Today, the dialogue is regarded as a basis for cultural being, while the dialogue of cultures has become a key notion in modern philosophical thinking. The concept of dialogue has been transformed over the past century, acquiring new meanings and changing its internal content from understanding it as an ordinary exchange of information to a complex creative interaction and mutual influence of different cultural and value consciousnesses. Not only different personalities, but entire ethnoses, cultures, and civilizations may become subjects of (...) the dialogue, thus increasing the dialogue functionality up to the means of developing inter-cultural, inter-ethnic and inter-civilizational relations and accentuating commonality of the global historic process and cultural heritage of mankind. Appearing as a form of interpersonal relations in the ontology of M. Buber, who was one of the first to focus on the transition of relations from "subject-object" to "subject-subject", the concept of "dialogue" has become an important philosophical concept throughout the mid-XX century. Brand new turn of development of the theory of dialogue, and the entire human culture in General, was due to the concept of Semiosphere Yu.М. Lotman. The article deals with genesis of the philosophical concept of the dialogue between cultures in the 20th century. The focus is on its emergence - in the early 20th century - in M. Buber's theological concept and at the highest point of its development in Yu. M. Lotman’s semiotic philosophy. (shrink)

The article discusses a methodological position that allows interpreting modes and, fist of all, musical modes as cosmographic and ethical objects without losing the approach to them as musical phenomena proper. The study is based on musical theoretical data relating to the period of Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as on the author's concept of modal ontology and the interpretation of modus as artistic content, developed by E.V. Nazaikinsky. In order to reveal the ontological prerequisites for the (...) unity of the musical modus with a cosmographic or ethical phenomenon, the author analyzes the ancient Chinese system of tones lü, Indian ragas, ancient tetrachords, the voices of the Russian Orthodox znamenny chant. The features of the correspondence of these musical phenomena to the periods of the year or day, elements, archetypal states of the human spirit, social laws are revealed. In the course of the analysis, the question is formulated about the nature of the connection between musical modes and non-musical reality: was it exclusively conventional, established by virtue of tradition, or did it have other, essential reasons? The search for unconventional foundations of the unity of musical modes with natural and socio-ethical phenomena leads to its ontological interpretation. The relevance of this research method is argued in the process of critical analysis of the semiotic approach to musical modes as references or conventional signs of objects. It also demonstrates the unproductiveness of the psychoemotional interpretation of musical modes as stimuli that cause certain emotional states. The result of the research is the development of a specific musical-ontological approach based on the methodology of modal analysis. This analysis aims at a syncretic understanding of unity. In the light of this approach, it was concluded that the concept of musical modus not only clarifies the rhythmic and harmonic laws of the musical language, but also embodies the interconnection of the phenomena of music, human spirit, nature, and space. (shrink)

At the end of the 20th century, a discipline of Buddhist ethics was formed in English-speaking countries, within the framework of which a community of closely interacting researchers is engaged in the comprehension and systematization of ethical positions within Buddhism, often resorting to the use of analytical philosophy tools. One of the directions within the discipline of Buddhist ethics is an attempt to embed the ethical content of Buddhism in a contemporary Western European philosophical context and to put before it (...) questions characteristic of Western philosophy, for example, the questions of moral responsibility, free will and determinism. While some researchers believe that Buddhist texts reflect a compatibilist position, others see Buddhist ethical position as resembling incompatibilism. The first problem faced by Buddhist researchers interested in this topic is that Buddhism does not have a concept of “free will” similar to the one that exists in Western philosophy. Nevertheless, contemporary theorists believe that classical Buddhism contains enough material to allow for a conversation about causality and responsibility. The purpose of this research is to substantiate the possibility of discussing free will in the context of the ethics of Buddhism. In order to do this the research examines the key provisions of Buddhist teaching relevant in the context of free will: dependent arising, absence of self and karma. It is noted that one of the reasons for the difference in the conclusions of researchers of Buddhist ethics regarding the issue of free will and moral responsibility in Buddhism are the peculiarities of Theravada and Mahayana and their particular texts different theorists mainly refer to. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted that Kant holds the “Opacity Thesis,” the claim that we cannot know the ultimate grounds of our actions. Understood in this way, I shall argue, the Opacity Thesis is at odds with Kant's account of practical self-consciousness, according to which I act from the (always potentially conscious) representation of principles of action and that, in particular, in acting from duty I act in consciousness of the moral law's determination of my will. The Opacity Thesis thus (...) threatens to render acting from duty unintelligible. To diffuse the threat, I argue, first, that we need not attribute the Opacity Thesis to Kant. Kant's concern with the ubiquity of moral self-opacity does not imply the strong skeptical conclusion that knowledge of the grounds of one's action is impossible. Second, I show how moral self-opacity in cases of morally bad action emerges from the intrinsic inability of representing oneself, insofar as one is pursuing the indeterminate end of “happiness.” Thus, moral self-opacity does not undermine the will's self-consciousness but is born of it. (shrink)

The research is devoted to the ethical views of Vladimir Monomakh, reflected in the “Teaching” of the Grand Duke. The author’s reflections concerning such fundamental moral categories as good and evil, virtue and vice, the meaning of life and death, free will, duty, happiness are considered and analyzed. A partial continuity of the Grand Duke’s views concerning the relationship to the categories of good and evil, as well as virtue and vice, with the Byzantine Christian tradition, in particular with regard (...) to the “theory of three small deeds”, which is based on the theory of repentance of John Chrysostom, and the theory of “asceticism in the world”, based on the writings of Basil the Great. It is revealed that the ethical views of the Grand Duke do not fit into the strict paradigm of Christian medieval philosophy and theology. In this regard, the author of the article draws attention to the syncretic nature of the worldview of the author of the “Teaching”, expressed in a kind of worldview combining Christian and pre-Christian beliefs. In this vein, the specific understanding of the problems of the meaning of life, death, happiness by Vladimir Monomakh is analyzed, which is revealed when considering the peculiar attitude of the author of the “Teaching” to the sacred rites of prayer and burial. The author’s views on the category of duty in the universal and state terms, as well as the principles of practical behavior, are studied. According to the results of the research, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that the work of the Grand Duke is an ethical “micro-treatise”, the ideological content of which fully reflects the moral concept of the existence of the ancient Rus-sian man. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on corporate reputation as perceived by non-professional stakeholders. Proponents of CSR disclosure argue that CSR disclosure can be considered as a tool for reputation management. We empirically investigate this claim using a reputation index which tracks the general public’s perceptions of corporate reputation over time. In our analysis, we focus on disclosure in stand-alone CSR reports and control for CSR performance. We find that, in contrast to the common belief, stand-alone (...) CSR reports do not influence corporate reputation among non-professional stakeholders. However, we are able to document that stand-alone CSR reports influence corporate reputation among professional stakeholders. We also provide some evidence that transparent CSR disclosure on corporate websites can influence corporate reputation among non-professional stakeholders. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of uncertainty, scientific attention has focused primarily on probabilistic approaches, which predominantly rely on the assumption that uncertainty can be measured and expressed numerically. At the same time, the increasing amount of research from a range of areas including psychology, economics, and sociology testify that in the real world, people’s understanding of risky and uncertain situations cannot be satisfactorily explained in probabilistic and decision-theoretical terms. In this article, we offer a theoretical overview of an alternative approach to (...) uncertainty developed in the framework of the ecological rationality research program. We first trace the origins of the ecological approach to uncertainty in Simon’s bounded rationality and Brunswik’s lens model framework and then proceed by outlining a theoretical view of uncertainty that ensues from the ecological rationality approach. We argue that the ecological concept of uncertainty relies on a systemic view of uncertainty that features it as a property of the organism–environment system. We also show how simple heuristics can deal with unmeasurable uncertainty and in what cases ignoring probabilities emerges as a proper response to uncertainty. (shrink)

We offer an analysis of future morphemes as epistemic operators. The main empirical motivation comes from the fact that future morphemes have systematic purely epistemic readings—not only in Greek and Italian, but also in Dutch, German, and English will. The existence of epistemic readings suggests that the future expressions quantify over epistemic, not metaphysical alternatives. We provide a unified analysis for epistemic and predictive readings as epistemic necessity, and the shift between the two is determined compositionally by the lower tense. (...) Our account thus acknowledges a systematic interaction between modality and tense—but the future itself is a pure modal, not a mixed temporal/modal operator. We show that the modal base of the future is nonveridical, i.e. it includes p and ¬p worlds, parallel to epistemic modals such as must, and present arguments that future morphemes are a category that stands in between epistemic modals and predicates of personal taste. We identify, finally, a subclass of epistemic futures which are ratificational, and argue that will is a member of this class. (shrink)

The evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial. To capture gender biases in banks’ loan allocations, we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict EUR 10,000 loan ceiling on microcredit. Descriptive statistics indicate that the presence of the ceiling is associated both with bank-MFI co-financing and with harsher treatment of female borrowers. To investigate causal links, we develop an econometric approach that addresses the concerns (...) of selection biases, multicollinearity, and endogeneity. Our empirical findings suggest that the change in the MFI’s gender-related attitude was triggered by banks through co-financing. Hence, we speculate that co-financing pushes ceiling-constrained MFIs to import whatever biases in loan granting that the banks are prone to. Overall, this paper stresses that apparently benign regulations such as loan ceilings can significantly harm the women’s empowerment efforts made by MFIs. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the feeling of moral respect has notoriously puzzled interpreters: on the one hand, moral action is supposed to be autonomous and, in particular, free of the mediation of any feeling on the other hand, the subject’s grasp of the law somehow involves the feeling of moral respect. I argue that moral respect for Kant is not, pace both the ‘intellectualists’ and ‘affectivists,’ an effect of the determination of the will by the law – whether it be a (...) mere effect or the motivating cause of action – but is instead identical to it. Drawing on Kant’s general account of feeling as the awareness of how representations and their objects harm or benefit our own powers, I argue that the identity between moral respect and the determination to action contains two elements. Moral respect is, first, a form of practical self-consciousness which constitutes the subject’s recognition of the moral law and thus of herself as intrinsically bound by it, i. e., as a moral agent. Second, respect is a capacity for receptive awareness of particular features of our environment as well as other persons insofar as they benefit and harm us as moral agents. Thereby moral respect affords us awareness in concreto of particular, morally-conditioned ends. In this way moral respect provides the key for a Kantian account of genuinely free practical receptivity. (shrink)

Erroneous gambling-related beliefs can be defined as beliefs that imply a failure to recognise how commercial gambling activities are designed to generate a guaranteed loss to players. In t...

Clinical trials are a central mechanism in the production of medical knowledge. They are the gold standard by which such knowledge is evaluated. They are widespread both in the United States and internationally; a National Institute of Health database reports over 106,000 active industry and government-sponsored trials (National Institutes of Health n.d.). They are an engine of the economy. The work of trials is complex; multiple people with diverse interests working across multiple settings simultaneously participate in them, and they are (...) underwritten by multiple organizational structures and diverse funding mechanisms. In the past several years, concern about the ethics of clinical trials has spiked dramatically .. (shrink)

Издание содержит: Есть ли ошибка в формуле мира?; Бегство от смысла; Секрет формулы мира - закон притяжения?

Not all theists who are members of the Abrahamic faiths will sign up to a particular metaphysics of evil: some may be sceptical theists, and others may be uninterested in metaphysical questions altogether. In this paper, I argue that theists in the Abrahamic faiths who are interested in metaphysics and who are not sceptical theists should endorse a privative account of evil. This is because a privative view of evil is the only metaphysic of evil that is compatible with the (...) theism of the Abrahamic faiths. In order to persuade you of this, I will explain the religious importance of the privative view, and show how the three alternatives to the privative view that might initially appear compatible with theism are not, after all, compatible with the particular theism of the Abrahamic faiths. Privative views are often objected to on the basis that pain is an evil that does not seem like a privation. I will put forward one (non-exclusive) defence of the privative view of evil in response to this objection, drawing on the work of Herbert McCabe. (shrink)

Moralising accounts of depression include the idea that depression is a sin or the result of sin, and/or that it is the result of demonic possession which has occurred because of moral or spiritual failure. Increasingly some Christian communities, understandably concerned about the debilitating effects these views have on people with depression, have adopted secular folk psychiatry’s ‘medicalising’ campaign, emphasising that depression is an illness for which, like (so-called) physical illnesses, experients should not be held responsible. This paper argues that (...) both moralising and medicalising models of depression are intellectually and practically (pastorally and therapeutically) problematic, gesturing towards more promising emphases. (shrink)

Movement abnormalities are prevalent across all stages of schizophrenia contributing to poor social functioning and reduced quality of life. To date, treatments are scarce, often involving pharmacological agents, but none have been shown to improve movement abnormalities effectively. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool used to simulate virtual environments where behavioral performance can be quantified safely across different tasks while exerting control over stimulus delivery, feedback and measurement in real time. Sensory information is transmittedviaa head mounted display allowing users to (...) directly interact with virtual objects and bodies using gestures and body movements in the real world to perform different actions, permitting a sense of immersion in the simulated virtual environment. Although, VR has been widely used for successful motor rehabilitation in a variety of different neurological domains, none have been exploited for motor rehabilitation in schizophrenia. The objectives of this article are to review movement abnormalities specific to schizophrenia, and how VR can be utilized to restore and improve motor functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Constructing VR-mediated motor-cognitive interventions that can help in retaining and transferring the learned outcomes to real life are also discussed. (shrink)

Nudging is considered a promising approach for behavioural change. At the same time, nudging has raised ethical concerns, specifically in relation to the impact of nudges on autonomous choice. A complexity is that in this debate authors may appeal to different understandings or dimensions of autonomy. Clarifying the different conceptualisations of autonomy in ethical debates around nudging would help to advance our understanding of the ethics of nudging. A literature review of these considerations was conducted in order to identify and (...) differentiate between the conceptualisations of autonomy. In 33 articles on the ethics of nudging, we identified 280 autonomy considerations, which we labelled with 790 unique autonomy codes and grouped under 61 unique super-codes. Finally, we formulated three general conceptualisations of autonomy. Freedom of choice refers to the availability of options and the environment in which individuals have to make choices. Agency involves an individual's capacity to deliberate and determine what to choose. Self-constitution relates to someone's identity and self-chosen goals. In the debate about the ethics of nudging, authors refer to different senses of autonomy. Clarifying these conceptualisations contributes to a better understanding of how nudges can undermine or, on the other hand, strengthen autonomy. (shrink)

Religion and spirituality are increasingly associated with mental health, yet spirit-related practices, beliefs and experiences (SPBEs) are regarded with more suspicion. This suspicion is misplaced, and worryingly so, since, I argue, it shuts down a potentially therapeutic avenue in relation to anomalous experiences such as hearing voices and sensing the presence of the dead. A presupposition of this argument is that anomalous experiences are not inherently pathological but can become so as a result of the way they are interpreted and (...) reacted to. While this claim is not new in itself, I will provide a philosophical foundation for it by defending a ‘contextualist’ view of pathology in the context of anomalous experiences against ‘inherentist’ alternatives, according to which some or all instances of anomalous experiences are inherently pathological. Keywords: religion, spirituality, auditory hallucinations, psychosis, pathology, mediumship, schizophrenia, hearing voices, mediumship, spirit possession, healing rituals. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and interpretation of free choice items (FCIs) in Greek, a language exhibiting a lexical paradigm of such items distinct from that of negative polarity items. Greek differs in this respect from English, which uniformly employs any. FCIs are grammatical only in certain contexts that can be characterized as nonveridical (Giannakidou 1998, 1999), and although they yield universal-like interpretations in certain structures, they are not, I argue, universal quantifiers. Evidence will be provided that FCIsare (...) indefinites; the quasi-universal effect is shown to be the result of binding by an operator with universal force. Additionally, the limited distribution of FCIs in non veridical contexts can be accounted for by analyzing them as indefinites which must always be interpreted in an intensional type. The difference between ``regular'' indefinites and FCIs, therefore, is reduced to a type difference which captures the fact that only the latter exhibit limited distribution: because of their intensional type, FCIs will be grammatical only in contexts providing alternatives (worlds or situations), and nonveridical contexts do exactly this. By contrast, FCIs are excluded from veridical and episodic contexts because these provide no alternatives and hence do not satisfy the lexical semantic requirement ofFCIs. The proposed analysis is supported by data from other languages as well (Spanish, Catalan,French) and has important consequences regarding the analysis of English any. If FCIs are not universal quantifiers but indefinites, then the usual ambiguity thesis (free choice any being universal, negative polarity any an existential) can no longer be maintained, at least not as one in terms of quantificational force. (shrink)

Christian interpretations of what psychiatry terms "depression" vary widely. Although liberal forms of Christianity regard depression as both a form of mental illness and a catalyst for moral and spiritual transformation, some Catholic theology regards some forms depression not as pathological but as a Dark Night of the Soul. Nonliberal Protestant forms of Christianity tend to view depression more as a sign of spiritual illness than spiritual health: an indication of demonic possession in some Charismatic and syncretistic/indigenous forms of Christianity, (...) and a sin or a result of sin, primarily in conservative Evangelical thought.This paper is about the... (shrink)

There are two main approaches in the phenomenological understanding of the unconscious. The first explores the intentional theory of the unconscious, while the second develops a non-representational way of understanding consciousness and the unconscious. This paper aims to outline a general theoretical framework for the non-representational approach to the unconscious within the phenomenological tradition. In order to do so, I focus on three relevant theories: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenology of body memory, and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of (...) affectivity. Both Merleau-Ponty and Fuchs understand the unconscious as a “sedimented practical schema” of subjective being in the world. This sedimented unconscious contributes to the way we implicitly interpret reality, fill in the gaps of uncertainty, and invest our social interactions with meaning. Husserl, however, approaches the unconscious in terms of affective non-vivacity, as a sphere of sedimentation and the horizon of the distant past which stays affectively connected to the living present. Drawing on these ideas, I argue that these two accounts can reinforce one another and provide the ground for a phenomenological understanding of the unconscious in terms of the horizontal dimension of subjective experience and a non-representational relation to the past. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that a general theory of negative concord (NC) should allow for the possibility of NC involving scoping of a universal quantifier above negation. I propose that Greek NC instantiates this option. Greek n-words will be analyzed as polarity sensitive universal quantifiers which need negation in order to be licensed, but must raise above negation in order to yield the scoping ∀¬. This gives the correct interpretation of NC structures as general negative statements. The (...) effect is achieved by application of QR, and the account is fully compositional, as only sentence negation is the vehicle of logical negation ¬. Greek n-words are also compared to nwords in Romance, Slavic, and Hungarian. This analysis, if correct, has two important.. (shrink)

Contemporary debates on God’s emotionality are divided between two extremes. Impassibilists deny God’s emotionality on the basis of God’s omniscience, omnipotence and incorporeality. Passibilists seem to break with tradition by affirming divine emotionality, often focusing on the idea that God suffers with us. Contemporary philosophy of emotion reflects this divide. Some philosophers argue that emotions are voluntary and intelligent mental events, making them potentially compatible with omniscience and omnipotence. Others claim that emotions are involuntary and basically physiological, rendering them inconsistent (...) with traditional divine attributes. Thinking Through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility creates a three-way conversation between the debate in theology, contemporary philosophy of emotion, and pre-modern (particularly Augustinian and Thomist) conceptions of human affective experience. It also provides an exploration of the intelligence and value of the emotions of compassion, anger and jealousy. (shrink)

Background In this qualitative analysis we aimed to explore addiction physicians’ perspectives on safer injection education for people who inject drugs, especially: (1) on possible means of introducing safer injection education in the medical environment, (2) on the compatibility of safer injection education with each physician’s core values and goals, and (3) on possible reasons for the ethical dilemma in safer injection education. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven physicians practicing addiction medicine in France in clinical and harm reduction (...) settings. Results All participants were in favor of educational interventions for people who inject drugs. Nonetheless, these interventions varied from simple advice to injection supervision and they were seen as less acceptable when they concerned the practical and material aspects of injection. Some participants found that physicians practicing in clinical settings, where patients consult mostly to stop their drug use, should not practice safer injection education. On the contrary, other participants claimed that safer injection education was essential in all settings and was not a choice but rather a duty for addiction physicians. The ethical dilemma of such intervention when delivered by medical staff was viewed as a complex phenomenon, related to the representations of intravenous drug use and to societal expectations from physicians. Conclusion Physicians’ views on safer injection education for people who inject drugs reveal an emotionally charged subject related to the structural organization of addiction management in France. Such education is marked by an arduous history of harm reduction policies in France. IRB registration: #00011928. (shrink)

The puzzle of English until is well-known. Karttunen 1974 argues that until is ambiguous between a durative and a punctual negative polarity (NPI) meaning. Mittwoch 1977 claims that there is no ambiguity and that the two meanings are due to scope differences: NPI-until is in fact until above negation. Mittwoch’s account relies crucially on the assumption that negation is an aspectual operator that ‘stativizes’ verb meanings (a position recently argued for in de Swart 1996, and de Swart and Molendijk 1999; (...) see also Klima 1964, Seuren 1974, Verkuyl 1993). Thus far, the correct analysis of until remains an open issue. (shrink)

It has already been discussed extensively in the literature that wh-elements in Chinese (as in Japanese and Korean) can have non-interrogative interpretations, i.e., they are the socalled “wh-indeterminates” à la Kuroda 1965 (see Huang 1982, Cheng 1991, Li 1992, Lin 1998 among others). (1a-c) illustrate the typical examples.

Philosophy for children is an educational movement that includes diverse goals that are not always clearly articulated by theorists and practitioners. In order to navigate the multitude of aims found in the philosophy for children literature I propose distinguishing between the following categories of goals: aims of education; educational goals of philosophy for children ; goals of a community of philosophical inquiry ; goals of the facilitator; and goals of the children. The definitions of these various types are given along (...) with some examples of how the distinctions between them can be of aid in understanding the approaches, criticisms, and practice of philosophy for children. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of personal attributes and organizational conditions on attitudes toward corporate misdeeds. On the basis of social cognitive theory, we develop hypotheses that are tested against data collected from 215 German employees using an online survey. Our findings suggest that personal attributes have a much greater impact on ethical attitudes than organizational conditions. Further, a moderating effect of control-oriented culture on the relationship between personality traits and attitudes toward corporate misdeeds is found. We derive implications for (...) human resource management and further theory development. (shrink)

While some aspects of mouthings have been previously investigated, many topics in the use of this cross-modal contact phenomenon in sign languages remain unstudied, and not much is known about mouthings in Russian Sign Language, in particular. This article examines various aspects of mouthings as these are used by native RSL signers and aims to contribute new insights into the use and origin of mouthings in this sign language. Based on novel data from the online RSL Corpus alongside additional elicited (...) data, we describe the distribution, forms, functions and spreading patterns of mouthings. Our findings furthermore show that sign languages exhibit more extensive variation in the use of mouthings than has previously been thought. Moreover, we – thus far uniquely – describe mouthings also as a written-language-based contact phenomenon. This study has the potential to provide a better understanding of the nature of such contact-induced features as mouthings in sign languages in general and reveals a complex interplay of the modalities of signed, spoken and written languages. (shrink)

In line with recent developments in leadership research which conceptualise leadership as a discursive and collaborative process rather than a set of static attributes and characteristics displayed by individuals, this paper explores some of the discursive processes through which leadership emerges in a sports team. Drawing on over ten hours of naturally occurring interactions among the players of a women’s netball team in the UK, and applying the concepts of deontic and epistemic status and stance, we identify and describe some (...) of the specific processes through which leadership is claimed and assigned, as well as rejected, passed on, and eventually accepted by different team members at different points throughout an interaction. While the processes outlined in our analysis contribute to theoretical discussions regarding the notion of emergent leadership, this paper also demonstrates the benefits of taking a discourse analytical approach to leadership, and outlines how such an approach enables researchers to empirically capture emergent leadership in situ. (shrink)

Contemporary literature on the divine im/passibility debate has been concerned, among other things, with the intellectual and cultural context in which twentieth century passibilism arose. Foremost among the cultural and intellectual factors cited as occasioning the rise of passibilism are the moral evils and consequent suffering that have occurred during the twentieth century and which have become focal for both theology and the philosophy of religion. This paper seeks to clarify the way in which the modern experience of and response (...) to suffering has affected modern theology and philosophy of religion with respect to the im/passibility debate. The paper begins by establishing the unintelligibility of the claim that the rise of passibilism is due to an increase in suffering, and criticising other models of the relationship between the rise of passibilism and the experience of suffering. Having concluded that existent models of the relation between passibilism and suffering are unsatisfactory, the paper suggests that belief in a suffering God has arisen as a response to the psychological need, in the face of suffering, for a transcendent fellow sufferer, previously fulfilled by prayers to the saints and reflections upon the particular sufferings of Christ. In so doing, the paper highlights some of the frequently overlooked deep-rooted issues inherent in the im/passibility debate, and points to essentially Protestant qualities found in passibilist theology and philosophy of religion. (shrink)