For Plotinus, although the One and the Intellect are transcendent sources of the cosmos, they are also omnipresent within it. At first, the mutual omnipresence and transcendence of the One and the Intellect seem contradictory, but their omnipresence and transcendence are perfectly consistent outcomes of the relation of the cosmos to the One and the Intellect. For the perfection of the One entails both that the One has power to generate and that it is mutually transcendent and omnipresent (...) in the universe. Plotinus extends his principles of perfection, transcendence, and omnipresence to include the relation of the body to the soul by explaining that the soul can transcend the body while the body is within it. Hence, Plotinus is able to fashion an efficient and consistent metaphysics in which Godcontains the universe and the soul contains the body without denying the transcendent perfection of either. (shrink)

Traditional debates, such as those regarding whether the universe is finite in spatial or temporal extent, exemplified, according to Kant, the inherent tendency of pure reason to lead us astray. Although various aspects of Kant’s arguments fail to find a footing in modern cosmology, Kant’s objections to the search for a complete objective description of the cosmos are related to three intertwined issues that are still of central importance: the applicability of universal laws, the status of distinctively cosmological laws, (...) and the explanatory sufficiency of laws. We will advocate a broadly Kantian position on these three issues as part of a critical response to a prevalent strain of Leibnizian rationalism in contemporary cosmology. (shrink)

What are the laws of physics? -- The stuff that kicks back -- Point-of-view invariance -- Gauging the laws of physics -- Forces and broken symmetries -- Playing dice -- After the bang -- Out of the void -- The comprehensible cosmos -- Models of reality.

Following the introduction of the special and general theories of relativity and development of consequent cosmological models, the extent to which time and space play a starkly abstract role in physics has become more and more apparent. We examine here whether the full force of such abstract characterizations comes ultimately into opposition with the practice of science and implies some hard limitations on the scope of scientific discourse.

Diogenes Laertius begins Lives of the Eminent Philosophers thus: “There are some who say that the study of philosophy had its beginning among the barbarians.” He goes on to review possible claims on behalf of the Persians, Babylonians, Indians, “Druids,” and Egyptians granting that each such peoples have wisdom traditions, but no true philosophy. Think what you may of Diogenes’ blunt Greek chauvinism, there is, indeed, something peculiar and unique about Greek philosophy. It begins in the early sixth century BCE (...) with speculation about the stuff of the world (water, air, fire); the forces moving that stuff around (Love and Strife, Mind); its beautiful-order (κοσμος) and the law(s) governing the moving cosmos (Justice, Logos). It rapidly develops by way of a diachronic dialectical process. That is, succeeding philosophers respond to the speculations of their predecessors with, often implicit, but always incisive criticism followed by ever subtler speculation. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius reports that Xenophanes of Colophon said that τὰ πολλὰ ἥσσω νοῦ εἶναι— on one defensible translation: that ‘many things are weaker than mind.’ The remark has been interpreted in various ways, none of them entirely convincing. However, a review of the relevant fragments and ancient testimonia will provide the basis for a credible interpretation. Ultimately, it will emerge that the remark reflects Xenophanes’ understanding of the relationship between the divine mind and the cosmos.

One’s first reaction on seeing this book might be to wonder why it is labelled "Aristotle" at all. The de Mundo has long been regarded as spurious, the work of a later Peripatetic, or even of the vaguely Stoicizing eclecticism which was already, in the later Hellenistic period, beginning to see Aristotle and Plato as the proponents of the same philosophy. There has, however, been no general agreement about where precisely in that framework it should be placed, and Reale, who (...) has recently tried, not without success, to rehabilitate Melissus as a serious thinker, now tries to rehabilitate the de Mundo as a genuine work of Aristotle: he thinks the lack of agreement among the critics is itself an argument in its favor. Restoring the original attribution seems to be the main purpose of what is in fact the first full scale edition with commentary of the de Mundo. It contains a text, largely that established by Lorimer, with translation en face, a long introduction, copious notes and a full word index; the text and translation occupy less than a fifth of the whole. As far as a non-Italian can judge the translation is accurate—and free of effusive expansion. The notes are a real mine of information. So it should be said at the start that whether or not one accepts Reale’s thesis about genuineness does not affect the value of the edition as such. The question of authenticity is discussed with great thoroughness in the introduction, with considerable backing, some of it perhaps inevitably repetitious, in the form of detailed discussion in the notes. At the start Reale lists the charges levelled against the work at various times. These are that in general it contains non-Aristotelian elements, that the style is completely different from Aristotle’s, as is the method, being one of assertion rather than demonstration. Further, much of the material in the scientific section is post-Aristotelian, and the "Orphic hymn" of chapter 7 shows Stoic influence. Reale argues that the first three charges will stick only if the basis of discussion is the Aristotle of the treatises and claims that the objectionable material in the de Mundo can be paralleled from the exoteric works. Thus all the pre-Jaeger discussion is misconceived. (shrink)

The prospect of recognizing the ultimate is a matter of interpretation. As such, hermeneutics is used as a framework for describing the interactions of self, language, and the other (whether culturally other or ultimately other). Questioning whether religious ultimacy can be recognized across religious boundaries is based on a mistaken assumption that differences between religions are qualitatively different than differences within a religion. Hermeneutically speaking, intra-communal difference and inter-communal difference are of the same kind. If humans can negotiate the former, (...) they can negotiate the latter. Recognizing ultimacy is an intersubjective act of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. As such, it cannot be explained in any detail apart from the concrete particulars of each encounter. Below is an account of recognizing the Ultimate, analyzed into four explanatory ways: its immediate quality (uncanniness), its vehicle (the classic), its cultural-linguistic mechanism (metaphorical appropriation), and its ontological implications (a signifying cosmos). Each way offers a different type of explanation as to how a person can recognize another religion’s ultimate. I begin with the most concrete: spontaneous feeling, and work my way to more speculative implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 371-397 [Access article in PDF] How the "New Science" of Cannons Shook up the Aristotelian Cosmos Mary J. Henninger-Voss [Figures]Approximately halfway through the "Second Day" of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo's mouthpiece, the mathematician Salviati, scoffs at his Aristotelian colleague Simplicio: "I see that you have hitherto been of that herd who, in order to learn (...) how matters such as this [motion] take place, and in order to acquire a knowledge of natural effects, do not betake themselves to ships or crossbows or cannons, but retire to their studies... to see whether Aristotle has said anything about them."1 Silly, simple Simplicio! He has been searching for natural philosophical wisdom in the books of natural philosophers rather than in the world of docks and arsenals. Indeed this quotation appears near the outset of Day Two wherein Salviati offers cannonshot as proof for the opposing Aristotelian position that the experience of projectiles proves the motionless state of the earth. Obviously, if the earth rotates toward the east, cannonballs shot point-blank to the west ought to travel much further than to the east. And clearly this is not so. Simplicio agrees that the new arguments offered by the cannon are excellent, "and now I see with how many elegant experiments nature graciously wishes to aid us in coming to the recognition of the truth," Simplicio enthusiastically enjoins. "What a shame there were no cannons in Aristotle's time!" exclaims the third interlocutor, Sagredo. "With them he would indeed have battered down ignorance, and spoken without [End Page 371] [Begin Page 373] the least hesitation concerning the universe."2 The irony here is not only that Aristotle might have used cannons in order to explain the workings of the universe but also that Galileo does so in the following pages. His demonstrations with reference to artillery demolish the Aristotelian position, but he has had Simplicio open the door for him by recognizing this most violent of artifices as an elegant experiment provided by nature.3The cannon provides a primary referent for Galileo's new mathematical physics of motion from his very first dialogue to his very last. The early De Motu culminated in a series of questions about the shot of cannons, while the conversation in his final masterwork, Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences, was set in the Venetian arsenal, and to it Galileo appended a table of the parabolic paths that could be expected from cannons shot at various elevations.4 In some sense Galileo turned inside-out a much older problem, one that had haunted military engineers of sixteenth-century Italy—and Galileo had been trained, and trained others, in military engineering.5 State organizers of war and captain generals were less interested in the implications the arts of fortifications and artillery held for the existing science of natural motion than in the necessity to reduce to a science, that is, a coherent body of knowledge, the rules for manufacturing cannons, planting artillery battery, aiming guns, and fortifying camps, cities, and castles.What Galileo gives us is recognizable as early physics, as a sophisticated mechanical science, a neat triumph of mathematical method in natural philosophy. But the ways and means by which mathematics came together with natural philosophy to address problems of both technology and nature are by no means neat. My claim is that attention to the military sphere will help us sort out some of those ways and means. The curious thing about the historiography on the relationship between early modern science and warfare is that the fact of a connection seems to have been taken for granted, while the implications have seldom been investigated.6 This essay is an attempt to trace those implications by [End Page 373] looking at a mathematician who specifically tried to reduce to a mathematical science the military arts, Niccolò Tartaglia.7 Tartaglia's story shows how the minutia of Aristotelian philosophy was transmuted in early attempts to understand cannonshot... (shrink)

The argument from internal relatedness was one of the major nineteenth century neo-Hegelian arguments for monism. This argument has been misunderstood, and may even be sound. The argument, as I reconstruct it, proceeds in two stages: first, it is argued that all things are internally related in ways that render them interdependent; second, the substantial unity of the whole universe is inferred from the interdependence of all of its parts. The guiding idea behind the argument is that failure of free (...) recombination is the modal signature of an integrated monistic cosmos. Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another... (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, p. 43). (shrink)

1. There was not the undifferentiated ‘chaos’ nor the reality of the ‘cosmos’ then (cf. KV. 10, 72, 2 ; 3) ; there was not space (cf. RV. 1, 164, 6) nor the firmament which is beyond. What moved intermittently (cf. KV. 1, 164, 31 ; see st. 2 c)? Where ? Under whose (mase, or neutr.) protection ? Was there (the primordial) water, the unfathomable, deep (cf. RV. 10, 82, 5 ; 6 etc.) ? 2. There was not (...) death (nor continuation of life) then. There was no appearance of day and night (i.e. day and night could not be distinguished). The One (cf. KV. 10, 82, 2 ; 6) breathed without wind (breath) by its own nature. Other than that there was nothing else. 3. (There) was darkness. Hidden by darkness was this universe in the beginning,indistinguishable, something waving (not „water”, cf. st. 1 d). The virtual (cf.the verb in st. 6 d ; 7 a), viz. the One, which was covered by the void, assumed individual existence by the greatness of eternal heating. 4. Desire in the beginning arose (came into being) on that (viz. on the One), which was the first seed (semen) of manas (the seat of thought, feeling, will, consciousness, and which may be identical with the One ; cf. JB. 1, 68 ; TA. 1, 23, 1). The sages after having received (it) in their hearts with the inspired thoughts of their minds, found the bond of the reality of the ‘cosmos’ in (with) the undifferentiated ‘chaos’. 5. Their cord (presumably that of the creative architect ; enabling also to connect and distinguish) was extended across (probably in order to perceive or establish duality, e.g. of heaven and earth). Was there below, was there above ? There were semenbearers, there were greatness (powers, cf. TS. 4, 3, 11, 1 ; see also BAU. 1, 4, 3 ; RV. 10, 72, 4 ; 10, 90, 5). There was own (inherent, specific) nature (power) below, there was willingness (to give oneself) above (c and d chiastically). 6. Who knows for certain ? Who will (can) declare here, whence it has arisen (it was born), whence is this creation-in-differentiation ? With the creation (emanation)-in-differentiation of this (universe) the gods are at this side (which is known to us ; i.e. they did not exist before the creation of the universe). Who then knows whence it (the created or emanated universe) has come into existence ? 7. This creation (emanation)-in-differentiation, whence it has come into existence, whether it is the result of an act of founding or establishing or not, he who surveys it in the highest firmament, he only knows (it) - or else he (also) does not know (it). (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor misses (...) the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The True Purpose of Religion in a Processive Naturalistic UniverseJ. Edward HackettMan's value experiences are certainly no mere subjective creations of his fancy or his mores; beauty, order, cooperation, adaptation, have their objective grounds. There are axiogenetic processes in nature, and religion is an attitude of respect for and trust in those processes.1—Edgar S. Brightman, A Philosophy of ReligionSome rationality certainly does characterize our universe.2—William James, A Pluralistic Universelet (...) us start our meditation on science and religion by first thinking about what assumptions scientists are committed to in practice. Science is an attempt to know nature through four assumptions: (1) All things are physical; (2) physical relationships are cause and effect relationships; (3) by assuming all things are physical, then a scientist can systematically test various experimental findings in the hopes of those findings becoming theories and generalized laws; and finally (4) scientific inquiry may embrace (1)–(3) as an ontological limit to conceive of the whole. In acting in accordance with (1)–(4), scientists simply do science in their respective regions of inquiry. Biologists inquire into the region of living things and chemists investigate the chemical composition of matter. Scientists operate under these assumptions, and scientists may proceed under these assumptions for their entire lifetime without ever moving beyond them. The reader shall notice that I worded the fourth assumption as scientific inquiry may embrace (1)–(3) as an ontological limit to conceive of the whole because scientists may assume their methodological assumptions hold for all inquiry. They may uncritically assume such a powerful stance, and yet a scientist does not have to embrace the fourth assumption. Any methodological naturalist may be fine assuming (1)–(3) without the need to do metaphysics. At the same time, if a scientist wants to move past the methodological naturalism of (1)–(3) and not be so [End Page 22] dogmatic regarding (4), then science may be a springboard to another form of inquiry either into philosophical or theological speculation. Here, I mean speculation as Alfred North Whitehead described the term as speculative philosophy. "Speculative philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, and necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted."3 For me, William James's radical empiricism united with his pragmatism succeeds in providing a necessary system of general ideas wherein all elements of experience can be interpreted.4 In agreement with Whitehead, James thinks speculative philosophy to be possible by incorporating religion and scientific elements as components of a speculative philosophy. Whitehead states:Philosophy frees itself from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and with science, natural and sociological. It attains its chief importance by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought. Religion should connect the rational generality of philosophy with the emotions and purposes springing out of existence in a particular society, in a particular epoch, and conditioned by particular antecedents. Religion is the translation of general ideas into particular thoughts, particular emotions, and particular purposes; it is directed to the end of stretching individual interest beyond its self-defeating particularity. Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme.5In this passage, one already sees one aspect of radical empiricism, namely, that we first experience elements in qualitative immediacy as particulars. What's more, in the explanation to follow, like Whitehead, experience is the ground in which the purposes of both religion and science are integrated. Science, for Whitehead, and for our purposes here, is only "concerned with the harmony of rational thought with the percepta [what we call percepts in James] themselves."6 Religion concerns a more intimate awareness with oneself and the cosmos and, very much like James, Whitehead returns to experience.Recall the four assumptions mentioned above. If we transgress the fourth assumption while keeping in mind (1)–(3), then we might be tempted to say that the final act of bringing science to completion is to interpret science in relationship to the very whole to which the scientist, being... (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the world is an amazing and puzzling fact in its own right. Indeed, consciousness is one of the most mystifying features of the cosmos. The unity of consciousness is something that cries out for analysis and explanation as well. This chapter provides a way of relating the three types of unity: objectual phenomenal unity; subject phenomenal unity; and subsumptive phenomenal unity. According to Tim Bayne and David Chalmers, this sort of unity is irrelevant for (...) investigating the nature of consciousness' unity because it is trivially true by definition and tells us nothing about consciousness. Many thinkers, including Bayne himself, believe there is no self or subject that unifies consciousness. Bayne's position amounts to a bunch of mere assertions that allow him to avoid an obvious solution: substance dualism. (shrink)

This piece is an essay review of Wang Hui's book China from Empire to Nation-State, which is a translation of the introduction to Wang's four-volume Rise of Modern Chinese Thought. According to the reviewer, Wang studies less the modern history of China than its historicity and does so in the context of China's transition from being an empire, inhabiting a cosmos that is the product of its own self-reflection, to being one among a number of nation-states, inhabiting a number (...) of histories of their own, all of which are now simultaneously present. But the Euro-American terms empire and nation-state, which increasingly pervade Chinese perceived realities, lack precise Chinese equivalents. Meanwhile, the terms that the Chinese use in referring to the same historical transition, tianli and gongli, are obscure to the Euro-American mind. The reviewer asks whether the Chinese, now facing a plurality of histories, wonder if there may be a plurality of li, as well, or at least if there can be a li that is “universal” in the sense that it is common to them all. The problem here, the reviewer argues, in part derives from Wang's binaries being Hegelian, while the breakdown of the nation-state in Europe projects a postpolitical order in which human communities are incapable of state-based action or of determining their own li. The review ends by questioning whether China is capable of following this path and, in any case, whether Wang's vocabulary is able to encompass it. (shrink)

Donald J. Zeyl begins the historical section of the book by tracing divine causation throughout classical Greek philosophy. Some of the Pre-Socratics held to a single god as the source of rational order or change. These views suggested that the cosmos may be explained teleologically. Plato takes up that suggested promise in his Phaedo and finds it wanting. Instead, he looks to Forms as (formal) causes of natural processes. This direction of inquiry leads him to postulate, in the Republic, (...) the Form of the Good as the “unhypothetical (causal) first principle.” In Plato’s later writings, most notably in the Timaeus, Plato presents a full-blown teleological account of both the universe at large and the varieties of living things that inhabit the earth. The agent that brings about the conformity of the world to the Forms is the divine Demiurge. -/- Aristotle inherits from Plato the belief that processes in the natural world are to be understood teleologically. These processes are explained by the nature (or form) of the organism itself. Aristotle’s world has no beginning and thus has no place for an original efficient cause to get the world started. Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover” plays no causal role in the processes of the natural world, all of which are exhaustively explained in terms of Aristotle’s well-known theory of the “four causes.” Nevertheless, the Unmoved Mover is a final cause. -/- After Aristotle, only the Stoics offered an account of divine causal agency. As pantheists, the Stoics identified the world with a divine rational principle they named the Logos. All events, natural and social, are completely determined by Reason, so the Stoics were strict determinists, both in their natural philosophy and in their social and ethical thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William James, Radical Empiricism, and the Affective Ground of Religious LifeJ. Edward Hackett (bio)In the following article, I aim to discuss three separate linkages in William James’s overall philosophy of religion. James’s philosophy of religion is based thoroughly on his radical empiricism, and this is the uniting thread often missed in contemporary scholarship. Radical empiricism makes it possible to link 1) his criticism of both representational metaphysics and theology (...) and that philosophy through James must take to heart the lack of access both representative metaphysics and theology conventionally claimed, and 2) the affective ground on which both philosophy and religion have operated for James, especially in his “Will to Believe” argument, and 3) how understanding the affective ground informs a thoroughly empiricist philosophy of religion that moves through his treatment of religious themes (e.g. his mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience) and how this affective ground emerges in the body and action.In showing the accuracy of James’s affective grounds of religion, many reading this essay will note that I am not directing my comments in any particular spiritual path. Instead, my Jamesian commitments are about the individual experience of religion, and for James, he affirmed the widest possible conception of religion to remain neutral to the power such traditions have. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, he writes, “Religion, whatever it is, is man’s total reaction upon life.” To get at and underneath these total reactions is not to regard these reactions as causal. Instead, to discover them, James writes, “you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos.”1 This residualness is the affective dimension of experience and its unfolding relations that do not regularly become thematized in philosophy of religion. By contrast, many versions of philosophy of religion attempt to justify the epistemic beliefs about religion through theoretical reason. By contrast, our total reactions make us feel the marrow of our existence because the sense of the world’s presence causes us to feel existence. These religious feeling acts come to form our most completest [End Page 67] answer to the question: “What is the character of the universe in which we dwell?”2 In feeling existence, we experience an ongoing relation with particulars in the world. These feeling acts consist in a whole range of possible religious experiences. By looking at the character of the universe in which we dwell, James is asking: What is the place of feeling that comes to characterize the shared character of the universe in which we all dwell? Reason always comes last. Feeling is always constitutive of all later and built-up cognition.My essay is about the Jamesian-experiential-scaffolding surrounding the religious traditions as ways to encounter the meaning of suffering and uncertainty in these ongoing felt relations. Following the example of James Campbell, I am not committed to drawing a distinction between psychological and metaphysical interpretations of affectivity. Suffering and uncertainty are ways we encounter the feeling of existence. Feeling of existence is, then, akin to a nearly phenomenological-like ontology in which the psychological that inspired the metaphysical are not entirely separate.3 The experiential-scaffolding is regarded as the very same starting place for every single religious person. In this essay and what I hope to make clear in James is that philosophy starts in the affective ground where existence is felt and philosophized about rather than assuming the whole of reality is complete, determined, and somehow reflected in our contemplation of it.4 In essence, the lack of access to reality in-itself means that our beliefs are risky and must start in the marrow where existence is felt. [End Page 68] We risk everything in our spiritual practices. As James reminds, “On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any [religious] hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.”5 That is what makes them so necessary on an existential and practical level. Our passional nature (what James calls the feeling sense of religious feeling in The Varieties of Religious Experience), thus, fuels what we need, and philosophical reflection turns into proposing concepts and beliefs... (shrink)

Presents a comprehensive history of multiverse theory, reviewing the discoveries that shaped astrophysicists' current consensus view while showing that the multiverse is able to be explained entirely in naturalistic terms.

Galatians is a clear witness to a basic conviction of Paul: the gospel is not about human movement into blessedness, but about God's liberating invasion of the cosmos. Christ's love enacted in the cross has the power to change the world because it is embodied in the new community of mutual service.

Schleiermacher's Copernican revolution in theology is effected through his presentation of the Christian mythos in terms of a phenomenological anthropology of self-consciousness. Moreover, as Niebuhr shows in this apt study of some features of Schleiermacher's theological thinking, the principles which determine the shape of that revolution can be deduced neither from a biblical dogmatics allegedly purified of philosophical presuppositions nor from a philosophy uninformed by theological experience. In the first part of the book, Niebuhr discusses Schleiermacher's little-known work The Christmas (...) Eve: A Dialogue, affording us a picture of the author's starting-point in the experience of a salvation or potentiated self-consciousness which is historically and socially mediated. The subsequent analysis of the lectures on hermeneutics and ethics discloses the object of Schleiermacher's inquiry to be not the supernatural being that posits the cosmos, but the creative Logos indwelling the individual and all men by means of the common, organic media of human existence in which the self both comes to be and comes to create history and culture. Finally, The Christian Faith is reviewed by Niebuhr in terms of the expression it gives to the mature Schleiermacher's theology and christology. The primordial consciousness of being-in-relation reveals the historical, societal, worldly context of the self and the various polarities of the self's existence such that religion emerges as a phenomenon coterminous with man's affective response to the relationships in which the whole of human nature is bound, and theology, the "daughter of religion," becomes the methodology by which the articulation of an affective determination of self-consciousness is achieved. The rigorously pursued explicitation [[sic]] of the forms and determinations of self-consciousness is interpreted by Niebuhr with a penetration and a sympathy at once acute and comprehensive. By giving us a series of insights into Schleiermacher's "thinking in motion," Niebuhr has contributed a cogent testimony to the nineteenth-century theologian's central importance in the fields of hermeneutical theory, philosophical ethics, philosophy of religion and culture, and theology. One would have welcomed a more critical appraisal of Schleiermacher's view of the formal and material compatibility of philosophy and theology, understanding and feeling, inasmuch as the scope of theological inquiry appears to be limited by the boundaries of reason set forth in the ethics, and philosophical anthropology is apparently reduced to a rather sophisticated phenomenology of religious experience. In any case, Niebuhr's scholarly treatment of the material should lead the reader to an informed examination of Schleiermacher's text.--J. M. S. (shrink)

La pensée contemporaine est-elle accessible au concept biblique de fin de l'histoire ? Les sciences de l'univers et celles de la vie ont répandu, à l'aide de diverses notions de temps, des scénarios de fin du monde qui renvoient à la philosophie la question angoissante de l'avenir de l'humanité. Dans le passé, les gnoses avaient élaboré une représentation du temps brisé, que les philosophies modernes ont entrepris de démythologiser de bien des façons : morales purement rationalistes, qui tantôt acceptent tantôt (...) refusent l'idée d'une fin morale, morales utopiques, vision d'un cosmos régi par des lois mécaniques, vision d'une histoire dépourvue de sens et de finalité.Cependant, si la temporalité est inscrite au cœur du réel, la question de la fin ne peut pas être éludée. De nos jours, la pensée de la mort est le lieu d'une interrogation métaphysique sur l'être ; la philosophie de l'histoire pense la fin à la lumière d'une exigence de justice ; la pensée de l'altérité est la postulation d'un dépassement du temps ; dans l'éthique de l'action, la notion d'événement introduit à une destinée de liberté ouverte sur une transcendance ; l'analyse du langage symbolique dévoile la dimension eschatologique de la raison dans sa recherche du vrai : autant d'ouvertures philosophiques sur l'espérance théologale. Is contemporaneous thought accessible to the biblical concept of the end of history ? With the help of different notions of time, universe and life-sciences have spread scenarios of the world’s end that pass on to philosophy the anguishing question of the future of humanity. In the past, gnostics elaborated a representation of broken time, which modern philosophies went about demythologizing in diverse ways : purely rationalistic morals, which at one time accept and another time refuse the idea of a moral end, utopian morals, vision of a cosmos ruled by mechanical laws, and the vision of a history empty of meaning and finality.Nevertheless, if temporality is inscribed in the heart of the real, the question of the end cannot be avoided. In our time, thinking about death leads to a metaphysical interrogation about being ; the philosophy of history thinks about the end in light of a demand for justice ; the idea of alterity postulates the overcoming of time; in the ethics of action, the notion of event introduces a destiny of freedom open to transcendence ; the analysis of symbolic language unveils the eschatological dimension of reason in its search for the true, – these are some of the philosophical openings to theological hope. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and Free Will in Machiavelli’s ThoughtCary J. Nederman*Machiavelli and ReligionSurely there is no political theorist about whom scholarly opinion is more divided than Niccolò Machiavelli. The subject of intense and continuous examination almost from the time of his death, Machiavelli has become if anything more enigmatic with the passage of time and the proliferation of interpretations. Although one might argue that this fact reflects the (...) highly unsystematic and context-bound nature of his thought, the now well-established consistencies in his linguistic usage and narrative style suggest that certain principles inform his writings across genre and circumstance. 1One of the most contentious aspects of Machiavelli’s writing has been his attitude towards religion, in particular, Christianity. 2 To be sure, Machiavelli [End Page 617] was no friend of the institutionalized Christian Church as he knew it. The Discourses makes clear that conventional Christianity saps from human beings the vigor required for active civil life. 3 And the Prince speaks with equal parts disdain and admiration about the contemporary condition of the Church and its Pope. 4 Many scholars have taken such evidence to indicate that Machiavelli was himself profoundly anti-Christian, preferring the pagan civil religions of ancient societies such as Rome, which he regarded to be more suitable for a city endowed with virtù. 5 At best Machiavelli has been described as a man of conventional, if unenthusiastic, piety, prepared to bow to the externalities of worship but not deeply devoted in either soul or mind to the tenets of Christian faith. 6In recent times, the only dissenting voice of note has been Sebastian de Grazia, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning intellectual biography, Machiavelli in Hell, attempts to rescue Machiavelli’s reputation from those who view him as deeply hostile to Christianity. 7 De Grazia argues that not only do central biblical themes run throughout Machiavelli’s writings but that these works reveal a coherent conception of a divinely-centered and ordered cosmos in which other forces (“the heavens,” “fortune,” and the like) are subsumed under a divine will and plan. Machiavelli in Hell points to evidence from throughout the Machiavellian corpus supporting an idea of divine ordination of earthly events, especially in the case of the accomplishments of extraordinary individuals. For de Grazia’s Machiavelli success in human affairs depends primarily upon the friendship of God.De Grazia’s interpretation of Machiavelli’s religious faith has, of course, proven controversial, not least because he introduces his case in a fairly unsystematic and speculative way. 8 But while de Grazia’s presentation may be somewhat haphazard, the general reading he defends has important merits that ought [End Page 618] not to be overlooked. Machiavelli does make reference to a monotheistic divinity, as well as to central elements of Christianity theology, rather more often in his corpus than most scholarship might lead one to believe. Moreover, the passages in which these references occur are often among the most important and troubling sections of his work. De Grazia would seem, then, to be correct in asserting that we must grasp Machiavelli’s idea of God and the divine role in earthly affairs if we are to understand the basic principles of Machiavellian political theory.If de Grazia’s basic observation is indeed persuasive, why have Machiavelli’s religious ideas been so widely overlooked (or indeed dismissed) by recent scholars? To explain this we have to take into account Machiavelli’s own exaggerated statements regarding the originality of his teachings, as well as his already mentioned antipathy towards the institutions and officials of the Roman Church. But perhaps more important has been the reluctance to read Machiavelli in conjunction with many central cultural and intellectual features of his time, especially in terms of persisting patterns and traditions of medieval Latin thought. One of the most striking developments in the study of Western intellectual history in recent years has been the recognition of important continuities between the ideas of the late medieval and the early modern periods. Scholars have come to realize that many of the supposed innovations of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and even the early Enlightenment had clear roots or antecedents in... (shrink)

This little book contains lectures given by Vlastos in the summer of 1972 in the Danz Lectures series of the University of Washington. His theme relates to that often rather paternalistic exercise of plotting out the extent to which Science was Revealed to the Greeks. In his view, "it was not given to them... to grasp the essential genius of the scientific method." However, they did discover "the conception of the cosmos that is presupposed by the idea of natural (...) science and by its practice". This discovery, an intellectual "revolution," was of the view, upheld by the Presocratic physiologoi, that the world is characterized by "unbreachable regularities" which make the world a "cosmos," which "constitute the order of nature and, if known, would yield the ultimate explanation of every natural phenomenon". This was revolutionary since it rejected the traditional belief in an unlimited area of possible divine supernatural intervention in the world, a belief which made perception of the universe a perception of an "irrational universe". Thus, "for the first time in history", man achieved, with Presocratic physiologia, "a perception of a rational universe". In the remaining two chapters of the book, Vlastos examines Plato, represented as a "fierce opponent" of the revolution who appropriated the newly discovered cosmos, refashioning it "on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics". This interpretation of Plato is developed mainly through a study of the Timaeus and especially of the "Theory of Celestial Motions" and of the "Theory of the Structure of Matter". Plato appears as opposed to the "impiety" of the physiologoi, proposing himself in the Timaeus a transcendent god as his primary cosmological principle. At the same time, the Timaeus reflects, as Vlastos shows in a brief survey of earlier and contemporary Greek astronomy, an awareness of the "empirical facts" established by the astronomers and Plato’s desire to reconcile these facts with his metaphysical, theological, a priori convictions. This reconciliation involved postulating a system of celestial circular motions, a theory whose "scientific value" Vlastos does not doubt, despite its dependence on a "metaphysical scheme". Vlastos concludes that although Plato fully acknowledged a supernatural power in the universe, he guaranteed the regularities of nature against divine intervention. There is an unfailing natural law. However, its ground for Plato is not natural but supernatural. In examining the "Theory of the Structure of Matter", Vlastos again finds that Plato’s world-order resembles very much that of the physiologoi and, like theirs, is "safe from supernatural interference". The "elementarism" of the Timaeus is shown to be indebted to the Atomists, but also to innovate by opening the way to the intertransformability of elementary corpuscules. What "scientific value" does this theory of the transformation of elements have? It is neither entailed nor contradicted by observation. Vlastos suggests rather that its grounds are "aesthetic". At any rate, Vlastos concludes that although Plato opposed the physiologoi in reintroducing supernatural agency, he annexed their conception of cosmos. In his "perversely original way," he thus "sustained the faith that our world is cosmos. He gave rational men a pious faith to live by in two millennia all through which science was more prophecy than reality". Some of Vlastos’ more extensive footnotes are collected in an Appendix, which is followed by a Bibliography and Indices. (shrink)

In this paper I shall deal with a new form of Optimism. Rationalists once believed that it was mistaken to suppose that a world without God is a meaningless one; material progress along with the improvement of men and their institutions, indefinitely protracted, ensured that life was meaningful. More recently it has become fashionable to claim that the pessimist, the cosmic mourner, is not mistaken at all, but rather incoherent. It is not that there is no answer to his question (...) but rather that no sensible question has been asked—at least in the terms in which he poses it. The latter qualification is necessary, for no one is denying that people's lives may either possess or lack meaning. Rather what is being denied is that life as a whole, tout court and without limitation, can be said either to have or not to have sense. One cannot, it is argued, regret what could not, logically, be otherwise, and since nothing could possibly count as endowing the cosmos as a whole with meaning it is not logically possible for the cosmos as a whole to have, or not to have, meaning. The regret evinced by the pessimist becomes, therefore, a pseudo-regret. ‘… it is perverse writes Ayer, ‘to see tragedy in what could not conceivably be otherwise.’ Just as a pseudo-problem is one for which there could, logically, be no solution, so a pseudo-regret is one in which there can be no assuagement of the regretted situation. None of this is to deny, of course, that a man can experience a state of mind which might be described as ‘cosmic anguish’, but such an experience has no cognitive value: it is a state of mind, no doubt painful for the possessor, which tells us nothing about the world beyond it. That people have confused this state of mind with a judgement about the world is understandable, but mistaken. (shrink)

The phrase “Cosmic Purpose” and others akin to it are familiar enough, particularly in the literature of edification. It is the aim of this article to examine the idea the words convey rather more closely than we do in our common use of them; to deflate the expression, so to speak, of those gaseous suggestions of “uplift” which too often hang about it. The question involved is, of course, in what sense, if in any, purpose may be attributed to the (...) Cosmos, to the universe in its totality. And we have to ask, in case the term so used should turn out to be really misused, Is it a sheer error that dissolves away under criticism, or is there some valid core of meaning which may be restated in other terms? If these are well-worn questions, yet the problem is too fundamental for them ever to be altogether trite. (shrink)

In this article I analyse the texts in which Joseph Ratzinger deals with the topic of evolution, particularly in the context of the compatibility between faith in creation and acceptance of the theory of evolution. I have grouped his writings into three periods that reflect the changes in his ideas on this topic. His early writings, until 1979, contain the most elaborate and deepest theological insights, with a defence of the compatibility between faith in creation and the theory of evolution (...) when each one is kept within the boundaries of its own explanatory framework. There is a clear change of attitude at the beginning of the 1980s, when he becomes aware of the attempts by some atheist scientists to portray evolution as a “first philosophy”. This triggers a critical response against some technical aspects of the theory of evolution, a position that was reinforced by his contacts with anti-evolution German intellectuals during this period. The conflict reached its climax in the 1999 lecture at the Sorbonne University and the 2006 meeting of the Schulerkreis in Castel Gandolfo. After 2006 his references to this topic were few, and he seemed to return to the original ideas expressed in his early writings, stressing the intrinsic rationality and inner logic of the cosmos. (shrink)

Modern science developed in the interflow of culture between west and east. Combing of pratice technology with philosophic thoughts formed experimental method. Holistic views contacting atomism produced system theory. System thoughts are applicated in the science and engineering of biosystems, and the cencepts of system biomedicine (Kamada T.1992), systems biology (Zieglgansberger W, Tolle TR.1993), system bioengineering and system genetics (Zeng BJ. 1994) were established. From positive to synthetic thoughts, philosophy have been developed ontology, cosmology, organism theories. Structurity is structure logic (...) system founded on entity, develop, exist axioms, tolerance, adaptation, fluctuate, interweave, transform theorems and integrate, adaptation, construct laws. Structurity be discussed on the cosmos, life, culture system, creation, hologram theories of structure ontology, construct mutation, simi-structure organism and entity emergence, symbol implication. From the relation of structure, function and development, the structurity put forward the cycle, spiral, triangle structure stability patterns of self-organization in structure complement each other and stratification, functional couple and interflow bounds growth, coordinativetransformation and holographic symmetry. (shrink)

L'auteur livre une réflexion sur le taoisme et confronte ses idées avec celles des autres grandes croyances qui conduisent à une autre conception de la religion. Il dresse un panorama de la métaphysique chinoise, du courant d'idées appelé universisme, religion de l'interaction de l'homme et du cosmos.

This dissertation attempts to identify the presence and role of myth in Parmenides' philosophical poem. It is argued that the myths of the poem are neither extrinsic to, nor entirely in service of, Parmenides' reasoned account. By virtue of the traditional significance which they possess, the myths of the poem determine both the form and content of Parmenides' philosophical presentation, with the result that Parmenides' philosophy should be viewed as an attempt to sustain traditional tales with philosophical argumentation. Primarily two (...) myths are identified as operative in the poem. The first is that of a mortal's chariot-journey on the path of the sun to a region of life, light and understanding. It is in the context of this archaic myth that a number of otherwise puzzling features of the poem are explained, including the detailed imagery of the prelude, the presentation of the search for knowledge as a "path," the goddess' advice on "ways of seeking," and the characterization of the poem's argumentation as "signs along the way." The second myth takes its point of departure from the first. Parmenides' conception of reality is, at its core, a mythological view of the cosmos as a whole, as associated with the vantage-point of the all-seeing sun at the apex of the sky. A dose examination of the "signs" of what is in Fr. 8 reveals that Parmenides' argumentation constitutes a defense of the notion of the cosmos as a single, animate, corporeal, possibly sentient, being. Mortal ignorance is accordingly explained as an error of perspective for Parmenides, i.e., the inability of charioteer-mind to arrive at an insight into the cosmic whole, the enduring unity from which all things come and into which they return. It is suggested that Parmenides does not deny change and plurality at the level of the phenomena; what he does deny is that change and plurality have reality from the perspective of the unity and totality of all things, in so far as that totality is conceived as a single, ever-living being. (shrink)

All the medical and bioethical questions, ranging from stem cell research to converging technologies and synthetic biology, touch on the question regarding the image of human beings and their position in the cosmos, by which we are able to orient ourselves. This article argues that the biblical belief in creation and the discourse about humans as created beings by and in the image of God can still be proclaimed as a viable form of human self-interpretation in the present. The (...) distinction between practical knowledge and knowledge of orientation may be of help here. Guidance for how to live and act is not best found in abstract principles, but rather in meaningful stories, in metaphors and symbols. On this level, too, is also where faith in creation and the certainty of our own creatureliness is located. Contribution: This article interprets the doctrine of creation by a hermeneutical theology. It analyses the interdependence between hermeneutics and criticism in the process of reinterpreting the classical propositions about the human being and the world as God’s creation and the relation of anthropology and ethics. The aim is to show what might be the contribution of Christian faith in creation to the approach of an ethics of responsibility in the field of bioethics and ecology. The specific contribution of this article to current debates on an ethics of creation is the thesis that the key to a well-balanced theological approach to all this is the Pauline doctrine of justification as interpreted by the protestant reformers. (shrink)