In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Love, Lust, and Sex: A Christian Perspective John Berthrong Boston University School of Theology Prologue When I was assigned the topic of love and sex (and I decided to add lust/desire as the link between the two), I immediately consulted with a number of my colleagues at the Boston University School of Theology.1 The response of my (...) colleagues was uniform. Representing different theological disciplines and denominational backgrounds, they noted that the answer as to the Christian perspective on sex was simple: don't; but if you do, be sure not to enjoy it. If this seems a vast and hasty overgeneralization, please consult Mark Jordan's new book (2002) on Christian sexual ethics to see that this confident and consistent rejection of sex and pleasure has been the dominant and main position for the entire history of the cumulative Christian tradition.2 As Clifford Bishop has noted, the West has held "a wounded body" in ambiguous embrace as chronicled by the history of its written discourse and artistic representation of sex.3 Once my colleagues had delivered this ironic teaching, they did go on to give me good advice as to how to grapple with the topic, as well as to wish me well in the attempt.I then decided to take solace in Daoism, often a good idea for a despondent Christian with strong Confucian tendencies, but came across this quote from Livia Kohn's new study of the tradition: "Anyone who commits debauchery and indulges in sex will suffer from insanity. Having passed through this, he will be born among the sows and boars."4 So much for differences between Daoism and Christianity—though I should point out that Kohn blames Buddhist influence for such a retrograde teaching. One wonders what will happen to women who act in a similar fashion. However, I was cheered in my search when I read the great Tiantai master Zhiyi's account of the matter: "It is like fighting bandits. Bandits are the root of glory; it is because a general is able to destroy bandits that he attains fame and reward. Infinite lust is a seed of the Tathagata in just the same way. It makes the bodhisattvas come up with an infinite number of Dharma-ages in response."5According to Mark Heim, Dante had a slightly more charitable view: "Lust is a type of shared sin; at its best, and so long as it remains a sin of incontinence only, there is mutuality in it and exchange."6 At least Dante thought we were in it together. [End Page 3] Moving on to a history of early modern Christian views of sex, which makes sense because this is probably the set of views that informs the modern period as well, I discovered why mainstream Christians were so concerned about the proper teaching of sexual ethics when I read the following: "... as the Ranters in seventeenth-century England proclaim, 'What act soever is done by thee in light and love, is light and lovely, thought it be called adultery....No matter what Scripture, saints, or churches say, if that within thee do not condemn thee, thou shalt not be condemned.'"7If Daoists, Buddhists, and early modern Christians all agree and then disagree, then this is serious business indeed.Then I started to read about the contemporary history of sex, which I discovered was born, with a vengeance, about the same time as the new theology of dialogue, circa 1970. Even the scholarly, and hence most serious in tone, literature on sex is vast.8 I commend it to anyone who is not convinced that we have lived through and probably are still experiencing a new paradigm shift in the Christian worldview. My thesis is that the worldview transformation is the imaginative articulation of the shifting social grounds that have cried out for a new ethics of sex.9 But perhaps things are not so simple. Does the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s demand a new worldview or did... (shrink)

A number of psychologists hold that aggression is a basic instinct, meaning that it is a primitive drive and therefore cannot be derived from, or decomposed into, other drives. The truth is that aggression is not a basic drive. Desire for power is a basic drive, and aggression is what results when that desire is frustrated.

ABSTRACT Is a scientific attitude to the natural world an obstacle to an appreciation of its value? This paper argues that it is not. Following Aristotle and Marx, it maintains that, properly pursued, science has value because it enables us to contemplate that which is wonderful and beautiful. However, the paper concedes that, as actually practised, science can foster a vice described by Augustine as ‘the lust of the eyes’: knowledge is sought not to open us to the world, (...) but merely to satisfy the itch of curiosity. If scientific knowledge is thus pursued, no limits to the means to it nor to its objects are recognised. Those who thus seek knowledge fail to understand its value. (shrink)

Intriguing, and occasionally unsettling, In Defense of Sin is a refreshingly frank exploration of some real facts of life. Portmann gathers an on-target collection of great writers on transgressions large and small. Read about defenses for promiscuity, greed, deceit, gossip, lust, breaking the golden rule, and more--and use this unusual guide to decide for yourself if sin has a place in our contemporary, and virtually unshockable, society. Provocative and illuminating, this book may change how you think about sin, morality, (...) and what's right. Contributors include Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, Anthony Ellis, Jane English, Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, Bernard Mandeville, Jerome Neu, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Novitz, Joyce Carol Oates, David A.J. Richards, Seneca, Jonathan Swift, Richard Wasserstrom, and Oscar Wilde. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cause, Fault, NormJohn Z. Sadler (bio)Keywordscriminality, mental disorder, responsibilityThanks to the commentators for their fine work. In my brief comments I cannot address all that is raised, but can touch upon everyone’s discussion briefly.In her commentary, Gwen Adshead reflects on her experience as a forensic psychiatrist and therapist for violent offenders. Although Adshead discusses a number of important points, I found her insight into why some vices find their (...) way into psychiatric classification particularly compelling and thought provoking. I will here interpret these in my own terms. Dr. Adshead implies that a (perhaps) assumed folk psychology underlies our motivation to classify (as disorder) some, but not all vices. The contribution of this folk psychology does not depend on particular details, but rather, the folk psychology concerns the degree to which the vice–actor’s actions are amenable to explanation, or are transparently understandable or interpretable. We (think we) understand why prostitutes sell themselves and why tax evaders cheat; their folk psychologies are variously constituted by moralistic constructs like desperation, oppression, licentiousness, greed, opportunism, and indignation. In contrast, some offenses step outside our empathic realm: the pedophile, or the serial killer, or even the persistently acting-out child provoke onlookers to wonder, “There has to be something wrong with a person who does that!” “Loud” symptoms in themselves do not qualify; seemingly incomprehensible loud symptoms fit better into the “sick” category. Indeed, in a recent translation of Foucault’s lectures at the College de France, Foucault describes the “monster” as combining “the impossible and the forbidden.” (Foucault 1999, 56) When confronted with the impossible and forbidden, the lust for classification is irresistible.Adshead’s wonderment about the use of “really” to question the explanation of wrongful conduct (what’s “really” going on) leads naturally to Michael First’s discussion. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV really tries to make a firm distinction between vice and mental disorder, and First describes the DSM approach.Drawing on his experience as the DSM-IV Text Editor, Dr. First provides a particularly lucid presentation of the distinction between what I call “vice” and mental disorder. He supplies vivid examples to illustrate his points. The DSM key for distinguishing disorder from vice is whether “the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual.” As other commentators point out later, First notes that the “vice action” (a term coined by Morse in his own commentary following) may disguise a number of possible explanations: the car thief may simply be seeking thrills and profit, or may be motivated by a delusion—leading to alternative explanations for the behavior. Sometimes the explanation for vice actions are transparent—as in the red Mustang example, but other times they are not so clear. The DSM approach requires the clinician to [End Page 51] make an explanatory claim in order to distinguish the appearance of vice versus the appearance of disorder. I think everyone would agree that an explanation of the phenomenon is required in distinguishing vice from disorder, so that much can be accepted.In my view, the problems with the DSM account are three: (1) The requirement for an internal psychological dysfunction is an easy claim to make for virtually any vice condition. The prostitute’s vice may be attributable to childhood trauma, deviant social learning, pathological desire to sexually control others, and so on. The tax evader may in turn have a pathological resentment of authority combined with a desperate financial situation and a pathological denial and avoidance of paying taxes. Every misbehavior has its psychology, and if we proclaim this psychology is abnormal or deviant, then we have an “internal dysfunction.” Indeed, it is easy to proclaim a psychology as abnormal if it is less than an ideal response to circumstances, or even an adequate response to circumstances; after all, not everyone who is exposed to sexual trauma becomes a prostitute nor does every financially desperate individual cheat on taxes. The DSM’s overinclusiveness on this account defaults to an arbitrariness about what counts as a legitimate (or not) internal dysfunction. Here there will be great argument.(2) First (and later, Wells) admits there... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:564 BOOK REVIEWS illuminating re-examination of the category of inwardness in Kierkegaard 's writings. The majority of the essays in the hook are similarly suggestive and will prove rewarding and interesting reading-they echo the aim and gift, share by Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, of "making their readers thinkers" (xvi). University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia M. JAMIE FERREIRA Let the Future Come. By WILFRED DESAN. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987. (...) Pp. 152. $9.95 (paper). Toward a lust Social Order. By DEREK L. PHILLIPS. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Pp. 434. $12.50. After several decades of doldrum thinking, social ethics, i.e., personal and political ethics done on the same canvas, is undergoing a welcome renewal. Perhaps spurred by the growing awareness of the massive problems of our tiny planet, thinkers from diverse areas are beginning to offer what the social sciences call "grand theory." Both Desan and Phillips make valuable contributions to this project and represent the best levels of refleotion from the teleological and deontological perspectives respectively. Desan's essay is the final volume of three, hut may be read independently of the earlier studies, discussed by this reviewer in 1973 in The Thomist (Vol. 37, pp. 249-255). If Desan has a core concept for his thinking it is planetary peace and the human individual as gardener and guardian of this admittedly future state of affairs. Phillips, critically inheriting the Anglo-American rights tradition, focuses on the person, not the planet, on the distinctiveness of the part, not on Desan's projeotion of a whole humanum composed of parts (each a member of the human community yet only a member). The metaphysical background here, then, is the whole-of-parts versus parts·of-awhole dialectic. Read together the two works would truly stimulate a graduate ethics seminar, for we see the renewal of ethical,thinking against some classical ontological themes. For Desan, the person is homo custos, self-aware becoming otheraware ; for Phillips, the person is the source and enactor of rights. He offers heavy criticism of the virtue/community school's orientation towards the common good of society, with subsidiary private rights located within that context. This is the weakest part of his massive survey of recent ethics. Phillips simply cannot see the reality of human community, which is exactly what Desan is determined to project as BOOK REVIEWS 565 our only possible future. Desan's combination of Thomism and Hegel stands to the far side of Phillips's Lockean stress on private rights as the base criterion for any future just public order. We will look first at Desan's final effort to summarize a notion of " planetary " existence that will be valid both individually and communally and then turn to Phillips's detailed, Rawls-like approach. Desan's argument against the primacy of the individual over the world community was carefully nuanced in his two earlier volumes; he has no intention of denigrating the person in order to celebrate the planet, and he is no partisan of the " deep ecology " effort to elevate nature above the sub-category human nature. His planet is social and political, a cosmic existent dependent upon specifically human activitynot individual activity at either the personal or national levels but activity at the level of the total earth population. He is not so much detailing yet another agenda for a New World Order as he is striving to raise modern individualized consciousness to a height where the reality of interdependency is rationally undeniable. Desan's appreciative critique of Husserl's individualized consciousness in his first volume, A Noetic Prelude to a United World, displayed the plight of personalized consciousness as against planetary awareness. In this final panel of his triptych, he synthesizes that critique: "Where the individual Observer is the magister, there are as many worlds as there are magistri." This privatized existence is not to be denied but rather seen for what it is: a limit instead of a secure startpoint for either ethical or epistemological theory. His second volume stressed that our very awareness of this limitation gives rise, perhaps in a Hegelian dialectic, to potential for participation in global existence. To resist this cooperative... (shrink)

Respon'sible, liable to be called to account or render satisfaction: answerable: capable of discharging duty: able to pay. The old Chambers's dictionary gives a behavioristic view of responsibility: in terms of action, not thought or belief. “Lust in the heart” is not equated to lust in flagrante. It is this view I shall explore in this essay, rather than the more subjective notion of moral responsibility, as in, “I feel moral responsibility for not doing anything to save the (...) Tutsis [Hutus, ethnic Albanians, etc.].” My presumption is that responsibility implies capability: you cannot be held responsible for something over which you have no control. There is obviously uncertainty in some cases—where control is less than total, where the degree of potential control depends on our own efforts, where we cannot know if we have control until we try to exert it, etc. The relation between responsibility and degree of control is a separate topic which I shall not treat here. (shrink)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1799 edition. Excerpt:... chapter viii. discipline' of the heart. One of the first steps to be taken, if you would have a character that will stand by you in prosperity and in adversity, in life and death, is to fortify your mind, with fixed principles. There is no period of (...) life in which the heart is so much inclined to scepticism and infidelity as in youth. Not that young men are infidels, but the mind is tossed from doubt to doubt, like a light boat leaping from wave to wave. There is no positive settling down into deism or infidelity, but the heart is full of doubting, so that the mind has no position, in morals or religion, fortified. If the restraints of education are so far thrown off as to allow you to indulge in sin, Which is in any way disgraceful if known, you will then easily become an infidel. "The nurse of infidelity is sensuality. The young are sensual. The Bible stands in their way. It prohibits the indulgence of ' the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.' But the young mind loves these things, and therefore it hates the Bible, which prohibits them. It is prepared to say, ' If any man will bring me arguments against the Bible, I will thank him; if not, I will invent them.' As to infidel arguments, there is no weight in them. They are jejune and refuted. Infidela are not themselves convinced by them. What sort of men are infidels? They are loose, fierce, overbearing men. There is nothing in them like sober and serious inquiry. They are the wildest fanatics on earth. Nor have they agreed among themselves on any scheme of truth and felicity. Look at the needs and necessities of man. 'Every pang of grief tells a man he needs a helper; but infidelity provides none. And what can its schemes do for you in death?' Examine your... (shrink)

This collection - assembled by the author in 1995 - includes all his articles then published that he thought worthy of preserving. Contents. 1. Hutcheson, Hume and the Ontology of Morals. (1985) - A critique of David Norton's 1982 book David Hume - Common Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician. 2. Hume, Spencer and the Standard of Morals. (1983) 3. Egoism and Rigorism: Spencer's Resolution of a Moral Paradox. (1995) - not previously published. 4. On distinguishing between Love and Lust. (1977) (...) 5. Love and Lust revisited: Intentionality, Homosexuality and Moral Education. (1988) - A critique of aspects of Roger Scruton's 1986 book Sexual Desire. 6. In Defence of Gay Lessons. (1988) 7. Homosexuality and Education: a reply to Jim Ferguson. (1990) 8. The Two Minds of Roger Scruton. (1991) 9. Public Schools, Private Privilege and Common Sense. (1985) - A defence of independent education. 10. Was Hume's Natural History of Religion inspired by Mandeville's Fable of the Bees Part II? (1995). The clear textual parallels here noted were not noticed by Tom Beauchamp in his 2007 text of NHR for the Clarendon Edition of Hume's works. (shrink)

Sometimes emotions excuse. Fear and anger, for example, sometimes excuse under the headings of (respectively) duress and provocation. Although most legal systems draw the line at this point, the list of potentially excusatory emotions outside the law seems to be longer. One can readily imagine cases in which, for example, grief or despair could be cited as part of a case for relaxing or even eliminating our negative verdicts on those who performed admittedly unjustified wrongs. To be sure, the availability (...) of such excuses depends on what wrong one is trying to excuse. No excuse is available in respect of all wrongs. Some wrongs, indeed, are inexcusable. This throws up the interesting question of what makes a particular emotion apt to excuse a particular wrong. Why is fear, for example, more apt to excuse more serious wrongs than, say, pride or shame? This question leads naturally to another. Why are some emotions, such as lust, greed, and envy, apparently not apt to furnish any excuses at all? Can one not be overcome by them? Can they not drive one to wrongdoing as readily as fear and grief? Or is that not the point? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume on Tranquillizing the Passions John Immerwahr Borrowingafragmentfrom thelyric poetArchilochus, Sir IsaiahBerlin once divided thinkers into two categories: foxes, who know many things; and hedgehogs, who know only one, "one big thing."1 Although Berlin does not include Hume in either list, it is tempting to put him with the foxes. Indeed, Hume's corpus is brilliantly eclectic, ranging with equal facility over an impressive array of seemingly diverse subjects (...) such as epistemology, ethics, political science, religion, psychology, history, criticism, economics, and demography. Many of Hume's admirers have not even attempted to find a unity here, and Hume's less generous critics have attributed this diversity to an incessant hunger for "literary fame" which supposedly led Hume from topic to topic, always searching for popular acclaim and recognition.2 The dazzling diversity of Hume's thinking has obscured some important underlying themes; Hume is more of a hedgehog than he initially appears. At the centre of many of Hume's discussions is a recurring conviction about the nature of human well-being and the means to obtain it. This insistence—which can be found in each stage ofHume's career and in writings on virtually every topic—provides one way of finding an overarching unity to his thought and invites us to rethink some ofthe conventional wisdom about Hume. In this essay I argue that many of Hume's investigations are informed by his early distinction between calm and violent passions. Wherever we turn we find Hume insisting that people arehappiest and governments are most stable when emotional calmness prevails. Hume alsohas astrategy, which Icall "moderation through opposition," which is designedto"tranquillize and soften"the passions.3 This strategy also becomes a stylistic principle which informs Hume's own writing, especially his popular works. This essay begins with a brief discussion of the calm/violent distinction itself. I then sketch out the role ofcalm passions in Hume's treatment of rationality, happiness, morality, politics and religion. Next I turn from Hume's diagnosis to his proposed cure, and discuss the strategy that Hume presents for enhancing the calm passions; indeed, Hume's writing style itselfis often designed to implement this strategy. I then discuss the context of Hume's insight, arguing that while it grows out of a cosmopolitan continental paradigm of using Volume XVIII Number 2 293 JOHN IMMERWAHR passions to oppose passions, Hume's own use ofit is tailored to rather specific features of the political and intellectual life of eighteenth centuryEdinburgh. The essay concludesby discussingthe implications of these findings for reading ofHume's works. Passions: Calm and Violent One characteristic feature of the thinkers of the "Scottish Enlightenment" was a desire tofound moral concepts in a scientific and empirical understanding ofhuman nature, rather than upon abstract conceptions of virtue and justice.4 These thinkers were particularly interestedin non-cognitivistelements ofhuman nature, such as"taste," "sentiment" and the "passions,"5 and they were also interested in discriminatingamongthe feelings and passions to discover those which were most beneficial to the individual or society. One Scottish philosopher who was particularly influential upon Hume in this connection was Francis Hutcheson. In discussing the passions, Hutcheson distinguished between what he called the "calm desire of good" and the "particular passions towards objects immediately presented to the senses." Hutcheson noted that these calm desires were frequently powerful enough to conquer particular passions such as "lust or revenge."6 The calm passions are thus very important to our understanding ofhuman motivation. As in so many other things, Hume also appears to be influenced by Hutcheson on the existence and importance of "calm passions." Early in Treatise 2, Hume expands on Hutcheson's idea that our experience ofan emotion or passion can be described as either "calm" or "violent"7 (also "soft" or "tender," "rough" or "fierce").8 The main difference between calmness and violence has to do with the intensity with which a passion is experienced. When we experience violent passions we feel an "uneasiness" (T 418) and sometimes "disorders and agitations" (E 17).9 Other passions are "calm" in that they cause "no disorder in the soul" and "little emotion in the mind" (T 417).10 Hume's main point is that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"EVERY MARITAL ACT OUGHT TO BE OPEN TO NEW LIFE'': TOWARD A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING I. INTRODUCTION NE FREQUENTLY encounters misinterpretations of the statement " Every marital act ought to be open to new life " and similar statements in recent Catholic teaching concerning contraception.1 There are two common misinterpretations. One is: No couple may engage in marital intercourse without the intention to procreate. The other is: No couple may (...) engage in marital intercourse at times when they think procreation is impossible. As interpretations of the Church's teaching, these must be mistaken. For the Church teaches that contraception is always wrong and that natural family planning (NFP) is not always wrong. But NFP facilitates intercourse without the intention to procreate at times when procreation is thought to be impossible. Moreover, the Church has never taught that marital intercourse is good only if the couple desires to procreate; indeed, couples known to be sterile have never been forbidden to marry. We think that the only plausible interpretation of "Every marital act ought to be open to new life" is: It is wrong for those who engage in marital intercourse to attempt to impede the transmission of life which they think their act otherwise might bring about. For if they do try to impede that to which their act of itself might lead, they choose to close it to new life. 1 The proposition is formulated somewhat differently by Paul VI, Humanae vitae, 11, AAS 60 (1968), 488 (with references to Gasti connubii and to Pius XII's.Allocution to the Society of Italian Catholic Midwives); and by John Paul II, Familiaris consortia, 29, AAS 74 (1982), 115, following proposition 22 of the 1980 session of the Synod of Bishops. Moreover, the different formulations also are translated diversely. We do not think these differences matter for our present purpose. 365 366 GRISEZ, BOYLE, FINNIS AND MAY Un.derstood in this way, "Every marital act ought to be open to new life" expresses the same proposition as " Contraception is always wrong." Nevertheless, the affirmative formulation helps to clarify what contraception is, for it indicates the precise object of the contraceptive act. "Contraception" signifies only the prevention of conception, but the contraceptive act seeks to impede the beginning of the Zife of a possible person. The distinction is only conceptual, but we think it important, for the explicit reference to new life calls attention to the fact that contraception is a contralife act. The characterization of contraception as a oontralife act is one major element of the unbroken Christian tradition condemning contraception as always wrong. For example, a canon, Si aliquis, concerning contraception was included in the Church's universal law from the thirteenth century until 1917: " I£ anyone for the sake of fulfilling sexual desire or with premediated hatred does something to a man or to a woman, or gives something to drink, so that he cannot generate, or she cannot conceive, or offspring be born, let it be held as homicide." 2 This canon does not say that contraception is homicide ; the tradition made no such mistake. The canon rather says that contraception sihould be regarded as homicide is regarded. To regard contraception as homicide is regarded is not only to make it clear that.contraception is wrong, but also to point to its being contralife as the reason why it is wrong. When contraception is regarded as contralife, it is seen as evil outside marriage as well as within. Historically, contraception probably was more common among the unmarried than the married, and much of the tradition condemned contraception without distinguishing between its uses in and outside mar2 Deoret. Greg. IX, lib. V, tit. 12, cap. v; Oorpus iuris oanonioi, ed. A. L. Richter and A. Friedberg (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1881), 2, 794: "Si aliquis causa explendae libidinis vel odii meditatione homini aut mulieri aliquid fecerit, vel ad potandum dederit, ut non possit generare, aut concipere, vel nasci soboles, ut homicida. tenea.tur." Some transla.te "ca.usa explendae libidinis," which is broad enough to cover all motivation by sexual impulse, "to satisfy lust," which unnecessarily limits the motive to habitual vice. " OPEN TO NEW LIFE " 367 riage. But. Casti oonnubii dealt with contraception... (shrink)

This paper argues that Locke offers qualified support for male-male intimacy. While one can find denunciations of sodomy and ‘debauchery’ in his work, these claims are embedded in a natural and divine law framework that did not formally specify how to define much less morally characterize these actions. At the very least, Locke makes it difficult to strictly condemn sodomy or other homosexual acts as inherently immoral. This paper will explore three areas of interest: 1) Locke’s Paraphrases of the Pauline (...) epistles in which he argues that Paul’s interest in sexuality concerns temple idolatry rather than a trans-generational sexual ethic; 2) the empirical terms in which he appears to reject the viability of sodomy and his interest in native sexual practices show that he tolerated alternative conjugal frameworks; and 3) the curious case of his own sexuality, the passionate letters he shared with close male friends suggest that sexual obligations to society were not permanent and that as one ages alternative forms of love may be permitted. (shrink)

This is a book that we would enthusiastically recommend to those who unconditionally believe in the epistemologically or politically unproblematic character of organisational research. Carl Rhodes, once an employee of the Boston Consulting Group, now researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney, has written a small yet important book about academic writing on organisation. It has appeared in a small but interesting collection called Advances in Organization Studies that is edited by Stewart Clegg and Alfred Kieser and published by (...) class='Hi'>John Benjamins. Rhodes’ book resonates well with developed traditions in narrative and storytelling approaches to management and organisation studies. Such traditions have approached organisational knowledge from a narrative perspective1 and used narrative and literary methods to understand organisations.2 More specifically, Rhodes both draws on and contributes to an understanding of the relationship between narrative and power3 and to using multiple interpretations and representations in research.4 However, although we would argue that it is possible to identify Rhodes’ position in the field, ‘summing up’ in his own terms what he has to say is not easy. His central point seems to be that conclusively singular representations, perhaps including the one that we give here, are problematical from both an ethical and political perspective. One may be tempted to discard this as yet another postmodernist frivolity, but we would suggest that what writers and researchers in organisation studies, and the social sciences more generally, might get from this work is an increased sensitivity to the ethics of their writing practices. We intend in this review essay not so much to provide the reader with a neat survey of Rhodes’ book as to build further on some of its ideas. And in doing so, we will highlight its philosophical underpinnings not only because we think that these are especially interesting for the readers of this journal but also because we think that some of them are problematical. We have tried to provide a fairly neutral reconstruction of Rhodes’ argument in the first three sections below, and from the fourth section onwards — ‘authorless writing’ — we question some of Rhodes’ assumptions and ideas. While we are enthused by the questions raised in this book and indeed by the way the overall argument is presented, we will also claim that in places he seems to succumb to an anti-realist and anti-authoritarian position that we regard as unnecessarily radical. (shrink)

Augustinian Just War Theory and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: Confessions, Contentions and the Lust for Power,edited by Craig J. N. de Paulo, Senior Editor, et al. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011. Details: A work concerning Augustine’s influence on Christian just war theory and the rhetoric of just war theorists from two symposia in addition to an Augustinian critique of the wars. Preface by Most Rev. Sean Cardinal O’ Malley, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Boston. Foreword by Roland (...) J. Teske, S.J. Chapter One is a brief history of Augustine’s influence on the theory. Chapter Two includes a transcript of a symposium on the topic that includes the following distinguished contributors: Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., John D. Caputo, Most Rev. Edwin Cardinal O’Brien, Ambassador Thomas Melady, Col. Jack Jacobs, Dr. Joseph Hagan. Chapter Three includes a transcript of a colloquium on the topic that includes the following distinguished scholars and contributors: Joseph Margolis, Frederick Van Fleteren, Brian Kane, et al. (Advance Praise by James J. O’Donnell and Arthur Waldron.). (shrink)

In Being John Malkovich, the first of Charlie Kaufman's screenplays to be made into a feature film, the protagonist, Craig Schwartz , finds a portal into the body of actor John Malkovich , allowing him to inhabit it for fifteen minutes. Craig describes the experience to his sexy and condescending coworker Maxine , whom he lusts after: "It raises all sorts of philosophical-type questions, you know ... about the nature of self, about the existence of a soul You (...) know, am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? I had a piece of wood in my hand, Maxine. I don't have it any more. Where is it? Did it disappear? How could that be? Is it still in Malkovich's head? I don't know! Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is? I don't see how I could go on living my life the way I've lived it before." Kaufman's film does indeed raise "philosophical-type questions" about the nature of self, including: what kind of self could possibly make this journey? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hannah Arendt and Theology by John KiessGregory WilliamsHannah Arendt and Theology John Kiess NEW YORK: BLOOMSBURY T&T CLARK, 2016. XI 1 249 PP. $21.99Of the great secular Jewish thinkers of the mid-twentieth century, none has occasioned quite so much recent attention among Christian theologians as Hannah Arendt. Arendt's popularity is due to a number of factors, not least of which is the ongoing revival of Augustine's (...) thought in political theology, and it is unlikely to subside any time soon. This is why John Kiess's most recent volume, Hannah Arendt and Theology, is of importance to the field of Christian ethics.After providing an intellectual biography of Arendt, the bulk of Kiess's text is devoted to the key loci that theological authors have highlighted in her work, [End Page 210] specifically her concepts of evil, citizenship, action, and thinking. In writing about each of these, Kiess articulates the ways in which theologians have underestimated Arendt. For example, in defending Arendt vis-à-vis Eric Gregory, Kiess argues that "Arendt points to a kind of love that Augustine appears to have overlooked, one which, if falling short of the love of God and neighbor, reaches higher than the love of self to the good of what is common to all" (121).At the same time, Kiess also points out the places where Arendt underestimates Christian theology. Possibly his biggest critique is that, in arguing that the evils of totalitarianism not only transcend but completely "break" traditional definitions of evil, Arendt assumes tradition to be a static article passed on intact from one generation to the next. Against this view, Kiess holds up Alasdair MacIntyre's definition of a tradition as an ongoing argument and shows how Arendt's efforts actually demonstrate the way traditions operate dynamically in contexts of ongoing crisis.Both of these examples also point to broader metaethical questions. In particular, Kiess's statement that Augustine "overlooked" the existence of a nonsalvific love that still rises above the level of the lust for domination that constitutes the telos of the earthly city, or even the love of human glory that gives rise to its greatest virtues, seems to elide the fact that neither Augustine nor his contemporary interpreters have simply forgotten about such a possibility; rather, a chief insight of Augustinian political thought is to deny it. This is precisely why Augustine, as Kiess notes, "longed for a more transformative founding" than Arendt does in her stress on human natality (178). Kiess, it seems, wants to have it both ways on this point. Either the loves of the earthly city can amount to something more than an ethics domination or glory, in which case Augustine's doubts about the founding of political entities based on those loves is overly pessimistic, or the loves and the goods of the earthly and heavenly cities are incommensurable, in which case Arendt's amor mundi, however noble its outcomes, is not immune to the degradations of the earthly city as a whole and must be regarded as one more penultimate earthly virtue.This brings us back to the question of tradition. For all his emphasis on how Arendt exemplifies the dynamism and responsiveness of traditions, Kiess never actually specifies to which tradition Arendt belonged. To put it bluntly, he does not treat it as relevant that Arendt was not a Christian. While she is an extensive and extremely helpful commentator on the Christian theological tradition, she wrote as a critic and an outsider. We can expect certain basic differences between Arendt and her Christian interlocutors to remain irresolvable because that is the nature of interreligious difference. That does not mean, however, that dialogue is not fruitful, and it is because of this that Kiess's text is, and is likely to remain, extremely generative. [End Page 211]Gregory WilliamsDuke UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In 1955 John Harsanyi proved a remarkable theorem that connects general good with the personal good of individuals. This chapter interprets Harsanyi’s theorem. It explains the meaning of its conclusion, the way it links together intrapersonal and interpersonal aggregation, and in particular the link it makes between the value of avoiding risk and the value of avoiding inequality between people. It explains how the theorem connects prioritarianism with risk avoidance and utilitarianism with risk neutrality. It sets out the theorem’s (...) premises and assesses the various objections that have been made to them. Finally, it considers how far Harsanyi’s theorem gives support to utilitarianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHARITY LOST: TBE SECtJLA'.RIZATfON OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT IN THE JUST-WAR TRADITION TIMOTHY M. RENICK Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 0 N AUGUST 12, 1945, the city of Hiroshima still smoldered, and President Harry Truman addressed the American people : We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who have attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American (...) prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war.1 Truman and his military advisers had made a calculation. Japan was preparing for a last-ditch defense of the Japanese Islands. The prospect was ominous, to say the least. The United States had suffered eighty thousand casualties in the taking of the smaller and less protected Okinawa just two months earlier; 120,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed (and only ten-thousand taken prisoner). Strategists estimated that losses, both military and civilian, from a full scale battle for Japan itself would exceed one million. Surely the tens of thousands killed by exploding a bomb over Hiroshima was the lesser evil. Surely this was a proportionate act : fifty thousand lives traded for a million. As Winston Churchill wrote in support of Truman's decision: "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery... at the cost of a few explosions seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance." 2 1 Michael Walzer, lust and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p.164. 2 Ibid., pp. 266-267. 441 442 TIMOTHY M. RENICK From an ethical perspective, however, the act was anything but a deliverance. I am not alone in this assessment. Advocates of the just-war tradition including Elizabeth Anscombe, Paul Ramsey, George Kennan, John Langan, and Michael Walzer have condemned the bombing of Hiroshima by means of a shared just-war argument.8 The argument goes as follows, and it is a good one. In times of war, many actions are likely to have both good and evil effects. One destroys an enemy's munitions factory (good effect) but kills an innocent child in the process (evil effect). The jus in bello of the just-war tradition, however, stipulates that an action which has a " double effect " is permissible if and only if: ( 1) it is discriminate (i.e., the actor aims only at the good effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good); and (2) it is proportionate (i.e., the good created by the act outweighs the bad).4 Now, the argument continues, Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima failed the first criterion. It was not a discriminate act because the evil effect (the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians) was not unintended. In fact, the evil was the very means to the good end. Although Truman himself claimed to have selected Hiroshima as a target because it was "a war s See, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Decision," in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1981); M. Walzer "Supreme Emergency," in Just and Unjust Wars; and John Langan, "The American Hierarchy and Nuclear Weapons," Theological Studies 43 (1982) : 447-467. ' I utilize here a helpful shorthand version of the principle of double effect introduced by Paul Ramsey in War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1961). More frequently, the principle is rendered by means of four criteria: It is permissible to perform an act likely to have evil consequences if and only if (I) the act is good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) the direct effect is morally justified; (3) the actor aims only at the acceptable effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good ; and (4) there is in the good effect a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. The shortened version of the theory captures all components essential to my discussion and enhances clarity. I thus will make use of it throughout this essay. CHARITY AND... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dune(s)Michel Pierssens, co-founder of SubStance (bio)Any great work of art, be it literary or otherwise, is made of intricate enigmas that admit infinite solutions, indifferent to their content, true or false, since no one holds the key (or Occam style razor) to judge, not even its author. In the best of cases, indeed, the author has produced his œuvre precisely to confront the unknown and face the deadly monsters (...) that make the labyrinths worth exploring in the first place. The reader of the work, or watcher of the painting or film, cannot escape the perilous attraction of the cognitive maelstrom he, hesitantly or trustfully, enters at his own risk. Every word or stroke on canvas or chord or instant shutter of the camera or unending gros plan may hide unexpected doors to impossible worlds, each of them possible nonetheless. Love, hate, crime, lust, power, etc.: every facet of human experience can become scary or exciting forces to be faced, for just an instant or for an inconclusive lifelong struggle. Time is possibly the most intractable of those forces as only unconceivable gods can make of it their plaything. Similar to the desert planet of Frank Herbert's Dune, it harbors unpredictable monsters that destroy anything that moves—unless one learns to dance in an equally unpredictable fashion, winning a reprieve only to end up inescapably a fatality, having met the unavoidable fatum.SubStance has been travelling a much populated and cacophonic desert for fifty years, maintaining, despite the times' ubuesque twists and turns, its acrobatic démarche and tracing its empirical path through the intellectual dunes of two or three generations, collecting as it went many stimulating spices that it shared, avoiding its sale to the highest academic bidder. Editing a journal cannot be compared to the creation of a work of art, but it partakes in its aspiration to question the Known and face the Unknown, with the support of an army of minds devoted to the intriguing study of any cognitive coup de dés. [End Page 13]Michel Pierssens Michel Pierssens is co-founder of SubStance, with Sydney Lévy, and co-founder of the journal Histoires littéraires. He is Emeritus Professor of French literature, Université de Montréal.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2003 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesFrances S. AdeneyThe 2003 meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held in Atlanta, Georgia, 21-22 November 2003. This year's theme was "Overcoming Greed: Christians and Buddhists in a Consumeristic Culture." During the first session panelists Paula Cooey, Valerie Karras, and John Cobb, whose paper was read by Jay McDaniel, presented Christian views and Stephanie Kaza gave a Buddhist (...) response. The second session mirrored the first with panelists Kenneth Kraft, David Barnhill, and Judith Simmer-Brown presenting Buddhist views on the theme and Paul Knitter responded with a Christian analysis.Cooey began the discussion by outlining her thesis that overcoming greed depends on overcoming fear. She asserted that people buy out of fear thus perpetuating a system of greed. The consequences of fear support the cultural myth of upward mobility—there is no way to go but up. The exploitation of fear then produces goods benefiting those at the top of the economic system. This system also produces consequences for human rights as cultural fear leads to laws that thwart due process, for example, the Patriot Act.An alternative Christian view understands desire to be culturally produced—sin upsets the natural order; God redeems. Christian transformation requires dissent against the underlying greed that supports the cultural system.Christianity arose as a movement of dissent, a countercultural movement. That trajectory of dissent has continued through the centuries. Although early Calvinists were noted for linking personal wealth with election, the Mennonites and Anabaptists created better models for practicing dissent. Those communities are based in an economy of grace, supported by an underlying ethic of the ability to give as a gift of grace. This economy, for Christians, is mediated by Jesus of Nazareth and allows for transformation toward becoming greedy for God.Valerie Karras illumined the differences in Christian traditions by her analysis of the difference in anthropology between Eastern and Western Christian theologies. The community model of Eastern Christianity is hostile to the individualism of Western consumerism. Instead, in this model, greed is recognized as a fallen passion, the consequence of separation from God. The two aspects of greed in this view are [End Page 231] acquisitive lust: the desire for control, and desire for the physical acquisition of things.Karras used Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom as examples of theologians that criticized the rich and encouraged Christians to use their wealth for the poor. In this view, overcoming greed involves a spiritual process. Virtue can be cultivated by a proper use of wealth, which in itself has no moral content. It is the misuse of wealth that indicates deeper spiritual problems. Some of those spiritual problems can be alleviated by asceticism: celibacy, almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. Such exercises can provide a means to master the vices—greed, in this case, being the vice at hand.John Cobb's paper argued that a theology of consumerism is deeply embedded in our culture. That theology runs counter to traditional Western Christian teaching that consuming more deprives others. The question one must ask is, Does consumption enhance or detract from the common good? Traditional arguments that too much consumption deprives others were rendered obsolete by the industrial revolution. The new problem is how can demand keep up with production. The argument here is that increased consumption benefits others by preventing downturns in the economy.Unfortunately, Cobb argues, the spiritual costs to this pattern of consumption are tremendous. A class of exploited peasants now produces more goods, but has a better society been created? Increasing poverty in two-thirds of the world, global warming, dehumanizing advertising, and the unsustainability of keeping production at current levels press the issue. Human survival depends on changing consumption patterns. The elite must be forced to give up control and we must recover and emphasize the traditional Christian interpretation of greed as a cardinal sin.To accomplish this, Cobb recommends rejecting consumerism in our personal lives, developing local sustainability projects, and demonstrating another world possibility—another way to live that leads to human flourishing. Buddhist and Christian emphases on overcoming consumerism are complimentary and together can make possible the deep changes that are... (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is an undisputed giant of twentieth-century philosophy. His intellectual writings popularizing existentialism combined with his creative and artistic flair have made him a legend of French thought. His tumultuous personal life - so inextricably bound up with his philosophical thinking - is a fascinating tale of love and lust, drug abuse, high profile fallings-out and political and cultural rebellion. This substantial and meticulously researched biography is accessible, fast-paced, often amusing and at times deeply moving. Existentialism and Excess (...) covers all the main events of Sartre's remarkable seventy-five-year life from his early years as a precocious brat devouring his grandfather's library, through his time as a brilliant student in Paris, his wilderness years as a provincial teacher-writer experimenting with mescaline, his World War II adventures as a POW and member of the resistance, his post-war politicization, his immense amphetamine fueled feats of writing productivity, his harem of women, his many travels and his final decline into blindness and old age. Along the way there are countless intriguing anecdotes, some amusing, some tragic, some controversial: his loathing of crustaceans and his belief that he was being pursued by a giant lobster, his escape from a POW camp, the bombing of his apartment, his influence on the May 1968 uprising and his many love affairs. Cox deftly moves from these episodes to discussing his intellectual development, his famous feuds with Aron, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty, his encounters with other giant figures of his day: Roosevelt, Hemingway, Heidegger, John Huston, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, Khrushchev and Tito, and, above all, his long, complex and creative relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. Existentialism and Excess also gives serious consideration to Sartre's ideas and many philosophical works, novels, stories, plays and biographies, revealing their intimate connection with his personal life. Cox has written an entertaining, thought-provoking and compulsive book, much like the man himself. (shrink)

This book encapsulates John Beebe’s influential work on the analytical psychology of consciousness. Building on C. G. Jung’s theory of psychological types and on subsequent clarifications by Marie-Louise von Franz and Isabel Briggs Myers, Beebe demonstrates the bond between the eight types of consciousness Jung named and the archetypal complexes that impart energy and purpose to our emotions, fantasies, and dreams. For this collection, Beebe has revised and updated his most influential and significant previously published papers and has introduced, (...) in a brand new chapter, a surprising theory of type and culture. Beebe’s model enables readers to take what they already know about psychological types and apply it to depth psychology. The insights contained in the fifteen chapters of this book will be especially valuable for Jungian psychotherapists, post-Jungian academics and scholars, psychological type practitioners, and type enthusiasts. (shrink)

This presidential address to the Society for Business Ethics argues that business ethics rests upon the mistaken assumption thatteaching and research in the field ought to aim at the incorporation of ethics into managerial decision making. An alternative to this Moral Manager Model is a Moral Market Model, in which the aim is to develop markets that produce ethical outcomes. The differencesbetween the two models are discussed with reference to the themes of responsibility, participation, and relationships.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Overcoming Greed:An Eastern Christian Perspective1Valerie A. KarrasAs an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I have chosen to approach the topic of "overcoming greed" from an Eastern Christian perspective, relying particularly on the writings of some of the early theologians of the Greek East. It is not coincidental either that laissez-faire capitalism arose in the Western Christian world, or that the first strongholds of communism developed in Eastern European, traditionally Orthodox, countries. (...) Both phenomena speak to an intrinsic difference in the way in which human beings are conceived as relating to the world and to each other, both personally and communally.The traditional Eastern Christian model of the human person as not simply caretaker of creation, but fundamentally as a mediator uniting all aspects of creation in humanity's own nature,2 has led historically to a general lack of interest in exploiting creation (in fact, the worst environmental problems in the Orthodox world occurred in countries after they came under totalitarian communist domination). Similarly, the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on the relational, and even communal, nature of salvation created an environment hostile to the individualist, exploitative model upon which modern Western economics has been founded (this has been rapidly changing in post-communist Eastern European countries and Russia, however).The Eastern Church identifies this phenomenon of exploitative and abusive relationships toward nature and other persons as a consequence of the fallen condition of humanity, that is, humanity as it currently exists, in a state where our natural communion with God has been ruptured. In this context, Christianity in general and Eastern Christianity in particular recognize greed as one of the passions (equivalent to what Buddhism describes as "cravings") that are part of our fallen human nature, a consequence of our separation from God. Some of the passions are primarily physical in nature, others emotional or psychic, but in fact virtually all passions are a combination of the two.Greed, a passion of both soul and body that is endemic to our current existence, is typical of this understanding. There are two aspects to the vice of greed: (1) the emotional or spiritual dimension, that is, the acquisitive lust that usually betokens either a deep-seated insecurity or, worse, a desire for power and control; and (2) the [End Page 47] external, physical manifestations of greed in the actual acquisition of things, often to the detriment or exploitation of others. Eastern Christian writings attempt to work on both dimensions of the passion of greed, especially the spiritual, while often distinguishing between greed (a moral vice) and wealth (an amoral condition).This article will focus on two early church theologians, Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom. In particular, it will focus on their biblical exegeses of two pertinent New Testament passages: Jesus' conversation with a young righteous scholar of the Mosaic Law and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, respectively. Finally, I will suggest that, for Orthodox Christians, an important key to overcoming greed is disciplined asceticism, to be practiced by all persons and not simply by monks and nuns. Asceticism—the exercise of control over the passions through fasting, prayer, chastity (understood differently for married and unmarried persons), and almsgiving—is the vehicle by which to cultivate an attitude of apatheia or passionlessness, the Christian equivalent of the Buddhist ideal of detachment.Clement was a philosopher-theologian who headed the great Christian catechetical school in Alexandria in the late second century C.E. In his treatise Who IstheRich ManWhoWill Be Saved? 3 Clement mused on the spiritual and soteriological dimensions of greed by reflecting on Jesus' encounter with the wealthy young "lawyer," that is, scholar of the Mosaic Law, who questioned Jesus on how to acquire eternal life. In his response, the young man showed himself righteous in his adherence to the demands of the law, but ultimately unwilling to commit all of himself by giving away his property, even though Jesus said that it was the price to inherit eternal life.Clement pondered whether it were therefore possible for anyone wealthy to be saved, given Jesus' declaration that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man... (shrink)

This book shows otherwise. John Martin rehabilitates Neoplatonism, founded by Plotinus and brought into Christianity by St. Augustine.

Sequence on modern ontology -- From theology to philosophy -- The four pillars of modern philosophy -- Modern philosophy : a theological critique -- Analogy versus univocity -- Identity versus representation -- Intentionality and embodiment -- Intentionality and selfhood -- Reason and the incarnation of the logos -- The passivity of modern reason -- The baroque simulation of cosmic order -- Deconstructed representation and beyond -- Passivity and concursus -- Representation in philosophy -- Actualism versus possibilism -- Influence versus concurrence (...) -- Transition -- Sequence on political ontology -- Cosmos, law and morality -- Metaphysics and modern politics -- The fate of the rational animal -- The irony of representation -- On legal concurrence -- The fate of the social animal -- Representation and mixed government -- Bureaucracy and the formal distinction -- Form, matter and contract -- The antiquity of historicism -- The sovereignty of the artist -- Eucharistic creativity and political power -- The conundrum of kingship -- The truth of political fiction -- The two rival constructions -- Creativity and mixed constitution -- Christological constitutionalism -- The fate of the fabricating animal -- The fate of the beast-angel -- The death of charity -- Augustine's three cities -- Church as cosmopolis -- Aquinas and kingship -- The theology of ruling -- The ecumenico-political problem -- Supernatural charity and global order -- Socialism beyond the left -- Critique of all materialisms. (shrink)

David Marr's three-level method for completely understanding a cognitive system and the importance he attaches to the computational level are so familiar as to scarcely need repeating. Fewer seem to recognize that Marr defends his famous method by criticizing the “reductionistic approach.” This sets up a more interesting relationship between Marr and reductionism than is usually acknowledged. I argue that Marr was correct in his criticism of the reductionists of his time—they were only describing, not explaining. But a careful metascientific (...) account of reductionistic neuroscience over the past two decades reveals that Marr's criticisms no longer have force. Contemporary neuroscience now explains cognition directly, although in a fashion—causal-mechanistically—quite different than Marr recommended. So while Marr was correct to reject the reductionism of his day and offer an alternative method for genuinely explaining cognition, contemporary cognitive scientists now owe us a new defense of Marr's famous method and the advantages of its explanations over the type now pursued successfully in current reductionist neuroscience. There are familiar reasons for thinking that this debt will not be paid easily. (shrink)

Logical Options introduces the extensions and alternatives to classical logic which are most discussed in the philosophical literature: many-sorted logic, second-order logic, modal logics, intuitionistic logic, three-valued logic, fuzzy logic, and free logic. Each logic is introduced with a brief description of some aspect of its philosophical significance, and wherever possible semantic and proof methods are employed to facilitate comparison of the various systems. The book is designed to be useful for philosophy students and professional philosophers who have learned some (...) classical first-order logic and would like to learn about other logics important to their philosophical work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Essays on Happiness John Immerwahr The second volume of Hume's Essays, Moral and Political (1742) includes a set offour pieces on the sects, that naturally form themselves in the world. These essays, "The Epicurean," "The Stoic," "The Platonist," and "The Sceptic,"refer to the ancient philosophical schools, but their main purpose, according to Hume, is to describe four different ideas ofhuman life and ofhappiness. There is little discussion (...) ofthese works in the Hume literature, but Hume himself seemed to be rather fond of them. Although several early essays were dropped from later editions, this set reappears in every version of the Essays. Hume also invested unusual care in crafting these essays, "polishingthe sentences with such precision," according to Green and Grose, "that the subsequent editions made scarcely an alteration in their language." In this article I will argue that these essays do play a significant role in Hume's overall philosophical strategy, and that a close reading ofthem helps us fill out important aspects of Hume's moral philosophy. An Attractive Reading of the Four Essays In one of the few detailed discussions of these essays, Robert Fogelin presents one reading that has a good deal of initial plausibility. Fogelin's interpretation has several main points. First, he dismisses the importance of the first three essays and asserts that "despite certain particular points of agreement," these essays are "not expressive ofHume's own position." Secondly, he argues that the final essay, "The Sceptic," does represent Hume's own position, and that in this essay Hume presents himself"under the thinnest possible disguise." In effect, Fogelin'sinterpretation is that"The Sceptic"canbe profitably readinisolationfrom the first three. Finally, Fogelin sees "The Sceptic" as having roughly the same function as the Treatise ofHuman Nature. He sees "The Sceptic" as another technical philosophical work where Hume tries, in a somewhat different way, to work out the relationship between scepticism, morality, and the passions. It is not hard to see what makes this type of interpretation plausible. On stylistic grounds alone, there are reasons to dismiss the first three essays and focus attention primarily on "The Sceptic." The first three are quite brief and are written in a rhetorical and flowery style, whereas "The Sceptic" is longer (as long as the other three essays combined) and returns to Hume's normal prose style. Substantively, Volume XV Number 2 307 JOHN IMMERWAHR there are many doctrines in "The Sceptic" which, as Fogelin correctly points out, are reminiscent of Hume's other philosophical works. An Alternative Reading Despite the plausibility of this reading, I will defend an alternative interpretation. First, I will argue that the essays are intended to be read as a set. The four essays constitute a philosophical dialogue that consists offour closely related speeches; it is misleading to read one of the speeches out of the context of the dialogue as a whole. Secondly, I will try to show that none of the speakers represents Hume's own position. From Hume's point of view, all of the speeches make important points but also contain significant errors. Finally, I will argue that the purpose of these popular essays is different from the goal of technical philosophical works such as the Treatise. While the Treatise is intended to describe and analyze human nature, the purpose ofthese essays is therapeutic rather than analytic; they are designed to change rather than to inform the reader. In the next three sections I discuss these claims in detail. I. Hume's First Dialogue Taken together, the four essays can be read as Hume's first (but by no means last) effort in dialogue writing. The evidence that they were intended by Hume as a dialogue is drawn from what Hume says about them, from internal evidence, and from a comparison with their classical model, the dialogues of Cicero. For the most part, Hume wanted his readers to see his Essays as stand-alone pieces. In the Advertisement for the first volume Hume warns his readers that they must not look for any Connexion among these Essays, but must consider each ofthem as a Work apart. But both in the Advertisement to the second volume (where... (shrink)

This chapter traces Carl Schmitt’s attempt, in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political, to quell the near civil war circumstances of the late Weimar Republic and to reinvigorate the sovereignty of the German state through a reappropriation of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy. The chapter then examines Schmitt’s reconsideration of the Hobbesian state, and his own recent reformulation of it, in light of the rise of the “Third Reich,” with particular reference to Schmitt’s 1938 book The Leviathan in the (...) State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Emotions, Values, and the Law brings together ten of John Deigh's essays written over the past fifteen years. In the first five essays, Deigh ask questions about the nature of emotions and the relation of evaluative judgment to the intentionality of emotions, and critically examines the cognitivist theories of emotion that have dominated philosophy and psychology over the past thirty years. A central criticism of these theories is that they do not satisfactorily account for the emotions of babies or (...) animals other than human beings. Drawing on this criticism, Deigh develops an alternative theory of the intentionality of emotions on which the education of emotions explains how human emotions, which innately contain no evaluative thought, come to have evaluative judgments as their principal cognitive component. The second group of five essays challenge the idea of the voluntary as essential to understanding moral responsibility, moral commitment, political obligation, and other moral and political phenomena that have traditionally been thought to depend on people's will. Each of these studies focuses on a different aspect of our common moral and political life and shows, contrary to conventional opinion, that it does not depend on voluntary action or the exercise of a will constituted solely by rational thought. Together, the essays in this collection represent an effort to shift our understanding of the phenomena traditionally studied in moral and political philosophy from that of their being products of reason and will, operating independently of feeling and sentiment to that of their being manifestations of the work of emotion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Autonomy is foundational to ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and it has been closely associated with argumentation. What is curious about autonomy is that it has traditionally been explained in terms of reasoning and argument: autonomy involves reasoning because, standardly, someone who’s autonomous is one who thinks things through, who has reasons for their actions. Autonomy regards argument because to respect the autonomy of someone who thinks things through, one must offer them reasons, that is, argue with them. (...) One common thought is that provided one’s arguments meet certain criteria (e.g., they’re not sophistries or clever manipulations), then argument respects autonomy. But is this really so? No. Properly understood, argument is a kind of paternalism, for to argue with someone means to enter into and manage their stream of reasons, the very things that account for their autonomy. (shrink)

We study when classes can have the disjoint amalgamation property for a proper initial segment of cardinals. Theorem A For every natural number k, there is a class $K_k $ defined by a sentence in $L_{\omega 1.\omega } $ that has no models of cardinality greater than $ \supset _{k - 1} $ , but $K_k $ has the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to $\mathfrak{N}_{k - 3} $ and has models of cardinality $\mathfrak{N}_{k (...) - 1} $ . More strongly, we can have disjoint amalgamation up to $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ for α > ω, but have a bound on size of models. Theorem B For every countable ordinal a, there is a class $K_\alpha $ defined by a sentence in $L_{\omega 1.\omega } $ that has no models of cardinality greater than $ \supset _{\omega 1} $ , but K does have the disjoint amalgamation property on models of cardinality less than or equal to $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ . Finally we show that we can extend the $\mathfrak{N}_\alpha $ to $ \supset _\alpha $ in the second theorem consistently with ZFC and while having $\mathfrak{N}_i \ll \supset _i $ for 0 > i < α. Similar results hold for arbitrary ordinals α with |α|= K and $L_{k + ,\omega } $. (shrink)

Studie over leven en werk van de Engelse wijsgeer en opvoedkundige (1632-1704).

This second set of papers by John Rist is concerned with attempts by (mostly pagan) thinkers in Greco-Roman antiquity to understand the nature of morality against a background of wide-ranging debate about the relationship between soul and body and the necessity for a correct psychology and physiology if the 'good life for man' is to be revealed. Three papers are on Plato, whose elaborate mix of ethics, psychology and metaphysics sets the stage for most of the debate; one is (...) on Aristotle, five are on the Stoics and five on Plotinus. A further study deals with the general problem of the relationship between ethics, cosmology and biology, and the series concludes with the crisis among both pagans and Christians in late antiquity over whether man is naturally good enough to correct his own moral weakness. The set of difficulties recognised by Plato has now found a disturbing conclusion. (shrink)

John Wilson; Relativism and Teaching, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 89–96, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1986.

Henry at Work invites readers to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard—surveying land, running his family’s pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond—and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions. And (...) his ideas about work have much to teach us in an age of remote work and automation, when many people are reconsidering what kind of working lives they want to have. -/- Through Thoreau, readers will discover a philosophy of work in the office, factory, lumber mill, and grocery store, and reflect on the rhythms of the workday, the joys and risks of resigning oneself to work, the dubious promises of labor-saving technology, and that most vital and eternal of philosophical questions, “How much do I get paid?” In ten chapters, including “Manual Work,” “Machine Work,” and “Meaningless Work,” this personal, urgent, practical, and compassionate book introduces readers to their new favorite coworker: Henry David Thoreau. (shrink)