The following essay is an attempt at bringing together two conceptions, the one theological and ascetical, the other philos–ophical. This confrontation may be attempted either from the point of view of theology, using revealed premises, or from the point of view of philosophy using the methods of purely rational analysis. It is the latter task I am undertaking here. I do not argue from revealed premises, but I do take account of the mighty phenomenon of the Christian revelation. It is, (...) as I see it, absolutely essential to keep theology and philosophy distinct as methods, but this does not prevent the one from providing useful material and suggestive hypotheses for the other. (shrink)

In his Introduction Fr. Delhaye tells us that the present work has its origin in two modern movements, the one theological, the other philosophical.

EXISTENCE EXISTS. I imagine that this statement will seem to many people to be either meaningless or false or pointless. In what follows I shall try to show that the statement is meaningful, true, important.

This is a follow-up to The Future of Belief, and it resumes and develops all the main themes of that very controversial book: the dehellenisation of philosophy and theology, the rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, the identification of man and consciousness, the radical mutability of dogma, the assertion that God does not exist since He is beyond being, and the attendant distinction between being and reality. There is, in fact, little or nothing that is new in the way (...) of thesis or conclusion; Professor Dewart is concerned rather with re-examining and strengthening the foundations of his position. The Future of Belief was a kind of manifesto addressed to the world at large; the present book is more technical, and seems to be addressed to philosophers and theologians: at least it is doubtful whether anybody else will have the patience and mental equipment to read it through. Even at that the book is heavy going, and the task of reading it is not sufficiently lightened by the realisation that something important is being said. This, however, is a personal judgment : a very competent Catholic scholar has already hailed the Foundations as the book that will dominate Christian thinking for the next decade or so. (shrink)

DR JOSEPH BOBIK’S article The First Part of the Third Way is a notable contribution to the literature on the subject. Anybody who has wrestled with the text itself—a text as profound and disconcerting as anything St Thomas has written—will be grateful for the many fine elucidations the article provides, and will be grateful especially for the fact that he has kept to the text itself as given in Summa Theologiae I, q 2, a 3 and has not read into (...) it some argument of his own. This method is particularly helpful and fruitful when there is question of pointing to a flaw in the argument. Against Kant and against most critics of the argument no defence is possible, for no real effort has been made to understand the argument in its own terms, within its own ‘thought-world’—one can of course insist that the attack is misdirected, but this kind of non-discussion scarcely serves the common pursuit of truth and will never enlarge anybody’s horizons. Dr Bobik, on the other hand, is able to point to the exact proposition in the text which he finds faulty and he is in a position to situate this proposition in the general context of Thomist metaphysics. In such circumstances there is everything to be gained by a further examination of the proposition and its context. (shrink)

This is an important study in Kant’s moral philosophy, and will be read with increasing excitement by those who find the Foundations a puzzling and exasperating work. It is ‘the outcome of years of dissatisfaction’ with the usual interpretations of the treatise, and it puts forward what seems to be an entirely new interpretation.

This book by the Professor of Educational Philosophy and Psychology at Drake University aims at “detailing for the first time the rudiments of a systematic philosophy based upon dialectical material monism”. Moreover, it “attempts to present man as a God in the process of becoming”. Further, this point of view “has forced the writer to new concepts of memory, will self, and freedom”.

PATHOS is not the same thing as suffering, though, of course, it is bound up with suffering, just as it is bound up with contingency and loneliness. We suffer when somebody dies whom we loved, but pathos makes its appearance only when we turn up a letter and find in it some characteristic turn of expression, brave and cheerful perhaps in face of pain or disappointment, or an old jacket, or a pipe, or things arranged in a certain way in (...) a bedroom or kitchen. Not that pathos has to wait on death: the boy in John McGahern’s novel The Dark sits by the fire at night after his father has gone to bed, and his mood of enmity and disgust is disturbed and broken by the sight of the heavy country shoes his father had thrown carelessly aside—he meets pathos for the first time, and is deeply changed by it, even though the external father-son relationship seems to remain unchanged.…What has happened in this case is that the boy’s personality has been extended in the direction of manhood; suffering was nothing new to him but this was something new, a new dimension, new horizons of the spirit. (shrink)

In this closely argued book Professor Flew of Keele University examines the philosophical arguments in favour of theism and Christianity, and finds them inadequate. He begins by analysing the notion of ‘God’, goes on to evaluate the more usual arguments for God’s existence and, finally, takes up the question of miracles as evidence for the truth of Christianity.

This book is a putting together of articles published in Louvain philosophical and theological journals over the past few years. The collection has more unity and continuity of theme than is usual in this kind of book, and one has the impression that Canon Van Riet had the book in mind when he wrote the articles. Although it is a series of studies rather than a continuous treatise, it is, in the judgement of the present reviewer, the best book that (...) has appeared in recent years on the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This book is part of the series The Herder History of Dogma edited by Michael Schmaus and Aloys Grillmeier. This context helps to define the nature and limits of the work: it is not a philosophical but a theological work, and it is not so much concerned with creation and providence as with what various theologians have said about them. In a study that ranges from Genesis to Scheeben there can be no question of a full exploration of any particular (...) writer or period, but the author has mastered most of the secondary source material, and the result is a comprehensive and balanced work of historical scholarship. (shrink)

Miss Murdoch finds that ‘true morality’ has its source in ‘an austere…love of the Good’. Good is the image which unites all moral striving, even though we may never quite attain to it in its purity. Philosophers who argue that Good is a mere ‘value tag of the choosing will’ are brushed aside. ‘The proper and serious use of the term refers us to a perfection which is perhaps never exemplified in the world we know…and which carries with it the (...) ideas of hierarchy and transcendence’. (shrink)

The Discourses of Epictetus were first translated into English by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter in 1758. This translation was rewritten in 1865 by an American, Thomas W. Higginson. In 1890 Bohn’s Classical Library issued a translation with notes and a life of Epictetus by George Long. Like Higginson, Long began by attempting a revision of Mrs. Carter’s version, and then decided to make his own translation, which he later compared with Mrs. Carter’s and with the Latin version. Apparently Long knew nothing (...) of Higginson’s translation. (shrink)

This book is a sustained and powerful exercise of reflection on reflection—leading to the conclusion announced in the subtitle.

This book is a collection of articles on philosophical and theological topics which have already appeared in the Revue Thomiste, the Revue Philosophique de Louvain and Lumiàre et Vie. There are articles on L’àtre and articles on aspects of La Conscience Morale, but the et of the title does no more than tie the two bundles together, and the reader who expects a discussion on the metaphysical basis of morality will be disappointed. And I think M Corvez is somewhat unfair (...) to himself in using a title which arouses this kind of expectation, which can only yield to irritation as it becomes clear that the promise is not going to be fulfilled. It is in fact necessary to put the title out of one’s mind to give any fair idea of the contents and value of the book. (shrink)