodness? How long does beauty last? Does it terminate at the terrestrial realm or transcend to the (...) celestial? What kind of beauty is essential for the attainment of transcendence and eschatological happiness? Beauty is two-sided, one is transient, the other eternal. This essay examines the concept of beauty in Arabic poetical compositions of Muslim mystics, and explores how they construe beauty and identify its locus vis-à-vis transcendence between ephemerality and eternality as seen in the poems by Ibn al-Farîd and al-Tilimsânî. The former perceives God’s name and attributes as embodiment of absolute beauty, and everything in the universe, as manifestations of the beauty, while the latter argues that every beauty in the universe derives from God’s absolute beauty. (shrink)

Although Hegel's philosophy of history is recognized as a great intellectual achievement, it is also widely regarded as a complete failure. Taking his cue from the third century Greek historian Polybius, who argued that the rapid domination of the Mediterranean world by Rome had instituted a new phase of world history, Hegel wondered what the rise of European modernity meant for the rest of the world. In his account of the contingent paths of world history, he argued that at work (...) behind it is an eternal human struggle over justice, and that it had led to a new conception of justice in which nobody by nature had authority to rule over anybody else. Moving away from the ancient conception of justice as ordered through a cosmic system, the modern conception is based instead on freedom. This is, so Hegel argues, not an accident of history but part of the necessary development of the institutions and practices through which humans establish and maintain their changing shapes of agency. Behind it is an infinite end, justice, which as infinite is neither something which can ever be finally achieved nor a goal to which we are getting closer but which requires an infinite effort at sustaining.--. (shrink)

This paper challenges the claim that the traditional Christian (Augustinian, Thomistic, Anselmian) idea of hell as a form of eternal punishment (damnation and torment) for human sin cannot be made consistent with the idea of proportionate punishment, and it raises concerns with the notion that divine justice requires divine forgiveness and mercy. It argues that divine justice entails or at least permits retribution as the meting out of punishment by God to those who deserve it in proportion (...) to the degree and amount of harm unduly and responsibly caused by sinners to others. For God to fail to punish those who deserve it in proportion to their harmful wrongdoings would imply God’s failure to be both just and omnibenevolent. (shrink)

The present study starts from the discovery that reincarnationist ideas have spread massively throughout European and Western thought in general, in a framework where the belief in one life was defining. However, the quandary between the two afterlife interpretations in contemporary Western culture is distinct from similar conflicts in other times or places because post-Christian critique of the Christian tradition shapes how reincarnation theory is understood in the West today. Therefore, the present study shifts the debate from the realm of (...) scientific and philosophical arguments to that of human needs and their cultural overtones. Contemporary reincarnationist theories circulating in the West are re-read through the grid of cultural criticism aimed at the shortcomings of one’s own tradition. As a next step, it is shown that only one of the forms that have developed within the Western tradition is the target of this criticism. The plurality of Christian eschatologies is yet unknown to most contemporary Westerners. This article is a plea for knowledge and contextualisation, which are prerequisites for navigating the ideational universe. Contribution: This article addresses the dilemma between reincarnation and one-life theories as perceived by the contemporary Western mind and deciphers it in the light of human needs and contextual cultural criticism, while also pointing to the internal plurality of the Christian tradition that remains largely unknown to those involved in the debate. (shrink)

My article concerns constitutional interpretation and substantive due process, issues that played a central role in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), one of the two same-sex marriage cases. (The other same-sex marriage case was United States v. Windsor (2013).) -/- The late Justice Scalia consistently maintained that the Court “invented” substantive due process and continues to apply this legal “fiction” not because the Constitution supports it but simply because the justices like it. Two theories underlay his cynical conclusion. First is (...) the theory of “Constitutional Textualism”—or just plain “Textualism”—which says that the meaning of the Constitution lies entirely within the “four corners” of the document. Second is the theory of “Originalism,” which says that this meaning was fixed at the time of ratification. (Likewise, the meanings of the amendments were fixed at the time of their ratification.) -/- While Justice Scalia helped to inspire a Textualist/Originalist (and anti-substantive-due-process) movement, his Originalism has received far more attention than his Textualism. Since Judge Robert Bork first introduced Originalism to the general public during his Supreme Court nomination hearings in 1987, this theory has ignited passions on all sides and effectively re-framed the entire debate about how to interpret the Constitution. Constitutional scholars, left and right, now define themselves as either for or against Originalism. Meanwhile, Textualism has merely retreated into the background. -/- Part of the reason for this disparate treatment is that many who reject Originalism still consider themselves to be Textualists. They agree with Justice Scalia (and Judge Bork) that the text is all-important. They disagree, however, that its meaning was fixed for eternity at ratification. Instead, they maintain that either the meaning of the text or applications of this meaning to new cases can change as society changes. -/- In this Article, I bring Textualism out of Originalism’s shadow and into broad daylight. I argue that once we dig just a little deeper into the proposition that all of the meaning in the Constitution inheres in its words, we find that this theory simply cannot work. In order to interpret the nation’s foundational document, we must resort to assumptions that it does not explicitly state. (Indeed, even Textualism itself is a theory that the Constitution does not explicitly endorse.) And the notion that “extra-textual” assumptions necessarily inform our interpretations of the Constitution poses a direct and insurmountable threat to Textualism. -/- The Constitution actually requires each judge, when faced with a case concerning the right to privacy, not merely to consider the text but also to anticipate and evaluate the moral, social, and political consequences of both possible decisions before choosing between them. While this position may initially sound counterintuitive, it turns out to be a much more realistic theory of constitutional interpretation than Textualism (and Originalism). -/- I ultimately conclude that, contrary to Justice Scalia, the Constitution most certainly does protect a right to privacy. For what it’s worth, the Obergefell majority agree with me (and oppose Justice Scalia). I aim to show exactly why they are correct. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that God is either incapable of lying to humans or utterly unwilling to do so. However, there appear to be compelling reasons for God to intentionally deceive that are rooted in the traditional conception of God as an agent of salvation for humanity. A terroristic threat like eternal damnation ("hell") illustrates these reasons. God's love for human beings as wayward members of a divine family in concert with the obvious moral and cognitive limitations many humans (...) suffer provide sufficient reason for God to deploy (or allow uncorrected) the threat of eternal damnation. A proper understanding of justice supports the contention that eternal damnation is contrary to justice, and therefore divinely inspired threats of eternal damnation are deceitful. (shrink)

Critique of Justice is a collection of reflective essays on ditferent dimensions of justice written by eminent scholars of Philosophy and allied disciplines who are astively engaged in the academic pursuit and promoting the cause of philosophy The book is conceived from the standpoint of multi-perspectival approach to the multifarious concept of justice which is regarded as the highest value in any civilized society On the one hand from traditional metaphysical point of view justice consists of (...) the eternal and immutable principles hat are transcendent, objective and absolute, where as from modern positivistic and empirical approachjustice is ahuman construct relative to time and space. Justice is, therefore, regarded as complex and dynamic concept which is multi-dimensional. It synthesizes other values like rights, liberty equality and property. In this well researched book there are 40 scholarly articles covering a wide range from Plato's concept of justice to Nozick's concept of justice in the Western Philosophy and from Vedic concept of justice to Amartya Sen's view ofjustice in Indian perspective. (shrink)

Ted Sider’s paper “Hell and Vagueness” challenges a certain conception of Hell by arguing that it is inconsistent with God’s justice. Sider’s inconsistencyargument works only when supplemented by additional premises. Key to Sider’s case is a premise that the properties upon which eternal destinies superveneare “a smear,” i.e., they are distributed continuously among individuals in the world. We question this premise and provide reasons to doubt it. The doubts come from two sources. The first is based on evidential (...) considerations borrowed from skeptical theism. A related but separate consideration is that supposing it would be an insurmountable problem for God to make just (and therefore non-arbitrary) distinctions in morally smeared world, God thereby has sufficient motivation not to actualize such worlds. Yet God also clearly has motivation only to actualize some member of the subset of non-smeared worlds which don’t appear non-smeared. For if it was obvious who was morally fit for Heaven and who wasn’t, a new arena of great injustice is opened up. The result is that if there is a God, then he has the motivation and the ability to actualize from just that set of worlds which are not smeared but which are indiscernible from smeared worlds. (shrink)

Discusses complex philosophical problems in concrete language to better understand the eternal concepts that shaped Western culture.

A major source of disagreement among proponents of the traditionalist and conditionalist views of hell regards the proportionality criterion, according to which the justice of a punishment must match the severity of the offense. Conditionalists often argue that eternal conscious torment is too severe, given that the sins of any human being are finite. Traditionalists, however, typically insist that the perfect moral status of God requires infinite punishment for the damned. The discussion usually proceeds on the assumption that (...) eternal conscious torment is a more extreme punishment than annihilation. Here I challenge this assumption by identifying reasons to believe annihilation is actually a more severe punishment than eternal conscious torment. (shrink)

This book explores the relation between agape (or Christian charity) and social justice. Timothy Jackson defines agape as the central virtue in Christian ethical thought and action and applies his insights to three concrete issues: political violence, forgiveness, and abortion. Taking his primary cue from the New Testament while drawing extensively from contemporary theology and philosophy, Jackson identifies three features of Christian charity: unconditional commitment to the good of others, equal regard for others' well-being, and passionate service open to (...) self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Charity, prescribed by Jesus for his disciples and named by Saint Paul as the "greatest" theological virtue, is contrasted with various accounts of justice. Jackson argues that agape is not trumped by justice or other goods. Rather, agape precedes justice: without the work of love, society would not produce persons capable of merit, demerit, and contract, the elements of most modern conceptions of justice. Jackson then considers the implications of his ideas for several questions: the nature of God, the relation between Christian love and political violence, the place of forgiveness, and the morality of abortion. Arguing that agapic love is to be construed as a gift of grace as well as a divine commandment, Jackson concludes that love is the "eternal life" that makes temporal existence possible and thus the "first" Christian virtue. Though foremost a contribution to Christian ethics, Jackson's arguments and the issues he takes up will find a broader readership. (shrink)

As Leibniz points out in the Méditation sur la notion commune de la jus tice, justice—defined as charity of the wise and universal benevolence—belongs “to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, as numbers and proportions.” According to the interpretation of Patrick Riley, from this perspective the two manuscripts usually regarded as belonging to the Méditation should be seen as complementary parts of a unitary Platonizing work. According to Riley, the manuscript that now constitutes the (...) first part of the Méditation is concerned with definitions of ethical concepts viewed as “quasi-mathematical, demonstrable ‘eternal verities’”, whereas the manuscript that now constitutes the second part of the Méditation is concerned “with Platonic ‘ascent’, in the manner of Phaedrus and Symposium,” which recommends the transition from mere negative forbearance from harm to doing positive good. In formulating these claims, Riley uses scare quotes to indicate that he uses the terms “eternal verities” and “ascent” in an unusual way that diverges from the views of the historical Plato. According to his interpretation, Leibniz’s modifications of Platonism are restricted to peripheral parts such as the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul or Pythagorean components such as the doctrine of metempsychosis. Therefore, Riley claims that when Leibniz is talking about knowing eternal truths, what he has in mind is literally the view that we know the same truths as the truths that the gods know and love but do not cause or change. (shrink)

Si la doctrine arithmologique des nombres « parfaits », « abondants » et « déficients » est bien connue et souvent exposée depuis Nicomaque de Gérasa (iie siècle apr. J.-C.), elle reçoit une illustration nouvelle, dans laquelle la mythologie cède le pas à l’éthique et à la théologie, dans une glose médiévale du texte de Martianus Capella (livre VII des Noces de Philologie et de Mercure), où le nombre parfait est mis en correspondance avec la justice éternelle.

In this thesis I offer an interpretation of Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism. I argue against interpreting Schopenhauer’s pessimism as if it were merely a matter of temperament, and I resist the urge to find a single standard argument for pessimism in Schopenhauer’s work. Instead, I treat Schopenhauer’s pessimism as inherently variegated, composed of several distinct but interrelated pessimistic positions, each of which is supported by its own argument. I begin by examining Schopenhauer’s famous argument that willing necessitates suffering, which I defend (...) against the misrepresentative interpretation advocated by Ivan Soll. I also offer a metaphysical reading of Schopenhauer’s claim that no amount happiness can compensate for the mere fact of suffering, based upon his negative conception of happiness. I proceed by analysing Schopenhauer’s criticisms of two prominent optimists, Leibniz and Rousseau. I attempt to salvage something of Schopenhauer’s counterargument against Leibniz that this is the worse of all possible worlds, and I also examine Schopenhauer’s claim that the optimistic metaphysics of a priori rationalistic philosophy cannot cope with the evidence of meaningless suffering. In the case of Rousseau, I interpret Schopenhauer’s brief objection to Rousseau’s assumption of original goodness, by means of an examination of Schopenhauer’s conception of the contrary doctrine, original sin. Next I consider the metaphysics of Schopenhauer’s account of eternal justice. After defending it against a number of objections, I argue that the nature of his version of eternal justice, which he admits constitutes a justification for suffering, does not conflict with the fact that he so strongly condemns Leibniz’s and Rousseau’s optimistic justifications for suffering. Finally I assess whether and to what extent Schopenhauer’s ethics of salvation are either pessimistic or optimistic. I conclude that the mere fact that salvation is possible is not necessarily a cause for optimism, but that Schopenhauer’s doctrine of salvation is made partly optimistic by the higher form of cognition that he describes as part of it. I also argue that Schopenhauer’s views on the essentially mystical nature of the state of salvation ultimately commit him to being neither positively optimistic nor positively pessimistic about salvation. I conclude overall with some brief remarks about the meaning of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, and how in spite of its diverse nature, it is able to lay down a singular challenge to all future philosophers concerned with the question of suffering. (shrink)

Enquiring the sources and the legitimacy of Derrida’s statement “Law {droit) is not justice” from his essay “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’ ” (1990), the paper analyses the three notions of “justice”, “equity” and “concordantia” (in Cusanus). Part I explains historically how the difference between the limited and changing human laws and the eternal justice of God was gradually being perceived and acknowledged in Antiquity. Part II illustrates how the virtue of equity was (...) called upon to compensate for the insufficiencies and contradictions of human laws, mainly by Aristotle. Part III explores the conditions how and argues for the possibility that the notion of “concordantia” as developed by Nicolaus Cusanus for the Council of Basle could work as a mediating principle of legislation among conflicting interests and thus provide for temporary justice by means of an equitable procedure of legislation. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Abhandlung versucht die systematischen und ontologischen Gründe für Schopenhauers politische Philosophie darzulegen, indem insbesondere auf die Verbindung von kontraktualistischen und metaphysischen Elementen in seiner Staatskonzeption eingegangen wird. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass Schopenhauers Begriffe des „Rechts“ und „Unrechts“ innerhalb eines institutionellen Gesamtrahmens nicht ohne den systematischen Horizont der „Welt als Wille und Vorstellung“ begriffen werden können, der insbesondere auf der kantischen Unterscheidung zwischen Erscheinung und Ding an sich beruht. Die immanenten Implikationen seiner metaphysischen Annahmen sollten daher als Grundlage (...) für staatliches Handeln und der damit verknüpften Funktion von Autorität, die sich in institutionalisierter Strafe und anderen Einschränkungen niederschlägt, mitbedacht werden, insofern sie letztlich als phänomenale Manifestationen eines universellen Substrats zu begreifen sind, das Schopenhauer als „Wille“ bestimmt. Keywords: state, temporal and eternal justice, right and wrong. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin viewed value conflict as tragic, as it requires the sacrifice of some values for others. It is a mark of maturity, he thought, to accept this tragic truth. This view raises certain conceptual problems that can be attributed to Berlin’s subtle departures from the German authors (Kant, Schelling, and Hegel) who originated the doctrine of tragic maturity—figures who had, in turn, transformed the earlier idea that enlightenment is a natural and morally neutral process of maturation. Kant moralized the (...) notion of enlightened maturation by portraying it as contingent on our courage to bring it about, such that we are responsible if we remain immature. This theory of maturity rested on the idea, which would have been uncongenial to Berlin, that we are intelligible creatures inhabiting the noumenal realm, duty bound to exercise moral freedom, even though this duty surpasses our ability to carry it out, as we also inhabit the phenomenal realm, where our natural inclinations tend to make us resist laboring to fulfill our duties. However, according to Kant, the metaphysical limitations we face as individuals can be transcended to an extent, allowing us to make moral progress as a species—so long as we do not lazily persist in our immaturity. Schelling built upon Kant’s notion of freedom to bring out the tragic and heroic dimension of individual moral life, where the tragedy is our doomed but noble struggle to exert moral freedom in a world of natural necessity. Hegel turned these metaphysical notions in a more recognizably Berlinian direction by extending Schelling’s account of tragic conflict to conflicts of values. But he identified the ultimate tragic hero as an ethical totality that enacts eternal justice by reconciling such conflicts, while Berlin attempted to repudiate both the notion of a historical totality and the possibility of reconciliation on empirical grounds, even though these are metaphysical claims. Thus, Berlin asserted the absolute, trans-historical necessity of tragic value conflict, while the evidence for this assertion was merely his personal conviction that in his particular time and place, specific values were, as a matter of empirical fact, tragically irreconcilable. In this manner he illicitly portrayed Cold War value pluralists (such as himself) as courageously accepting the tragic inevitability of value conflict, while Marxists, the legatees of Hegel and thus German Idealism, immaturely shrank from this reality by embracing the fantasy of total reconciliation. (shrink)

The paper analyses fragmentarily preserved views of Empedocles, that, in the author’s opinion, represent the antecedents of deviations from the anthropocentric vision of the world and anticipate the majority of later attempts at scientific, philosophical, and legal modifications of the status of all living beings. Empedocles, namely, claims that all beings think, i.e., that they have understanding or consciousness. He is, moreover, portrayed as a proponent of the thesis that plants as well have both intellect and the ability to think, (...) and that they are driven by desire and have feelings, sadness and joy. According to him, the idea that the whole nature is akin not only has a vital-animal meaning but, to a certain extent, a mental meaning. Empedocles urged his disciples to abstain from consuming ensouled beings, since it is in the bodies of these beings that penalized souls reside. He believed that he himself was one of them who had been killed and eaten, and that it is by purification that prior sins in connection with food should be treated. Empedocles’ case shows that humans are living beings that err, and that they owe to animals justice based on mutual kinship. Aside from living a pure life, practicing the recommended katharmoi, and abstaining from flesh in any version, the path to the salvation of the soul leads through two additional dimensions. The first is being revealed in the important phrase of the sage from Acragas that one should fast from evil. And secondly, the wealth of divine thoughts is connected with being happy, just as those who have vague opinions about the gods are wretched. Eventually, the “Sicilian Muse” believed that if people live in a holy and just manner, they shall be blessed in this life, even more so after leaving this one, because they will achieve happiness that will not be temporarily, and be able to rest for eternity. (shrink)

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to (...) undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again. (shrink)

The concept of divine justice has been the subject of considerable scrutiny in recent philosophical theology, as it bears upon the notion of punishment with respect to the doctrine of eternal damnation. In this essay, I set out a version of the traditional retributive view of divine punishment and defend it against one of the most important and influential contemporary detractors from this position, Thomas Talbott. I will show that, contrary to Talbott’s argument, punishment may satisfy divine (...) class='Hi'>justice, and that perfect justice is commensurate with retribution, rather than, as he suggests, reconciliation and restoration. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about divine justice stemming from the fact that God seems required to judge on the basis of criteria that are vague. Justice is proportional, however, it seems God violates proportionality by sending those on the borderline of heaven to an eternity in hell. This is Ted Sider’s problem of Hell and Vagueness. On the face of things, this poses a challenge only to a narrow class of classical Christians, those that hold a retributive theory (...) of divine punishment. We show that this puzzle can be extended to the picture of divine judgement and the afterlife found in Mormon theology. This is significant because at first glance, the Mormon picture of the afterlife looks like it fails to co-operate with Sider’s puzzle. In Mormon theology, there are not two afterlife states, but three: a low, a middle, and a high kingdom. There is no afterlife state quite like Hell, and the states that function similarly to Hell aren’t places of eternal suffering. We argue that appearances are misleading. While it may be true that no place in the Mormon afterlife is bad in the sense that its inhabitants suffer eternal bodily harm, it is true that many of the places in the Mormon afterlife are bad in the sense that their inhabitants lack access to significant goods. This allows Sider’s puzzle to re-engage as a puzzle about distributive Justice. After setting out this alternative version of the puzzle, we argue that Mormon theology has sufficient resources to reject proportionality as a constraint on divine judgment by adopting a nuanced version of universalism called escapism. (shrink)

Continuing Keith Ward's series on comparative religion, this book deals with religious views of human nature and destiny. The beliefs of six major traditions are presented: the view of Advaita Vedanta that there is one Supreme Self, unfolding into the illusion of individual existence; the Vaishnava belief that there is an infinite number of souls, whose destiny is to be released from material embodiment; the Buddhist view that there is no eternal Self; the Abrahamic belief that persons are essentially (...) embodied souls; and the materialistic position that persons are complex material organisms. Indian ideas of rebirth, karma, and liberation from samsara are critically analysed and compared with semitic belief in the intermediate state of Sheol, Purgatory or Paradise, the Final Judgement and the resurrection of the body. The impact of scientific theories of cosmic and biological evolution on religious beliefs is assessed, and a form of 'soft emergent materialism' is defended, with regard to the soul. In this context, a Christian doctrine of original sin and atonement is presented, stressing the idea of soterial, as opposed to forensic, justice. Finally, a Christian view of personal immortality and the 'end of all things' is developed in conversation with Jewish and Muslim beliefs about judgement and resurrection. (shrink)

I argue that Wolfhart Pannenberg’s view of human subjectivity presupposes a metaphysics of eternity that both contracts and expands the human subject. For this purpose, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology is a useful criterion. Pannenberg rejects substantialist theories of subjectivity that give priority to the agency of the ego over the passivity of the self. Following Friedrich Schleiermacher, Pannenberg thinks self-reflection must be grounded on a symbiotic totality of life, and he views essences, even of subjectivity, as determined by that totality. In (...) contrast, Husserl provides both an essentialist theory of subjectivity and a viable model for self-reflection that does not suffer from infinite regress. Husserl does more justice to the mineness of consciousness and the agency of the ego, while not discarding the narrativity of the self. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guilt History:Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"Werner Hamacher (bio)Translated by Kirk Wetters (bio)History as Exchange EconomySince history cannot be conceived as a chain of events produced by mechanical causation, it must be thought of as a connection between occurrences that meets at least two conditions: first that it admit indeterminacy and thus freedom, and second that it nonetheless be demonstrable in determinate occurrences and in the distinct form of their (...) coherence. Relations can thus be called historical and can be recognized as historical only if they are determined by neither necessity nor chance, and if their causality is of a different order than the mechanical. The temporal structure of history can therefore be characterized on the one hand by the distinct connection of its elements—and on the other hand by the dissolution of all connections that do not assist these elements in achieving their independence.A temporal nexus that clearly does not satisfy these conflicting requirements has been characterized in one of the oldest texts of occidental philosophy as the time of guilt. According to the sentence of Anaximander (from about 500 BC), handed down by Simplicius in his commentary (530 AD) on Aristotle's Physics, the origin and end of all things is subordinated to the law of necessity (katà tó kreòn). "They must pay penance and be judged for their injustice, according to the order of time (katà tèn tou chrónou táxin)"—so the fragment reads in the translation offered by Nietzsche in his treatise "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks." According to Anaximander, the sequence of time orders the rise and fall of all things and orders them in accordance with the law of guilt and punishment so that becoming (génesis) is a guilt (adikía) that must be expiated in perishing. Time and more precisely its táxis, the positing of time, is thought in Anaximander's sentence as an order of guilt and retribution, debt and payback. It is a time of economy in the sense that it is the time of law—and precisely a law that is valid for all beings, a táxis, a decree, an ordinance and an ordering—in which the unavoidable incurring of guilt is atoned in an equivalent penance that is just as unavoidable. The strict coherence of guilt and penance is ascertained by the principle of their equivalence. Time is therefore conceived here as a double process of coming into being and perishing, [End Page 81] a process that occurs in such a way that the genesis is erased in its passing away—so that time is thus erased by time itself.In Anaximander's sentence, however, time is not only the double-process of coming into being and passing away, it is—as a táxis—the common and constantly enduring medium of the exchange of the contrary but equivalent motions of coming into being and perishing. It is the time of the quid pro quo of everything that is generated and passes away within time. Its measure is a justice that represents itself as a táxis and thereby as the positing and the law of all becoming and vanishing, the law of physis and its demise as an onto-economic law. This taxiological order of time places every realm of the natural and human world under a law of substitution without exception; this also allows ethical, juridical, and economic concepts to substitute for one another within this order. The ethical dimension of justice, thus circumscribed by the order of time, is reduced to the juridical dimension of the decree, and both now define themselves according to the calculus of "an exchange economy in an eternally unchanging household of nature."1 It can only, however, be a matter of an ethics of time to the extent that this ethics, already juridified and economized, is subordinated to the schema of exchange, trade, and the equivalence of guilt and retribution. The time of history, ethical time, is thus interpreted in Anaximander's sentence as a normative time of inculpation and expiation. Whatever enters this táxis of time is thereby already guilty and can... (shrink)

In the twentieth century, we often think of Nietzsche, nihilism, and the death of God as inextricably connected. But, in this pathbreaking work, Michael Gillespie argues that Nietzsche, in fact, misunderstood nihilism, and that his misunderstanding has misled nearly all succeeding thought about the subject. Reconstructing nihilism's intellectual and spiritual origins before it was given its determinitive definition by Nietzsche, Gillespie focuses on the crucial turning points in the development of nihilism, from Ockham and the nominalist revolution to Descartes, Fichte, (...) the German Romantics, the Russian nihilists and Nietzsche himself. His analysis shows that nihilism is not the result of the death of God, as Nietzsche believed but the consequence of a new idea of God as a God of will who overturns all eternal standards of truth and justice. To understand nihilism, one has to understand how this notion of God came to inform a new notion of man and nature, one that puts will in place of reason, and freedom in place of necessity and order. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 177-188 [Access article in PDF] Chaïm Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy":Commentary and Translation David A. Frank Michelle K. Bolduc Chaïm Perelman's 1949 article, "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy," has remained unavailable to readers unable to read French. Our commentary and translation is intended to provide English readers access to the context, influences, and themes that make the article an extraordinarily important work in (...) the history of twentieth-century rhetoric. In this article, Perelman offers a powerful critique of first philosophies and anticipates the problems of radical postmodernity. "First Philosophies" remains a strikingly elegant attempt to foil what Foucault (1984, 41-42) has called the "Enlightenment blackmail of reason," the assumption held by logical positivists and radical skeptics that if reason does not yield absolute and eternal Enlightenment knowledge, there can be no knowledge.Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric project avoids Enlightenment blackmail by charting a third way between logical positivism and radical relativism, and "First Philosophies" sets forth the project's philosophical blueprint. Commencing in 1947 and culminating in 1958 with the publication of Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought, discovered, and developed a philosophical system designed as a rapprochement between dialectic (reason and logic) and rhetoric (the art of adapting arguments to audiences). Historians of rhetoric judge the work a "grand revolution" (Meyer 1999, 259), believing it marks a rhetorical renaissance in Europe, and suggest nothing like it will appear for another 100 years after its publication (Johnstone 1971). The New Rhetoric project influenced Gadamer and a host of post-war European and American thinkers (Mootz 1998). Michael Leff calls the 1970 English translation of Traité a "bombshell" (1994, 510). Beyond its historical importance, Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is "the single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theory" (1996, 35)and "First Philosophies" marks Perelman's turn from logical [End Page 177] positivism to rhetoric, offering prescient answers to the post-World War II crises of reason, and the ideas in the article provide the Traité'sphilosophical glue (see in particular the English translation, 62).Perelman joined many post-war theorists, including Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in the resistance to the reign of a disembodied Enlightenment rationality. However, Perelman identified what Habermas (1987, 119) would later call the "performative contradiction" in the conclusion that radical skepticism was the only alternative to Enlightenment rationality. In "First Philosophies," Perelman responds directly to Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness (198; see translation below) by exposing the failure of radical skeptics to see that they had been held hostage by Enlightenment blackmail in accepting the Enlightenment criterion for truth, rejecting it, and then making skepticism an absolute. Indeed, "First Philosophies" navigates from this performative contradiction to chart a third way between Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism with an approach that he labels regressive philosophy. Regressive philosophy, Perelman argues, provides the human community with a mode of philosophical reasoning located between the extremes of Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism. In this space between extremes, Perelman identifies contingent truths and values dependent on a rhetorical mode of reasoning, one making moral judgments possible.To best understand "First Philosophies," we recognize the importance of historical context in the development of social theories of knowledge (see Delacampagne 1999; Kennedy 1999). The intellectual networks in which philosophers operate also influence the development of philosophical systems, as Randall Collins has aptly documented. In addition to historical context and intellectual networks, Frederick Beiser has recently noted: "[t] he best introduction to any philosophy is the biography of the person who created it" (1999, 5). He argues that textual analysis alone cannot illuminate the motivation or meaning of a philosophy. A sense of Perelman's biography and the cultural influences that gave rise to "First Philosophies" are necessary for a proper understanding of its themes. For Perelman, the primary intellectual exigencies of the post-war period were the interrelated crises of justice, philosophical reasoning, and responsibility to which "First Philosophies" is a... (shrink)

L'idéalisme comprend le devoir moral comme une catégorie éternelle et le formule en lois qui s'adressent aux sentiments de chaque individu. Le matérialisme, au contraire, cherche à expliquer la conscience morale par les conditions sociales et à l’exposer historiquement. L'article ci-dessus donne les grandes lignes d'une telle analyse. Il distingue entre la morale, phénomène de notre temps, l'éthique de l'antiquité et la conception autoritaire du moyen âge. La morale se base essentiellement sur la société bourgeoise, dans laquelle l'intérêt particulier et (...) l’intérêt général sont distincts. L'individu qui, dans l'activité quotidienne, ne recherche que son propre avantage, éprouve à l’appel de sa conscience, le souci de la société. L'auteur démontre ce fait au moyen d'une analyse de l’impératif catégorique de Kant.La morale bourgeoise contient déjà les germes de sa victoire sur elle- même. Elle tend vers une société dans laquelle le devoir et l'intérêt ne seront plus séparés. On retrouve cette tendance non seulement chez Kant, mais encore chez d'autres grands philosophes bourgeois. Les idées de justice, d'égalité et de liberté prennent peu à peu, au fur et à mesure que la société bourgeoise se développe, une autre signification que celle qu'elles paraissent avoir eue au début ; elles exigent aujourd'hui la modification des conditions pour l'introduction desquelles elles ont pourtant été proclamées à l'origine. Cette dialectique est une des raisons de la perplexité actuelle en matière d’idées sur le monde et la vie. Dans l'exposition de cette dialectique, l'auteur montre comment les idées bourgeoises ne vivent plus aujourd'hui dans la pensée idéaliste, mais bien plus dans la pensée matérialiste. Les deux formes principales d’expression de la morale ont actuellement, d’après M. Horkheimer, la pitié et la politique. Elles ne peuvent pas être rationnellement liées l'une à l'autre, mais le sens moral se manifeste dans toutes deux.L'impulsion morale est vivante non seulement dans la vie pratique, mais aussi dans la science. Le matérialisme nie la possibilité d'une science entièrement objective : les intérêts des hommes influencent la recherche scientifique. Il est vrai que ces intérêts, si sublimes qu'ils puissent être, ne sont pas l'émanation d’un sujet libre, comme l'enseigne l'idéalisme, mais la conséquence nécessaire du processus historique. Aussi le matérialisme n’exige- t-il nullement, pour autant que le respect de la vérité reste l'élément de base, le manque de chaque jugement moral dans la science. La croyance du positivisme actuel à la possibilité de faire des constatations affranchies de toute théorie, comme d'ailleurs son aversion envers toute théorie en général, sont dues à ce qu’il ne possède pas lui-même de grandes idées directrices. La théorie naît partout où les connaissances sont sciemment rapportées à un but, c'est-à-dire strictement en relation avec des valeurs de la pratique.Philosophical idealism conceives moral obligation as an eternal category, and formulates it in commandments that appeal to individual sentiment. Philosophical materialism on the other hand, endeavours to explain moral consciousness in terms of social conditions, and to present it in its historical perspective. This essay attempts to furnish the main features for such an analysis. It distinguishes ethics, as a phenomenon of modern times, from that of ancient times, and from the authoritative attitude in the middle ages. Its foundation rests on bourgeois society in which individual and collective interests become sharply separated from each other. The individual, who in his daily work looks to his private interests, experiences through his conscience, concern for the public welfare. H. proves this through his analysis of Kant’s categorical imperative.Bourgeois morality already contains within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. It indicates a society in which duty and interest are no longer separate. This tendency in ethics becomes manifest, not only in Kant, but also in other great philosophers of bourgeois society. With the development of the latter the ideas of Justice, Equality, and Freedom acquire a content other than that they seem to have possessed in their genesis, and to-day require that change in conditions, to effect which, they were originally introduced. This dialectical process is one of the causes of the present-day philosophical uncertainty. H. shows in his exposition of this dialectical process, how bourgeois ideas are no longer active in idealist thought, but are so in materialist thought.The two main forms in which contemporary ethics expresses itself, are according to H. pity and politics, which cannot indeed, in a rational way, be connected one to the other. Both arise out of a moral sentiment. This moral impulse is active not only in practical life, but also in knowledge. Philosophical materialism denies the possibility of completely objective knowledge : men’s interests find expression also in their cognition. Indeed, however sublime these interests are, they do not spring from „free“ beings, as idealism maintains, but are the necessary results of historical processes.Accordingly, materialism in no way claims for knowledge, freedom from all subjective valuations, but only that a consideration for truth, remain the dominant characteristic. The belief of modern positivism in the possibility of attitudes free from all valuations, as well as its disinclination for all theory, is due to the fact that it possesses no great leading ideas. In all cases is theory vindicated, only when knowledge has a definite aim, that is, when it is related to practical values. (shrink)

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that (...) he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. By way of systems theory and cybernetics, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he integrates the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. This work will be of great interest to Continental philosophers, ecologists, cultural theorists, media theorists, and those following recent developments in the thought of speculative realists. (shrink)

this paper has a double objective. On the one hand, it aims to examine Leibniz's approach to church-state relations, a central question in early modern political philosophy that has rarely been discussed in the context of the philosopher of Hanover despite the fact that his political texts contain much to be appreciated on the topic. On the other hand, it aims at providing a prominent example of how Leibniz's political philosophy, contrary to what is often held, was not exclusively grounded (...) in the metaphysical principles of 'universal jurisprudence,' that is, the eternal and immutable principles of justice common to God and men. I argue that Leibniz realized that applying those principles in human jurisprudence... (shrink)

Plato argued that knowledge of human nature can be reached through dialogue and dialectical method in accordance with the Socratic heritage. In his philosophy, man can be defined as being capable of rationally answering a rational question. By giving rational answers to himself and others, human also becomes a moral subject. In Plato's philosophy, we see a clear program based on human nature. Issues related to human nature are discussed in the process of applying Plato's theory of ideas to the (...) field of morality, art, politics and education. What emerges in practice, for example, right and fair behavior is a manifestation of the principle of truth and justice. According to Plato, man reflects the character of the state he lives in. To understand a person, it is necessary to consider the society in which he lives. The state is not an institution that people come together and establish with their own will, but an organism, a whole. According to Plato, in order to grasp the true meaning of human society and to arrange it properly, one must first comprehend the astronomical cosmos. Because, knowing the meaning of the concepts of harmony and order is possible only by understanding the astronomical cosmos, which is the expression of an eternal order. While studying the astronomical cosmos, a man comes to the idea of harmony and order itself. Indeed, the infinite canonical and harmonious movements of the stars in this pre-eternal order on their perennials lead to the concept of law itself. People who admire this harmony and order in the sky want to realize a model of it on earth. He concludes that the laws that will rule over the human world must be continuous and compatible, just like the laws in the world of stars. Thus, the state must be an earthly model of the astronomical cosmos. If a person lives in the state, he should realize this harmony and order in the state in his own spirit. (shrink)

The Christian conception of Hell as everlasting punishment for past sins is confronted with two charges of unfairness. The first is the inequity of an eternal punishment. The never‐ending punishment seems disproportionate to the finite sin (Kershnar, Lewis, Adams). A second and related problem is that the boundary between sins that send one for all eternity to Hell and those sins that are slightly less bad that are compatible with an eternity in Heaven is arbitrary and thus it is (...) unfair that sinners so alike are treated differently (Sider). Hell, as traditionally conceived, is then claimed to be incompatible with God's traditional attributes such as his commitment to justice, omniscience and omnipotence. The unfairness can be avoided by appealing to God's foreknowledge and a debt/atonement theory of punishment. My view is analogous to refusing to parole the unrepentant. If a wrongdoer is eternally defiant, then he can never be released from Hell for his debt won't ever be paid if he isn't reformed and reconciled with the wronged. So it doesn't matter that his initial sin was a finite wrong not deserving of infinite punishment nor a sin no worse than that of the penitent in Heaven. (shrink)

Soumis aux conditions difficiles que lui impose l’Occupation, Julien Benda exprime dans La Grande Épreuve des démocraties une foi lucide en la démocratie, fondée sur un bilan critique du combat antifasciste. Appelant les Européens à privilégier dans leur passé les éléments d’une tradition républicaine d’inspiration libérale et sociale, il remet en cause la relative indifférence qu’il a longtemps entretenue, dans l’esprit de La trahison des clercs, à l’égard des systèmes politiques et de l’espoir de promouvoir la justice dans les (...) sociétés humaines, au profit d’un idéal élitiste soucieux de préserver la liberté d’une minorité d’intellectuels tournés vers l’éternité.Affirmant nettement la nécessité d’un ordre juridique international coercitif et chargé de veiller au respect des principes démocratiques, Julien Benda, collaborant aux publications de la Résistance, a la conviction que la démocratie doit se libérer de l’humanisme pacifiste dont elle est naturellement porteuse, et qu’elle doit, passant par un moment machiavélien, aller contre ses propres valeurs, et s’appuyer sur la force pour assurer son existence face à ses ennemis.Submitted to the difficult conditions imposed on him by the German occupation in France, Julien Benda, in La Grande Épreuve des démocraties expresses a true lucid faith in democracy, grounded on the critical appraisal of the anti-fascist fight. Urging the Europeans to privilege within their past the elements of a Republican tradition of a social and liberal inspiration, he questions the relative indifference he had for quite a while entertained, within the spirit of the Trahison des clercs, towards political systems and his hope to be able to promote justice in human societies, to the profit of an elitist ideal careful to safeguard the freedom of a minority of intellectuals turned towards eternity.Strongly stressing the necessity of a legal international order both coercive and meant to be sure democratic principles should be applied and respected, Julien Benda, by collaborating to the publications of the French Resistance, strongly believes that democracy should free itself from the pacifist humanism which it normally evidences and that it should – through a Machiavellian moment – go astride from its own values and rest on strength to grant its existence when confronted to its enemies. (shrink)

Der Problemrahmen des Konflikts zwischen Liebe und Gerechtigkeit beschäftigt Nietzsche von der zweiten Unzeitgemässen Betrachtung bis zu Also Sprach Zarathustra. Die aktuelle philosophische Debatte ist hauptsächlich auf soziale Gerechtigkeit forkussiert. Nietzsche geht aber darüber hinaus und setzt sich mit jenen Aspekten dieser fragestellung auseinander, die auf ihrem Verstädnis als ethisches Problem in der individuellen Einstellung zur Erkenntnis beruben. Die Spannung zwischen Liebe und Gerechtigkeit erscheint als Grundgestal des inneren Konflikts einer Lebensform, die dem Streben nach Erkenntnis Verpflichtet ist. in diesem (...) Sinn ist Nietzsches Reflexion über jene Problematik mit dem philosophischen Rahmen verbunden, dem Gedanken wie die Lehre ver der "völligen Unverantwortlichkeit des Menschen", amor fati und die ewige Widerkehr des Gleichen zugehören.Nietzsche treats the conflict between love and justice in his works from the second of his Untimely Meditations to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While current philosophical debates discuss this conflict with reference to social justice, Nietzsche focuses mostly on aspects arising from understanding it as an ethical problem regarding the individual's attitude towards knowledge. He thus treats the conflict between love and justice as the fundamental form of conflict internal to a form of life committed to knowledge, and his reflections are strictly connected with the broader philosophical framework from which emerge his doctrines of 'man's complete lack of responsibility', amor fati, and the eternal return. (shrink)

I argue that the idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and implies, quite apart from its incoherence, that we are free both to sin with impunity and to defeat God's justice forever.

Part 1: Philosophical inquisitions -- Labyrinthal paradigms: western philosophy in Borges' Oeuvre -- Literary philosophers: Mythos and Logos in Borges and Plato -- Philosophy and ideology: dialectical Orientalism in Borges' writings -- Part 2: Comparative perspectives -- Borges and Schopenhauer: microcosms and aesthetic observation -- Borges, Herclitus, and the River of Time -- A view from eternity: the archetypal quest -- Borges and Levinas face to face: writing and riddle of subjectivity -- Narrative aspect change and alternating systems of (...) class='Hi'>justice: A Wittgensteinian reading of Borges -- Borges, Wittgenstein, and Kierkegaard on the boundaries of language: mystical silence and indirect communication -- Borges and Berkeley: idealism and the ontology of the fantastical object. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE TRINITY AND FEMINISM * GREGORY RoccA, O.P. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California SPEAKING THE CHRISTIAN GOD is a substantial and fundamental theological response to the basic assumptions and conclusions of the burgeoning feminist movement within Christian theology. Its opponent is clearly theological feminism, not that egalitarian feminism which seeks justice for women within church and society. Noting the " paucity of critical response from (...) the theologians of the church " to the challenge of feminism, the editor states the book attempts " to substantively and critically engage specific feminist thinkers " about the doctrine of God and God-talk, and " to offer constructive discussion and analysis of the crucial and often very complex theological issues." With only a couple of exceptions, the individual articles succeed admirably in the second aim, though only about half offer a substantive engagement with specific feminist thinkers (the most frequent debate partners are Sallie McFague and Rose~ mary Radford Ruether, and the single most cited line is Mary Daly's " If God is male, then the male is God "). The editor also warns us that polemic has often not been avoided, for " when the gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake, passion also must enter into theology." However, again with only a couple of exceptions, I found the individual essays to be models of rational criticism and controversy which avoid the kind of emotional attack that delights in sarcasm, personal vituperation, and ad feminam arguments. *Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism. Edited by Alvin F. Kimel, Jr. Grand Rapids, Michigan/Leominster, England: Eerdmans/Gracewing, 1992. Pp. x + 337. 509 510 GREGORY ROCCA, O.P. The book's eighteen contributors (thirteen men and five women) share the fundamentals of Christian belief and span the various Christian confessions, though the great majority are from the Protestant traditions. This collection does not entirely escape the anthological bane of uneven quality (though almost all the essays are excellent), repetition, and lack of focal unity (the common target is feminism but the responses to it are varied). As an aid in discerning the focal unity behind these diverse rejoinders to feminism, I will synthesize the essays under four basic questions : How do we speak the Christian God? Why do we speak the Christian God as Father? What does speaking the Christian God as Father teach us about God and ourselves? Why does theological feminism have trouble with speaking the Christian God as Father? First Question: How do we speak the Christian God? According to different essayists-by simile, metaphor, analogy qualified by negative theology, and personal name. Some point out the differences between these various ways of speaking God and then try to show how, in at least one of the ways, Father is God's ineradicable and eternal name. Thus, they defend Father as the Trinity's nomen primum and critique the feminists for conflating the distinct ways by which we speak God. Roland Frye, Garrett Green, Colin Gunton and Janet Martin Soskice all focus on Father as a metaphorical name for God. Frye maintains there is an essential difference between simile and metaphor, and that Father is God's most fitting metaphorical name. While God is a few times compared to a mother by illustrative simile (mainly in Second and Third Isaiah), he is never named mother or addressed as mother; more positively, the appellative and predicative metaphor Father is said of God directly or vocatively about 250 times in the Old and New Testaments. One might wonder, however, whether the division between metaphor and simile is so airtight. Are not all metaphors immediately translatable back into similes? The answer is No, according to Garrett Green, who explains how contemporary thinkers see metaphor not as atomistic and substitutional (the classical view) but as contextualized and THE TRINITY AND FEMINISM 511 unique. Thus, Father is God's unique metaphorical name which transcends mere simile. Still, one might counter that metaphors are protean and plastic: if Father can be said uniquely of God, then why not also Mother? Gunton addresses himself to this objection in dialogue with Sallie McFague, contending that a realist theological epistemology shows that divine metaphor cannot be totally protean but... (shrink)

What makes Carlo Michelstaedter’s life and work worthy of a reflection on Italian aesthetics is his erratic attitude when taking a stance in the ancient discord between Philosophy and Poetry. This, since Plato’s times, as an original item, expects and transcends each historical chapter of the literary critique and each kind of philosophy of history. Michelstaedter justapoxes names such as Parmenides, Sophocles, Socrates, Christ and the Ecclesiastes in an anti-genealogical manner, that is against fathers and masters as well as sons (...) and disciples. Everything that, in his short life, he could read and study in Latin, Greek, German and Italian, was bound to death against institutions and codes, against the family and the University, against the audience and every literary genre attended by the world in which he was born. Michelstaedter reads Parmenides’ Carminum reliquiae as a poetic emergency and sees in Socrates the one who becomes this poetry. The bold link between Parmenides’ ontology and Socrates’ dialectics constitutes the climax of an iconoclastic and anti-mimetic poiesis. Rhadamanthus’ justice, results bitter to Michelstaedter. It discerns, that is, the original relationship of Socrates with death from that which was superimposed by Plato ; he distinguishes Socrates’ beautiful death from that which was enticed by Hegesias, the death-persuader, in the naive; he places Socrates next to Sophocles and the Ecclesiastes, against the mortal event of the birth. Socrates, in case, did not die because of the “cicuta” which parted him from the pain of living, nor because of the eternal idea that he’s been contemplating ever since with his immortal soul. He died, instead, after having become something divine and devilish, something that distracts him since his childhood from everything he is about to do, every time, and eventually leads him nowhere. From this anti-contemplative perspective, Michelstaedter acknowledges in every philosophy intended to reconcile the absolute and relative, the rhetoric artifice aimed at concealing an original aporia which can only be dishonestly swayed, rather than overcome. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism on the contemporary geopolitical landscape. The authors argue that while the critique of Orientalism has significantly influenced academic discourse and domestic policies in Western countries, particularly the United States, it has not led to fundamental changes in global geopolitical strategy. The paper focuses on two key aspects: the natural connection between knowledge and power, which cannot be altered by anti-colonial declarations, and the shift of colonial discourse to new regions, (...) specifically non-Western Europe. The authors posit that the strength of a modern state lies in its ability to dynamically bifurcate its image into internal and external faces, presenting different aspects to its society and foreign partners. Using the United States as a case study, the article demonstrates how internal anti-colonial discourse coexists with an unchanging foreign policy strategy of global dominance. The authors criticize the illusions about the possibility of changing the fundamental principles of US foreign policy, which has remained consistent since 1941. The paper emphasizes the continuation of a strategy aimed at fostering global dependence on the West, despite anti-colonial rhetoric. The article explores the complex interplay between domestic movements for social justice and decolonization, and the pragmatic realities of international relations. It argues that the deconstruction of Orientalism, while challenging the legitimacy of historical colonial practices, has not transformed the core geopolitical interests of Western states.The authors contend that the apparent dichotomy between internal anti-colonial discourse and external policy reflects both the complexity and strength of states like the US, where domestic and foreign policies can be shaped by different institutional and ideological forces. The paper also discusses the expansion of the concept of liberal democracy as an export product to regions deemed lacking in popular sovereignty.In conclusion, the article suggests that the critique of Orientalism, despite its academic and cultural impact, has been effectively neutralized in geopolitical practice. This is achieved through a shift in focus to regions not traditionally considered part of the «old» Western colonies, allowing for the implementation of economic partnership policies without the moral self-flagellation associated with charges of Orientalism. The paper ultimately argues that renaming reality does not change its underlying structure, and that the postmodern belief in the power of language to transform geopolitical realities is akin to magical thinking. It concludes that the critique of Orientalism has not fundamentally altered the eternal principles and interests guiding global geopolitical strategies. (shrink)

Introducing the building project -- Building law on a solid foundation : the eternal law -- Discovering the framework : the natural law -- Examining the framework : the content of the natural law -- Consulting the architect when problems arise : the divine law -- Decorating the structure : the art of making human law -- Appointing a foreman : the basis of authority and obligation -- Falling OV the frame : the limits of legal authority -- The (...) point of the structure : justice and the causes of law -- The reality of the art (not the science) of law. (shrink)

«Ideology» means here a collective project, immanent to society, «religion», a collective committment towards an absolute, a transcendent source of meaning and value.To day the ideological belief that we could, by destroying present social structures and the use of new technics, enjory happiness, brotherhood and justice at once becomes a substitute for the absolute of religion.Absolutized ideologies destroy the conditions of meaning in life by dissimulating «the perfect imperfection» of human condition. Ideological eschatology expects «an end of history» located (...) in future time, to be reached under the scientific guidance of political ingenieurs. For religious eschatology, the end of history is transcendent, «beyond time», in eternity. Christians and marxists in search for understanding and common action are usually confusing the future with eternity, immanence with transcendence.Even in a fight to death, transcendence allows a beyond, a dimension of possible brotherhood or communion. After its destruction by absolutisation of an immanent project, there only remains total war and technical power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 177-188 [Access article in PDF] Chaïm Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy":Commentary and Translation David A. Frank Michelle K. Bolduc Chaïm Perelman's 1949 article, "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy," has remained unavailable to readers unable to read French. Our commentary and translation is intended to provide English readers access to the context, influences, and themes that make the article an extraordinarily important work in (...) the history of twentieth-century rhetoric. In this article, Perelman offers a powerful critique of first philosophies and anticipates the problems of radical postmodernity. "First Philosophies" remains a strikingly elegant attempt to foil what Foucault (1984, 41-42) has called the "Enlightenment blackmail of reason," the assumption held by logical positivists and radical skeptics that if reason does not yield absolute and eternal Enlightenment knowledge, there can be no knowledge.Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric project avoids Enlightenment blackmail by charting a third way between logical positivism and radical relativism, and "First Philosophies" sets forth the project's philosophical blueprint. Commencing in 1947 and culminating in 1958 with the publication of Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought, discovered, and developed a philosophical system designed as a rapprochement between dialectic (reason and logic) and rhetoric (the art of adapting arguments to audiences). Historians of rhetoric judge the work a "grand revolution" (Meyer 1999, 259), believing it marks a rhetorical renaissance in Europe, and suggest nothing like it will appear for another 100 years after its publication (Johnstone 1971). The New Rhetoric project influenced Gadamer and a host of post-war European and American thinkers (Mootz 1998). Michael Leff calls the 1970 English translation of Traité a "bombshell" (1994, 510). Beyond its historical importance, Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is "the single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theory" (1996, 35)and "First Philosophies" marks Perelman's turn from logical [End Page 177] positivism to rhetoric, offering prescient answers to the post-World War II crises of reason, and the ideas in the article provide the Traité'sphilosophical glue (see in particular the English translation, 62).Perelman joined many post-war theorists, including Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in the resistance to the reign of a disembodied Enlightenment rationality. However, Perelman identified what Habermas (1987, 119) would later call the "performative contradiction" in the conclusion that radical skepticism was the only alternative to Enlightenment rationality. In "First Philosophies," Perelman responds directly to Sartre's 1943 Being and Nothingness (198; see translation below) by exposing the failure of radical skeptics to see that they had been held hostage by Enlightenment blackmail in accepting the Enlightenment criterion for truth, rejecting it, and then making skepticism an absolute. Indeed, "First Philosophies" navigates from this performative contradiction to chart a third way between Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism with an approach that he labels regressive philosophy. Regressive philosophy, Perelman argues, provides the human community with a mode of philosophical reasoning located between the extremes of Enlightenment rationality and radical skepticism. In this space between extremes, Perelman identifies contingent truths and values dependent on a rhetorical mode of reasoning, one making moral judgments possible.To best understand "First Philosophies," we recognize the importance of historical context in the development of social theories of knowledge (see Delacampagne 1999; Kennedy 1999). The intellectual networks in which philosophers operate also influence the development of philosophical systems, as Randall Collins has aptly documented. In addition to historical context and intellectual networks, Frederick Beiser has recently noted: "[t] he best introduction to any philosophy is the biography of the person who created it" (1999, 5). He argues that textual analysis alone cannot illuminate the motivation or meaning of a philosophy. A sense of Perelman's biography and the cultural influences that gave rise to "First Philosophies" are necessary for a proper understanding of its themes. For Perelman, the primary intellectual exigencies of the post-war period were the interrelated crises of justice, philosophical reasoning, and responsibility to which "First Philosophies" is a... (shrink)

This paper examines Descartes' controversial theory of the creation of eternal truths and the views of modality attributed to Descartes in recent interpretations of it. It shows why attempts to make Descartes' view intelligible by distinctions of different kinds of modality fail to do justice to his theory, which is radical indeed without being incoherent or involving universal possibilism or irrationalism. Descartes' opposition to traditional rationalist views of modality, it suggests, can be seen instead as foreshadowing contemporary views (...) prefixed, logical structure of reality or of the divine intellect. (shrink)

One of the major arguments for theological voluntarism offered by the Ash’arites involves the claim that that some of the factors upon which our salvation or condemnation depend are beyond our control. We will call this “the problem of salvific luck.” According to the Ash’arites, the fact that God does save and condemn human beings on the basis of factors beyond their control casts doubt on any non-voluntarist conception of divine justice. A common way to respond to this Ash’arite (...) argument for voluntarism is to eliminate the role of luck in God’s judgments. But this is not the Mu’tazilite way of resisting the argument. The Mu’tazilite, who oppose theological voluntarism, choose a more daunting solution to the problem of salvific luck. They reject the claim that God’s Judgment concerning the eternal destiny of some persons would be unjust if it depended upon factors beyond their control. The paper discusses this solution to the problem of salvific luck. (shrink)