The effects of mental disorder are apparent and pervasive, in suffering, loss of freedom and life opportunities, negative impacts on education, work satisfaction and productivity, complications in law, institutions of healthcare, and more. With a new edition of the 'bible' of psychiatric diagnosis - the DSM - under developmental, it is timely to take a step back and re-evalutate exactly how we diagnose and define mental disorder. This new book by Derek Bolton tackles the problems involved in the definition (...) and boundaries of mental disorder. It addresses two main questions regarding mental illness. Firstly, what is the basis of the standards or norms by which we judge that a person has a mental disorder - that the person's mind is not working as it should, that their mental functioning is abnormal? Controversies about these questions have been dominated by the contrast between norms that are medical, scientific or natural, on the one hand, and social norms on the other. The norms that define mental disorder seem to belong to psychiatry, to be medical and scientific, but are they really social norms, hijacked and disguised by the medical profession? Secondly, what is the validity of the distinction between mental disorder and order, between abnormal and normal mental functioning? To what extent, notwithstanding appearances, does mental disorder involve meaningful reactions and problem-solving? These responses may be to normal problems of living, or to not so normal problems - to severe psycho-social challenges. Is there after all order in mental disorder? With the closing of asylums and the appearance of care in the community, mental disorder is now in our midst. While attempts have been made to define clearly a concept of mental disorder that is truly medical as opposed to social, there is increasing evidence that such a distinction is unviable - there is no clear line between what is normal in the population and what is abnormal. 'What is Mental Disorder?' reviews these various crucial developments and their profound impact for the concept and its boundaries in a provocative and timely book. (shrink)

From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life’s big questions In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family’s import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza’s views (...) has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to answer one of humanity’s most urgent questions: How can we lead a good life and enjoy happiness in a world without a providential God? In Think Least of Death, Pulitzer Prize–finalist Steven Nadler connects Spinoza’s ideas with his life and times to offer a compelling account of how the philosopher can provide a guide to living one’s best life. In the Ethics, Spinoza presents his vision of the ideal human being, the “free person” who, motivated by reason, lives a life of joy devoted to what is most important—improving oneself and others. Untroubled by passions such as hate, greed, and envy, free people treat others with benevolence, justice, and charity. Focusing on the rewards of goodness, they enjoy the pleasures of this world, but in moderation. “The free person thinks least of all of death,” Spinoza writes, “and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life." An unmatched introduction to Spinoza’s moral philosophy, Think Least of Death shows how his ideas still provide valuable insights about how to live today. (shrink)

The boldest and most unsettling of the major early modern philosophers, Spinoza, had a much greater, if often concealed, impact on the international intellectual scene and on the early Enlightenment than philosophers, historians, and political theorists have conventionally tended to recognize. Europe-wide efforts to prevent the reading public and university students learning about Spinoza, the man and his work, in the years immediately after his death in 1677, dominated much of his early reception owing to the revolutionary implications of his (...) thought for philosophy, religion, practical ethics and lifestyle, Bible criticism, and political theory. Nevertheless, contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, his general impact was immediate, very widespread, and profound. One of the main objectives of the book is to show how early and how deeply Leibniz, Bayle, Arnauld, Henry More, Anne Conway, Richard Baxter, Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Richard Simon, and Nicholas Steno, among many others, were affected by and led to wrestle with his principal ideas. (shrink)

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche addresses the problem of how to live a fulfilling life in a world without meaning, in the aftermath of 'the death of God'. Nietzsche's solution lies in the idea of eternal recurrence. This translation of Zarathustra reflects the musicality of the original German, and for the first time annotates the abundance of allusions to the Bible and other classic texts with which Nietzsche's masterpiece is in conversation.

Max Jammer's Concepts of Simultaneity presents a comprehensive, accessible account of the historical development of an important and controversial concept -- which played a critical role in initiating modern theoretical physics -- from the days of Egyptian hieroglyphs through to Einstein's work in 1905, and beyond. Beginning with the use of the concept of simultaneity in ancient Egypt and in the Bible, the study discusses its role in Greek and medieval philosophy as well as its significance in Newtonian (...) physics and in the ideas of Leibniz, Kant, and other classical philosophers. The central theme of Jammer's presentation is a critical analysis of the use of this concept by philosophers of science, like Poincaré, and its significant role in inaugurating modern theoretical physics in Einstein's special theory of relativity. Particular attention is paid to the philosophical problem of whether the notion of distant simultaneity presents a factual reality or only a hypothetical convention. The study concludes with an analysis of simultaneity's importance in general relativity and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Wattles offers a comprehensive survey of the history of the golden rule, "Do unto others as you want others to do unto you". He traces the rule's history in contexts as diverse as the writings of Confucius and the Greek philosophers, the Bible, modern theology and philosophy, and the American "self-help" context. He concludes by offering his own synthesis of these varied understandings.

Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Claire Elise Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas’s work. Rather than viewing the feminine as a metaphor with no significance for women or as a means to reinforce traditional stereotypes, Katz goes beyond questions of sexual difference to reach a more profound understanding of the role of the feminine in Levinas’s (...) conception of ethical responsibility. She combines feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings to reveal that the feminine provides an important bridge between his philosophy and his Judaism. Katz’s reading of Levinas’s conception of the feminine against the backdrop of discussions of women of the Hebrew bible points to important shifts in contemporary philosophy toward the creation of life and care for the other. (shrink)

"Fénelon is arguably the most neglected of all the major philosophers of early modernity. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet to now we have lacked a single interpretive monograph in English devoted specifically to his thought. This monograph aims to correct this by providing the first such book-length study. In focusing specifically on Fénelon's political thought, it has three primary aims. The first is to provide a reconstruction of Fénelon's political ideas (...) accessible to those who might be encountering Fénelon directly or at length for the first time. The second is to demonstrate the connections between Fénelon's political thought and several other fields to which he made significant and long-recognized contributions, including not only philosophy and political science but also economics, education, literature, theology, and spirituality. Third, the book aims to cut several new edges in our extant understanding and appreciation of Fénelon's political thought and its significance. On this front, it specifically argues that Fénelon is better understood as a moderate and modern thinker rather than as a radical or reactionary, and that Fénelon deserves to be seen not merely as a political thinker but as a political philosopher. Finally, The Political Philosophy of Fénelon argues for Fénelon's relevance to our political world today. Fénelon was a nuanced and insightful diagnostician of ills from egocentrism and social atomism to authoritarianism and imperialism, and our understanding of these phenomena so familiar to us today can benefit from attending to his insights"--. (shrink)

The great philosopher and historian of philosophy, Etienne Gilson, sets out to show that final causality or purposiveness and formal causality are principles for those who think hard and carefully about the world, including the world of biology. Gilson insists that a completely rational understanding of organisms and biological systems requires the philosophical notion of teleology, the idea that certain kinds of things exist and have ends or purposes the fulfillment of which are linked to their natures-in other (...) words, formal and final causes. His approach relies on philosophical reflection on the facts of science, not upon theology or an appeal to religious authorities such as the Church or the Bible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible HandPeter HarrisonFew phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s “invisible hand,” and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance (...) range from the laudatory—“one of the great ideas of history,” to the dismissive—“an ironic joke.”1 Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s “invisible hand” has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Galbraith declared that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of “spiritual force.”2 Spenser J. Pack maintained that the invisible hand was “a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up” and certainly “not [End Page 29] a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.”3 Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if “the invisible hand” is evacuated of its theological significance.4 For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase pointed to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, “the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological.”5Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.6 Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that it was primarily owing to his influence that the phrase first became widespread.7 Those who have made perfunctory efforts at a history of the phrase generally point to a few scattered literary references with a view either to judging them irrelevant to Smith’s oeuvre, or to suggesting that Smith’s (admittedly meagre) uses of the phrase are empty metaphors. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency, offering a history of “the invisible hand” with a particular focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What clearly emerges from this survey is that the concept was relatively common by the time Smith came to use it. Moreover, while “invisible hand” was used in a variety of contexts, by far the most common involved reference to God’s [End Page 30] oversight of human history and to his control of the operations of nature. Almost certainly, then, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy. Whether Smith was himself committed to such a view is more difficult to determine, but the history of the expression and the contexts in which it appears in Smith’s writings offer some support for providentialist readings.Hidden and Invisible HandsThe expression “invisible hand” was not commonly used before the seventeenth century. It does not occur in classical literature (although some have suggested that the phrase may be found in Ovid).8 Neither does it appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.9 The earliest reference that I have found occurs in a Greek liturgy which invokes God’s “invisible right hand which is full of blessing.”10 The liturgy was used by the Alexandrian Church and its origins date back (probably) to the second century. However, [End Page 31] the expression is relatively rare in subsequent patristic and medieval writings. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Alexandrian Church father Origen (185–254 ce) attributed the Israelites’ defeat of the Amalekites, recorded in Exodus 17, to the agency of God’s hidden hand.11 Some later sources made reference to the work of a “hidden” or “invisible” hand of God in restoring individuals to health. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce) thus spoke of the hidden hand of God which heals and makes whole.12 A medieval source refers similarly to a wound being healed by the touch of an invisible hand.13 French Benedictine Petrus Cellensis (1115–83 ce) alluded to the action... (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 32 In this paper we first set the stage with a brief overview of the tangled history of humility in theology and philosophy—beginning with its treatment in the Bible and ending with the more recent work that has been done in contemporary philosophy. Our two-fold goal at this early stage of the paper is to explore some of the different accounts of humility that have traditionally been developed and highlight some of the key (...) debates in the current literature. Next, we present the findings from several studies we recently conducted in an effort to explore people’s intuitions and beliefs about humility as well as their experiences with being humble. Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings to the ongoing philosophical debates about humility—suggesting that while some varieties of humility are problematic, other varieties of humility are certainly worth wanting. (shrink)

In the tense religious climate of the late Renaissance (ca. 1550-1650), traditional charges of impiety directed against Aristotle carried new weight. Many turned to alternative philosophical authorities in the search for a truly pious philosophy. Another, "most pious" solution was to ground natural philosophy on a literal reading of the Bible, especially Genesis. I examine this kind of physics, often called Mosaic, or sacred, or Christian, through the example of Johann Amos Comenius and those whom he praises (...) as predecessors in his attempt to reform physics according to the "divine light" of Scripture. In analyzing the works of these authors, I conclude that what they shared most effectively was an agenda rather than a practice. They defended the single, universal truth of a "Christian philosophy" grounded in biblical literalism against the impious excesses of philosophical naturalism, on the one hand, and against the antiphilosophical attacks of extreme theologians, on the other hand. This peculiar strand of natural philosophy, neither traditional nor "modern," needs to be included in attempts to map the complex dynamics of contemporary debates and self-presentations. -/- . (shrink)

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by (...) Nazi Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“A Child Has Been Born unto Us”Arendt on BirthAdriana CavareroTranslated by Silvia Guslandi and Cosette BruhnsIn The Human Condition, at the end of the dense chapter on action, Hannah Arendt reiterates that action, that is, the political faculty for excellence, “is ontologically rooted” in the fact of natality, “like an ever-present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to (...) begin” (Arendt 1998, 246).1 To reinforce this argument, Arendt compares action to miracles, and makes an interesting and, as we will see, somewhat perplexing reference to the Bible:[The miracle] is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored altogether.…It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their “glad tidings”: “A child has been born unto us.”(HC, 247)The citation is suggestive, but incorrect. In the Gospels, which do announce with true joy the birth of the child, the phrase as it is quoted here does not exist. It appears instead in Isaiah (9:6), translated into English both as “For to us a child is borne,” and, in the version of the King James Bible from which Arendt is plausibly drawing, as “For unto us a child is born.” The error, if indeed it is an error, is thus twofold (see Young-Ah Gottlieb 2003, 136ff.), since [End Page 12] both the passage referenced and the words cited are incorrect. That Arendt frequently cites from memory, and that the citations tend to be bibliographically incorrect, is known to her interpreters, but in this case the error ends up being quite significant. As is well known, the prophetic text carries a strong Messianic burden, and such a burden would trouble significantly the thesis that Arendt is here illustrating; the Gospels’ message creates instead fewer obstacles to her strategy of framing the meaning of birth within the mundane horizon that in her vocabulary takes the names of “world” or “worldliness.” Since “‘to live’ and to ‘be among men’” mean the same thing (HC, 7), the child, every newborn, that is, every human being that makes its entrance in the world, is not, according to the Arendtian vision, born to us, coming from elsewhere, but appears among us here. The scenario of birth, like that of action, whatever be the holy text that mentions or exemplarily validates them, is, for Arendt, a radically mundane scenario that does not call into question any transcendence or religious instance of salvation.Jewish, secular, and classically trained in Greek and Latin, Arendt, who had little familiarity with the Jewish language and tradition, met Christian thought primarily through Saint Augustine, to whom she dedicated her doctoral thesis (Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, published in Berlin in 1929 and then in English in 1996 as Love and Saint Augustine), and who remained a constant point of reference throughout her work. A phrase from Augustine—initium ut esset homo creatus est—present in the thesis, appears, in fact, in Arendt’s later texts, including The Human Condition, indeed with obsessive repetitiveness in reference to the category of birth.2 In her monumental work The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, a full seven years prior to The Human Condition, Arendt already writes: “Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est, ‘that a beginning be made, man was created’, said Augustine. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man” (Arendt 1973, 479). On the philosophically anomalous theme of birth, the contributions of the Christian tradition that Arendt does appreciate are predominantly two: the “glad tidings” that herald the coming of the child, and Augustine’s comments on the narrative of Creation.Natality, Birth, and the Human Condition of... (shrink)

The nihilists are right, admits philosopher Loyal Rue. The universe is blind and aimless, indifferent to us and void of meaning. There are no absolute truths and no objective values. There is no right or wrong way to live, only alternative ways. There is no correct reading of a text or a picture or a dance. God is dead, nihilism reigns. But, Rue adds, nihilism is a truth inconsistent with personal happiness and social coherence. What we need instead is a (...) new myth, a noble lie. Only a noble lie can save us from the psychological and social chaos now threatened by the spread of skepticism about the meaning of life and the universe. In By the Grace of Guile, Loyal Rue offers a wide ranging look at the importance of deception in nature and in human society, concluding with an argument for a noble lie to replace the religious beliefs rejected by modern thought. Most of the book is a provocative apology for deception, illuminating its role in the shaping of history, evolution, personality, and society. Ranging from the Bible and Greek philosophy, to Saint Augustine and Montaigne, to Galileo, Kirkegaard, and Freud, Rue shows that it may be more accurate to describe the history of our culture as a flight from deception than as a quest for truth. He turns then to the natural world to reveal how deception works at every level of life, ranging from plants that mimic dung, carrion, or prey to lure insects that then spread pollen, to a remarkable African insect (Acanthaspis petax) that bedecks itself with dead ants and enters the ant colony undetected to binge at will. Moreover, he points out that psychological research has shown that strategies of deception and self-deception are essential to our personal well-being, that we sometimes shore up our self-esteem by deceptive means, by leaving others in a state of ignorance, by manipulating others into a state of false belief, by suppressing information from consciousness, and by fabricating or distorting our own sense of reality. And he argues that social coherence is achievable only within certain optimal limits of deception--the social fabric would be threatened by an overabundance of lies and false promises, of course, but it would also collapse if everyone were perfectly honest all the time. Finally, he argues that society is caught up in a Kulturkampf with nihilists promoting intellectual and moral relativism and realists defending objective and universal truths. The noble lie, says Rue, would introduce a third voice, one which first agrees with the nihilists that universal myths are pretentious lies, but then insists, against the nihilists, that without such lies humanity cannot survive. The challenge, he concludes, is ultimately an aesthetic one: it remains for the artists, poets, novelists, musicians, filmmakers, and other masters of illusion to seduce us into an embrace with a noble lie. We need a new myth that tells us where we have come from, what our nature is, and how we should live together--a story with the courage and presumption to say how things really are and what really matters. (shrink)

It is not unusual for even the very greatest polemics to proceed through some unfairness toward what they attack, indeed to draw strength from the very distortions which they impose upon their targets. In the same way that a good caricature of a person’s face enables us to see something that we feel was genuinely there to be seen all along, a conviction that persists in the face of, and may indeed be sustained by, our ongoing sense of the discrepancy (...) between the picture and the reality. Some such distortion may be necessary in order to point to or make visible a feature that is perfectly present, but is obscured by the mass of other details. In the case of ideas and systems of thought there is an additional reason for a positive concern with distortion, and that is that we do not encounter ideas in a social or intellectual void. Rather, they come to us through their admirers, detractors, followers and opponents. The social and intellectual reception and dissemination of Plato, or Marx, or the Bible are now and forever part of the meaning of those texts, and this remains true however demonstrable it may be that their reception involves a large distortion of what is actually there in those texts. To concern oneself with them must also be to concern oneself with what both their advocates and opponents have made of them, and in this or that context this image may be of greater social and intellectual importance than the question of strictly ‘correct’ readings. And of course for no contemporary school of philosophy has the social and cultural milieu of its reception been more important to its identity as a trend of thought than in the case of Existentialism, particularly in its French, Sartrean form. Today, of course, it has been a fact of intellectual life within the Academy for over 30 years that Existentialism has no friends, and is.. (shrink)

Doctors have been treating infectious diseases for hundreds of years, but the risk they and other medical professionals are exposed to in an epidemic has always been high. At the front line of the present war against COVID-19, medical teams are endangering their lives as they continue to treat patients suffering from the disease. What is the degree of danger that a medical team must accept in the face of a pandemic? What are the theoretical justifications for these risks? (...) This article offers answers to these questions by citing opinions based on Jewish ethical thought that has been formulated down through the ages. According to Jewish ethics, the obligation to assist and care for patients is based on many commandments found in the Bible and on rulings in the Responsa literature. The ethical challenge is created when treating the sick represents a real existential danger to the caregivers and their families. This consideration is relevant for all dangerous infectious diseases and particularly for the coronavirus that has struck around the world and for which there is as yet no cure. Many rabbis over the years have offered the religious justifications for healing in a general sense and especially in cases of infectious diseases as they have a bearing on professional and communal obligations. They have compared the ethical expectations of doctors to those of soldiers but have not sanctioned taking risks where there is insufficient protection or where there is a danger to the families of the medical professionals. (shrink)

Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condones slavery, and demands the adoption of unjust laws-for example, laws that (...) mandate the death penalty for adultery and rebellion against parents, and laws institutionalizing in various ways the diverse kinds of bigotry and oppression just mentioned. In recent days, these sorts of criticisms of the Hebrew Bible have been raised in new and forceful ways by philosophers, scientists, social commentators, and others. This volume brings together eleven original essays representing the views of both critics and defenders of the character of God as portrayed in these texts. Authors represent the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and Biblical studies. Each essay is accompanied by comments from another author who takes a critical approach to the thesis defended in that essay, along with replies by the essay's author. (shrink)

Baruch Spinoza’s (1632–77)Tractatus theologico-politicus (1669 or 1670) caused outrage across the Dutch Republic, for it obliterated the carefully installed separation between philosophy and theology. The posthumous publication of Spinoza’s Ethica, which is contained in his Opera posthuma (1677), caused similar consternation. It was especially the mathematical order in which the Ethica was composed that caused fierce opposition, for its mathematical appearance gave the impression that Spinoza’s heretical teachings were established demonstratively. In this essay, I document how the Dutch physician, (...) local politician, and amateur mathematician and experimenter Bernard Nieuwentijt (1654–1718) attempted to physico-mathematically and methodologically counter the threats posed by Spinoza’s program. Nieuwentijt tried to defend the authority of the scriptures in times at which they came under attack by the new philosophy and by the emerging sciences that were gradually winning terrain. The crux of his defense consisted in delineating a modest epistemology, a “learned ignorance,” that would cure Spinoza’s followers of their pansophical aspirations, on the one hand, and remove the conflict between the Bible and reason, on the other. The specific way in which he sought to accomplish this distinguished him from Dutch Reformed thought, or so I will argue. (shrink)

The paper deals with the work Philosophia Sacra: Or The Principles of Natural Philosophy. Extracted from Divine Revelation, published in 1753 by the relatively unknown English clergyman Samuel Pike (circa 1717 – 1773). This work falls within the tradition of the so-called Mosaic physics, a specific Early Modern endeavor to build natural philosophy based on a literal reading of the Holy Scriptures, particularly the first chapters of the book of Genesis attributed to Moses – hence the term “Mosaic.” (...) For this reason, at the beginning of the paper, the author seeks to introduce the fundamental ideas of this movement as expressed by its key proponents, namely L. Daneau, O. Casmann, and K. Aslakssøn. In the subsequent analysis of Pike’s natural-philosophical conception, the author highlights its specific features, including obvious Newtonian influences on the one hand (Pike’s work was written about a century and a half later than the texts of the ‘founding fathers’ of Mosaic physics and must have been influenced by the contemporary discourse). On the other hand, Pike’s work exhibits strong, albeit implicit, similarities with the ideas of J. A. Comenius, another thinker associated with Early Modern Mosaic physics (and often considered its most significant representative, which are explored in the concluding part of the text. It can be said that Pike’s work appears as a remarkable and highly original culmination of the Mosaic natural philosophy tradition, combining a range of seemingly unexpected, if not outright contradictory, motifs. (shrink)

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands”. In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the (...) other. We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand? (shrink)

This book’s goal is to give an intellectual context for the following manuscript. -/- Includes bibliographical references and an index. Pages 1-123. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 18th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. I. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich -- 1770-1831 -- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus. II. Rosenzweig, Franz, -- 1886-1929. III. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, -- 1775-1854. IV. Hölderlin, Friedrich, -- 1770-1843. V. Ferrer, Daniel (...) Fidel, 1952-. [Translation from German into English of the-- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus.]. -/- Note: the manuscript is in the handwriting of G.W.F. Hegel, but the actual authorship is disputed. No date is given. Franz Rosenzweig made up the title as it is known today. He published the text in 1917. At that time, F. Rosenzweig thought F.W.J. Schelling was the author. No one has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. Martin Luther who did the famous early translation of the Bible into German wrote in a letter, “If anyone does not like my translation, they can ignore it… (September 15, 1530)”. There are no ‘correct’ translations. Some are just better than other translations. -/- The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism. The German title is: Das Älteste Systemprogramm Des Deutschen Idealismus. This title was made up by Franz Rosenzweig in 1917, when he first published the manuscript. He found the manuscript in the Royal Library in Berlin in 1913. The manuscript suggested date is around 1796 and was done by handwriting research. However, the manuscript is not dated. The Prussian State Library auctioned in March 1913 from the auction of the house Liepmannssohn in Berlin a single sheet on the front and back with Hegel's cursive handwriting. The manuscript was lost during WWII. But Dieter Henrich found it again in 1979 in the “Biblioteka Jagiellonska” in Krakow (Poland), where it is today. Address: Jagiellonian Library, Jagiellonian University, al. Mickiewicza 22, 30-059 Cracow, Poland. Later research suggests that manuscript had come from the estate of Hegel’s student Friedrich Christoph Förster (1791-1868). He was one of the editors of Hegel’s posthumous works and most likely had access to a number of Hegel’s manuscripts. This text actually being one of them. Hegel traveled around Bohemia with Marie and Friedrich Christoph Förster around the year 1820-21 (see Klaus Vieweg). -/- Philosophical mystery -- who is the author or authors of this text? -/- Take a plunge into the deep and cold waters. Maybe a quagmire or quandary, but decidedly interesting. This project is to contextualize an old handwritten manuscript which is about 225 years old. The actual author is a mystery. I offer my own assessment. You can make your own assessments. The mystery has continued to unfold since 1917. There is plenty to read. Otherwise, think about the authorship and read more of the German philosophers and authors from this period and enjoy the depth of thinking and philosophizing. On one hand, there is just the sheer fun in the puzzle of the authorship questions; and on the other hand, these are the alluring thoughts that lead to the nascent stage of German Idealism and our intellectual heritage. There is no end to the accolades for this group of philosophers. A heritage that we still hear in in our attempts to move forward into our future. -/- Do your own astute exegesis (ἐξήγησις) as all paths are still open. Let your thought take to the wings of what is called thinking with this text. Critical encounters (Auseinandersetzung, or a Gegenüberstellung) with at least: Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) --- starts here! German Idealism. We are not going to study this situation endlessly, instead we make some broad strokes and provide you a general context. You are allowed to read between the lines too. Goal: to understand the overall affinity and differences between the intellectuals of this period in German history; and to come to grips with this demanding text within its large scholarly context in the last 100 years. There are no final answers. (shrink)

Wolterstorff defends the claim not only that ‘God speaks’ through the Bible but also that the reader gains ever new insights upon subsequent readings of it. I qualify this project with the philosophical hermeneutics he rejects—namely that of Gadamer and Ricoeur. Wolterstorff thinks what he calls ‘authorial discourse interpretation’ provides warrant for religious communities believing that ‘God speaks’ to them through a text. In developing this hermeneutic, he dismisses the viability of Gadamer and Ricoeur's approach because, Wolterstorff asserts, their (...) form of interpretation is merely an operation performed on an artifact. While a cursory study of Gadamer and Ricoeur might support such dismissal, particularly Ricoeur's emphasis on writing's obliteration of dialogue, a closer study guided by the hermeneutic priority of questioning complicates Wolterstorff's caricature. If writing obliterates dialogue, what happens to questions and responses? My thesis is that dialogue with another is preserved through the hermeneutical arc. I demonstrate this through specifying distinct logics of question and answer that occur in the reading process, and I delimit these logics by way of appeal to contemporary literacy pedagogy and its taxonomies of questions. A voice does speak with and listen to a reader in the event of reading, in this case a God who is not behind but before the text. Isolating this other who speaks and listens provides reinforcement for constructive theological work aligned with Gadamer and Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and answers for the experience of hearing ‘God speak’ differently through sacred texts. (shrink)

Overview * Part I: Introduction * Philip Appleman, Darwin: On Changing the Mind * Part II: Darwin’s Life * Ernst Mayr, Who Is Darwin? * Part III: Scientific Thought: Just before Darwin * Sir Gavin de Beer, Biology before the Beagle * Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population * William Paley, Natural Theology * Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Lamarck, Zoological Philisophy * Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology * John Herschell, The Study of Natural (...) class='Hi'>Philosophy * William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology * Alfred Russel Wallace, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type * Part IV: Selections from Darwin’s Work * The Voyage of the Beagle * o Chapter I. St. Jago-Cape de Verd Island o Chapter XVII. Galapagos Archipelago * On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection * o I. Extract from an unpublished Work on Species, by C. Darwin, Esq.... o II.of Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray, Boston, U.S., dated Down, September 5th, 1857 * An Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species, previously to the : Publication of This Work The Origin of Species * o Introduction o Chapter I. Variation under Domestication o Chapter II. Variation under Nature o Chapter III. Struggle for Existence o Chapter IV. Natural Selection o Chapter VI. Difficulties on Theory o Chapter IX. On the Imperfections of the Geological Record o Chapter XIII. Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs o Chapter XIV. Recapitulation and Conclusion * The Descent of Man * o Introduction o Chapter I. The Evidence of the Descent of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter II. On the Manner of Development of Man from Some Lower Form o Chapter III. Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals o Chapter VI. On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man o Chapter VIII. Principles of Sexual Selection o Chapter XIX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man o Chapter XX. Secondary Sexual Characters of Man-continued o Chapter XXI. General Summary and Conclusion * Part V: Darwin’s Influence on Science * THE VICTORIAN OPPOSITION TO DARWIN * o David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics o Adam Sedgwick, Objections to Mr. Darwin’s Theory of the Origin of Species o Sir Richard Owen, Darwin on the Origin of Species o Fleeming Jenkin, Review of the Origin of Species * VICTORIAN SUPPORTERS OF DARWIN * o Joseph Dalton Hooker, Flora Tasmaniae o Thomas Henry Huxley, On the Relations of Man to the Lowe Animals o Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology o Alfred Russel Wallace, The Debt of Science to Darwin * DARWIN AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN SCIENCE * o Scientific Method in Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Evolution and the Nature of Science o Richard Dawkins, Explaining the Very Improbable o Lewis Thomas, On the Uncertainty of Science o Noretta Koetge, Postmodernisms and the Problem of Scientific Literary o Richard Dawkins, Science and Sensibility o The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis o Peter Bowler, The Evolutionary Synthesis o The Human Genealogy o Adam Kuper, The Chosen Primate o Ian Tattersall, Out of Africa Again... and Again? o Stephen Jay Gould, The Human Difference o Punctuated Equilibrium o Stephen Jay Gould, [On Punctuated Equilibrium] o Niles Eldredge, The Great Stasis Debate o Rethinking Taxonomy o Kevin Padian, Darwin’s Views of Classification o David L. Hull, Cladistic Analysis o Kevin Padian and Luis M. Chiappe, Cladistics in Action: The Origin of Birds and Their Flight o Evolution as Observable Fact o James L. Gould and William T. Keeton with Carol Grant Gould, How Natural Selection Operates o Peter r. Grant, Natural Selection and Darwin’s Finches o John A. Endler, Natural Selection in the Wild * Part VI: Darwinian Patterns in Social Thought * COMPETITION AND COOPERATION * o Richard Hofstadter, The Vogue of Spencer o Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth o Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid o Martin A. Nowak, Robert M. May, and Karl Sigmund, The Arithmetics of Mutual Help * NATURE AND NURTURE * o Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis o Stephen Jay Gould, Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determination o Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh, The New Creationism: Biology under Attack * EVOLUTION AND GENDER * o Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible o Nancy Makepeace Tanner, On Becoming Human o Evelleen Richards, Darwin and the Descent of Woman o James Eli Adams, Woman Red in Tooth and Claw * EVOLUTION AND OTHER DISCIPLINES * o Edward O. Wilson, [On Consilience] o Randolph H. Nesse and George C. Williams, Evolution and the Origin of Disease o Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works o Steve Jones, The Set within the Skull * Part VII: Darwinian Influences in Philosophy and Ethics * John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy * Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Natural Selection as an Algorithmic Process * Michael Ruse Darwinian Epistemology * Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics * Julian Huxley, Evolutionary Ethics * Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics * Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origin of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals * Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue * Part VIII: Evolutionary Theory and Religious Theory * MAINSTREAM RELIGIOUS SUPPORT FOR EVOLUTION * o Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences o Central Conference of American Rabbis, On Creationism in School Textbooks o United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Evolution and Creationsim o The Lutheran World Federation, [Statement on Evolution] o The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Resolution on Evolutionism and Creationism o Unitariuan Universalist Association, Resolution Opposing "Scientific Creationism" * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM * o Eugene C. Scott, Antievolution and Creationism in the United States o The Scopes Trial o Thomas McIver, Orthodox Jewish Creationists o Harun Yahya, [Islamic Creationism] o Seami Srila Prabhupada, [A Hare Krishna on Darwinian Evolution] o Institute for Creation Research, Tenets of Creationism o Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism o Thomas J. Wheeler, Review of Morris o Richard D. Sjolund and Betty McCollister, Evolution at the Grass Roots o Richard D. Sjolund, [Creationism versus Biotechnology] o Betty McCollister, [The Politics of Creationism] o Molleen Matsumara, What Do Christians Really Believe about Evolution? o National Center for Science Education, Seven Significant Court Decisions Regarding Evolution/Creation Issues * PERSONAL INCREDULITY AND ANTIEVOLUTIONISM * o Richard Dawkins, [The Argument from Personal Incredulity] o Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial o Eugenie C. Scott, Review of Johnson o Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box o Robert Dorit, Review of Behe o Michael Ruse, Darwin’s New Critics on Trial * SCIENTISTS’ OPPOSITION TO CREATIONISM * o American Association for the Advancement of Science, Forced Teaching of Creationist Beliefs in Public School Science Education o American Institute of Biological Sciences, Resolution Oposing Creationism in Science Courses o National Association of Biology Teachers, Statement on Teaching Evolution o National Academy of Sciences, Frequently Asked Questions about Evolution and the Nature of Science * FUNDAMENTALIST CREATIONISM AND THE VALUE OF SATIRE * o Michael Shermer, Genesis Revisted: A Scientific Creation Story o Philip Appleman, Darwin’s Ark * Part IX: Darwin and the Literary Mind * DARWIN’S LITERARY SENSIBILITY * o Charles Darwin, Autobiography o L. Robert Stevens, Darwin’s Humane Reading o George Levine, Darwin and Pain: Why Science Made Shakespeare Nauseating o Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots * DARWIN’S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE * o Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets o George Levine, Darwin among the Novelists o Joseph Wood Krutch, The Tragic Fallacy o Herbert J. Muller, Modern Tragedy o Philip Appleman, Darwin-Sightings in Recent Literature. (shrink)

Lévinas’s harsh criticisms of the sacred have irked not just his critics but even some who sympathize with his work. Taken at face value, some of Lévinas’s comments concerning the sacred appear prejudicial towards non-monotheistic religions. But a closer reading of his analysis of the sacred shows that his preoccupation with the sacred has to do with a questionable “temptation” or disposition found in every human being. Drawing on the insights of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Lévy-Bruhl, Lévinas shows how (...) this temptation involves a primitive wish to escape one’s responsibilities as a human being. For Lévinas, the phenomenon of the sacred promotes the illusion of a direct and immediate experience of the absolute or the Infinite. Genuine transcendence, for Lévinas, is possible only within the ethical drama of self and Other. The apex of human life involves not the eclipsing of the self—the fundamental motivation behind the sacred—but a heightening of the self’s radical uniqueness that only moral engagement makes possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE PLACE OF RENE GIRARD IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY Guy Vanheeswijck University ofAntwerp and ofLeuven Iwould like to start by quoting a text which is likely to be recognized by everyone, who is even on a superficial level familiar with the work of René Girard: Desire that bears on a natural object is only human to the extent that it is mediated by the desire of another bearing on (...) the same object: it is human to desire what others desire, because they desire it. Thus an object that is perfectly useless from a biological point of view (such as a medal, or the enemy's flag) can be desired because it is the object of other desires. Such a human desire, and human reality as it differs from animal reality, is only created by the action that satisfies such desires. Human history is the history of desires that are desired [Désirs désirés]. Undoubtedly, these could be words written by Girard. However, they are not. These words are quoted from the famous lectures given by Alexandre Kojève on Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes at the Ecole pratique des hautes études between 1933 and 1939. They were followed by what would become the crème ofpost-war French philosophy: Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Alexandre Koyré, Pierre Klossowski, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre.' Kojève's interpretation ofHegel has, as generally known, become the point ofreference to the post-war twentieth ' Although Sartre himselfcould not attend the lectures (at that time he taught philosophy in Le Havre en Laon), he must have heard from it by way of Aron or Merleau-Ponty. 96Guy Vanheeswijck century philosophy in France. Before 1930 the word "dialectic" was burdened with an odium of sin, after 1930 it became a word—thanks to Kojève —radiant with prestige. Before 1930 there had been no talk of an Hegelian school whatsoever in France, after 1930 the situation changed so drastically that Merleau-Ponty was able to write these often quoted lines in 1946: Hegel is at the origin of everything that has been great in philosophy for over a century; for example Marxism, Nietzsche, phenomenology and German existentialism, psychoanalysis. He inaugurates the attempt to explore the irrational and to integrate it within a wider rationality that remains the philosophical task of our century. (Sens et non-sens 109-110) Half a century later, these words have lost their self-evident character. While the generation of French thinkers between 1930 and 1960 stresses its dependence on Hegel, the generation after 1960 heavily reacts against him. In 1970 Michel Foucault gave his inaugural speech at the Collège de France. On behalf of his generation he testified to a generalized antiHegelianism at that moment: "Our entire epoch, whether through logic or epistemology, whether through Marx or Nietzsche, seeks to evade Hegel's Imperium [échapper à Hegel] (L'Ordre du discours 74). Obviously, René Girard belongs to the second generation, which, on the one hand, embroiders on the theme ofdesire, borrowed from Kojève's interpretation ofHegel, but, on the other, in its search for answers precisely wishes to get rid of Hegel. But, is it correct to call René Girard a philosopher? His schooling was that of an historian. In 1947 he graduated in Paris as an archivistepal éographe at the Ecole de Chartres: his thesis was "La vie privée à Avignon dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle." Three years later—in the meantime he had emigrated to the United States—he received his Ph.D. at the faculty of history of the University of Indiana. The topic of his dissertation was "American opinion ofFrance, 1940-1943." However, he has never worked as a professional historian. He owes his reputation first and foremost to his literary analyses, subsequently to his research in anthropology, finally to his exegesis ofthe Bible. Time and again, Girard has expressed his preference for literature to both humanities and philosophy. Human behavior is, in his view, much less elucidated by the conceptual structures of discursive philosophy than by the evocative force of a Greek tragedy, the Biblical passion story or a modern novel. One might retort that René Girard... (shrink)

The question of whether or not God exists is profoundly fascinating and important. Now two articulate spokesmen--one a Christian, the other an atheist--duel over God's existence in an illuminating battle of ideas. In God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong bring to the printed page two debates they held before live audiences, preserving all the wit, clarity, and immediacy of their public exchanges. Avoiding overly esoteric arguments, they directly address issues such (...) as religious experience, the Bible, evil, eternity, the origin of the universe, design, and the supposed connection between morality and the existence of God. Employing sharp and humorous arguments, each philosopher strikes quickly to the heart of his opponent's case. For example, Craig claims that we must believe in God in order to explain objective moral values, such as why rape is wrong. Sinnott-Armstrong responds that what makes rape wrong is the harm to victims of rape, so rape is immoral even if there is no God. By assuming a traditional concept of God in their discussion, the authors ensure that they are truly addressing each other's viewpoints and engaging in a disagreement over a unified issue. The book is composed of six chapters that alternate between Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong, so that each separate point can be discussed as it arises. Ideal for courses in the philosophy of religion and introduction to philosophy, this lively and direct dialogue will stimulate students and anyone interested in the existence of God, regardless of whether or not they believe in God. (shrink)

In recent years, numerous researches have been conducted on CSR from various perspectives. From a survey of CSR literatures from spiritual and religious perspectives, there are some studies based on the Quran (Islam) and the Bible (Christianity) made by scholars. However, the Bhagavad-Gita (Hinduism) is yet to be explored in the context of CSR. This article is therefore timely and fills the gap in the CSR literature. In this article, the authors employs hermeneutics, a qualitative research methodology which involves (...) the study, understanding and interpretation of the BG particularly the concept of ‘dharma’ (duty) and ‘karma’ (action) in the context of CSR. In a nutshell, the BG provides an inside-out approach to CSR, which is the development of individual leader’s self-conscience of his1 dharma (duty) and karma (action). Based on the BG’s insights, CSR should ideally begin with ISR (Individual Social Responsibility includes Personal Social Responsibility) and to go beyond CSR with GSR (Global Social Responsibility). These three social responsibilities are the essential dharma and karma of corporate leaders. The leaders and the role they play in corporations are crucial in ensuring transparency, good conduct and governance towards the ultimate aim of achieving CSR. This article is expected to provide a framework to the study of BG philosophy from other aspects of corporate management; such as corporate governance, corporate ethics and human resource management in the near future. (shrink)

The article highlights the features of Candidate Degree works of the Kyiv Theological Academy students of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries as the most important element of their educational and scientific training. Based on a wide range of primary sources, the author refutes the false identification of works for obtaining of the degree of Candidate of Theology, written in the Orthodox theological academies of the Russian Empire, with the modern Candidate dissertations. Considering these works as qualifying (...) works for obtaining an academic degree of Candidate of Theology that are of similar status as the modern diploma works of higher education institution students, the author argues that such an approach does not diminish their importance and their great source potential in the study of scholarly work of the Orthodox theological academies of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Based on the example of the Kyiv Theological Academy, the article reveals the important role of independent research work of the students, their mastering of skills of academic reading and writing in creating Candidate Degree works of quality; explains the procedural moments associated with their preparation, review, and evaluation. Based on the preserved manuscripts of Candidate Degree works of the Kyiv Theological Academy students, the paper outlines their subjects related to Bible Studies, Patrology, Dogmatic, Comparative, Moral, Pastoral Theology, Liturgy, and Homiletics, which are considered chiefly on historical material. The author stresses the particular popularity of the studies in History of the Church at the Kyiv Theological Academy, as well as other theological academies, particularly the study of history of the Orthodox Church and its hierarchy in so-called Southewestern Krai of the Russian Empire, as well as the history of the Kyiv Theological Academy of the 17th – 19th centuries. The article clarifies that contrary to the requirements of the Most Holy Synod to offer and choose the topics of exclusively theological nature for the qualification works, The Kyiv Theological Academy found the opportunity to realize the interest of students in other humanities – first of all, philosophy, the evidence of which is more than one hundred remaining manuscripts of Candidate Degree works on philosophical issues. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the work of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre by comparing their understanding of the narrative structure of selfhood with paradigms derived from three other sources: Heidegger’s conception of human being as Dasein; Rowan Williams’ interpretation of Dostoevsky’s theology of narrative; and Kierkegaard’s project of reading the Old Testament narrative of Abraham and Isaac as part of the Christian God’s autobiography. These comparisons suggest that Taylor and MacIntyre’s own narratives of Western culture lack a certain, theologically (...) required openness to a variety of specific ways in which both individuality and history resist understanding in narrative terms as much as they demand it. (shrink)

Chapters 17 and 18 of the TTP constitute a textual unit in which Spinoza submits the case of the ancient Hebrew state to close examination. This is not the work of a historian, at least not in any sense that we, twenty-first century readers, would recognize as such. Many of Spinoza’s claims in these chapters are highly speculative, and seem to be poorly backed by historical evidence. Other claims are broad-brush, ahistorical generalizations: for example, in a marginal note, Spinoza (...) refers to his Jewish contemporaries as if they were identical with the ancient Hebrews. Projections from Spinoza’s own experience of his Jewish and Dutch contemporaries are quite common, and the Erastian lesson that Spinoza attempts to draw from his “history” of the ancient Hebrew state is all too conspicuous. Even Spinoza’s philosophical arguments in these two chapters are not uniformly convincing, as I will attempt to show. Yet in spite of all these faults, the two chapters are a masterpiece of their own kind: a case study of the psychological foundations of politics and religion. The work that comes closest in my mind is Freud’s 1939 Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion. The two works are similar not only in terms of their chronological subject matter – the Hebrews of Moses’s time – but also in their attempt to reconstruct the communal psyche of the Hebrews in order to demonstrate their respective social theories about the foundation of civilization. Needless to say, there are numerous differences between the two works, not the least of which are their distinct aims and the very different political contexts in which they were produced. We will return to this comparison with Freud’s Moses and Monotheism toward the end of the essay, but let me first stage the background for our discussion. Chapter 16 of the TTP begins a new section of the book which primarily deals with the relation between religion and the state. In this chapter Spinoza presents an outline of his political theory and his understanding of key notions such as right, power, the state of nature, the social contract, sovereignty, democracy, and justice. The title of chapter 17 announces its aim and focus: “showing that no one can transfer everything to the Supreme Power, and that this is not necessary; on the Hebrew Republic, as it was during the life of Moses, and after his death, before they elected Kings, and on its excellence; and finally, on the causes why the divine Republic [Respublica divina] could perish, and could hardly survive without rebellions” (III/201). The far less ambitious title of eighteenth chapter states that in it “certain Political doctrines are inferred from the Republic and history of the Hebrews” (III/221). Essentially, the two chapters present a surprising, ironic, and penetrating reading of the story of the divine Hebrew Republic, a reading which highlights both how much and how little was achieved by the use of the fantastic political device of attributing divine sanctification to the state and its sovereign. (shrink)

The political philosopher Leo Strauss is famous for contending that any synthesis of reason and revelation is impossible, since they are irreconcilable antagonists. Yet he is also famous for praising the secular regime of liberal democracy as the best regime for all human beings, even though he is well aware that modern philosophers such as Spinoza thought this regime must make use of biblical morality to promote good citizenship. Is democracy, then, both religious and secular? Strauss thought that Spinoza was (...) contradictory in teaching that reason and revelation should be separated from each other while also insisting that a secular democratic politics still requires the biblical morality of charity. The paradox that liberal democracy is both religious and secular, which is central to Spinoza, was dismissed by Strauss as a Machiavellian subterfuge or the cynical attempt to use religion for political purposes. In order to adhere to his dualistic separation of reason and revelation, Strauss turned to ancient Greek political philosophy, particularly the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, as the true ground of liberal democracy since this classical tradition was never exposed to biblical revelation. Yet, the illiberal and hierarchical implications of Greek political thought, which clash with Strauss’s modern views on human individuality and dignity, ultimately take him back to the biblically based philosophies of Spinoza and Kierkegaard, who teach the paradox that the Bible is the true foundation of human freedom. (shrink)

Taking Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of the prologue of St John's gospel (in his Lectura super loannem Evangelium) as example, I first discuss eight differences between medieval biblical interpretation and modern exegesis, especially Aquinas's frequent use of philosophical opinions in interpreting the Bible, taken mostly from Aristotle. Second, I account for these differences by reconstructing Aquinas's hermeneutics, hinging, as is shown, upon the assumption that scripture was authored by God infallible and, therefore, only contains true statements. From this starting point (...) Aquinas is lead to a holistic hermeneutics: The interpretation of a biblical statement can be judged on only within the context of an entire theory of God, the world, and of the interpretation of the other biblical statements. Thirdly, this view is discussed systematically and critically. (shrink)

Some early modern scholars believed that Scripture provided more certain knowledge than all secular authorities – even Aristotle – or investigating nature as such. In this paper, I analyse one such attempt to establish the most reliable knowledge of nature: the so-called Mosaic physics proposed by the Reformed encyclopaedist Johann Heinrich Alsted. Although in his early works on Physica Mosaica Alsted declares that his primary aim is proving the harmony that exists between various traditions of natural philosophy, namely between (...) the Mosaic and the Peripatetic approaches, and despite the fact that his biblical encyclopaedia of 1625 was intended to be based on a literal reading of the Bible, he never truly abandoned the Aristotelian framework of physics. What is more, in his mature encyclopaedia of 1630, he eventually openly preferred Aristotle to other natural-philosophical traditions. I argue, therefore, that Alsted’s bold vision of Mosaic physics remained unfulfilled and should be assessed as an unsuccessful project of early modern natural philosophy. (shrink)

We present the results of research carried out as a part of the project “Current Controversies about Human Origins: Between Anthropology and the Bible”, which focused on the supposed conflict between natural sciences and some branches of the humanities, notably philosophy and theology, with regard to human origins. One way to tackle the issue was to distribute a questionnaire among students and teachers of the relevant disciplines. Teachers of religion and the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics) and (...) students of theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences (specializing in biology and/or anthropology) were asked to answer eleven questions concerning the perception of the conflict between evolutionism and creationism, the definitions of creation and evolution, the existence of a human spiritual element, and the ways of interpreting the Bible, especially the first chapters of the book of Genesis. In the paper we present and analyze selected results of this questionnaire. Among interesting findings there are the following: 1) the opinion concerning the relationship between evolutionism and creationism largely depends on the respondent’s general attitude toward religion, and not on their field of study or teaching expertise, which runs contrary to the received view attributing the opinion of the conflict between science and religion to people’s educational or professional background; 2) The conflict is far more pronounced in the group of nonbelievers. This distinguishes Poland from other countries, notably the United States, where the majority of people with strong religious beliefs seem to maintain that there is a conflict between the natural sciences and religion; 3) literal understanding of the Bible was rejected by vast majority of the respondents, including those who insist on the ‘conflict view’, which seems to make the situation in Poland again quite different from that in some other countries; 4) Unsophisticated understanding of creation positively correlates with the ‘conflicting view’ on the one hand, while, on the other, erroneous understanding of the basics of the theory of evolution appears to have its bearing on too optimistic vision of certain coherence between religion and science. We suggest some hypotheses to explain these and other results of the questionnaire. (shrink)

This chapter presents a historical study of how science has developed and of how philosophical theories of many sorts – philosophy of science, theory of the understanding, and philosophical theology – both enable and constrain certain lines of development in scientific practice. Its topic is change in the legitimacy or acceptability of scientific explanation that invokes purposes, or ends; specifically in the argument from design, in the natural science field of physico-theology, around the start of the eighteenth century. ... (...) The context that produced physico-theology was clearly religious and political. It is unsurprising that a large body of Protestant intellectuals well-placed in a relatively peaceful society with a strong tradition of open speech, would develop links between science and critical discussion of both divinity and the Bible. There were also bounds to the discussion, as Newton, who chose to sit on the sidelines, knew well. Many others on Europe’s continent lived much more intimately with religious division as well as the reminder, in 1633, of Galileo’s failure to arrange a peaceable arrangement between science and religion. These aspects of the rise of physico-theology have not been the focus of this chapter, which has surveyed the philosophical and social origins found in the English context. Science, philosophy of science and other English philosophical currents – most particularly the theory of ideas and understanding that we are familiar with in its later development by John Locke – were formative for a field that might alternatively have been called ‘empirical natural theology.’ Prior shifts in religious sensibility that emptied the Book of Nature of much of its content also prepared the ground. Other philosophical and theological currents not discussed here – most notably theories of divine agency and predestination – and other philosophical trends – the rise of Spinoza’s challenge to such natural theology on the continent – also had both shaping and limiting influences upon the field. Finally, philosophers, including natural philosophers, did much more to promote physico-theology than just write about it: Boyle in particular provided a very important launch pad for the further development of an already healthy tradition of natural theology with his named lectureship, which drew the interest of others in the Royal Society, most notably Isaac Newton, and which spawned two of the most influential physico-theological tracts shortly before and shortly after the turn of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

"The fact is, man is an etymologizing animal."Etymologizing—the practice of connecting one word with one or more other similar-sounding words that are believed to elucidate its meaning1—is a complex and putatively universal phenomenon.2 Thus, to take two representative examples far apart in time and space, etymologizing practices figure prominently in some episodes of the Hebrew Bible,3 but also provide some modern influential thinkers with an important mode of argument.4 Perhaps etymologizing is so pervasive because it offers a pliable (...) and powerful tool for addressing a key question, namely, why is something called what it is?While this question has universal appeal, only a few cultures seem to have addressed it... (shrink)

In God Emperor of Dune, Leto II explains to Moneo why people destroyed thinking machines in the Butlerian Jihad: "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments." The Orange Catholic Bible (OCB), the key religious text in the Dune universe, forbids the creation of machines that imitate human thinking: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind." The OCB focuses on human (...) mental abilities – especially computation, reason, and logic – that have a status that machines should not emulate. In Frank Herbert's universe, divine imitation and creation are presented in conflicting ways: on the one hand, they are strictly prohibited, on the other, they are aspirations for key characters. Mentats replace machines by use of hard, cold, logical thinking and reasoning with machine‐like efficiency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spinoza et le christianisme by Henri LauxSteven NadlerHenri Laux. Spinoza et le christianisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2022. Pp. 241. Paperback, €19.00.No one should be surprised by the popularity that Spinoza’s philosophy continues to enjoy today, within academia and even beyond. His bold ideas in metaphysics, ethics, politics, and religion seem to remain vitally relevant and continue to inspire, certainly more so than those of his (...) contemporaries. As the Spinoza scholar Henri Laux puts it at the beginning of his new book, “La pensée de Spinoza s’affirme comme l’une des plus novatrices de la modernité... elle stimule aujourd’hui la réflexion de bon nombre des champs de savoir: anthropologie, sociologie, psychanalyse, politique, économie, écologie, biologie, etc.” (9).But there is at least one domain where Spinoza’s alleged relevance may be rather unexpected: Christian theology. “Un terrain de rencontre, est-il possible?” Laux asks. “Spinoza, peut-il intéresser le christianisme aujourd’hui?” On the one hand, Spinoza’s rejection of the providential deity of the Abrahamic prophets and his dismissal of anything resembling traditional Christian theology as irrational superstition would seem to rule him out as a participant in typical theological conversations about God, the meaning of life, and death. On the other hand, there surely is no longer a need among theologians to attack and “refute” Spinoza; that ship sailed a long time ago. Thus, it is certainly not a surprise that, as Laux notes, “la théologie chrétienne a largement ignoré Spinoza” (14).And yet, Spinoza was writing for, among others, Christian theologians. His intended readers were not, to be sure, the more orthodox predikanten of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Voetians and Counter-Remonstrants who so viciously attacked him in his time. But the Theological-Political Treatise was written, at least in part, for more liberal-minded Christian thinkers—including Spinoza’s Collegiant friends—who might give his reading of the Bible and his reductive understanding of Christ’s universal moral message a fair hearing. At the same time that Spinoza attacks Christianity as an organized religion (“ses pratiques et ses énoncés,” Laux notes [11]), he elevates Christ as the most enlightened and philosophical of all prophets, one who spoke with God not merely through the imagination but with the intellect, “mind to mind.” To the question “Spinoza peut-il intéresser le christianisme?” Laux responds with a definite oui.The first section of the book, “Spinoza et le christianisme de son temps, un état des relations,” is devoted to a presentation of the main themes of Spinoza’s philosophy and the reactions they generated among his contemporaries. On the one hand, Spinoza’s attack on Christianity might seem to be directed primarily at the mendacious but historically contingent practices of the theologians—and especially their misuse of the Bible to manipulate the passions of ordinary people—rather than Christianity’s essential principles. And yet, Laux argues, Spinoza’s conception of God (Deus sive Natura) goes right to “l’essentiel du christianisme” and represents, as any reader of the Ethics knows, “une rupture radicale” with Christian theology. Then there is Spinoza’s rejection of the Trinity and the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ, at least as these fundamental dogmas are literally understood to be supernatural affairs. “La radicalité de Spinoza à propos de Dieu et du Christ ébranle les fondements de la religion chrétienne” (42). In light of Spinoza’s “athéisme” and the “fatale nécessité” of his metaphysics, not to mention the absence of original sin and any absolute, transcendent, nonrelative moral values, what might Christian theologians find in Spinoza’s philosophy that is salvageable and useful for their own intellectual and spiritual purposes? [End Page 664]For most of Spinoza’s contemporaries, the answer was: absolutely nothing. The vicious onslaught of seventeenth-century critics, and not just theologians, was directed not just at the theological and metaphysical principles that undermined central Christian doctrines, but especially at their alleged practical implications for everyday moral behavior. But, Laux insists, things are not as simple as they appear. Spinoza’s denials of atheism are to be taken seriously, and they reveal, in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 599-617 [Access article in PDF] Thinking Geometrically in Pierre-Daniel Huet's Demonstratio evangelica (1679) April G. Shelford Sometime after 1679, Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) indulged an author's vanity by comparing his Demonstratio evangelica with works whose authors are far better known today. He recorded his judgments on a scrap of paper. 1First, he contrasted the Demonstratio to Antoine Arnauld's Les nouveaux élémens de (...) géometrie (1664). While Arnauld had assumed that all the principles of geometry were true and all geometrical demonstrations certain, and had considered religious questions not amenable to methodical demonstration, Huet noted, "I made clear the contrary by proving religion through a methodical sequence of propositions similar to those one finds in geometry." For Arnauld religious belief fell into the class of things better proven through a series of mutually reinforcing propositions than through proofs modeled on geometry; Huet had actually accomplished the latter. Arnauld did not require geometric proofs in religious works; Huet wrote the Demonstratio "to satisfy those who do." Indeed, Arnauld forbade such proofs, "but I permitted them... and I proposed something to satisfy those who do [demand them]."Huet then considered Blaise Pascal's Pensées (1670). Pascal had also rejected demonstration in proving religious truths, Huet noted, opting instead for "moral proofs, which are directed more to the heart than to the mind. In other words he desired to work harder at moving and disposing the heart than at convincing and persuading the intellect." Apparently, "M. Pascal did not believe that one could prove the truth of the Christian religion by geometric proofs; much less that he had any hope of doing so." [End Page 599]Huet's jottings precisely situate the Demonstratio evangelica (1679)between the claims of Cartesian rationalism and Pascal's fideism and religion of the heart, inviting us to take another look at an imperfectly understood work. Scholarly treatment of the Demonstratio has generally been cursory or partial because it has been considered less for its own merits than for how it fits into larger research agendas. 2 Some scholars have offered important insights but either do not develop them or do not consider the Demonstratio in a sufficiently broad context. 3 A consensus on the Demonstratio's general thrust thus masks puzzling questions. Everyone acknowledges, for example, that Huet's apologetic responded to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670). Like other Christian apologists, he had to maintain "the Mosaic authorship" that was "the supposed guarantee of the truth of the text," 4 devoting "long chapters to the authenticity of the books of the Old Testament." 5 Yet Huet began the Demonstratio with an assault on geometrical knowledge and an epistemological discussion—an odd place to begin refuting the Tractatus. 6 Why? The question deserves a good answer, as Huet was a scholar of international reputation, and his contemporaries judged the Demonstratio an important work. 7More important for us, the evolution of the Demonstratio superbly reflects a vanished intellectual world and scholarly culture and in fact records change [End Page 600] in that world over four decades. Its genesis was the rash promise of a young man inspired by the possibilities of geometry and aspiring to recognition in the Republic of Letters, but before fulfilling that promise Huet developed a lively interest in such diverse fields as biblical criticism and natural philosophy, and he would apply the insights gained there in his apologetic. 8 A central question confronting Huet and his contemporaries was how to achieve certainty in matters religious, historical, and scientific. 9 The Demonstratio reveals Huet's conclusion that certainty in all three was profoundly interrelated. Finally, he composed the Demonstratio during the 1670s, having grasped with much alarm the consequences of the spread of Cartesianism. Thus, the Demonstratio is an intellectual biography not just of the author but of an era.Of course, Huet had to contend with Spinoza's challenge to Mosaic authorship, which fatally undermined the historical certainty of the Bible, but he also wrote... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Naturalistic Empiricism as Process TheologyGary Dorrien (bio)The founders of the Chicago School of Theology sought to develop a fully modernist theology, the first one by their standard. They swept aside the a prioris of Kant and Schleiermacher, declaring that nothing is given and no norm from the past holds legitimate authority. Theologian Shailer Mathews, philosopher of religion George Burman Foster, church historian Shirley Jackson Case, and psychologist of religion (...) Edward Scribner Ames were the founders. They agreed with Ernst Troeltsch that Ritschlian historicism is not true historicism and with William James that lingering over the mystery of subjectivity is a loser for theology and philosophy. Theology had to change to deserve the modernist name. Instead of claiming that religious knowledge is a product of religious experience, theologians should say that religious knowledge is a product of disciplined empirical reflection on experience, especially the experience of external relations. Moreover, the Ritschlian approach of employing a Christian framework to get a Christian answer is illegitimate. The only way to make theology truly modern is to make it as scientific as chemistry, or at least, sociology.The Chicago School had a quintessential figure in each of its first three generations. Mathews was the emblematic founder, Henry Nelson Wieman defined the second generation, and Bernard Meland defined the third generation. Each generation had a process orientation that distinctly ventured theological claims. Mathews led the Divinity School as dean from 1908 to 1933, crafting a socio-historical theology of evolutionary process, functional patterns, value theory, and cultural progress. Wieman developed a theological behaviorism that touted its empirical objectivity and opened the door to the organic metaphysical system of Alfred North Whitehead, though Wieman subsequently tried to close the door. One stream of Wieman’s protégés stuck with his approach and another stream tacked back to Whitehead. Meland synthesized the history of the Chicago School, pulled it in Whitehead’s direction, and later regretted that Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, and process theology were too scholastic. Process theology, Meland believed, should be more theopoetic, more culturally attuned, and less scholastic—a prescription with an ample future once feminist theology entered this field. [End Page 5]I. Shailer Mathews and the Early Chicago SchoolThe University of Chicago was the product of John D. Rockefeller’s money, Midwest Baptist anxieties about falling behind other denominations, and William Rainey Harper’s vision of a modern Baptist university. Harper, a Hebrew Bible scholar, and a phenomenally enterprising administrator, founded the university in 1890, stocking it with faculty stars he plucked mostly from New England colleges and universities. Mathews was not a star, or thought to be brilliant. Raised in the staid, thoroughly middle-class, evangelical ethos of Portland, Maine, he was educated at Colby College in Maine, befriending sociologist Albion Small, who became Colby’s president in 1888. Small opened a succession of doors for Mathews—seminary at Newton Theological Institution, a faculty position at Colby in public speaking, graduate study in sociology at the University of Berlin, teaching sociology at Colby, and in 1894, two years after Small moved to Chicago to found the nation’s first sociology department, following Small to Chicago. Harper chaired the Old Testament Department, Mathews’s former teacher at Newton, Ernest DeWitt Burton, chaired the New Testament Department, and Mathews was hired to teach New Testament history, never mind that he had no training in it except whatever Burton had taught him. Burton told Mathews not to worry—his Berlin training in sociology should apply just fine to New Testament history. The University of Chicago had a mission to make religion relevant again, and Mathews could help with that.1Harper enlisted him to serve as an extension of himself in Harper’s numerous endeavors. Mathews was really good at representing Harper, speaking for him on the road, hustling back to Chicago for classes, and enjoying his dual role. To ground himself in his acquired field, Mathews wrote a series of articles on “Christian Sociology” that became his first book, The Social Teaching of Jesus (1897). Christian sociology, he explained, was the use of social science to explicate the objective meaning of Christianity, an overdue enterprise. A scientific reading... (shrink)

In 1982 the American philosopher and Levinas scholar Edith Wyschogrod conducted an interview with Emmanuel Levinas, the transcript of which she published seven years later. Early in the interview, Wyschogrod proposed to Levinas that his philosophy constituted a radical break with western theological tradition because it started not with a Parmenidean ontological plenitude, but rather with the God of the Hebrew Bible. The God Levinas began with, according to Wyschogrod, wasan indigent God, a hidden God who commands that (...) there be a world apart from God, because God needs the multiplicity of the world in order for there to be justice. Levinas responds to this proposal: That’s quite right. Justice, I call it responsibility for the other, right? There is even in Totality and Infinity, the evocation of the tzimtzum [the idea in kabbalistic writings of the self-contraction of God in order to create the void in which creation can take place], but I won’t venture into that. (shrink)

The paper presents the results of the research which was carried out as a part of the project: Current controversies about human origins. Between anthropology and the Bible, this project was focused on the supposed conflict between natural sciences and theology (or religious beliefs) with regard to the origin of man. The research was aimed at finding out whether such a conflict really exits. For we cannot exclude the possibility that these controversies have no factual ground and their significance (...) is inflated by American popular literature. If, on the other hand, we assume that the conflict is real, it should be worthwhile examining its sources. Such an approach may prove helpful in systematize the highly emotional debates about the origin of man. One of the ways of tackling the issue was a questionnaire which was distributed among students, teachers and university professors. Our respondents represented three disciplines: theology, philosophy and natural sciences, t t e paper presents selected results of the questionnaire which was addressed to a group of students, they were asked to fill in the form consisting of eleven questions, these questions concerned the following issues: the existence of the conflict between evolutionism and creationism, the definitions of creation and evolution, the existence of the spiritual element in man, and the ways of interpreting the Bible (esp. the first chapters of the Book of Genesis). (shrink)

This article proposes that Hobbes runs two different arguments for sovereignty in Leviathan. The one is polemical and takes up the notion of a covenant from early-modern resistance theory in order to redeploy it in the cause of absolutism. The other is biblical and constructs an image of the sovereign whose authority is a Mosaic legacy. The one argument is addressed to the unruly subject and teaches obedience, whereas the other is addressed to the sovereign and sets out (...) the positive vocation of a Christian ruler. The conjunction of secular materialism and divine right in Leviathan becomes less puzzling when the book’s addressees are differentiated. By depriving the subject of any right of appeal to God in protest against the sovereign, Hobbes dismantles one of the bulwarks of early-modern resistance. This motive for secularism has understandably no role to play in Hobbes’ conception of the sovereign. Indeed, as far as facilitating the sovereign’s biblically framed vocation is concerned, the secularism of Leviathan is arguably simply a means to an end. (shrink)

To some, Rene Girard is best known for his views on sacred myth and ritual. To others, he is the eminent structuralist critic who offers challenging readings of major literary works. Still others know him for his analyses of the Bible. Central to all aspects of Girard's work is his theory of mimesis, a basic hypothesis about the structures of human motivation, Yet nowhere in his writings does Girard offer a systematic presentation of the mimetic theory. In fact, key (...) terminology shifts from work to work, resulting in considerable ambiguity in both basic concepts and explanatory claims,In Models of Desire Paisley Livingston provides the first rigorous critical reconstruction of Girard's theory of mimesis. Drawing a careful distinction between the theory itself and Girard's often ambitious claims about it, Livingston provides a systematic presentation of Girard's ideas about the role of imitation in human motivation. He surveys responses to Girard's work and compares his theory of mimetic desire with recent work in cognitive psychology and philosophy. The result is a salient theoretical alternative to the false choice--between psychoanalysis and anti-psychological doctrines--that currently dominates literary theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NAMING GOD: MOSES MAIMONIDES AND THOMAS AQUINAS NEIL A. 8TUBBENS The Methodist Ohurch Barnsley Oircuit, South Yorkshire MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135-U04) and Thomas Aquinas (c. U~5-1274), two of the greatest theologians of the Jewish and Christian faiths, had much in oommon.1 Like other Ohristian.writers, Aquinas made several criticisms of Maimonides' views on divine predication. In this article l will discuss these criticisms and evaluate them by means of a (...) detailed e:iq>0sition of Maimonides' position. I will ithen offer an account of Aquinas's justification of analogical predication and make some suggestions ais to the :role of causality in naming God. 1. Introduetion Moses Maimonides was the middle-man in the interaction of the three monotheistic faiths with Aristotelian philosophy. He was a great admirer of the ancient philosopher, claiming that Aristotle':s intellect reached the highest perfection attainable hy humanity-e:reept by the prophets and they WeTe divinely inspired. Maimonides :firrst work, the short Treatise on Logic, clewly reflects ihis own interest in logic and language and shows the influence of Afistotle mediated through the Ambs.2 It was The Guide or the Perplexed, his last major work, that introduced the mostly Christian West to the thought of the Islamic philosophers Alf.arabi, Avicenna, and 1 On some matters Aquinas refers to Maimonides as a:ii. authority, e.g., De potentia, q.7, a.4, c; Summa theologiae (ST), I, q.68, a.2 ad 1. 2 Treatise on Logic, translated by I. Efros, Proceedmgs of the American Academy for Jewish Research 8 (1938): 1-65. 230 NEIL A. STUBBENS Avermes.3 The Guide, however, is not so much a philosophical work as a iphilosoprucal interpretation of the Bible. Like the thinkers of the Christian monastic anrd later cathedral schools of the eleventh and rbwelfth centuries, Maimonides began his reflections with the wo;vds of Scripture. Soon after its publication in 1190, two Hebrew triansla:tions of the Guide were produced from,the original Arabic by Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Jehudah al-Harizi; Aquinas wo:rked with_ a Latin translation of the Harizi version.4 Feldman has complained that some of the scholastics misinterpreted Maimonides, foisting upon him views which were clearly not his own. According :to Feldman, Giles of Rome.(c. 1247-1316), in his ErrofJ'es Philosophorum, misformulates Maimonides' theory of negative ·attributes and suggests that he employs attributes ".by wa.y of causality." 5 Duns Scotus (c. 1264-1308) cites Maimonides and Avicenna ws ·advocating attributes of efficient causality. Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), in his Summa theologiae, moorrrectly construes actions as relations : "Indeed", writes Feldman, "he characterises them as ruttributes 'hy way of causality.'" Aquinas's translators and interp:veters come in d)or as much criticism from Feldman as :Aquinas himself, e.g., R. Garrigou-Lagrange,6 M. Penido,7 and R. Mulligan:8 all mistakenly say that a.ooording to Maimonides "God is good" means "God is the ca;use of good things.'' a See S. Pines, "Translator's Introduction: the Philosophic Sources of The Guide of the Perplwed," in The Guide of the Perplewed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, 1963). 4 The chapters of the Harizi and Latin versions are enumerated one less than those of the Ibn Tibbon version. I shall use the latter scheme as is common practice. 5.S. Feldman, " A Scholastic Misinterpretation of Maimonides' Doctrine of Divine Attributes," in Studies in, Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Dienstag (New York, 1975), pp. 58-59. 6 See The One God, (St. Louis, 1944), p. 404. 1 See "Le role d'analogie en theologie dogmatique," Bibliotheque Thomiste 15 (1931) : 149 and 169. s See his translation of De veritate, q.2, a.I, in The Disputed Question on Truth (Chicago, 1952). MAIMONIDES AND AQUINAS 2. Aquinas's Criticism of Maimonides There are five points of disagreement between Aquinas and Maimonides. First, Aquinas argues that if expressions such as " God is wise " and " God is angry " are used to indicate only a likeness of effect, i.e., we say " God is wise" or " God is angry " because in his effoots he acts lilre a wise or angry person, there would he no difference in the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 97-114 [Access article in PDF] Blackloism and Tradition: From Theological Certainty to Historiographical Doubt Beverley C. Southgate * Introduction "Pyrrho himself never advanced any Principle of Scepticism beyond this," complained John Tillotson at the height of the seventeenth-century "rule of faith" debates; 1 and John Sergeant, as Catholic champion and the object of his charge, must have noted the irony. For (...) Tillotson was not unreasonable in concluding that his adversary's theological arguments had the effect of increasing the very uncertainty which they were designed to combat. Sergeant's attempts to overcome scepticism in theology were actually destined to exacerbate the problem of scepticism in relation to historiography.John Sergeant (1623-1707) was an English secular priest and, more specifically, a member of that notorious faction of Catholics known as "Blackloists," followers of Thomas White (1593-1676), alias Blacklo. 2 White produced some forty works on theology, natural philosophy, and political theory; he was known as an eminent philosopher in his own day and has more recently been restored to wider interest following the publication of Hobbes's lengthy critique of his cosmological treatise De Mundo. Sergeant has remained best known for his advocacy of the Catholic position in the "rule of faith" debates, but he was also a prolific writer on philosophy and, as a late Aristotelian, took issue with such "modernists" as Descartes and Locke. 3 Sergeant was widely recognized as White's [End Page 97] intellectual disciple, and it will be convenient here to consider their thought together. 4 Both devoted much of their time and energy (in Sergeant's words) to "beating down scepticism" or, as White had earlier called it, the "contagion of Pyrrhonism"; and both would have been horrified to think that they had actually contributed to any extension of skeptical philosophy. 5Blackloist concerns with the refutation of skeptically induced uncertainty had obvious implications for their contributions to the "rule of faith" debates and to their attempted establishment of one single and certain ground of religious belief. During the latter half of the seventeenth century Protestants and Catholics expended a considerable amount of intellectual and emotional energy in advocating their respective routes to that level of religious certainty which would assure salvation. While the former expressed confidence in the reliability of the scriptures' literary record, the latter counter-claimed that they alone enjoyed a faith that was reliably grounded in an unbroken tradition deriving from Christ himself.Thomas White highlights these issues in his additions to the "corrected and enlarged" 1654 edition of William Rushworth's Dialogues, in which he laments the fragmenting effects of the Reformation. White argues that because they no longer enjoy "one rule among them all" Protestants resort to their various individual principles; and although all appeal ultimately to the authority of the Bible, they each have only their own "private conceit" by which to resolve any ambiguities in the scriptural record. The extraction of religious tenets then becomes effectively a matter of mere guesswork; the whole Bible might as well be replaced by the Koran. Something far more authoritative, White insists, is needed to overcome theological uncertainty--"this dangerous Cockatrice, Incertitude"; 6 and it is precisely such firmly based and wholly reliable authority that he and Sergeant strove to provide. [End Page 98]In this context, however, theology became intimately interrelated with historiography. Some of the difficulties attendant on the Protestant recourse to the Bible were no doubt specific to the Bible itself, but others related more generally to the validity of any historical record, and it is some of the wider historiographical implications of theological debate that I shall examine in this paper. By arguing against the skeptics and pragmatic Protestants while simultaneously insisting on their own variety of absolute theological certainty based on reliable historical tradition, the Blackloists actually contributed to the development of that form of historiographical uncertainty which culminated in what, by the end of the century, came to be known as "Historical Pyrrhonism." 7 The Scriptures: Linguistic and Literary Problems "For since the... (shrink)

Since the beginning of human history, there has been no society that did not have any religion. Man meets his need to believe, encoded in his nature by turning to God. God has not left humans alone in their journey on earth, and from time to time, He has intervened in the world through his prophets. The prophethood, which constitutes one of the main subjects of theology, is an important institution in God-human communication. The messengers chosen by God convey to (...) people the information that they received through revelation and offer teachings that will bring them to salvation. The idea of salvation by God when suffering or feeling helpless has driven people to the expectation of a savior. Nearly all religions except Shintoism have the awaited savior belief in the world. Accordingly, the savior will emerge in an environment of chaos where disasters are experienced, and a moral collapse is observed. The expected savior will drive people away from this turmoil, bring them happiness, well-being, and lead them to salvation. Although there is a savior belief in Judaism and Christianity, Muslims claim that the awaited savior in these religions is Muhammad. Muslim thinkers who believe that Muhammad was heralded in previous scripts, tried to find evidence on the subject from the Bible. One of the Islamic scholars who did researches for this purpose is Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi. Shamsuddin Mohammed b. Ashraf al-Husayni al-Samarqandi is an important Turkish-Islamic scholar who lived in Turkestan at the end of the 7th century and the first quarter of the 8th century. Samarqandi is a versatile scholar who produced important works in various fields such as philosophy, logic, mathematics, discussion, debate and astronomy. Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi is one of the eminent scholars who have written his name in the history of science and philosophy with his works. He adopted a critical and analytical style in almost every field, putting the science of logic at the center of his system. His constructive criticisms had an important function in understanding and interpreting the ideas of numerous thinkers, from Greek philosophers to Islamic philosophers and representatives of philosophical theology. In addition to all these, Samarqandi did not hesitate to criticize the Christian and Jewish belief systems, religions such as Sanawiyyah and Zoroastrianism, and the teachings of the naturalist philosophers regarding the relationship between God and the world in the light of rational and scriptural evidence. Samarqandi, who distinguished himself in rational sciences, also showed himself with his background in theology. Due to his exceptional intellectual interest, he analyzes some key concepts and divine codes related to the Bible, making original inferences about the loyalty of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Samarqandi interprets some passages of the Torah and the New Testament, which he considers as signs of Muhammad's prophethood, in the axis of language, logic and the rules of shariah, and concludes that Muhammad is the last prophet to be announced. The conceptual framework that he mostly focuses on in this regard contains Mount Paran, Paraklite, comparison with Moses, and the good news given to the Ishmaelites. Samarqandi makes inferences about the environment in which Muhammad appeared, his qualities, and his lineage, based on the aforementioned concepts. Samarqandi also responds to the criticisms raised by the Ahl al-Kitab about the principles, such as the abolition of other religious rules constituting the basis of Muhammad's legitimacy and establishment of Islam instead, and him being a universal prophet. An important privilege of Samarqandi is that he not only grounds his claims on a theoretical scale but also engages in debates with the leaders of the Ahl al-Kitab. Although Samarqandi exhibits a satisfactory analytical attitude in most of his claims, he displays a sophisticated approach based on the method of coercion (ilzām) in some of his claims. Although he adheres to the tradition of beshair al-nubuwwah in general, he gives a different perspective and strong reasoning to the same evidence within the tradition with the effect of his identity as a verifier (muhaqqik). (shrink)

The argument presented here explores homosexuality within the context of applied Christian ethics. The argument works by asking students to grapple with and define the common characteristics of all eros relationships. Once the students analytically break down eros relationships, and wrestle with defining concepts such as “love,” “sex,” and “desires,” basic biblical moral precepts are applied. After this biblical application it can be shown that there is latitude enough in Christian morality to openly permit homosexuality that iscompatible with biblically stated (...) ethical dictums. The argument is pedagogical in nature, and is a challenging, engaging, and accessible argument that avoids the educational pitfalls that entangle other arguments of this nature. (shrink)