A speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) in behavioural decisions is known to occur in a wide range of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa. Accurate decisions often take longer for a given condition, while fast decisions can be inaccurate in some tasks. Speed-accuracy tactics are known to vary consistently among individuals, and show a degree of flexibility during colour discrimination tasks in bees. Such individual flexibility in speed-accuracy tactics is likely to be advantageous for animals exposed to fluctuating environments, such as changes in predation (...) threat. We therefore test whether individual speed-accuracy tactics are fixed or flexible under different levels of predation threat in a model invertebrate, the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. The flexibility of speed-accuracy tactics in a foraging context was tested in the laboratory using a ‘meadow’ of artificial flowers harbouring ‘robotic’ crab spider predators. We found that while the ranking of bees along the speed and accuracy continuums was consistent across two levels of predation threat, there was some flexibility in the tactics used by individual bees – most bees became less accurate at colour discrimination when exposed to predation threat when flower types were rewarding. The relationship between decision speed and accuracy was influenced by predator detectability and the risk associated with making incorrect choices during the colour discrimination task. Predator crypsis resulted in a breakdown in the relationship between speed and accuracy, especially when making an incorrect floral choice incurred a distasteful quinine punishment. No single speed-accuracy tactic was found to be optimal in terms of foraging efficiency under either predation threat situation. However, bees that made faster decisions achieved higher nectar collection rates in predator free situations, while accurate bees achieved higher foraging rates under predation threat. Our findings show that while individual bees remain relatively consistent in terms of whether they place greater emphasis on speed or accuracy under predation threat, they can respond flexibly to the additional time costs of detecting predators. (shrink)

In Belgium the multiple preferential voting system was for the first time applied to parliamentary elections in 1995. Since then the electorate has the possibility to cast a vote for several candidates figuring on the same party list.As a result of this voting system change, more voters used the possibilities offered by the preferential voting system than during the 1991 elections: almost 57% of the electorate of 1995 cast a multiple vote on candidates for the House of Representatives - this (...) was an increase of 8,6% compared to the 1991 results. For the Senate, the trend is even clearer: 59% of the electorate expressed their preference for one or more candidates of the Senate, resulting in an increase of 18,3% compared to 1991. Though one has to add that the above mentioned increases are only partly due to the election system change. Part of the increase is actually also due to a more accurate handling by the Ministery of Internal Affairs of the multiple preferential voting data figuring on the ballot-papers.Compared to previous elections the use of preferential voting was for the first time higher for the Senate than for the House of Representatives. Furthermore, the analysis showed that the use of the multiple preferential vote is varying from one constituency to another, from Flemings to Walloons and from one political party to another. (shrink)

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

This volume contains the seminal articles that define the influence of Aquinas within legal philosophical thought. A comprehensive reference for those new to the field, it covers such topics as the relation of virtue to law, the common good, natural law, natural rights and property rights; together with social and political issues like abortion, feminism, homosexuality, environment, civil disobedience and just war. Attention is devoted to the new natural law theory and its limitations, as well as the place of historical (...) context in the recovery of social thought. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1.Providing information about research integrity § 2.Providing education, training and mentoring § 3.Strengthening a research integrity culture § 4.Facilitating open dialogue § 5.Wise incentive management § 6.Implementing quality assurance procedures § 7.Improving the work environment and work satisfaction § 8.Increasing transparency of misconduct cases § 9.Opening up research § 10.Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels § 11.Protecting the alleged perpetrators § 12.Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson § 13.Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1. Providing information about research integrity§ 2. Providing education, training and mentoring§ 3. Strengthening a research integrity culture§ 4. Facilitating open dialogue§ 5. Wise incentive management§ 6. Implementing quality assurance procedures§ 7. Improving the work environment and work satisfaction§ 8. Increasing transparency of misconduct cases§ 9. Opening up research§ 10. Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels§ 11. Protecting the alleged perpetrators§ 12. Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson§ 13. Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 439-440 [Access article in PDF] John F. Wippel. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being. Monographs of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2000. Pp. xxvii + 630. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $39.95. In this weighty volume, John Wippel brings together much of the important research that he (...) has carried out on the metaphysics of Aquinas over the last three decades in order to produce as he calls it, a "Summa metaphysicae" based on the original texts of Aquinas (xxvii). Throughout much of the twentieth century metaphysics has been thought to be Aquinas's greatest philosophical achievement. The historical research of Etienne Gilson and Joseph Owens together with the philosophical reflections of Jacques Maritain did much to place this topic at the heart of Aquinas scholarship. Therefore, this volume both represents Wippel's central research interest and brings to a head an entire school of Aquinas studies of the twentieth century. It is the clearest and most detailed account of the subject in the English language, bearing the hallmarks of Wippel's scholarship: clarity in reference to the arguments and attention to textual chronology.Metaphysics here does not mean so much a focus on Aquinas's treatment of Aristotle's four causes or his act and potency as much as a clear presentation of Aquinas's reflections on existence (esse) and the implications that this has for his thought. After an introductory discussion of the nature and subject of metaphysics for Aquinas, Wippel devotes the first part of the book to Aquinas's view of existence in order to unpack what it means to talk about individual things as beings, being in general, and the catagories of Aristotle (73-74). Masterfully, he explains Aquinas's analogical approach to being and guides the reader through the interpretive thicket of Cornelio Fabro, G. P. Klubertanz, and Ralph McInerny. An interesting parallel is presented between Parmenides' problem of the one and the many and Aquinas's philosophically interesting view of the composite manner in which concrete individuals exist (161-170). Since no individual creature is the author of its own existence, but does in fact exist, each finite being must receive existence from a single being that exists necessarily. Wippel highlights this and other approaches that Aquinas takes to clarify relations between the many individual beings and the single divine being that lies beyond the study of metaphysics.Part two is devoted to many of the ways in which Aquinas talks about concrete individuals. Here Wippel explains Aquinas's distinctions between substance and accident as well as between matter and form and how they relate to existence. Part three concludes the work with a treatment of what Aristotle and Aquinas call divine science. This consists of more than a hundred pages on Aquinas's famous arguments for the existence of God (379-500) and a discussion of what human beings can understand about God (501-575). Not only does Aquinas conclude that God exists, but he indicates the limited manner in which human beings can understand the divine. The problem is that if we acquire language in relation to concrete individuals, how can we use words to discuss a being who is not bound by space or time? The solution is to speak of words like "good" and "wise" in an analogical sense. Words like these when applied to creatures are used in a sense that is both similar to but different from the way they are used to [End Page 439] speak of the divine. Reiterating the theme of the one and the many, the name "good" has a single and most excellent meaning when applied to God and a limited sense when applied to creatures.This is an excellent and accessible book for the educated reader and specialist alike which can be supplemented by works such as Wayne Hankey's God in Himself: Aquinas' Doctrine of God as Expounded in theSumma Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford... (shrink)

This small volume provides undergraduate students in medieval studies or philosophy with an accessible but scholarly guide to the work of Aquinas and the traditions of his era.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:“First the Bow is Bent in Study …” Dominican Education before 1350 by M. Michèle MulchaheyJohn InglisM. Michèle Mulchahey. “First the Bow is Bent in Study …” Dominican Education before 1350. Studies and Texts, vol. 132. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1998. Pp. xxi + 618. Cloth, $110.00.In his The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas, Leonard Boyle represents one of the more interesting (...) directions in the recent historiography of Latin medieval philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982). His claim is that if we are to understand Aquinas, we need to pay closer attention to the Dominican intellectual context. With a focus on the moral component of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, Boyle establishes that Aquinas did not converse alone with Aristotle and Averroes in some philosophical ivory tower as historians often imply, but that he wrote and disputed in light of Dominican goals. This point helps to clarify the context of Aquinas’s texts—a type of historical context not found in the standard philosophical accounts. In the book under review, the first detailed history of Dominican medieval education, M. Michèle Mulchahey supplies a more extended treatment of this intellectual context.Commonly, intellectuals in the high middle ages are presented as spending their lives at universities studying philosophy, conducting disputations, and lecturing on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg present such a picture in their helpful contribution to The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy ([Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], 11–42). Mulchahey argues that this sort of picture is rather simplistic when applied to the Dominican intellectual life. From the early years of the order, there was to be a “doctor” in each and every local Dominican house (132). One of Mulchahey’s more interesting conclusions is that the schools associated with these local houses were more advanced than has often been thought. For example, each house was to include lectures on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard and on Scripture, that is, on the very texts which historians commonly associate only with the universities (134–136). Furthermore, disputations were conducted frequently at local houses (134, 167) and by the middle of the thirteenth century, the works of Aristotle were often taught (220). Her point is that if we are to understand the intellectual world in which a Dominican like Aquinas spent his life, then we need to be clear about this context and not just about that of the universities.Even at the university, Dominicans studied and lectured at Dominican houses and not at institutions of the secular clergy. For instance, even when Aquinas was a Bachelor of the Sentences and a Master of the Sacred Page at the University of Paris, he lived and taught at the Dominican convent according to the distinct traditions and practices [End Page 361] of the order. Furthermore, select Dominican schools of higher learning, including those associated with universities, produced teachers for local Dominican communities. Mulchahey argues convincingly that the structures of Dominican education came to exist from the bottom up within a Dominican context and not as an extension of the statutes of the universities (351–378).This Dominican context helps to provide a response to an objection that John Jenkins raises to Boyle’s view of the audience of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae—an issue that has important implications for how to read this work. Boyle argued that the Summa arose out of the pastoral needs of ordinary Dominicans and reflects this institutional purpose. Jenkins “rejects” this claim, arguing that Aquinas’s text is so dense and conceptually difficult that it could only have been written for those who were prepared to study the Sentences of Peter the Lombard at the University of Paris. (See John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and faith in Thomas Aquinas [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 81, 89–90.) Mulchahey provides important support for Boyle’s view by establishing that it was the policy of the order to prepare ordinary Dominicans to study the Sentences of Peter the Lombard at the local houses. At a time when there were few universities, the Dominicans established hundreds of sites of higher education at... (shrink)

According to the analysis of intentional action that Michael Bratman has dubbed the ‘Simple View’, intending toxis necessary for intentionallyx‐ing. Despite the plausibility of this view, there is gathering empirical evidence that when people are presented with cases involving moral considerations, they are much more likely to judge that the action (or side effect) in question was brought about intentionally than they are to judge that the agent intended to do it. This suggests that at least as far as the (...) ordinary concept of intentional action is concerned, an agent need not intend toxin order toxintentionally. (shrink)

Emanuel Swedenborg has been a literary celebrity for more than two centuries because of his vivid depictions of heaven and hell. But to a considerable extent this renown has also excluded him from the history of science, to which he actually belongs. He was active as an exegete and a visionary only during the last twenty‐five years of his long life, and before he got a divine call to found a new Christian church he had published a great number of (...) scientific works.Immanuel Kant's negative polemics in Träume eines Geistersehers offers an explanation as to why historians of science have only rarely taken an interest in Swedenborg, but it is not the only one. Swedenborg does not seem to have exerted any particular impact on contemporary science, and many of his writings—for example, the voluminous manuscripts on the human brain—remained unpublished for more than a century. He was employed not as a university professor but as a civil servant in the College of Mines, and therefore he had no actual disciples. Consequently his contributions to science have mostly been studied by literary historians as precursors to his visionary works.Francesca Maria Crasta, an Italian historian of science, has reacted against the prevailing views that depict Swedenborg as a visionary fool. As she declares in the preface to this new book on Swedenborg's philosophy of nature, she set out to study him as a scientist in the context of his time, an approach that perhaps makes him less exciting but certainly better defined historically. Within self‐imposed limits she has carried out her task quite well. She has carefully analyzed the scientific works published through 1734, including the magnum opus Principia rerum naturalium published in that year. This means that she has discussed Swedenborg's studies of inorganic nature in toto. On the other hand, she has abstained from addressing his extensive studies of the human body during the following decade, an effort that resulted in two large works in print and a great number of posthumously published manuscripts.The title of Crasta's book may therefore arouse unmet expectations, but what it does provide is valuable enough. The author starts with a survey of Swedenborg's works in natural philosophy from 1716 to 1734, in which she proves herself to be well versed both in the original sources and in the secondary literature. In the next four chapters she then discusses, in sequence, how Swedenborg discerned the origin of the universe in the mathematical point and its further development up to the birth of the planetary system through a series of finite particles. She emphasizes that Swedenborg got his decisive inspiration from Descartes, an author “constantly present although very seldom directly quoted in the Swedenborgian Principia” . No doubt this is a correct observation; the notorious scarcity of references in Swedenborg's writings makes life complicated for those who are trying to describe his intellectual background in detail.It is not surprising, then, that Crasta has not been able to detect any previously unknown sources. However, she has presented fresh and interesting aspects of the intellectual environment in which Swedenborg's philosophy of nature took shape. One example is her comparisons between Swedenborg's, Leibniz's, and Vico's ways of using the concepts of “mathematical” and “metaphysical” point, which show that Leibniz and Vico distinguish clearly between them while Swedenborg lets them merge. In that context she has also noticed that in the later parts of the Principia Swedenborg starts to make use of eggs and similar biological metaphors . This is an important observation that lends support to her thesis that mechanistic Cartesianism is balanced in Swedenborg's philosophy of nature by the influence of Leibniz. Quite reasonably, Crasta also maintains that Swedenborg's presentation of magnetism comes much closer to Leibniz's optimism than to the Neoplatonic idea of decay he had met in Thomas Burnet .Another topic of particular interest is the question of a potential Swedenborgian influence on Kant's Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels , although not as transmitted by Buffon, as has sometimes been assumed, but by Thomas Wright's An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe . Crasta has been unable to reach a firm conclusion, but she has proved that this is an issue well worth raising. Despite some inaccuracies with regard to chronological and bibliographical data, this learned book is a substantial contribution to our understanding of Emanuel Swedenborg as a scientist in his time. (shrink)

This article charts the ways in which students negotiate an academic identity whilst pursuing academic tasks that are publicly observable precisely as ‘academic tasks’ to their peers. Previous research into aspects of student interaction that take place within university tutorial sessions has suggested that different kinds of student identity come into conflict as students interact, face-to-face. Most notably, the imperative of ‘doing education’ — as a keen proto-academic seeking a good final degree classification — is often overridden by the imperative (...) of ‘doing being a student’ — as an average and/or indifferent student who does not stand out. In this article, however, it is not the university tutorial but a slightly different and hitherto unexplored site of interaction that is foregrounded: the university library textbook. As with tutorials, the margins of library textbooks are spaces within which individually accomplished research becomes publicly observable — in the former as group work, and in the latter as student marginalia. Drawing on discourse analytic concepts such as ‘footing’ and ‘stake’ this article seeks to understand what student marginalia can tell us about the ways in which the tension between ‘doing education’ and ‘doing being a student’ is managed and negotiated in sites other than the university tutorial. (shrink)

The consensus in the philosophical literature on joint action is that, sometimes at least, when agents intentionally jointly φ, this is explicable by their intending that they φ, for a period of time prior to their φ-ing. If this be granted, it poses a dilemma. For agents who so intend either severally or jointly intend that they φ. The first option is ruled out by two stipulations that we may consistently make: (i) that at least one of the agents non-akratically (...) believes that, all things considered, the agents ought not to φ, and (ii) that an agent is akratic, if she intends a thing that she believes, all things considered, ought not to be done. But the second option seems to entail the existence of a mental state with multiple subjects, which, in turn, seems to commit us to the existence of a group mind modified by that state: an incautious posit to say the least. I resolve the dilemma by noting that ‘They jointly intend’ is indeterminate between ‘They intend, jointly’, which does indeed entail that some mental state is an intention with multiple subjects, and ‘Jointly, they intend’, which entails a weaker claim, viz. that some mental state or states is an intention with multiple subjects. I then sketch an account of how a plurality of mental states, distributed among subjects, might, collectively, do service as their intention that they φ. It makes novel use of notions of participation and of doing a thing jointly with others. A corollary is that either intentions are not attitudes towards propositions, or propositions are individuated more finely than is often assumed. (shrink)

While this Journal is not the place for an extended discussion of the exegeticalpoints raised by Thomas Oberdan’s ‘The Vienna Circle’s ‘‘Anti-Foundation-alism’’’ [1998], some brief remarks are required to correct his misunderstand-ing of my position on the relevant issues, to stress the highly controversialstatus of his own interpretation and to counter his portrayal of the dialectics ofthe debate.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DULLES AND AQUINAS ON REVELATION 1. Beginning the Dialogue RESPECT FOR Avery Dulles' achievement in Models of Revelation 1 need not oonsist entirely in "enthusiastic recognition of its many merits " 2 even though it is " the mature reflection of an experienced teacher " and " as of now... the most comprehensive treatment on revelation in the English"'speaking world ".3 Learning from it involves recognizing the " worthwhileness (...) of dialogue with Dulles ' work ".4 In this questions,are essential to advancing the discussion. This article will proceed in appreciative dialogue by means of critical questions and wiH move in the direction of modifying aspects of Dulles' basic principle in Models of Revelation. Dialogue, according to the hermeneutical work of H.-G. Gadamer,5 is not first of all a genre for organizing,and presenting themes and ideas already attained. It belongs to the act of understanding itself, occurs in reading a text, always takes place in and through tradition and is one of the ways in which interpretation enters into every experience. In this light, the Summa Theologiae 6 of St. Thomas Aquinas belongs to a read1 Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983). 2 Bernard Cooke, " God Revealing in Symbol", OommonweaZ 110: 308, May 20, 1983. 3 Dermot Lane, "A Review Essay: Dulles on Revelation", The Living Light, 21:74-76, Oct. 1984; p. 74. 4 William Loewe, review in New Catholic World, 226:185, July-August, 1983. 5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth wnd Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982); pp. 325-341, 345-351. 6 St. Thomas.Aquinas, Summa Theofogiae, Vol. 45, Prophecy and Other 445 446 THOMAS HUGHSON, S.J. ing of 211odels of Revelation, despite the absence of evidence that it influenced Dulles' theology of revelation. It does not belong to it, that is, because it served as a source for 211odels of Revelation. Nevertheless, the Summa is within, and has significantly changed, the theological tradition shared by 211odels of Revelation. Reading Dulles' book in light of its tradition, then, brings Aquinas into the dialogue 7 in a way that would not be appropriate for a strictly historical-theological analysis of influences upon Dulles' theology of revelation. The Summa stands as a classic 8 work in the Catholic theological tradition. The inescapable magnitude of Aquinas' achievement makes it pertinent to every part of that tradition. Karl Rahner judged that, " Thomas Aquinas is to be immbered among the great figures of theology with whom any contemporary theology must engage in a genuine dialogue ".9 Rahner observed, too, the way in which attitudes toward Aquinas have changed. He noted, "From being the teacher of theology in the theological schools themselves, Thomas has acquired the status of a Father of the Church ".10 In this new and somewhat reduced condition, Aquina:s' text's can assume their true proportions as theological classics whose claim upon generation after generation arises not so much from official sanction as from their self-evidencing power to speak about subject-matter whose intr:insic significance brings it before a succession of eras and to a variety of cultures. It is easy Charisms (2a2ae, 171-8), Latin text; English translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices & Glossary by Roland Potter, O.P. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1969). English translations and Latin text will be from Vol. 45 through-out this article; references will be to parts of Aquinas' article. 7 M.-D. Chenu's Toward Understanding Et. Thomas, translated by A-M Landry & D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964), it is true, places the modern reader in dialogue with medieval texts through careful recovery of their contexts. But the relationship tends to lead into Aquinas's texts and their meaning rather than back from them to contemporary themes. s H.-G. Gaclamer, pp. 253-258. 9 Karl Rahner, "On Recognizing the Importance of Thomas Aquinas", Theological Investigationg Vol. XIII, translated by D. Bourke (New York: Seabury Press, 1975); pp. 3-12, 6-7. 10 Rahner, p. 4. DULLES AND AQUINAS ON REVELATION 447 enough to see that dirulogue with Aquinas inspired the work of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan as well as the early writings of Edward Schillebeeckx and Johann Baptist Metz. Yet this is not to... (shrink)

According to Cassirer, humanity is defined by the activity of the spirit. In other places, he attempts to explain the transition from ›life‹ to ›spirit‹, but this proj- ect seems hampered by his taking spirit to be a phenomenon of consciousness. Plessner’s »aesthesiology« opens up an alternative route. He discloses the mean- ing of ›spirit‹ or ›understanding‹ by an inquiry concerning the work of the senses in the context of behavior. This paper shows that for Plessner behavior is closely related (...) to its environment while at the same time not restricted to a biological programme. (shrink)

Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought: Explication as En lighten ment is the first book in the English language that seeks to place Carnap's philosophy in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context. According to the author, Carnap synthesized many different cur rents of thought and thereby arrived at a novel philosophical perspective that remains strik ing ly relevant today. Whether the reader agrees with Carus's bold theses on Carnap's place in the landscape of twentieth-century philosophy, and his even bolder claims concerning (...) the role that philosophy in Carnap's style should play in the thought of our century, does not matter so much as the excellent opportunity Carus's book offers to thoroughly rethink one's ideas about Carnap's philosophy. One reason why Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought might change one's ideas is that Carus has unearthed much hitherto unknown material from the archives that sheds new light on Carnap's early life and thought. Indeed, the many archival findings presented in CTT for the first time suffice to make the book re warding reading for philosophers and historians of philosophy alike. CTT exhibits a high standard of historical scholarship, and the book itself is a beautiful example of high-quality academic publishing. Up to now, Carnap has remained a controversial figure on the philo sophical scene. On the one hand, he has a solid reputation as a leading figure of logical positivism . According to conventional wisdom, this was a school of thought characterized by its formal and technical philosophy, as well as being rather dismissive of other ways of doing philosophy, dogmatically sticking to its own theses. As a typical example of this arrogant logical empiricist attitude, one usually refers to Carnap's notorious Overcoming Metaphysics by Logical Analysis of Language , written when the Vienna Circle's Logical Empiricism had entered its most radical phase. Self-proclaimed postpositivist philosophers of science dismissed logical positivism, in particular Carnap's, as the dogmatic and orthodox “received view.” The tendency to portray logical empiricism as an obsolete doctrine centering around certain “dogmas” started with Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism and reached its somewhat ridiculous culmination in the early 1980s when allegedly “six or seven dogmas” were discovered . Thereby an allegedly un brid geable gap between classical “dogmatic” logical em pi ricism and its modern “enlightened” suc ces sors was construed. (shrink)

I have three aims in this essay. I want to offer an example of an interdisciplinary historical inquiry combining literary criticism with the relatively new field of critical legal studies. I intend to use this historical inquiry to argue that the ambiguity of literary texts might better be understood in terms of an era’s social contradictions rather than in terms of the inherent qualities of literary language or rhetoric and, conversely, that a text’s ambiguity can help us expose the contradictions (...) masked by an era’s dominant ideology. I try to prove my assertion by applying my method to Herman Melville’s three most famous short works—“Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Bill Budd, Sailor—works dealing with the law and lawyers and widely acknowledged as ambiguous.1 I will base my critical inquiry into these stories on Melville’s relationship with his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, who, while sitting as the chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1830 to 1860, wrote some of the most important opinions in what Roscoe Pound has called “the formative era of American law.”2Before I get started, I should clarify what this study does not entail. By using Shaw and his legal decisions in conjunction with Melville’s fiction, I am not conducting a positivistic influence study. My method will not depend on the positivist assumption that Shaw’s legal opinions can be used to illuminate Melville’s texts only when his direct knowledge of Shaw’s opinions can be proved. Nor will I limit myself to a traditional psychoanalytic reading: my emphasis is on political and social issues, and too often these issues are deflected by translating them into psychological ones. At the same time, I recognize that critics concerned with political and social issues too often neglect questions raised by a writer’s individual situation. I compare Shaw to Melville not to reduce Melville’s politics to psychology but to prevent a political study from neglecting the political implications of psychology, to remind us—as the title of Fredric Jameson’s book The Political Unconscious reminds us—that psychological questions always have political implications. 1. See Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno,” “Bartleby,” and Billy Budd, Sailor, “Billy Budd, Sailor” and Other Stories, ed. Harold Beaver ; all further references to these works will be included in the text.2. See Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of American Law . For discussions of Melville and Lemuel Shaw, see Charles Roberts Anderson, Melville in the South Seas, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, no. 138 , pp. 432-33; Charles H. Foster, “Something in Emblems: A Reinterpretation of Moby-Dick,” New England Quarterly 34 : 3-35; Robert L. Gale, “Bartleby—Melville’s Father-in-Law,” Annali sezione Germanica, Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 5 : 57-72; Keith Huntress, “ ‘Guinea” of White-Jacket and Chief Justice Shaw,” American Literature 43 : 639-41; Carolyn L. Karcher, Shadow over the Promised Land: Slavery, Race and Violence in Melville’s America , pp. 9-11 and 40; John Stark, “Melville, Lemuel Shaw, and ‘Bartleby,’ “ in Bartleby, the Inscrutable: A Collection of Comentary on Herman Melville’s Tale “Bartleby the Scrivener,” ed. M. Thomas Inge , all further references to this work, abbreviated JA, will be included in the text. Brook Thomas teaches English and American literature at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is the author of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: A Book of Many Happy Returns and is at work on a study of the relations between law and literature in antebellum America. (shrink)

Marjorie Perloff’s Wittgenstein’s Ladder investigates the relationship between Wittgenstein’s manner of writing—a “process of interrogation... tentative, self-canceling, and self-correcting” —and what she terms the “‘ordinary language’ poetics so central to our own time”. “Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,” Wittgenstein proposed, in Perloff’s translation of a remark in Culture and Value. What form of poetry, Perloff asks, do we find in Wittgenstein’s work? We find a “poetry” which, “travel[ing] over a wide field of thought (...) criss-cross in every direction,” attempts to “command a clear view of the use of our words” through a sort of “understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’”. In particular, we find a poetry which brings out the beauty and complexity and strangeness in everyday communication by “arranging what we have always known” into texts in which we might think language through, from within. In the words of the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth: “One of the lessons for art which we can derive from the Philosophical Investigations is that I believe the later Wittgenstein attempted with his parables and language-games to construct theoretical object-texts which could make recognizable aspects of language that, philosophically, he could not assert explicitly”. Just as Wittgenstein-as-philosopher constructs texts which make language visible rather than employing language to make assertions, so Wittgenstein-as-poet, Perloff suggests, dramatizes our life in language rather than using language for self-expression. (shrink)

Play and games are among the basic means of expression in intelligent communication, influenced by the relevant cultural environment. Games have found a natural expression in the contemporary computer era in which communications are increasingly mediated by computing technology. The widespread use of e-games results in conceptual and policy vacuums that must be examined and understood. Humans involved in design-ing, administering, selling, playing etc. computer games encounter new situations in which good and bad, right and wrong, are not defined by (...) the experience of previous generations. This article gives an account of the historical necessity of games, the development of e-games, their pros- and cons, threats and promises, focusing on the ethical awareness and attitudes of game developers. (shrink)

Genetic mosaicism has long been linked to aging, and several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the potential connections between mosaicism and susceptibility to cancer. It has been proposed that mosaicism may disrupt tissue homeostasis by affecting intercellular communications and releasing microenvironmental constraints within tissues. The underlying mechanisms driving these tissue‐level influences remain unidentified, however. Here, we present an evolutionary perspective on the interplay between mosaicism and cancer, suggesting that the tissue‐level impacts of genetic mosaicism can be attributed to Indirect (...) Genetic Effects (IGEs). IGEs can increase the level of cellular stochasticity and phenotypic instability among adjacent cells, thereby elevating the risk of cancer development within the tissue. Moreover, as cells experience phenotypic changes in response to challenging microenvironmental conditions, these changes can initiate a cascade of nongenetic alterations, referred to as Indirect non‐Genetic Effects (InGEs), which in turn catalyze IGEs among surrounding cells. We argue that incorporating both InGEs and IGEs into our understanding of the process of oncogenic transformation could trigger a major paradigm shift in cancer research with far‐reaching implications for practical applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:nooK itEVIEWS 141 La Doctrine de la Revelation Divine de Saint Thomas D'Aquin: Actes du Symposium sur la Pensee de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, recueil puhlie sous la direction de LfoN ELDERS, S.V.D. in Studi Tomistici 37. Pontificia Academia di S. Tommaso, Lihreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990. Pp. 278. 30,000.00 lire. This collection of essays by distinguished scholars presents the acts of a conference on the doctrine of Revelation (...) according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. The volume contains twelve papers, four in French, four in English and four in German. The contributors are, in alphabetical order: A. Blanco, G. Cottier, O.P., Ph. Delhaye, L. Elders, S.V.D., L. Hodl, B. McGregor, O.P., J. H. Nicolas, O.P., L. Scheffczyk, R. Schenk, O.P., J. Schumacher, P. Stohr, and J. P. Torrell, O.P. The ground covered by their articles is as broad as the horizon of their authors. Aquinas's doctrine is confronted with problems ranging from the modernist crisis to those currently discussed in missiology. In theology, when one associates Revelation with Thomism, one is forced to think of Father Garrigou-Lagrange's De Revelatione, truly a landmark in the history of modern theology. Reading it, one cannot help hut to he impressed by the mastery and the clarity with which this eminent Dominican theologian of the antimodernist period disputes and refutes the arguments which threatened the Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Garrigou-Lagrange's hook has never been translated into modern languages. And yet, in a certain way, volume 37 of Studi Tomistici can substitute for it, since it deals with issues closely related to those which Garrigou-Lagrange addressed in his study of Revelation. It also recasts the discussion in the terms in which it is expressed in the theological field today. For this reason, this volume provides a valuable resource for the contemporary student of theology for whom the details of the modernist crisis in the early part of this century have not only faded with time, hut also have become less pressing due to the complexity of the problematic which retains the attention of theologians in the post-Vatican II period. The focus of this collection of papers is the epistemology of divine Revelation, to the point that this could he its subtitle. Ten of the twelve articles deal with this question. Only Delhaye's paper ventures outside of the field of epistemology to cover the topic of morals, while Horl takes up the ecumenical question. Scheffczyk's article provides a broad perspective on the evolution and the perenniality of the modernist/antimodernist problematic in theology. He shows that the root of the problem lies in the epistemology of the 142 BOOK REVIEWS Enlightenment, i.e. in idealism, which imposed itself as the philosophy of the anticlerical nineteenth century. In the last part of his paper he demonstrates how Saint Thomas's theology provides the insights neces· sary to articulate the doctrinal unity which exists between the teaching on Revelation found in Vatican I and that of Vatican II. He draws the reader's attention to the notion of degrees of Revelation whose culminating point is indeed the beatific vision and which is prepared for by a historical unfolding. Schumacher and Stohr also deal with the modernist's characterization of the traditional scholastic doctrine of Revelation as an imparting of propositions. Schumacher reviews the theory of Revelation of several of the modernist theologians. A com· mon characteristic of these theories is an idealist epistemology that re· duces the life of the intellect to its immanent part and thus renders impossible God's communication of intelligible truths without violating the laws of Nature. Stohr, on the other hand, investigates current theological theories and shows how Rahner and Schillebeeckx encounter the same difficulty with the intelligible content of Revelation because of their attempts to reconcile the Gospel's claim of effectiveness in chang· ing lives with idealist philosophy. With respect to the main line of inquiry, Nicolas's paper deals explicitly with epistemology of Revelation. This study of the " epistemo· logical aspects of Revelation " has two parts. In the first, Nicolas provides a commentary on S.Th... (shrink)

Thomas Nadelhoffer claims that a morally praiseworthy agent cannot knowingly produce a morally positive side effect. I claim that the argument Nadelhoffer uses to establish this claim has two false premises. The two false premises are: If something is a side effect, then it is not desired or intended; and If agent S is morally praiseworthy and knows that her performing p will produce a morally positive q, then q forms part of S's reason for p-ing. I offer a (...) counterexample that shows the falsity of and . 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on the Metaphysics has long been con sidered by many as one of the most interesting, most rewarding of all his works. Yet strangely enough, there has been no extensive study of this work, at least none that has ever reached print. It is in the hope of partially filling this gap in medieval research that the present study of the metaphysical system of the Commentary was conceived. However, the discussion of the Commentary's metaphysics must simultaneously (...) be an investigation into the reasons which motivated Aquinas in the composition of his work. Did he wish to expose only the theories of Aristotle, or did he simultaneously intend to present his own metaphysical views? Obviously, we must learn the answer to this before we can proceed to disentangle the metaphysical system, or systems, operative in Aquinas' Commentary. Up to the present day this problem, the nature of Aquinas' exposition has not been answered in a manner acceptable to all. Generally speak ing, three theories have been advanced. A first one would see the 1 Commentary as an objective exposition of Aristotle. A second opinion views Aquinas' exposition as an attempt to express his own personal 2 theories on metaphysics. And finally, the third view divides within the Commentary paragraphs containing Aquinas' personal thought ... (shrink)

St. Thomas Aquinas has been considered a kairos in intellectual history for seeing God’s essence as being. Martin Heidegger criticized philosophers forrepresenting being as a be-ing and identifying it with God, and Jean-Luc Marion speaks of “God without being.” In her Potency and Act Edith Stein introduced thecategory of being without essence, but such being is not God but “the opposite.” For St. Augustine sin was an approach to nonbeing, and Stein saw it leading to a“displacement into nonbeing,” to (...) an “annihilation” where only a “null being” is retained. This eschatological reflection is an intriguing aspect of her “fusion” ofscholasticism and phenomenology. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS IN LIGHT OF THEIR INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION Summary The book consists of two main parts: in the first, on the basis of an analysis of international law, elements of the contemporary conception of human rights and its positive legal protection are identified; in the second - in light of the first part -a philosophical theory of law based on the tradition leading from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas is constructed. The conclusion contains an (...) application of the results of the analysis conducted in the second part. The first part comprises four chapters. The first aims at revealing characteristics of human rights on the basis of an analysis of historical conditioning of the inter-national law of human rights and its development. The historical context displays the practical, vindicative, and critical character of the positive legal protection of human rights. Moreover, the process of change of positive human rights law is distinguished from the process of change of human rights as such. In the second chapter the content of human rights - a topic which is only auxiliary to the conducted analysis - is discussed. Basic typology and catalogues of rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected in the International Covenants of Human Rights are presented. The review of the content of rights aims at a more precise limitation of the field of research. The examination shows a diversity of rights which poses a serious challenge to the coherence of every philosophical theory of human rights. In the third chapter, central in the first part, international law is analyzed with regard to the characteristics of rights and the foundations of them. The analysis of documents shows a number of solutions referring to the anthropological foundations of rights. The inherent dignity of the human person is the source of all human rights. Each human being is recognized as free, and endowed with both reason and conscience. In the propounded conception of man individuals are not rivals but create a community which is a condition for their development. International law characterizes the rights as universal, inherent, inalienable and inviolable. The reconstructed conception also comprises the following basic elements: on the level of the structure of rights, a recognition of their equality, interdependence, and comprehensiveness; in the grounding of these rights, a recognition of the anthropological foundations of law; in the conception of positive law, a recognition of the secondariness of the positive law of human rights to human rights themselves, and a recognition of human rights and justice as the basis for legal order; in the conception of state, a recognition of the well-being of the individual as the fundamental aim of actions undertaken by political institutions, and recogni¬tion of rights which form an impassable boundary to the power of the state, includ¬ing its legislative actions. The characterization of the international legal paradigm serving for the under¬standing of human rights is supplemented by analyses of the structure of their posi¬tive legal protection. Various meanings of the terms "right" and "freedom" are distinguished. Subjective right, as basic structure of the positive legal protection of human rights, is understood as a complex relation formed by various legal situations of the subject of a right which create a functional whole in respect of the subordi-nation of human person to its good. Subordinating person to a good proper for it, expressed usually in a proclamatory norm, is the central element of particular rights around which further elements aiming at the realization of this good are built. In the second part of the book a philosophical theory is developed which allows for the location of a coherent foundation for the presented characterization of human rights and their positive legal protection. This part consists of two chapters. The first includes a review of some - not entirely satisfactory - means of founding of human rights; the second presents philosophical conceptions of law and man which may form a basis for the constructed theory. The review of arguments contained in the first chapter does not aim at a detailed analysis of various specific ways of argumentation encountered in works on this subject but rather at a concise presentation of the main possible lines of argumentation. These analyses also serve to emphasize the positive solutions which are pro¬posed later and to underscore the explanatory power of the elaborated theory. This theory, retaining accurate intuitions contained in the presented types of argumenta¬tion, helps in avoiding their consequences which are difficult to reconcile with the reconstructed paradigm of human rights. Efforts to base human rights on the norms of international law rightly take into account the necessity of determining the content of the rights and their positive legal protection as a means for the realization of man's good. These attempts, how¬ever, do not properly take into account the inherent character of human rights, which are independent of positive law and provide grounds for applying specific legislative measures and not others. Founding human rights on freedom accurately points at the freedom of an indi¬vidual as a constitutive element of some rights; however, absolutization of freedom leads, to a loss of an important element of the contemporary paradigm of under¬standing human rights. This foundation undermines recognition of the fact that human rights may set limits to both the freedom of others and the freedom of the subject of rights itself. Additionally, attempts at the so-called axiological justification of human rights are discussed. This type of justification has a few variants depending on the as¬sumed conception of value. Subjectivistic conceptions have similar advantages and disadvantages to the conceptions basing human rights on freedom; objectivistic conceptions while providing for the universality of human rights place, the fundamental aim of human rights protection beyond the individual human being - in the idealistically existing world of values; finally, conceptions rooting values and human rights in culture, while accurately noting that human rights are learned through the medium of culture, place the source of human rights beyond a concrete individual - in culture and processes which take place in it - which leads to difficulties in finding a basis for the universality of rights. Furthermore, attempts to ground human rights in specific characteristics of the human being are presented. This type of approach points to an important problem of dependence of the content of rights on what man is. However, recognition of specific characteristics of a human being as an ontic foundation of the existence of rights poses a danger to their universality since one has to accept that it is not enough to be a man to be a subject of rights, but a man possessing specific charac¬teristics. The second chapter aims at outlining solutions worked out by Saint Thomas Aquinas. For a fuller understanding of his propositions selected elements of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy are presented. It was them who formulated the founda¬tions for reflection on law and justice in the ontological context. A qualification is made that Stoicism is not be analysed in depth. Although Thomas' concept of law was undoubtedly developed under the influence of the Stoic doctrine as well, it is not in this that one should look for the tools to understand the ontic foundations of human rights and law in general since the Stoic moral philosophy and philosophy of law were developed in the context of a theory of being which assumed monistic and pantheistic premises as foundations, leading to the recognition of a total subor¬dination of the human individual to a larger unity of which man is only a part. The analysis of Plato's and Aristotle's texts concentrates on problems of justice. Plato seems to be the first philosopher who reflected on the formula basic in the history of European thought: to render to each his due. It appears that justice as both a characteristic of man and his acts is understood in the perspective of that which is just, that which is a good for another man - the recipient of the act. The basis for determining what is just is the relation of correspondence between some¬one and something. While in the case of Plato this relation is based on something beyond its terms, namely on ideas, in the case of Aristotle the relation occurs on account of the elements of the relation itself. Something is just when it contributes to the develop¬ment of the recipient of an act realizing that which is just. At the same time, the realization of that which is just is a good for the agent. In the analysis of the just two types of relation are revealed: the relation of due-to-recipient occurring on account of the compatibility of that which is due, with the recipient of the act; and - a "superstructure" - a relation of obligation-of-subject occurring on account of the compatibility of the acting subject with the thing which should be done. The basis for being that which is due is formed by various potentialities of development of man - the recipient of agency; the basis of being that which is an obligation is the possibility of development of the subject of action. Aristotle distinguishes various types of freedom and points to the necessity of taking them into account in the discussion of justice. Among other things, as the core of man's freedom, he considers life for its own sake, which can be seen as his expression of the basic indices of the autotelic character of man - which is funda¬mental for later conceptions of dignity. The freedom which is described by him is not, however, inherent and inalienable; being free is conditioned by a factual possi¬bility of undertaking actions, which are not solely means to the realization of aims set by others. Thomas Aquinas takes over the Aristotelian research perspective both in his conception of man and of law. At the same time, however, he significantly enriches it. In anthropology he develops a conception of personal being. Drawing upon his distinction between existence ("that something is") and essence ("what something is"), he sees the basis for being a person in the dignity of personal being which is a certain way of existence of a rational being more perfect than that of non-personal beings. The person is a being which, by virtue of its act of existence, is individual¬ized in a specific way. It is an aim in itself. Expressing it in a negative way, one may say that it does not exist as a means for the realization of the aims of others and, in this sense, that it is free. As distinct from Aristotelian conclusions, being a person is not conditioned by the specific actions of a being. Dignity is inherent, based on that which is the foundation of the factual existence of every rational being. Although freedom requires that a being is rational, dignity still encompasses all being, all its properties and potentialities. Thus an act conforming with dignity has to take into account a whole human being. Among different types of that which is just, ius, the first place, from the point of view of understanding law, falls to "the just thing itself ("ipsa res justa"), which is right in the full meaning of the word. On the one hand, it is that which is due; on the other hand, it determines the way of acting in the utmost degree, since the course of every act is determined in the fullest extent by its aim. The content of ius may be determined both by elements independent of free decisions - ius naturale - and by free decisions taking into account the state of things - ius positivum. Recognition of the objective structure of being as the basis of law does not entail that it is possible or desirable to determine unequivocally "the only right" patterns of conduct. This concept is very well justified within the system proposed by Saint Thomas. Individualization of being is a significant element of the develop¬ment of a person as a person. It is attained by the realization of individual aims which are not unequivocally determined by circumstances and the nature common to all people. By virtue of free choices made in the sphere of that which is not by its nature unjust, the object of action becomes ius. Since in the realization of the person the individualization of human being is central, Aquinas clearly sees the need for the protection of the sphere of "dominion of will". This sphere itself constitutes ius naturale, something which is due to man independently of the acts of will. Therefore "law should forbid nothing which is not unjust" ("nihil debet lege prohiberi quod licite fieri potest", In 3 Sent., dist. 40, q. I, a. 1, 3). Besides the relation of due-to-recipient, ius also includes the relation of obligation-of-subject which is superimposed on the relation of due-to-recipient. As far as the ontic foundations of obligation are concerned, in explaining why man is subordinated to realization of the good of others, Aquinas generally follows Aristotle in accepting that this basis is the subordination to moral good - to actions conforming with the learned truth about reality. Aquinas' systemic solutions allow, however, to reach deeper and understand why moral development is also a development of the whole human being. This was difficult within Aristotle's system, since he was reluc¬tant to decide whether precedence should be given to intellectual or moral develop¬ment. The inclination to realise good of another appears to be a transcendental characteristic of being, based on its very existence. Morality understood as rational and free subordination to realize the good of another is a specifically personal way of the realization of this inclination. Thus just actions contribute to the actualization of being in the aspect of its existence and therefore to the actualization of being as a whole. Thomas' conception of natural law (lex naturalis) as participation in eternal law (lex aeterna), offers possibilities for grasping that which is just as something which is basically accessible cognition, independently of Revelation and independently of faith in God, and at the same time as something based in eternal law, understood as a design of God's wisdom. Eternal law, embracing all particular actions, is not, from the human perspective, accessible cognition directly. It is enacted in the struc-ture of the created being and - in case of human beings - in free choices taking this structure into account. In the concluding remarks, the results obtained earlier are applied directly to the contemporary conception of human rights. Human rights are understood in the first place as "just things" - concrete goods of man; as that which is due because of subordination, based on dignity, to the personal development of man. That which is just is understood as a relational - actual or potential - state of things, which exists by virtue of existing relations. Evaluations referring to that which is right are true when respective relations of due-to-recipient take place; norms of conduct are true when respective relations of obligation-of-subject take place. Examples of the application of the sketched theory outside the field of human rights are also presented. Procedural consequences of the developed theory are shown, such as the discrimination of two types of legislative procedures which differ significantly in the structure of argumentation: the first aims at recognition of that which is just independently of the will of the legislator, and the second, at making individual or collective "projects" of development compatible. Finally the possibilities of applying the theory to the increasingly important problems of the protection of the environment and the "rights" of animals are mentioned. The central issue is a philosophical conception of man and his freedom and a conception of law. It is also indispensable to turn to a general theory of being. The search for a comprehensive theory of human rights requires attention to the Abso¬lute Being - God - as well. This is important for at least two reasons. First, a conception of the Absolute Being is integral to philosophy of the systemic type -of which the present book is a piece. A conception of the Absolute Being is signifi¬cant for understanding all being, including, first of all, man as a personal being. Second, every theory of human rights which does not comprise the problem of the Absolute may be questioned as to whether solutions adopted in it do not lead, in consequence, to eliminating God from the perspective of the understanding of law. It is desirable that a philosophical theory should deal with this problem directly. A theory which eliminates God from the perspective of the understanding of rights will be unacceptable for all those who, for philosophical reasons or relying on faith, consider God as the author of inherent rights. Nevertheless, a theoretical approach to rights from the perspective of the Absolute Being should only be a possible extension of a philosophical approach which bases rights on something which is cognizable independently of the acceptance of the existence of God so that the theory is also acceptable for those who reject the existence of God or suspend their judgment on this subject. The pursued theory should therefore contain, on the one hand, reference to natural, faith-independent foundations of human rights, but on the other hand, point to a possible extension accounting for the Absolute Being. The analyses contained in this chapter have undoubtedly some historical value since they are based on source texts. Nevertheless, the use of these texts and not critical works was dictated, first of all, by a conviction that analyses embrace a given theory in the aspect selected by the interests of the researcher. Therefore to find out what past thinkers say on the subject characterized in the first part it is simpler to reach to the sources than to adopt the existing critical works. The pre¬sented reconstruction of Aquinas' views on philosophy of law incorporates proposi¬tions of supplementing and developing some of the ideas undertaken by him. Obligation to act in this and not an other way arises because human actions are subordinated to the conformity, on the one hand, of aims realized by these actions and, on the one hand, the order of being determining that which is favourable to man or destroys him. The content of the order of being is, on the one hand, determined by the structure of being independent from man's will and, on the other, by free decisions of man. (shrink)

One of the most interesting recent attempts to interpret the peculiarities of Plotinus's philosophy is that of Bréhier in his ‘La Philosophie de Plotin’. His thesis, contained in the last four chapters of the work, is that Plotinus, instead of being simply the continuator of the Greek rationalist tradition, is the founder of modern European Idealism, or, perhaps more accurately, Pantheism. ‘Avec Plotin nous saisissons done le premier chatnon d'une tradition religieuse qui n'est pas moins puissante au fond en Occident (...) que la tradition chretienne …’. He is the spiritual ancestor of Spinoza and Hegel. It is interesting in passing to compare this view with that of Dean Inge, for whom Plotinus is the spiritual begetter of S. Thomas Aquinas. The divergences of modern interpreters of the Plotinian metaphysic are often both amusing and suggestive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 361 ing should gravitate, it is no wonder that many say: " There are no clear answers." Finally, I wonder if casuistry can even deal with the most significant ethical issue facing medicine in the immediate future: The construction of a system in the United States which will provide adequate health care for all citizens. Director, Center for Health Care Ethics Saint Louis University Medical Center KEVIN (...) O'ROURKE, O.P. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions. Edited By GAVIN D'CosTA. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1990. Pp. xii + 218. $16.95 (paper). There are two ways of reading ·this remarkably stimulating collection of essays. At one level it is a vigorous rebuttal of an earlier book in the "Faith Meets Faith Series" entitled The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, edited by John Hick and Paul Knitter; D'Costa's sub-title, "The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions," is a conscious polemical riposte. On the second level it purports to propose an alternative theology of religions which would on the one hand retain the claim of Christian uniqueness but on the other be not exclusivistic but genuinely pluralistic and, therefore, fruitful for interreligious dialogue. In my judgment, the book achieves its first objective well, furnishing an impressive array of counter-arguments to the pluralistic thesis. Indeed, like a swarm of tacklers ganging up on the hapless quarterback, so many contributors attack the same points of the pluralistic proposal that readers must have the impression of witnessing an overkill. On the other hand, the book's positive construction of a theology of religions suffers from vagueness and even internal contradictions. It is a classical case of people banding together because they know what they are against (in this case, the proposal to regard all religions as equally valid ways of salvation, with none allowed to claim superiority and exclusiveness) but not yet able to determine what they are for (except to retain the claim of Christian uniqueness). The volume contains 14 essays divided into three groups. The first three discuss the implications of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for interreligious dialogue (Rowan Williams, Gavin D'Costa, and Christoph Schwobel); the next five explore the relevance of christology in the context of religious pluralism (M. M. Thomas, Francis X. Clooney, John B. Cobb, Jr., Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Monika Hell- 362 BOOK REVIEWS wig) ; the last six examine the epistemological and hermeneutical issues of religious pluralism (J. A. DiNoia, Lesslie Newbigin, Jurgen Moltmann, Paul J. Griffith, John Milbank, and Kenneth Surin). The editor has done an excellent job of summarizing the main points of each essay; it is therefore unnecessary to replicate his effort. My intention in this review is not to examine each essay individually; space would not permit such an undertaking. Rather I shall list the major criticisms made by the contributors against the pluralistic thesis and then examine their rather diverse positive proposals. Before doing so, however, it would be useful to describe briefly the essential thesis of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, which is under attack. Its contributors argue that due to the rise of historical consciousness, the nature of God as Absolute Mystery, and the obligation to promote peace and justice, the Christian claim to uniqueness and superiority as a way to salvation should be abandoned. Instead of the exclusivist and inclusivist theologies of religions, they propose the pluralist position that Christianity is one among the many religions, equally valid and mutually complementary. What do the contributors to Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered find wrong with this pluralist thesis? A complete list of their objections cannot be furnished here, but these are some of the more important ones. First, the pluralists are as imperialistic as the exclusivists and inclusivists they denounce because they impose their (Western) notions of religion, dialogue, social justice, and so on, on other religionists (D'Costa, Newbigin, Griffiths). Hence the pluralist thesis is logically incoherent. Secondly, the pluralists wrongly presume that there is such a thing as a common core of religious experience which functions as a genus of the different species of religions (Newbigin, Milbank, Cobb). Thirdly, pluralists neglect the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:358 BOOK REVIEWS ing and his arguments seem more tentative and relativistic than those offered in his previously published works (Truth and Other Enigmas, 1978; The Interpretation of Frege's Phuosophy, 1981, etc.). Yet he uses his mastery of powerful logical techniques in order to support the chosen positions. This fact might give great satisfaction to a logician, hut the metaphysician may he somewhat disappointed by the meager results attained, (...) though Dummett himself modestly restricts his goals to those of forming only " a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks...". One may also wonder whether Dummett remained faithful to his methodological requirement of the priority of meaningtheory with regard to logic and metaphysics. Doesn't Dummett's acceptance of intuitionistic logic (with its rejection of the principle of bivalence) dictate his preference for a certain meaning-theory, and not the other way around? To distill and extract metaphysical beliefs and insights which are contained (perhaps tacitly) in the working of our language is undoubtedly a legitimate goal of any philosophical enterprise. But our ambitions go beyond this goal: we are reaching after reality itself, not just after our opinions about reality and their semantical elucidation. In this respect Dummett's programmatic conception of metaphysics may face serious difficulties in attempts to climb the ahovementioned metaphysical peaks. On the other hand, is any metaphysical program exempt from such difficulties? The hook is beautifully printed; Harvard University Press has done an excellent job! The Index, which combines names and subjects, is a hit too economical, omitting certain references (for example, important remarks on God's omniscience on pp. 75-76). AUGUSTIN RISKA Saint John's University New York, New York Ethical Practice in Clinical Medicine. By WILLIAM J. ELLOS. New York: Routledge, 1990. Pp. 190. Medical ethics is an integral part of the science and art of medicine. Rather than being a set of norms or regulations added from external sources, such as the legal norms regulating the medicare program, the norms and maxims of medical ethics are integral elements of medicine arising from the relationship between physician and patient. In one way or another, most philosophers of ethics and medicine would agree with the foregoing statements. But once the role of ethics in medicine has BOOK REVIEWS 359 been established, a serious difficulty arises: What method should he used to define and delineate ethical norms for particular cases? More to the point, how should one go about solving problems in medical ethics? Father William Ellos, S.J., is concerned with resolving the difficulty of method in medical ethics. He seeks to develop and explain a method in medical ethics that will be both clinical and pragmatic. Joining with other specialists in the field, he opts for a virtue-centered approach to solving issues in medical ethics, as opposed to a rulecentered duty-based approach. While not rejecting the ethical method featuring the principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice derived from W. D. Ross (an approach favored by so many contemporary scholars in the field of medical ethics), he does maintain that these principles are greatly overworked as well as simplistic. He proposes virtue-centered reasoning as a better method of ethical endeavor, especially attuned to the complexity and problematics of clinical ethics. In developing the notion of virtue·centered ethics, Ellos considers the contributions of the past and present thinkers to this method of ethical decision making. Hence, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, the Scottish Enlightenment Philosophers, and American Pragmatists are the main sources of his reflections upon virtue ethics. Ellos finds a culmination of virtue ethics in the present-day tendency of many consultants in medical ethics to classify themselves as casuists, indicating that they are eclectic and pragmatic in their efforts to solve clinical cases. In the course of the historical and analytical sections of this work, Ellos demonstrates not only a wide acquaintance with classical and contemporary authors but also an ability to discern continuity of thought among these well.known philosophers and theologians. Especially significant is his recognition of the too often neglected contemporary authors Collen Clements and Roger Sider, whose accurate indictment of the principle of autonomy as interpreted by present-day medical ethicists restores the... (shrink)

While John Dewey is an icon of American education and his work object of comprehensive studies, this book ventures to fill gaps that have been neglected by previous research. In particular, it opens new perspectives on Dewey's theory of curriculum, his concept of democratic education, his role as an administrator and the extent to which his philosophy of education coincided with the practice of the Laboratory School teachers. Thus, the author joins the ranks of those who strive to historicize Dewey's (...) pragmatist pedagogy and contextualize his celebrated school experiment. Drawing on new archival research and dozens of overlooked sources, Knoll offers numerous insights into what was and was not original in Dewey's pedagogy, and to what degree Dewey and his associates were successful in faithfully implementing his complicated vision. This is Dewey scholarship at its very best! Thomas Fallace, author of Dewey and the Dilemma of Race "While many historians have chronicled the growth of John Dewey's educational philosophy, very few have traced in detail its application by Dewey in the real world. In this superb critical study of Deweyan educational reform, Michael Knoll does both. At once a tour de force and a cautionary tale." Andrew Feffer, author of The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism "Michael Knoll's meticulous archival research places Dewey's work both in the long sweep of the history of educational ideas and in the context of Dewey's historical moment. Knoll highlights significant transatlantic currents in the New Education, illuminates misunderstood or overlooked episodes in Dewey's lifework, and humanizes Dewey. Knoll's findings and interpretations will challenge scholars to reassess prevailing perspectives not only on Dewey's work, but also on early 20th century education reform in the US." William G. Wraga, author of Progressive Pioneer: Alexander James Inglis and American Secondary Education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:English Classical: The Reform of Poetry in Elizabethan England STEPHEN ORGEL Roger ascham, writing in the 1560s, in the course of a treatise on education, urged the reform of English poetry on classical models: “Our English tongue, in avoiding barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables, and true order of versifying... as either Greek or Latin....”1 He cites as an example of right quantity of syllables (...) and true order of versifying this translation by the scholar and poet William Watson of a verse from the Odyssey: All travelers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses. For that he knew many men’s manners, and saw many cities. This does not sound much like English poetry, but if we count it out we can see that it does, more or less, follow the quantitative rules. The trouble is that the rules have little to do with English pronunciation. Vowels are long by position (followed by two consonants) regardless of how they are pronounced ; moreover, Watson makes vowels long if they are stressed (such as the a in “travelers” and “manners” and the i in “cities”), again regardless of how they are pronounced. For the Elizabethans, this was a problem not with the rules, but with English, both in its dissimilarity from the classical tongues and in the variety of spelling and pronunciation at the time—proponents of quantitative verse in English observe that a necessary first step would be to stabilize the language, as Gabriel Harvey wrote to Edmund Spenser, “there is no one more regular and justifiable direction, either for the assured and infallible certainty of our English artificial prosody particularly, or generally to bring our language into art and to arion 27.2 fall 2019 frame a grammar or rhetoric thereof, than first of all universally to agree upon one and the same orthography.”2 But even with a stable orthography, the application of quantitative rules to English is problematic. To begin with, it is not clear in what sense an English vowel can be said to be long or short—to consider the vowels in stressed syllables invariably long, as Watson does, is entirely arbitrary. There is obviously a difference between the a sound in “rat” and in “rate”; such vowels are now described as short and long, but in pronunciation, they may or may not be of equal extension : thus, the a in “rate” is not, in speaking, longer than the a in “rat,” it is simply pronounced differently; whereas the i in “rise” is certainly longer than the i in “rid.” If quantity means length, English vowels are too erratic to serve—Harvey observed to Spenser that in some quantitative hexameters Spenser had sent him, “the,” “ye” and “he” were treated as short, but “me” was long.3 The issue is especially vexed in the case of vowels that are long by position. The most common examples in English are the -ing endings of participles, which are invariably unaccented and stubbornly short when spoken. In fact, Thomas Campion confronted precisely this problem; and his way of dealing with it gives a clear sense of how willed the whole quantitative system in English necessarily was: For though we accent the second [syllable] of Trumpington short, yet is it naturally long, and so of necessity must be held of every composer.4 What can “naturally” mean here? Are the rules of Latin prosody laws of nature? Harvey had a clear sense of the practical problems, writing to Spenser, “in short, this is the very short and long: position neither maketh short nor long in our tongue,” and concludes that some other rule must be found for English “that should as universally and canonically hold amongst us as position doth with the Latins and Greeks.”5 The larger assumption behind Ascham’s and Harvey’s proposals for a new poetry was that the “barbarous” England 44 english classical of the time could be rectified by the application of classical rules. A return to the classics held out the promise of culture and civility—not only in poetry, of course, but poetry seemed a particularly clear example. Nobody thought the transformation would be easy; a hectoring... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Humanism, Female Education, and Myth:Erasmus, Vives, and More's To CandidusA. D. CousinsWhen considering pleasure and chance as aspects of human experience, Thomas More sometimes gendered them female; that is to say, at times he represented them by drawing from the mythographies of Venus and of Fortune. But what did he suggest that actual women, as distinct from goddesses, were or should be or might become: what were his (...) notions of being a woman, of femaleness? Further, what did he suggest that women might contribute to the common weal? A useful way to start answering that question is to look at what More seems to have thought about educating women: in particular, women who were entering adult life—entering into what was agreed to be the major female role—by marrying for the first time and therefore newly taking upon themselves the management of a household. In one of his most ambitious Latin poems, as nowhere else, More wrote elaborately, concisely and problematically on the education of women who were in just those circumstances. My discussion attempts a repositioning of that poem, To Candidus: How to Choose A Wife A Poem in Iambic Dimeter Brachycatalectic (Versvs Iambici Dimetri Brachycatalectici ad Candidvm, Qvalis Vxor Deligenda). To make the attempt involves examining More's other Latin poems on women, as would be anticipated; however, I am mainly concerned here with affinities between To Candidus—then, to a lesser extent, some of More's associated Latin poems—and notions about female education that were or were to become part of the already long, and mostly male, debate about the nature of femaleness.1 To be [End Page 213] specific, I am chiefly concerned with affinities between More's poem and writings by Erasmus and by Vives on the education of prospective or of recent brides.Because the primary concern in my discussion is to clarify the relations between More's To Candidus and humanist notions on female education, especially notions put forward by two of More's humanist friends about young brides, I want initially to revisit the early modern debate on educating women, of course an important element of the wider debate about femaleness itself. One medieval and thence early modern idea on female education was that, in addition to what their mothers taught them, most women needed merely to receive religious and ethical instruction from their husbands, who would likewise instruct them in how to govern a household.2 After all, it was often pointed out, the household was women's natural domain: since, therefore, they would not normally engage with the world at large as would men—since, for example, they would not normally be educators, or writers, or politicians—women did not usually need the broad education appropriate to men.3 Assertion to the contrary was variously argued—and differences between or among those contrary assertions did not always depend on whether an author was male or female. In The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), a response to Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris and, perhaps unknowingly, also to Plutarch's The Virtues of Women, Christine de Pizan attempted to construct at once a refuge and a resource for [End Page 214] women, whom she recognized as having been misrepresented to themselves no less than to men throughout generations of misogynistic male fictions, ranging from satire to epic, from fable to history.4 Her City, in so far as it is a revisionist history of women, forms a textual space which does indeed offer a refuge as well as a resource, for Christine advocates that women, fulfilling their capabilities as women, aim at "cultivat[ing] virtue" and thereby gaining inclusion in the true, illustrious record of female achievement: membership of a textual community within which they will see themselves reflected and which is at one with the City of God.5 Inseparable from their seeking to do so, she emphasizes, will be their receiving education.6 Despite that emphasis—and despite her emphasizing that women are men's intellectual equals or, not infrequently, superiors—Christine nevertheless defends the concept that the domestic sphere and not the public is in general that "appropriate" to women.7... (shrink)

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt has famously coined “bullshit” as a technical term— it refers not to outright lying but rather to a casual indifference to truth. Disregard for truth is accepted and even expected in many contexts, yet it creates conditions for gross injustice and dehumanization. I offer an account of widespread cultural indifference to truth as structural sin, a condition I call “truth indifference.” Draw- ing on Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the virtue of truth (veracitas), I map out the (...) conceptual framework that must be in place before Christian ethicists can provide an adequate moral analysis of structural truth indifference. (shrink)

The context in which medieval theologians discuss 'relation' is nearly always a trinitarian one. They have to solve an awkward problem: to explain how in God the persons are identical with the divine essence, yet different among themselves. In this paper I want to argue that Henry of Ghent's interest in the nature of the Trinity acted as an impetus towards the development of his theory of the nature of relations. In this context the accounts of Thomas Aquinas and (...) Giles of Rome will be considered as important for understand18 ing Henry's account. Henry's positive account of relations stems from Avicenna. For Henry, a relation is not an aliquid but has two modes of being, both as an accident and as a relative. Henry's attempt to think the nature of relation leads to him developing a relational ontology. (shrink)

A critical retrospective of 'The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas' Radio Addresses' sheds new light on an often underplayed tension in Adorno's thought concerning the capacity of mass culture to express resistance against domination. In 'Thomas' Adorno moved beyond denouncing mass culture as 'culture industry' by approach ing early Christian right radio in a manner consistent (initially) with his defense of the autonomous dimension of culture in general. At the same time, 'Thomas' accomplished groundwork for the (...) culture industry theory, and this theory ultimately guided the study's conclusions. This critique confirms Adorno's ambivalence regarding the negative capabilities of mass culture while suggesting a new way to analyze the contemporary Christian right. This approach, which I illustrate, draws upon both the culture industry theory and a modified version of Adorno's method of immanent, dialectical criticism to identify ideological elements as well as moments of resistance in Christian right radio today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy by John InglisMark D. JordanJohn Inglis. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, volume 81. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998. Pp. x + 324. Cloth, $99.50.Modern philosophers have shown themselves quite unphilosophical about the academic history of their own discipline. Content with grand stories that move from Plato to themselves, (...) they have treated institutional histories, recent histories, and bibliographical histories as unworthy of attention. John Inglis sets out to change all that for the study of medieval philosophy. He demonstrates by the book’s end that we have failed to recognize our historiographical procedures as conventions—with very particular histories of their own.The first part of the book traces the genealogy of the dominant (one might say, hegemonic) model in recent studies of medieval philosophy. The genealogy is prefaced with two chapters that show how various were the motives for reconstructions of medieval thought before 1850 in authors such as Billuart, Goudin, and Brucker or Hegel, Ritter, and Hauréau. These chapters might be dismissed by contemporary scholars as so much antiquarianism. There can be no dismissing the relevance to contemporary work of Inglis’s main genealogy, which runs with surprising directness from Joseph Kleutgen (1811–1883) and Albert Stöckl (1823–1895) to Norman Kretzmann and Anthony Kenny.It adds to the piquancy of Inglis’s argument that most specialists in medieval philosophy will not even recognize the names of Kleutgen and Stöckl, much less feel kinship with them. But Inglis shows convincingly what Kleutgen and Stöckl did to make the study of medieval philosophy possible in modern universities. Kleutgen mapped the medieval texts onto a system of “spheres,” of fields or topics, recognizable to professors of philosophy. This means that he necessarily privileged epistemology, as he necessarily connected a medieval thinker’s views across the “spheres” into a system—or a failed attempt at one. Kleutgen then emphasized the reason/revelation dichotomy and an allegiance to what he understood as the system of Thomas Aquinas. Put these elements together and you have a surprisingly familiar story. It remained for Stöckl to write it up as an erudite and monumental narration.Inglis follows this „Kleutgen-Stöckl model” through a number of more familiar authors, including De Wulf, Gilson, Boehner, Weinberg, and the editors of the Cambridge [End Page 530] History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Of course, in reducing the genealogy to a list of famous names I ignore two of its great virtues. The first is the detail with which it retells the institutional circumstances and the forgotten intermediaries of the scholarly tradition. Behind the genealogy, around its borders, there stands Inglis’s enormous effort of original research, much of it archival. The genealogy’s second virtue is the dialectical subtlety with which it locates continuities under contradictions. Gilson is usually touted as the antithesis of De Wulf, and Kretzmann of Gilson. Inglis makes such antitheses seem superficial by comparing them with an abiding if tacit agreement about how medieval texts can be appropriated within modern philosophy. To seal the comparison, Inglis suggests in the book’s second part what a real antithesis to the Kleutgen-Stöckl model might be. He reconstructs, in his last two chapters, Thomas’s accounts of human knowledge and of theology’s relations to philosophy in opposition to that model’s prescriptions.No review can represent—or even adequately praise—the enormous learnedness of this book. Moreover, since the book already discusses so much, it must seem ungrateful to suggest that it ought to discuss anything else. Let me end then rather by posing two questions beyond the book’s end. First, does Inglis’s genealogy mean to suggest that the Kleutgen-Stöckl model is now chiefly received in English-speaking philosophy departments? I wonder, for example, how far Inglis might judge Alain de Libera’s Penser au Moyen Age (Paris: Éds. de Seuil, 1991) an alternative to that model. Certainly de Libera shows more self-consciousness about the culturally determined history behind our historiography. His emphasis on the thirteenth-century recovery... (shrink)

Oscar Kenshur’s “Demystifying the Demystifiers: Metaphysical Snares of Ideological Criticism” should go a long way toward convincing most readers that the cure for “ideological” criticism is worse than the disease. His attempt to uncouple ideology and epistemology in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Michael Ryan’s Marxism and Deconstruction belongs to an increasingly popular subgenre of metacriticism, the “more-historical-than-thou” offensive against Marxists and new historicists for their alleged essentialist procedures.1 There is no question that Kenshur raises significant issues about the nature (...) of ideological analysis that should be debated. However, he has neither interrogated the basis of his own assumptions about seventeenth-century views of language theory and epistemology nor convincingly demonstrated, to my mind, that Ryan is somehow wrong in his reading of Hobbes. The weakness of Kenshur’s argument is that he seems intent on erecting the windmills at which he wants to tile—most damagingly for his argument a simplistic notion of ideology that he assumes both Hobbes and Ryan share. By accepting a deterministic notion of ideology, Kenshur offers a “corrective” to overzealous claims for the significance of ideological criticism that has the effect not of “sav[ing history] from its friends” but of returning it to the status of “background” or “context” that it had been for a previous generation of New Critics. The terms in which he casts his argument—epistemology and/or ideology—redefine “ideological criticism” in a polemical manner designed, it seems, to discourage anyone from wanting to practice it. His ultimate purpose is not simply to save “history” from the Ryans of the world but to inoculate his versions of literature and philosophy against the ideological virus. To respond fully to the various issues that Kenshur raises would require detailed analyses of seventeenth-century literary and political culture and of the institutionalization of twentieth-century criticism; simply to discuss the differences between Hobbes and Ryan on epistemology or ideology would require a full-length study of the various discourses in which and against which their works are situated. Given the limitations of a critical response, I shall confine my remarks to two suspect areas of Kenshur’s argument: his characterization of seventeenth-century notions of the relationships among language, epistemology, and ideology and his assumptions about the nature of claims currently made for ideological analysis. 1. See, for example, Edward Pechter, “The New Historicism and Its Discontents: Politicizing Renaissance Drama,” PMLA 102 : 292-303. Robert Markley teaches in the English department of the University of Washington and is editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. He is the author of Two-Edg’d Weapons: Style and Ideology in the Comedies of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve and coauthor, with Kenneth J. Koespel, of Newton and the Failure of Messianic Science: A Postmodern Inquiry into the Discourses of Natural Philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 68J The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview. By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Joseph Fessio, S. J., Michael M. Waldstein (Preface), and Susan Clements (Conclusion). San Fran· cisco: Ignatius Press/Communio, 1991. Pp. 127. $9.95 (paper). Except for the preface and conclusion, Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Theology of Henri de Lubac first appeared as the long essay, "Henri de Lubac-L'oeuvre organique d'une vie," in (...) Nouvelle Revue Theologique 97 (1975), 897-913 and 98 (1976), 33-59, and translated by Joseph Fessio, S.J., as "The Achievement of Henri de Luhac" in Thought 51 (1976), 7-49. The preface was added soon after for the German edition, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Frei· burg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag, 1976). The conclusion was added for Balthasar's and Jesuit Georges Chantraine's Le Cardinal de Lubac: L'Homme et son oeuvre (Paris: Ed. Lethielleux, 1983). While de Lubac denied " a true, personal philosophical or theo· logical synthesis " in the multiplicity of his oeuvre, he did believe that there could he found " a pattern that constitutes its unity " (de Luhac on p. 10). A more systematic work had been planned with Bruno de Solages, Peres Congar, Chenu, and others. In de Luhac's words, " the lightning bolt of Humani Generis killed the project" (p. 11). We can only wonder at what might have been. At the center of de Lubac's thought is a spiritual perception of "the essence of Christian mysticism" (p. 11). A hook on this subject was planned hut never completed; its fundamental importance was indicated by de Luhac in 1956: "I believe my hook on mysticism has inspired me for a long time in everything I work on; in its light I make my judgments and gain the criteria for ordering my thoughts and ideas" (p. 11). The purpose of Balthasar's little book is to trace these "great spiritual options of the master" (p. 26). Balthasar wrote his preface after he had received from de Luhac the manuscript that would he published as his Memoire sur l'occasion de mes ecrits (1989; ET: At the Service of the Church (1993]). Accord· ing to Balthasar, this "meandering" text has great value in display· ing the organic unity of de Luhac's writings in the contexts which occasioned them-" as well as the legendary condemnations and banish· ments prepared for him by his order and by the Church" (p. 9). De Luhac adopted the " fundamental elan " (p. 13) of Blondel, Marechal, and Rousselot. They enabled de Lubac to see in Thomas Aquinas " the paradox of the spiritual creature that is ordained beyond itself by the innermost reality of its nature to a goal that is unreachable for it and that can only he given as a gift of grace " (p. 13). Balthasar is unambiguous in his belief in the correctness of their interpretation. 684 BOOK REVIEWS Blondel, Marechal, and de Lubac were " martyrs for truth " (p. 13). De Lubac " exposed himself to the attacks of a tutiorist scholastic theology, armed with nothing but the historical and theological truth" (p. 13). Of the three, de Lubac was the most persecuted. The conflict with scholasticism is presented in all its sharpness. One must go back to Thomas himself, over the commentatorial tradition of John of St. Thomas and Cajetan, whose work represents, in the words of Gilson, " a successful ' corruptorium Sanctae Thomae.'... Thomas has been castrated by it" (p. 14). Gilson's "unqualified assent" to de Lubac's Thomistic conclusions means much to Balthasar, because it is "the assent of the greatest authority in the field of the history of phi· losophy" (p. 15). Upon reading Sumaturel (1946), Gilson wrote to de Lubac that the difference between the scholastic and the humanist theologians, like de Lubac, in part lies in the way they understand propositions. The scholastics " understand only univocal propositions and those that seem to be univocal. The former [humanist theologiansJ, by contrast, are more interested in the truth that the proposition attempts to formulate and that partly escapes it" (p. 14). In their incomprehension and fear of analogy, the scholastics are represented as hankering after a security that... (shrink)