What does it mean to have a distinctively religious orientation toward reality? Martin J. De Nys offers a philosophy of religion grounded within the phenomenological tradition as a way to understand religious life. Focusing on the key concepts of sacred transcendence, religious discourse, and radical self-transcendence, De Nys contends that a phenomenological view of religion allows considerable diversity in regard to the possibility of religious truth. Phenomenology also helps to account for the dizzying variety of religious expressions and religious (...) lifeways. Ultimately, De Nys reaches a universal and complete method of describing a philosophical approach to religious life. This compelling book plays a valuable role in describing human engagement with religion. (shrink)

The ethical theory discoverable in Hegel’s writings assigns, on Dean Moyar’s reading, an important role to the idea of conscience. Hegel’s discussion of conscience presents a theory of practical reasoning which requires that one be able to nest the particular purposes that motivate one’s actions in the objective purposes that have normative status insofar as they prevail in the institutions of modern ethical life. Those norms are legitimized by the fact that the institutions in question, most especially the state, predicate (...) themselves on their recognition of the rights of the particular individual. Individuals are not simply passive in relation to ethical, institutional norms. Individual moral deliberation plays a key role in the ethical development of society. Nonetheless, the norms that the state requires the individual to recognize do seem to be, in the last analysis, beyond appeal. Hegel makes, and Moyar presents, a powerful case for this position. Nonetheless, pacifist arguments present this position with a serious challenge. (shrink)

Can the conception of God in Hegel’s philosophy of religion provide a resource for current philosophical theology? The argument in William Desmond’sHegel’s God: A Counterfeit Double? entails a strongly negative response. Desmond argues that the basic commitments of Hegel’s speculative philosophyentail a systematic inability adequately to conceive of divine transcendence. In this article, I address this claim by examining Hegel’s conception of God inrelation to the issues of (i) the religious representation and the philosophical concept, (ii) the nature of speculative (...) thinking and the conception of God, (iii) the idea of creation, and (iv) affirming the truth about divine transcendence. In each case I argue that Desmond’s critique is unwarranted. A more appropriate attitude towards Hegel on the question of God combines critique with an effort at discovering and appropriating philosophical principles that are productive for current philosophical theology. (shrink)

Hegel and Lonergan both make important contributions to the contemporary task of developing philosophical considerations of God within the context of a philosophy of religion. Hegel maintains that philosophy must both present knowledge of God as God is in godself, and present an account of God’s involvement with the human community. One accomplishes this two-sided task, Hegel believes, through the philosophical appropriation of the religious representation. If this appropriation is rightly understood, there is little in it to which Longern should (...) object, and a great deal that he might endorse, given his own views about the relation between philosophy of religion and philosophy of God. At the same time, Lonergan would rightly object to what at times seems at least to be Hegel’s annulment of religious mystery, and the claim Hegel sometimes seems to make that the cognitive achievements of philosophy result in a sublation of the existential concerns of religion. Lonergan argues for positions that make possible important corrections of these problems. (shrink)

This volume collects the papers given at the meeting of the Hegel Society of America held in November, 1972, at the University of Notre Dame. As the editors point out in their Foreword, these papers fall under two general headings, “ Hegel’s conception of the history of philosophy in general, and his relation to individual thinkers both before and after him.” The value of these essays lies not only in their being carefully informative regarding these two themes, although they are (...) this. But there also emerge from reflection upon these essays philosophical problems important to anyone doing philosophy in the Hegelian manner. The following brief review of the essays will depart from the order of the text by considering the second essay first. (shrink)

This book is a careful study of writings by Paul Ricoeur from his early discussions of phenomenology, through the development of his hermeneutic philosophy, to recent texts on the self and the other. Venema identifies the development of a hermeneutical understanding of identity and selfhood as the central issue that belongs to Ricoeur’s work. He discusses the distinct phases that belong to that work, and the specific concerns that Ricoeur comes to address in those phases, in the light of this (...) issue. The hermeneutical treatment of identity and selfhood begins in a critique of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. Venema develops that critique by focusing, not exclusively but significantly, on the first part of Ideas I. He argues that one finds in transcendental phenomenology claims to a self-transparent and independent ego whose achievements occur with necessity. A critique that discovers immanent problems in these claims is the first step that Ricoeur takes in moving toward a hermeneutical understanding of identity. A second step occurs when Ricoeur focuses on the significance of the imagination. Imagination mediates between the multiplicity of involuntary dispositions and the unifying function of voluntary capacity. It also mediates between the finitude of passive receptivity and the infinite effort to determine what is received with names. This effort, in turn, locates the self in a situation of power over others in a context that nonetheless also calls for the reciprocals constitutions of selves. Venema notes the anomalous character of this position. He claims that it continues to be present in related and basic ways throughout the development of Ricoeur’s work. The analyses of metaphor seriously attempt to exhibit the reciprocity of identity and difference and to contribute to a hermeneutic of reciprocal self-constitution. At the same time, parts of those analyses suggest a primacy of identity over difference in relation to language, selfhood, and Being. This undercuts the claim that selves are constituted through reciprocal relations with each other and with the world. The analyses of narrative uncover an understanding of identity as something that comes about insofar as narrative discourse configures and refigures temporal experience. At the same time the appropriation of narrative possibilities seems to presuppose a voluntary cogito that stands over against the flux of symbolic and narrative discourse. Finally, Ricoeur extends the discussion of identity expressly to include the problem of selfhood. Continuing to define identity in narrative terms, he insists on both the distinction between and the correlation of self-sameness and self-constancy in the identity of the self. However, the way in which his discussions of identity and selfhood combine a semantic analysis of selfreference with a pragmatic analysis of self-designation leads to problems that ultimately render his account of the self’s receptivity of the other inadequate or at least incomplete. (shrink)

The question of the role of juridical conceptions, concepts of justice and rights, in Marx's evaluation of capitalist society, is a major issue in current American Marx scholarship. In this book, Allen Buchanan analyzes many aspects of Marx's social theory in an examination and critique of Marx's views regarding the role of juridical concepts in that theory. His book, as an interpretation of Marx, defends three basic claims. First, Marx's evaluation of capitalist society is a radical and external evaluation of (...) the same, made from the perspective of communist society, which perspective does not include concepts of justice or rights. Communist society is a society in which persons enjoy undistorted consciousness of their needs, in that it abolishes the forms of alienation and exploitation which differently characterize capitalist society and all pre-capitalist societies. Conceived as such, communist society provides an external standard from which capitalism can be radically evaluated. But this evaluation does not include claims to the effect that capitalism is less just or unjust when compared to communist society, or that persons in capitalist society cannot claim rights which they can claim under communism. This is because, second, the very "circumstances of justice," the types of conflicts which lead persons to assert rights claims and appeal to prescriptive rules of justice, are overcome in communist society as Marx conceives it. With this, the very notions of justice and rights wither away under communism. Buchanan argues, against Wood and others, that concepts of justice do operate in Marx's internal critique of capitalism. But they are not at work in his radical and external evaluation of capitalist society, made from the perspective of communist society, because in communist society the circumstances of justice are overcome. For this reason, and this is Buchanan's third interpretive claim, the proletariat for Marx is not motivated towards revolutionary action by notions of justice or rights. Rather, the proletariat acts in a revolutionary way because of its own self-interest in overcoming intolerable conditions of exploitation, and acts towards the goal of bringing into being a type of society in which rights claims and prescriptive rules of justice are impossible because fundamentally unnecessary. (shrink)

The renaissance of Hegel studies, now well into its third decade in the United States, has from its beginning included serious efforts to reexamine Hegel's philosophy of religion. These efforts naturally point beyond themselves to investigations into Hegel as a source of productive possibilities for philosophical theology. Hodgson's book is an exemplary instance of such an investigation. It is written with admirable clarity and takes account of a rich variety of texts and traditions. It stands as a critical and insightful (...) retrieval of Hegel's philosophy of religion and of history for the purposes of constructive philosophical theology. (shrink)

This work is an effort at philosophical reconstruction. It endeavors critically to retrieve the idea of reason that belongs to modern philosophy and to phenomenology, in a way that takes account of what Marsh sees as the postmodern challenges to that idea. The reconstruction Marsh proposes takes the form of a "dialectical phenomenology," in which Hegel and Husserl are chastened by each other and by their philosophical successors. Dialectical phenomenology is dialectical in that it roots thinking in historical experience and (...) surpasses "either-or" oppositions in "both-and" mediations. It is phenomenological in its endeavors to secure relative apodicticity for its claims, to recognize differences and relations among distinguishable structures that belong to experience, and to recover an illumining understanding of the life-world in which the self is involved and of the self which is intelligible with reference to worldly involvements. (shrink)

This document translates the most important portion of one of the most important texts which Hegel wrote in Jena prior to the composition of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The quality of the translation, its historical importance, and its philosophical merit make this document a valuable addition to philosophical scholarship.

This book examines the conditions which make possible an existentialist social philosophy in the writings of Sartre. At issue, of course, is the question of the legitimacy of Sartre's Marxism. To deal with this question, Flynn focuses on the issue of collective responsibility. Is there, in Sartre's later writings, a social ontology which allows one to assign responsibility to a social ensemble? Can Sartre conceive of collectivities in a way which must be possible for any version of Marxism?

Cílem článku je ukázat, že německá raná romantika, která položila filosofické základy romantického hnutí, nebere příklon k subjektivitě prožívání jako odklon od poznání, nýbrž jako jiný způsob poznání. Romantická niternost nachází svůj protějšek ve zkušenosti světa, jemuž umění dokáže propůjčit hlubší význam než racionální filosofie a věda. Tento nový pohled na poznání je romantiky použit jak na výklad přírody, tak duchovní lidské skutečnosti. Článek upozorňuje na to, že vedle dědictví spinozismu měla romantická epistemologie důležitý zdroj v některých úvahách Kantovy Kritiky (...) soudnosti. Tato vazba je sledována zvláště na příkladu filosofie umění F. W. J. Schellinga. Argumentace článku je rozvinuta v kritické konfrontaci se subjektivistickou interpretací romantiky H.-G. Gadamera, čímž se ozřejmuje její širší epistemologický dosah i aktuálnost. Návaznost německých romantiků na Kantovu Kritiku soudnosti se spíše než tendencí k subjektivizaci estetiky projevovala ve snaze o estetizaci poznání. (shrink)

One recursively enumerable real α dominates another one β if there are nondecreasing recursive sequences of rational numbers (a[n] : n ∈ ω) approximating α and (b[n] : n ∈ ω) approximating β and a positive constant C such that for all n, C(α − a[n]) ≥ (β − b[n]). See [R. M. Solovay, Draft of a Paper (or Series of Papers) on Chaitin’s Work, manuscript, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, 1974, p. 215] and [G. J. (...) Chaitin, IBM J. Res. Develop., 21 (1977), pp. 350–359]. We show that every recursively enumerable random real dominates all other recursively enumerable reals. We conclude that the recursively enumerable random reals are exactly the Ω-numbers [G. J. Chaitin, IBM J. Res. Develop., 21 (1977), pp. 350–359]. Second, we show that the sets in a universal Martin-Lof test for randomness have random measure, and every recursively enumerable random number is the sum of the measures represented in a universal Martin-Lof test. (shrink)

The Influence of Augustine on Heidegger: The Emergence of an Augustinian Phenomenology, edited with an Introduction by Craig J. N. de Paulo Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Details: Preface by John Macquarrie and distinguished contributors include Robert Dodaro, O.S.A., Peg Birmingham, Theodore Kisiel, Daniel Dahlstrom, George Pattison, James K. A. Smith, Wayne Hankey and Matthias Fritsch. (Advance Praise by James J. O’Donnell, Jaroslav Pelikan and Joseph Margolis and reviewed in the American Catholic Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 82, Spring 2008, (...) issue no. 2, in article form.) Bishop de Paulo is the founder of "Augustinian phenomenology," a field within phenomenology that merges the Christian existential thought of Augustine with the methodology of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Q: If necessity is the mother of invention, whence necessity? A. : The matrix of necessity in God-talk is religious experience, philosophically interpreted. The interpreters, theists and non-thesists, have indeed been inventive.

From the early nineteenth century, the successful use of fossils in stratigraphy oriented paleontology towards geology. The consequent marginalising of biological objectives was countered in the twentieth century by the rise of ‘Paläobiologie’, first in the German cultural area and only later, as ‘paleobiology’, in the anglophone world. Several kinds of paleobiological research flourished internationally after the Second World War, among them the novel field of ‘paleoecology’. Within this field there were attempts to apply functional morphology to the problematical cases (...) of fossil organisms, for which functions cannot be observed directly. This article describes the origins of the kind of functional inference for fossils that I proposed in 1961 as the method of ‘paradigms’. Here I summarize some of my ‘worked exemplars’, which were intended to show the paradigm method in action. These case-studies were all taken from the paleontologically important phylum of the Brachiopoda, but the method was claimed to have much wider implications for the interpretation of the fossil record in terms of adaptive evolution. This article takes the history of the paradigm method as far as the late 1960s. I hope to trace, in a sequel, its ambivalent fate during the 1970s and beyond, when for example Gould’s critique of ‘the adaptationist programme’ and the rise of computer-based quantitative methods for the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record led to the relative eclipse of functional morphology in paleontology. (shrink)

Linguistic interaction between two people is the fundamental form of communication, yet almost all research in language use focuses on isolated speakers and listeners. In this innovative work, Garrod and Pickering extend the scope of psycholinguistics beyond individuals by introducing communication as a social activity. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, philosophical and sociological research, they expand their theory that alignment across individuals is the basis of communication, through the model of a 'shared workspace account'. In this workspace, interlocutors are actors who (...) jointly manipulate and control the interaction and develop similar representations of both language and social context, in order to achieve communicative success. The book also explores dialogue within groups, technologies, as well as the role of culture more generally. Providing a new understanding of cognitive representation, this trailblazing work will be highly influential in the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics. (shrink)

Standard models of lexical production assume that speakers access representations of meaning, grammar, and different aspects of sound in a roughly sequential manner (whether or not they admit cascading or interactivity). In contrast, we review evidence for a parallel activation model in which these representations are accessed in parallel. According to this account, word learning involves the binding of the meaning, grammar, and sound of a word into a single representation. This representation is then activated as a whole during production, (...) and so all linguistic components are available simultaneously. We then note that language comprehension involves extensive use of prediction and argue that comprehenders use production mechanisms to determine (roughly) what they would say next if they were speaking. So far, theories of prediction-by-production have assumed sequential lexical production. We therefore reinterpret such evidence in terms of parallel lexical production. (shrink)

Our target article proposed that language production and comprehension are interwoven, with speakers making predictions of their own utterances and comprehenders making predictions of other people's utterances at different linguistic levels. Here, we respond to comments about such issues as cognitive architecture and its neural basis, learning and development, monitoring, the nature of forward models, communicative intentions, and dialogue.