Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

How do the arts inform and cultivate our service to God? In this addition to an award-winning series, distinguished philosopher Bruce Ellis Benson rethinks what it means to be artistic. Rather than viewing art as practiced by the few, he recovers the ancient Christian idea of presenting ourselves to God as works of art, reenvisioning art as the very core of our being: God calls us to improvise as living works of art. Benson also examines the nature of liturgy (...) and connects art and liturgy in a new way. This book will appeal to philosophy, worship/liturgy, art, music, and theology students as well as readers interested in engaging issues of worship and aesthetics in a postmodern context, including Christian artists and worship leaders. (shrink)

Can we legitimately speak of ethicsexperts? Recent literature in philosophy and medical ethics addresses this important question but does not offer a satisfactory answer. Part of the problem is the absence of an examination of what it means to be an expert in general. I therefore begin by reviewing my analysis of expertise which appeared earlier in this journal. We speak of two kinds of experts: persons whose expertise is in virtue of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (performative (...) expertise). Applying this analysis to the domain of ethics, I argue that we may speak of ethical expertise in three epistemic senses: a) expertise indescriptive ethics, b) expertise inmetaethics, c) expertise innormative ethics, and in a performative sense: d) expertise inliving a good life. I conclude with a brief description of some social roles of ethics experts. (shrink)

In a fascinating paper, “Ask the Philosopher,” Dimitrios Dentsoras shows how philosophers were once integrally engaged in society as agents of practical advice on how to govern and indeed on how to live. Over the centuries, beginning in Roman times, this social role has diminished to a point where professional philosophers are largely socially irrelevant. What has changed? This paper outlines an argument that identifies a central contribution to its own demise that professional philosophy itself has made. That contribution has (...) to do with how philosophical critique is conceived and operates. Philosophical teaching and publishing focus is on undermining opposing positions, or on eliminating opposition, rather than seeking deeper and genuine understanding. Examining certain elements of this eliminative function presents a possibility of seeing a renewal of philosophy’s previous functions of truth-seeking and accessing the Good. (shrink)

In November 2018, the practice of health care ethics consultation crossed a major threshold when 138 candidates took the inaugural Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certification Examination. This accomplishment, long in the making, has had and continues to have both advocates and critics. The Healthcare Ethics Consultant Certification Commission, a functionally autonomous body created and funded by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, was charged with overseeing creation of the certification process, developing the exam, and formulating certification standards and policies to (...) assess candidates’ qualifications. In this essay, as members of the commission, we describe the process of developing, administering, and scoring the certification examination as well as the historical context and the outlook for certification. By detailing the decisions and actions of the commission, we aim to provide a transparent account of the commission's efforts to develop a psychometrically sound, reliable, and secure examination through a deliberative, fair, and data‐driven process. (shrink)

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

This book represents a series of incursions or philosophical forays between realms of Byzantine and Russian thought and territory long claimed by Western philosophy and theology. Beginning with thoughts inevitably rooted in the West, it seeks to penetrate as deeply as possible into Byzantine and Russian philosophical and spiritual landscapes, and to return with fresh insights. These are also incursions that move back and forth between the visible and the invisible realms, in the traditions of Plato and his successors as (...) well as the great monastics of Eastern Christianity. Foltz argues from various perspectives that the problematic relation between transcendence and immanence finds its answer in the philosophical and theological legacy of Eastern Christian thought, which has always sought to bring together strands tenaciously held separate in the West. This book transports contemporary readers to an ancient conceptual landscape as it expertly handles both Western and Byzantine ideas with a familiarity unusual to contemporary scholars. It is essential reading for all those wishing to engage the heart of Byzantine thought and employ its lessons to address the problems which plague Western philosophy and culture. (shrink)

Schürmann a conçu son projet philosophique comme un sauvetage des phénomènes. Car ceux-ci sont menacés à la fois par les principes logiques qui les déterminent et par leur propre précarité ontologique. Toutefois le principe n’a-t-il pas en lui-même un pouvoir phénoménalisant? Le phénomène lui-même en sa singularité n’est-il pas si intimement marqué par la négativité qu’il peine à apparaître? On propose donc d’interroger le diasozein ta phainomena de Schürmann en sauvant le sauvetage lui-même du risque d’une dissolution des phénomènes par (...) eux-mêmes et sous les principes. (shrink)

Genome editing is revolutionising the field of genetics, which includes novel applications to food animals. Responsible research and innovation has been advocated as a way of ensuring that a wider-range of stakeholders and publics are able to engage with new and emerging technologies to inform decision making from their perspectives and values. We posit that genome editing is now proceeding at such a fast rate, and in so many different directions, such as to overwhelm attempts to achieving a more reflective (...) pace. An alternative location for reflection is during the much slower process of taking products from the lab to market. We suggest emphasising Responsible Innovation, putting the ‘I’ back into RRI, and encouraging companies to embrace an RRI approach. We review some previous attempts at developing industry-relevant frameworks for RRI. We then describe two examples of genome editing in livestock; hornless cattle and disease resistant pigs, and reflect on the sorts of questions that could be considered in these two genome editing examples. This paper seeks to take forward the discussion on RRI by extending it to bringing products to market in the context of genome edited livestock. (shrink)

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal (...) closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism. (shrink)

This book is the result of a conference that addressed two pressing issues for christianity in the modern world.

Søren Kierkegaard was an almost unbelievably prolific writer. At his death he left not only a massive body of published work, but also a sprawling mass of unpublished writings that rivaled the size of the published corpus. This book tells the story of the peculiar fate of this portion of Kierkegaard's literary remains, which flowed ceaselessly from his steel pen from his late teens to a week before his death. It is the story of packets and sacks of paper covered (...) with words and images that, after a vagabond existence in various homes, finally landed at the Royal Danish Library, where they are today guarded with great care.Readers are also introduced to a selection of this enormous body of material, including drawings and doodlings that escaped from Kierkegaard's pen in unguarded moments and complement the allure of the philosopher's strikingly variable, elusive handwriting. The authors of this book are among the editors of a modern critical edition of Kierkegaard's oeuvre currently being produced in Copenhagen.By the end of his life Kierkegaard had become a controversial figure, engaged in a furious assault upon "Christendom." From the very moment of their discovery in the days following his death, the unpublished words and images constituted a highly problematic bonanza, an intellectual and religious hot potato that was passed from hand to hand, suppressed, selectively and tendentiously published and republished. Written Images offers readers a fascinating tour of the misadventures of these written images that will, finally, soon be published in their entirety. (shrink)

: This comment on Campbell argues that a good book could be made better if more critical judgment was displayed. Attempts to recover the complete past must be abandoned, and especially in the history of ideas, evaluative judgments about the worth of ideas must be made and the presuppositions of thought must be explored.

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 64-66.

My aim is to indicate that Bernard Lonergan's work in economics can be used to argue that there is a special or unique dimension of business ethics. To be more specific, in order to be an ethical business person it is not sufficient to be a "virtuous" person. Ethics in business calls for a clear view on how an economy works and is working, and it calls for intelligent actions in light of such knowledge.

Since 1952, the History of Science Society has been responsible for the substantial human and financial resources required to sustain the journal Isis. The editorial history of Isis has previously been covered by those closely involved with it, but these practitioner histories only occasionally offer insight into the business of running Isis. We have used the Society’s archives to investigate the behind-the-scenes operations of the journal. In 1953, the editor and one assistant had to do everything besides the actual printing. (...) Over the next four decades, this would change dramatically. We consider the people involved in the editorial work (academic volunteers and paid staff), the production and distribution arrangements for Isis, and how this was all financed in the years from George Sarton’s retirement up to the 1990 decision to move to the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)