_De regimine Christiano_, produced at the height of the great conflict of 1296-1303 between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France, is a detailed and rigorous defence of the papacy’s claim to supremacy even in temporal matters.

James of Viterbo OESA,, let us only one political treatise, the De regimine christiano,, writen during the climax of the conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France,, in which, among other subjects, he also explained how must be the behavior of the king, under a religious-ethical perspective. The main theme of the XIV Congress of Medieval Philosophy: Continuity and discontinuities, allows to explain about this matter and to check that it well corresponds the whises of (...) some societies and peoples of our time. Thus, according the Doctor Gratiosus’ sight, we will discuss about the king’s duties to God, to himself and to his subjects. (shrink)

In this study, based in the main political works of D. Fr. Alvarus Pelagius O. Min. (c. 1270- c.1350) we analyze his conception on the origin or efficient cause of the spiritual power and, also, his thought about the finality or final cause of the mentioned power. Referring to the first topic, the Bishop of Silves wants principally refutes some Marsilius of Padua’s thesis contained in the Second Dictio of his Defensor Pacis, completely different of the theology of the catholic (...) priesthood and their hierarchic degrees and the Peter’s Primacy. With this purpose, ad litteram, he bases, between other sources, specially, in James’ of Viterbo OSA De regimine christiano (1301). Concerning the finality of the spiritual power, on the one hand, Alvarus supports the Church’s traditional thought about this matter and, the other hand, by consequence, as member and defender of the hierocratic thought, he defends the thesis according which, in the Societas Christiana, the priests, the bishops and, principally, the Roman Pontiff hold the most important position concerning the secular rulers. (shrink)

Neste estudo, com base nos principais escritos políticos de D. Frei Álvaro Pais O. Min. (c. 1270-c. 1350) analisamos sua concepção a respeito da origem ou causa eficiente do poder espiritual e, igualmente, seu pensamento no tocante à finalidade ou causa final do referido poder. Quanto ao primeiro tópico, o Bispo de Silves quer principalmente refutar algumas das teses de Marsílio de Pádua contidas na 2.ª Parte do seu Defensor da Paz, completamente opostas à teologia do sacerdócio católico e seus (...) graus hierárquicos e à do Primado Petrino. Para tanto, quase literalmente, haure-se, entre outras fontes, particularmente no De regimine christiano (1301) de Tiago de Viterbo OSA. Com respeito à finalidade do poder sacerdotal, de um lado, Álvaro sustenta a doutrina tradicional da Igreja a seu respeito e, de outro, em conseqüência, como partidário da hierocracia, defende a tese de que na, Societas Christiana, os detentores do poder espiritual, particularmente o Sumo Pontífice, ocupam uma posição mais eminente em relação aos governantes seculares. (shrink)

El motivo central de la Teoría Crítica de la Escuela de Francfort fue el concepto de dialéctica de la Ilustración. Pero la amenaza de un mundo completamente administrado por el impulso de una racionalidad formal se vuelve asimismo hacia las instancias críticas: ¿dónde puede hallarse el criterio independiente capaz de desvelar, por contraste, la mecánica del avasallamiento total de la modernización? La Teoría Crítica lo buscó a la vez en el espíritu moral de una Ilustración humanista y en el horizonte (...) del movimiento comunista internacional liderado por la URSS. Esta balance se truncó trágicamente ante la evidencia de la perversión soviética del contenido humano del socialismo revolucionario. La extrema ambigüedad que esta situación produjo en la lógica del pensamiento de la Teoría Crítica, extiende sus consecuencias hasta un presente que asiste a la exclusión forzada de todo proyecto fehacientemente revolucionario del panorama político occidental. (shrink)

IN HIS System des transzendentalen Idealismus, Schelling describes the philosophy of art as the “key stone” of the entire “arch” of the system. The purpose of the following essay is to explore why this is so, why Schelling’s idea of philosophy led him to take up the question of “art” not only as philosophically interesting, but as the key to understanding his system as a whole.

Why does one theory "succeed" while another, possibly clearer interpretation, fails? By exploring two observationally equivalent yet conceptually incompatible views of quantum mechanics, James T. Cushing shows how historical contingency can be crucial to determining a theory's construction and its position among competing views. Since the late 1920s, the theory formulated by Niels Bohr and his colleagues at Copenhagen has been the dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet an alternative interpretation, rooted in the work of Louis de Broglie in (...) the early 1920s and reformulated and extended by David Bohm in the 1950s, equally well explains the observational data. Through a detailed historical and sociological study of the physicists who developed different theories of quantum mechanics, the debates within and between opposing camps, and the receptions given to each theory, Cushing shows that despite the preeminence of the Copenhagen view, the Bohm interpretation cannot be ignored. Cushing contends that the Copenhagen interpretation became widely accepted not because it is a better explanation of subatomic phenomena than is Bohm's, but because it happened to appear first. Focusing on the philosophical, social, and cultural forces that shaped one of the most important developments in modern physics, this provocative book examines the role that timing can play in the establishment of theory and explanation. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i William (...) James”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

Does 'consciousness' exist? -- A world of pure experience -- The thing and its relations -- How two minds can know one thing -- The place of affectional facts in a world of pure experience -- The experience of activity -- The essence of humanism -- La notion de conscience -- Is radical empiricism solipsistic? -- Mr. Pitkin's refutation of 'radical empiricism' -- Humanism and truth once more -- Absolution and empiricism.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat paradoxically famous for his insights into democracy and equality, is one of history’s greatest analysts of American society and politics. His contributions to political theory and sociology are of enduring significance. This book, from one of the world’s leading experts, is a clearly written and accessible introduction to Tocqueville’s social and political theories. Schleifer guides readers through his two major works, Democracy in America (1835/40) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), as well (...) as his working papers, correspondence, and other writings. Schleifer examines Tocqueville’s essential themes and explores the various meanings of his key terms, including equality, democracy, liberty, and revolution. He combines a skillful exposition of Tocqueville’s analysis of the beneficial and harmful consequences of democracy with a crystal clear discussion of his often overlooked economic ideas and social reform proposals. Schleifer traces both the overall unity and the significant changes in Tocqueville’s ideas, demonstrating the complexity and subtlety of his thought and the importance of his legacy. It will be essential reading for all scholars, students, and general readers interested in the history of political thought, political theory, American politics, and sociology. (shrink)

Reissuing works originally published between 1938 and 1993, this set offers a range of scholarship covering Aristotle’s logic, virtues and mathematics as well as a consideration of De Anima and of his work on physics, specifically light. The first two books are in themselves a pair, which investigate the philosopher’s life and his lost works and development of his thought.

In the past 250 years, David Hume probably had a greater impact on the field of philosophy of religion than any other single philosopher. He relentlessly attacked the standard proofs for God's existence, traditional notions of God's nature and divine governance, the connection between morality and religion, and the rationality of belief in miracles. He also advanced radical theories of the origin of religious ideas, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in divine reality. In the last decade of (...) his life Hume wrote 'I cou'd cover the Floor of a large Room with Books and Pamphlets wrote against me'. Indeed, most of these targeted his writings on religion. This, the third part of the Early Responses to Hume series, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited, collects responses to Hume's writings on religion published during his life, namely, 'Of Miracles', 'Of a Particular Providence and a Future State', The Natural History of Religion , and the posthumously published works Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , 'Of Suicide' and 'Of the Immortality of the Soul'. The set covers a wide range of the replies Hume's writings provoked, including contributions by Philip Skelton, William Adams, Thomas Rutherforth, William Warburton, Anthony Ellys, John Douglas, John Leland, Thomas Stona, Voltaire, George Campbell, Herman Andrew Pistorius, Duncan Shaw, William Samuel Powell, Thomas Hayter, Joseph Milner, William Paley, Charles Moore, Richard Joseph Sulivan, John Hey, Samuel Vince, Lord Brougham and Thomas De Quincey. (shrink)

One of the contemporary results of Germany’s memorial conundrum is the rise of its “counter-monuments”: brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being. On the former site of Hamburg’s greatest synagogue, at Bornplatz, Margrit Kahl has assembled an intricate mosaic tracing the complex lines of the synagogue’s roof construction: a palimpsest for a building and community that no longer exist. Norbert Radermacher bathes a guilty landscape in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood with the inscribed light of (...) its past. Alfred Hrdlicka began a monument in Hamburg to counter—and thereby neutralize—an indestructible Nazi monument nearby. In a suburb of Hamburg, Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz have erected a black pillar against fascism and for peace designed to disappear altogether over time. The very heart of Berlin, former site of the gestapo headquarters, remains a great, gaping wound as politicians, artists, and various committees forever debate the most appropriate memorial for this site.4 4. The long-burning debate surrounding projected memorials, to the Gestapo-Gelände in particular, continues to exemplify both the German memorial conundrum and the state’s painstaking attempts to articulate it. For an excellent documentation of the process, see Topographie des Terrors: Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem “Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände,” ed. Reinhard Rürup . For a shorter account, see James E. Young, “The Topography of German Memory,” The Journal of Art 1 : 30. James E. Young is assistant professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation and The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning in Europe, Israel, and America , from which this essay is drawn. He is also the curator of “The Art of Memory,” an exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York. (shrink)

The objective of the present text is to develop a reflection about the value of human life in today’s society bringing into focus the contrasting perspectives of the ordinary and the extraordinary of life. For that purpose, we emphasize the conception of the Catholic Church from the Second Vatican Council that suggests an attitude of a Pilgrim Church which longs for dialogue with human beings in their ordinary life (we intend to rescue the positive sense of the term "ordinary"), in (...) disadvantage of the triumphalist vision which gives priority to the great deeds of history. In that sense, we establish a dialogue with the literal work Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose protagonist Raskolnikov reveals himself through the contemporary dilemma between being and not being extraordinary in the eyes of the society. His moral conscience is tested after a crime he committed. The apex of this revelation takes place after the reading of the Gospel relating to the resurrection of Lazarus shared with Sonia, a flagrant sinner, an ordinary in the eyes of the society represented in the work. In fact, how it happens in the painful passage of Raskolnikov, God makes himself known through the other in borderline situations and we take him into account through the experience which a man of faith realizes when discovering Him to be present. The presence of God in the world is surely not to be understood in the sphere of the extraordinary, what matters is the experience of refuge when we are seduced by the faith. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Mark Bevir’s contention that Foucault is committed to reject autonomy but affirms agency. I argue that Bevir’s claim is extravagant, that (a) Foucault need not reject autonomy, and (b) the rejection of autonomy flies in the face of the emphasis Foucault placed on autonomy in his late work. Central to my argument is the distinction between autonomy as self-sufficiency and autonomy as self-rule. By deploying Harry Frankfurt’s structural account of identification, I show that Foucault’s (...) discussion of autonomy in his late work is best understood as self-rule. Such an interpretation has the virtue of not adopting the counter-intuitive view that Foucault is committed to reject autonomy. By way of conclusion, I explore how such a concept of autonomy as self-rule figures in Foucault’s project of self-formation in his late work. (shrink)

Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion, logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, (...) organized by James Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. (shrink)

Louis Agassiz.--Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord.--Robert Gould Shaw.--Francis Boott.--Thomas Davidson: a knight-errant of the intellectual life.--Herbert Spencer's autobiography.--Frederick Myers' services to psychology.--Final impressions of a psychical researcher.--On some mental effects of the earthquake.--The energies of men.--The moral equivalent of war.--Remarks at the peace banquet.--The social value of the college-bred.--The university and the individual: The Ph.D. octopus. The true Harvard. Stanford's ideal destiny.--A pluralistic mystic.

Recent theories of remembering and of reference (or singular thought) have de-emphasised the role causation was thought to play in mid- to late-twentieth century theorising. According to postcausal theories of remembering, such as simulationism, instances of the psychofunctional kind _remembering_ are not, in principle, dependent on appropriate causal chains running from some event(s) remembered to the occurrence of remembering. Instead they depend only on the reliability, or proper functioning, of the cognitive system responsible for their production. According to broadly reliabilist (...) accounts of _singular thought_, such thought is not, in principle, dependent on causal chains running from the object(s) of thought to the occurrence of thinking. Despite this common trend, accounts of the two phenomena have been pursued separately. In this paper, we argue that the two lines of research can profitably converge to address a neglected question: what enables occurrences of remembering to _refer_ to particular events, and what determines _which_ event a given occurrence of remembering refers to? We motivate and present a reliabilist account of reference-fixing for postcausal theories of remembering, focusing in particular on simulationism. We then show that this account draws attention to the possibility of _referential mnemic confabulation:_ cases where the reliability requirement for reference is met despite the improper functioning of the episodic construction system. We suggest that this makes sense of some underdiscussed phenomena described in the empirical literature on confabulation and argue that our reliabilist account of mnemic reference-fixing accommodates these more naturally than could causal theories of remembering. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that if there is to be a plausible connection between the truth of a de re attitude report about a subject and that subject’s possession of a singular thought, then ‘acquaintance’-style requirements on singular thought must be rejected. I show that this belief rests on poorly motivated claims about how we talk about the attitudes. I offer a framework for propositional attitude reports which provides both attractive solutions to recalcitrant puzzle cases and the key to preserving (...) acquaintance constraints. The upshot is that there is an independently motivated response to the principal argument against acquaintance. (shrink)

Researchers have studied marketing ethics from several perspectives. Few studies, however, have analyzed supervisory reactions to unethical behavior by salespeople. The results of this study using a 2 × 3 factorial design showed that the performance level of the salesperson and the consequences of the salesperson's actions influenced some types of discipline used by a sample of 246 sales managers. The findings both support and contradict prior research on how sales managers respond to unethical sales force behavior.

Hume consideredAn Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals(1751) incomparably the best of all his writings. In the argument advanced here, I propose that Hume's preference for theEnquirymay be linked to his admiration of Cicero, and his work,De Officiis.Cicero's attempt to discover thehonestumof morality inDe Officiishad a particular relevance and appeal for philosophers of the early eighteenth century who were seeking to establish what they called the foundation of morality. One of those philosophers was Francis Hutcheson; his differences with his contemporaries (...) and with Hume are reviewed in the second and third parts of the essay. In the fourth and final section, I examine Hume's attempt to reconcile the foundation of morality, as he under-stood it, the sentiment of humanity, with the principles of utility and agreeableness. And an attempt is made, finally, to explain why Hume's critics (James Balfour, Thomas Reid) perceived Hume'sEnquiryto be the work of an Epicurean and a sceptic. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that in typical cases of singular thought, a thinker stands in an evidential relation to the object of thought suitable for providing knowledge of the object's existence. Furthermore, a thinker may generate representations that purport to refer to particular objects in response to appropriate, though defeasible, evidence of the existence of such an object. I motivate these constraints by considering a number of examples introduced by Robin Jeshion in support of a view she calls ‘cognitivism’ (...) (Jeshion, 2010b). Although I agree with Jeshion that acquaintance is not required for all cases of singular thought, I argue that her account doesn't go far enough in rejecting semantic instrumentalism, the view that we can generate singular thoughts arbitrarily, by manipulating the mechanisms of direct reference. (shrink)

Nietzsche's book On the Genealogy of Morals is often taken to be the high point of his critical project. Many of the positive aspects of Genealogy are often ignored, however, because they are difficult to explain. This article attempts to give an interpretation of the second essay of Genealogy in terms of Nietzsche's concept of will to power. On this basis, the second essay shows itself not to be simply an account of "bad conscience", but rather an account of the (...) development of morality as a whole, and one which shows the beginnings of a normative teaching. /// A obra A Genealogia da Moral é normalmente considerada como o cume do projecto crítico de Nietzsche. A verdade, porém, é que muitos dos aspectos positivos da Genealogia são frequentemente ignorados, pela simples razao de que são difíceis de explicar. O presente artigo pretende dar uma interpretação do segundo ensaio da Genealogia em termos do conceito nietzschiano da vontade de poder. Neste sentido, o segundo ensaio revela ser algo mais do que uma mera narrativa acerca do desenvolvimento da moralidade no seu conjunto, explicação essa que põe a descoberto os inicios de uma doutrina normativa. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the teaching of James of Viterbo on the ontological status of the possibles, and compares his position with those of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines. James holds that possibles are real only in a qualified sense, as objects of God’s power and knowledge. While James appears to have been influenced by Henry in his explanation of divine knowledge of creatures, in his analysis of the possibles he makes no use of Henry’s theory (...) of esse essentiae, and he denies Henry’s claim that divine ideas function as exemplar causes of the possibiles. James’ theory is actually much closer to that of Godfrey, although Godfrey himself was highly critical of James’ teaching. (shrink)

People’s beliefs about their ability to control their emotions predict a range of important psychological outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether these beliefs are playing a causal role, and if so, why this might be. In the current research, we tested whether avoidance-based emotion regulation explains the link between beliefs and psychological outcomes. In Study 1, a perceived lack of control over emotions predicted poorer psychological health outcomes, and avoidance strategies indirectly explained these links between emotion beliefs and psychological (...) health. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated participants’ emotion beliefs by leading participants to believe that they struggled or did not struggle with controlling their emotions. Participants in the low regulatory self-efficacy condition reported increased intentions to engage in avoidance strategies over the next month and were more likely to avoid seeking psychological help. When asked if they would participate in follow-up studies, these participants were also more likely to display avoidance-based emotion regulation. These findings provide initial evidence for the causal role of emotion beliefs in avoidance-based emotion regulation, and document their impact on psychological health-related outcomes. (shrink)

Although Leibniz characterised himself in the “New Essays” as a “Platonic” as opposed to a “Democritean” philosopher, his intellectual relationship with the most famous of the Renaissance Neoplatonists, Marsilio Ficino, has received little attention. Here we review what can be thus far established regarding Leibniz’s acquaintance with portions of Ficino’s Opera omnia of 1576. We compare Ficino’s disenchantment with the atomistic materialism of Lucretius, which he had favoured in his youth, and his turn to Platonism for inspiration, with Leibniz’s own (...) reported disenchantment with Gassendi’s Epicurean atomism and his invention of a vitalistic monadology that, despite Leibniz’s reservations regarding Ficinian magic, resembles Ficinian nature philosophy in number of striking respects. (shrink)

Feminist and socialist movements both aim at emancipation yet have often been at odds. The socialist feminists of the Paris Commune provide one of the few examples in late nineteenth-century Europe of a political movement combining the two. This article offers a new interpretation of the Commune feminists, focusing on the working-class women’s organisation the Union des femmes. We highlight how the Commune feminists articulated the specific form of oppression experienced by working-class women as both women and workers, which consequently (...) required a joint, yet differentiated, struggle to overcome. We explore three aspects of this framework. First, the Commune feminists offered a vision of the transformation of the social through reforms to girls’ education, the family and women’s work. Second, they practised a politics of coalition building by connecting their struggle with those of other oppressed groups, such as male workers, peasants and workers of other nations. Third, these ideas were instantiated in the Union des femmes’ novel proposal for women’s worker co-operatives as part of a socialist re-organisation of the economy. (shrink)

I will argue that 'Continental Philosophy' is an Anglo-American invention. It is 'Pseudo-Continentalism,' no more than a highly selective rendering of Western European Philosophy. Borne out of opposition to the dominance of analytical philosophy in our universities, Pseudo-Continentalism in fact converges with analysis in remarkable ways. Both are advertised as revolutions in thought and both stand over against the tradition of speculative philosophy: both repeat eachother's historical shibboleths about traditional speculative philosophy in respect of the completeness of reason and of (...) reality, the priority of identity and totality, the predetermined fixity of teleology. What this amounts to is a common rejection of a chimera, which in Pseudo-Continental Philosophy is usually called onto-theology or the metaphysics of presence and in the analytic tradition is sometimes called speculative philosophy. Here, indeed, the analytic tradition is moreradical: as I will show, it characteristically rejects any notion of a special kind of activity of actualisation as a feature of the real, whether this is understood as Being, mind, will, the élan vital. Difference, or the impotential. These are the vestiges of the tradition of speculative philosophy that are retained under the rubric of Continental Philosophy. (shrink)

De se exceptionalism is the view, notably championed by Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979), that our characteristically 'first-personal' ways of thinking about ourselves present unique challenges to standard views of propositional attitudes like belief. Though the view has won many adherents, it has recently come under a barrage of deserved criticism. A key claim of detractors is that classic examples used to motivate de se exceptionalism from de se ignorance or misidentification are nothing more than familiar Frege-puzzles, which raise no (...) issues exclusive to self-directed thought. After reviewing how this simple objection has substantial force against the classic defenses of exceptionalism, I provide new arguments based on cases of pure de se ignorance that avoid the criticism. Afterward, I revisit Lewis's defense of exceptionalism, diagnosing how he arrived at roughly the right conclusions on the basis of an argument that begged critical questions and obscured the representationally unique features of the de se. (shrink)

Thought experiments have a long and illustrious history. But in spite of their acknowledged importance, there has until recently been remarkably little said about them. How do they work? Why do they work? What are the different ways in which they work? And above all: How is it possible that just by thinking we can learn something new about the world? This paper surveys some of the recent approaches, including my own , and discusses their various prospects. Chief among the (...) alternatives is John Norton′s “argument” view. The paper ends by drawing attention to some of the outstanding problems in thought experiments. These are some of the issues that will likely be the focus of attention and research in the future. (shrink)

The difference between Derrida and Deleuze has been debated in terms of their understandings and uses of the historical distinction between Being and beings. Daniel W. Smith intersects with the question when discussing transcendence and immanence. Clair Colebrook intersects when discussing materialism. Paul Patton intersects when distinguishing the unconditioned and conditioned. This essay moves along with their ideas, and contributes to the discussion by re-inscribing the debate in terms of nouns and verbs. The conclusion suggests that the noun/verb prism yields (...) a view of the question about Being and beings that fits most easily into Smith’s conception of the relation between Derrida and Deleuze. Thematically, the essay is framed by a line from Derrida’s eulogy for Deleuze, and by a question. The line is Derrida recollecting Deleuze commenting that, "It’s painful for me to see you spending so much time on the College International de Philosophie. I would rather you wrote..." The question addressed to the prolific Derrida and Deleuze is: “How much writing is enough?” Why do individuals with limited time who have already written numerous and thick volumes of philosophy choose to go ahead and write more? (shrink)

As older people begin to develop dementia, we confront ethical questions about when and how to intervene in their increasingly compromised decision-making. The prevailing approach in bioethics to tackling this challenge has been to develop theories of “decision-making capacity” based on the same characteristics that entitle the decisions of moral persons to respect in general. This article argues that this way of thinking about the problem has missed the point. Because the disposition of property is an identity-dependent right, what matters (...) in dementia and decision-making is an individual’s personal identity with their prior self, not their moral personhood. Therefore, in considering when and how we ought to intervene in the decision-making of those with dementia, we must look to the philosophy of personal identity rather than personhood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SPLUTTERING UP THE BEACH TO NINEVEH... James Alison Rio de Janeiro I. Fleeing from the Word Jonah, ifyou remember, was a most unwilling prophet. The word of God came to him, telling him to go and preach against the great city ofNineveh, for its wickedness had come up before God. Jonah immediately went in the opposite direction. Rather than heading across the fertile crescent to Nineveh, he rushed (...) down to Jaffa and booked passage on a ship. Scripture tells us that he went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord (Jon 1,3) Not only was Tarshish quite the wrong way to go, it was a serious attempt to get away from the presence of the Living God. Why was Jonah so frightened? What was it about Nineveh that scared him? We get a clue later, when Jonah gets cross with Nineveh for repenting on cue. He hated Nineveh. He wanted it to be destroyed. He knew it to be wicked. Why go somewhere which should be destroyed and shout at its inhabitants to change their ways? They will probably give the messenger a rough time! Jonah did not appreciate that he was being sent to Nineveh for the good ofthe people there, yes, but also for his own good. At the end ofthe story he tells God that he hadn't wanted to go because he knew God was a loving God, and was too 'This talk originated as a presentation for the third annual conference ofthe Roman Catholic Caucus of the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement held in London in March 1999. James Alison109 angry at the thought that the people ofNineveh would get off so lightly. But we're not told that at this stage. Jonah is the son of Amittai, which is to say son of "My Truth." So the whole story is set up from the beginning as one in which someone who is wedded to their own truth comes to learn God's truth the hard way. He knows what is wrong with the gentile world, but was at first able to hear only half of the word of God. He heard it as he was able to receive it: as a stern word of rebuke that he was to pass on to others. That was the state of his soul. Luckily, God had chosen someone who, invincible as he was in his righteousness, knew perfectly well that it is a terrible thing to fall into the presence ofthe living God, and suspected, at some level ofhis being that if, he, Jonah were to obey God, God would certainly break through the carapace ofordered adhesion to true religion, and come into contact with a much more turbulent, stormy world, the world of shame and fear and hatred that is the underside ofall ordered righteousness. Shame is a compulsion which heeds only one command: flee! And Jonah fled. Thank heaven for Jonah's flight! Think how much more damage is caused by those who are not vulnerable to their own shame, who really do manage to fool themselves that their righteousness and God's are cut from the same cloth. Something in Jonah's being was vulnerable to the suspicion that the word ofthe living God would wreak havoc with his own carefully covered hatred and fear, the suspicion that that hatred ofothers and fear of himselfwere aspects ofthe same as yet unredeemed dimension ofhis own life. In that vulnerability was his flight, and through it, ultimately, he was reached so as to be taught how to be a bearer ofGod's word. Andrew Sullivan has a line which catches this dynamic exactly: "Shame forces you prematurely to run away from yourself; pride forces you prematurely to expose yourself. Most gay lives, I'm afraid, are full of an embarassing abundance ofboth."2 Faced with the prospect ofshouting at an incomprehending Nineveh with the hollow pride of those who love neither themselves nor those whom they must convince, Jonah, who knew at the root ofhis heart that he had been giveln something to say, went, as many of us do, into exile. Shame forced him prematurely to... (shrink)

Philosophy studies the relation between random, routine, and reflective thought and action. It is in essence the reflective study of routine. No one can survive a random world, but a routine world will generate the same randomness it is intended to avoid owing to the inevitable errors associated with routines. The prime function of reflective inquiry is to identify and explain the logical foundation of these errors. While governments depend on strict routine to prevent anarchy, it is only with the (...) maintenance and adaptive revision of those routines that they are able to serve that purpose. Thus philosophy is essential even to preserve routine, aside from facilitating the building of better routines. To advance global understanding philosophers need to use informal means to communicate to all people everywhere the distinction between randomness and routine, and the transcending of routine by reflective study. I add a concluding note of advocacy for UNESCO’s Strategy on Philosophy. (shrink)

Let's begin with an old example. In De Rerum Naturua , Lucretius presented a thought experiment to show that space is infinite. We imagine ourselves near the alleged edge of space; we throw a spear; we see it either sail through the ‘edge’ or we see it bounce back. In the former case the ‘edge’ isn't the edge, after all. In the latter case, there must be something beyond the ‘edge’ that repelled the spear. Either way, the ‘edge’ isn't really (...) an edge of space, after all. So space is infinite. (shrink)

The relationship between perceptual experience and memory can seem to pose a chal- lenge for conceptualism, the thesis that perceptual experiences require the actualization of conceptual capacities. Since subjects can recall features of past experiences for which they lacked corresponding concepts at the time of the original experience, it would seem that a subject’s conceptual capacities do not impose a limit on what he or she can experience perceptually. But this conclusion ignores the fact that concepts can be composed of (...) other simpler concepts that a subject possessed earlier, and that de- monstrative capacities can explain how a subject can experience a particular feature of her environment, even when she lacks a fully general concept for that feature. Using these resources, conceptualism can explain the relation between perceptual experience and memory. Nevertheless, a puzzle remains for the defender of conceptualism. A cer- tain view about the relation between perceptual experience and mental imagery in epi- sodic memory – that imagery in recall matches the experience retained in it – can make it difficult to understand how conceptualism could be true. For if a subject’s conceptual capacities determine what the phenomenology of an experience (or memory of it) is like, then one would expect a perceptual experience and its recall in memory to differ in phenomenology if they involve different concepts. In this essay, I solve this puzzle for conceptualism by undermining the assumption that there is a match between im- agery in episodic memory and the phenomenal character of experience. (shrink)

Summary The career of Jacques-Pierre Brissot (1754–1793) featured two phases, separated dramatically by the Revolution of 1789. Before the revolutionary crisis and the subsequent political struggle that was to cost him his life, Brissot was an avocet who never practised but sought instead a career as a writer—and indeed as a philosophe, seeing himself as an ally of Diderot. The improbability of such an alliance was not lessened by his early and continuing alliance with Linguet. Before embarking in1778 on what (...) would be a prolific career as a published author, Brissot had written the manuscript on which attention is focused here. This is an uncompleted ‘Plan Raisoné’ for a comprehensive sceptical critique of all systematic claims to certainty in knowledge. There is an evident though problematic relationship here with Brissot's 1782 De la vérité, but it is also clear that the influence of Rousseau and Brissot's increasingly radical political outlook must have entailed a widening divergence from the scepticism he had previously extolled—the ‘Pyrrhonism’ that would protect sensible readers against dogmatic absurdity. Death on the scaffold proclaimed certainty, not doubt. (shrink)

While not ignored, the question of the role of mothers in the schema of political rule in Hobbes is not often taken up. Distinct from his contemporaries, Hobbes acknowledges only minimal differences between men and women, and argues that, because maternal protection and nourishment are necessary for its survival, the mother dominates the infant in the state of nature. How to explain that the mother loses this power of domination in the social or political order? Hobbes does not explicitly say. (...) However, some possibilities can be extracted from his texts. -/- Here, I will attempt to explain the loss of maternal power by examining Hobbes's discourse on the different modes of dominion and political rule in "De Cive" and "Leviathan." I will concentrate on their differences, drawing from Yves Charles Zarka's reading of them. Then I will approach the question of the mother and her position in the hierarchy of servitude in each of these texts, appealing to Carole Pateman's analyses as well as Zarka's. Finally, I will present what role the mother's dominion over her children plays in Hobbes's schema. (shrink)

In much of the literature on Hobbes, he is considered a proto-liberal, that is, he is seen as setting up the apparatus that leads to liberalism but his own authoritarian streak makes it impossible for liberals to completely claim him as one of their own. In this paper, I argue that, far from being a precursor to liberalism, Hobbes offers a political theory that is implicitly anti-liberal. I do not mean this in the conventional sense that Hobbes was too conservative (...) for liberalism. On the contrary, I will argue that in his writing, Hobbes evinces a concept of collective interpretation, theories of individualism and the nature and possibilities for democratic politics, that is radical and offers a completely developed alternative to liberalism even as it eschews conservative and reactionary models as well. I focus in particular on the idea of individualism and how the model offered by liberals and conservatives offers far less in terms of individual choice and justice than Hobbes’s own theory does, however paradoxical this may seem. (shrink)

This essay explores quantum physics and theology to propose that ontological randomness does not exist, but divine Providence does. Some interpretations of quantum physics that involve mathematical formalism and observational phenomenology are deterministic (de Broglie-Bohm, many-worlds, cosmological, time-symmetric, many-minds), while others are non-deterministic (Copenhagen, stochastic, objective collapse, transactional). Yet, quantum events are merely epistemically indeterminable by us, but actually do have a fundamental cause. Compatibilism best describes the teaching of the Bible. Humans possess free agency, and are determined by their (...) desires and values. Hence, they can be said to have “free will,” because they do what they want. The fundamental cause, as understood by Compatibilism, is God’s Providence, defined as God’s continual involvement with creation through keeping it existing, cooperating with creation in every action, and directing it to fulfill His purposes. The interaction between quantum physics and Providence suggests methodological parallels between science and theology in a quest for synthesis. (shrink)

As documented in Part I, monogenism, the descent of all human beings from Adam and Eve, was closely linked to the Catholic doctrine of original sin throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Theological reservations about polygenism, the more scientifically supported account of human origins through a transitional population, was brought to a head by Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani generis. Although the encyclical allowed discussion of human evolution, polygenism was prohibited because “It does not appear how such a (...) view can be reconciled with the doctrine of original sin.” Nevertheless, during and after Vatican II de facto theological acceptance of polygenism became commonplace even though the prohibition was not withdrawn. While some modern conceptions of original sin make a reliance upon monogenism unnecessary, another school of thought emphasizes a spiritual rather than a biological understanding of the concept. It remains to be seen whether polygenism can be unanimously accepted as a scientific phenomenon that is not theologically threatening. Reflection on the Vatican’s long period of ambivalence about the motion of the earth suggests that a similar prospect can be foreseen for polygenism even though it is subject to development in a manner that geostasis was not. (shrink)

The Yijing/Binary System Episode involved Leibniz' discovery of a de facto representation of the binary number system in the sixty-four-hexagram Fu Xi "Yijing." Scholars have left the match unexplained, since they have found no evidence of a forgotten binary number system in ancient China. The interesting similarities and differences are discussed between the thought of Leibniz and that of Shao Yong, both of whom, it is argued, understood and recognized the importance of the double geometric progression in the diagram.