This book contains the collected papers of Alan Donagan on topics in the philosophy of religion. Donagan was respected as a leading figure in American moral philosophy. His untimely death in 1991 prevented him from collecting his philosophical reflections on religion, particularly Christianity, and its relation to ethics and other concerns. This collection, therefore, constitutes the fullest expression of Donagan's thought on Christianity and ethics, in which it is possible to discern the outlines of a coherent, overarching theory. Editor Anthony (...) Perovich has supplied a useful introduction, which brings Donagan's work into focus and brings out the unifying themes in the essays. (shrink)

Paul Marshall takes extrovertive mystical experience seriously by providing a metaphysical framework inspired by Plotinus and Leibniz that aims to interpret it non-reductively and to explain it persuasively. However praiseworthy Marshall's intentions, his account fails for a variety of reasons, among them an inability to establish convincingly why natural objects appear as transfigured and alive, characteristics frequently encountered in the reports of nature mystics. An alternative approach, rooted in contemporary pan-experientialist philosophy of mind, is able to take extrovertive mysticism equally (...) seriously while accounting more successfully for its pre-eminent features at a less extravagant metaphysical cost. (shrink)

Fichte’s The Way towards the Blessed Life is a genuinely mystical work that contains several themes characteristic of mystical writing: the opposition of a non-spatio-temporal, non-manifold being to the world as it appears; the ineffability of the Divine; the centrality of union with God and of detachment; and the individual as a conduit for Divine life and love. It must, however, be granted that Fichte conjoins his affirmations of union with denials that the ontological identity of human beings and God (...) is a matter of experience. This is nevertheless an insufficient reason for denying that Fichte’s text is correctly characterized as mystical, for experience of God’s presence is a more adequate criterion of the mystical than the experience of ontological identity or even of union with God, and the experiences that The Way towards the Blessed Life does acknowledge are properly interpreted in terms of Divine presence. (shrink)

The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext. By Gabriel Said Reynolds. Routledge Studies in the Qurʾan, vol. 10. London: Routledge, 2010. Pp. xi + 304. $130.

An approach to constructing counterparts of some fields of mathematical analysis in the frames of Pilbert's “finitary standpoint” is sketched in this paper. This approach is based on certain results of functional spaces theory development in classical mathematics.

Background: Discussing treatment risks has become increasingly important in medical communication. Still, despite regulations, physicians must decide how much and what kind of information to present. Objective: To investigate patients’ preference for information about a small risk of a complication of colonoscopy, and whether medical and personal factors contribute to such preference. To propose a disclosure policy related to our results. Design: Vignettes study. Setting: Department of Gastroenterology, Academic Medical Centre, the Netherlands. Patients: 810 consecutive colonoscopy patients. Intervention: A home-sent (...) questionnaire containing three vignettes. Vignettes varied in the indication for colonoscopy, complication severity and level of risk. Patients were invited to indicate their wish to be informed and the importance of such information. In addition, sociodemograhic, illness-related and psychological characteristics were assessed. Main outcome measurements: Wish to be informed and importance of information. Results: Of 810 questionnaires, 68% were returned. Patients generally wished to be informed about low-risk complications, regardless of the indication for colonoscopy or the severity of the complication. The level of risk did matter, though (OR = 2.48, SE = 0.28, p = 0.001). The information was considered less important if done for population screening purposes or diagnosis of colon cancer, if the complication was less severe (bleeding) and if the risk was smaller (0.01% and 0.1%). Patients’ information preference was also related to age, mood and coping style. Limitations: Difficulty of vignettes. Conclusions: Patients generally wish to be informed about all possible risks. However, this might become uninformative. A stepwise approach is suggested. (shrink)

A. N. Williams examines the conception of the intellect in patristic theology from its beginnings in the work of the Apostolic Fathers to Augustine and Cassian in the early fifth century. The patristic notion of intellect emerges from its systematic relations to other components of theology: the relation of human mind to the body and the will; the relation of the human to the divine intellect; of human reason to divine revelation and secular philosophy; and from the use of the (...) intellect in both theological reflection and spiritual contemplation. The patristic conception of that intellect is therefore important for the way it signals the character of early Christian theology as both systematic and contemplative and as such, distinctive in its approach from secular philosophies of its time and modern Christian theology. (shrink)