This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical attention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls's undergraduate thesis, "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community" (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant theology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liberalism for reasons that (...) anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls's late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellectual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism. (shrink)

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical (...) themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. _Politics and the Order of Love _will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society. (shrink)

Although the ability to perform gene therapy in human germ-line cells is still hypothetical, the rate of progress in molecular and cell biology suggests that it will only be a matter of time before reliable clinical techniques will be within reach. Three sets of arguments are commonly advanced against developing those techniques, respectively pointing to the clinical risks, social dangers and better alternatives. In this paper we analyze those arguments from the perspective of the client-centered ethos that traditionally governs practice (...) in medical genetics. This perspective clarifies the merits of these arguments for geneticists, and suggests useful new directions for the professional discussion of germ-line gene therapy. It suggests, for example, that the much discussed prospect of germ-line therapy in human pre-embryos may always be more problematic for medical genetics than adult germ-line interventions, even though the latter faces greater technical difficulties. (shrink)

ABSTRACTObjective: This study was designed to improve our understanding of prospective memory changes in ageing, and to identify the cognitive correlates of PM decline, using a virtual environment, to provide a more realistic assessment than traditional laboratory tasks.Design: Thirty-five young and 29 older individuals exposed to a virtual town were asked to recall three event-based intentions with a strong link between prospective and retrospective components, three event-based intentions with a weak link, and three time-based intentions. They also underwent retrospective episodic (...) memory, executive functions, binding in working memory, processing speed, and time estimation assessments.Results: Older individuals recalled fewer intentions than young adults. While age-related PM decline affected the recall of both prospective and retrospective components, the recall of the latter seemed more challenging for older individuals when the link was weak. This PM decline was linked to an age-related decline... (shrink)

Readers of Plato have often neglected the Laws because of its length and density. In this set of interpretive essays, notable scholars of the Laws from the fields of classics, history, philosophy, and political science offer a collective close reading of the dialogue "book by book" and reflect on the work as a whole. In their introduction, editors Gregory Recco and Eric Sanday explore the connections among the essays and the dramatic and productive exchanges between the contributors. This (...) volume fills a major gap in studies on Plato’s dialogues by addressing the cultural and historical context of the Laws and highlighting their importance to contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

Das Buch "Der kleine Hobbit" gilt als Vorläufer der wichtigsten Fantasy-Bücher aller Zeiten - den drei Bänden von "Der Herr der Ringe". Mit diesem Buch über die Abenteuer des Hobbits Bilbo Beutlin, zusammen mit 13 Zwergen und dem Zauberer Gandalf, schuf J.R.R. Tolkien schon jene Fantasiewelt, die uns alle später beim "Herrn der Ringe" nachhaltig beeindruckte. Elben, Trolle, Orks und ein Drache halten kleine und große Leser schon seit Jahren in Atem. Man stelle sich folgende Geschichte vor: Ein Mensch wohnt (...) in einer Höhle und lebt dort ein ruhiges, geordnetes und unaufgeregtes Leben, das schon seit Geburt an in den gleichen Bahnen verläuft. Eines Tages verlässt der Mensch seine Höhle und geht hinaus in die Welt. Dort sieht und erfährt er Dinge, die ihn nachhaltig verändern und reifen lassen. Er wird nach dieser Reise nie wieder derselbe sein wie vorher. Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich, wenn das bekannt klingt: Es handelt sich dabei um Platons Höhlengleichnis - eines der wichtigsten Gleichnisse bzw. Beispiele der Philosophie, genauer der Erkenntnistheorie. Die Handlung passt aber auch genau auf die Geschichte eines anderen Autors: J.R.R. Tolkien und sein Buch "Der kleine Hobbit". Auch hier verlässt eine Person die sichere und geordnete Umgebung des Auenlandes und zieht in die Welt hinaus. Diese abenteuerliche Reise wird ihn verändern und - wie wir alle wissen - mit dem Fund des EINEN Ringes für Mittelerde weitere große Folgen nach sich ziehen. Es ergibt also Sinn, den "kleinen Hobbit" mit seinen Inhalten unter der philosophischen Linse zu betrachten. Es ist nicht nur eine Kindergeschichte, sondern eine Auseinandersetzung mit Werten wie Mut, Freundschaft, Demut, Gnade und Weisheit - um nur einige zu nennen. (shrink)

Contains over fifteen essays that discuss philosophical topics in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" providing new insights into the characters and plot.

Culls dozens of life lessons from the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tale, examining the author's treatment of such issues as happiness, morality, and the search for ultimate truth.

[The war for a ring through the eyes of philosophers].

Augustine—for all of his influence on Western culture and politics—was hardly a liberal. Drawing from theology, feminist theory, and political philosophy, Eric Gregory offers here a liberal ethics of citizenship, one less susceptible to anti-liberal critics because it is informed by the Augustinian tradition. The result is a book that expands Augustinian imaginations for liberalism and liberal imaginations for Augustinianism. Gregory examines a broad range of Augustine’s texts and their reception in different disciplines and identifies two classical (...) themes which have analogues in secular political theory: love—and related notions of care, solidarity, and sympathy—and sin—as well as related notions of cruelty, evil, and narrow self-interest. From an Augustinian point of view, Gregory argues, love and sin constrain each other in ways that yield a distinctive vision of the limits and possibilities of politics. In providing a constructive argument for Christian participation in liberal democratic societies, Gregory advances efforts to revive a political theology in which love’s relation to justice is prominent. _Politics and the Order of Love _will provoke new conversations for those interested in Christian ethics, moral psychology, and the role of religion in a liberal society. (shrink)

This essay on Richard Miller’s Friends and Other Strangers (2016) locates its arguments in the context of how the practice of religious ethics bears upon debates about normativity in the study of religion and the cultural turn in the humanities. After reviewing its main claims about identity and otherness, I focus on three areas. First, while commending Miller’s effort to analogize virtuous empathy with Augustine’s ethics of rightly ordered love, I raise questions about his use of Augustine and his distinctive (...) formulation of Augustinian “iconic realism.” Second, I suggest his discussion of public reason is at odds with the dialogical spirit of the book and may distract from the democratic solidarity required by our political moment. Third, more briefly, I highlight the practical implications of Miller’s vision for higher education at both the graduate and undergraduate level. (shrink)

The limits and secularity of political life have been signature themes of modern Augustinianism, often couched in non-theological language of realism and the role of religion in public life. In dialogue with Gilbert Meilaender, this article inverts and theologizes that interest by asking how Augustinian pilgrims might characterize the positive relation of political history to saving history and the ways in which political action in time might teach us something about the nature of salvation that comes to us from beyond (...) history. This relation of continuity and discontinuity eludes dogmatic formulation, but the goal of the present article is to see where a shared Augustinianism and a shared commitment to aspects of the liberal political tradition might find illuminating disagreement. (shrink)

This paper illustrates the need for a more integrated theoretical account of two large but typically isolated subjects in twentieth century Augustine studies: love and the ambiguous relation of Augustinianism to liberalism. The paper is divided into three parts. First, by aligning Augustinian caritas with a feminist "ethic of care," it presents a morally robust ethics of liberalism that differs from both liberal-realist and antiliberal extrapolations of the Augustinian tradition. Second, and most extensively, it presents Hannah Arendt's provocative reading of (...) Augustine that issues both "Kantian" and "Nietzschean" challenges to a political ethic that moves beyond liberal reciprocity and relates love for neighbor to love for God. Finally, and more tentatively, it argues that Augustine's much maligned categories of "use" and "enjoyment" should be redeemed by those who defend a version of Augustinian liberalism that does not sentimentalize or privatize love. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Problems and Arguments Religion and Bioethics: A Distinctive Contribution? Religion, Bioethics, and Liberal Society References Further reading.

The nature and scope of government surveillance have intensified debates about liberty and security in a post-9/11 world. Critics of the just war tradition argue it is not able to constructively address these new challenges. Defenders often simply re-affirm its various criteria in making retrospective judgments or clarifying principles. By contrast, this article argues that our political moment—marked by the arbitrary exercise of power, the prospect of permanent war, and the rapid speed of global politics—reinforces the need to frame just (...) war thinking within a constructive account of statecraft and practical reasoning. In particular, I highlight moral dimensions of authority and intention which reveal a fundamental question about what we want from the just war tradition in relation to democratic social criticism and the possibility of political morality. (shrink)

This essay situates James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology in the context of contemporary social criticism, Augustinian politics, and the cultural turn in religious ethics. While commending Smith’s liturgical ambitions and newfound appreciation for the democratic tradition, I raise critical questions pertaining to eschatology, war and nationhood, and the extent to which he overcomes familiar debates in Christian social ethics.

An important application of cognitive architectures is to provide human performance models that capture psychological mechanisms in a form that can be “programmed” to predict task performance of human–machine system designs. Although many aspects of human performance have been successfully modeled in this approach, accounting for multitalker speech task performance is a novel problem. This article presents a model for performance in a two-talker task that incorporates concepts from psychoacoustics, in particular, masking effects and stream formation.

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.

In Beyond Physicalism, an interdisciplinary group of physical scientists, behavioral and social scientists, and humanists from the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research argue that physicalism must be replaced by an expanded scientific naturalism that accommodates something spiritual at the heart of nature.

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This issue of the Hastings Center Report features a couple of interesting takes on the governance challenges of emerging technologies. In an essay on the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report published this February on human germ-line gene editing, Eric Juengst, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina, argues that the NASEM committee did not manage to rethink the rules. Juengst reaches what he calls an “eccentric conclusion”: “The committee's 2017 consensus report has been widely interpreted (...) as ‘opening the door’ to inheritable human genetic modification and holding a line against enhancement interventions. But on a close reading it does neither.” In the column Policy and Politics, Sarah Chan, a chancellor's fellow at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the emerging science of “organoids,” “embryoids,” and “synthetic human entities with embryo-like features” and calls for a sustained effort to rethink the rules for embryo research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hannah Arendt and Theology by John KiessGregory WilliamsHannah Arendt and Theology John Kiess NEW YORK: BLOOMSBURY T&T CLARK, 2016. XI 1 249 PP. $21.99Of the great secular Jewish thinkers of the mid-twentieth century, none has occasioned quite so much recent attention among Christian theologians as Hannah Arendt. Arendt's popularity is due to a number of factors, not least of which is the ongoing revival of Augustine's thought in (...) political theology, and it is unlikely to subside any time soon. This is why John Kiess's most recent volume, Hannah Arendt and Theology, is of importance to the field of Christian ethics.After providing an intellectual biography of Arendt, the bulk of Kiess's text is devoted to the key loci that theological authors have highlighted in her work, [End Page 210] specifically her concepts of evil, citizenship, action, and thinking. In writing about each of these, Kiess articulates the ways in which theologians have underestimated Arendt. For example, in defending Arendt vis-à-vis Eric Gregory, Kiess argues that "Arendt points to a kind of love that Augustine appears to have overlooked, one which, if falling short of the love of God and neighbor, reaches higher than the love of self to the good of what is common to all" (121).At the same time, Kiess also points out the places where Arendt underestimates Christian theology. Possibly his biggest critique is that, in arguing that the evils of totalitarianism not only transcend but completely "break" traditional definitions of evil, Arendt assumes tradition to be a static article passed on intact from one generation to the next. Against this view, Kiess holds up Alasdair MacIntyre's definition of a tradition as an ongoing argument and shows how Arendt's efforts actually demonstrate the way traditions operate dynamically in contexts of ongoing crisis.Both of these examples also point to broader metaethical questions. In particular, Kiess's statement that Augustine "overlooked" the existence of a nonsalvific love that still rises above the level of the lust for domination that constitutes the telos of the earthly city, or even the love of human glory that gives rise to its greatest virtues, seems to elide the fact that neither Augustine nor his contemporary interpreters have simply forgotten about such a possibility; rather, a chief insight of Augustinian political thought is to deny it. This is precisely why Augustine, as Kiess notes, "longed for a more transformative founding" than Arendt does in her stress on human natality (178). Kiess, it seems, wants to have it both ways on this point. Either the loves of the earthly city can amount to something more than an ethics domination or glory, in which case Augustine's doubts about the founding of political entities based on those loves is overly pessimistic, or the loves and the goods of the earthly and heavenly cities are incommensurable, in which case Arendt's amor mundi, however noble its outcomes, is not immune to the degradations of the earthly city as a whole and must be regarded as one more penultimate earthly virtue.This brings us back to the question of tradition. For all his emphasis on how Arendt exemplifies the dynamism and responsiveness of traditions, Kiess never actually specifies to which tradition Arendt belonged. To put it bluntly, he does not treat it as relevant that Arendt was not a Christian. While she is an extensive and extremely helpful commentator on the Christian theological tradition, she wrote as a critic and an outsider. We can expect certain basic differences between Arendt and her Christian interlocutors to remain irresolvable because that is the nature of interreligious difference. That does not mean, however, that dialogue is not fruitful, and it is because of this that Kiess's text is, and is likely to remain, extremely generative. [End Page 211]Gregory WilliamsDuke UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This study seeks to bring to light Socrates' view of virtue on the basis of the Memorabilia of Xenophon. It opens with a consideration of Gregory Vlastos' account of Socrates' "moral theory" in Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher . The study criticizes Vlastos for overlooking various passages of the Memorabilia that are pertinent to this theme and seemingly inconsistent with his account of it. ;The discussion of Vlastos prepares the way for a consideration of Xenophon. In the first chapter, (...) the study examines Xenophon's presentation of Socrates' view of "continence" or "self-control." The analysis indicates that Socrates had a very favorable view of this quality---he was himself outstandingly continent---and focuses on his claim that continence is "a foundation of virtue" . In trying to explain this claim, however, the study is led to consider an exhortation to continence in which Socrates recounts a debate between female personifications of "Virtue" and "Vice" . Following a close analysis of this debate, I argue that Socrates follows a path that is neither that of Virtue nor that of Vice: he travels "the middle road of Socratic virtue." In particular, I maintain that if continence is "a foundation of virtue" for both Virtue and Socrates, the phrase must be understood differently in each case. ;It thus becomes necessary to clarify the character of the Socratic "middle road." To that end, the study considers successively Socrates' view of "justice," of "the noble" and of "moderation." In each case, Socrates' view is brought to light, analyzed and closely compared with the view that Virtue either explicitly accepts, or else would likely accept. In conclusion, the study returns to the theme of continence and argues that continence is a foundation of Socrates' virtue in the sense that it is a foundation of his "wisdom" and "moderation." Having explained the meaning of this phrase, the study ends with a consideration of the Socratic view of the best life. (shrink)

Conceptual structures are commonly likened to scientific theories, yet the content and motivation of the theory analogy are rarely discussed. Gregory Murphy and Douglas Medin's The Role of Theories in Conceptual Coherence is a notable exception and has become an authoritative exposition of the utility of the theory analogy. For Murphy and Medin, the theory analogy solves what they call the problem of conceptual coherence or the problem of conceptual glue. I argue that they conflate a number of issues (...) under these rubrics and that in each case either the problem to be solved isn't subject to a general solution or the theory analogy is of little use. The issues I consider are: (1) what makes a concept efficient, useful, and informative, (2) what makes a concept refer to what it does, (3) what makes a set of objects form a single category, and (4) what makes concepts combine in one way rather than another. (shrink)

This article argues that two important thinkers of the 20th century, Gregory Bateson and Eric Voegelin, developed a set of ideas that are of importance to the history of the human sciences. The article also argues that their ideas are, in essential ways, comparable and display similarities that have not yet been discussed within the larger history of the human sciences. The aim of the article is to show how the diagnostic terms provided by Bateson and Voegelin complement (...) each other toward an understanding of underlying tensions and social pathologies of contemporary civilization. (shrink)

Eric Gregory's Politics and the Order of Love takes up an audacious project: enlisting Saint Augustine in order to "help imagine a better liberalism." This article first provides a summary of Gregory's argument, focusing on his emphasis on love as a "motivation" for neighborly care, and hence democratic participation. This involves tracing the theme of motivation in the book, which is tied to his articulation of liberal perfectionism and an emphasis on civic virtue. In conclusion I raise (...) the question of whether his project has ignored a key aspect of Augustine's account of love, namely, the role of the Holy Spirit, thereby demarcating the limits of Gregory's "rational reconstruction" of Augustine. (shrink)

From the time of Locke, discussions of personal identity have often ignored the question of our basic metaphysical nature: whether we human people are biological organisms, spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what have you. The result of this neglect has been centuries of wild proposals and clashing intuitions. What Are We? is the first general study of this important question. It beings by explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, such as (...) questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It then examines in some depth the main possible accounts of our metaphysical nature, detailing both their theoretical virtues and the often grave difficulties they face. The book does not endorse any particular account of what we are, but argues that the matter turns on more general issues in the ontology of material things. If composition is universal--if any material things whatever make up something bigger--then we are temporal parts of organisms. If things never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological simples, then we too are simples--perhaps the immaterial substances of Descartes--or else we do not exist at all (a view Olson takes very seriously). The intermediate view that some things compose bigger things and others do not leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that we are organisms. So we can discover what we are by working out when composition occurs. (shrink)

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)