On November 19, 2017, the eighth annual Analytic Theology Lecture was delivered in Boston, Massachusetts by N.T. Wright before the American Academy of Religion. His lecture, titled “The Meanings of History: Event and Interpretation in the Bible and Theology,” is printed here for the first time.

In the past 25 years or so, the issue of ethical universalizability has figured prominently in theoretical as well as practical ethics. The term, 'universaliz ability' used in connection with ethical considerations, was apparently first introduced in the mid-1950s by R. M. Hare to refer to what he characterized as a logical thesis about certain sorts of evaluative sentences (Hare, 1955). The term has since been used to cover a broad variety of ethical considerations including those associated with the ideas (...) of impartiality, consistency, justice, equality, and reversibility as well as those raised in the familar questions: 'What if everyone did that?' and 'How would you like it if someone did that to you? But this recent effloresence of the use of the term 'universalizability' is something that has deep historical roots, and has been central in various forms to the thinking about morality of some of the greatest and most influential philosophers in the western tradition. While the term is relatively new, the ideas it is now used to express have a long history. Most of these ideas and questions have been or can be formulated into a principle to be discussed, criticized, or defended. As we discuss these ideas below this prin ciple will be stated on a separate numbered line. The concepts of justice and equality were closely linked in Greek thought. These connections between these two concepts are apparent even in two authors who were hostile to the connection, Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

The theory of relativity forbids the superluminal travel of ordinary matter. However, it is possible to amend the theory of relativity and to develop a theory permitting superluminal travel. The acceptability of the features needed for superluminal travel is discussed.

The geodesics and the curvature of a metric representing an isolated tachyon are investigated. It is argued that the properties are unphysical and inconsistent with observation, thus providing further evidence against the existence of tachyons.

Review of the Modern Mongolian philosophical history.

Mongolian philosophy in the post-communism period.

In a previous paper a theoretical method permitting superluminal travel was suggested. A difficulty with the global conservation of energy and momentum is settled here.

In this new study of Dilthey, Professor Makkreel attempts to counteract the common tendency among Dilthey scholars to divorce his early psychological work from his later hermeneutical-historical position by showing their essential continuity. Makkreel also attempts to show the centrality of Dilthey’s aesthetic writings, and to reveal their implications for his theory of historical understanding. A disregard of these themes, the author claims, has encouraged a fragmentary interpretation of Dilthey’s philosophy. The thrust of the book is to provide a historical (...) and theoretical background for the development of hitherto disregarded aspects of Dilthey’s mature philosophy. In Part II, for example, Professor Makkreel examines Dilthey’s aesthetics as a model human science and explores the role of the poetic imagination by exposing its apparently unnoticed epistemological implications. One such implication is that Dilthey’s theory of the imagination involves a concept of articulation which relates it to poetry and history. It is not clear in the text, however, why this implication is "epistemological," or how Makkreel’s treatment of it exhibits any epistemic analysis. The book also discusses Dilthey’s later hermeneutics and philosophy of history which some commentators believe to have replaced Dilthey’s earlier psychology as the means of understanding human existence in time. Makkreel denies this interpretation, and he reinstates the importance of psychology at all stages of Dilthey’s thought. One chapter examines the interesting question of Husserl’s relation to Dilthey. It attempts to show to what extent Dilthey reformulated his previous psychological descriptions of the lived experience in the light of Husserl’s work. (shrink)

How people react emotionally to the positive or negative events that they experience in their lives depends in part on whether particular outcomes are perceived to be deserved or undeserved. For ex...

In this new study of Rousseau, Levine presents a Kantian reading of the Social Contract. By attempting to reveal Rousseau’s anticipation of such Kantian themes as moral right and obligation the author’s purpose has been "to produce a Kantian reading of The Social Contract, a reading that emphasizes the many respects in which Rousseau anticipates Kant and motivates his investigations in moral philosophy". This purported similarity has been noted previously by thinkers such as Hegel and Cassirer. The book also develops (...) the theme that the solution to the conflict between moral autonomy and political authority is the main issue in The Social Contract. Because Rousseau apparently "grasped his conflict better than either Hobbes or Locke" he was able to anticipate Marx’s critique of the contractarian tradition. Consequently, Rousseau’s political philosophy underlies the "deep structure" of contemporary mentality, and continues to dominate our own sense of self, society, and being-in-the-world. While the main issues in Kant’s moral philosophy—autonomy/heteronomy, person/thing, rule of reason/heteronomous irrationalism—are present in ovo in Rousseau, the author warns us of crucial differences between the two thinkers, for example, in Kant the notion of our being forced to our own freedom is absent. But both thinkers share the belief that any conception of the state’s function as merely external coercion or coordination is sub-rational. Also, Kant’s conception of moral autonomy located in the de jure kingdom of political ends is anticipated in Rousseau’s attempt to direct society to the norm of the general will as its legitimate political end. In sum, Levine’s book, while drawing from the previous work of Althusser, avoids the usual Marxist concept manipulation, and gives us an interesting addition to Rousseau scholarship.—H.N.T. (shrink)