_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. In (...) this second, brief dialogue, Augustine and his mother, brother, son, and friends celebrate his thirty-second birthday by having a “feast of words” on the nature of happiness that includes a bittersweet metaphorical birthday cake. Using a process of reasoning that is philosophical as well as theological, Augustine and the group conclude that the truly happy life consists of “having God” through faith, hope, and charity. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. In this first dialogue, (...) Augustine and his interlocutors have retreated to a quiet country villa north of Milan to explore the history and teachings of Academic Skepticism. Augustine is both sympathetic to and critical of the Skeptics, eventually hypothesizing that they could not possibly have believed everything they taught. The dialogue serves as a fitting launch point for a knowledge of God and the soul, the overall subject of the Cassiciacum tetralogy. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s third work as a Christian convert__ "The 'Cassiciacum dialogues'... are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness."—_Credo__ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called (...) the “Cassiciacum dialogues,” these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. _On Order_ is the third work in this tetralogy, and it is Augustine’s only work explicitly devoted to theodicy, the reconciliation of Almighty God’s goodness with evil’s existence. In this dialogue, Augustine argues that a certain kind of self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the answers to theodicy’s vexing questions, and he devotes the latter half of the dialogue to an excursus on the liberal arts as disciplines that will help strengthen the mind to know itself and God. (shrink)

In this new translation the brilliant and impassioned descriptions of Augustine's colourful early life are conveyed to the English reader with accuracy and art. Augustine tells of his wrestlings to master his sexual drive, his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of high power at the imperial court of Milan, and his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage as he recovered the faith that his mother had taught him. It was in a Milan (...) garden that Augustine finally achieved the act of will to Christian conversion, which he compared to a lazy man in bed finally deciding it is time to get up and face the day. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

The best available introduction to the political thought of Augustine, if not to Christian political thought in general. Included are generous selections from _City of God_, as well as from many lesser-known writings of Augustine.

In this book, Augustine Brannigan provides a critical examination of the major theories which have been devised to account for discoveries and innovations in ...

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s fourth work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity (...) and ironic wryness. _Soliloquies_ is the fourth work in this tetralogy. Augustine coined the term “soliloquy” to describe this new form of dialogue. _Soliloquies__,_ a conversation between Augustine and his reason, fuses the dialogue genre and Roman theater, opening with a search for intellectual and moral self-knowledge before converging on the nature of truth and the question of the soul’s immortality. Foley’s volume also includes _On the Immortality of the Soul__,_ which consists of notes for the unfinished portion of the work. (shrink)

I argue that Neo-Fregean accounts of arithmetical language and arithmetical knowledge tacitly rely on a thesis I call [Success by Default]—the thesis that, in the absence of reasons to the contrary, we are justified in thinking that certain stipulations are successful. Since Neo-Fregeans have yet to supply an adequate defense of [Success by Default], I conclude that there is an important gap in Neo-Fregean accounts of arithmetical language and knowledge. I end the paper by offering a naturalistic remedy.

INTRODUCTION1 ARELY HAS A GREAT AND INFLUENTIAL THINKER taken pains to let others look at his previous literary career through his very own eyes....

"Translated with an uncanny sense for the overall point of Augustine's doctrine. In short, a very good translation. The Introduction is admirably clear." --Paul Vincent Spade, Indiana University.

Geoengineering as a technological intervention to avert the dangerous climate change has been on the table at least since 2006. The global outreach of the technology exercised in a non-encapsulated system, the concerns with unprecedented levels and scales of impact and the overarching interdisciplinarity of the project make the geoengineering debate ethically quite relevant and complex. This paper explores the ethical desirability of geoengineering from an overall review of the existing literature on the ethics of geoengineering. It identifies the relevant (...) literature on the ethics of geoengineering by employing a standard methodology. Based on various framing of the major ethical arguments and their subsets, the results section presents the opportunities and challenges at stake in geoengineering from an ethical point of view. The discussion section takes a keen interest in identifying the evolving dynamics of the debate, the grey areas of the debate, with underdeveloped arguments being brought to the foreground and in highlighting the arguments that are likely to emerge in the future as key contenders. It observes the semantic diversity and ethical ambiguity, the academic lop-sidedness of the debate, missing contextual setting, need for interdisciplinary approaches, public engagement, and region-specific assessment of ethical issues. Recommendations are made to provide a useful platform for the second generation of geoengineering ethicists to help advance the debate to more decisive domains with the required clarity and caution. (shrink)

This article provides arguments to show that there is a form of syntax specific to the bodily movements of certain martial arts. This syntax of bodily mouvements is different from that usually identified in multimodal conversational analysis which consists of the addition of bodily extensions to speech turns Keevallik (Res Lang Soc Interact 46(1):1–21, 2013) and (Res Lang Soc Interact 51(1):1–21, 2018). Based on an analysis of video extracts from two martial arts (Aikido and Kenpo), the article shows that martial (...) arts movements, accomplished within a martial intercorporeality, acquire syntactic characteristics that make it possible to anticipate trajectories accomplished simultaneously, before and during body contact. The article presents the four movement-units common to these two martial arts and the way participants combine them, in a sequentiality of simultaneity. (shrink)

In 1672, inspired by the wave theory of Ignace Gaston Pardies, Christiaan Huygens made his first attempt to explain the sine law of refraction, but in 1673 he abandoned his plans owing to difficulties concerning double refraction. Huygens was able to explain double refraction on 6 August 1677 after his discoveries of the axis of symmetry of the crystal and of ‘Huygens's principle’. On 6 August 1679, he wrote: ‘I have found the confirmation of my theory of light and of (...) refraction’, and then described an ‘experimentum crucis’ to decide between his theory and a rival hypothesis. A study of caustics may have led Huygens to the discovery of ‘Huygens's principle’. (shrink)

The violation of Bell inequalities seems to establish an important fact about the world: that it is non-local. However, this result relies on the assumption of the statistical independence of the measurement settings with respect to potential past events that might have determined them. Superdeterminism refers to the view that a local, and determinist, account of Bell inequalities violations is possible, by rejecting this assumption of statistical independence. We examine and clarify various problems with superdeterminism, looking in particular at its (...) consequences on the nature of scientific laws and scientific reasoning. We argue that the view requires a neo-Humean account of at least some laws, and creates a significant problem for the use of statistical independence in other parts of physics and science more generally. (shrink)

Cet article vise à interroger le rapport unissant la temporalité au langage dans les Âges du monde de Schelling. Après avoir retracé le parcours de Schelling jusqu’à cette œuvre de l’époque intermédiaire, on montre de quelle manière elle cherche à faire coïncider, dans une pensée originale du temps, l’auto-déploiement de l’être et l’acte philosophique et humain de prédiquer l’être à travers la narration.

I first became interested in De dialectica in 1966, while I was doing re search on Augustine's knowledge of logic. At the time I made a transla tion of the Maurist text and included it as an appendix to my doctoral dissertation (Yale, 1967). In 1971 I thoroughly revised the translation on the basis of the critical text of Wilhelm Crecelius (1857) and I have re cently revised it again to conform to Professor Jan Pinborg's new edition. The only previously (...) published translation of the whole of De dialectica. is N. H. Barreau's French translation in the Oeuvres completes de Saint Augustin (1873). Thomas Stanley translated parts of Chapters Six and Nine into English as part of the account of Stoic logic in his History of Philosophy (Pt. VIII, 1656). I offer De dialectica in English in the hope that it will be of some interest to historians of logic and of the liberal arts tradition and to students of the thought of Augustine. In translating I have for the most part been as literal as is consistent with English usage. Although inclusion of the Latin text might have justified a freer translation, for example, the use of modern technical terms, it seemed better to stay close to the Latin. One of the. values in studying a work such as De dialectica is to see familiar topics discussed in a terminology not so familiar. In the translation I follow these conventions. (shrink)

Corruption is a major problem in many of the world’s developing economies today. World Bank studies put bribery at over $1 trillion per year accounting for up to 12 of the GDP of nations like Nigeria, Kenya and Venezuela. Though largely ignored for many years, interest in world wide corruption has been rekindled by recent corporate scandals in the US and Europe. Corruption in the developing nations is said to result from a number of factors. Mass poverty has been cited (...) as a facilitating condition for corruption just as an inability to manage a sudden upsurge in mineral revenues has been credited with breeding corruption and adventurous government procurement among public officials in countries like Nigeria and Venezuela. Virtually all developing nations that have serious corruption problems also have very limited economic freedom and a very weak enforcement of the rule of law. In such nations, corruption represents a regressive taxation that bears hard on the poor. It has a dampening effect on development and it could result in the production of inferior goods as companies find ways to accommodate under-the-table payments. Finally, corruption is a dangerous threat to the legitimacy of the governments of some of the developing nations themselves. It is suggested that new urgent initiatives are needed to deal with the dangers posed by corruption in the developing economies. They include making the economies of these nations more open by the withdrawal of the government from the productive sector and by the abolition of unnecessarily stringent restrictions on business conduct. The rule of law needs to be strengthened in these nations and those countries like Nigeria and Venezuela should ignore scruples over sovereignty and seek foreign assistance in the management of their oil wealth. Finally, multinationals should be made to disclose all the payments they make in developing nations to such organizations like International Chamber of Commerce or Transparency International where they can be reviewed by anyone interested. (shrink)