Two hundred twenty eight experienced personal trainers responded to a survey of perceived role responsibilities, conflicts and boundary issues in this emerging profession. Data from a 53-item questionnaire were analyzed by sex, age, and trainers' levels of experience. Findings provide information about why clients are believed to hire personal trainers, degrees of responsibility trainers feel for different aspects of the relationship, common conflicts experienced in this profession, and relationship behaviors considered acceptable or unacceptable. From a number of perspectives, the results (...) suggest that trainers may engage in and take responsibility for behaviors that fall beyond their legitimate domains of competence and influence. These include such activities as giving advice to clients about nutrition, lifestyle, and psychological agendas. Significant differences were observed when results were analyzed by sex, age, and experience level. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology presents a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the rapidly growing field of political ecology. Located at the intersection of geography, anthropology, sociology, and environmental history, political ecology is one of the most vibrant and conceptually diverse fields of inquiry into nature-society relations within the social sciences. The Handbook serves as an essential guide to this rapidly evolving intellectual landscape. With contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook presents a systematic overview of political ecology's (...) origins, practices and core concerns, and aims to advance both ongoing and emerging debates. While there are numerous edited volumes, textbooks, and monographs under the heading 'political ecology,' these have tended to be relatively narrow in scope, either as collections of empirically based (mostly case study) research on a given theme, or broad overviews of the field aimed at undergraduate audiences. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology is the first systematic, comprehensive overview of the field. With authors from North and South America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, the Handbook of Political Ecology provides a state of the art examination of political ecology; addresses ongoing and emerging debates in this rapidly evolving field; and charts new agendas for research, policy, and activism. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary academic field. By presenting a 'state of the art' examination of the field, it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars. It not only critically reviews the key debates in the field, but develops them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William Joseph Gavin, 1943–2021James Campbellit is my task briefly to memorialize the life of William Joseph Gavin. This is a sad task, as are all memorials, but it is also an important one. Bill was a beloved and respected colleague, and it is the duty of the Society to note his passing.The basic facts of Bill’s life are easy to recount. Born in New York City on (...) 16 December 1943, he was educated at Fordham from ninth grade on. He earned his BA in 1965, with a major in Russian language and Soviet-area studies. He completed his doctorate in 1970 with a dissertation entitled “An Aesthetic Approach to the Philosophy of William James.” Bill taught at the University of Southern Maine—with occasional periods in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Japan and China—from 1968 until his retirement in 2014. He was the author, co-author, or editor of seven books, and wrote well over a hundred articles and reviews. Bill was an active member of SAAP forever. Long before we had T-shirts or posters, before there were prizes or even banquets, he was participating in our meetings and speaking on such figures as James and Dewey. A not irrelevant aspect in Bill’s life was that he was married to the same woman, Catherine Kerley Gavin, for over fifty years, and together they shared a life of travel, sailing, and dancing. Bill died in Maine on 25 April 2021.In addition to his work in American philosophy with which we are most familiar, Bill’s overall interests encompassed the sub-fields of ethics and aesthetics, medical ethics, Russian philosophy, and Existentialism. In his writings, these diverse aspects of his thought were seamlessly integrated and presented with a teacher’s eye on the larger mission of philosophy: to try to answer such questions as these: “Why do we do what we do?” “What should we value?” “What should we believe?” “How should we live?” [End Page 106]Running like a dark thread through Bill’s writings are the themes of finitude and death. He emphasized that our beliefs in the secure and the permanent—our delusional expectations of control, our excessive demands for clarity, our hopeless quest for certainty—are all misguided. In his wonderfully clear volume, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Bill writes: “[M]ost philosophers, and indeed most people... have pursued certainty, objectivity, and some form of universal truth” and “have assumed that such truth can be captured in language, that is, that a complete linguistic description of reality is at least possible and certainly desirable” (Gavin, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Temple UP, 1992, p. 1). By means of his work, Bill shows us that all of this is delusional. He helps us to grasp what it is to live our lives without an adequate understanding of what we are doing, and to face the tragedy of having to endure when our choices prove mistaken. His view of life, and his approach to philosophy, are thus existential in the deepest sense.Philosophy for him was not some gussied-up academic pastime by means of which we polish and update the thoughts of others. Rather, philosophy lives only in a broader cultural context that also includes hunger and illness, yet has room for both poetry and dance. In the vital niche that Bill’s work occupies between Pragmatism and Existentialism, he returned again and again to the diversity of our problematic contexts, and to the vague and tentative understandings that we cobble together to address our situation. [End Page 107]James CampbellUniversity of ToledoCopyright © 2023 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois... (shrink)

Distilling the main currents of James's thought, William J. Gavin focuses on "latent" and "manifest" ideas in James to disclose the notion of "will to believe," which courses through his work.

An extended visual exploration of Brooklyn and its inhabitants viewed from a bus window frame. The project was conceived as a symbolic photographic portrait of America in this specific time of history, a time of transition and transformation deeply affected by the global economic crisis and its consequences on society, politics and culture.

William james is often thought of as a philosopher who rejected language as incapable of dealing with the unfinished character of the universe. Actually, There are two different complementary uses of language in james' texts. Sometimes he does reject language as inadequate; but at other times he presents a surprisingly "modern" view of language. Specifically, James recognized that meanings vary from context to context; that some words have an "intentional" aspect, And that language cannot be viewed as (...) consisting of substantive words strung together by neutral logical connectives. In this paper, I try to "unpack" these two different natures of uses language found in james' works. (shrink)

Although william james wrote no complete philosophy of science, nonetheless there exist in his writings several references to scientific procedure. furthermore, these are anti-positivistic in tone. these references include: 1) a rejection of the old baconian model for science; 2) an assertion that competing conceptual models of experience exist, each one of which can account for the empirical data in question; 3) nonetheless, a refusal either to reduce different conceptual theories to one conceptual outlook, or to reduce conceptual models (...) as a whole to sensory experience; and 4) an assertion that the scientist is an active transformer of his environment. in this paper i discuss these issues. (shrink)

Recently, the work of philosopher-psychologist William James has undergone something of a renaissance. In this contribution to the trend, William Gavin argues that James's plea for the "reinstatement of the vague" to its proper place in our experience should be regarded as a seminal metaphor for his thought in general. The concept of vagueness applies to areas of human experience not captured by facts that can be scientifically determined nor by ideas that can be formulated in words. (...) In areas as seemingly diverse as psychology, religion, language, and metaphysics, James continually highlights the importance of the ambiguous, the contextual, the pluralistic, or the uncertain over the foundational. Indeed, observes the author, only in a vague unfinished world can the human self, fragile as it is, have the possibility of making a difference or exercising the will to believe. Taking James's plea seriously, Gavin traces the idea of the vague beyond the philosopher's own texts. In "conversations" with other philosophers--including Peirce, Marx, Dewey, and, to a lesser extent, Rorty and Derrida--the author shows that a version of James's position is central to their thought. Finally, Gavin looks for the pragmatic upshot of James's plea, reaffirming the importance of the vague in two concrete areas: the doctor-patient relationship in medicine and the creation and experiencing of modern art. In conclusion, Gavin argues that James's work is itself vague, in a positive sense, and that as such it functions as a "spur" to the reader. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: James's Personal Life ‐ Vagueness and Commitment Vagueness in the Principles of Psychology The Religious Experience as Vague James's Metaphysics: “The Really Real” as Opaque The Pragmatic Upshot Conclusion.

The american philosopher william james has been accused of being both a positivist and a romantic intuitionist. in the present paper, i wish to defend james from both charges. first, an analysis of the james texts will indicate that: 1) he refuses to distinguish clearly sensation, percept and concept; 2) he recognizes the ontological status of concepts; and, 3) he uses the word "perceptual" in two different ways. this two-fold use of the word has been the source (...) of much difficulty and forces us to deal, secondly, with the issue of james' opinion of language. he is often thought of as a romanticist, as someone who believed that life was beyond all language. we shall try to show that this view also is wrong, and that there exist two different views of language in his texts. (shrink)

The similarities and differences between Herzen and James as humanist theoreticians are very interesting in view of the roles which they played in their respective countries. Radical freedom was important to the theories of each.

John Dewey once said that "it is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half solved." But what happens when the situation at hand can't be "put" into a problem, or it can be put into multiple problems, incommensurate in nature? At issue is whether every situation is at least potentially problematic, or whether some remain, "troublesome," "tragic," or characterizable in some other "non problematic" manner.Dostoevsky and Kafka present us with such instances. The underground man is (...) terribly worried about being predictable when he chooses. Kafka's character Joseph K. is stuck in a situation that is over-determined, i.e., it can be looked at psychologically, politically, and/or religiously.For James too, there are some situations which are not solved by "thinking the situation through." These may not be termed "tragic" or "troublesome," but they are other than "problematic." I show this by comparing "The Will to Believe" and "The Sentiment of Rationality" with Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Kafka's The Trial. (shrink)

William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague. By William Joseph Gavin. Anti‐foundationalism Old and New. Edited by Tom Rockmore and Beth Singer.

The discussion in this essay is the result of a dialogue between William Gavin and the Cologne program of interactive constructiveism. First, we give an introduction to language in James and Rorty combined with constructivist reflections. Second, we provide an extended and deepened exploration of the relation of language and experience. Here we expand the discussion and also include perspectives from Dewey. Third, we draw conclusions to the important philosophical issues of relativism and arbitrariness as questions to which (...) pragmatism as well as constructivism must give constructive responses. (shrink)

There are at least two passages in the jamesian corpus where he seems to establish a topology of "regional ontologies", or to set up multiple "language games". the first of these is "the principles of psychology" when he talks about "the many worlds", or "...sub-universes commonly discriminated from each other...", the second is in "pragmatism", where he notes that there "are...at least three well-characterized levels, stages, or types of thought about the world we live in..." two questions immediately come to (...) mind about these levels. first, is each of these areas of equal importance, epistemologically and ontologically speaking? second, how, if at all, are these regional areas related to each other? each of these questions has a seemingly obvious answer. to wit, the world of perception is more important than any of the other areas; and second, the regional areas are related in terms of the disjunctive and conjunctive transitions which james so strenuously upholds, resulting in an overall "concatenated" picture. i argue that both of these responses are insufficient, and that the issue is more complicated than it first appears. (edited). (shrink)

Francis Ingledew's impressive recent article in this journal argues the following: that the Trojan historiography produced by secular clerics for Norman lords and English kings is characterized by the defining features of the Virgilian philosophy of history . Even if the “Book of Troy” is “irreducible … to any single work,” Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae may be taken to be exemplary of it, since Geoffrey's “book is the effective mastertext of the new rendering of the historical field.” In (...) this article I set aside my agreement with the broad thrust of Ingledew's argument; instead I want to qualify it in two ways. In the first place, I question whether the template of the Aeneid can be used quite so straightforwardly for Galfridian material. More importantly, I question the notion of one “Troy Book.” There is another version of the “Troy Book,” that of Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, translations of which constitute a significant body of English vernacular writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This tradition is resolutely anti-imperialistic in every way. Even if works in this tradition were written for aristocratic readers, they were pitched from a clerical position that stood opposed to imperial enterprise. I make each of these points by looking back to English narratives in the Guido tradition from the vantage point of Gavin Douglas's early-sixteenth-century translation of the Aeneid, his Eneados. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In his book The End of Life James Rachels argues that in a situation of forced choice if we must choose between a more and a less complex human being we have good reason to choose in favour of the normal human. He argues also that since some humans have less complex mental abilities than some animals it will sometimes be right to choose a non‐human animal in preference to a human being. I do not consider Rachels’belief that (...) sometimes non‐human animals are to be preferred to retarded humans; I focus rather on the seemingly less contentious belief that in situations of forced choice, we should choose human beings with more rather than less complex lives. I reject this contention both because Rachels does not seem to have offered a worthwhile argument in its favour and also because I find his cavalier approach to the lives of people with intellectual disabilities morally offensive. En route I argue against his simplistic separation of human lives into the categories ‘simple’and ‘complex’on the basis of whether the individuals in question fall into what he seems to take as given—the clear cut categories ‘mentally retarded’and ‘normal’[1] [2]. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some current developments in death and dying literature—certainty vs. context; death as process vs. death as event; acceptance vs. denial; and the present moment vs. the long run. I then show how the work of James and Dewey can be beneficially applied to these topics. In this way, I hope to be true to the spirit of James and Dewey, following in their “wake,” while extending their insights to a new topic, namely death.Benjamin (...) Franklin once said: “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” He was at least half wrong. There is now no complete agreement as to when life begins or when it ends, nor on who should decide this—medicine, biology, the law, or each human being herself... (shrink)

The term ‘predistribution’ draws attention to the need for policies and institutions that are designed to improve the position of the least advantaged members of society by generating a fairer distribution of opportunities and benefits from the operation of the free market system, with less reliance on redistributive tax-and-transfer mechanisms. Although the idea of progressive predistribution has only recently begun to attract the attention of politicians and commentators in the mainstream media, there is an older and more philosophically grounded predistributive (...) approach that goes back to the idea of the property-owning democracy proposed by Economist James Meade and further developed by liberal political philosopher John Rawls. In this article, I argue that neither the Meadeian/Rawlsian POD model, nor the more recent analysis of the idea of progressive predistribution, provide a clear and convincing account of the distinction between predistributive and redistributive mechanisms. I then argue that a more promising account of this distinction is provided by the idea of the socialization of economic rent through taxation of the rental value of land, and that there are good reasons to think that a shift in the burden of taxation away from production and employment and on to the rental value of land might turn out to be both more genuinely predistributive and more effectively progressive than other possible predistributive mechanisms that have recently been proposed, most notably the aggressive taxation of private inheritances as a means to broaden the distribution of privately owned capital and productive property. (shrink)

“The Will to Believe” defines the religious question as forced, living and momentous, but even in this article James asserts that more objective factors are involved. The competing religious hypotheses must both be equally coherent and correspond to experimental data to an equal degree. Otherwise the option is not a live one. “If I say to you ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan’, it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive.” (...) James, WB, p. 3. Analogously, in A Pluralistic Universe James is at pains to convince the reader that his own religious hypothesis is just as “objective,” makes just as much sense, etc. as alternative possibilities: the “only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it [pluralistic pantheism] is a fully coordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block universe; but on the other hand, it may be a universe only strung along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist.”William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909) p. 328.Here, once again, before the will to believe can be employed, the objective factors of competing hypotheses, their equal coherence and correspondence, must be brought out.When reconstructed, James' overall outlook has a “qausi Kuhnian” taint to it- though obvious differences remain. Much of what goes on in evaluating competing scientific hypotheses is either not forced, or not living, or not momentous, but rather “typical,” “dead,” and “avoidable,” in short very “normal.” But there are moments in the history of science where the decision between hypotheses might well be forced, living and momentous, and sometimes James comes close to recognizing this.Analogously, a good deal of what goes on in religion is not forced, not living or not momentous - in short it is all too “normal”. In The Varieties of Religious Experience for example, James proposes to ignore the institutional branch of the religious domain and to concentrate on personal and psychological factors, his reason being that the institutional aspect concentrates on the routine, the normal. “Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods.” James, VRE, p. 29. and again “The word ‘religion,’ as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word ‘religion’ nowadays, we think inevitably of some ‘church’ or other.” Clearly here religion has a normal, i.e. trivial side, just as does science. On the other hand, there are revolutionary moments in religion, such as that of choosing between theism and materialism in Pragmatism, or choosing among theism, monistic pantheism and pluralistic pantheism in A Pluralistic Universe. Such moments involve the will to believe and are clearly more personal than their counterparts in the domain of normal institutionalized religion. Going further, there are no doubt differences of degree between the will to believe decisions in science and the will to believe decisions in religion. These have been explicated in more specific terms by Ian Barbour in his article, “Paradigms in Science and Religion.” ...each of the ‘subjective’ features of science... is more evident in the case of religion: (1) the influence of interpretation on data, (2) the resistance of comprehensive theories of falsification, and (3) the absence of rules for choice among paradigms. Each of the corresponding ‘objective’ features of science is less evident in the case of religion: (1) the presence of common data on which disputants can agree, (2) the cumulative effect of evidence for or against a theory, and (3) the existence of criteria which are not paradigm-dependent. It is clear that in all three respects religion is a more ‘subjective’ enterprise than science. But in each case there is a difference of degree - not an absolute contrast between an ‘objective’ science and a ‘subjective’ religion. Ian Barbour, “Paradigms in Science and Religion,” in Paradigms and Revolutions, edited by Gary Gutting (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) pp. 242–43. Barbour correctly notes that the “...choice is not between religion and science, but between theism, pantheism, and naturalism, let us say, as each is expressed in a particular historical tradition. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof.”Ibid., p. 243. James sometimes comes close to recognizing this but his oscillation on the status of the everyday world of common sense, or the perceptual world, causes him not to see the issue clearly. When the animated world of the perceptual is taken as the all inclusive ‘really real,’ science is viewed as an abstract, second class citizen. But James offers what we would consider a more sophisticated and adequate perspective when he views the world of common sense, having become linguistified, as itself suspicious, and consequently views all three tiers - common sense, scholastic philosophy, and science - as “regional ontologies”, or “language games” in Wittgenstein's terminologySee Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), paragraph 7, paragraph 23. For the notion of “regional ontology” see Edmund Husserl, Ideas, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1962) p. 57ff; p. 158ff. - and opposes all three to a more primordial or prereflexive level. When James takes this second approach it is easier to see that the basic distinction he began to make in “The Will to Believe” was between the scientific and religious domain where the will to believe was to be employed, and the domain of “ordinary” religion and science. Finally this position anticipates his ultimate metaphysical outlook, viz. “pure experience” as approachable through language on a series of diverse regional levels, but nonetheless not completely describable within language. It is important to recall that in The Varieties of Religious Experience James distinguishes between the science of religions and what he calls living religion: [T] he science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. James, VRE, p. 489. The study of religion, in short is not the activity of religion; the latter is animated, personal, and, we would argue, necessitates a commitment in terms of the will to believe. Once again, however, James hesitates over offering the same two-fold delineation in other areas of science. On the one hand he tells the reader that “science-has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view.”Ibid., p. 491. On the other hand, he offers the following comment a few pages later on in a footnote: ...the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to forsee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitely triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be.Ibid., p. 501, Footnote. The burden of this paper has been to indicate that when James' two-fold outlook on perception and/or common sense is properly reconstructed, the raproachment between science and religion is not so “impossible to forsee.”. (shrink)

Three types of thought about the world are put forth by James in Pragmatism : common sense, science, and philosophy. The worlds of science and philosophy reified and idealized aspects of the vague, intersubjective world of common sense. However, once "formed" these two worlds are themselves "formative." They can and have infected the vague world of common sense with a quest for certainty and immediacy. Empathy arises as a problem through the conceptual world views of science and philosophy, insofar (...) as the vague is not acceptable. Using James' views on language and his metaphysics, I argue that empathy appears epistemically as an issue unsolvable in terms of certainty, and empathy appears ontologically as an issue which compels action. In medicine, empathy exists as a problem because pure consciousness has come upon the scene as a "rip" or "tear," in Sartrean terminology. The physician finds himself "encrusted twice over"; consciousness has arisen and also professional consciousness has arisen. He/she works back, not simply toward the world of common sense, now infected, but toward the pre-reflective world. Such a recovery is never complete, yet such a recovery must always be attempted. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article develops how wider understandings of time may help inform managers’ communication decisions. Using Peter F. Drucker as an initial touchstone—but going much deeper—the article employs an applied liberal arts methodology to establish a time-minded attitude toward communication. Applying perspectives from both classical philosophy (specifically Plato and Aristotle) as well as twentieth century rhetoricians (specifically Richard Weaver, James Kinneavy, and Walter Beale), this article celebrates both physical and metaphysical structures of reality. To this end, it proposes a theoretical (...) equation to help calibrate communication management under a more holistic banner. The equation acknowledges the typical appropriateness of occasion-directed communication (kairos); however, it also distinctively acknowledges the grand fabric of temporal reality (chronos). The output of this equation can be understood as the “chronos principle.” The article concludes that a more complete understanding of time-mindedness can elevate empathy, foster respect, and assist social relationality within any given organization’s communication culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:530 BOOK REVIEWS I think none of these books contains a wholly satisfactory treatment of the particular issues it takes up. Taken together, however, they do show that evil presents not just one but many problems to reflective religious minds. In addition, they make it perfectly evident that not just one but many academic disciplines continue to have helpful things to say in response to these gripping perplexities. University (...) of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana PHILIP L. QUINN Di,alogue with the Other: The Inter-religious Dialogue. By DAVID TRACY. Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs, 1. Louvain : Peeters; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990. Pp. 123. $12.95. With this book David Tracy continues the hermeneutical project he launched in the Analogical Imagination: a concern to converse with the classics and to encounter the ' other '. However, here the ' other ' is extended beyond the traditional Western classics to the religions of the world and the often neglected archaic traditions. Tracy is surely correct when he says: " I believe that we are fast approaching the day when it will not be possible to attempt Christian systematic theology except in serious conversation with the other great ways" (p. xi). Here he follows a pioneering line drawn in Chicago by Tillich, Eliade and Kitagawa. Tracy brings to this venerable tradition his particular concern with hermeneutics and his experience with Jewish-Christian and Buddhist-Christian dialogue. The essays are further united by Tracy's desire to restore the unity between the mystical and prophetic within the Christian tradition. Employing Kenneth Burke's analysis of rhetoric, Chapter one shows that Freud and Lacan can be interpreted in terms of a clash of prophetic and mystical rhetorics respectively. Both are concerned with the ' other ', Freud more instrumentally and didactically and Lacan more subversively and anarchically but not nihilistically or in the way of Zen. In this chapter Tracy has a tendency towards overdetermination. Still, the brunt of his argument is that all discourse has concealed foundations, the archaeology of which will help illuminate the opera· tive rhetoric. Furthermore, the mystical/prophetic typology used in religion can illuminate secular issues, viz., the debate between Freud and Lacan. However, Tracy does not pay full attention to the nature of the 'other', but too easily assimilates it. For instance, is Freud's attention to the subconscious analogous to religious rhetoric's regarding the otherness of God? And does it really serve Tracy's purpose to start BOOK REVIEWS 531 the book by remammg within such very western waters despite the brave navigational direction he charted in the introduction? Chapter two revisits the classics: he uses the writings of William James to throw light on the criteria for interreligious dialogue. These criteria are used to affirm the authenticity of religions; these are not intended to " replace the dialogue but, at best, heuristically to inform it" (p. 27). Tracy offers a good and sensitive appreciation of James (despite his anachronistic elements), but his conclusions are somewhat thinly related to James's work and relate more closely to Tracy's own hermeneutical approach. The three criteria that he advances are: first, the notion of " immediate luminousness," understood as manifestation in a Heideggerian sense (and in keeping with von Balthasar) ; second, the necessity of coherence, understood as the compatibility of religious belief with science, art, and other humanistic traditions; and third, an ethical-pragmatic criterion related to James's notion of "fruits." With regard to the second, Tracy is aware of the problem of assuming a neutral form of "reason" in adjudicating such coherence. Still, his study would have been more helpful with specific examples to highlight some of the intractable problems in such a task. For instance, autonomy has been granted to the sciences by most western Christians but has not been by some other religious traditions in certain parts of the world, and so the notion of coherence begs the question. Tracy needs to grapple with the issues raised by Macintyre and Winch (among others) to move beyond the potentially sterile dichotomy implied in his notion of coherence. With regard to the third criterion there is question begging, too. Would Abraham have passed this test in his willingness to kill his son? Or... (shrink)