This article deals with the question of the interrelation between two papers, both called, in short, “Onomatodoxy”, dedicated to the doctrine of Name-glorification (Imiaslavie, Onomatodoxy), both of which were created in line with the Neo-Patristic movement in the Russian philosophy of the Silver Age. One of these papers is by Alexei Losev and the other by Pavel Florensky. In my opinion, there are sufficient grounds to state that Losev’s “Onomatodoxy” was written either after Florensky created his own “Onomatodoxy”, (...) i.e., after November 1922, or, at the earliest, after Florensky started to give clandestine lectures about Onomatodoxy in Moscow (where Losev lived), i.e., not earlier than spring 1921. Therefore, Losev’s article “Onomatodoxy” could have been intended for the religious-philosophical collection of articles planned for publishing by Yaschenko in 1922 in Berlin. (shrink)

This article uses the personal diaries and memoirs of Archpriest Sergius (Sergei) Bulgakov to examine the circumstances of his expulsion from Bolshevik-occupied Crimea in late 1922. At the time, he was rector of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Yalta. The expulsion of Fr. Sergius was part of a large-scale operation to expel the humanist intelligentsia, who did not fit within the ideological contours of the new government. We will examine the political aspects of the condemnations of Fr. Sergius’s doctrine of (...) Sophia, the theological development of which he began in exile. We will also examine aspects of Fr. Sergius’s attitude to monarchy and his belief in the “white tsar,” noting that Bulgakov’s position as an émigré could hardly be characterized as monarchical. Sophiology may be the political equivalent of ecclesiastical democracy, of faith in the ecclesiastical people and the Christian community, which was alien to the conservative monarchism of Orthodox believers abroad, centered in Serbia’s Sremski Karlovci. We will examine the circumstances of the church’s condemnation of Fr. Sergius, which took place against the context of canonical uncertainty, and we will touch upon some aspects of the contemporary reception of Sophiology in Russia in a political context (V. Bibikhin, O. Kirichenko). (shrink)

This study examines self-legitimation and other-delegitimation in the online radio broadcasts of Nnamdi Kanu, the Supreme Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Using Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) legitimation approach, the paper analyses four speeches he delivered in Israel following his ‘reappearance’ in 2018. The analysis reveals that Kanu uses three legitimation strategies, namely authorisation, moralisation and rationalisation to justify his sudden escape from Nigeria, call for Biafra’s self-rule and boycott of elections and to discredit alleged cloning of the (...) president, electoral malpractices, marginalisation of the Igbo and corruption and brutality among security agents. These strategies are linguistically realised by self-glorification, exclusive and inclusive pronominalisations (us-them dichotomy), polarisation, derogatory nomination (labelling), and hyperbolic expressions. They are aimed at presenting Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB positively as fighting a legitimate cause. (shrink)

Tainted political symbols ought to be confronted, removed, or at least recontextualized. Despite the best efforts to achieve this, however, official actions on tainted symbols often fail to take place. In such cases, I argue that political vandalism—the unauthorized defacement, destruction, or removal of political symbols—may be morally permissible or even obligatory. This is when, and insofar as, political vandalism serves as fitting counter-speech that undermines the authority of tainted symbols in ways that match their publicity, refuses to let them (...) speak in our name, and challenges the derogatory messages expressed through a mechanism I call derogatory pedestalling: the glorification or honoring of certain individuals or ideologies that can only make sense when members of a targeted group are taken to be inferior. (shrink)

In July 2015, shortly after the murder of an elderly priest in the city of Rouen, the leading French daily Le Monde announced it would no longer publish the names or images of individuals involved in acts of terrorism. The decision, wrote the editors, was intended to limit the "posthumous glorification" of terrorist acts. It was not the first time the notion of conscientious self-censorship in the fight against terrorism had bubbled to the fore. The strategy had been flowing (...) through media circles and policy centers for over a decade. By the time the Islamic State emerged in the summer of 2014, it had become nearly impossible for the average Western consumer to hear or see any actual trace of the... (shrink)

Educational philosophy has not discussed Foucault’s publications on the Iranian Revolution and the related controversy. Foucauldian concepts are applied to education, though his only writings which ‘sidetracked’ him from exploring power within the state, namely, his journalistic accounts of his visits to Iran, remain unexplored in our field. Against moralist accusations of Foucault’s views on Iran as ‘singularly uncritical’, and beyond standard postcolonial charges of Foucault with exoticism and orientalism, I examine how the writings in question reveal ambivalences and limits (...) of Foucauldian philosophy and complicate the glorification of limit-experience in educational theory. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGIn diesem Aufsatz wird versucht, exegetische Einsichten über die johanneische Konzeption von δóξα and δoξάζειν mit dogmatischen und ästhetischen Bezügen zu »Herrlichkeit« und »Verherrlichung« in Verbindung zu setzen. Zwei Aspekte des Gebrauchs von δóξα and δoξάζειν im vierten Evangelium werden vorgestellt: erstens die Unterscheidung zwischen δóξα πατϱóς und δóξα πατϱί , die eine Veränderung in Jesu Beziehung zu der einen Herrlichkeit Gottes bezeichnet; zweitens der Aufbau eines christologischen Deutungszusammenhangs im Evangelium, in welchem die δóξα-Begrifflichkeit dazu dient, den Tod Jesu in (...) den theologischen Rahmen des Evangeliums zu integrieren.Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die »Herrlichkeits-bezogenen« Werke von Reinhard Hoeps, Das Gefühl des Erhabenen und die Herrlichkeit Gottes. Studien zur Beziehung von philosophischer und theologischer Ästhetik, 1989, und von Wolf Krötke, Gottes Klarheiten. Eine Neuinterpretation der Lehre von Gottes ›Eigenschaften‹, 2001, analysiert. Insbesondere Krötkes Werk scheint bemerkenswerte Übereinstimmungen mit der johanneischen δóξα-Theologie aufzuweisen.In einem abschließenden Ausblick werden weitere Möglichkeiten der Rezeption der johanneischen δóξα-Konzeption in der Dogmatik angedeutet, nämlich die Impulse für eine konkretere Bestimmung des Verhältnisses zwischen Gott und seinem Sohn und Gesandten, für die Spezifizierung des Selbstverständnisses der glaubenden Gemeinde und ihrer Verantwortung für die Welt und für eine Deutung des Todes Jesu, die die sühnetheologische Deutung ergänzt, überragt und überschreitet.SUMMARYThis paper seeks to relate exegetical insights concerning the Johannine concept of δóξα and δoξάζειν to dogmatic and aesthetic references to “glory” and “glorification”. Two features of the Fourth Gospel's use of δóξα and δoξάζειν are introduced: First, the distinction of a δóξα πατϱóς and a δóξα πατϱί , signifying a change in Jesus' relation to the one glory of God; second, the establishment of a Christological network throughout the Gospel, in which δóξα terminology serves to integrate Jesus' death into the theological framework of the Gospel. With this in mind, the “glory-centered” works of Reinhard Hoeps, Das Gefühl des Erhabenen und die Herrlichkeit Gottes. Studien zur Beziehung von philosophischer und theologischer Ästhetik, 1989, and, most extensively, Wolf Krötke, Gottes Klarheiten. Eine Neuinterpretation der Lehre von Gottes ‘Eigenschaften’, 2001, are analyzed; especially Krötke's work seems to yield remarkable consonances with Johannine δóξα theology. In a concluding outlook, some further ways for a dogmatic evaluation of the Johannine δóξα concept are suggested, namely its potential for a specification of the relationship between God and his Son and Sent One; for a specification of the self-understanding of the believing community and their responsibility for the world; and for an understanding of Jesus' death that supplements, surmounts and transcends the traditional soteriology of atonement. (shrink)

In the polemical literature against Judaism, it is stated that Islam is the last religion, Prophet Muhammad was foretold in the Bible, and the Bible is distorted. Among the authors of such works, there are many who embraced Islam from Jews and Christians. Through their works, these converts show Muslims how serious they are in embracing Islam. In this article, the treatise under the evaluation was first brought to the agenda in 1867 by Gustav Flügel (d. 1870). Flügel claimed that (...) the author of the treatise was a Spanish or Moroccan convert Jew named Rakili. However, recent researches have revealed that Rakili is the name of the copyist and the author is an unknown Jew. Due to the Hebrew words in the text of the treatise, the author is thought to be a Jewish convert. The author of the treatise makes use of intensive quotations from Tanakh. However, it seems that the criticism of the treatise is not as strong as Ibn Hazm. The author also quotes from the Jewish oral tradition. Although the author is thought to be a Jewish convert, it is difficult to say that there is a very strong polemic of Judaism. Rather than showing that the Torah has been tampered with, using the passages of Tanakh, he wants to demonstrate that the Israelites went astray. In doing so, he tries to refute the Jewish claim of chosenness. Instead of stating that the Jews were not at the point of religious representation of God’s message, the author claims that Muhammad's followers were the addressees of this election. This method, which we occasionally encounter in other polemical treatises, appears as a much more intense and central agenda in this treatise. The most original aspect of this treatise at issue is the Ishmael-Isaac, Hagar-Sarah and Moses- Muhammad comparisons. The author insistently emphasizes that the chosen line is not the lineage of Isaac, but the lineage of Ishmael. As a natural consequence of this, he tries to prove that Muhammad is the greatest prophet to be obeyed and followed. What is interesting here is that the author, as a Jewish convert, tried to refute the idea of the chosennes of Jewish nation. According to him, there is an election not through Sarah and Isaac, but through Hagar and Ishmael. It is seen that those who have converted do such things both to prove their sincerity and to be accepted by Muslim administrators. The author’s glorifications of the Prophet Muhammad and his miracles by scorning Moses' miracles and Jewish ancestors can be described as an extreme attitude in this sense. The author also devotes a place to the subject of Biblical prophecies about the Prophet Muhammad. In this part, the author of the treatise stated that the gematria (abjad) value of some words in the Torah and the word Muhammad are equal. He claims that there are passages pointing to Muhammad. However, these passages are known in the polemical literature and are issues that were mentioned before the author. Apart from these widely known passages, there are some other passages he quoted. But these passages are also based on strained interpretations. Again, in some passages he quoted from Tanakh, it is seen that he was flexible and not loyal to the text. One of the points that the author dwells upon is the sins committed by the Israelites and the curses that were inflicted on them. The author of treatise supports this with passages different from Tanakh. Drawing attention to the fact that the Jews were cursed in their own books, which they consider sacred, the author tries to show that a nation so cursed cannot be a chosen people. The author, contrary to the Jews' expectation of the Messiah, points out that Jesus will come back, break the cross, kill the pig, and rule the earth. The writer, who reported the hadith that the Jews would be killed in the End Times, even reports that when the Jews hid behind the stones, the stones would say "There is a Jew behind me, come and kill". According to him, the time for Jews to repent has passed, because they could not take this opportunity by denying Muhammad either. The author has an interesting explanation as to why the hereafter and resurrection are not mentioned in the Torah. According to this claim, when God sent down the Torah to Moses, he ordered the Israelites to keep their orders and refrain from their prohibitions. Since God knows the hardness and stubbornness of the hearts of the Israelites, that most of them are devilish, engaged in magic and pagan cults, and prefer the world to the hereafter, he did not mention the issues such as heaven, hell, reward and punishment in the Torah. On the contrary, in many parts of the Torah, God said to them if you keep my orders, your sustenance will increase, your generation will increase, fertility will increase, and you will win victories over your enemies. (shrink)

Among the four propositions considered in this paper, we have found two which can contribute to a holistic environmental ethic: individuals acquire some of their value through participating in communities, including biotic communities, and wholes, including biotic communities, can have values which are not the sum of the values of the individuals composing them. However, accepting these propositions does not represent a revolutionary break distinguishing holism from traditional value theories or ethics. On the other hand, the holistic propositions we considered (...) which would clearly differentiate holism from (at least some) traditional value theories and ethics are unacceptable. Consequently, if the propositions we have discussed fairly represent what goes under the name of “holism,” then rather than being a new kind of ethic, a viable ethical holism will make its contribution by emphasizing the communal elements of traditional ethics which have sometimes been neglected in glorifications of the individual. This would not be an inconsiderable contribution, philosophically, socially, or environmentally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deification through the Cross:Reflections from an Implied Ideal WorshiperAndrew J. SummersonKhaled Anatolios's most recent book, Deification through the Cross,1 develops a definition of salvation out of his experience of the Byzantine liturgy. This experience of worship offers an immersion in what he calls "doxological contrition." By this, Anatolios means that Christ saves us by offering us the ability to participate in the mutual glorification of the persons of (...) the Holy Trinity by vicariously repenting for our sins. For Anatolios, this objective content is subjectively appropriated in Byzantine Christian worship. To explore this theme, Anatolios develops a working account of "doxological contrition" through a synthetic discussion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, books of liturgical hymnography that govern the Byzantine worship from Lent to Pentecost. Anatolios derives his approach from the adaption of reader response theory, which aims to expose the effect a text should have on the "implied ideal reader." As such, his account speaks from the perspective of the "implied ideal worshiper"—presumably a theologically educated congregant who can seize these themes that evaporate into the ether as quickly as incense swung throughout the church during the services.Let me say from the outset, I heartily recommend Anatolios's book. It is both an ambitious work and a rewarding read. Ambitious because Anatolios's approach makes otherwise fragmented theological disciplines—liturgical [End Page 1089] studies, Scripture, historical theology, and systematics—fruitful dialogue partners in his exposition of a working account of the Christian experience of salvation. Rewarding because the reader can explore in depth the touchstones of the Christian tradition through Anatolios's deep retrieval of a more coherent soteriology. Deification of the Cross demonstrates the perennial value of historical theology to correctly account for the "half-forgotten, half misunderstood" details of the Christian tradition in the face of caricatures that at best misrepresent and at worst present an idolatrous, counterfeit Christianity.Eastern Christian Liturgy and RevelationPerhaps I am not Anatolios's ideal audience; I may be too close to the source material and lack objectivity. That aside, the bulk of my reflections on this book comes from the perspective of an "implied ideal worshiper." I do share some of Anatolios starting points. Like Anatolios, I am a convert, scholar, and Eastern Catholic priest. Furthermore, I also share the discontent with which Anatolios begins his book, though perhaps for different reasons. He bemoans a loss of the experience of salvation. My own vocation as priest and scholar comes out of a frustrated wonder. As a college student, I set out to learn about this Church and its Tradition. I learned about the Sunday experience I was supposed be having. It was in university when I read for the first time John Paul II's 1995 apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, written to acquaint the wider Catholic Church with the riches of the Christian East. John Paul II dedicated much reflection to the "genius of Eastern liturgy," emphasizing its power to envelop all our human senses into the fullness of the mystery of God. It is worth quoting in full:Within this framework, liturgical prayer in the East shows a great aptitude for involving the human person in his or her totality: the mystery is sung in the loftiness of its content, but also in the warmth of the sentiments it awakens in the heart of redeemed humanity. In the sacred act, even bodiliness is summoned to praise, and beauty, which in the East is one of the best loved names expressing the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured, appears everywhere: in the shape of the church, in the sounds, in the colors, in the lights, in the scents. The lengthy duration of the celebrations, the repeated invocations, everything expresses gradual identification with the mystery celebrated with one's whole person. Thus the prayer of the Church already becomes participation in the heavenly liturgy, an anticipation of the final beatitude.(§11) [End Page 1090]The experience of this liturgy has been quite potent throughout history. It led to the baptism of the entire kingdom of Rus' in 988 AD. As the story goes, its ruler, Vladimir the Great, sent emissaries to find a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John BehrMatthew Z. ValeJohn the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John Behr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), xv + 388 pp.Father Behr's book defies summary. Its ambitions span several fields—patristics, contemporary biblical scholarship, speculative systematics, phenomenology—and Behr has controversial proposals in each. The book is not (expressly) a work of systematic (...) theology, but its speculative élan and its ambition to give a normative account of Christian theology's beating heart is unmistakable. If a vice of the book is vagueness on questions of burning Christological, protological, and eschatological interest, among its virtues is the verve and vividness with which it provokes such questions to begin with. Behr has written, not a book on John, but a Johannine manifesto on theology. [End Page 989]The book is a "symposium" in three parts, each inviting a different kind of reader of John's gospel. The first is predominantly "historical" (the early Fathers of the Johannine school, reconstructed by modern scholarship), the second predominantly "exegetical" (contemporary biblical studies), and the third "philosophical," with a single guest in Michel Henry. The book's heart is an argument about what "incarnation" means. When it comes to the Incarnation, we labor, Behr says, under what Quentin Skinner calls a "mythology of doctrine," the hermeneutical fallacy of projecting onto a tradition's classical writers positions and whole doctrinal categories developed only later (6–8). The mythology of doctrine Behr opposes is, in fact, a mythological notion of the Incarnation as "an episode in the biography of the Word" (a phrase from Rowan Williams), the episode when a "pre-incarnate Word" is born as Jesus (3, and throughout). To break the ice on this mythology, part 1 reconstructs an original milieu for John's Gospel—a school of John the Evangelist, centered upon an original Pascha celebration—in which "becoming flesh," "Word," and "human being" mean something other than the dogmatic meanings we project back onto them. This Johannine school is not the Johannine "community" posited by historical-critical studies, but the school of John's "hearers" that J. B. Lightfoot traced from Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias of Hierapolis, and Melito of Sardis down to Irenaeus (30–31). Behr's reconstruction makes the following proposals. Our evangelist is John the Elder, the beloved disciple, not the Synoptics' son of Zebedee. This John was plausibly an eyewitness to the crucifixion—alone among the evangelists. He authored both the Gospel and the Apocalypse bearing his name, according to near unanimous second-century tradition (76). The Apocalypse was possibly written before the Gospel, perhaps before the Temple's destruction. John the Elder originated the yearly Pascha celebration, and it remained peculiar to his school until the second half of the second century. This feast originally celebrated the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost as the single event of the Passion, just as in John's Gospel Jesus's ascension (12:32), glorification (13:31–2), and "handing down the Spirit" (19:30) are identified with the crucifixion. Only later was the Passion's simple white light refracted into the liturgical cycle's rainbow of distinct feasts (91–92, 243).This reconstruction is explicitly speculative. Its purpose is to enliven our imaginations about what the evangelist's vision may possibly be. If the mythological picture of the Incarnation is easily recognized as false, our theological traditions still have not entirely exorcised it from their standard narration. Behr proposes a Johannine narration untroubled by this [End Page 990] mythology. The Incarnation is not a novelty occurring for God at some moment. No previously fleshless divine agent undergoes change to become flesh at some time. The Incarnation must instead be understood "apocalyptically," as the eternal mystery of Jesus Christ being revealed for us in time (256-57). The Incarnation is Jesus's eternal identity as the Word being revealed and wrought in time and pro nobis by the Passion (24, 29, 257, 130). John's Gospel should be read, in John Ashton's words, as "an apocalypse—in reverse, upside down, inside out" (4, 99... (shrink)

Harmful and dangerous language is frequent in social media, in particular in spaces which are considered anonymous and/or allow free participation. In this paper, we analyse the language in a Telegram channel populated by followers of Donald Trump, in order to identify the ways in which harmful language is used to create a specific narrative in a group of mostly like-minded discussants. Our research has several aims. First, we create an extended taxonomy of potentially harmful language that includes not only (...) hate speech and direct insults, but also more indirect ways of poisoning online discourse, such as divisive speech and the glorification of violence. We apply this taxonomy to a large portion of the corpus. Our data gives empirical evidence for harmful speech such as in/out-group divisive language and the use of codes within certain communities which have not often been investigated before. Second, we compare our manual annotations to several automatic methods of classifying hate speech and offensive language, namely list based and machine learning based approaches. We find that the Telegram data set still poses particular challenges for these automatic methods. Finally, we argue for the value of studying such naturally occurring, coherent data sets for research on online harm and how to address it in linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"He Who Eats Me Will Live Because of Me":Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas's Johannine Theology of the Missions of the Divine PersonsDaniel M. Garland Jr.IntroductionIn the Bread of Life Discourse of John 6, Jesus begins his teaching by stating that he is the true bread from heaven sent from God to give life to the world. After "the Jews" (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι)1 boast that Moses gave their fathers manna to eat (...) in the wilderness, Jesus makes a contrast between the manna in the wilderness and himself as the "bread of life" (6:35). While the title "Bread of Life" carries a metaphorical sense, Jesus climaxes his discourse by [End Page 1171] insisting that believers eat of (ἐσθίω) or gnaw on (τρώγω) his flesh and drink his blood. Then, in John 6:57, Jesus makes the startling claim: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats [τρώγω] me will live because of me." Jesus, here, connects his mission with the giving of his flesh as food for eternal life. At the same time, Jesus declares in John 17:3 that eternal life is predicated on the knowledge of God the Father and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. There seems to be a tension here in John's Gospel. Do we have eternal life by eating or by knowing?This article will explore the gift of eternal life communicated through the sacramental eating and drinking of Christ's body and blood and its relation to our coming to know the Father and the Son. It will be divided into two main parts. The first part will explore this as revealed in the text of the Gospel of John by examining what it means "to know God." Next, I will show that Jesus has the power to give eternal life because he is Life itself and that John points to the root of this power as being derived from Jesus's procession from the Father. Then, I will take up Jesus's mutual abiding/indwelling language in John 6 and elsewhere in the Gospel and how this contributes to bringing eternal life to believers. The second part will show how St. Thomas's teaching on the missions of the divine persons further clarifies Jesus's teaching in the Gospel of John that eternal life comes about through both eating Christ's flesh and coming to the knowledge of the Father and the Son and also gives greater theological insight into the Johannine theology of the Eucharist as the source of eternal life.Gospel of JohnJohn 17 and the Relational Name of the Father and the Son in Relation to Eternal LifeIn John 17, Jesus prays from the vantage point of already having completed (17:4; τελειώσας) the work that the Father has given him to do. The work that Jesus speaks of is both a past event, consisting of the signs that witness that the Father has sent him (see 5:36; τελειώσω), but also the future event of the Cross(see 19:30; τελειώσω),2 Here, Jesus requests glorification by the Father in order that he, as Son, may glorify the Father in return. This mutual glorification is rooted in the power (ἐξουσίαν) that the Father has given to the Son over all flesh—the power to grant eternal life (17:2). Jesus [End Page 1172] then defines eternal life in 17:3 as "to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent." There is an intimate connection, here, between knowing the Father ("the only true God") and Jesus. Eternal life is not merely knowledge of the Father, but knowledge of the Father as the one who sent the Son.3 How does one know the Father? John 17 suggests that it is through the revelation of his name. There is a repeated refrain in John 17 of Jesus making known the Father's name (17:6, 26) and keeping them in this name (17:11, 12). Looking back in the Gospel, we can recall that in John 5:43, Jesus associates the "Father's name" with his mission: "I have come in my Father's name." The same can... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Old Orders for New Ecology, Animal Rights, and the Poverty of HumanismCary Wolfe (bio)Luc Ferry. The New Ecological Order. Trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.1Early on in The New Ecological Order, the French philosopher Luc Ferry characterizes the allure and danger of ecology in the postmodern moment. What separates it from various other issues in the intellectual and political field, he writes, is thatit can call (...) itself a true “world vision,” whereas the decline of political utopias, but also the parcelization of knowledge and the growing “jargonization” of individual scientific disciplines, seemed to forever prohibit any plan for the globalization of thought.... At a time when ethical guide marks are more than ever floating and undetermined, it allows the unhoped-for promise of rootedness to form, an objective rootedness, certain of a new moral ideal.[xx]As we shall see, for Ferry—a staunch liberal humanist in the Kantian if not quite Cartesian tradition—this vision conceals a danger to which contemporary European intellectuals are especially sensitive: not holism, nor even moralism, exactly, but that far more charged and historically freighted thing, totalitarianism. Ferry’s concern is that such “world visions,” incarnated in contemporary environmentalism in movements such as Deep Ecology and ecofeminism, threaten “[o]ur entire democratic culture,” which “since the French Revolution, has been marked, for basic philosophical reasons, by the glorification of uprootedness, or innovation” [xxi]. Ferry’s thesis—it becomes quite explicit in his comparison of environmental legislation under the Third Reich with tenets of Deep Ecology in the book’s second section—is that Deep Ecology and its ilk have moved in to occupy the space left open by the passing of the political imaginaries of fascism and communism, so that denunciations of liberalism (and its corollary in political praxis, reformism) may now be unmasked for what they are: critiques “in the name of nostalgia, or, on the contrary, in that of hope: either the nostalgia for a lost past, for national identity flouted by the culture of rootlessness, or revolutionary hope in a radiant future, in a classless and free society” [xxvi]. To which Ferry responds—literally—“Grow up!” Late in the book, he tells us that we must see through “the adult development of the secular and democratic universe” [137] by rejecting totalizing revolutionary visions of the sort purveyed by Deep Ecology, and by adhering instead to liberal reformism, “the only [End Page 21] position consistent with leaving the world of childhood” [138].Ferry is certainly right to draw our attention to the often uncritical nostalgia and romantic holism of some varieties of environmental thought—problems that have been noted before by critics from points on the map very different politically from Ferry’s avowed liberal humanism. And it is certainly understandable, given the historical context, that he would join a long list of other European intellectuals in pointing out the manifold dangers to democratic society of totalizing moral schemes—dangers often represented for liberal intellectuals like Ferry by the rise of the Greens in European politics. 1 We do well to remember, too (as Fredric Jameson and others have pointed out), that for European intellectuals such as Ferry, liberalism retains, for understandable historical reasons, a viability and a promise about which many American intellectuals are skeptical or even jaded. European intellectuals, conditioned by the experience of fascist authoritarianism and the strong but problematic presence historically of the Communist party in social and intellectual life, may find in liberalism a refreshing and indeed radical democratic openness and dynamism, while American intellectuals, conditioned to the absence of any other major political contenders, have long since grown accustomed to liberalism as the name for that “end of ideology” position which, as Jameson puts it, “can function more effectively after its own death as an ideology, realizing itself in its most traditional form as a commitment to the market system that has become sheer common sense and no longer a political program” [249, my emphasis].But in defending democratic difference, everything hinges, of course, on precisely how such terms are framed and how difference is articulated—an index of which often may be found in how its imagined... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 451-454 [Access article in PDF] Susan P. Mattern. Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. xxi + 259 pp. Cloth, $35.00. This well-written book is nothing if not bold. Its time frame is, broadly speaking, the first two and a half centuries A.D. Its basis is the view that has met increasingly (...) wide acceptance over the past quarter-century, that the Romans' conduct of foreign relations was altogether different from what we assume of modern states. The Roman mindset, motivation, intelligence, and strategy are all alien to us and thus require evaluation on their own terms. Consequently, in five chapters Mattern first examines the character and education of Rome's small decision-making elite. She next moves to their "image of the world," variously gained through campaigning, geographical knowledge, intelligence, and ethnology. A chapter on strategy follows, treating the size and deployment of the Roman army and the different means by which the empire was defined and defended. Income and expenditure are the focus of the fourth chapter, with particular reference to the expense of maintaining the army, the cost of warfare, and the economic gain to be made from conquests. Finally a chapter on "values" concludes the book--the unashamed glorification of conquest, the prestige accruing to the Romans in general and to the emperor in particular, and reinforcement of the sense that it was discipline, both moral and organizational, that made Rome supreme over other peoples. [End Page 451]The discussion of all these aspects displays insight and balanced judgment, and the accompanying bibliography is valuable (some notes are repetitious, however: cf. 117 n. 163 with 172 n. 36). The work of Ampelius (ed. Budé 1993) might have been cited (25) as another example of how weak even a schoolmaster's geographical knowledge could be. Although, to be sure, it is true that "bird's-eye view" was hardly an option for Roman representations of the world (26), we might still recall Artemidorus' (Oneirocritica 2.68) vision of dreamers flying along and looking down at the landscape below, while the presentation of Rome's Marble Plan is large-scale and ichnographic. The Tabula Banasitana (AE 1971.534) merits citing as a prime example of Marcus Aurelius' pondering with care the bestowal of benefits upon people on a remote fringe of the empire (180). In stating that we shall never know where the Teutoburg Forest was, let alone the site of Varus' defeat (167), Mattern seems to overlook the finds made at Kalkriese (see now W. Schlüter in J. D. Creighton and R. J. A. Wilson, eds., Roman Germany: Studies in Cultural Interaction [1999] 125-59); equally, she shows no awareness of a kernel of truth in the tradition that Hadrian abandoned Dacia, at least in part (104; cf. Barrington Atlas, Directory, 1376). In treating the Roman concern to save "face" (177), there is more to be made of L. Caesennius Paetus as scapegoat. The major step of annexing Armenia must surely reflect instructions he brought with him from Rome, rather than just a personal preference (cf. 92 n. 46), but all the blame for the rapid, catastrophic failure of the annexation attempt is then heaped upon him alone. Tacitus grasped Rome's vulnerability in this region. He has the Parthian cavalry commander Vasaces coolly dismiss Paetus' bluster about long-standing Roman control there: "imaginem retinendi largiendive penes nos, vim penes Parthos" (Ann. 15.14). Later, after Corbulo's diplomatic victory, Tacitus can detail the official tokens of respect insisted upon by Tiridates during his journey to Rome and conclude ironically: "scilicet externae superbiae sueto non inerat notitia nostri apud quos vis imperii valet, inania tramittuntur" (Ann. 15.31).These and other sundry observations aside, it is the book's principal thesis that invites comment, namely Mattern's sweeping claim: "I would argue that Rome's real strategy lay in the realm of psychology. The empire was defended not by 'scientific frontiers,' however we might choose to... (shrink)

Book Review. Jos de Mul. The Tragedy of Finitude . Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life . New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2004.

[Book Review] Rudolf Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, eds. Wilhelm Dilthey. Selected Works vol. III: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Book Review. Jesús Conill-Sancho. Ética hermenéutica. Crítica desde la facticidad. [Hermeneutic Ethics. The Critique of Facticity]. Madrid: Tecnos, 2006.

This article is a report on ongoing field research and the exponential growth of the environment in which sex workers, prostitutes, call girls, and escorts operate. We look at the complexity of the conditions of such work and consider the socio-psychological and media vectors that make up the context from which its actors and stereotypes emerge. With the explosion of websites offering virtual or real sex, there is also a continuation of oppressive and violent male practices in this sector, restricting (...) the freedom of choice for women who work professionally in this field. These practices reproduce the power relations and the exclusion that has always been present in society, and are also now more diffuse as virtual reality has come to play an important role in social practice. (shrink)

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Volume 26 Number 1 March 2012 ARTICLES An Inferential Model of Scientific Understanding Mark Newman 1 Evidence and the Assessment of Causal Rela...

Preface -- Introduction -- How to value democracy -- Paper stones, the ethics of participation -- Philosophers-citizens -- Superdeliberators -- What is it like to be a citizen? -- Democracy's ethics of belief -- The division of democratic labor -- Representing principles -- Democratic complicity -- Not in my name, macrodemocratic design.

Since the beginning of the scientific revolution, believers have had to reconcile their beliefs with science. This has always proved difficult. If an all-perfect God created the universe and its physical laws, why would he have to step in to perform miracles and answer prayers? If, as all the evidence indicates, the universe, including humans and their brains, is matter and nothing more, how can we possibly live forever? Theologians try hard, but never come up with satisfactory answers.

Wells identifies influential mistakes about language embedded in the empiricist philosophical tradition of Locke, Russell and Ayer. He shows how these errors stimulated a religious backlash, in which faith became coupled with commonsense realism. He also covers behaviourism and magical thinking.

With his theory of descriptions Russell wanted to solve two problems concerning denotation and reference, which are formulated here as Problem I and Problem II. After presenting each problem, we describe the main points of Russell’s solution. We deal with Russell’s concepts of existence and then elaborate his presuppositions concerning the relation of denoting and referring. Next we discuss the presuppositions or principles which underlie Russell’s understanding of the _objects_ of reference. These principles are such that if the objects of (...) reference are material objects, they are objects of classical mechanics, or very close to such an interpretation. Finally we show how these principles have to be relaxed if the objects of reference are objects of quantum mechanics or special or general relativity. (shrink)

One current challenge for neuropsychologists is to design assessment methods capable of detecting cognitive deficits in the early or preclinical phases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The objective of this paper is to review the studies that have explored the use of the Face-Name Associative Memory Exam (FNAME) as a test for early diagnosis of AD. Studies looking at correlations between performance on the FNAME test and biomarkers in healthy people and studies comparing healthy controls and people with mild cognitive (...) impairment are reviewed. These studies are based on the evidence that AD’s pathological process begins years before the most visible clinical manifestations. We conclude that the FNAME test may be a valuable tool for early diagnosis but that some important questions remain to be resolved in future research. (shrink)

Augustine famously claims every word is a name. Some readers take Augustine to thereby maintain a purely referentialist semantic account according to which every word is a referential expression whose meaning is its extension. Other readers think that Augustine is no referentialist and is merely claiming that every word has some meaning. In this paper, I clarify Augustine’s arguments to the effect that every word is a name and argue that ‘every word is a name’ amounts to (...) the claim that for any word, there exist tokens of that word which are autonymous nouns. Augustine takes this to be the result of universal lexical ambiguity or equivocity and I clarify how Augustine’s account of metalinguistic discourse, which is one of the most detailed to have survived from antiquity, differs from some ancient and modern theories. (shrink)

The aim of this research is to extract the Shariah principles from the verses in which the Qur'an addressed the Children of Israel with the phrase: "O Children of Israel." Although the Qur'anic discourse was originally directed at the Children of Israel, but it also addresses Muslims indirectly, as its mention in the Holy Qur'an is for reflection and admonition, as well as for deriving legal principles and rulings. Therefore, the objective of this research is to enlighten Muslims about the (...) Shariah principles derived from the Qur'anic discourse directed at the Children of Israel, to benefit them in their practical lives. The research focuses on two specific types of principles: doctrinal and ethical. (shrink)

This book is about love - our ideals of love, our experiences of love, and the fatal consequences of love. A unique collaboration between a leading philosopher in the field of emotions and a social scientist, In The Name of Love presents fascinating insights into romantic love and its future in modern society.