[Marilyn McCord Adams] In this paper I begin with Aristotle's Categories and with his apparent forwarding of primary substances as metaphysically special because somehow fundamental. I then consider how medieval reflection on Aristotelian change led medieval Aristotelians to analyses of primary substances that called into question how and whether they are metaphysically special. Next, I turn to a parallel issue about supposits, which Boethius seems in effect to identify with primary substances, and how theological cases-the doctrines of the Trinity, (...) the Incarnation, and of the human soul's separate survival between death and resurrection-call into question how and to what extent supposits are metaphysically special. I conclude with some reflections on various senses of being metaphysically special and how they pertain to primary substances and supposits. /// [ Richard Cross] Scotus's belief that any created substance can depend on the divine essence and/or divine persons as a subject requires him to abandon the plausible Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change. I argue that Scotus's various counterexamples to the principle can be rebutted. For reasons related to those that arise in Scotus's failed attempt to refute the principle, the principle also entails that properties cannot be universals. (shrink)

Who would the Saviour have to be, what would the Saviour have to do to rescue human beings from the meaning-destroying experiences of their lives? This book offers a systematic Christology that is at once biblical and philosophical. Starting with human radical vulnerability to horrors such as permanent pain, sadistic abuse or genocide, it develops what must be true about Christ if He is the horror-defeater who ultimately resolves all the problems affecting the human condition and Divine-human relations. Distinctive elements (...) of Marilyn McCord Adams' study are her defence of the two-natures theory, of Christ as Inner Teacher and a functional partner in human flourishing, and her arguments in favour of literal bodily resurrection and of a strong doctrine of corporeal Eucharistic presence. The book concludes that Christ is the One in Whom, not only Christian doctrine, but cosmos, church, and the human psyche hold together. (shrink)

A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought -- ...

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and (...) sometimes socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices. (shrink)

This book treats Hannah Arendt as a distinctly political writer who attempts to carve out a way in which humanity, poised between the Holocaust and the atom bomb, might reclaim its position as the creators of a world fit for human habitation. Marilyn LaFay argues that Arendt tries to bring a humanity into modernity, rejecting the argument that Arendt is an 'antimodernist lover of the Greek polis.' Rather, Arendt tries to politically reconcile the potential of humanity with the demands (...) of the modern condition: she encourages us to locate and use the expressive element of the modern for our political ends. This work identifies the paradox of Arendt's choice of an expressive, existentialist interpretation of politics over that of a politics of vision and imagination, concluding that Arendt's politics leads to little more than political aesthetics. (shrink)

Politics of Reality includes nine essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective. -/- The essays "The Problem That Has No Name" and "A Note On Anger" have been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia.

"The Problem That Has No Name," in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1983), has been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia. See the links below for the original book.

This essay counteracts that trend [regarding the debate about whether partiality can be justified, those supporting impartiality have generally been on the offensive arguing that morality calls for impartiality] by taking a closer look at the moral complexity of our social practices of partiality. My adoption of this approach does not represent an endorsement of current notions of impartiality. The ideal of impartiality, in my view, should be substantially reformulated. However, that the concept of partiality is transparently defensible. In this (...) discussion, I focus on the aspects of partiality that complicate the philosophical defense of it. In the first part of the discussion, I argue that the moral value of partiality depends partly on the moral value of the relationships it helps to sustain. It matters to the philosophical issues at stake that personal relationships can be abusive and oppressive. In Section II, I refer to the vastly unequal social distribution of the means for favoring loved ones. Because many people have inadequate resources for caring for their loved ones, our conventional relationship practices of partiality-practices by which we care only for our ``own''-can be disasterous for many people. This seriously complicates the defense of partiality. The paper ends with a discussion, in Section III, of ``global moral concern'' and the resistance which most partialists show to it. (shrink)

This book presents a series of studies by the late Marilyn McCord Adams of medieval philosophical and theological views regarding the powers that govern human psychological processes. She explores which of them were taken to be ours to exercise and control, and which to be controlled and exercised only by God.

Embark on a visual journey of self-discovery. In Beaming, Marilyne Verschueren-the artist behind internet sensation @beamingdesign-presents 100 expansive visuals designed to stimulate your mind and awaken your intuition. Messages of hope, resilience, and joy are incorporated into radiant art, with each image offering the reader an opportunity for deep contemplation and introspection. Powerful imagery is paired with 25 guided exercises for mindfulness, journaling, and breathwork to deepen your interactive experience. Full of warmth and positive energy, Beaming is an exquisite companion (...) and a stirring call to follow your truth. (shrink)

How can the Body and Blood of Christ, without ever leaving heaven, come to be really present on eucharistic altars where the bread and wine still seem to be? Marilyn McCord Adams examines how this question and its answer engaged thirteenth and fourteenth century philosophical theologians.

I very much welcome Professor Wilder’s debunking of Rossi’s theses and arguments and I wholeheartedly share his rejection of that sort of biological determinism and his recognition of the unnaturalness of all human behavior. That last is, I think, an essential first step toward our assuming responsibility for how things are. However, I am not as comfortable as he seems to be with the liberal anyone-can-parent line of thought. What gives me pause about that may be some of the same (...) experience and observations that make the Rossi sort of view so plausible to so many people. That is, regardless of my clear knowledge that an ability to acquire facility in the home kitchen or with infant care is not biologically determined, and also my knowledge that ability to become competent in the maintenance of the common automobile is not biologically determined either, I see many such propensities and abilities as being hardly less difficult to acquire or to lose as a gendered adult than if they had been biologically determined. In other words, the tracking into gender-correlated competencies creates a “second-nature”—each individual seems to take to some activities and practices naturally. It feels natural, one is “a natural” as a mother or as a businessman; it seems natural to all those around, as well. And, learned and human-created though it may be, it is not therefore easy to undo. (shrink)

Sexology, or the formal study of sexuality, positions itself as an authoritative voice wearing a cloak of neutrality. Sexology offers the seal of “scientific truth” to pronoucements that have been arrived at through processes that are ostensibly objective, but covertly value-laden; thus sex research has been effective in perpetuating innocent claims about the human condition and human sexual behavior. Closer examination reveals these claims to be controversial. In the texts and literature of sexology, we find that there is a coherent (...) and significant cluster of assumptions about what is so-called natural sexuality. These assumptions express major paradigms that not only inform the theoretical basis of contemporary sexological thought, but which also happen to be constituent elements in contemporary patriarchal ideology. In this paper I will look at these major paradigms. (shrink)

A contribution to the feminist discussion on moral theory, exploring the debate between moral impartiality and the partiality that characterizes personal relationships, the ethic of care and its relation to justice in a gender asymmetrical society, and the role of intimate friendship in an era of the dissolution of both extended and nuclear families.

placed side by side, james’s A Pluralistic Universe and Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House seem to have little in common. James’s critique of absolute idealism is written for intellectuals comfortable with philosophical abstractions. Twenty Years is full of stories about the lives of poor people and immigrants. Yet, sometime after April 1909, when A Pluralistic Universe appeared, and before November 1910, when Twenty Years was published, Addams inserted a few telling quotations into her manuscript. I will give a reading of (...) Twenty Years as a presentation in real time of James’s pluralistic universe, with both form and contents conveying the “essential provisionality” of experience in James’s “strung-along”.. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of conceptualising phenomenology as explanatory for the ongoing dialogue between the phenomenological tradition and cognitive science, especially enactive approaches to cognition. The first half of the paper offers three interlinked arguments: Firstly, that differentiating between phenomenology and the natural sciences by designating one as descriptive and the other as explanatory undermines opportunities for the kind of productive friction that is required for genuine ‘mutual enlightenment’. Secondly, that conceiving of phenomenology as descriptive rather than explanatory risks (...) committing us to what Zahavi (2019) identifies as the error of equating the phenomenological with the phenomenal. Finally, that the erroneous reduction to the descriptive occludes the rich resources that the phenomenological tradition can contribute to investigations of non-human cognition. The second half of the paper then turns to focus specifically on the promising relationship between phenomenology and enactive approaches to cognition. It will suggest that phenomenology must be seen as having explanatory capacities if it is to shed light on the structures of “mind in life” (Thompson, 2007), before drawing on the model of explanation put forward by Louis Sass to explore what this might look like. (shrink)

If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.

Ces trente dernières années, les women’s studies se sont développées aux États-Unis et sont devenues un nouveau domaine du savoir dans l’enseignement supérieur. Entre 1978 et 1995, plus de 10 000 étudiants ont obtenu un diplôme doctoral fondé sur un travail de recherche dans ce domaine. Les women’s studies ont amené de nouvelles questions, de nouveaux concepts, de nouvelles catégories d’analyse et des interprétations révisées de la sagesse conventionnelle à beaucoup – si ce n’est à la plupart – des disciplines (...) littéraires et dans les sciences sociales. Cependant, les women’s studies doivent faire face à de grands défis, tant conceptuels que d’organisation. Les critiques mettent en question la validité du concept « femme » comme concept fondateur, préférant soit subsumer les women’s studies dans le « gender », soit même placer l’étude des femmes et du « gender » dans les disciplines traditionnelles. (shrink)

An exploration of commercially available technologies that can enhance energy security and address climate change and public policy options crucial to their adoption.

In "An Inscriptional Approach to Indirect Quotation," Israel Scheffler presented an analysis of sentences of the form '... writes that ---'. He was primarily concerned to give a nominalistic analysis of indirect discourse which would elude certain objections offered by Church. Here the question is not whether the analysis eludes those criticisms. The question is whether the analysis is correct. I shall argue that it is not.