Samantha Vice’s proposal on how to live in ‘this strange place’ of contemporary South Africa, includes an appeal to the concepts of shame and silence. In this paper, I use Emmanuel Levinas and Giorgio Agamben to move the discussion of shame from a moral to an existential question. The issue is not about how one should feel, but about the kind of self that whiteness in South Africa makes possible today. Shame desubjectifies. Vice’s recommendation of silence is then taken as (...) witnessing/listening, which I argue grounds the possibility of a recovery of the self. (shrink)

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

Burgess, J.P. and Rosen, G. Subject with No ObjectElliott, R.Faking Nature.

" Medieval Thought provides a clear and authoritative introduction to an important period in intellectual history. It studies the course of medieval intellectualisation, analysing how tension between the religious and non-religious components of medieval culture resulted in its sophisticated development. The most influential vehicle for medieval intellectualisation was philosophy. Philosophy became the mode of expression in religion, providing religious thinkers with a unifying vocabulary and means of reasoning. In turn philosophers found in religion fertile ground for metaphysical discussion. The initial (...) alliance between philosophy and religion did not, however, hold, for Christianity's necessity for theological strength through uniformity inevitably clashed with the dissenting questioning of philosophy. This book will be accessible to even those with little knowledge of Christian theology. Appendices have been included to help the reader surmount possible difficulties, and no prior knowledge of Latin is assumed. Each chapter ends with a select bibliography to direct the reader toward further study, and an additional, more comprehensive, annotated bibliography is included at the end of the book. (shrink)

A clear, compact, technical presentation of the traditional topics of symbolic logic. The propositional calculus, which Lorenzen develops for ten truth functions, is formulated in six axioms to enable comparison with intuitionism. An important part of the book is Lorenzen's "establishment" of the axioms of Brouwer's intuitionistic calculus by proving their universal admissibility for any calculus. If the and's and if's of these axioms are interpreted as metalinguistic terms used in stating inference rules for object calculi, then no matter what (...) calculus the axioms are added to, no new theorems become provable. In the process of this "establishment" of what he calls "effective logic," Lorenzen makes use of nine different kinds of implication.-J. B. B. (shrink)

An attempt to evolve a puristic definition of poetry in which the poem itself serves as the point of departure. The examination is systematically conducted throughout the three parts of the book: "Phonétique," "Sémantique," and "Ontologie." Frequent textual examples are offered; the accompanying analyses are often illuminating, particularly in the case of the cryptic "sonnet du Cygne" by Mallarmé. A key concept in the discussion is "la conversion poétique du langage": the means by which a word is freed from its (...) accepted meaning and enabled to acquire a multiplicity of meanings. The hierarchy of symbol and object-symbolized is always destroyed by "la conversion": that which is poetic cannot be symbolic. "Symbolist poetry" is, therefore, a misnomer. By modifying or totally eliminating traditional literary formulae, Champigny arrives at and ably defends his own concept of "le genre poétique."—B. B. C. (shrink)

Contrary to the English title's suggestion, Pieper does not distinguish belief from faith, but rather develops the interpersonal character of an assent to what another says. Philosophically and sensitively, Pieper delineates the facets of an act certain yet never secure, leaping beyond knowledge yet actively presupposing it. The act is completely free because directed more to the person than to what he says, and hence perfectly warranted only if God himself has spoken.--D. B. B.

Part of a series designed to present theology to college students in a relevant and incisive fashion, this particular monograph fails to come to grips with the crucial issues of soteriology raised by a philosophic study of man, and contents itself with a rehearsal of scriptural and doctrinal data. When theological reasoning occurs--as in the final chapter--it is seriously marred by its failure to deal with counterpositions.--D. B. B.

An examination of the contemporary Italian movement associated with M. P. Sciacca, and the serious application of dialectical and phenomenological methods to unveil the structure of "intentionality" or "spirit." An appraisal of Sciacca together with a sample critique of Dante follows a competent summary of the prevailing positions.--D. B. B.

Intended as a college text, this presentation of Aquinas' teaching on God achieves an admirable clarity of exposition although it dismisses initial epistemological misgivings and contents itself with a systematic gloss of the questions Aquinas asked in the order he raised them. Documentation is ample and a bibliography of Thomistic works on God is appended. --D. B. B.

The author examines literary sources, takes poets as subjects, and allows their philosophical implications to emerge. Man is thought, but thought is figuring. Hence man is the figure who figures. And good figuring works. Sewell selects six modern figures for man: temple, labyrinth, gambler, laboratory, language, machine, showing the partiality of each, only to lead into a detailed examination of the cosmic figures: the universe itself, as pole of the I; suffering and effort, as capabilities of the I; love and (...) death, as man's absolute reach. Though the book as a whole may not work, its somewhat ragged character may well display the true state of our philosophical methods for coming to grips with man.—D. B. B. (shrink)