This essay surveys the present position of postmodernism with respect to the effect of its ideas upon historiography. For this purpose it looks at a number of writings by historians that have been a response to postmodernism including the recently published collection of articles, The Postmodern History Reader. The essay argues that, in contrast to scholars in the field of literary studies, the American historical profession has been much more resistant to postmodernist doctrines and that the latters' influence upon (...) the thinking and practice of historians is not only fading but increasingly destined to fade. The essay also presents a critical discussion of the current philosophy of postmodernism in its bearing upon historiography, directed chiefly against its claim that the world has undergone an epochal transition from the modern to a postmodern age; its theory of language and linguistic idealism; its opposition to historical realism and denial of the actuality of the past as a possible object of reference; and its theory of historical narrative as unconstrained fictional construction. This discussion includes a consideration of the work of postmodernist thinkers such as J.-F. Lyotard, of the recent books by David Roberts and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. which espouse a postmodernist theory of history, and of the narrativist theory of Hayden White. The essay also notes some of the reasons for postmodernism's appeal; and while it does not deny that postmodernist philosophy may have served a useful purpose in provoking historians to be more self-critical and aware of their presuppositions and procedures, it maintains that its skeptical and politicized view of historical inquiry is deeply mistaken, out of accord with the way historians themselves think about their work, and incapable of providing an understanding of historiography as a form of thought engaged in the attainment of knowledge and understanding of the human past. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Islam: Religion, History, and CivilizationZain AliIslam: Religion, History, and Civilization. By Seyyed Hossein Nasr. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2003. Pp. 224. Paper $9.71."Islam," writes Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "is like a vast tapestry," and in his book Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization he aims to survey the masterpiece that is Islam. The present work is part of a trilogy including Ideal and Realities of Islam (...) and The Heart of Islam. Nasr states that the common theme in the trilogy "is the universalist perspective and respect for other religions" (p. xxiv). In addition, Nasr clarifies that his approach, as with all of his Islamic writings, is to write from an Islamic perspective, which he terms "traditional Islam" (p. xxiii). Nasr stands opposed to either the secular modernist or fundamentalist perspectives, both of which he regards as forms of extremism.This book, initially published as part of Our Religions, edited by A. Sharma, is significantly revised and includes a new introduction and bibliography. It can best be described as a primer on Islam, consisting of eight chapters that focus on a variety of pertinent themes.Chapter 1 deals with the self-understanding of Islam and the Islamic world. Islam, Nasr notes, sees itself as a return to the primordial faith of humanity, a faith that affirms the unity and oneness of God. This chapter also presents an overview [End Page 495] of the various ethnic and cultural groupings within the Muslim world, and charts the spread and demographic growth of Islam.Chapter 2 introduces the notion of al-din, an Arabic term that corresponds closely to the word "religion." Nasr contrasts the two words, where religion means "to bind" while al-din means "debt" (p. 25). Thus, religion, as framed by Islam, involves the notion of debt, in particular humanity's debt to the Divine. The chapter also discusses the significance of the Qur'an and Muhammad as the messenger of God.Chapter 3 begins with an exposition of the nature of Divinity, which is at the heart of Islamic doctrine. As Nasr explains, the Divine is understood as being "at once the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Perfect Good" (p. 59). The remainder of the chapter deals with various Islamic doctrines and beliefs, including prophecy and revelation, human nature, the Qura'nic view of men and women, and eschatology.Chapter 4 deals with the content, codification, and schools of Shariah, the Divine Law of Islam. There is also an interesting discussion of Sufism, which Nasr claims "is like the heart of the body of Islam" (p. 81). Controversially, Nasr claims that "the spread of Islam outside of the Arab and Persian worlds up to the present day has been mostly through Sufism" (p. 87).Chapter 5 delves into the central pillars of Islam, which accompany the belief in God and in Muhammad as the messenger of God. The pillars are salah (canonical prayer), sawn (fasting), hajj (pilgrimage), and zakah (religious tax or charity). Associated with these pillars is the notion of jihad, and here Nasr writes, "jihad... is usually mistranslated into English as 'holy war,' but literally means 'exertion' or 'effort' in the path of God" (p. 91). Also covered are the topics of family, ethics, and economic and political institutions.Chapter 6 presents the historical evolution of Islam beginning with the migration of Muhammad to Medina, and the events leading to the divide between Sunnis and Shiites.Chapter 7 discusses the early Islamic community, who found themselves in the "throes of disputes over such issues as whether human beings are saved by faith or works, whether there is freewill or determinism, and questions concerning the sacred text as the Word of God" (p. 154). Nasr then explores the various schools of theology and philosophy that arose in order to address these questions of faith.Chapter 8, the final chapter of the book, attempts to evaluate the place of Islam in the contemporary world. Nasr concludes by noting that despite the challenges of secular modernism and fundamentalism the vast majority of Muslims remain committed to the truth of Islam, and bear witness to the Oneness of God and the Oneness of humanity.The one quibble... (shrink)

What is comparative legal history? This essay argues that to understand this new field of legal-historical studies, we need first to clarify how legal historiography has changed over time. To this purpose, this essay begins from two main ideas. -/- First, the writing of legal history is deeply intertwined with an image of law that tells us what law is, how it is created and by whom. This is, in fact, the premise for writing legal history, as (...) it determines the object of investigation. Second, the decades between 1930 and 1960 saw a profound turn in European legal science. Some legal scholars challenged the legacy received from the 19th century and launched an attack on the ‘formalism’ at the heart of its intellectual framework. -/- Those path-breaking insights gave life to a wave of works self-styled as comparative legal history published in the period 1930–60. At their heart were some of the challenging ideas that have continued to fuel original legal-historical research in the last few decades (e.g. to place law in context, to think outside the doctrinal box, the dislike of abstract theorising) and which today are shared as an obvious truth. They are the fruit of the antiformalist turn of between1930 and 1960. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. ROBIN DARLING YOUNG Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its History (...) and Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper). In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate "lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the ministry of the Church. Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative might be condensed as follows. The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion : Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good. Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does BOOK REVIEWS 333 not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church. This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which, while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus, and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship " (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship " (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains... (shrink)

John Stuart Mill wrote in the opening chapter of Utilitarianism, ‘A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong,’ thus explaining why he thought the work to follow was practically important. In Chapter 3, ‘On the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility,’ he answers the question, ‘What are the motives to obey the principle of utility?’ This principle is presented as a morality to be adopted. Yet before the (...) nineteenth century was over Henry Sidgwick was proposing that it may well be best, from a utilitarian view, that the utilitarian doctrine is not too widely adopted. Perhaps it should be an esoteric morality.Moreover, Sidgwick argues, it seems contrary to self interest to adhere to an impartially benevolent morality. Devotion to utilitarian duty seems to require that the agent sacrifice his or her own happiness in a devotion to the relief of others that can only ‘partially mitigate’ their distress. Such a morality seems impossibly demanding. Sidgwick’s argument challenges Mill's claim that there is an adequate sanction for adoption of utilitarian morality. (shrink)

In this volume honouring Robert Pippin, prominent philosophers such as John McDowell, Slavoj Žižek, Jonathan Lear, and Axel Honneth explore Hegel's proposals concerning the historical character of philosophy. Hegelian doctrines discussed include the purported end of art, Hegel's view of human history, including the history of philosophy as the history of freedom, and the nature of self-consciousness as realized in narrative or in action. Hegel scholars Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Sally Sedgwick, Terry Pinkard, and Paul Redding attempt to (...) vindicate some of Hegel's claims concerning historical philosophical progress, while others such as Robert Stern, Christoph Menke, and Jay Bernstein suggest that Hegel either did not conceive of philosophy as progressing unidirectionally or did not make good on his claims to progress: perhaps we should still be Aristotelians in ethics, or perhaps we are still torn between sensibility and reason, or between individuality and social norms. Perhaps capitalism has exacerbated such problems. (shrink)

Rewriting the Self is an exploration of ideas of the self in the western cultural tradition from the Renaissance to the present. The contributors analyze different religious, philosophical, psychological, political, psychoanalytical and literary models of personal identity from a number of viewpoints, including the history of ideas, contemporary gender politics, and post-modernist literary theory. Challenging the received version of the "ascent of western man," they assess the discursive construction of the self in the light of political, (...) technological and social changes. Contributors include: Peter Burke, Roger Cardinal, Stephen Connor, Jonathan Dollimore, Terry Eagleton, Kate Flint, E.J. Hundert, John Mullan, Linda Nead, Daniel Pick, Nikolas Rose, Jonathan Sawday, Jane Shaw, Roger Smith, Sylvana Tomaselli and Carolyn D. Williams. (shrink)

While discussions of the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg over ‘secularisation’ focus primarily on the methodological utility of the concept, the difference between them was also one of the philosophical commitments and substantive claims about modernity. This difference is not always obvious. One way of bringing it out is to address the different contexts in which they produced their most famous statements about secularisation. But another, and one that will be pursued here, is to consider the critical dialogue (...) that both thinkers engaged in with Nietzsche. Put briefly, while Löwith thought that Nietzsche misunderstood the ancients, Blumenberg thought that he misunderstood the moderns. For Löwith, Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return is not Greek, but an aggressive countergospel that owes much to the Christian culture it seeks to oppose; for Blumenberg, Nietzsche assumes, wrongly, that the self-belittlement of man by theology has been succeeded by the self-belittlement of man by science. In addition, Blumenberg – unlike both Nietzsche and Löwith – thinks that he can mount a robust defence of both modern science and progress. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is one that has been in the forefront of contemporary metaphysics in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, namely, the problem of personal identity through time. Although we generally believe that we remain the same persons throughout our lives, the answers to questions concerning just what it is that remains the same about us prove to be elusive. Contemporary debate on the subject has its roots in the challenges posed by Locke and Hume to theories which assert (...) that persisting and substantial selves, or souls, constitute the ground for personal identity, and their efforts to suggest alternative theories based on such concepts as memory and causality. It is remarkable that a similar debate, aroused by the "non-self" doctrine of the Buddha, occupied a central position in Indian philosophical discourse during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first millennium C.E. While much historical and philological research has been devoted to Buddhist approaches to this problem, the task of interpreting these materials in the light of recent refinements of philosophical method has not yet been undertaken. It is this task to which the present thesis is devoted, drawing on the works of such Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu and Santaraksita, and their Brahmanical opponents such as Uddyotakara, as well as recent contributions to the debate on personal identity by Chisholm, Parfit and others. The dissertation is divided into three main sections: Part One, in six chapters, traces out the history of the problem of personal identity in Indian philosophy, and is especially concerned with the role played by refinements of Indian philosophical method in the developments discussed; Part Two presents a selection of the most important Buddhist and Brahmanical contributions to the problem, newly translated from the Sanskrit for the present dissertation; and Part Three includes three supplementary essays on personal identity in the work of Derek Parfit and Steven Colline, Buddhist idealism, and Buddhist hermeneutics. (shrink)

Since its first appearance in 1821/22, The Christian Faith has had a fractious history of reception. It implements decisive departures for theology, founding the possibility to speak about God on human freedom. It recognises the role of historical consciousness, and the need to relate to advances in the natural sciences. The study investigates the early critiques of Schleiermacher’s analysis of the feeling of utter dependence, of his conception of Christ as the archetype of the God-consciousness, and of his doctrine (...) of God in terms of absolute causality. It reconstructs the revisions carried out in the second edition of 1830/31 as a break-through to a transcendental argumentation. Does Schleiermacher’s elaboration of the anthropological turn in theology leave it defenseless against the dissolution of faith in a saving God in Feuerbach’s projection thesis? Does it offer a naturalising account of religion? And where does the interconnectedness of nature established by God leave what was prized by the Romantics, human individuality? Ongoing objections and new constellations of questions are examined in their relevance for a modern theology that spells out faith in God as a practical self-understanding. “Maureen Junker-Kenny’s book is an outstanding presentation of Schleiermacher’s theology. She attends not only to the development of his method from the first to the second edition of The Christian Faith, but also to his concrete interpretation of Creation, Christology, Redemption, Theological Anthropology, especially human freedom, and his understanding of God. The book has an exceptional value in the way she relates Schleiermacher not only to his contemporaries, but also contemporary concerns. Schleiermacher’s theology is shown in its relation to the modernity of his age, but also the ongoing modernity of today. The book has a depth and breath that make it indispensable not only for historical theology, but also contemporary constructive theology.” – Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Harvard Divinity School “In Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics. A Theology Reconceived for Modernity, Maureen Junker-Kenny proves herself to be not only a distinguished interpreter of Schleiermacher’s work, but a creative practitioner in her own right of his dialogical method. Elegantly conceived and beautifully written, the book shows how Schleiermacher connected the different aspects of his thought—form/content, structure/doctrine, piety/critical rigor—into a coherent system. Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics is now the only guide to Schleiermacher’s magnum opus, Christian Faith, anyone needs.” – Christine Helmer, Northwestern University, Chicago. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.1 (2005) 55-81 [Access article in PDF] Self-Knowledge in Descartes and Malebranche Lawrence Nolan John Whipple 1. Introduction Descartes's notorious claim that mind is better known than body has been the target of repeated criticisms, but none appears more challenging than that of his intellectual heir Nicolas Malebranche.1 Whereas other critics—especially twentieth-century philosophers eager to use Descartes as their whipping boy—have (...) often been uncharitable, Malebranche accepts many of the fundamental Cartesian doctrines, including mind-body dualism. But he argues that Descartes's position on knowledge of the mind is internally inconsistent. Malebranche agrees with Descartes that the existence of the mind is better known than that of body, but he vehemently denies that the nature of the mind is better known. This denial is based on his view that we lack a clear idea of the mind.2 [End Page 55]Malebranche's polemic has attracted much attention in recent scholarship.3 The growing consensus among commentators is that Malebranche develops a devastating internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. For example, Nicholas Jolley writes: "In his case for his negative thesis [concerning knowledge of the mind] Malebranche mounted a powerful, even annihilating, critique of Descartes. This critique embodies the remarkable insight that there is a serious muddle at the heart of Descartes's whole theory of knowledge."4 In a book-length defense of Malebranche's critique, Tad Schmaltz also emphasizes its internal character: "the interpretation here of Malebranche's theory presents it as fundamentally Cartesian, and thereby serves to reinforce his own view that he has provided an authoritative interpretation of the account of mind in the writings of Descartes and other Cartesians."5 Schmaltz also asserts: "Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it."6We think such remarks misstate the case. Indeed, we argue in this paper that Malebranche's polemic fails as an internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. Although we do not here aspire to defend Descartes's strong thesis—that mind is better known than body—we do think he can consistently maintain that we have a clear and distinct idea of the mind, and thus that our knowledge of the mind's nature is at least on a par with our knowledge of corporeal nature.7 While Malebranche's rhetoric would encourage us to think that the debate between him and his predecessor is being fought on common or neutral ground, the fact is that Malebranche often appeals to assumptions and aspects of his own theory of "Vision in God" that Descartes would reject. Once more, he interprets Descartes's theory of knowledge in ways that are misguided and sometimes even uncharitable. If Malebranche's critique succeeds at all, it succeeds only against a straw man—Malebranche's Descartes and not the historical figure.Ours is not the first effort to defend Descartes against this particular attack. When Malebranche first published his critique in Book Three of his first great work, The Search After Truth (1674),8 Descartes had been dead for over two decades, [End Page 56] but he was ably defended by the famous Cartesian Antoine Arnauld in On True and False Ideas (1683). In the ensuing debate Arnauld was clearly the superior dialectician, but while winning several tactical points, he appears not to fully appreciate the crux of Malebranche's argument, or at least that is the view of Jolley and Schmaltz.9 We have a somewhat higher opinion of Arnauld's side of the debate. Granted, some of his defenses are facile and can be easily dismissed; others however are quite compelling when properly developed. In at least one instance, we attempt to provide that development. At the same time we think it is a mistake to treat Arnauld as Descartes's surrogate or as if he had issued the final salvo from the camp of the orthodox Cartesians. Arnauld was a... (shrink)

Historical consciousness of the modern period, which shows a clear distinction from that of the previous periods, is well displayed in intellectual history, which is investigation into the development of ideas and transmission of knowledge. To understand the academic issues that are grappled with in intellectual history, it is necessary to understand how it interacts with other relevant academic disciplines. Firstly, it is connected to classics and philology, in which historicity is regarded as part and parcel of their (...) research. Critical investigation into them leads intellectual historians to take the stance that perception on historicity lies not in a factual stratum but in an interpretive stratum. Further, they usually focus on coherently organizing inconsistent, inessential, contradictory elements of interpretation within the frame of temporality on which all texts have a footing. Next, intellectual history is closely tied to philosophy and the history of philosophy because it is a historiography of ideas and thinkers. On the basic assumption that the historicity of philosophy should be involved for a proper understanding of philosophical texts, intellectual history focuses on diachronic influences and changes of ideas which are intertextually detected. Clearly, intellectual historians assume that texts may be considered as ahistorical or even trans-historical when historicity was not a concern between traditions nor is it in modern interpretive traditions of philosophy. As a result, a tension between intellectual history and philosophy is inevitable, and the former has conditioned and simultaneously fostered understanding of the latter. Taken together, it may look as if intellectual history, being based on classics and philology, attempts a risky pas de deux with philosophical traditions which may be understood as ahistorical where their foci are given to doctrinal sides. The hitherto mentioned issues of intellectual history raised by Western critical approaches to historicity are also inherent in Buddhist studies and Buddhist intellectual history which have developed on Western soil. For example, the historicity of person(s) as seen in such examples as the historicity of Maitreya(-nātha), and the transition of philosophical thought in the works attributed to Vasubandhu/ Vasubandhu-s—which have become controversial since the 20th century, can be understood within the bigger frame of modern historical consciousness and how its coupled intellectual history unfolded. Specifically regarding these issues, efforts have been consistently made to construct a proper intellectual history in spite of limited sources of inner- and outer-textual evidence. The seemingly diversified opinions and cacophony in the development of interpretations of the issues epitomizes intellectual history, including the theoretical process which explores ways of thinking about various possibilities and the presuppositions of those possibilities. (shrink)

This collection of thirteen essays, when viewed together, offers a unique perspective on the history of American philosophy. It illuminates for the first time in book form, how thirteen major American philosophical thinkers viewed a problem of special interest in the American philosophical tradition: the relationship between experience and reflection. Written by well-known authorities on the figure about which he or she writes, the essays are arranged chronologically to highlight the changes and developments in thought from Puritanism to Pragmatism (...) to Process Philosophy. While Doctrine and Experience will be of particular interest to specialists in American Philosophy, there is also much to offer anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural history of the United States. In order of appearance, the essays are: "Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening" by John E. Smith "Heart and Head: The Mind of Thomas Jefferson" by Andrew J. Reck"Emerson and the American Future" by Robert C. Pollock"Chauncey Wright and the Pragmatists" by Edward Madden"Charles S. Peirce: Action Through Thought – The Ethics of Experience" by Vincent G. Potter"Life Is in the Transitions’: Radical Empiricism and Contemporary Concerns" by John J. McDermott"John Dewey and the Metaphysics of American Democracy" by Ralph W. Sleeper"Individualization and Unification in Sartre and Dewey" by Thelma Z. Levine"Josiah Royce: Anticipator of European Existentialism and Phenomenology" by Jacqueline Ann K. Kegley"The Transcendence of Materialism and Idealism in American Thought" by John Lachs"C. I. Lewis and the Pragmatic Tradition in American Philosophy" by Sandra Rosenthal"The Social Philosophy of George Herbert Mead" by David Miller"Existence as Transaction: A Whiteheadian Study of Causality" by Elizabeth Kraus. (shrink)

Horkheimer and Adorno make claims that imply a complete rejection of the idea of a universal history developed in classical German philosophy. Using Kant’s account of universal history, I argue that some features of the idea of a universal history can nevertheless be detected in the Dialectic of Enlightenment and some of Adorno’s remarks on freedom and history. This is done in connection with the kind of rational self-mastery that they associate with the story of (...) Odysseus. Some claims made by Adorno in particular will be shown to imply that this self-mastery is a necessary condition of a better, freer society, especially in relation to this society’s material conditions. On the other hand, certain essential features of the idea of a universal history are clearly absent in virtue of the ultimate contingency of events and states of affairs that Adorno seeks to preserve. I show that the absence of these features and the preservation of contingency are, in fact, the means of saving the notion of the possibility of progress which informs the idea of a universal history. (shrink)

There are two seemingly unrelated paradoxes of democracy. The older one is the doctrinal paradox or the discursive dilemma. or a comprehensive bibliography, see List 1995. The younger one is the mixed motivation problem introduced by Jonathan Wolff (1994) in this journal. In the mixed motivation problem, we have voters with mixed Benthamite and Rousseauian motivations who reach a majority on an issue that is neither in the self-interest of a majority of the voters, nor considered to be conducive (...) to the common good by a majority of the voters. What has gone unnoticed so far is that both of these paradoxes share a common structure. (shrink)

The history of dynasties and the reigns of kings can be shown to conform to certain recurring astrological configurations or periods of years in the past and can be extrapolated into the future. The various recurring periods are provided, as they are described by Abu Ma‘shar in his Book on Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions), and then the application of these doctrines to Bohemian history is illustrated.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 416-417 [Access article in PDF] Jean-Baptiste Rauzy. La Doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité. Aspects logiques et ontologiques. Paris: Vrin, 2001. Pp. vii + 353. Paper, FF 170,55.This important book provides a reappraisal of Leibniz's philosophy of logic and epistemology based on a close scrutiny of the recently edited manuscripts in the Akademie-Ausgabe, and a reconstitution of Leibniz's sequential investigations. The (...) author displays an exceptional knowledge of the Leibnizian corpus, the ancient and medieval sources for the various doctrines he analyzes, and the contemporary issues underpinning Leibniz's investigations. He aims at rectifying misconceptions that stemmed originally in Couturat's La Logique de Leibniz (1901) and have since affected several studies. Three methodological statements set the ground for Rauzy's analysis: (1) Leibniz's notion of truth concerns in unified fashion all the elements of discourse: terms, concepts, and propositions. (2) Leibniz did not restrict his doctrine of truth to consistency relations, but yielded a complex, well-articulated conception of truth as correspondence, as evidenced in New Essays on Human Understanding, IV, v, sect. 11; yet, at the same time, his doctrine focused on conceptual relations which specify an order of reasons deserving to be analyzed for their own sake: "Dans la doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité, l'adaequatio rei constitue encore le cadre général en dehors duquel le prédicat de vérité n'a pas de sens. Mais les concepts et les liaisons conceptuelles donnent désormais la raison pour laquelle telle phrase particulière est vraie..." (47). And (3) one should resist attributing to Leibniz a purely syntactic conception of truth since the semantic dimension of his logical analyses deserves to be reconstituted and due consideration should be given to the evolution of his thoughts on central philosophical issues, which occasioned significant variations in the elements and formulas of his calculus rationis.It is merely possible to render the rich contents of the book by mentioning some of its more striking features. In Chapter 1, the inesse principle (Praedicatum inestsubjecto) is shown to serve grammatical, logical, and conceptual functions. The doctrine of expression is finely analyzed: expression is shown to provide the major translation tool between characters and thoughts and to condition the combinatorial treatment of rational discourse. In Chapter 2, the distinction between concept and object is shown to involve some relativity, even if the understanding of complete notions is supposed to entail real knowledge of the corresponding realities. Leibniz is thus justified to represent the manifold of ontological relations, including the requisites of actual existence, in a tentatively unified logical way: "Que [End Page 416] l'existence soit une propriété relationnelle complexe, conçue tantôt par la relation de compatibilité, tantôt par une relation à l'esprit en général—et éventuellement [...] par un mixte des deux—n'interdit nullement de maintenir que la vérité de toutes les propositions dépend de relations conceptuelles" (124-5). In Chapter 3, the project of a calculus based on concepts is shown to entail a special relation, hardly dealt with in the literature, between intension and extension (cf. for instance New Essays, IV, xvii, sect. 8). Rauzy reassesses in particular Leibniz's critical revision of nominalism and of inductive procedures as these require universal propositions to ground rational presumptions. The extensional notion of class is considered an abstraction: a class presupposes therefore the extension of a concept in order to become an object of thought. The principle of conceptual inherence requires to be interpreted as stating the equipollence between the requisites of subject and predicate; if such an equipollence may be reached a priori in exceptional cases, most of the time it will require various kinds of additions and derivations to yield sufficient congruence between the related terms. Chapter 4 is devoted to substitutions, more precisely to the theory of definition and the context, at once logical and discursive, from which a potential Leibnizian theory of communication might be derived. Rauzy notes that substitutive equivalences... (shrink)

In Self-Creation and History, Michael Hinz focuses on the works of Collingwood and Nietzsche, showing how each construes traditional problems in metaphysics as problems generated in history and through conceptual change.

Contemporary notions of what constitutes tribal self government for Indigenous Peoples in the legal systems of the nation-states Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America have their origins in philosophies and theories developed by European nation-states generally, in relation to their colonial expansion into what is now called the Americas. This thesis examines the nature of these theories, and how they have formed the basis for legal precedent and public policy in the three nation-states. A representative analysis (...) of three contemporary issues will serve to illustrate the outcome of this legal/political history. I look at three sites. These are the British Columbia Treaty Process in Canada, the Waka Umanga legislation in New Zealand, and legal developments arising from the Indian Reorganization Act in the United States. Full sovereignty from an Indigenous Peoples worldview existed for Indigenous nations, and with it, self government. The notion of self government as a viable and contemporary public policy initiative is well grounded in law and history. It would seem that current initiatives to acknowledge this inherent right are more about preserving colonial hegemony rather then engaging in honest negotiation. Current initiatives are converging into a single public policy goal; namely the corporatisation of Indigenous Peoples legal personality and self governing capacity. What used to be distinct nation-state development now seems to be a four nation-state (CANZUS) unified plan being implemented on four different fronts. Clearly, from the legal history, self government is something fundamentally different from self-management. The advent of Legal Positivism has played a significant role in assumptions that inherent sovereignty and self government never existed under European legal systems. The framework of tribal self governance must be viewed in the context of the values of the specific People to be a true expression of an Indigenous Nation exercising self government. This fundamental distinction can be traced back to the legal history. The foundational laws regarding interactions with Indigenous Peoples were developed under theories of natural law. The contemporary state practice is conducted under positivist law, with a nod toward developing human rights standards. Only through continued advocacy for the legal recognition of inherent rights will the nation-states be challenged on their self management agenda. (shrink)

The concept of human dignity is criticized due to its vagueness, but by discussing the most important schools of thought, we can identify a core meaning that is common to most understandings of human dignity: Whether we conceptualize human dignity in terms of autonomy, self‐respect, social acts, or equal status, we always refer to some kind of personal identity. This personal identity consists in those aspects that we consider to be constitutive of our individual personality. Instead of remaining within (...) doctrinal school thought, this core meaning can be taken as a common denominator for human dignity discourse. (shrink)

This article entitled “History's `So it seems'” explores the potential of phenomenology for the framing of histories which privilege partcipant perspectives. The theory agenda of the article adapts insights drawn from Heidegger's ontological hermeneutic of Da-sein - the human condition of being-there and being-aware (or not aware). The theory agenda also adapts Heidegger's readings of Heraclitus. The practical agenda of the article illustrates this potential of Heidegger's phenomenology for history by contrasting `so it once seemed' senses of the (...) Emperor Julian the Apostate's Roman pagan self-hood. The contrasts are autobiographical (Julian's Misopogon ), contemporary biographical (Ammianus Marcellinus's history), and long-lag biographical (Gore Vidal's novel avowedly constrained by the sources). (shrink)

"No philosophical dictum is better known than Descartes's assertion about the intimate relation between thinking and existing. What remains unknown is how we are to understand the 'I' who thinks and exists. This book is about the ways that the concept of an 'I' or a 'self' has been developed and deployed at different times in the history of Western Philosophy. It also offers a striking contrast case, the 'interconnected' self, who appears in some expressions of African (...) Philosophy. Appealing to philosophy to illuminate the concept of a 'self' may seem unnecessary. Anyone who can read this book is a self, so why can we not just tailor a concept to fit what we already know about ourselves? This objection has considerable force and provides a constraint on efforts to fashion a self-concept. Although there is a sense of 'self-knowledge' in which it is said to require a lifetime of serious effort to achieve, what is at issue here is simply knowing that one is a self"--. (shrink)

The acquisition of self-knowledge is often described as one of the main goals of philosophical inquiry. At the same time, some sort of self-knowledge is often regarded as a necessary condition of our being a human agent or human subject. Thus self-knowledge is taken to constitute both the beginning and the end of humans' search for wisdom, and as such it is intricately bound up with the very idea of philosophy. Not surprisingly therefore, the Delphic injunction 'Know (...) thyself' has fascinated philosophers of different times, backgrounds, and tempers. But how can we make sense of this imperative? What is self-knowledge and how is it achieved? What are the structural features that distinguish self-knowledge from other types of knowledge? What role do external, second- and third-personal, sources of knowledge play in the acquisition of self-knowledge? How can we account for the moral impact ascribed to self-knowledge? Is it just a form of anthropological knowledge that allows agents to act in accordance with their aims? Or, does self-knowledge ultimately ennoble the self of the subjects having it? Finally, is self-knowledge, or its completion, a goal that may be reached at all? The book addresses these questions in fifteen chapters covering approaches of many philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Edmund Husserl or Elisabeth Anscombe. The short reflections inserted between the chapters show that the search for self-knowledge is an important theme in literature, poetry, painting and self-portraiture from Homer. (shrink)

Renowned Eastern European author Adam Michnik was jailed for more than six years by the communist regime in Poland for his dissident activities. He was an outspoken voice for democracy in the world divided by the Iron Curtain and has remained so to the present day. In this thoughtful and provocative work, the man the Financial Times named "one of the 20 most influential journalists in the world" strips fundamentalism of its religious component and examines it purely as a secular (...) political phenomenon. Comparing modern-day Poland with postrevolutionary France, Michnik offers a stinging critique of the ideological "virus of fundamentalism" often shared by emerging democracies: the belief that, by using techniques of intimidating public opinion, a state governed by "sinless individuals" armed with a doctrine of the only correct means of organizing human relations can build a world without sin. Michnik employs deep historical analysis and keen political observation in his insightful five-point philosophical meditation on morality in public life, ingeniously expounding on history, religion, moral thought, and the present political climate in his native country and throughout Europe. (shrink)

Michael Goldhaber, who popularized the term the attention economy, said of the US Capitol insurrection: “It felt like an expression of a world in which everyone is desperately seeking their own audience and fracturing reality in the process. I only see that accelerating.” If we don’t do something about this, American democracy may not survive. For when there is no longer any common ground of evidence and reason, history shows that misinformation will eventually overwhelm public discourse and authoritarianism can (...) take over. That is precisely what dictators across the world gleefully anticipate will happen in the US. The Biden administration could combat this by establishing a digital fairness doctrine for the twenty-first century. This would not mean setting up a government agency as the arbiter of truth. The purpose of such a doctrine is simply to preserve the possibility of a functioning national discourse on critical issues of public interest. It would not run afoul of First Amendment free speech guarantees, given that it would do nothing to block speech itself. In fact, it would expand and enrich national conversations, by preventing echo chambers prone to systematic bias. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:nooK itEVIEWS 141 La Doctrine de la Revelation Divine de Saint Thomas D'Aquin: Actes du Symposium sur la Pensee de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, recueil puhlie sous la direction de LfoN ELDERS, S.V.D. in Studi Tomistici 37. Pontificia Academia di S. Tommaso, Lihreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990. Pp. 278. 30,000.00 lire. This collection of essays by distinguished scholars presents the acts of a conference on the doctrine of Revelation according to (...) Saint Thomas Aquinas. The volume contains twelve papers, four in French, four in English and four in German. The contributors are, in alphabetical order: A. Blanco, G. Cottier, O.P., Ph. Delhaye, L. Elders, S.V.D., L. Hodl, B. McGregor, O.P., J. H. Nicolas, O.P., L. Scheffczyk, R. Schenk, O.P., J. Schumacher, P. Stohr, and J. P. Torrell, O.P. The ground covered by their articles is as broad as the horizon of their authors. Aquinas's doctrine is confronted with problems ranging from the modernist crisis to those currently discussed in missiology. In theology, when one associates Revelation with Thomism, one is forced to think of Father Garrigou-Lagrange's De Revelatione, truly a landmark in the history of modern theology. Reading it, one cannot help hut to he impressed by the mastery and the clarity with which this eminent Dominican theologian of the antimodernist period disputes and refutes the arguments which threatened the Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Garrigou-Lagrange's hook has never been translated into modern languages. And yet, in a certain way, volume 37 of Studi Tomistici can substitute for it, since it deals with issues closely related to those which Garrigou-Lagrange addressed in his study of Revelation. It also recasts the discussion in the terms in which it is expressed in the theological field today. For this reason, this volume provides a valuable resource for the contemporary student of theology for whom the details of the modernist crisis in the early part of this century have not only faded with time, hut also have become less pressing due to the complexity of the problematic which retains the attention of theologians in the post-Vatican II period. The focus of this collection of papers is the epistemology of divine Revelation, to the point that this could he its subtitle. Ten of the twelve articles deal with this question. Only Delhaye's paper ventures outside of the field of epistemology to cover the topic of morals, while Horl takes up the ecumenical question. Scheffczyk's article provides a broad perspective on the evolution and the perenniality of the modernist/antimodernist problematic in theology. He shows that the root of the problem lies in the epistemology of the 142 BOOK REVIEWS Enlightenment, i.e. in idealism, which imposed itself as the philosophy of the anticlerical nineteenth century. In the last part of his paper he demonstrates how Saint Thomas's theology provides the insights neces· sary to articulate the doctrinal unity which exists between the teaching on Revelation found in Vatican I and that of Vatican II. He draws the reader's attention to the notion of degrees of Revelation whose culminating point is indeed the beatific vision and which is prepared for by a historical unfolding. Schumacher and Stohr also deal with the modernist's characterization of the traditional scholastic doctrine of Revelation as an imparting of propositions. Schumacher reviews the theory of Revelation of several of the modernist theologians. A com· mon characteristic of these theories is an idealist epistemology that re· duces the life of the intellect to its immanent part and thus renders impossible God's communication of intelligible truths without violating the laws of Nature. Stohr, on the other hand, investigates current theological theories and shows how Rahner and Schillebeeckx encounter the same difficulty with the intelligible content of Revelation because of their attempts to reconcile the Gospel's claim of effectiveness in chang· ing lives with idealist philosophy. With respect to the main line of inquiry, Nicolas's paper deals explicitly with epistemology of Revelation. This study of the " epistemo· logical aspects of Revelation " has two parts. In the first, Nicolas provides a commentary on S.Th... (shrink)

Self-Transcendence and Human History in Wolfhart Pannenberg examines Pannenberg's thoughts on self-transcendence and its relationship to human history. The author attempts to establish a better understanding of man as "creature" and as "creator" of history. Godfrey Igwebuike Onah begins by clarifying the definitions of self-transcendence, openness, and exocentricity. These terms involve man's natural tendency to constantly reach out beyond the present reality, which is based in his existence as a spiritual being open to God. (...) Onah discusses the development of the self that is always present, but does not completely emerge until the end of the individual's history. He shows that imagination, culture, language, play, love, trust, and the question of God are dimensions of man's capacity of self-transcendence. Through a critical dialogue with Pannenberg, the author demonstrates that man becomes history, while also participating with God in the making of history. He proposes that through self-knowledge comes knowledge of God and through knowledge of God comes knowledge of self. (shrink)

Quassim Cassam argues that contemporary philosophers largely neglect the kind of “substantial” self-knowledge most people care about – knowledge of my character, beliefs, and desires – in favor of “trivial” forms of it that are nevertheless philosophically illuminating. This article takes up Cassam's challenge to turn toward accounts of substantial self-knowledge, and, building on the work of Gadamer, makes the case that any such account has to address the question of the historical formation of the knowing subject. That (...) historical formation – our ‘historicity’ – both erects barriers to self-knowledge and serves as a source of it, and raises the question of how much self-knowledge is even possible for historically situated knowers. To answer that, I take up Collingwood's claim that the aim of historical research is self-knowledge, and his view that, since its scientific turn in the nineteenth century, history has enabled self-knowledge of an especially significant sort. Developing these and other ideas in Collingwood, I draw a distinction between what I call “historico-philosophical” self-knowledge, which includes knowledge of our historicity, and “garden-variety historical” self-knowledge, which is focused on the particular historical formations in which we find ourselves. I argue that both count as substantial self-knowledge and round out an understanding of myself that includes any grasp I might have of my character, beliefs, and desires. (shrink)

Not being an historian but a philosopher, largely concerned with political theory, Plato was not primarily interested in historical inquiry for its own sake. His references to history or prehistory, when they occur, are introduced for the purpose of illustrating some particular point of doctrine, generally ethical or political.

The third and concluding volume of Maurice Cowling's magisterial sequence examines three related strands of English thought - latitudinarianism, the Christian thought which has assumed that latitudinarianism gives away too much, and the post-Christian thought which has assumed that Christianity is irrelevant or anachronistic. As in previous volumes, Maurice Cowling conducts his argument through a series of encounters with individual thinkers, including Burke, Disraeli, the Arnolds, Tennyson and Tawney in the first half, and Darwin, Keynes, Orwell, Leavis and Berlin in (...) the second. Central to the whole is Mr Cowling's contention that the modern mind cannot escape from religion. Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England represents a massive contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of modern England, of interest to historians, literary and cultural critics, theologians, philosophers, economists, as well as to that broader reading public with a serious interest in the making of the English mental landscape. (shrink)

The works of many early critics of the Christian church were burned by ruling emperors or otherwise destroyed in the second and third centuries, but the writings of the Greek pagan philosopher, Celsus, have survived indirectly through his eloquent opponent Origen of Alexandria. In his apologetical treatise, Contra Celsum, Origen argues against the ideas set forth by Celsus and quotes from Celsus' The True Doctrine at length. Through this treatise, Celsus has come to represent the detached pagan voice of the (...) ages. In this translation, Professor Hoffmann has, for the first time, painstakingly reconstructed the main order of the philosopher's argument. Celsus' discourse shows him to be an eclectic philosopher--a dabbler in various schools of thought, including Platonism and Stoicism, and a student of the history and religious customs of many nations. Hoffman supplements this definitive translation with an informative introduction, summarizing Celsus' premises and placing the identity of Celsus in its historical context. (shrink)

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of (...) intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. (shrink)

The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific and (...) philosophical spirit of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought - The Renaissance, when along with the re-discovery of ancient thought, atomism became once again an important doctrine to be fully debated - Logical atomism in early analytic philosophy, with Russell and Wittgenstein - Atomism in Liberalism and Marxism - Atomism and the philosophy of time - Atomism in contemporary metaphysics - Atomism and the sciences Featuring 28 chapters by leading and younger scholars, this valuable collection reveals the development of one of philosophy's central doctrines across 2,500 years and within a broad range of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to clarify the relation between genealogy and history and to suggest a methodological reading of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. I try to determine genealogy's specific range of objects, specific mode of explication, and specific textual form. Genealogies in general can be thought of as drastic narratives of the emergence and transformations of forms of subjectivity related to power, told with the intention to induce doubt and self-reflection in exactly those readers whose (collective) (...) history is narrated. The main interest in understanding the concept of genealogy and revisiting Nietzsche's introduction of it into philosophy lies in understanding how a certain way of writing and a certain textual practice function that successfully call into question current judgments, institutions and practices. Nietzsche's example, I argue, can provide a paradigm for a critical practice that accounts for historical processes of subject formation in terms of power and turns them against given forms of subjectivity. (shrink)