This article presents, in a programmatic way, the histoire croisée approach, its methodological implications and its empirical developments. Histoire croisée draws on the debates about comparative history, transfer studies, and connected or shared history that have been carried out in the social sciences in recent years. It invites us to reconsider the interactions between different societies or cultures, erudite disciplines or traditions . Histoire croisée focuses on empirical intercrossings consubstantial with the object of study, as well as on the operations (...) by which researchers themselves cross scales, categories, and viewpoints. The article first shows how this approach differs from purely comparative or transfer studies. It then develops the principles of pragmatic and reflexive induction as a major methodological principle of histoire croisée. While underlining the need and the methods of a historicization of both the objects and categories of analysis, it calls for a reconsideration of the way history can combine empirical and reflexive concerns into a dynamic and flexible approach. (shrink)

Abstract In recent debates, both physicalist and anti-physicalist philosophers of mind have come to agree that understanding the nature of phenomenal concepts is key to understanding the nature of phenomenal consciousness itself. Recently, however, Derek Ball (2009) and Michael Tye (2009) have argued that there are no such concepts. Their case is especially troubling because they make use of a type of argument that proponents of phenomenal concepts have typically found persuasive in other contexts; namely, arguments much like those (...) that Tyler Burge used to motivate a certain form of externalism about mental content. The goal of this paper is to defend phenomenal concepts against this line of attack. Burge-style arguments, I contend, cannot be successfully used to make the case that there are no phenomenal concepts. As such, phenomenal concepts must remain central to understanding the nature of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Daniel, Michael E Review(s) of: Benedict XVI: A guide for the perplexed, by Tracey Rowland, London: T and T Clark International, 2010, pp.160, $29.95.

While the rise of a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ was a longstanding concern for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, some commentators have suggested that—for better or for worse—the challenge posed by relativism appears to be less of a priority for Pope Francis. Indeed, Francis's remark, ‘Who am I to judge?’ appears to have become as much the defining soundbite for his papacy as the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ was for Benedict's. Contrary to these perceptions, this article argues that a critique of (...) relativism is in fact a central aspect of Pope Francis's magisterium. Francis exhibits continuity with Benedict by amplifying his concerns about the danger of attempting to reconstruct reality according to human desire, but Francis also develops his predecessor's teaching by introducing the category of ‘practical relativism’. With this development, relativism cannot be dismissed as a theoretical problem that only plagues those who refuse to assent to the truth intellectually. The willingness to set aside the truth to which one assents when it proves inconvenient represents a more pernicious—precisely because more subtle—form of relativism that Francis argues must be rooted out, not by argument, but through self‐examination and the practice of solidarity. (shrink)

An engaging, compelling and disturbing confrontation with evil...a book that will be transformative in its call for individual and collective moral responsibility." - Michael A. Grodin, M.D., Professor and Director, Project on Medicine and the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust challenges you to confront the misguided medical ethics of the Third Reich personally, and to apply the lessons learned to contemporary human subjects research. While it is comforting to believe (...) that Nazi physicians, nurses, and bioscientists were either incompetent, mad, or few in number, they were, in fact, the best in the world at the time, and the vast majority participated in the government program of "applied biology." They were not coerced to behave as they did-they enthusiastically exploited widely accepted eugenic theories to design horrendous medical experiments, gas chambers and euthanasia programs, which ultimately led to mass murder in the concentration camps. Americans provided financial support for their research, modeled their medical education and research after the Germans, and continued to perform unethical human subjects research even after the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. The German Medical Association apologized in 2012 for the behavior of its physicians during the Third Reich. By examining the medical crimes of human subjects researchers during the Third Reich, you will naturally examine your own behavior and that of your colleagues, and perhaps ask yourself "If the best physicians and bioscientists of the early 20th century could do evil while believing they were doing good, can I be certain that I will never do the same?" · Presents relatively unknown aspects of human subjects research during the Third Reich · Reveals surprising relationships between German and American human subjects research · Dispels myths about Nazi human subjects research · Compels introspection and self-examination by today's medical and research practitioners · Addresses contemporary bioethical issues affecting vulnerable populations · Brings together experts in the history of medicine during the Third Reich and thoughtful new voices. (shrink)

In his 2009 encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI calls for a deeper, theological and metaphysical evaluation of the category of “relation” to achieve a proper understanding of the human being’s “transcendent dignity.” For some contemporary thinkers, this position might seem to be hopelessly paradoxical or even incoherent. After all, many contemporary thinkers are apt to believe that the human creature can have “transcendent dignity” only if the being and goodness of the human creature is not conditioned (...) by or dependent upon any relation or relatedness to anything else, including the natural environment. This chapter seeks to show that apparent paradoxes in Benedict XVI’s statement will begin to disappear if one resists the rather understandable temptation to interpret his thought by relying on presuppositions borrowed from contemporary ethical theories. More specifically, this chapter aims to show that Benedict XVI’s teachings— embedded as they are within a rich tradition of Catholic “natural law” thinking—are importantly distinguishable from contemporary utilitarian and deontological views. Furthermore, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that Benedict XVI’s “natural law” account offers an intellectually defensible alternative to contemporary modes of environmental thinking. (shrink)

When Spinoza described his dream of a ‘black, scabby Brazilian’, was the image indicative of a larger pattern of racial discrimination? Should today’s readers regard racist comments and theories in the texts of 17th- and 18th-century philosophers as reflecting the prejudices of their time or as symptomatic of philosophical discourse? This article discusses whether a critical discussion of race is itself a form of racism and whether supposedly minor prejudices are evidence of a deeper social pathology. Given historical hindsight, we (...) may read such discussion of race in early modern philosophy as a sign of the incipient struggle against prejudice, a sign that we can recognize and use in the struggles of our own time. Key Words: colonialism • the concept of haunting • essentialism • David Hume • Immanuel Kant • racism • Benedict Spinoza. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Bible and the Priesthood: Priestly Participation in the One Sacrifice for Sins by Anthony GiambroneMichael S. HahnThe Bible and the Priesthood: Priestly Participation in the One Sacrifice for Sins. By Anthony Giambrone, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2022. Pp. xxi + 297. $22.99 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-5409-6186-0.In the Vatican II decree on priestly training, Optatam Totius, the council Fathers prescribe a five-stage pedagogical approach to the treating (...) of topics in dogmatic or systematic theology, such as the sacrament of holy orders. Consideration is to be given first to the witness of Scripture, then to patristic testimony, to subsequent historical developments, to Scholastic speculation, and finally, to the contemporary life of the Church, especially in the addressing of current problems. Although this genetic method of theological instruction may appear plausible and attractive on paper, in actual practice it runs certain risks. Among other things, the immediate relevance of what is to be considered in the final stage threatens to overrun or distort what is to be considered in the earlier stages, such that these sources are mined with too much of an eye to their applicability to present issues. Moreover, even if more equally balanced attention is paid to each stage, the danger arises that in covering so much ground one remains chiefly at surface level, inadvertently foreclosing appreciation for the depths of the mysteries in view and inoculating against the theological studiositas that drives toward greater [End Page 692] understanding. Further compounding the challenges of fruitfully implementing the council Fathers’ vision is the ever-widening divergence of specialization within theological subdisciplines, which too often renders the field Babel-like and crippled by mutual incomprehension. Perhaps nowhere is this tendency toward breakdown of communication more evident than in the disconnect between biblical studies and other theological areas—a tragedy of special import, given the stress placed by Optatam Totius and by other magisterial texts on Scripture as the foundational for theology.While there appears on the horizon neither a one-size-fits-all fix to the problems of theological integration nor an algorithmic means of implementing it, glimmers of hope remain. Holding promise, for instance, are recent trends toward the “theological interpretation of Scripture” and the continued emergence of a self-styled “biblical theology” which, while admitting of great variety in expression and emphasis, nonetheless constitute explicit attempts to bridge this particular gap. What the strongest of these and other endeavors tend to illustrate is that genuine theological integration is to be found not so much in methods or programs of study as in the actual thinking and writing of individual theologians and exegetes, who will approach the consideranda identified by Optatam Totius not as discrete stages of inquiry but as essential ingredients that ought to be creatively and responsibly blended in varying proportions, reflecting both their own particular specializations and their personal attentiveness to the pertinent biblical, patristic, historical, speculative, and practical concerns.A worthy example of such creative and responsible blending is Anthony Giambrone’s The Bible and the Priesthood, the second of seven planned entries in Baker Academic’s new series “A Catholic Biblical Theology of the Sacraments,” edited by Tim Gray and John Sehorn. In keeping with its stated focus on the Bible and Giambrone’s own training as an exegete, the book is chiefly a work of Scripture scholarship, yet it also thoroughly theological, and this not only in its concern with priesthood and the sacrament of orders, but also in how and why the author engages with the biblical (and extrabiblical) texts under investigation in treating these topics. Taking a cue from a 2019 essay by Pope Benedict XVI, Giambrone zeros in on certain “deep roots” of the ongoing priestly crisis that were identified by the late pontiff, including “a methodological flaw in the reception of Scripture as the Word of God” and a related “reject[ion]... of an authentically cultic priesthood in the New Covenant” (3). In directly countering the second of these problems across the bulk of its chapters, the book also exemplifies a corrective to the first, providing remedies to this “flaw” on both the hermeneutical and the... (shrink)

By reviewing the notion of the human person found in the modern liberal tradition, this essay seeks to give an account of the possible tensions between modern liberal political life and human fulfillment as understood in Catholic tradition. Resolving any such tensions would require showing that the philosophical underpinnings of modern liberalism are compatible with man’s “transcendent dignity” to pursue and live the Truth. By way of conclusion, the Church’s rapprochement with modern liberalism is discussed in light of Benedict (...) XVI’s comments on and praise of American civil life made during his recent visit to the U.S. (shrink)

In this paper I contrast the metaphysical philosophies of Benedict de Spinoza and the ‘sudden enlightenment’ tradition of Chan Buddhism. Spinoza’s expressivist philosophy, in which everything can be conceived via a lineage of finite causes terminating in substance as a metaphysical ground of all things, emphasises the relative sameness of all entities. By contrast, Chan’s philosophy of emptiness, which rests on the dependent co-origination of all entities, renders such comparison fundamentally meaningless. Having no source beyond dependent co-origination to generate (...) a thing’s distinct nature leads to a metaphysics in which, rather than being relatively similar or different, all things are at one and the same time absolutely the same and absolutely distinct. As a result, Spinoza grounds ethics wholly is sameness or similarity, whereas Chan transcends the dichotomy of sameness and difference and offers an environmental ethics grounded simultaneously in absolute sameness and absolute difference. As a result, in Spinoza’s case, the dissimilarity between human beings and the non-human world places limits on our concern for it. In Chan Buddhism, however, insight into the emptiness of all phenomena leads to a concern for all entities in their suchness, regardless of whether they are similar or different to human beings. As such, I argue that Chan is in a better position than Spinoza to develop a robust environmental ethic. (shrink)

Pope Benedict XVI argued that it is "necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason" and to understand "theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith." (Ratzinger 2006) The idea that faith per se can be reconciled with rationality per se presents a delicate analytical task for philosophy of religion, to consistently ground a belief system which is regarded by nonbelievers as inherently ungrounded and inconsistent, without negating any grounding postulates internal to the (...) dogma. Focussing on Abrahamic theism, with special emphasis on Christianity, I interpret the Biblical narrative as a symbolic representation of a universal normative structure grounded in social ontology and the value-commitments intrinsic to agency. (shrink)

This volume contains the speech given by Derrida at Emmanuel Levinas's funeral on December 27, 1995, and his contribution to a colloquium organized to mark the first anniversary of Levinas's death. For both thinkers, the word _adieu_ names a fundamental characteristic of human being: the salutation or benediction prior to all constative language and that given at the moment of separation, sometimes forever, as at the moment of death, it is also the _a-dieu_, for God or to God before and (...) in any relation to the other. In this book, Derrida extends his work on Levinas in previously unexplored directions via a radical rereading of _Totality and Infinity_ and other texts, including the lesser-known talmudic readings. He argues that Levinas, especially in _Totality and Infinity,_ bequeaths to us an "immense treatise of hospitality," a meditation on the welcome offered to the other. The conjunction of an ethics of pure prescription with the idea of an infinite and absolute hospitality confronts us with the most pressing political, juridical, and institutional concerns of our time. What, then, is an ethics and what is a politics of hospitality? And what, if it ever _is,_ would be a hospitality surpassing any ethics and any politics we know? As always, Derrida raises these questions in the most explicit of terms, moving back and forth between philosophical argument and the political discussion of immigration laws, peace, the state of Israel, xenophobia—reminding us with every move that thinking is not a matter of neutralizing abstraction, but a gesture of hospitality for what happens and still may happen. (shrink)

Post-communist anti-Semitism in Romania and elsewhere in East Central Europe is not necessarily driven by the same motivations. Basically, each of the categories I employ in the taxonomy (updating earlier endeavors) acts out of a different motivation and has a different temporal orientation. What they all share, however, is precisely the attempt to respond to the need to produce what Benedict Anderson called an “imagined community,” in albeit significantly different positive terms of reference. A distinction is made between the (...) following taxonomic categories of “producers” of anti-Semitism: a) “Selfexculpatory nostalgic anti-Semitism;” b) “Self-propelling anti-Semitism”; c) “Neo-populist mercantile anti-Semitism”: d) “Utilitarian anti-Semitism”; e) “Reactive anti-Semitism; and, finally, f) “Vengeance anti-Semitism.&rdquo. (shrink)

This article serves as an editorial introduction to this special issue on Pope Benedict’s encyclical-letter, Caritas in Veritate ( 2009 ) and its engagement with the field of business ethics. According to this document , love in truth, which includes justice, is indeed presented as a basic moral foundation for economic and business ethics. The article provides an overview of some major themes in the encyclical and their relationship to the essays in this special issue. The authors in this (...) issue are an interdisciplinary group of scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, psychology, business, economics, and political science who address the relevance and relationship of the encyclical to business ethics in light of their disciplinary field. Their articles include, among other topics, discussions based on recent scholarship on business ethics, the economics and ethics relationship, the orientation of business to the common good, the encyclical’s proposal of the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift in ordinary business, and new perspectives on economic exchange and bargains and hybrid forms of business. (shrink)

Barker, Sue Review(s) of: The road to eternal life: Reflections on the prologue of Benedict's rule, by Michael Casey OCSO, (Mulgrave VIC: John Garratt Publishing, 2011), pp.182, $29.95.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents eds. by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-BuckSteven P. MilliesDemocracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents Edited by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-Buck NEW YORK: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 350 pp. $105.00 / $35.00Democracy, Culture, Catholicism is the product of a three-year, international project that started from a less specific inspiration. Originally begun at Loyola University Chicago's Joan (...) and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage in 2010 as a broad inquiry into the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and politics, the project leaders eventually took a different bearing from events as diverse as the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, and Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate to focus their project more squarely on democracy. Examining democracy from within the diverse experiences found in Lithuania, Peru, Indonesia, and the United States, the editors [End Page 208] present us with a valuable snapshot of where the Catholic engagement with democracy as a cultural expression finds itself today in a global perspective.Given the amount of material at play, the volume is a monumental achievement, if only for the clarity with which it presents its findings. Some essays are stronger than others. Still, the volume benefits tremendously from an apparent and unusual amount of editorial attention that sequences the essays and interrelates them with useful references to one another in such a way that Democracy, Culture, Catholicism escapes entirely the fate of so many volumes of collected essays. Here, the reader has the sensation of reading one coherent narrative, not twenty-three disparately connected, individual essays. This alone is impressive.The volume possesses other strengths. Reflections emerge throughout that engage the deeper questions of democracy. Who are these people making decisions together? How can we understand the composition of a political community? Too much democratic theory overlooks the complex interweaving of history, memory, and identity that operates like a substrate of our consciousness beneath our reason while we are presuming ourselves to be rational decision makers using democratic procedures. The book's engagement not just with democracy and Catholicism but also with culture is important. These essays treat culture not only in different local expressions but also (and in a way that is deep, serious, and sustained) as a phenomenon of consciousness.The American perspective always lurks in the narrative, threatening to dominate. This is inevitable not only because the project was managed in the United States but also because the polarizing obsessions of the church in the United States about how to acknowledge the norms of modern political arrangements have tended to dominate conversation in the church worldwide. The editors have shrewdly chosen to save the United States for the last part of this volume, allowing other voices to come forward first to claim their own space. This editorial decision, like so many others, improves the volume and keeps the narrative in good balance. Still, some questions linger in this reviewer's mind as the volume concludes.What do we mean by democracy? Throughout, the authors treat this as a question that is largely settled. Democracy is identified with democratic values that the church accepts, and in Schuck's words, what is under way is "a critical conversation with the culture of democracy" (330). Yet procedural democracy cannot be severed from these values. Are democratic norms and values vindicated when majorities choose undemocratic values? A more careful drawing of distinctions between democracy, liberalism, and republicanism would expose the inner conflicts in which Catholicism meets modern political norms.Perhaps most urgently for the subject matter of this book, are the claims of Catholic social teaching and Christian ethics a foundation for the democratic, participatory values of this secular age, as writers like Charles Taylor and David [End Page 209] Walsh have suggested? This also would raise questions about how culturally conditioned we should understand democracy to be, surely an important consideration for this very fine study.Steven P. MilliesCatholic Theological UnionCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Half a century after Michael Polanyi conceptualised ‘the tacit component’ in personal knowing, management studies has reinvented ‘tacit knowledge’—albeit in ways that squander the advantages of Polanyi’s insights and ignore his faith in ‘spiritual reality’. While tacit knowing challenged the absurdities of sheer objectivity, expressed in a ‘perfect language’, it fused rational knowing, based on personal experience, with mystical speculation about an un-experienced ‘external reality’. Faith alone saved Polanyi’s model from solipsism. But Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism provides scope (...) to rethink personal tacit knowing with regard to ‘other people’ and the intersubjectively viable construction of ‘experiential reality’. By separating tacit knowing from Polanyi’s metaphysical realism and drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’, it is possible to conceptualise ‘imagined institutions’ as the tacit dimension of power that shapes human interaction. Whereas Douglass North claimed institutions could be reduced to rules, imagined institutions are known in ways we cannot tell. (shrink)

The two dominant theories of consciousness argue it appeared in living beings either suddenly, or gradually. Both theories face problems. The solution is the realization that a foundational consciousness was always here, yet varying conscious states were not, and appeared gradually. Michael Tye explores this idea and the key questions it raises.

Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from (...) theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals. (shrink)

Because of the difficulty posed by the contrast between the search for truth and truth itself, Michael Polanyi believes that we must alter the foundation of epistemology to include as essential to the very nature of mind, the kind of groping that constitutes the recognition of a problem. This collection of essays, assembled by Marjorie Grene, exemplifies the development of Polanyi's theory of knowledge which was first presented in Science, Faith, and Society and later systematized in Personal Knowledge. Polanyi (...) believes that the dilemma of the modern mind arises from the peculiar relation between the positivist claim for total objectivity in scientific knowledge and the unprecedented moral dynamism characterizing the social and political aspirations of the last century. The first part of Knowing and Being deals with this theme. Part two develops Polanyi's idea that centralization is incompatible with the life of science as well as his views on the role of tradition and authority in science. The essays on tacit knowing in Part Three proceed directly from his preoccupation with the nature of scientific discovery and reveal a pervasive substructure of all intelligent behavior. Polanyi believes that all knowing involves movement from internal clues to external evidence. Therefore, to explain the process of knowing, we must develop a theory of the nature of living things in general, including an account of that aspect of living things we call "mind." Part Four elaborates upon this theme. (shrink)

The paper addresses a prima facie tension between two popular views about concepts. The first is the doctrine that some concepts are constitutively perceptual/experiential, so that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced subjects. This is a classic empiricist theme, but its most conspicuous recent appearance is in literature on phenomenal concepts. The second view is anti-individualism: here, the view that concept possession depends not only on a thinker’s internal states and relations to the concepts’ referents, but also on (...) certain of her relations to sociolinguistic peers. In recent works, Derek Ball and Michael Tye have in effect argued that the doctrines are incompatible, and their conclusion is that no concepts depend on experience. In reply, Bénédicte Veillet endorses those authors’ incompatibilism, but argues that it is anti-individualism that we should reject. I develop an approach to reconciliation that is more promising than any considered by these theorists. Against Veillet, I defend a version of anti-individualism about phenomenal concepts, but against Ball and Tye, I argue that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced thinkers. (shrink)

This article serves to extend a critique initiated by Allsup and Benedict in their 2008 PMER article, "The Problems of Band." Using the work of Michael Foucault as a theoretical and methodological basis, I consider ways in which today's large ensemble paradigm, particularly that of the wind band, has resulted in an ongoing antinomy in school music between those who view bands as a medium of music education and those who view bands as a medium for music education. (...) I argue that the emergence of the pedagogical band world in the United States and Canada altered the nature of wind band practices, and that the resultant bands-as-music-education paradigm can be understood in terms of issues of power and legitimacy. I strive to demonstrate how future directions in music education might benefit from a reflexive engagement with the discourses of our profession. (shrink)

What is knowledge? What, if anything, can we know? Michael Ayers initiates a fresh approach to these questions by recovering the insight in the distinction between 'knowledge' and 'belief' that was common philosophical currency for two millennia after Plato. He argues that knowledge comes only with direct cognitive contact with reality or truth.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityThe ancient concept of ‘self-cultivation’ with its roots in Confucianism and Hellenistic philosophy can also be utilised as tool for understanding the prac...

One of the most persistent and popular bourgeois myths about Spinoza is that of his unwillingness to participate in any kind of political struggle whatever. This myth is sustained particularly by those non-Marxist historians of philosophy who contend that the essence of Spinozism is the development of a new form of religiosity, free of the limitations of any national religion. Such a conception of the Dutch thinker is partially based on facts related by his first biographers, particularly Lucas. As we (...) know, Lucas, in his Life of Benedict Spinoza, written in French between 1678 and 1688, writes that the philosopher's father, Michael de Spinoza, lacking funds and being unable to establish his son in commerce, chose for him the career of a rabbi, and with this in mind placed the young Spinoza in the Amsterdam kheder, where he gained an excellent knowledge of classical Hebrew and studied to perfection the Old Testament and the considerably more voluminous Talmud. Even during his period of instruction, Spinoza, having found many contradictions in the Bible and Talmud, placed the rabbis who were his teachers in untenable positions and this subsequently led to a conflict between him and the leadership of the Amsterdam Jewish community. This report by Spinoza's first biographer suggests the idea that the young Spinoza had crystallized his ideas as early as his stay in the kheder. This we find stated in many of the non-Marxist studies devoted to him. Soviet writings on Spinoza also usually repeat Lucas' view entirely without criticism . However, certain foreign researches of recent decades, which have given consideration to documents and firsthand reports published in 1932 by the Dutch researcher Vaz Dias and, more recently, certain other documents have necessitated considerable corrections in the biographies both by Lucas and Colerus. In these works — of which the book by the French researcher Madeleine Francés, Spinoza dans les pays Neerlandais de la seconde moitié du XVII siècle, Vol. I, Paris, 1937, and that of the American researcher, Lewis Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston, 1958, are particularly worthy of mention — serious attempts are made to demonstrate the social roots and essence of Spinozism. The biographical data presented in these works contribute to a clarification of the real reasons for the conflict between the young Spinoza and the leadership of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. According to these writers, Spinoza's father was a wealthy man and, in all probability, did not intend to make a rabbi of his son. There can be no question that the young Spinoza attended the elementary classes of the Jewish school, but his name is not found in the lists of students in its higher grades, from which future rabbis emerged. Beginning approximately at the age of thirteen, Bento helped his father in his commercial and financial operations. However, after his father's death, Baruch himself took charge of these matters during the period 1654-1656 and, as these documents suggest, demonstrated considerable skill in commercial and financial affairs. However, the activities of merchant and financier did not appeal to the young man. The discrepancy between his intellectual interests and the nature of his occupation proved so irreconcilable that the future philosopher, who had established numerous scholarly and personal ties outside the Jewish community, drifted farther and farther both from his business and the community, until finally he was excommunicated, and broke with the community. (shrink)

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the (...) best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair is also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it is." He sorts through the apparently chaotic text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the "self," how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their "mission." In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers. (shrink)

Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know provides a balanced look at the topic, considering atheism historically, philosophically, theologically, sociologically and psychologically.

Nietzsche's Therapy explores the ethics of self-cultivation that Nietzsche forged in his middle works.

Evolutionary biology distinguishes differences in survival and reproduction rates due to selection from those due to drift. The distinction is usually thought to be founded in probabilistic facts: a difference in (say) two variants' average lifespans over some period of time that is due to selection is explained by differences in the probabilities relevant to survival; in the purest cases of drift, by contrast, the survival probabilities are equal and the difference in lifespans is a matter of chance. When there (...) is a difference in actual average lifespans there is always a difference in causal histories, but in drift, the causal differences make no contribution to the relevant probabilities. Some writers have claimed that the framework that determines which causes contribute to the probabilities, and so the framework that determines when the relevant probabilities differ and when they are equal, is imposed by modelers rather than being an objective fact of nature, and so that the distinction between selection and drift, however practically useful, is unreal. This paper uses my work on biological probabilities (Bigger than Chaos) and probabilistic explanation (Depth) to argue for the objectivity of, and the importance of the objectivity of, the distinction between selection and drift. (shrink)

In his third and final investigation into the science of belief, bestselling author Michael Shermer tackles the evolution of morality and ethics A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an “evolutionary ethics,” science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the roots of human nature. In The Science (...) of Good and Evil , psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates, how and why morality motivates the human animal, and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the im-plications of statistics for fate and free will fuzzy logic for the existence of pure good and pure evil and ecology for the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamamo, infamously known as the “fierce people” of the tropical rain forest, to the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, to John Hinckley’s insanity defense. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth. (shrink)

Michael Devitt tells us that metaphysical realism has a kind of immunity from considerations concerning the nature of truth. Part of this immunity comes from Devitt’s insistence that realism is a metaphysical issue, not a semantic one. Most of Devitt’s critics have focused on this point, arguing that a proper understanding of the realism question necessarily involves semantic considerations :65–74, 1991; Miller in Synthese 136:191–217, 2003; Putnam in Comments on Michael Devitt’s ‘Hilary and Me’, in: Baghramian Reading Putnam. (...) Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, 2012; Taylor in Models, truth, and realism. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006). But Devitt also argues at length that semantic considerations should not lead us to give up on realism regardless of whether we admit that the correct characterization of realism is metaphysical in character or not. Devitt’s view hinges on the viability of a strategy which he calls Putting Metaphysics First, which essentially involves giving “a certain temporal and explanatory priority to metaphysical concerns”. Fully explicated, Devitt’s strategy is seen to be based on an epistemological naturalism in the vein of Quine. The main idea is that if we assume a naturalism according to which the only way to know anything is empirically through experience, then we will be able to establish a version of metaphysical realism early on in our investigations. According to Devitt, the empirical evidence for this realism is much stronger than the empirical evidence for the numerous semantical and epistemological views which are put forward in favor of antirealism. So, Devitt argues, we should hold on to the realism that we establish first and build our other theories on top of it. After detailing Devitt’s approach, I offer two objections. The first problem for Devitt is that in the process of putting metaphysics first, he puts epistemological naturalism first. This fact is in tension with his claim that epistemology is a weak starting place and a poor basis of theoretical revision. The second problem is that while our experiences of objects give us evidence that those objects exist, our experiences do not tell us that the objects exist mind-independently in all the ways required for metaphysical realism, or so I contend. Thus, I argue, even if we do put naturalized metaphysics first as Devitt recommends, realism is not secured as a starting point. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a mystic, philosopher and scientist whose ideas were decades ahead of their time. A proponent of a unificatory vision of science, he was both a champion of the occult as Newton would be after him, and a torch-bearer for the sort of holistic dreams that Leonardo had cherished before him. As such he is perfect material for the third in Michael White's loose trilogy of science biographies - after Newton, the last sorcerer, and Leonardo, the (...) first scientist, we have Bruno, science's first martyr. THE POPE AND THE HERETIC re-creates not just the vibrancy of intellectual life at the height of the Renaissance but also the horrific cost of pursuing ideas which ran counter to the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church. After almost eight years' imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Inquisition, Bruno was burned at the stake for his beliefs - or rather, his refusal to accept that intellectual investigation was limited by the dictats of Rome. His life and martyrdom are the subjects of this fascinating book. (shrink)

A new study of Porphyrian soteriology, or the concept of the salvation of the soul, in the thought of Porphyry of Tyre.

Written by well-known professor and author Michael Boylan, Morality and Global Justice is an accessible examination of the moral and normative underpinnings of ...

This book critically examines 'just liberal violence': forms of direct and structural violence that others may be 'justly' subjected to. Michael Neu focusses on liberal defences of torture, war and sweatshop labour respectively, and argues that each of these defences fails and all of them fail for similar reasons.