It is a violation of legitimate academic freedom to attempt to link Catholicism to a particular school of economic thought and shut down all further debate. Whether the realm of human choice, which economics describes, is subject to an array of cause-and-effect relationships is obviously a matter for human reason to determine. From there, reason can then investigate these relationships. Although economic policy has a moral dimension, economics as a positive scienceconsists merely of an edifice of cause-and-effect relationships, and to (...) that extent is as autonomous as the purely descriptive sides of all other sciences. (shrink)

A new public philosophy began to emerge in the United States during the Progressive Era. Promoted by such intellectuals as John Dewey, William James, and the coUectivists of the New Republic magazine, it called for a citizenry trained in an experimental milieu, free of dogma and emancipated from sources of allegiance other than the new centralized democratic state then being forged. Catholics, however, neither capitulated to the new creed nor retreated into a self-righteous isolation. In a culture whose chief value (...) was pluralism they insisted on the uniqueness of the Church and the need for making value judgments based on a sound philosophy of man. (shrink)

Since Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum, the Catholic Church, while opposing socialism, has adopted a skeptical and suspicious posture with regard to the free market. The popes have supported labor unions, the idea of a "just wage," and a variety of other interventions. Yet the economic recommendations of the Church have consistently proven counterproductive, and have apparently been devised without recourse to economic law. Papal economic teaching is filled with unstated assumptions which, if false, throw into question the moral (...) analysis based on them.Depuis que le Pape Léon XIII a écrit Rerum Novarum l’église catholique, bien qu’opposée au socialisme, a adopté une attitude sceptique et suspicieuse à l’égard du libre marché. Les papes successifs ont soutenu les syndicats, l’idée de « juste salaire », et une variété d’autres interventions. Jusqu’à présent les recommandations économiques de l’Eglise ont constamment été contreproductives et ont été promulguées sans égard vis-à-vis des lois économiques. L’enseignement économique des Papes est rempli d’hypothèses non formulées qui, si elles sont fausses, mettent en question l’analyse morale qu’elles sous-tendent. (shrink)

The organization of The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas is straightforward: after an initial chapter on aesthetics in medieval culture, Eco proceeds to the most general consideration of the transcendental character of beauty. He then moves to the aesthetic subject in a consideration of visio, then to the object in a consideration of the formal criteria of beauty. He follows that up with a chapter on "Concrete Problems and Applications," then goes on to the theory of art and the role (...) of judgment, followed by a concluding chapter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MEISTER ECKHART AND THE NEOPLATONIC HERITAGE: THE THINKER'S WAY TO GOD RICHARD Wooos, O.P. Loyola University of Ohioago Ohicago, Illinois IN BOTH HIS LIFE rand preaching, Meister Eokrhart's " way" was pre-eminently.a spirituality of the mind. The srpeoulat:ive inqui.rires.and p:roibings thaJt animate his iSChD'l-·arly woliks 1also f!:>iervrude his sermons ·and treatisies, while a pastoral, homiletic inrberrtion iieciproca:1ly permeates the scholarly.worrks, particularly in regard to.the Meister'1s fascination with rthe Woil1d. (...) Heinrich Deni:fle, 1who disonviered and first commented upon Eckhart's Laitin writings in the 1880s, concluded that the Meister faclmd the clarity of conception and precision of expression characteristic of the great scholastic figmes who preoeded him, partiou1ady Albert the Grea:t 1and 'lihomas Aquinrus.1 B:ut more reoent Eckhart scholars have increasingly •argued that Denifle's oonoern to :ve£ute uncritically inflated characteriz,ations of Eckhart's philosophloa:l genius, notrubly that of Wilhelm Preger,.led him to undel'V'alue and indeed misrepvesen:t •the Meister's ireal goal a;nd bme achievement. Indeed, tto the modern critical eye, aided :by a oontury 1 "Eckhart ein unklarer Denker war, der sich der Consequenzen seiner Lehrer resp. seiner ausdruckweise nicht bewusst war. Gerade bei den schwierigen Lehrpunkten, wo Klarheit und Scharfe der Begriffe und des Ausdrucks mehr als je geboten ist, tritt dies zu Tage. Gerade in den entscheidenden Momenten verlasst ihn die Klarheit.... Eckhart besass aber nicht die geistige Begabung iiber die Scholastik hinauszugeben und doch innerhalb der Granzen der Wahrheit zu bleiben." "Meister Eckharts lateinische Schriften, und die Grundanschauung seiner Lehre," in A.rahiv fii,r Literatur unCl Kirchengeschichte Cles Mittelalters, ed. H. Denifie and Franz Ehrle (Graz: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt, 1956), vol. 2, pp. 482, 521. 609 610 RICHARD WOODS, O.P. of ]urbher di:s:cioverieis 1rund study, " the scholastic Eckhart is an original.and spooulaxbivie til:rintker, 1and not only a spirit's itineriary fa~om.aJJJd ha:ck to its eternail. Sourioe-4hie Ohristian NoopLatonic schema th.at Eckhart im.heri'bed room St. Albert tb!e Greait rund, 1behind him, Hugh and Richa;rid of St. Victo:r, Thomas Ga1lus, John Sarraoenus, John Soottus Eriugena, Diornysiius the Areop1aigibe, P!l.'odus, and, penultimrutely, Pilotinus!himself. For thls gre:art theoa Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke: Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, 11 Vols. to date (Stuttgart and Berlin: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958-). German sermons will be identified hereafter by their number in the Deutsche Werke and, for English translation, by the corresponding page number in the Walshe edition. 9 " Eine Koiner Handscrift mit lateinischen Eckhart-Exzerpten," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 31 (1961) : 204-12. In volume three of his edition, Walshe includes a translation of a fragment of one of Eckhart's sermons discovered by Prof. Kurt Ruh in 1967 and published in the Zeitschrift fii,r deutohes Aitertum 111 (1982) : 219-25. See ed. cit., pp. 131-35. ECKHART AND NEOPLATONISM 618 ~ogical tradition, liecently examined in some detail iby John Macquarrie alllld Andrew Louth, stretches hack evoo £artlier to tbie Oappadocian Fraithe'I"s, Origien, Philo, :and at the source, Pilato.in Smee the 1app1e1amance of Eoklhamt'1s more aoadiemic Laltin wiorrks, op;inion has heen divided as 1 00 their importance :velative ibo the more familiar German sermons iand tT1eatises for understarndmg the Meister~s authentic tooching. Some recent commenibato 'l.1s 1 sti1l 1:Jend to favor the lattier aJ.moot enti'11ely, even wihile acknOW11edging t:hie impo'11tooce of the forn11er; some favor the Latin.11 Critical opinion :seems 'bo have turned in the direction of remphrusizing the importalllice of both.the Latin and the German :works in 01der 1bo unders:tand the whole Eckhartthe teacher and the p:veacheT.12 But to understand to what extent Ed.mart ias,a tlheologian, philosopher, arrd mystic was indebted to Obrisltian Nooplatmrism it is raliso n:ecess1acy to see him in the oonteJct of his,w;orks, his method, and his scholarly and apostolic career. The Scholar and His Temper While Echltart had ra ik!een phi1osorphica1 temperament, he did not 1rus,a rule compose racrudemic 1weatises. Ratiher, he scatltJeTed... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 143 sensual reason is supposed to develop the powers of observation and reasoning to the highest degree but not the spiritual intuition into the essence of things. Steiner proposed a theory of reincarnation; he also created a special kind of Christology which is based on the assumption that there were two Jesus-boys, one of whom incarnated the spirit of Zarathustra. As for Christ he descended into the (...) second Jesus from extraterrestrial spheres where he pre-existed. This is the "mystery of Golgatha," a decisive event in the history of mankind. Steiner has also a special concept of Karma as world spirit. His beliefs are strongly influenced by the German "Naturphilosophie" of the Romantic epoch and by Fichte whom he admires. The main theme of his life-work is the struggle against "materialism," against the concept of "homo oeconomieus," although Steiner was connected in the beginning with the leaders of the Austrian social democracy, such as his friends, Engelbert Pernerstorfer, and Viktor Adler. There is also the influence of German mystics, such as Jakob Boehme, on his thinking. This collection of lectures shows also that in the crucial period of German nationalism-during World War I--Steiner was not a chauvinist. He criticized, for instance, in these lectures the chauvinistic aberrations of Thomas Mann. He predicts (p. 100), in the course of the mechanization of human thinking, the construction of machines which would replace thinking itself. Instead of thinking, there would be mere "switching" (man schiebt). He predicts furthermore (p. 98) that this radical mechanization of man will come from America. The greater part of mankind will be influenced by America from the West.... It will not take too much time: around the year 2000 there will be issued in America not a formal but still a sort of prohibition of thinking; there will be a law that will have the purpose of repressing all individual thinking. On one side there is already the beginning of this development in purely materialistic medicine where the soul is not permitted to act but man is dealt with on the basis of external experiments as a pure machine. MAx RINSER New York City The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. By Alan Donagan. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press~ 1962. Pp. xi + 332. $6.00.) The influence of Collingwood has been evident in many disciplines, and, judging from the number of books, articles, and dissertations being prepared with him and his interests in mind, it is a safe guess that he will remain an ubiquitous influence for some time. Yet because Collingwood 's interests were so wide and his attraction so general, few, if any, of his readers and critics have attempted to "place" him. This is not to say that the critical works prepared by T. M. Knox (the "Editor's Preface" to The Idea of History, 1946) and E. W. F. Tomlin (R. G. Collingwood, 195~) were unconcerned with such an issue. Indeed, their respective studies appear to have it in mind; nevertheless, it was not the impetus for the specific work, and as a result their researches tend to be prolegomena. With the publication of Donagan's book, however, there is presented a study which must be considered a landmark, if not a turning point, in the tradition of Collingwood criticism: for Donagan not only "places" Collingwood, he also attempts to justify his conclusion. And for the critic it is the subtlety of Donagan's arguments, ~lbeit their venturesome quality, which leads one to suggest that this book will make its "contributions " both to the tradition in particular and to the avid interest in general. In the Preface, Donagan acknowledges the fact that in order to "place" Collingwood his readers must be persuaded "to abandon the injurious preconception with which Collingwood's later books are often read" (p. vii). Although he does not designate what these "preconceptions " are, it may be surmised that they have something to do with the traditional tendency among the critics to read too lightly The New Leviathan (1942). Donagan believes that Colling~ wood's "later" masterpieces, "The Idea of History (1936-39?), The Principles of Art (1938), and the first three parts of The... (shrink)

of (from Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics).

Respect, Pluralism, and Justice is a series of essays which sketches a broadly Kantian framework for moral deliberation, and then uses it to address important social and political issues. Hill shows how Kantian theory can be developed to deal with questions about cultural diversity, punishment, political violence, responsibility for the consequences of wrongdoing, and state coercion in a pluralistic society.

This contrasts Kant's view of conscience, and its merits, with alternative views. These alternatives are a popular religious view, a social relativist conception, and Joseph Butler's philosophical account. Kant's view avoids the epistemological problems of the first view, but accepts its idea that conscience is often experienced as an unsolicited voice. Kant denies the metaethical scepticism of social relativists, but agrees with them that conscience expresses a dissonance between our acts and our moral beliefs rather than an independent perception of (...) what is truly right or wrong. Kant agrees with Butler that reason, in due reflection, is the source of justified moral beliefs, but he distinguishes moral reasoning and judgement about what acts are permissible from conscience, which is an inner forum in which a verdict of innocence or guilt is pronounced on the basis of the moral beliefs that we already have. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume describe a range of programs that use picture books to teach philosophy to diverse audiences. From a pre-school program in which college students to do the teaching to a program focused on overcoming the legacy of violence and genocide in Mali in which the teachers write and illustrate their own picture books, the authors demonstrate the impact that learning philosophy has on diverse communities of young students and their teachers.

This response considers the question whether empiricists are condemned to silence about the epistemic agency their theories attribute or presuppose. It is argued that, unlike Reichenbach or Carnap, Neurath allowed for and indeed provided specifications of the role of epistemic agency in scientific inquiry. If this is correct, it underscores once more the need to distinguish between the various strands of logical positivism which show different strengths and weaknesses.

Thomas Hill, a leading figure in the recent development of Kantian moral philosophy, presents a set of essays exploring the implications of basic Kantian ideas for practical issues. The first part of the book provides background in central themes in Kant's ethics; the second part discusses questions regarding human welfare; the third focuses on moral worth-the nature and grounds of moral assessment of persons as deserving esteem or blame. Hill shows moral, political, and social philosophers just how valuable moral (...) theory can be in addressing practical matters. (shrink)

This essay, responding to recent work of David Cummiskey and Barcia Baron, defends the thesis that imperfect duty of beneficence in Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals is a rather minimal, indeterminate requirement but must be supplemented by judgement guided by the values expressed in Kant's formulas of the Categorical Imperative. So understood, Kant's ethics is neither as permissive nor as inflexibly demanding as various commentators have thought. Although Kant does not acknowledge supererogation as a moral category, arguably his position implies (...) that some acts are meritorious and more than required. (shrink)

Bezugnehmend auf Kants Moralphilosophie entwickelt dieser Beitrag eine These dazu, was mit der Forderung gemeint sein soll, Personen unter Beachtung ihrer Würde bzw. als "Zweck an sich selbst" zu behandeln. Es wird vorgeschlagen, die Implikationen von Kants "Menschheitsformel" als ein Bündel von mit einander verwandten Vorschriften zu interpretieren, die das moralische Nachdenken darüber, wie die Prinzipien unserer tagtäglichen Entscheidungen spezifiziert und interpretiert werden sollten, leiten und begrenzen können. Der Beitrag bearbeitet sodann die folgenden drei Fragestellungen: Was folgt aus dem Vorangehenden (...) im Hinblick auf die Behandlung von Straftätern bei der Verbüßung ihrer Strafe? Was empfiehlt die "Menschheitsformel" - einmal abgesehen von Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie - im Hinblick darauf, wer, wie stark, in welcher Weise und warum bestraft werden sollte? Gibt es Konflikte zwischen diesen Empfehlungen und Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie, die eine Revision seiner Gründe für diese Theorie erforderlich machen? Drawing from Kant's moral theory, this essay develops an account of what is required to treat persons with dignity, or as "ends in themselves". It proposes to regard the implications of Kant's humanity formula as a cluster of related precepts that can guide and constrain moral deliberation about how to specify and interpret the principles that should guide day to day decisions. The essay then addresses three questions: What is implied regarding how offenders should be treated while undergoing punishment? Apart from Kant's official theory of punishment, what would the humanity formula recommend regarding who should be punished, how much, in what way, and why? Are there conflicts between these recommendations and Kant's official theory of punishment that invite reexamination of his grounds for his official theory? (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) to different sites allows interfering with dysfunctional network function implicated in major depression. Because a prominent clinical feature of depression is anhedonia--the inability to experience pleasure from previously pleasurable activities--and because there is clear evidence of dysfunctions of the reward system in depression, DBS to the nucleus accumbens might offer a new possibility to target depressive symptomatology in otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Three patients suffering from extremely resistant forms of depression, who did not respond to pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, (...) and electroconvulsive therapy, were implanted with bilateral DBS electrodes in the nucleus accumbens. Stimulation parameters were modified in a double-blind manner, and clinical ratings were assessed at each modification. Additionally, brain metabolism was assessed 1 week before and 1 week after stimulation onset. Clinical ratings improved in all three patients when the stimulator was on, and worsened in all three patients when the stimulator was turned off. Effects were observable immediately, and no side effects occurred in any of the patients. Using FDG-PET, significant changes in brain metabolism as a function of the stimulation in fronto-striatal networks were observed. No unwanted effects of DBS other than those directly related to the surgical procedure (eg pain at sites of implantation) were observed. Dysfunctions of the reward system--in which the nucleus accumbens is a key structure--are implicated in the neurobiology of major depression and might be responsible for impaired reward processing, as evidenced by the symptom of anhedonia. These preliminary findings suggest that DBS to the nucleus accumbens might be a hypothesis-guided approach for refractory major depression. (shrink)

Since ancient times the practices and ethics of bankers and banking in general have undergone a great deal of criticism. While lending is motivated by profit, and while households are not explicitly coerced into borrowing money, the justice of a system which exploits workers and at the same time encourages them to borrow money in order to maintain a certain standard of living can be viewed as sometimes unfair and perhaps immoral. The value of goods, according to St. Thomas (...) Aquinas and Karl Marx, should mostly reflect the value of labor embodied in them, and for that reason, labor should be compensated fully for its work. For these reasons, Aquinas and Marxian economists offer somewhat similar and at the same time different views on both the labor theory of value as well as on the morality of certain banking practices. If credit and the banking system also bring about crisis and the greater concentration and centralization of capital, then the morality of these outcomes also needs to be examined. (shrink)

Thomas E. Hill, Jr., interprets and extends Kant's moral theory in a series of essays that highlight its relevance to contemporary ethics. He introduces the major themes of Kantian ethics and explores its practical application to questions about revolution, prison reform, and forcible interventions in other countries for humanitarian purposes.

Autopoiesis and systems theory are terms often treated as synonymous by lawyers. This sleight‐of‐phrase elides the space between autopoiesis and systems theory, removing its content. Within this eliminated space there exist numerous understandings of systems approaches in law; one such understanding is complexity theory. Complexity theory entails a very different systems view of law to that of autopoiesis. In this paperIexplore the concepts of complexity and their relevance to law. In tracing an outline of complexity, a number of contradictions, paradoxes, (...) and additional questions are exposed which require further detailed analysis in the future. (shrink)

There are many ways of writing about the moral life, but at first sight few seem more formal and apparently remote from its urgent, anguishing problems than ...

This commentary takes issue with Corballis's claim to have presented a falsifiable hypothesis. It argues that Corballis has instead presented a framework of weak inferences that, although unfalsifiable, might help to constrain future theory-building.