In the last book of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius develops his solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge and free choice. Interpreters standardly hold that this problem and his solution to it presuppose causal indeterminism. In this paper, I argue that Boethius, following a Neoplatonist view found in Proclus, is a causal determinist and compatibilist and maintains that God’s providential knowledge ensures the occurrence of all the events he knows. This alternative interpretation offers a better fit (...) with Boethius’s text and its historical antecedents and provides resources to address the main criticisms of his solution. (shrink)

Human persons can act with libertarian freedom in heaven according to one prominent view, because they have freely acquired perfect virtue in their pre-heavenly lives such that acting rightly in heaven is volitionally necessary. But since the character of human persons is not perfect at death, how is their character perfected? On the unilateral model, God alone completes the perfection of their character, and, on the cooperative model, God continues to work with them in purgatory to perfect (...) their own character. I argue that although both models can make sense of all human persons enjoying free will in heaven on various assumptions, the cooperative model allows all human persons in heaven to enjoy a greater degree of freedom. This consideration about the degree of heavenly freedom provides a reason for God to implement the cooperative model. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Christian doctrine of heaven has implied that the human agents that exist there will be exceptionally moral. More than this, there appears to be a consensus that heavenly agents are so morally upright as to be considered morally perfect. However, there has been some kickback to this idea of moral perfection, and whether it is a possibility for contingently existing agents. The primary goal of this thesis is to defend the view that moral (...) perfection in heaven is possible if understood from an Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian virtue account. My secondary goals are to show that the process of perfecting agents requires some form of temporal extension, does not require a traditional form of character development to maintain the agent’s free will, and allows for the possibility of moral growth after the status of perfection has been attained. (shrink)

The Problem of Heavenly Freedom explores the tension between the concept of free will and the absence of sin in heaven, challenging traditional notions of moral freedom. This paper examines James Sennett’s solution, known as “proximate compatibilism,” which argues that heavenly freedom can coexist with a form of determinism based on the moral character developed through earthly choices. Sennett contends that true freedom does not require the potential for evil but instead reflects the ability to act in (...) accordance with one’s highest good. Building on Sennett’s framework, Timothy Pawl and Kevin Timpe offer an extension that incorporates libertarian freedom, suggesting that moral perfection enhances rather than diminishes free will by allowing individuals to choose among various good actions that reflect their alignment with divine goodness. The paper also addresses potential objections, such as the concern that this view undermines significant moral freedom and the role of divine grace, providing rebuttals that highlight the transformative power of character and the synergistic relationship between human choice and divine assistance. By redefining the nature of free will in the context of heavenly existence, this paper presents a compelling argument that true freedom is realized through the alignment of the will with moral perfection, offering a deeper understanding of human destiny and the ultimate purpose of spiritual growth. (shrink)

This paper emphasizes an unnoticed connection between two lines in Aristotle, Metaphysics Λ.1, 1069a32, and Λ.2, 1069b26. It argues that the Greek text of the former has been obscured in standard editions by unnecessary emendation: if the reading of the mss. is preserved, the text here sets out a programme for research into the elements of heavenly bodies which is taken up in the second part of Λ.2. There, Aristotle distinguishes the matter of heavenly substance as if it were (...) matter in a certain sense only, and not sensu stricto: the only change it underlies is coming-to-be ποθέν ποι, ‘from one place to another’ . In Θ.8 as well, this is what allows Aristotle to deny that eternal things can have matter as an element of their substance. The reading argued for here may also explain how Aristotle can claim, by the end of Lambda, that he has succeeded in responding to an important aporia which was neglected by predecessors, namely ‘why some things are corruptible and other incorruptible’. (shrink)

By far the most respected response by theists to the problem of evil is some version of the free will defense, which rests on the twin ideas that God could not create humans with free will without them committing evil acts, and that freedom is of such value that it is better that we have it than that we be perfect yet unfree. If we assume that the redeemed in heaven are impeccable, then (...) the free will defense faces what I call the Heaven Dilemma: either the redeemed in heaven are free, in which case it is false that you cannot be free without doing evil, or they are not, in which case (heaven being better than earth) it is false that we are better off with freedom and evil than without either. James Sennett has tried to defend a view of freedom that effectively allows us to be impeccable in heaven so long as we are not on earth, while claiming that we are free in both. I argue that this view leads to a new dilemma: either there is no point to earth at all, and given its miseries, it is wrong for God to make us pass through it to get to heaven (especially if we face the risk of ending up in hell), or Sennett’s view consigns millions who die tragically young to an eternity of unfreedom. (shrink)

Catharine Beecher held that women possessed a moral power that could allow them to play a vital role in the moral and social progress of nineteenth century America. Problematically, this power could only be obtained through their subordination to the greatest social happiness. I wish to argue that this notion of subordination, properly framed within her ethico-religious system, can in fact lead to economic independence for women and a surprisingly robust conception of moral power.

Numerous philosophers in recent decades have argued that a partial explanation for how the blessed in heaven are impeccable while remaining free and responsible is that they have cultivated or developed such a virtuous character prior to heaven that once in heaven they are incapable of acting contrary to their virtuously cultivated characters. Further, because the agents are at least partially responsible for the construction of their characters, they can be considered free and responsible (...) with regard to the choices or actions such virtuous characters allow. In what follows I will argue that the impeccability of the blessed is not achieved through a character-development process performed by the blessed themselves. (shrink)

My scholarly approach is to consider and treat the inner chapters of the Zhuangzi as an integral text regardless of whether its composition is the result of many hands. I treat this in much the same fashion as Western biblical scholars study the Western bible for its meaning, whether or not it actually came into being over many years and was the result of the work of multiple authorship. It is my opinion that such an approach is more appropriate (...) to the eminent status of the text of the Zhuangzi in the traditional, Chinese cultural canon, to its philosophical and spiritual value as a testament to the idea of the union of heaven and earth in the Chinese cultural tradition, and to its actual functioning as a working guidebook to the understanding of how to achieve a practical expansion of the spiritual dimension of human experience. In essence, I will demonstrate that a proper academic, textual analysis of this seminal work is crucial to the understanding of how it functions as a document designed to explain, illustrate and point the way to spiritual freedom. What I would like to present is the argument that the attempt to achieve the union of heaven and earth is indeed the main theme of the Zhuangzi. My argument is that the inner chapters are a literary and philosophical model of the cosmic unity of heaven and earth. My method of showing this is to show the developmental nature of the inner chapters. I begin by arguing that the myth of K’un transforming itself into P’eng with which Zhuangzi commences his work prefigures the main theme of the Zhuangzi which is that of spiritual transformation. The unity and integrity of the text is shown by a close examination of the chapters which follow. The chapters form a developmental sequence. As the inner chapters develop, we are treated to a progression of “monster” types from the gentle and honorable form of the crippled military commander through physically crippled Shu to No-lips of triple deformity. Of Shu it is said, how much better if Shu, who is physically crippled, had crippled virtue. Then, as a philosophical development, Zhuangzi presents the madman whose conventional virtue is indeed crippled. Each character dialectically progresses, allowing the mind of the reader to expand with the progression of each monstrous character, until the mind of the reader can achieve the mental freedom that it longs for. Just as the pheasant longs to be free of its cage, so does the mind of the reader long for freedom from its cage of concepts. The mind is gradually prepared by the progressive development of the monster forms until it can break free of its conventional concepts to achieve the unity of heaven and earth. Each monstrous character shows itself in turn to be more physically limited or monstrous or different in kind than the previous example, but nonetheless capable of achieving a transcendental freedom. This is the teaching of the Zhuangzi, that regardless of form and of physical limitation, man can achieve the unity of heaven and earth. The gallery of monsters are metaphorical role models for the reader to learn the lesson that physical limitation does not hinder one from reaching heavenly unity, but the proper understanding of physical limitation is the key to unifying heaven and earth. The physical oddities of Zhuangzi’s messengers work together to function to break down conventional value judgments and enable the reader of the text to receive their message which is the message of the achievement of transcendental freedom. (shrink)

Questioning gender is about taking an active, critical role in the technological design of our daily behaviour. It is a deconstruction of the oppositions that exist in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence designers, the ICT industry and computer scientists. What underlies the assumption that Ambient Intelligence will, by disappearing into our environment, bring humans both an easy and entertaining life? The gender perspective can uncover power relations within the promotion and realisation of Ambient Intelligence that satisfy an (...) obvious wish for a technological heaven. The deconstruction of the promise of progress and a better life reveals what is overvalued, what is undervalued and what is ignored. This paper is a deconstruction of the view, currently prevalent in the discourses of Ambient Intelligence; a view of humans and the way they live. A view that will influence the way women and men will be allowed to construct their lives. (shrink)

With the rise of review sites and social media, films today, as soon as they are shown, immediately become the topic of debates on their merits not only as entertainment, but also as serious forms of artistic expression. Philosopher Robert B. Pippin, however, wants us to consider a more radical proposition: film as thought, as a reflective form. Pippin explores this idea through a series of perceptive analyses of cinematic masterpieces, revealing how films can illuminate, in a concrete manner, core (...) features and problems of shared human life. Filmed Thought examines questions of morality in Almodóvar’s Talk to Her, goodness and naïveté in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, love and fantasy in Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, politics and society in Polanski’s Chinatown and Malick’s The Thin Red Line, and self-understanding and understanding others in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place and in the Dardennes brothers' oeuvre. In each reading, Pippin pays close attention to what makes these films exceptional as technical works of art and as intellectual and philosophical achievements. Throughout, he shows how films offer a view of basic problems of human agency from the inside and allow viewers to think with and through them. Captivating and insightful, Filmed Thought shows us what it means to take cinema seriously not just as art, but as thought, and how this medium provides a singular form of reflection on what it is to be human. (shrink)

The majority of philosophers of religion, at least since Plantinga’s reply to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, agree that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God to exist who permits some of the evils we see in the actual world. This is conceivable essentially because of the possible world known as heaven. That is, heaven is an imaginable world in a similar way that logically possible scenarios in any fiction are imaginable. (...) However, like some of the imaginable stories in fiction where we are asked to envision an immoral act as a moral one, we resist. I will employ the works of Tamar Gendler on imaginative resistance and Keith Buhler’s Virtue Ethics approach to moral imaginative resistance and apply them to the conception of heaven and the problem of evil. While we can imagine God as an omnibenevolent parent permitting evil to allow for morally significant freedom and the rewards in heaven or punishments in hell (both possible worlds), we should not. This paper is not intended to be a refutation of particular theodicies; rather it provides a very general groundwork connecting issues of horrendous suffering and imaginative resistance to heaven as a possible world. (shrink)

This chapter argues that there is no reason that there won’t be physical disabilities in the life of heaven. To argue for this conclusion, the chapter considers what bodies will be good for in the life of heaven. On the one hand, if the life of heaven is physically dynamic, that is, where our bodies change and we can do things with them, like play rugby and climb mountains, physical disabilities can be part of (...) the limitations that allow the physical things we do to be difficult, which, in turn, allows us to achieve physical things. Since the possibility of achievement is important for a life supremely worth living, as the life of heaven is, God has no reason to eliminate, unilaterally, that is, without the person’s consent, physical disabilities in the life of heaven. On the other hand, if the life of heaven is physically static, where our bodies don’t change and we can’t do things with them, physical disabilities are neither a help nor a harm to such a life, and so God has no reason to eliminate unilaterally physical disabilities in the life of heaven. This then leads to the conclusion that God gives a person the option to retain or have eliminated their physical disability in the life of heaven. (shrink)

In Confucius' time, it was supposed that the sovereign had the mandate of heaven (tianming) to rule. Both Confucius and Mencius speak of a legitimate ruler as someone who has such a mandate and of a deposed ruler as someone who has lost it. Commentators have recently turned their attention to what the reference to the mandate of heaven means, as there are implications for the prospects of democracy in a Confucian state. The result is a wide (...) spectrum of views. In what might be called the liberal interpretation of the "mandate of heaven," Confucianism, or Mencius more specifically, allows for a popular revolt against a despotic ruler (hence for the possibility of democracy). In what might be called the conservative .. (shrink)

It has been pointed out that Sensorimotor Enactivism, a theory that claims that perception is enacted and brought about by movement, says very little about the neural mechanisms that enable perception. For the proponents of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism, this is a challenge that can be met by introducing predictive processing into the picture. However, the compatibility between these theories is not straightforward. Firstly, because they seem to differ in their stand towards representations: (...) while Sensorimotor Enactivism is said to belong to the non-representational wing of cognitive science, predictive processing has a representational profile. And secondly, because they exhibit different explanatory strategies: while Sensorimotor Enactivism prioritizes the interactions of the embodied agent, predictive processing has internalist commitments. The aim of this paper is to address these concerns and show that a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism is viable. More specifically, I focus on the Free-Energy approach, a theory that falls within the ballpark of predictive processing. In this paper I argue for the following claims. I argue that both Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach may be understood for some systems in representational terms. The non-representational reading of Sensorimotor Enactivism is not mandatory and neither is the representational reading of the Free-Energy approach. Sensorimotor Enactivism is, in this respect, compatible with both representational and non-representational interpretations of the FEA. So, the position towards representations of these frameworks should not stand in the way of a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. I also show that the Free-Energy approach allows for an account that prioritizes the interaction of the embodied agent with the environment. This is the explanatory strategy followed by Sensorimotor Enactivism. To justify this strategy and following other proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, I argue that by referring to the interactions of the embodied agent a better account of the phenomena in question is provided. On this basis, I claim that Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach are compatible in what concerns their explanatory strategy as well. Thus, making the case for the viability of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. (shrink)

Generally speaking, sex robots are artificial entities designed to be humanlike in appearance and behavior, and which are primarily used for sexual purposes. In the literature on robot ethics, most work is influenced by either deontology or utilitarianism. In this article, I address some issues concerning sex robots from a Confucian standpoint. The first question that will be raised is whether sex robots can be morally permitted. Intuitively, such machines might not be morally acceptable for Confucianism since Confucians seem (...) to hold a negative and mortifying attitude toward sexual desire. However, this intuition is likely incorrect. I argue that sexual desires guided by the heavenly principle are not immoral. Hence, from the Confucian perspective, sex robots, which are created to meet humans’ sexual desires, can at least sometimes be justified. The second question addresses what kinds of sex robots Confucianism can morally allow. As I explore, following Confucian insights, the answer to this question likely depends on the purpose for which one seeks to use sex robots. Sexual thoughts that involve incest, threesomes, fornication, and pedophilia are usually regarded as morally wrong from the Confucian perspective. Thus, it would likely be morally unacceptable to use sex robots to fulfil such illicit and inappropriate desires. By contrast, Confucianism might morally permit other kinds and uses of sex robots. In some cases, people want sex robots because they are unable to find human sexual partners. Sex robots might be able to fulfil such people’s sexual needs, while also enabling those individuals to build emotional bonds with their sex robots. The therapeutic use of sex robots can also be allowed. The paper consists of four sections. The first section demonstrates the specialty of sex robots. The second section explores the Confucian views of yin-yang theory and sex. In the third section, Confucian theories of family relations and sex are illustrated. Lastly, based on the features of Confucianism, I argue that some kinds of use of sex robots can be morally allowed by Confucians. (shrink)

The question of whether movies can deliver philosophical content is a leading topic in the cognitive and analytic debate on film. But instead of turning to the well-trodden terrain of narrative and emotional engagement, this is the first time fashion and costume choices are analyzed to demonstrate how movies can be said to be doing philosophy. -/- Considering how fashion and costumes can deliver the epistemic content of a film and act as a guidance to the interpretation of the philosophical (...) content of a film, Laura T. Di Summa examines fashion and costume choices in classical and contemporary films. She discusses a number of cinematic examples, and the costumes and fashion elements within them, illustrating the importance of issues such as the performative side of fashion, the alteration between novelty and repetition, the pivotal role of the body, and the relation between fashion, style, and individual as well as collective identity. -/- Featuring close examinations of 1950s melodramas, Hollywood blockbusters and documentaries such as All That Heaven Allows, Mad Max Fury Road, and McQueen, Di Summa uses an innovative new lens to provide fresh philosophical analysis of films. The result is not only an advancement of our understanding of the aesthetic means through which film can do philosophy, but the first insights into a philosophy of fashion. (shrink)

“But when you meet her again,” he observed, “in Heaven, you, too, will be changed. You will see her spiritualized, with spiritual eyes.”1Dante is not a philosopher, although George Santayana sees him as one among a very few philosophical poets.2 The Divine Comedy deals in terza rima with issues that are philosophically urgent, including the relation between reasoning well and happiness.3And as one of the few great epics in Western literature, the Comedy offers its readers the pleasures of (...) world-class poetry, fabulous beasts from classical literature, good people and sinners from Dante’s Italy, and the prolongation in verse of Thomas Aquinas’s summa Theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. In some ways, Dante’s epic .. (shrink)

Scholarship on Xunzi in English has been plagued by imprecise readings of the text and general philosophical naivete. It is hoped that this account will provide a sympathetic and accurate reading of this central thinker. ;The Introduction addresses the problems of interpretation raised by the text at hand, and all philosophical texts like it. A method of "interpretation as integrity," modeled on the theory of "law as integrity" put forward by Ronald Dworkin, is finally defended and adopted. ;Chapter I (...) takes up Xunzi's celebrated criticism of the earlier philosopher Mencius, pointing out Xunzi's fundamental analogy between ruler and polity on the one hand, and mind and person on the other. The discussion leads to a consideration of Xunzi's philosophy of mind. It is concluded that the refutation of Mencius is no refutation at all, but an excellent point of departure for a study of Xunzi's thought. ;Chapter II considers Xunzi's view of Heaven. Xunzi's mechanism is compared, and ultimately contrasted, with the deism of Tindal: there is a dimension to Xunzi's Heaven that finds no analogue in Tindal's cosmos. The chapter ends with a rejection of the commonplace that Xunzi is a conventionalist. ;Chapter III begins with an overview of Western approaches to the problem of ritual, gravitating towards an emphasis on contractarianism, since this model comes closest to what we find in Xunzi. But it is shown how the differences between Xunzi and Hobbes, a frequent comparandum, highlight the unmistakable absolutism in Xunzi's style of contractarianism. ;Chapter IV opens with an account of the Dialecticians, an unfederated group of sophists whom Xunzi criticized frequently and earnestly. The reasons behind Xunzi's animadversions are found in his theory of language. Despite the vast freedom of names that Xunzi allows, in anticipation of Saussure and others, Xunzi is shown not to countenance ontological relativity. Instead, Xunzi postulates a Way , a universal ontology. The ramifications of this commitment are wide-ranging and contribute to the basic character of Xunzi's philosophy. (shrink)

Sophists’ apologia. -/- Sophists were the first paid teachers ever. These ancient Greek enlighteners taught wisdom. Protagoras, Antiphon, Prodicus, Hippias, Lykophron are most famous ones. Sophists views and concerns made a unified encyclopedic system aimed at teaching common wisdom, virtue, management and public speaking. Of the contemporary “enlighters”, Deil Carnegy’s educational work seems to be the most similar to sophism. Sophists were the first intellectuals – their trade was to sell knowledge. They introduced a new type of teacher-student relationship – (...) the mutually beneficial communication on equal terms. They taught pupils how to think independently and how to persuade others, which was inseparably connected with the rise of democracy in the most advanced Greek polices. Sophists were the first to proclaim that all people are naturally equal. They put forward the idea of natural rights and social contract, working out the fundamentals of the present-day law. In addition, they developed the basics of philology, psychology, logic, and gave a scientific explanation to the origins of religions. They embodied definite positive ideals of their epoch. Sophistry flourished in the second half of the Vth through he first third of the IVth centuries B. C. The period coincides with the heyday of the entire Greek history – the so called Greek Miracle epoch. Sophists expressed some present-day concepts of Ancient Greek ideology and mentality, characteristic of its Golden Age times. The Ancient Athens of the times of Periclus were similar to the Florence of Renaissance as to the type of social structure. That is why (?) the art of eloquence (public speaking) was highly respected in Florence. The two cities had a lot of features of the present-day capitalist society, which was due to their role as the main centres of industry of their “worlds-economies”. During the subsequent Hellenic period, the Old Order was restored, based on the feudal rent recipients’ rule. The degradation of society resulted in the decline of sophistry. Sophistry represents the highest point in the evolution of Greek philosophy. It is also the most prominent school as to the novelty of its ideas. That was owing to the common propensity for innovation typical of Periclus’ Golden Age, which in its turn resulted from the establishment of the individualistic and rationalistic thinking similar to present-day mentality. Among other aspects, close attention was paid to ethnic issues; some humanistic ideas such as Master and Servant ethics and Enlightment as the primary condition of man’s freedom, received scientific grounding. The genre of philosophical dialogue was developed, as well as the rationalistic scientific gnoceology, aimed at consistently opposing any religion. Dialectics, the most outstanding achievement of the Antiquity, was also worked out by the sophists. Zeno of Helleas was one of the sophists. Democrites’ ideas were, too, quite close to dialectics. Socrates’ contemporaries regarded him ironically, as shown, for example, in the Aristophanes’ comedy “Clouds”. Nevertheless, this scholar can still be referred to as a sophist, although of somewhat weird personality. Socrates’ popularity, which came later, should be attributed to the fact that he was the first philosopher ever to have been sentenced and executed by law, rather than to any valuable scientific contributions. Sophistry as such, rather than Socrates, marks the line between pre-Socratic and post- Socratic schools. Plato, with the exception of his latest works, is considered to belong to the same philosophical school. Specifically, there are valid reasons to believe that he was paid fees by his disciples. In Plato’s Dialogues, all points of view will be proven and then disproved, so that an integral philosophical system is hard to observe. Plato’s “Idealism” is but one of the many possible theories. His ideal philosophy is a high-minded argument of wise men. As late as towards the end of his life, Plato betrayed the ideals of sophistry, turning into the world’s first proponent of totalitarianism. Sophistry is Greek classical literature. Later on, philosophy, as well as the entire Greek civilization, started to fall into decline. Over 500 subsequent years, Hellenistic-Roman scholars never came up with anything novel. The entire process of antique philosophical evolution can be subdivided into the following six stages: Phoenician (IX–VIIth centuries B. C.), archaic (VIth – the first half of IVth century B. C., classic (the epoch of sophistry: the second half of the Vth through the first decades of the IIIrd centuries B. C.), late antique (middle of the IIIrd – first decades of the VI th centuries B.C.) The fact that early in the VIth century B. C. sophistry was rejected in Athens, has a lot to do with the consequences of their defeat in Peloponnesian war, a social catastrophe. Ever since, the prevalent part of the criticism of sophistry is a criticism of sophists’ immoral ways of life and personalities, rather than the essentials of their philosophy. For instance, Aristotle’s criticism primarily concerns their pragmatism and tendency to make a profit out of teaching. However, Aristotle himself taught his disciples along similar lines, showing them how to “be able to prove both opposites”. It was Aristotle who summed up sophists’ century-long elaborations. The traditional modern interpretation of sophists as shown in Plato’s dialogues appears to be groundless. The truth of the matter is that Plato regards sophists as more serious philosophers than Socrates was. It becomes especially clear in the dialogue titled “Protagoras”, which shows the latter as gaining an undoubted victory over Socrates. Generally speaking, Plato’s works never regard sophists as weak or worthless opponents. A common opinion as to the essence of sophists’, in particular, Protagoras’s philosophy, has hitherto not been worked out. Many researchers renounce the very existence of any specific philosophical position in sophistry. The term “relativism” itself now has a bad name. However, it should be borne in mind that Protagoras doctrine emerged as a result of an attempt to get out of the ontological dead-end to which the entire Greek natural philosophy had come. To this purpose, he employed Anaxagoras’s idea about everything comprising everything, whereupon he built his physical-ontological theory, and Zeno of Helleas’s concept that all objects are such and different at the same time in the same respect. According to Protagoras’s philosophy, every object does not only seem, but is different from every other object, including human beings. Therefore, every person is his or her own measure of all other entities. The objective reality is the Ego’s relations with the outer world. Every object’s essence is defined through its interaction with ourselves. Nothing remains stagnant – every existence already contains non-existence, and vice-versa. However, the relativity of being is not to be regarded as absolute. That means, that relatively stable and therefore relatively cognizable entities do exist, among them the words we say. Doubt is not considered absolute by relativists either, which differentiates them from skeptics and agnostics. They dare to believe. Uncertainty is Godly – here, Protagoras becomes very close to the concept of apathetic theology. Gorgius shared Protagoras’s views and tried to prove them applying the same method as Zeno applied when upholding Parmenidis’s philosophy. He argued that if one accepts the opposite point of view and agrees that nothing can exist and not exist at the same time, one is bound to come to an the absurd conclusion that nothing is cognizable and nothing exists. To prove that there is a universal contradiction within the Existence itself, Protagoras and his followers in their turn put forward a number of special logical arguments, called rules of contraries, or sophisms. The most well-known of them is the Euathle’s sophism, which proves that an object can be such and different at the same time in the same respect. Generally speaking, all relationships of any entity are extraneous. The idea that all entities, including concepts, exist and do not exist at the same time, was also accepted by Plato. It should be stressed, that Plato’s philosophy as a whole is relativists’ greatest achievement. In his dispute against relativism, Aristotle put forward the main concepts of his ontology: the existence falls into the existence in possibility and the existence in reality, or substance and accidence – the ever changing “sublunary” world and the stable world of divine heavenly bodies. This division made his system self-contradictory to the point of absurd. Aristotle quite realized, that the direct disproof of relativism is hardly possible, which fact makes his criticism a mere tautology. It is very indicative in this respect that materialists, idealists and even skeptical agnostics applied the same arguments do disprove relativism. That demonstrates that the inner contradiction between any forms of “absolutism” and relativism is the most fundamental philosophical problem. Relativist ideas were repeatedly renewed throughout history, provided the social conditions were favourable. In variations, the concepts were advanced by Tzuan Tsi and ancient Chinese sophists, apostle Paul, Nicolas of Cusa, Galileo, Rene Descartes, G. Berkley, D. Hume, Ch. S. Pierce, E. Mach, A. Bogdanov, F. de Saussure, N. Bore, P. Feuerabend, U. Quain and others. However, no consistent relativist ontological system was developed after Protagoras. Meanwhile, a valid relativist theory could provide a clue to a fuller and more adequate general physical concept of the world, and to a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics. -/- Relativism as an ontological system of beliefs. -/- The relativist principle of relativity of all that exists is fundamental for the entire system of philosophy. Absolutely everything exists, but, at the same time, no existence is absolute. Anything is possible, but those entities only exist for us with which we interact this way or another, i. e., reality is interaction, “I interact – hence, I exist”. However, an overly close relationship between entities leads to non-existence – in other words, there is a certain existential optimum. For all of us, information, or perceptible heterogeneities, is real. Each of us is the center of a definite system of interactions with the world. If God is an endless Possibility, then the World is but the man’s dialogue with God. However, the ties that bind us with the world are of some definite kind, which predetermines our reality. The principle of relativity constrains itself, as any relativity is relative. On the one hand, that calls forth the Evil – caused by our own weakness. On the other hand, it makes our world relatively stable and cognizable. Generally speaking, the world is what we are. Everybody has an own Universe, but since people are fairly similar, our universes can be regarded as one Universe with common laws and regulations. It is possible for us to change the degree of objects’ existence in relation to ourselves and one another. It is equally important, though, to remain ourselves (keep following our “warrior’s path”). Since everything exists and no existence is absolute, the process of cognition should involve a criticism of everything but never a complete rebuttal of anything. The criterion of verity for any theory then is in its capacity to build itself upon a bigger number of diverse statements than in any other theory. Theoretically, all philosophies should ideally be complementary. The question of what in fact happened is meaningless unless we specify the “we”, the “where” and the “when”. The past can only exist as part of the present. When we change, our past undergoes corresponding qualitative objective changes, all of which are irreversible. The contemporary physics regards all objects of the Universe as existing for one another, which results in absurd conclusions. In fact, only what we interact with, exists. The so called “speed of light in vacuum” c is the maximum speed of direct interaction and direct exchange of signals. Specifically, at the oncoming speed c with a significant blue parallax the gamma-quantum is unable to interact with the matter. When this speed is reached, the gravitational mass of objects in relation to one another becomes equal to zero (imaginary), whereas their inertial mass equals infinity. Further acceleration will bring us into an entirely different Universe. That means that the Universe is an open system, which fact destroys all present-day cosmological models. Anything is possible in this world. Our reality is magic. Every bit of space contains a potentially limitless number of bits of other, however virtual, universes, as well as an infinite number of particles, which are still virtual for us (as postulated by quantum mechanics). In other words, there exists an infinity of different realities. With all the above in mind, the different levels of entities’ existence, in particular, of Life and Reason, should be taken into consideration. For example, to which extent a live system exists in relation to the inanimate forms of being is very indefinite, as what life is has to be determined by living creatures. An even greater compass of levels of existence can be brought about through interaction – that is the core idea of Godel’s theorem. As a result, the range of forms of existence tends towards infinity – the evolution of matter through super-intelligence will bring us up to God’s heights. A more generalized mathematical model of the physical world, including a universal operator of the co-existence of objects, can be developed based on the above considerations. The bonds between objects become weaker owing to 1) a high speed, 2) acceleration, 3) rotation, 4) strong gravity, 5) strong fields of other kinds, 6) the difference of levels of existence , 7) phase shifts. Yet, there always is an existential optimum. Such mathematical model is to operate certain non-transitive algebras. Relativist ontology assumes that the notion of “temperature” is relative, thus making it possible to ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In its turn, that will allow for phase shifts. A perpetual motion machine of the second type will become a reality. Rotation could presumably be used to increase inertial and decrease gravitational mass, slowing down the time. An experimental research could shed light on the mentioned effects. (shrink)

In this book, best-selling author and mathematician Haim Shapira presents an introduction to mathematical theories which deal with the most beautiful concept ever invented by humankind: infinity. Written in clear, simple language and aimed at a lay audience, this book also offers some strategies that will allow readers to try their ability at solving truly fascinating mathematical problems. Infinity is a deeply counter-intuitive concept that has inspired many great thinkers. In this book we will meet many sages, both (...) familiar and unfamiliar: Zeno and Pythagoras, Georg Cantor and Bertrand Russell, Sofia Kovalevskaya and Emmy Noether, al-Khwarizmi and Euclid, Sophie Germain and Srinivasa Ramanujan. The world of infinity is inhabited by many paradoxes, and so is this book: Zeno paradoxes, Hilbert's "Infinity Hotel", Achilles and the gods paradox, the paradox of heaven and hell, the Ross-Littlewood paradox involving tennis balls, the Galileo paradox and many more. Aimed at the curious but non-technical reader, this book refrains from using any fearsome mathematical symbols. It uses only the most basic operations of mathematics: adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, powers and roots - that is all. But that doesn't mean that a bit of deep thinking won't be necessary and rewarding. Writing with humour and lightness of touch, Haim Shapira banishes the chalky pallor of the schoolroom and offers instead a truly thrilling intellectual journey. Fasten your seatbelt - we are going to Infinity, and beyond! (shrink)

Ted Sider argues that a binary afterlife is inconsistent with a proportionally just God because no just criterion for placing persons in such an afterlife exists. I provide a possible account whereby God can remain proportionally just and allow a binary afterlife. On my account, there is some maximum amount of people God can allow into Heaven without sacrificing some greater good. God gives to all people at least their due but chooses to allow some who do not (...) deserve Heaven to enter out of grace. Although this model implies a precise cutoff between those who enter Heaven and those who do not, I have argued that there is a precise point where God best serves justice and some greater good. Although God’s actions may appear arbitrary and ‘whimsically generous,’ it is merely because we are ignorant of the precise cutoff point that best serves his purposes. (shrink)

In this chapter, we take stock of existing critiques of contemporary migration research and bring these debates into contact with ongoing debates among decolonial scholars and in feminist social epistemology. We illustrate how the ethical and epistemic concerns voiced by migration scholars in regard to the socio-epistemic functioning of their field can be understood using the conceptual apparatus that has been developed around the notions of epistemic injustice and oppression. In so doing, we illustrate the relevance and usefulness of (...) both feminist social epistemology and of decolonial theory for theorising the socio-epistemic challenges that migration scholars face. The conceptual framework of epistemic injustice and oppression not only offers clarity in what is at stake within migration studies both ethically and epistemically, but also elucidates moral and epistemic reasons for why these issues should be addressed. This framework both calls attention to issues of undue epistemic marginalisation, and centres these issues as a core concern as migration scholars critically reflect upon the knowledge production and dissemination practices of their field. Understanding the processes through which this happens, rather than just the epistemic outcomes, can help us to identify ways to address the structural inequalities with which the production of migration knowledge is often associated. (shrink)

Much recent academic literature on the afterlife has been focused on the justice of eternity and whether a good God could allow a person to experience eternal suffering in Hell. Two primary escapes are typically suggested to justify never-ending punishment for sinners: the traditional view focuses the blame for an individual’s condemnation away from God onto the sinner’s freely chosen actions; the universalist position denies the eternality of the punishment on the grounds that God’s inescapable love and eventual victory (...) over evil will bring all souls into His presence. I propose a third option that hinges on the possibility of Heaven itself being experienced as eternal punishment to demonstrate that if God’s presence is both the blessedness of Heaven for some and the agony of Hell for others, then the biblical affirmation of the universal restoration of all with the eternal punishment of some need not remain paradoxical. (shrink)

On the traditional Christian doctrine: 1. People have free will (in Heaven as on Earth). 2. Those with free will can go to Hell. 3. Heaven is eternal. Many Christians also hold: 4. God is all powerful, knowing and good and 5. Free will can justify eternal suffering, evil, or hell. The paper argues that those who accept a version of Christianity that endorses 1–5 face a dilemma: Either deny that free will can justify suffering, (...) evil, or hell or accept that we can fail in heaven and so go to hell. It suggests that compassionate Christians may do best to i) give up on the idea that free will is valuable enough to justify significant suffering. This may require: ii) accepting that something has gone woefully wrong on Earth and iii) giving up the idea that people can suffer significantly in Hell, but allows Christians to maintain that iv) Heaven is eternal. (shrink)

Researchers tend to believe that bamboo "I" more concerned about practical, and more on the ruler the people rule the country road, or self-cultivation and the country contains only two types of content, rarely discussed cosmology and Dao. However, analysis of this article pointed out, Guodian bamboo "I", although incomplete because of missing, can not present a complete and systematic channel theory and cosmology, but such ideas are still very clear. Which show more about all things back to the (...) text attributed to road, but more the lack of road itself, and discussion of all things produced by the channel. However, in the nature of the road, bamboo so-called "independent non-hai" means nothing big road boundaries, more reasonable, if not more than this as a "stand-alone does not change," stressed the same channel and into the road easily and dynamic nature of the eternal confrontation between the problem. Bamboo "I" because of the Confucian interpretation of the impact of personnel or political considerations may intervene in the Road, or the textual representation of the universe, such as "WANG Yi-big", "there are four countries, Yan Wang Ju," and other statements, highlight the "King "The existence of taxonomic status, the personnel and the existence of confusion. Sometimes, however, the influence of Confucianism can also help some of the papers in this universe purification, such as bamboo, "I," a the "between heaven and earth, and its initiatives and abandoned Yue? True and unyielding moving, but more out." period, less the object of Confucian benevolence few words of text and teaching people's advice, but more simply to save the universe in which this paper, I highlighted more clearly Bing empty space on the dynamic. For the interpretation of Confucian bamboo "I" "Germany" and "view" a greater impact on the basic concepts. "German" in the other book is a cosmological concept of the Central Plains; but in the bamboo in the "virtue" is only for people. As for the "concept" in the rest of all this in view of all things can be reverted to, as well as view the body, view home, view of town and watch the state and watch the world, but in bamboo, "I", only for the personnel of various units of the view layer, without of the "body" and "things" concept. "Concept" became the method applies only to personnel, lost cosmological meaning. The earliest manuscripts date Guodian bamboo corporations, but neither is the only transcript, it is difficult to convince me to the nearest original. One kind of transcript is often a kind of interpretation of the text lead to ideas, and ideas for all of the text should be text data. Guodian bamboo "I" is only just a sympathizer of the transcript from the Confucian, in addition, there are other more dollars transcript "instead of allowing" close to the original "ideas that shape our interpretation of a text, it is better to keep" multiple text "idea , open minded, so that each text have encountered trigger contemplation, thinking of the rich gain. The Guodian Bamboo Texts of Lao Zi, discovered in 1993, though the earliest texts we now possess, do not give support to the idea of ​​a linear development from Kuodian Texts to Silk texts, then from Silk texts to other texts such as those of Wang Bi among others'. I contend the concept of "multiple texts", in which the copying of texts or the integration of one text in a collection of texts could be thought of as inevitably imbued with interpretations. The Guodian Bamboo Texts of Lao Zi were susceptible to Confucian or pro-Confucian interpretations, by which not only those critiques of Confucian basic concepts such as Ren and Yi were minimized, but also the Taoist ontology and cosmology were thereby affected. Many scholars sustain the position that Guodian Lao Zi were more pragmatically oriented or that they contained only two categories of thought, one about self-cultivation, another about the art of governing, whereas the discourse on Dao and cosmology were neglected. But I demonstrate in this paper that the Guodian texts, though incomplete in themselves, still gave us very clear ideas of a discourse on Tao and a cosmology. In general, the Guodian Lao Zi emphasized more the way by which all things return to Dao, rather than on Tao itself and its process of producing all things. Concerning the attributes of Dao, the emphasis on the "boundlessness" of Dao is more reasonable than other versions of texts such as Wang Bi's and the Silk text Lao Zi, in which we read that Dao is "changeless", creating thereby a contradictory situation between Dao's eternity and its dynamicity. On the one hand, the Confucian interpretation might put political and human considerations into ontological and cosmological considerations; on the other hand, it could also purify some cosmological texts by dropping some texts criticizing the Confucian concepts of Ren and the sage. The most evident Confucian intervention into The Guodian Lao Tzu could be found in the concepts of Virtue De) and Retracing View The concept of Virtue had lost its cosmological meaning and was reserved merely for describing human virtue. As to the concept of Guan, the retracing regard, which was applied to all things and even Dao itself in other texts, was limited to merely human social affairs and loses its cosmological meaning totally in Guodian's texts. (shrink)

J.L. Schellenberg argues that divine hiddenness provides an argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, for if God existed he would not allow non-resistant non-belief to occur, but non-resistant non-belief does occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the stakes involved in theistic considerations put pressure on Schellenberg’s premise that non-resistant non-belief occurs. First, I specify conditions for someone’s being a resistant non-believer. Then, I argue that many people (...) fulfill these conditions because, given some plausible assumptions, there is a very good pragmatic reason to be a theist rather than an atheist. I assume it is more likely that theists go to heaven than atheists, and I argue there is a non-zero probability that one can receive infinite utility and a method of comparing outcomes with infinite utilities in which the probability of each outcome affects the final expected values. Then, I show how this argument entails there is no good reason to think that there are very many non-resistant non-believers. (shrink)

Nearly all of the scant comparative work on Søren Kierkegaard and Confucius places the two starkly at odds with each other. Kierkegaard is pictured as the paradigmatic exemplar of the Western self: a discrete rights-bearing and volitional atom who is quite alone in the world, while Confucius, by contrast, is the paradigmatic exemplar of the Eastern self: a complex and irreducibly embedded communitarian bundle of relations and rich social roles. In this article, I challenge this oppositional approach, since it is (...) both erroneous and obscures fruitful dialogue between the two on conceptually commensurate problems. I argue (1) that Kierkegaard offers a relational ontology of the self which moves in a Confucian direction, (2) that subjectivity and relational reciprocity are not fundamentally at odds in the two thinkers, (3) that both thinkers value a life of harmonious integration that entails right relation to others, and finally (4) that Confucius’ appeal to Heaven as a source of normativity allows for salutary social critique of prevailing ethical norms and practices, in a way that provides important comparative insights with Kierkegaardian theism. (shrink)

In Islamic thought, the accumulation regarding Tafsir appears in various ways. One of them is the type of work called Anmudhaj that contains chapters about Tafsīr. In the An-mudhaj type of works, the determination of the sciences to investigate may occur according to different criteria. These criteria may occur as a classification of science and they also can be limited to a few sciences. In this article, we will examine the Tafsīr chapter from the work of Sipāhīzādah who took (...) charge as a teacher and judge in the Ottoman Empire. That part cons-titutes the first chapter of the work called Anmūdhaju’l-Funūn which he symbolically limited the investigated sciences to seven. The other investigated sciences in the work are Ḥadīth, Kalām, the methodology of Islamic Law, Fiqh, Bayân, and Medical Science. In the Tafsīr chap-ter of the work of Sipāhīzādah called Anmūdhaju’l-Funūn, seven different issues are investi-gated in total. Those questions are “Does Bismillah count as a vow?” and “What is the order of the creation of the earth and the heavens in the light of the verse al-Baqarah 2/29?” and “Do the names of the numbers imply limitation (hasr)?” and “What is the reason behind the borrowing of Israelites the jewels of the Egyptians in the light of the verse al-Baqarah 2/50?” and “The entry order to the city was given to Israelites in the verses al-Baqara 2/58-59, was this order given to them before or after their deviation?” and “Where is the prostrated door which is mentioned in the verse?” and “How can we assess Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s questions and answers regarding the narrative differences between the verses al-Baqarah (2/58-59) and al-A‘râf (7/161-162)?” Sipāhīzādah examined the issues of Tafsīr through a historical which makes him the participant of the debate and allows him to the continue the present discourse through a critical reading. This makes the subject of work quite important. Because thanks to the work, it will be possible to catch some clues about the progress of the accumu-lation regarding Tafsīr in the era the author lived.Summary: In Islamic thought, the accumulation regarding Tafsīr appears in various ways. One of them is the type of work called Anmudhaj that contains chapters about Tafsīr. In Anmudhaj type of works, the determination of the sciences to investigate may occur according to diffe-rent criteria. These criteria may occur as a classification of science and they also can be limi-ted to a few sciences. In this article, we will examine the Tafsīr chapter from the work of Sipāhīzādah who took charge as a teacher and judge in the Ottoman Empire. That part cons-titutes the first chapter of the work called Anmūdhaju’l-Funūn which he symbolically limited the investigated sciences to seven. The other investigated sciences in the work are Ḥadīth, Kalām, the methodology of Islamic Law, Fiqh, Bayân, and Medical Science.The work of Sipāhīzādah, Anmūdhaju’l-Funūn consists of seven chapters and also seven is-sues are investigated in the Tafsīr part of the work. The first investigated issue in the Tafsīr part is the issue of Basmalah and in our opinion, it would not be surprising to accept that in one dimension it is a conscious choice aimed at the beginning of the work. His general attitude is presenting the issues firstly. He constituted all of the issues through the trio of al-Zamakhs-harī, al-Rāzī, and al-Bayḍāwī either one or two of them. Another remarkable point in the de-velopment of the issues is Sipāhīzādah begins with Basmalah according to the Mushaf com-position and proceeds to al-Baqarah verse 59 in a particular order. According to this, the aut-hor takes the problems he detected in the relevant parts as a subject.The issues that are investigated in the Tafsīr chapter can be listed as follows:1. Can Bismillah be used as a vow? According to Sipāhīzādah, al-Bayḍāwī, al-Jurjānī and Mollā Khusraw claim that there is a difference between vowing in the name of God and starting something with Bismillah and this difference should be rejected through the work of al-Mergīnānī that is called Hidâye and Ibn al-Humām’s Sharh. Thus, according to him one of the differences between Billah and Bismillah is not that they count as a vow.2. What is the order of the creation of the earth and the heavens in the light of the verse al-Baqarah 2/29? Sipāhīzādah mentions that the creation and the arrangement of the earth did not happen at the same time.3. Do the names of the numbers imply limitation (hasr)? Regarding this issue, Sipāhīzādah took the verse that says “…and made them seven heavens” as the focal point and claimed that the mentioned number in this verse indicated limitation and gave examples from verses, hadith, linguists and scholars of the methodology.4. What is the reason behind the borrowing of Israelites the jewels of the Egyptians in the light of the verse al-Baqarah 2/50? Sipāhīzādah criticized the two arguments of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Sipāhīzādah criticized the assessments that Ancient Egyptians pursued those properties which they lent before and Israelites kept those jewels and he rejected them.5. The entry order to the city was given to Israelites in the verses al-Baqara 2/58-59, was this order given to them before or after their deviation? He criticized the argu-ments of al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī which they have given to prove that this order was given to them after their deviation. He offered arguments and emphasi-zed that the entry order to the city was given before their deviation.6. Where is the prostrated door which is mentioned in the verse al-Baqara 2/58? It is controversial if it is Jerusalem or the door of the Mosque in which they were perfor-ming the prayer. al-Zamakhsharī and al-Bayḍāwī claim that it is Jerusalem. Was this order given before or after the death of the prophet Moses? Sipāhīzādah thinks that it has to be the door of Jerusalem.7. How can we assess Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s questions and answers regarding the nar-rative differences between the verses al-Baqarah (2/58-59) and al-A‘râf (7/161-162)? Sipāhīzādah criticized the responses which are given by al-Rāzī and gives contrary responses.It is obvious that the author is Hanafi in the matters of Islamic Law. Besides this, we can say that Sipāhīzādah did not examine the issues of Tafsīr through a sense of belonging, he emp-hasized the opinions of people which he found compatible with his beliefs. Hence, He someti-mes comes to an agreement with al-Bayḍāwī who is a Shaffi in the matters of Islamic Law and from time to time he affirms al-Zamakhsharī who is a Mutazilite in the matters of faith. Sipāhīzādah examined the issues of Tafsīr through a historical depth and this both makes him a participant of the debate and allows the continuation of the present discourse through a critical reading. Thus, an attitude of critical consistency is prominent in his works. In our opi-nion, this attitude of critical consistency is an action of consolidation for the maintenance of the power of the relevant text-centered linguistic system. In this regard, we can say that Tafsīr remained its liveliness in the geography in which the author lived. So, the founders of the system which we can list as al-Zamakhsharī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, and al-Bayḍāwī and the ones who caused it to continue which we can list as Sayyid Sharif al-Jurjānī, Mollā Khusraw, and Ibn Kamāl Pasha have been read critically by the author. This makes the subject of work quite important. Because thanks to the work, it will be possible to catch some clues about the progress of the accumulation regarding Tafsir in the era the author lived. Even though it was negative in the issues that are investigated by the author, the fact that the Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī is a prominent figure is an indicator of the maintenance of the dominance of Rāzī. It would be more appropriate to link this with his effectiveness rather than the Kalāmī power of his Tafsir. For Rāzī is not taken as the focal point by Sipāhīzādah only in issues of Kalām. Besides that, he renders Rāzī as a participant of the subject in linguistic issues too such as whether if the name of the numbers implies limitation or not and the usage of varied phrases in verses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Barthes and the Lesson of SaenredamHoward Caygill (bio)In his late dialogue Parmenides, Plato seems to be on the point of overturning the main achievement of his philosophy, the doctrine of ideas. The aged Parmenides disquiets the young Socrates by asking if ideas apply not only to abstractions such as the just, the beautiful, and the good, but also to "hair, mud, dirt, or anything else particularly vile and worthless" (...) [131A]. Socrates thinks not, but admits being troubled by a doubt that forces him to retreat "for fear of falling into some abyss of nonsense and perishing." This hint of an obverse Platonism that haunts the doctrine of ideas shares much with the later work of Barthes, which, qualifying a life's work in semiotics, seems to turn away from signs and the inquiry into their conditions of meaning to seek meaning in the smudge and the blemish. In his late essay on Cy Twombly, "The Wisdom of Art" (1979), he explicitly adopts the obverse Platonism that so troubled Socrates as a principle of method: "Ideas (in the Platonic sense) are not shiny, metallic Figures in conceptual corsets, but somewhat shaky maculations, tenuous blemishes on a vague background" [180]. The clear allusion to the parable of the cave in Plato's Republic—with its contrast between the shadows on the wall and the bright light of the ideas—allows Barthes's work to be situated within an obverse, dirty Platonism. He does not abandon the Platonic search for ideas but reorients its direction of inquiry from the realm of light to that of shadow, from the heavens to the cave.The position adopted by Barthes before his death should not be understood as a turn away from a preoccupation with light and the conditions of intelligibility to a sensitivity to the shadows in the nuances of voice, tone, timbre, and texture. Such a development might seem to be confirmed by the shift in Barthes's interests from the immaculate, harshly lit geometrical architectural interiors of the Dutch seventeenth-century artist Saenredam in one of his first essays, "The World as Object" (1953), to the informal works of Cy Twombly during the final years of his life. The church interiors of the former would seem to exemplify the idea as "shiny, metallic figure," while the paintings of the latter are closer to maculation and blemish. Yet the sensitivity to the vague and the indefinable that eludes meaning while remaining one of its conditions of possibility was always present, even and especially in Barthes's response to the mysterious works of Saenredam, which for all their immaculate surface are themselves profoundly marked and blemished.The essay of 1953, contemporary with Writing Degree Zero, inaugurates a number of trajectories that range between a concern with the visual to the conditions of artistic practice under capitalism, even to a reorientation of Platonism. Itself an astonishingly wide-ranging yet focused response to seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the essay begins with a discussion of Saenredam as an exceptional moment in Dutch painting. Yet this moment is itself quickly identified as an inaugural moment of a certain obverse [End Page 38] artistic practice—the evocation of the idea of truth through reduction and negation—that continued through the contemporary avant-garde. Saenredam's art is inaugural in its refusal to participate in the mythology of what would later be identified as a capitalist society and culture. The essay, ostensibly concerned with Dutch painting, is also a reflection on the possibilities of an aesthetics of resistance in a capitalist society and the limits within which avant-garde practice is confined. Barthes's reading of Saenredam and through him Dutch painting is thus programmatic of his readings of the contemporary avant-garde, and beyond this to the Platonic structures which still silently inhabit its aesthetic theory and practice.An Aesthetic of SilenceIn the opening paragraph of "The World as Object," Barthes introduces the work of Saenredam as anticipating "a 'modern' aesthetic of silence," an anticipation that is said to exceed even "the dislocations of our contemporaries" [62]. This chronological dislocation of Saenredam's work—placing it in advance of the contemporary avant-garde—is but one of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“The Whole Internal World His Own”: Locke and Metaphor ReconsideredS. H. ClarkWhy need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search, Amid the dark recesses of his works, The great Creator sought? And why thy Locke, Who made the whole internal world his own?Oh decus! Anglicae certe oh lux altera gentis!... Tu caecas rerum causas, fontemque severum Pande, Pater; tibi enim, tibi, veri magne Sacerdos, Corda patent hominum, atque altae (...) penetralia Mentis.Fourfold Annihilation & at the clangor of the Arrows of Intellect The innumerable Chariots of the Almighty appeard in Heaven And Bacon & Newton & Locke, & Milton & Shakespear & Chaucer1Two features of these encomia to John Locke, composed by James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and William Blake, are immediately striking. Firstly, they are delivered by poets in a tradition customarily seen as a reaction to the intellectual climate induced by Locke’s Essay, a book which Blake famously claimed to regard with “Contempt and Abhorrence.” 2 Secondly, the familiar and somewhat hackneyed characterizations of Locke as philosopher of common-sense, [End Page 241] empiricism, and liberal ideology are refreshingly absent. For Gray he is “veri magne Sacerdos,” great priest of truth; Thomson places him in a pantheon including Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Chaucer; and this ranking is explicitly endorsed in Blake’s “Milton & Shakspear & Chaucer.” Comparable praise of Locke’s imaginative power is conspicuously absent from even the most generous tributes of recent commentators. 3Even if Locke’s philosophical contribution to a variety of debates is fully acknowledged, the question remains of why his major work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, was held in such high popular esteem—veneration is not too strong a word—during the subsequent century. The text itself appears an improbable candidate for such canonization: George Saintsbury accused its prose of being “positively mean in every point of style,” 4 and certainly in comparison with the poised and lucid ironies of Berkeley and Hume, it cannot but appear prolix, diffuse, and repetitive. The chief (and frequently only) merit grudgingly accorded to it is of disarming informality. Rosalie Colie’s emphasis on the “exploitation of the generic and rhetorical possibilities in the essay form itself “ highlights the conscious manipulation of authorial distance through which Locke creates the effect of sprawling inclusiveness and incom-pletion, but at the expense of conceding that “in exchange for the frankness with which the essayist appeared to present his thinking self, he was allowed certain liberties from logical rigour.” 5 Though the suggestion that a major philosophical text seeks to evade “logical rigour” might seem damning enough, there is a still more insidious equation of Locke’s “middle-style,” his desire “to make, what I have to say, as easie and intelligible to all sort of Readers as I can,” with a complicity with the expectations of his audience. 6 Other critics, notably John Richetti, have put a more positive gloss on the “simple and fortuitously concocted circle of friends” to whom the Essay is addressed, but even these accounts have been obliged to stress the representative and consensual nature of Locke’s thought. 7 This view is perhaps most elegantly expressed by Leslie Stephen: “Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period [End Page 242] because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had been worked out at this time. He ruled, that is, by obeying.” 8William Walker correctly observes that “identifying and interpreting metaphors of mind” in the Essay are “standard practices of mainstream philosophical commentary from Leibniz to Rorty,” but also notes that these analyses are usually concerned with the degree to which Locke’s reliance on figuration was at variance with and compromised his epistemological doctrine. 9 I would argue that the poetic tributes previously quoted offer a more suggestive and adequate guide to the original impact of his work. In order to substantiate this claim, I shall begin by examining Locke’s apparent renunciation of, yet paradoxical dependence upon metaphor; go on to look at the connection of the “Horizon” to the elegiac presentation of memory and the ethic of mental “Labour”; and conclude by analyzing the complex interdependence of candle and sun within the light imagery employed in the... (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls, the author of books on hell and heaven, completes his tour of the afterlife with a philosophical and theological exploration and defense of purgatory, the traditional teaching that most Christians require a period of postmortem cleansing and purging of their sinful dispositions and imperfections before they will be fully made ready for heaven. He examines Protestant objections to the doctrine and shows that the doctrine of purgatory has been construed in different ways, some (...) of which are fully compatible with Protestant theology. In particular, while purgatory has often been understood as matter of punishment in order to make satisfaction for sins that have not been fully remitted, it can also be seen as the completion of the sanctification process, an account of the doctrine that is fully consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Purgatory assumes not only continuity of personal identity but also gradual moral and spiritual growth between death and resurrection. Different theories of personal identity are examined and assessed in light of these assumptions. Walls also shows that the traditional doctrine of purgatory is not understood as a second chance for salvation, but goes on to argue that it should be modified to allow for postmortem repentance. He concludes with an examination of C.S. Lewis's writings on purgatory, and suggests that Lewis can be a model for evangelicals and other Protestants to engage the doctrine of purgatory in a way that is true to their theology. (shrink)

Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery is an easy to follow instruction manual that enables practitioners to tap into and express directly each of the sixty-four energies that exist throughout the eternal movement of Tao, as outlined and explained in the I Ching (The Book of Changes). By way of mindful illustration, multiple pictures of postures and movements, and careful attention to detailed description, the practitioner is carefully led through the various postures and transitional movements (...) presented in this form. The form is divided into two essential sequences: Heaven and Earth. Daily practice allows the practitioner to maintain physical, mental, energetic and spiritual alignment with Spirit -- the unspeakable Mystery that is Tao. In effect, the practitioner becomes the harmonizing link between Heaven and Earth! Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery brings together aspects of the Taoist tradition in a very unique way, by combining the philosophical insight of the Tao Te Ching, the spiritual understanding of the I Ching, with the practice of Tai Chi. It accomplishes this by offering practitioners a comprehensive understanding of themselves -- as both a part of nature and as Spirit. It is the unification of these three, typically separate, strands that truly makes this work a unique enterprise. • The Tao Te Ching is the most efficacious philosophical text in China, having now influenced millions of people throughout the world with its teachings concerning the relationship between self, nature and ultimate reality. • The I Ching is the most ancient spiritual system in China, describing in a very practical fashion, the way in which Tao -- the ultimate Mystery -- influences and reciprocates with us through sixty-four universal energies formed by the combination of the eight most basic elements in nature -- Heaven, Thunder, Water, Lake, Earth, Mountain, Fire and Wind, otherwise known as Pa Qua. • Tai Chi is a universal and most honorable practice, enabling individuals to work on understanding, strengthening and unifying body, breath, mind and spirit. What also makes this book unique is the bold claim that if understood thoroughly and practiced properly, the I Ching Tai Chi Form may enable an individual to not only become proficient at tai chi and martial arts, to not only increase one's ability to concentrate, to not only enhance one's physical and emotional well-being, but to actually move closer to full and complete realization of one's most essential being, that is, closer to enlightenment, the original purpose of movement meditation. In the presentation of this form, each of the sixty-four postures is accompanied with a philosophical insight describing the essence of the energy which the practitioner is meant to access and express through the movement. Along with these insights are appropriate quotations from the Tao Te Ching that assist the practitioner in understanding the way in which this form corresponds to the universal and eternal movement of Tao. In addition, Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery includes chapters on Tai Chi as a practice and a way of life for beginners and masters; on the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, explaining their contributions to insight regarding the nature of the universe and oneself; on what the Tai Chi I Ching Form offers that other styles do not; on exercise, energy and health; on the integration of meditation, both theory and technique; on how to warm-up, practice and perform the Tai Chi I Ching Form, including what to wear, appropriate environments for practice, incorporating music, stances, exercises, and how to pace oneself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Art of Teaching in the MuseumRika Burnham (bio) and Elliott Kai-Kee (bio)A class is studying a small painting by Rembrandt in the galleries of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The museum educator has been inviting the assembled visitors to look ever more closely, guiding the class toward an understanding both of the painting itselfand of our reasons for studying it. The class has been anything (...) but passive—indeed, it has been lively. The painting is The Abduction of Europa (1632), a picture that depicts in delicate detail a story from Greek mythology, the kidnapping of the Phoenician princess Europa by Zeus in the guise of a white bull. The visitors have shared their observations, speculations, ideas. As the class concludes, the museum educator asks the participants to speculate on the painting's larger meaning, to say what they think this work is, finally, about, as revealed by their long discussion. The group's experience has clearly moved beyond the telling of a single story. One participant suggests that Rembrandt's work is about the fearlessness of traveling into the unknown. Another says that it concerns the story of the soul's leaving the earthly for the heavenly realm. When the class comes to an end, people move closer to the painting and continue their discussions.In the same museum, another museum educator is also conducting a group of students through the galleries. He begins with a Roman statue of Venus, followed by an eighteenth-century French terra-cotta bust of Madame Récamier by Joseph Chinard. For each sculpture, he asks the students to focus on only one detail, the hands. The students are encouraged to observe and take note of the sculpted figures' gestures, much as if they were studying a person. Time seems to slow as perception sharpens. The educator listens patiently as the students begin to "read" the sculptures as a whole through the expressiveness of the hands. The group moves on to a mysterious portrait by Millet in which the students discuss the nature of love, and [End Page 65] then to a painting of a Russian princess by Winterhalter, in which the artifice of all the details is suddenly theatrical, dazzling, and delightful. At the end, no one wants to leave.As museum educators we teach in many kinds of programs, and teach in many ways. Every museum educator brings unique gifts to the art of teaching through works of art. The two classes described above might seem at first glance quite different. The first museum educator stays with a single work of art for the entire session, constructs her class around the observations and ideas of the students, and trusts that through their collective experience, a larger meaning will emerge. The second educator inspires his students with a feeling of confidence by guiding their observations of a single feature common to several works, and then allows a main idea to emerge. The two classes, however, are also alike in certain essential ways. In both cases, the students and the instructor are animated, concentrated, focused, and active. Their investigation is tightly focused on the works under discussion, and the group together reaches for a sense of the artworks as a whole. At the end, when the participants cluster around the works of art, still wanting to continue the experience of discovery, the instructors know that theirstudents have understood that engagement with a work of art is a beginning, not an end.The opportunities museum educators have to teach and learn are granted to us by the collections of objects in the care of the institutions in which we work, and by the students and visitors we invite to consider these objects. These artworks also impose upon us a great obligation, to bring them alive for those we lead through the galleries. For ultimately, it is our devoted attention that keeps artworks alive generation after generation.This essay is the result of our work as museum educators. It began with a casual discussion about what constitutes good teaching, and what we can do to guide ourselves and our docent colleagues toward consistent and principled teaching in our museums. We... (shrink)

Feng Youlan emphasizes the concept of “creativity” in his article “Explanation of Mencius’ Chapter on Strong, Moving Vital Force”, in particular highlighting the problem whether the “ strong, moving vital force” is “innate” or “acquired”. Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi believed the “ strong, moving vital force” was endowed by Heaven, so was therefore innate; “nourishment” cleared fog and allowed one to “recover one’s original nature”. Mencius’ theory on “the good of human nature” is illustrated in the concept of (...) integrated “original endowment”. So Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi’s theory of “recovering the original nature” proposed that the “ strong, moving vital force” was innate, which is in complete agreement with Mencius and of which there is ample evidence in Mencius. However, “nature” is “created by the accumulation of righteousness”. Namely, it is the completion and presentation of the process of creation and transformation of human beings. Only when we consider both Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi’s theory and Feng Youlan’s theory can we fully understand Mencius’ theory of “the nourishment of the strong, moving vital force”, which is of great theoretical and academic value in accurately understanding Mencius and the Confucian theory of mind-nature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtue as "Likeness to God" in Plato and SenecaDaniel C. Russell (bio)In The Center Of Raphael's Famous Painting"The School of Athens," Plato stands pointing to the heavens, and Aristotle stands pointing to the ground; there stand, that is, the mystical Plato and the down-to-earth Aristotle. Although it oversimplifies, this depiction makes sense for the same reason that Aristotle continues to enjoy a presence in modern moral philosophy (...) that Plato does not: quite simply, Plato's ethics looks too fantastic. And Plato's ethics never looks more fantastic than in the claim that our highest good is to be like God.We find this view, in various forms, in the Phaedrus, Timaeus, Laws, Republic, and Theaetetus, as well as in the Phaedo and Philebus,1 and the ancient Platonist Alcinous in his Handbook of Platonism tells us that likeness to God () is Plato's "official" position on our final end.2 Nonetheless, this view receives very little press today: many philosophers are unaware of it; some have simply ignored it or dismissed it as an idle metaphor; and most of those who have taken it more seriously have also tended to find it too otherworldly to be of much relevance to us. This latter response is due in large measure to viewing likeness to God from the perspective of the ancient Neoplatonist Plotinus.3 But there is certainly no guarantee that Plotinus's perspective on likeness to God gives us an especially accurate reconstruction of Plato's view; indeed, the interpretation of this idea was a matter of considerable controversy among Neoplatonists, some of whom offered far less other-worldly interpretations than Plotinus's.4 [End Page 241]In any event, unraveling likeness to God in Plato requires a fresh approach that makes the greatest sense of it within Plato's larger moral philosophy. And in fact we find just such a promising understanding of likeness to God when we take a fresh look at it through Stoic lenses, and through the lens of Plato's Philebus: in both we find the idea that virtue is part of the divine realm right alongside the down-to-earth idea that virtue is rational activity in relation to the world as we find it. This is not to suppose that the Stoic conception of likeness to God is an interpretation of, or descended from, Plato's conception.5 It is simply that the Stoics also found it helpful to think of virtue as likeness to God, and it will be enough if the Stoic conception opens up the range of possibilities for understanding such an idea, allowing us to see philosophical alternatives that might take us some distance towards interpreting Plato, and that may have remained otherwise out of view. Such an understanding of the idea that virtue is likeness to God as we find in the Stoics, I argue, offers just this sort of promising and unexplored alternative in Platonism.One thing that is quite clear is that Plato means for likeness to God to offer us some insight into the nature of virtue. We see this in the Timaeus, where Plato offers a model of the three-part soul, in which mastery of the parts is justice (42 a-b) and happiness (90b-d), and is what likeness to God comes to (42b-d, 47a-c); clearly, then, the virtue in question is moral virtue. Rather curiously, Plato depicts this constitution of soul as a sort of motion which is of the same kind as the motion of the universe itself (90c-d):6 as the universe consists in orbits which are orderly and reconciled in their motion, so the human soul consists in the different orbits (44d) of reason, passion, and desire, which are out of harmony when we start life, but become more orderly as we mature (43a-44d). Although this is difficult talk, it is clearly meant to depict a self-mastery of the whole soul under [End Page 242] the leadership of reason (43a-44d), which is the same as justice, and which consists in the reconciliation of one's inner motions by reason (42b-d).7 Thus we "stabilize the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas by John I. JenkinsE.J. AshworthJohn I. Jenkins. Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 267. Cloth, $59.95.There is a strong tension in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, he is strongly naturalist. He insists that our cognition is rooted in sense-perception and that [End Page 673] it is normally reliable. (...) He insists that our moral life is grounded in our nature both as physical beings, able to feel pain and pleasure, and as social beings, depending on each other for our welfare. But he is also strongly supernaturalist. Human nature by virtue of its cognitive orientation toward the physical is not able through its own powers to know God. Still less is human nature able to achieve moral virtue by its own powers. This is not just because we are cut off from God by original sin; rather, there is a primal lack that was there even before the Fall. To achieve our true end, both cognitive and moral, we depend on God’s free gift of grace which elevates our nature and renders it able both to know God through the beatific vision in Heaven and to respond to God through loving, virtuous action. The gift of faith becomes central to human nature and destiny in a way that was to worry later thinkers such as Duns Scotus, who pertinently asked how our intellect can have the ultimate end of knowing God if it has to be made a different intellect before it achieves that end.Jenkins does not worry about the point raised by Scotus. Instead, he sets out to give an interpretation of the Summa theologiae which will help us understand more deeply the interplay between the natural and the supernatural in Aquinas. He begins by taking advantage of new readings of Aristode’s Posterior Analytics which present Aristode’s account of the demonstration which moves from cause to effect, not just as a pedagogic device for presenting material obtained by moving from effect to cause, but as a recipe for cognitive restructuring. Certainly we have to begin with mere observation, and with the piecemeal discovery of causes, but to achieve true scıentia (to use the medieval Latin term for organized, necessary knowledge) we need to acquire a new vision of how reality is structured and to see how effects flow necessarily from their causes. True demonstration is an expression of this new vision. Jenkins applies this reading of Aristotle to Aquinas. He takes with absolute seriousness Aquinas’s claim at the beginning of the Summa theologıae that theology too is an Aristotelian scientıa, and he sees the work as presenting a recipe for the cognitive restructuring of apprentice theologians (those to whom the work is addressed).The scientıa of the Summa theologiae differs from the scientia of the Posterior Analytics in two ways. First, Aquinas allows the term scientia to have an extended sense, so that God too can have scientia, even though he does not move from principles to conclusions by a process of syllogistic demonstration, but instead grasps all that is knowable in one simple act. Second, the basic principles which are the foundation of theological demonstration are the articles of faith, especially those of the creeds, which cannot be known by us in any naturalistic way. It is through God’s infused light that we assent to these articles as divinely revealed. After a lengthy examination of the role of faith in Aquinas’s account, Jenkins describes the epistemology involved as supernatural externalism.Although Jenkins’s presentation of the relationship between scientıa and faith in the Summa is carefully and lucidly argued, there are two aspects of the book that I would question.First, while it is true that Aquinas does present theology as an Aristotelian scientia, I doubt that this single fact “determines the purpose and structure of the Summa theologiae” (15) in any very detailed way. Jenkins further claims that the structure of the Summa is determined by the structure of God’s knowledge (220), but if God is truly [End... (shrink)

I recently attracted the attention of friends and acquaintances by donating a kidney to the NHS, taking advantage of the change in legislation last year, which allows donations to be made anonymously. My motive for doing so can be summed up in the old rule of thumb: “Do as you would be done by”, which may sound philosophically unsophisticated but has always been useful to me and prompts me to give blood and feed the pigeons. I am an atheist (...) and certainly not motivated by any desire to find a reward in heaven. In fact, I did it to make me feel good in both senses of the word—it’s a relief to have done something unambiguously useful at tolerable personal cost in terms of fear and pain.The main burden gradually dawned on me and will be borne for some time to come: in order to maximise that usefulness I should exploit my donation to the full, to tell people how gratifying my experience has been, in order to keep interest in the subject alive and encourage others to consider doing the same. There might also be an increased willingness to offer the organs of dying relatives. Here is an opportunity to press the government to put more money into transplantation and to look more closely than hitherto at the successful Spanish model, which has dramatically reduced the numbers of patients dying on the transplant waiting list in Spain. To this end, some friends and I have set up a charity, More Transplants Please, which aims to have a launching event sometime in 2008 with as much publicity as can be mustered. Beyond producing a manifesto, we are uncertain how to promote anonymous donations. I have had some wild ideas. How about a bunch of donors doing a coast to …. (shrink)

A stereoscopic view on a particular historical event, in which contemporary assessments are combined with mental stereotypes of a medieval man, allows a slightly different assessment of the chronicle plot about the posthumous “baptism of bones” of Oleg and Yaropolk, Princes of Kyivan Rus, in 1044. While from theological positions it is perceived as an absurdity and a direct violation of the rules of the church, in the Middle Ages this act did not contradict the mass religious beliefs. From (...) an ethical point of view, the action of Yaroslav the Wise was regarded as concern for the souls of the ancestors who died pagans and therefore did not claim for the salvation. The soteriological optimism that prevailed in the eleventh century in countries of the late Christianization, including Kyivan Rus, gave hope that living people were able to influence the fate of the souls of the dead. From a political point of view, the baptism of the ashes of the ancestors and their reburial in the family tomb of the Princes of Kyiv in the Church of the Tithes was aimed at expanding the circle of heavenly patrons and protectors of the princely dynasty, expanding the period of the Christian history of Kyivan Rus, and, as a result, legitimizing the power of Yaroslav the Wise. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper examines the relevance of the nomological view of nature to three discussions of tide in the thirteenth century. A nomological conception of nature assumes that the basic explanatory units of natural phenomena are universally binding rules stated in quantitative terms. Robert Grosseteste introduced an account of the tide based on the mechanism of rarefaction and condensation, stimulated by the Moon's rays and their angle of incidence. He considered the Moon's action over the sea an example of the (...) general efficient causality exerted through the universal activity of light or species. Albert the Great posited a plurality of causes which cannot be reduced to a single cause. The connaturality of the Moon and the water is the only principle of explanation which he considered universal. Connaturality, however, renders neither formulation nor quantification possible. While Albert stressed the variety of causes of the tide, Roger Bacon emphasized regularity and reduced the various causes producing tides into forces. He replaced the terminology of ‘natures’ by one of ‘forces’. Force, which in principle can be accurately described and measured, thus becomes a commensurable aspect of a diverse cosmos. When they reasoned why waters return to their place after the tide, Grosseteste argued that waters return in order to prevent a vacuum, Albert claimed that waters ‘follow their own nature’, while Bacon held that the ‘proper force’ of the water prevails over the distant force of the first heaven. I exhibit, for the thirteenth century, moments of the move away from the Aristotelian concerns. The basic elements of these concerns were essences and natures which reflect specific phenomena and did not allow for an image of nature as a unified system. In the new perspective of the thirteenth century the key was a causal link between the position of the Moon and the tide cycle, a link which is universal and still qualitative, yet expressed as susceptible to quantification. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2004 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesFrances S. AdeneyThe 2004 meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held in San Antonio, Texas, 19–20 November 2004. This year's theme was "Dealing with Illness and Promoting Healing: Buddhist and Christian Resources." During the first session panelists Laura Habgood Arsta, Jay McDaniel, and Beth Blizman presented Christian views on dealing with illness, and Rita Gross responded from a Buddhist (...) perspective. The second session focused Buddhist resources for promoting healing by panelists Francis Tsio and Grace Buford, with Laurel Curran presenting a Christian response.Laura Habgood Arsta presented research done by undergraduate students in border communities between the United States and Mexico. The topic was the connection between the Pentecostal movement and environmental health. Pentecostal Christianity (250–400 million members worldwide) emphasizes the signs that accompany the presence of Christ, evidenced by experiences of spirit baptism and faith healing.Their sample indicated that poor and minority people don't identify with the environmental movement until personal health problems emerge. One possible reason for Pentecostal religion thriving, according to this research, might be that exposure to toxins and poverty draws people to healing, a theological pillar of Pentecostalism. Religious services provide an emotional outlet and inspire self-confidence, which can become a mental health component of a healing solution. Women are free to share and lead services, finding leadership opportunities and a social group in churches. As an inexpensive alternative to medical care, healing in the Pentecostal church provides a sense of physical healing as well as help in overcoming addictions.Beth Blizman informed the group of the toxicity of the Lake Erie area of northern Ohio. Cancer is becoming normalized in this region, which has the highest level of multiple cancers in the United States. Beth feels called to heal her own body and become part of the healing process of that region. She argued that an attitude that disrespects the earth leads to disrespect of one another. "How can healing be found?" she asked. She discussed many resources from ancient monastics to modern women religious, from process and feminist thought to new cosmologies. Finally she connected [End Page 149] Audre Lourde's work on the rejection of difference to the bioregional studies that she has been doing on toxicity and illness.Jay McDaniels followed by giving a Christian perspective on Alzheimer's disease as an ecumenical Christian influenced by Buddhism. He addressed three questions that Christians ask in this situation. The first question is "Where is God now? Is God inside my loved one? How?" In response to this question, Jay outlined an evangelical view of God that understands God as a transcendent being, "way up there, watching from a distance." He contrasted this view with a process view of God as an "umbrella of compassion that envelops the world without smothering it." In this view, God is the great companion, sharing the confusion and anxiety of the ill person.So where is the person as they experience personality changes caused by the disease? Jay addressed this second question through process theology, stating that in process theology the person is defined in Buddhist terms, inheriting from the past and contributing to the future. A person is constantly in flux or transformation, so the person with illness may be a different person than they once were but can be embraced as the person that they are now. The multidimensional universe of process theology allows for a person to live "with one foot on earth and one foot in heaven."Help for dealing with Alzheimer's disease, Jay's third question, can be found in the Benedictine vow of obedience, stability, and ongoing conversion. The deepest need for those with Alzheimer's is to be with them, being available to others to listen. Stability is the vow to stay with the relationship through these changes. Ongoing conversion can come through Alzheimer's as those with this disease invite us into a space of creative imagination and a new kind of respect.Rita Gross responded to the three presentations by arguing that how one perceives a situation changes it tremendously. Two Buddhist principles that apply here are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 1-17 [Access article in PDF] What if the Father Commits a Crime? Rui Zhu Apparently, Socrates and Confucius respond similarly to the question if a son should turn in his father in the case of the father's misdemeanor. When Euthyphro, flaring his pride of his moral impartiality, tells Socrates that he is on his way to report his father because (...) he has thrown one of the household slaves into a ditch and left him bound there until he was dead, Socrates says, "Good Heaven! Certainly, Euthyphro, most men would not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom." 1According to Socrates, only a man of high wisdom knows how to prosecute his father righteously, but Euthyphro does not appear to have this wisdom. When his interlocutor observes that an upright man in his state would bear witness against his father if he misappropriates a sheep, Confucius contradicts the interlocutor's understanding of uprightness by speaking in a matter-of-fact tone: "In my country the upright men are of quite another sort. A father will cover up for his son, and a son his father—which incidentally does involve a sort of up—rightness." 2Confucius stands on the same line with Socrates but seems the more radical of the two. Socrates does not directly refute Euthyphro and only suggests that he make sure he understands what he is doing before going any further. Socrates is not only typically Socratic—indirect and suggestive—but also sounds so reasonable that Euthyphro appears in contrast to be a reckless youth who harbors [End Page 1] only a faint understanding of morality. Confucius's response is more rigid, for he categorically dismisses an act of the Euthyphroian kind. He demands that father and son cover up for each other in the case of either one's guilt. Compared to Socrates, Confucius advocates the position that seems a little too strong and leaves no room for justice, while Socrates does not have that problem with justice. This is how we feel about Socrates and Confucius on our first impression. The prima facie observations that we make from the remarks of Socrates and Confucius seem both plain and unproblematic.By embedding these remarks into their respective social or philosophical cultures, this paper will show that our previous observations are not quite accurate. The apparent affinity of the Socratic and Confucian stances belies different underlying moral philosophies. We want to use their comments as bridges to explore the early Greek and Confucian ethics and show how different a picture we see after things are examined within their traditions.The issue of a possible father-son conflict may be treated as a case study of the early Greek (the Heroic era until the age of Socrates) and early Confucian (Confucius and Mencius) morals. There is a strong theme in the early Greek morals that allows, or sometimes demands, a son such as Euthyphro to prosecute his father for the sake of justice, because justice, instead of love (philein) or filial piety, is the governing principle in the early Greek ethics. Confucian ethics is founded on love (human-heartedness), which in turn is extended from the love between father and son. All moral principles including justice are derived from this extension of love. The mutual love of father and son then becomes the governing principle in the case of Confucianism. A Guilty Father: The Greek Motif The question, "What if the father commits a crime?" has a certain realistic aroma to a boy coming of age in the Hesiodic Greek world. That father has to be overcome by son before some relief from strife becomes possible is a familiar theme in Greek literature. In Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus (the sky) incurs hatred from all his newborn children since he hides them in their mother Gaia's womb and does not let them return to the light, for no reason... (shrink)

We've had quite a number of outbreaks of "culture fever": The first one was apparently in 1985, when I was studying overseas, and friends told me the fever was raging at home in China. When I came home in 1988, I was in time for the second one. And over the last two years there has been a fever of cultural criticism, or "discussions on the humanist spirit." It looks as though the phenomenon of culture fever has certain similarities to (...) a flu epidemic. The first two fevers were fairly respectable, and at least provided information on some of the things that had been achieved in the social sciences overseas; but the latest one has been no good at all, consisting as it does mostly of the airing of complaints. It is claimed that the attitude of society toward intellectuals in the humanities is incorrect; that the intellectuals themselves are incorrect; that since Confucius said "The gentleman understands what is moral; the small man understands what is profitable" [Analects IV. 16], we should be trying to emulate the gentleman. Probably other things too have been said, but I believe that these have been the main points of most discussions during this outbreak of cultural criticism fever. Wang Shuo has come in for a good deal of abuse this time, in the same way that, in Water Margin, Lei Heng the "Winged Tiger," county head of Yuncheng, is jeered at in the courtesan's house when someone tells him, "It would be easier for a dog to grow horns than for you to know the proper way to behave here!" Culture is just this sort of establishment, and the riff-raff are definitely not allowed to set foot inside it. Looked at in this way, culture is a set of values centered on the self, and implies a closing of the ranks against outsiders. But I have no wish to think too badly of others, so I shall just say that the "culture" which is so much in favor this time is a kind of moral strength which demands that we should all preserve our personal integrity and not be tainted by material desires. We cultural workers are like Tang dynasty Buddhist monks, and the material desires of the everyday world are like the female scorpion spirit. We must not be seduced by the sorceress and sleep with her, for then, when we have lost our original yang essence and the pure seed has left us, we will no longer be virgins, and will not be fit to go to the Western Heaven and worship the Buddha. […] But if I go on talking such rubbish, other people may not acknowledge me as a cultural worker and may deprive me of the right to discuss cultural issues. What I am trying to say is that if this fever continues, I shall soon no longer know what culture is. (shrink)

“Qiuchi” 仇池 recurs as an enigmatic proper name in Su Shi’s 蘇 軾 later poetry. While scholars have treated Qiuchi primarily as the poet’s name for strange rocks, I argue that it is in the first place a metaphorical topos for him—it is a heterotopia, a counter-site to reality for this nonconformist. As a poetic image, Su Shi’s Qiuchi is a composite motif that allows for diverse interpretations. It is a hallucinatory dreamscape at the outset; the vision (...) then turns out to be Mount Qiuchi, a historical spot and Daoist “grotto heaven” near Su’s hometown in Sichuan so that Qiuchi becomes a macro-micro-equation of landscape; finally, the poet analogizes his Qiuchi to Tao Qian’s 陶潛 Peach Blossom Spring while denying its transcendency by bringing it down to earth. Qiuchi also inhabits various roles in Su Shi’s different life stages. It appears in matching poems among scholar-officials as the antithesis of bureaucratic service and an expression of longing for seclusion when the poet was in office. During his banishment, the inaccessible Qiuchi is the prototypical home topos and projected on other sites of exile as mirror images, which I call “heterotopia and its paratopia.” In this way, the Qiuchi trope contributes to Su Shi’s self-identity and public image, crystallized in the poet’s posthumous appellation. (shrink)

This article investigates the key aspects of the Confucian virtue ethics such as the "chun- tzu" (Superior Person), the Five Relationships of society, the particular Confucian virtues of "jen" (benevolence) and "li" (propriety), the moral vision of the "tao" (Way), and the understanding of the "t'ien- ming" (Mandate of Heaven). The thesis of the article is that the moral matrix provided by the web of social relationships allows the Confucian ethics of virtue to function well, and (...) class='Hi'>that a consideration of this Confucian moral matrix may illuminate the Western debate on the ethics of virtue vs the ethics of duty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eucharistic Adoration:Veils for VisionEmmanuel Perrier O.P.Translated by Amy Christine DevaudTo the Virgin of the AnnunciationEucharistic adoration is an eminently personal form of prayer.1 Not in the sense that each one of us could fill this time spent in the presence of the Lord with what he or she wants; if this were to be the case, there would be no adoration at all, since it would simply be (...) a matter of meeting oneself and one's ideas about God. Eucharistic adoration is a personal prayer in the sense that the adorer welcomes in his soul the divine person of the eternal Son, through the vision of the human body united to the Son in the womb of the Virgin Mary, just as this body is offered by faith in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Therefore, what is crucial to this meeting is that prayer be guided by the truth of the Eucharistic mystery and not by the feelings of the adorer, even less by the introspection of himself while adoring. In presenting the theological foundations of Eucharistic adoration, the following pages have a threefold goal: to enlighten beginners about the very things which shape this prayer; to help those who are progressing in their adoration to align it to the vision of the Word who became flesh; and [End Page 397] to accompany and support those who are more advanced in putting into words what they are already experiencing.After having specified the foundations of Eucharistic adoration, we will address the themes that sustain it in the same order in which the soul welcomes the mystery of the Word become flesh. This is an order that can be followed as steps to take during a time of adoration. One will then take care to allow enough time for each step. But it may be more relevant to focus on a limited number of themes, or even on a single one. We will be careful to ensure that we do not neglect any of the themes presented throughout the various meditations for adoration.The Hope of VisionEucharistic adoration begins and is consumed in vision, in the gaze toward the Body of Christ in his sacrament. God has accustomed us to listen to him, ever since he began to speak to Abraham, to Moses, to David, through the prophets. The Law begins with this commandment: "Hear now, O Israel!" To hear the Word is to welcome it, to put it into practice, and in doing so, to let it bear fruit within us. But seeing God is quite different.In the days of Christ, the central part of the Temple in Jerusalem, one of the wonders of the world, had two rooms, one called the Holy Place and the other called the Holy of Holies. The entrance to each room was obstructed by a huge curtain (see Exod 26:31–32). The priests usually celebrated their services behind the curtain of the Holy Place. However, they did not enter the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God among men (see Exod 29:43–46), which sheltered, before its destruction (probably in 587 BC), the Ark of the Covenant containing the tables of the Law given at Sinai, as well as a relic of the manna, the bread that came down from heaven to feed the people of Israel during the Exodus (see Heb 9:4). Only once a year the High Priest would cross the veil of the Holy of Holies to stand in the presence of God and pronounce the Name above all names, in remembrance of God's encounters with Moses:Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose up, and every man stood at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the door of to the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship. … The Lord used to speak with Moses... (shrink)

_Purpose._ This paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of a human being within the Confucian tradition as well as its interpretations from intercultural perspective. _Theoretical basis._ One of the ways to understand the deepest level of the intercultural dialogue is to reveal the interpretations of a human being in philosophical traditions, since they refer to the formation of personality and identity within a given culture including interpersonal, intergroup, and intercultural relations. Humanism based on the unity of Human and Heaven (...) runs like a red thread through the philosophical teachings of Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming defining the ideas of human nature, his/her duties, his/her place and roles in society that shaped the Chinese mentality. _Originality._ Quite often, Chinese concepts (for example, human dignity beyond the ideas of democracy and mass political participation, guanxi, mianzi) are incomprehensible to the representatives of the Western civilization, which leads to the challenges in intercultural communication. The interpretation of these ideas in the context of Confucianism allows to understand them from the perspective of Others and expand the set of patterns of cultural perception. This ultimately leads to the awareness that there are many social, political, cultural realities, which we perceive through the lens of our own concepts and attitudes. The participants of an intercultural dialogue realize that each of them has a unique experience, own way of posing a problem and resolving it, and no one is better or worse. _Conclusions._ Confucian philosophy shaped the worldview of Chinese people, defined values, goals, meanings, attitudes, communication models, which affected all spheres of Chinese life and culture. The study of the philosophical heritage of the great Chinese civilization enhances the cultural competence of the intercultural communicators and expands the field of dialogue to the level of global communication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 303-318 [Access article in PDF] The Threshold of the Self Bradford Vivian The subject has a history. Classical Greek sculpture expressed a fascination with the formal beauty of one's self. Ever gazing outward or upward, the marble figures symbolized the Greek preoccupation with a boldness of being, a constant focus on the ideals of the body and mind, which, through their pursuit, might allow (...) one a foretaste of heaven. Centuries later, as the pagan symbols of the ancient world were replaced with those of the growing Byzantine Empire, blocks of the same marble were fashioned into very different expressions. The ideals of form made manifest in the smooth, taught lines and surfaces of classical Greek sculpture were supplanted by Byzantine art's attention to the less perfect details of the individual: distinctive and common faces, beards, clothing, and less glorified bodies. The gazes of the Byzantine statues were cast down, contemplative, reflecting Byzantium's early Christian emphasis upon the modesty of human existence, the pious appraisal of one's time on Earth. Each of these sculptural styles is a material way of thinking and expressing one's being in the world. In this context, each is also symptomatic of the conditions in which such being was possible.The subject must not be conceived as a transcendent entity. Quite to the contrary, there is a historicity to our being and its expression, to our subjectivity and its elaboration. Within a more sweeping perspective, our epochal narratives of the subject--as well as the modes of thought and speech by which we make sense of ourselves--change with each passing age.At the forefront of the current era is a manifold effort to rethink and elaborate anew the concept of the subject. Feminist scholars have initiated political critique and transformation by arguing that the very notion of a subject in Western discourse has functioned as a trope of masculine privilege cloaked in the language of equality and secular humanism. 1 Postmodernists, of course, define contemporary subjectivity as de-centered and fragmented by nature (e.g., Baudrillard 1994; Latour 1993; Lyotard 1984). And [End Page 303] a variety of interdisciplinary studies illuminate the role of modern science and technology in not only sustaining our being, but actually constituting the human; in short, our daily interdependence and union with artificial body parts, synthetic products, life-support machines, test-tube reproduction, computers, and more, characterizes the arrival of what has been called "the posthuman." 2 Like ancient marble from a quarry, however, all of these materials are sculpted in historically specific ways to simultaneously think and express our subjectivity.What role might rhetoric play in this re-imagining of subjectivity? Modern Western thought has defined the subject according to content--that is, by the nature of the essence or being the subject is said to possess. Drawn around this content, the subject comes to appear enclosed, perhaps autonomous, and identical to itself. In this essay, however, I argue that the self may be conceived as a form--a rhetorical form--that exists only in its continual aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming. The self is, by this account, isomorphic with the threshold out of which it is composed. Such a formulation makes the self open to difference, to continual movement and transformation, instead of identical to itself.I aim in this essay to explore the abstract rhetorical forms and functions out of which the self is composed. The distinction here amounts to no longer asking, "What is a subject?" but, "What conditions and forces enable the ongoing production of the self?" Commensurate with such a proposal, it will be essential to ask how this movement--this continual becoming--of the self is brought about. The answer to this question ultimately will amplify the role of rhetoric in, not simply expressing, but actually producing conditions of being. In what follows, I begin by reviewing the very general aspects of subjectivity that I wish to call into question. Thereafter, I explore how the subject might be conceived differently. Finally, I discuss the manner in which rhetoric may... (shrink)