This essay comments on the articles by Loretta M. Kopelman and Anita Silvers. It extends their analyses and concludes that consistency and the total absence of conflict may be unavailable when one interprets and applies the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This article, which is an adaptation of a lecture delivered at Villanova University in the Fall of 2015, proposes a reading of Augustine’s Confessions with the assistance of the notions of absorption and theatricality. The very use of those notions is meant to counterbalance the readings generated by our overfamiliarity with Augustinian interiority. By replacing interiority with a concept that, heretofore, is alien to the Augustinian vocabulary, it becomes possible to block facile access to mystical interpretations of conf. on the (...) one hand, and to embark upon the task of reassessing the nature of “confessing” on the other. This new reading demonstrates the difficulties involved in approaching the confessor fully involved in his act of sustained confessing. A comparison is also made with the notion of absorption in the visual arts. Just as spectatordom becomes problematic vis-à-vis a painting whose personae look inward rather than outward, so too the position of the reader vis-à-vis a text whose confessing creator uninterruptedly addresses his Confessee demands a redefinition of the reader’s role and place in the process. (shrink)

Religions; Islam; relations; Christianity; Judaism; Christianity and other religions; Other (Philosophy); religious aspects; Islam.

Polybius II. 39. 9: ο μν λλá γε καί πεр тŵν μφσβηтοтμΈνων πÉрεψαν θηβαîοι καί λακεδαιμόνιοι μόνοις рŵν Έλλήνων Χαιοας, ο πρòς рήν δùναμν ἀποβλÉψανрες, σΧÉδον γαρ λαΧασрην рòрε γεрων έλλήνωνεîΧον рó δÉ πλεαον, εας νήν πασрν καα λην καλοκαγαθααν Strabo VIII.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:M. C. Dillon LOVE IN WOMEN IN LOVE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Despite his sexism, his turgid prose, and his antiquated social conscience, Lawrence is on every bookshelf. This is not merely because of the vicarious erotic entertainment to be found in the saga of John Thomas and Lady Jane, but because Lawrence remains a major guru of romance. We take him seriously, look to him for guidance, measure ourselves (...) against Ursula and Birkin. If he is on our shelves—and his thoughts not far from our pillows—then his ideas starid in need of scrutiny. Women in Love is as much a treatise as a novel: we witness more talking about than making of love. The agon of ideas engulfs the agon of flesh. Hence, the book suits the present purpose. It cannot be taken as Lawrence's definitive statement on love—later works, notably Lady Chatterly's Lover, move in different directions—but it is his most philosophical treatment and, I think, most clearly expresses his conceptual framework, the parameters which define and limit his thinking. What he says about love in Women in Love may therefore illumine his depictions of the behavior of lovers in other works. Lawrence is a romantic. In the popular sense of the word he is one who makes of romance or erotic adventure a dominant life value. Lawrence is also a romantic in another sense insofar as he takes the transcendence or unattainability of the other as essential to the project of loving. These two senses are conceptually compatible but existentially in conflict. That is, if one's major undertaking in life is to seek erotic satisfaction, and if one desires only so long as the object is beyond reach, then one has established the groundwork for continual frustration. This, I will try to show, is what Lawrence has done. I Many writers have tried to bring the ideas implicitly present in and constitutive of romantic love to the level of explicit reflective awareness. 190 M.C.Dillon191 The most successful treatment I know is given by a writer who did not know—or at least did not say—that he was writing about romantic love. Sartre purports to reveal the inner structures of love itself—the unqualified, unrestricted essence of love. As I have tried to show elsewhere,1 he fails at this. But he succeeds admirably in unveiling the inner contradictions of romantic love. Our project here is to draw upon Sartre's insights: first, to develop a conception of romantic love, and then to discern the model of Eros which informs Women in Love. The key idea in romantic love is transcendence. Something is transcendent when it is beyond me, when I cannot adequately prehend it conceptually or master it with my will. The role of transcendence in romantic love is demonstrated clearly in Denis de Rougemont's book on Love in the Western World.2 There he shows that Tristan's passion for Iseult is directly proportional to her distance from him: he is increasingly attracted as she becomes further removed. On the other hand, when through various deeds of gallantry and subterfuge, he succeeds in winning her to his side, he loses interest and must create circumstances which put her again beyond his reach. The culmination of romantic love, according to de Rougemont, is death—it sets the other absolutely beyond reach. It also arrests and preserves at their apices the youth and beauty of the lovers and the intensity of the erotic relationship. It is, I believe, this complex of ideas that led Kierkegaard to this cynical reflection on the nature of romantic love: "When two beings fall in love with one another and begin to suspect that they were made for each other, it is time to have the courage to break it off; for by going on they have everything to lose and nothing to gain."3 The same idea, qualified by increased optimism, underlies Stendhal's notion of crystallization in his book On Love.* Love is predicated on the attribution of perfection to the beloved. Just as a plain bough emerges from the salt-saturated waters of the Salzburg mines encrusted with beautiful crystals... (shrink)

In Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae one finds a rather unusual argument contending that human beings can lose their natures as the result of immoral or virtuous activity. A number of texts in the work argue that the polarities of beast and god serve as options for those who lead highly immoral or highly virtuous lives. This argument is examined in detail in light of its philosophical ancestry. I argue that those who think the Boethian doctrine is Platonic in origin tend to (...) read the texts about the loss of human nature as metaphorical. I then suggest that if one places the argument in an Aristotelian context one is able to see it as a metaphysical argument, and moreparticularly, as part of Boethian psychology. This paper thus provides a new context for approaching Boethius’s contention that human beings can lose their natures. (shrink)

The music ensemble has often been used as an analogy of organisation processes in general. Many versions of this analogy presuppose a specific organisation structure in the ensemble with clearly defined leader-follower relationships from which we can learn important points about successful leadership. This paper wishes to draw attention to the wide variety of organisation processes that may occur in a music ensemble, some of which are not dependent on leadership. Through the outlines of a logical analysis of a coordination (...) problem, it is argued that the music performance is in fact exemplary of a situation in which individual dedication to a goal promotes coordination in the entire group. (shrink)

The authors investigate MacCormick and Weinberger's claim that the Institutional Theory of Law provides a conceptual framework for the study of legal phenomena from a socio-legal point of view. They evaluate this claim by confronting both the Institutional Theory of Law and Weinberger's theory of action with two approaches in socio-legal theory, i.e. the instrumentalist and the constitutive approach. The conclusion is that the Institutional Theory of Law lends itself to empirical research from an instrumentalist perspective, for both place the (...) concept `institution' in the context of law. Weinberger's theory of action may provide a basis for empirical research from a constitutive perspective. The authors make some suggestions for refinement of Weinberger's theory of action in order that the relation between institutions and action can be labeled dynamic. (shrink)