Jan-Heiner Tück presents a work that explores the sacramental theology, lived spirituality, and Eucharistic poetry of the Church’s doctor communis, St. Thomas Aquinas. Although Aquinas’ Eucharistic poetry has long occupied an important place in the Church’s liturgical prayer and her repertoire of sacred music, the depth of these poems remains hidden until one grasps the rich sacramental theology underlying it. Consequently, Tück first offers a detailed but approachable primer of Aquinas’ theology of the sacraments, before diving deeply (...) into the Angelic Doctor’s theology and poetry of the Eucharist. The Scriptural accounts stand at the heart of the systematic framework developed by Aquinas, and thus significant attention is devoted to showing the harmony between the accounts of Christ’s passion and the detailed exposition of the Summa theologiae. Moreover, the Eucharistic controversies of the ninth and eleventh centuries provide the contrapuntal context in which Aquinas did his thinking, praying, and writing. Not surprisingly, therefore, the response he crafts to these controversies draws upon both speculative powers and contemplative prayer, brought together in the unity of Aquinas’ theology and spirituality. The net result is a twofold treasure for the Church: a careful systematic presentation of Eucharistic theology and the lived devotional expression of the same in the carefully constructed—and now much beloved—stanzas of Pange lingua gloriosi, Lauda Sion, Adoro te devote, etc. By revealing the lively interplay of the saint’s powerful speculative intellect and a heart steeped in love for the Eucharistic Lord, Tück offers a sophisticated exposition of Aquinas’ Eucharistic poetry and the roots it sinks into a wider theological framework. Finally, the contemporary significance and power of Aquinas’ work is drawn out, not only in the rarefied realm of intellectual inquiry but also in the everyday expanse of ordinary life. (shrink)

Der Eröffnungsband der neuen Reihe „Studien zu Literatur und Religion / Studies on Literature and Religion“ bilanziert das seit einigen Jahren wieder spürbar gewachsene Forschungsinteresse an Religion und Literatur und erörtert an konkreten Beispielen und Schlüsselthemen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart systematische Perspektiven für die zukünftige Forschung. Neben wissenschaftshistorischen Darstellungen widmen sich die Beiträge namhafter Vertreter aus Kultur-, Literatur-, Religionswissenschaft und Theologie Grundfragen u.a. nach Ritualität und Subjektivität, Mimesis und Fiktionalität, aber auch Konfessionalität und Transkulturalität, die Zusammenhänge wie Abgrenzungen (...) von Religion und Literatur deutlich werden lassen. (shrink)

In this study of Robert Boyle's epistemology, Jan W. Wojcik reveals the theological context within which Boyle developed his views on reason's limits. After arguing that a correct interpretation of his views on 'things above reason' depends upon reading his works in the context of theological controversies in seventeenth-century England, Professor Wojcik details exactly how Boyle's three specific categories of things which transcend reason - the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the unsociable - affected his conception of what a natural philosopher (...) could hope to know. Also covered in detail is Boyle's belief that God had deliberately limited the human intellect in order to reserve a full knowledge of both theology and natural philosophy for the afterlife. (shrink)

L’inquiétude de la totalité de la vie, qui s’éveille chez certains esprits, les amène à créer des représentations canoniques, types de vie stylisée et unifiée. Les philosophes sont des créateurs de « canons » de vie philosophique ; mais on peut se demander s’il est possible de dresser un tableau idéal du philosophe qui pourrait lui servir en même temps de norme et de critère. Non, car la vie philosophique est un mouvement, un « acte imparfait » dont la fin (...) nous échappe ; nous la poursuivons par des voies profondément personnelles ; c’est pourquoi on ne saurait « canoniser » un philosophe. (shrink)

This paper deals with Care of the Self under globalization. The first part refers to Johann P. Arnason’s interpretation of Jan Patočka’s work on super-civilization and shows the contradictions facing people in the Modern Era. It suggests that the concept of moderateness is an adequate point of departure for handling the various contradictions of the current epoch. The second part looks at selected aspects of Confucian philosophy in which moderateness, that is, the permanent search for a “middle position” is an (...) integral part of that philosophical tradition. The critical actualisation of Confucianism as proposed for instance by Heiner Roetz is seen as an appropriate way of developing the dialogical characteristics of Confucian philosophy. In the last part it is stressed that critical theory is of relevance when identifying various forms of suffering and because of its ability to understand and critically evaluate diverse cultural and social contexts. (shrink)

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, and engineering sciences and reflect a diversity of philosophical traditions such ...

This book deals with the history of the problem whether or not time can fully exist without the mind. This has been a vital issue in the philosophy of time, with intriguing arguments and solutions, from Aristotle to the present.

Due to the intense selection pressure against inbreeding, humans are expected to possess psychological adaptations that regulate mate choice and avoid inbreeding. From a gene’s-eye perspective, there is little difference in the evolutionary costs between situations where an individual him/herself is participating in inbreeding and inbreeding among other close relatives. The difference is merely quantitative, as fitness can be compromised via both routes. The question is whether humans are sensitive to the direct as well as indirect costs of inbreeding. Using (...) responses from a large population-based sample (27,364 responses from 2,353 participants), we found that human motivations to avoid inbreeding closely track the theoretical costs of inbreeding as predicted by inclusive-fitness theory. Participants were asked to select in a forced choice paradigm, which of two acts of inbreeding with actual family members they would want to avoid most. We found that the estimated fitness costs explained 83.6% of participant choices. Importantly, fitness costs explained choices also when the self was not involved. We conclude that humans intuit the indirect fitness costs of mating decisions made by close family members and that psychological inbreeding avoidance mechanisms extend beyond self-regulation. (shrink)

Studying personal identity, the continuity and sameness of persons across lifetimes, is notoriously difficult and competing conceptualizations exist within philosophy and psychology. Personal reidentification, linking persons between points in time is a fundamental step in allocating merit and blame and assigning rights and privileges. Based on Nozick’s closest continuer theory we develop a theoretical framework that explicitly invites a meaningful empirical approach and offers a constructive, integrative solution to current disputes about appropriate experiments. Following Nozick, reidentification involves judging continuers on (...) a metric of continuity and choosing the continuer with the highest acceptable value on this metric. We explore both the metric and its implications for personal identity. Since James, academic theories have variously attributed personal identity to the continuity of memories, psychology, bodies, social networks, and possessions. In our experiments, we measure how participants weighted the relative contributions of these five dimensions in hypothetical fission accidents, in which a person was split into two continuers. Participants allocated compensation money or adjudicated inheritance claims and reidentified the original person. Most decided based on the continuity of memory, personality, and psychology, with some consideration given to the body and social relations. Importantly, many participants identified the original with both continuers simultaneously, violating the transitivity of identity relations. We discuss the findings and their relevance for philosophy and psychology and place our approach within the current theoretical and empirical landscape. (shrink)

The paper consists of two parts. The first contains the paradox of Truth-teller, i.e. a sentence which asserts own truth. The paradox appears when we apply logic of rejection to the Truth-teller sentence. The Truth-teller paradox is symmetric with respect to the Liar paradox. The second part considers a sentence which asserts own provability. This sentence is unprovable on the base of rejection logic. This leads to counterparts of the Gödel incompleteness theorems and other metamathematical results.

The Access principle places an epistemic restriction on our obligations. This principle falls prey to the ‘Shirker Problem’, namely that shirkers could evade their obligations by evading certain epistemic circumstances. To block this problem, it has been suggested that shirkers have the obligation to learn their obligations. This solution yields a regress, yet it is controversial what the moral of the regress actually is. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, I spell out this intricate dispute. Second, on the (...) basis of my analyses I propose solutions to the Shirker Problem. (shrink)

Is the history of philosophy one of philosophical disciplines? Should not one give up pursuing the traditional history of philosophy on behalf of the history of philosophical culture as a historical discipline? Considerable divergences in defining the history of philosophy and its relation to philosophy and history show profound differences in the views on philosophy itself. The differences are an essential part of the history of philosophy. This paper does not intend to give a critical assessment of all positions that (...) concern the relationship between the history of philosophy and philosophy. We shall address the issue of consequences of historicism that bear on the history of philosophy. The main negative point of reference will R. Rorty\'s standpoint, which is representative of the radical version of historicism. The American neo-pragmatist\'s manners of pursuing philosophy and the relations between them will be submitted to criticism. In the perspective of radical historicism (historical and cultural relativism) the inquiries on the history of philosophy have no strictly philosophical importance. They may be cognitively interesting only from the historical point of view, for the history of culture, to be precise. Moderate historicism does not mean acceptance for the relativistic theory of truth. It makes us reconsider the issue of the difference between true knowledge and adequate knowledge, the difference well-known in tradition. Overcoming radical historicism prepares grounds for the pursuit of the history of philosophy as a philosophical discipline, the discipline that studies the history of philosophical problems in their variability and permanence. (shrink)

Indoctrination is a large and important issue in (not only moral) education. It is considered to be one of the capital pedagogical faults. However, the question is, what does it mean to indoctrinate? Educators from the liberal camp of the educational spectrum have had the tendency to criticize the traditional approach as “indoctrinational.” On the other hand, proponents of the traditional approach object that if indoctrination were defined properly then even the liberal approach would not be immune. This raises two (...) fundamental questions that will be the subject of this study: a) what exactly does it mean to indoctrinate? b) is education without indoctrination even possible? (shrink)

Philip Rosen _Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory_ Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001 ISBN 0-8166-3637-0 445 pp.

Psychoanalysis had a profound influence on formation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. However, at the same time, he rejects Freud’s idea that the unconscious consists of latent mental contents that cause a certain type of behavior. Instead of a hidden experience, Merleau-Ponty argues that the unconscious is an ambiguous consciousness. In The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, he specifies this ambiguity by means of the concepts of habit, bad faith, bodily expression, affective intentionality and body schema. In this paper, (...) I will present the interconnection of these aspects of the human existence, following Merleau-Ponty’s two early major works. Further, I will show the difference of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of bad faith from that of Sartre, and, finally, I will suggest a limitation of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to the unconscious. (shrink)

It will hardly come as a surprise to anybody even only remotely familiar with the general thrust and orientation of ‘Christian ethics’, that the question of euthanasia has been and still is seen in general as a moral disvalue and/or an evil that should be resisted. The bottom line of this approach is the theological notion that human life is a gift of the Creator and therefore a good to be nurtured, promoted and worth protection. Euthanasia, and especially its depenalization (...) and legalization to different degrees in the current laws of the Netherlands and Belgium, is evaluated as contrary to this requirement of protectability. Both during the debate on euthanasia and in reaction to various attempts to legislate on this matter, Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have raised their voices and addressed the public at large, their own members and politicians in order to influence reflection and deliberation.In this article, I will first describe the argumentative way in which the major Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have dealt with what they considered the challenge of the demand to legalize euthanasia in their respective countries. Given the important differences between the courses of events in both countries, the part on the interventions in the Netherlands will be considerably longer than the one on Belgium. No doubt, the most important reason for this difference is the fact that the public discussion on euthanasia together with efforts to change the penal law prohibiting it, took shape in the Netherlands already from 1968 on. Next to this, the fact that the major Christian churches in the Netherlands were not in agreement on the proper approach also contributes to a more differentiated picture. In the third part of this article, I will present some comments and a moral theological evaluation of the core of the argumentation forwarded by the Christian churches. (shrink)

A serious difficulty for theories of consciousness is to go beyond mere correlation between physical processes and experience. Currently, neural workspace and sensorimotor contingency theories are two of the most promising approaches to make any headway here. This paper explores the relation between these two sets of theories. Workspace theories build on large-scale activity within the brain. Sensorimotor theories include external processes in their explanations, stressing the sensorimotor contingencies that arise from our interaction with the environment. Despite the basic differences, (...) we argue that workspace- and sensorimotor theories are complementary rather than competitive. By combining these theories, a number of problems that hamper them individually may be overcome and their strengths combined: Workspace theories have more to offer for explaining how there can be consciousness in the first place, while sensorimotor theories are strong in making sense of the specific phenomenal character of experiences. (shrink)

En rendant compte de la récession économique, les médias se sont surtout penchés sur les effets de la crise sur les pays riches, sans beaucoup se soucier des nombreuses populations qui vivent dans ce qu’on avait coutume d’appeler le tiers-monde. Selon les analyses actuellement en vogue, le fléchissement de ces « économies émergentes » pourrait s’avérer moins grave que prévu. Pourtant, cette perspective, qui se contente d’analyser les répercussions de la crise sur les pays dans leur ensemble, masque l’hétérogénéité de (...) son impact en fonction des classes sociales. En tenant compte de la distribution des revenus, on s’aperçoit que le ralentissement mondial touche de façon disproportionnée les secteurs les plus vulnérables : les immenses cohortes de travailleurs sous-payés, sous-éduqués et privés de ressources qui constituent les strates inférieures surpeuplées de l’économie mondiale.fr. (shrink)

First international contacts between Liberals date back to just after the First World War with the creation of the Liberal World Union in 1924. Regular meetings among Liberals began in 1947 within the Liberal International, which at once published the «Oxford Manifesto» reaffirming basic liberal principles. Among the subjects discussed : the European integration. Another contribution to the European cooperation was made by the Liberal Movement for a United Europe, created by the Belgian liberal leader Roger Motz.At a congress in (...) Stuttgart in March 1976 a Federation of Liberals and Democrats was officially created. Fourteen parties initially joined the Federation, two however dropped out.In November 1976 at a Congress in The Hague, first preparations were made for a European election programme, which was approved in Brussels in November 1977, at the conclusion of a democratie consultation of all parties.This programme maps out a number of liberal ideas on the future cooperation in Europe in various fields of activity. There were no major divergencies between the various member-parties of the Federation.It is identical in its contents for all ELD parties. (shrink)

Biography of the Indian philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950.