In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture eds. by Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. ToulouseMichael R. Fisher Jr.The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. Toulouse LOUISVILLE: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2016. 250 pp. $25.00The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture is notable (...) for interested readers of religion and contemporary popular culture. The authors expand scholarly understandings of religion and the sacred, but [End Page 194] more important, the spaces where they appear in society by providing analysis of the religious nature of six aspects of American culture. These "meaning-making" aspects of popular culture function as "altars of worship." They are the body and sex, big business, entertainment, politics, sports, and science and technology. How religious devotion and worship are manifest in everyday life of Americans is fully examined. This book offers an alternative entry to classical secularization debates that have garnered the attention of religious scholars across fields of study. Resisting polarized battle lines in which secularization debates have positioned the death of religion on one hand, and its resilience in industrialized societies on the other hand, this book considers the idiosyncratic nature of secularization by foregrounding historical, national, and local differences that exist in various contexts.The authors argue that "religion is important to Americans. But the religion we practice is often not the religion we confess" (1, emphasis in the original). According to them, Americans basically believe in a serviceable, friendly "God" who meets their every desire and need. In contemporary American culture, the objects that are deemed to fulfill Americans' desires and passions become their God(s) and thus their religion(s). They support their argument by citing studies by the Pew Research Center on "America's Changing Religious Landscape" and "'Nones' on the Rise," which indicate a decrease in religious affiliation among adults and a notable tension between Americans' professed religious beliefs and their actual religious practices. Given these trends, they contend that Americans discover and produce religious meaning in places outside traditional or conventional sacred spaces. Consequently, they confess, Americans have "laid our fair share, if not our all" (186) on the six altars of American popular culture. Thus, though studies indicate a trending decline in traditional religious affiliations, for the authors, this does not "sound the death knell of religion" (185). Religion, they insist, exists in different shapes and practices.In The Religious Experience of Mankind (1969), the religious historian Ninian Smart offers a seven-dimensional scheme for the interpretation of religion: doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, institutional, and material. This scheme is adopted in the book as a framing device for interpreting the religious nature of popular culture. The sevenfold scheme is paralleled in each of the six chapters dedicated to a particular altar. Making their case, the authors draw on and weave thinkers from across disciplines and over time as critical interlocutors—from Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and Robert Bella to Cornel West, Audre Lord, and bell hooks, among many others—in examining the religious significance of popular culture.Although a truly engaging and provocative book, The Altars Where We Worship is not without challenges. Some readers may find certain categories of analysis underdeveloped. For example, what makes big business or politics sites of popular culture? This line of inquiry may raise questions for readers about what constitutes popular culture in general. Such challenges, however, do not [End Page 195] detract from the overall accomplishments and contributions this book offers the study of religion in the United States.Michael R. Fisher Jr.Vanderbilt UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 My second concern is whether Dulles needs to develop more explicitly the liturgical dimension of the tradition as a type of tacit knowing. To be sure, Dulles is open to seeing the divine liturgy as an important source for what he refers to as " traditioning " (cf. 33-34). Furthermore, his personal commitment to the traditional liturgy's unique mode of communication can be quite passionate, as (...) when he states: In countries such as the United States young people cannot even imagine what it must have been like to live in the Catholic Church of fifty years ago. They frequently worship in churches or auditoriums barren of shrines and statues. They are ignorant of the an· swers that their parents or grandparents memorized out of a catechism. They know practically no prayers by heart, and are perhaps unable to say the Angelus or the Rosary. They are so open to the world that they are almost drowning in secularity (101; cf. also 19). Nevertheless, personal conviction seems to give rise to little theoretical reflection about why this sort of symbolism is so central to the Catholic tradition. Liturgy's function in communicating the rule of faith of Christian communities receives no separate chapter and appears as a decidedly secondary source of theological reflection. Here he could perhaps have been illuminated by Jean-Luc Marion's philosophical meditations on the symbolism of the Eucharist as presence and gift. The Craft of Theology will serve as absorbing reading for graduate students who are just beginning to study theology. That is not to say that Dulles's book is only an autobiographical retrospect on the profession which he has ably practiced for more than half a century. Whether understood as a stimulant to ·thinking judiciously about the living tradition of the Catholic church or as a guide for contemporary ecclesial communities of different confessions seeking to recover the catholicity of the Christian tradition, Dulles's system will be a no less than invaluable resource to Christian theologians. The Catholic University of America.Washington, D.C. PETER J. CASARELLA "Un maitre en theologie: Le Pere Marie-Michel Labourdette, O.P." Revue Thomiste 92, No. 1 (January-March, 1992). Toulouse: Ecole de theologie, 1992. Pp. 428. 130F. This collection of twenty essays serves as an intriguing introduction to the life and thought of the Dominican professor and moral theologian P. Marie-Michel Labourdette, who worked for most of his religious life at the Dominican studium of St. Maximin of the Province 518 BOOK REVIEWS of Toulouse. Prefaced by two contributions of biographical interest, and completed by a comprehensive bibliography, the core selections crystalize around two poles of interest. First, they explore the character of Labourdette's thought and methodology, both as a churchman and a Thomist. Especially enlightening here are the essays by M. Larive, " Quaedam impressio divinae scientiae, la theologie selon le P. Labourdette " and 5.-Th. Bonino, "Le thomisme du P. Labourdette." Second, other essays succeed in capturing this Thomistic thinker in flight, as it were, as his incisive powers of analysis and synthesis reveal themselves in his treatment of various theological questions. I would especially recommend here A. D. Mongillo's "La fin derniere de la personne humaine," C. J. Pinto de Oliveira's "La prudence, concept cle de la morale du P. Labourdette," and T.-D. Humbrecht's "Le peche originel selon le P. Labourdette." These essays skillfully coalesce and complement each other, forming, as with the variously tinted panes of a stained-glass window, a multi-colored illumination of their subject. What emerges from this well-composed assemblage is a devoted homage to a theologian creatively faithful to his inherited traditions. This creative fidelity to the depositum fidei, and to a Thomistic legacy invigoratingly alive in his own work, forms the intellectual principle by which P. Labourdette sought to perceive and understand the many new insights and developments that cannot help hut teem before any alert, twentieth-century mind. P. Lahourdette addresses himself to theological issues using an approach both classical and flexible, deep, yet clear. This clarity is of such an order that it reveals to the contemporary reader aspects of traditional theological investigation that have been... (shrink)

Les études sur les élaborations christologiques des premiers siècles ne manquent pas et M. Fédou, dans son introduction, en retient trois afin de définir par contraste l'apport de sa propre approche : celle de L. Capéran, Le Problème du salut des infidèles, d'abord édité à Toulouse en 1912 (nouvelle édition revue et mise à jour en 1934) ; trois œuvres marquantes de J. Daniélou (Théologie du judéo-christianisme, 1958 ; Message évangélique et culture hellénistique aux IIe et IIIe siècles, 1961 (...) .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 493 La Trinite Creatrice. By GILLES EMERY. Paris: Vrin, 1995. Pp. 590 (paper). It was only a question of when, not if, the late rejection of Thomism in Catholic circles would be followed by the next tum toward the thought of the Angelic Doctor. This movement is already underway, and on the European continent two groups of young Dominicans are playing prominent roles. In Toulouse, though (...) he only assumed its editorship in 1991, S.-T. Bonino already has made the venerable Revue thomiste indispensable reading again. Two recent thematic issues are especially noteworthy: "Autour d'Etienne Gilson" (94 [1994): 355-553) and "S. Thomas et l'onto-theologie" (95 [1995): 1-192). Bonino's own bulletins et recensions are erudite and lively, and he is very clear about the present situation: After the decline of the last decades, Thomism is searching for a new 6lan, a new look, and not without success:... the corpse of Thomism is stirring again. Though the new look is not yet complete, one feature is set: One common point unites all now approaching the works of St. Thomas, whatever their ultimate goals: the necessity to put Thomistic doctrine into serious historical perspective.... Historical-doctrinal study of St. Thomas is opening the possibility of an authentic revival of Thomism. (Revue thomiste 95 [1995]: 485-6) While Anglo-Americans approaching Aquinas from neoscholastic or analytic perspectives might not be so enthusiastic about history, Fr. Bonino is simply correct. For evidence, he turns to the historical work of the other group of Dominicans, at Fribourg. Chief among them is J.-P. Torrell, whose masterful 1993 biography, Initiation d saint Thomas d'Aquin, is now in English, and was accompanied by a Festschrift for the eminent professor of theologyOrdo sapientiae et amoris, ed. C.-J. de Oliveira. Not least among Torrell's contributions has been to direct the thesis of Gilles Emery-La Trinite creatrice. One paragraph of Emery's helpful general conclusion reveals three dominant themes in his important work: In virtue of the nexus mysteriorum, faith in the Trinity clarifies faith in the creative and saving activity of God, while the doctrine of creation in its turn clarifies our approach to the mystery of the Trinity. It is this mutual clarification and support among the articles of faith that we mean by speaking of the "function" of the theme of the creative Trinity. The unity of the Trinity in its works ad extra constitutes a fundamental rule of the trinitarian theology of our scholastics. But it does not exhaust their theological discourse on the subject of God as creator. To arrive at a balanced doctrine, trying to give all the aspects of the mystery their due, one must add to the rule of unity a second rule, which completes it: the procession of the divine persons is the origin of the procession of creatures. (519) Emery's primary theme is captured in the title-The Creative Trinity. Creation involves not only the one God as efficient cause bestowing existence 494 BOOK REVIEWS on a multitude of creatures (rule 1), but also the Trinitarian multiplicity within God as exemplar cause of the procession of creatures (rule 2). The neoscholastics ignored rule 2, separating creation (which was turned over to the philosophers) from Trinity (the exclusive domain of the theologians). This too neat division oflabor produced unhappy consequences: a doctrine ofcreation with no role for the Trinity, and a doctrine of the Trinity with no function in creation. What can be called Emery's Trinitarian theme is a corrective for such mistakes. To understand this side of creation rightly, Emery situates Aquinas's thought in relation to Albert and Bonaventure, on whom he heavily depends. This is his hi,storical theme. From the development of these two principal themes there gradually emerges a third, less overt, but in the long run of signal importance for the new look of Thomism-what might be called the integration theme, uniting reason and revelation in Aquinas's theology. To break through the crust that had built up around Aquinas's genuine doctrine of creation Emery turns to history. Limiting himself to the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, he finds the Trinitarian... (shrink)

Ce volume fait le point sur plusieurs années de recherches méthodologiques et archivistiques et complète les publications récentes des membres du GDR sur le sujet, dont les dernières : Entre mémoire et histoire. Écriture ordinaire et émergence de l’individu, éd. S. Mouysset et N. Lemaitre, Paris, CTHS ; Car c’est moy que je peins. Écritures de soi, individu et liens sociaux (Europe, xve-xxe siècle), dir. S. Mouysset, Jean-Pierre Bardet et François-Joseph Ruggiu, Toulouse, Framespa, coll. « Mé...

Fair trade aims at humanising the capitalist economy by serving the community, instead of simply striving for financial profit. The current fair trade sector is an excellent example of an innovation where networks based on ethical principles can help to effectively serve this market. Our analysis is based on 48 interviews amongst fair trade innovators in France and illustrates the advent of a new type of entrepreneur, one that is grounded in the social and solidarity economy (SSE). Based on a (...) service-dominant logic, these innovators aim to construct a 'new world' centred on trade relationships by integrating the role of multiple-player networks into the creation of value in the market. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how the practitioners of the exact and natural sciences can make a contribution to the project of the social sciences to break free of a reductive Eurocentrism in order to achieve a renewed universalism. Focusing in particular on the last 50 years, the paper: a) describes the 1955–60 turning point that can be perceived in techno-scientific development and its relationship with society; b) analyzes technical developments under the two modes of gigantism and miniaturization, putting them in (...) close relation with the political evolution of the world (Cold War and post-Cold War era) as well as with the phenomena of divergence/convergence among disciplines; c) explains the 'ethical movement in science' namely by introducing the idea of moral revaluation defined by similarity/contrast with the older and now well-accepted concept of scientific revolution; and d) sketches a typology of the scientific community's varied responses to the growing social protests around topics such as nuclear installations, health crises, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnologies and so on. (shrink)

Et si on appliquait à la philosophie la méthodologie du physicien? L'inexplicable constat des limitations inhérentes à toute réalité expérimentée inciterait à poser en théorie l'hypothèse d'un modèle exempt de ces limitations d'où pourrait procéder la réalité limitée telle que nous la vivons. Et si par déduction on en arrivait à des résultats scientifiquement plausibles, l'aventure à laquelle nous serions alors conviés serait de décoder l'univers comme une anamorphose. Sous la forme d'un dialogue, ce livre met en débat la pensée (...) originale de Pierre Malifaud qui ouvre ensuite à des problématiques plus englobantes. (shrink)

Cette étude vise à montrer comment Synésios de Cyrène, ayant adopté deux doctrines vraisemblablement porphyriennes (touchant l’enkuklios paideia et le pneuma en tant qu’organe de l’imagination), les articule en fonction d’une double préoccupation: celle d’un progrès intérieur de l’âme qui soit une progression ordonnée via les logoi, et celle d’une communication intime avec la divinité (voire de salut personnel), via une phantasia purifiée. Ce double souci de conversion intérieure, manifesté dans le diptyque littéraire constitué par le Dion: ou du genre (...) de vie conforme à son modèle et le traité Des songes (publiés tous deux en 405), le conduit à concevoir une forme d’écriture intime qui serait une écriture philosophiquement adéquate au mode de vie auquel, idéalement, cet homme public et ce styliste hors pair envisage alors de se consacrer. Mais dans la réalité de son existence d’homme de lettres, et donc dans la pratique de son écriture, cette conversion à l’intime ne correspond qu’à un assez bref moment d’anachorèse vouée à l’étude et donc à soi-même – ultime refuge, plus rêvé que réalisé, de l’ethos platonicien, tel qu’il se le représentait. (shrink)

La notion d’un corps intermédiaire, connu sous le nom de véhicule de l’âme dans le néoplatonisme, est destinée à expliquer l’union de l’âme et du corps, mais aussi l’articulation du rationnel et de l’irrationnel, les communications avec le divin, et le maintien d’une forme de vie post mortem. Cette étude montre comment les premières attestations d’un usage structuré de la notion, sous la forme « le pneuma est le (premier) véhicule de l’âme », apparaissent dans deux contextes différents, fort éloignés (...) l’un de l’autre : une discussion de physiologie sur le pneuma optique, chez Galien ; et une explicitation philosophique de l’eschatologie d’Homère, dans le De Homero du Pseudo-Plutarque. Ce sont cependant les témoins les plus clairs d’une doctrine qui est encore en gestation dans le platonisme impérial. L’analyse montre en particulier ce que le médecin doit au Timée de Platon, ce que l’allégoriste doit à la théorie médicale des exhalaisons du sang, quand ils formulent cette nouvelle hypothèse commune sur la nature du pneuma, appuyée sur Platon et Aristote, et manifestement présentée comme une alternative à la doctrine stoïcienne de l’âme-pneuma. (shrink)

In France, Fair Trade arrived on the scene in the late twentieth century, and since then has passed through several experimental phases before becoming an enduring "realistic" economic alternative. To understand the transformation, this article defines Fair Trade as a social construct issues and tensions of which change depending on the point of entry. By conducting a secondary analysis of several data sets from varied sources, including documentary material, interviews, and observations, the authors trace the history of Fair Trade in (...) France, define its introduction as a system, describe its institutionalization, and contribute to a greater understanding of how its ideals have changed and become more professional over time. The analyses reveal that the term "Fair Trade" has become ambiguous, spanning divergent and conflicting ideas and projects, including opening and closing conventional market systems and alter-globaliza-tion and anti-globalization. (shrink)

Dans cette étude, nous examinons l'influence de quelques éléments caractéristiques des doctrines psychologique et eschatologique de Porphyre, dont certains correspondent à des idées de Plotin, sur l'analyse qu'Augustin propose des différentes sortes de visiones dans le De Trinitate et le De Genesi ad litteram.This study focuses on the influence of Porphyry's psychology and eschatology on Augustine's account of the different kinds of visiones, as it is set out in the treatises De Trinitate and De Genesi ad litteram.

Chapter SETTING THE STAGE As is fitting for a beginning chapter, attempts are made here to provide historical perspectives and insights from various vantage ...

This book draws together the latest work from scholars around the world using subjective well-being data to understand and compare well-being across countries and cultures. Starting from many different vantage points, the authors reached a consensus that many measures of subjective well-being, ranging from life evaluations through emotional states, based on memories and current evaluations, merit broader collection and analysis. Using data from the Gallup World Poll, the World Values Survey, and other internationally comparable surveys, the authors document wide divergences (...) among countries in all measures of subjective well-being, The international differences are greater for life evaluations than for emotions. Despite the well-documented differences in the ways in which subjective evaluations change through time and across cultures, the bulk of the very large international differences in life evaluations are due to differences in life circumstances rather than differences in the way these differences are evaluated. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of case studies worldwide, including 'profit with purpose' businesses such as co-operatives, this short guide reveals how to make a success of values. By unpacking what we mean by values and ethics, and setting out a series of practical approaches, Ed Mayo presents how values can become a natural part of commercial life. This book identifies both the pitfalls and the potential of bringing values into the heart of an organization, from a bank that responds to (...) an ethical crisis to a fast-growing worker co-operative founded on the values of equality. The values that guide your business are not necessarily the ones that are written down, or that you would expect. There is no right or wrong set of values, but there is power and potential in making the most of the values that are right for the business you are in. By reading Values: How to Bring Values to Life in Your Business, you will find out more about the business that you are, and the business that you could be." -- Back cover. (shrink)

If, as the title of this book suggests, the state of Tractatus commentary has at times recently resembled something close to a state of war, then it has most of all resembled a war of attrition. Against this background, Roger White's "Throwing the Baby Out with the Ladder" makes for refreshing reading. To be sure, White repeats some of the familiar misconceptions of what resolute readers do or must claim that have marred the debate over the adequacies or inadequacies of (...) such an approach to the Tractatus (TLP). But he also introduces some novel and interesting lines of criticism that merit serious attention. Foremost among the latter is White's treatment (in Section III of his paper) of three engaging examples that he sees as making trouble for resolute readers, and for their opposition to the standard idea that the lesson of the Tractatrrs could consist in its communicating, and our grasping, ineffable insights by way of its nonsense-sentences. (shrink)

François Laruelle's writing on Non-Photography is examined from its ontological condition to its desired form of a unity derived from the work of Kant, discussing precisely how the logic of transcendence and the ontology of immanence central to Laruelle's theory impact on how the photographic image is incontrovertibly involved with Kant's paradox of appearance and reality. In a context of burgeoning technoscience, which lays bare the meaning of Non-Photography for the seemingly impossible reversion to actual photography, the article goes on (...) to consider Photo-Fiction in the context of the Real of science now yoked to an economy of technical models. But by foreclosing the Kantian Real by fractal‐virtual ratio, does not this science reify the Real of Identity and displace real photography with a photography in the Real? The article thus questions how Laruelle's' thesis hangs together in terms of its cause and the contingency of effect that infuses Laruelle's radical aesthetic. (shrink)

2001. With Cecile Manorohanta. Oceanic Linguistics Vol 40 No 1: 67-85.

The Query is reasonable (First Order) Predicate Logic (PL:) is a ”Universal Grammar" for the languages of Elementary Arithmetic, Euclidean Geometry, Set Theory, Boolean Algebra, .... It defines their expressions, their semantic interpretations, and texts, called proofs, that syntactically characterize the boolean semantic entailment relation: P entails Q iff Q is true whenever P is.

This article probes the advisability of regulating U.S. food and drug safety according to the precautionary principle. To do so, a precautionary regulatory regime is formulated on the basis of the beliefs that motivate most proponents of this initiative. That hypothetical regime is critically analyzed on the basis of an actual instantiation of a similarly stylized initiative. It will be argued that the precautionary principle entails regulatory constraints that are apt to violate basis tenets of political legitimacy. The modifications that (...) would change this finding would also change precautionary regulation to the point that it would be indistinguishable from orthodox safety protocols. It is concluded on the basis of its impoverished content that the precautionary principle should not be taken seriously as a formal approach to the regulation of U.S. food and drug safety. (shrink)

In the tradition of Roland Barthes' Mythologies and Walter Benjamin's aphoristic Theses on the Philosophy of History, Ed Simon's Furnace of this World is a fragmentary, digressive, impressionistic account of what the radical implications of goodness could possibly be in late capitalism. Furnace of this World interrogates the concept of goodness, while arguing that it's always more interesting and radical than its opposite. With neither hubris nor reductionism, Furnace of this World speaks of what it means to pursue justice in (...) a fallen world."--Amazon.com. (shrink)

Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens examines the sensation, expression, and literary representation of envy and jealousy in Classical Athens.