Can philosophical inquiry into divinity be authentic to its subject, God, without adapting its categories to the challenges of its scriptural inspiration, be that biblical or Quranic? This essay argues that it cannot, and that the adaptation, while it can be articulated in semantic terms, must rather amount to a transformation of standard philosophical strategies. Indeed, without such a radical transformation, “philosophy of religion” will inevitably mislead us into speaking of a “god” rather than our intended object.

Can philosophical inquiry into divinity be authentic to its subject, God, without adapting its categories to the challenges of its scriptural inspiration, be that biblical or Quranic? This essay argues that it cannot, and that the adaptation, while it can be articulated in semantic terms, must rather amount to a transformation of standard philosophical strategies. Indeed, without such a radical transformation, “philosophy of religion” will inevitably mislead us into speaking of a “god” rather than our intended object.

Wessling’s treatment of divine love raises several questions for systematic consideration. My goal here is to articulate some of these questions and their rationale insofar as they relate to the Creator-creature distinction. I begin with the nature of “creaturely love,” with its material content and methodological contours in Wessling’s account. Then I move to questions about the Creator’s love with regard to divine aseity. Finally, I ask about the Creator’s relationship to creatures in the hypostatic union (...) of the Son with a human nature. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 61 Heft: 3 Seiten: 333-353.

Christian teaching about creation out of nothing appears to evacuate creatures of intrinsic worth. A theological‐spiritual response to this anxiety outlines the elements of the doctrine: understanding creation requires the direction of intelligence by divine instruction; God alone is cause of being to other beings, by his power, will and goodness; the act of creation is ineffable, instantaneous, without movement, supereminent, and without material cause; created things have being by divine gift; the relation of creator and creatures is (...) mixed, the creator not being constituted by creatures. Does this entail a metaphysics of creaturely privation in which creatures are permanently indigent? The creator is benevolent and, with no self‐interest, gives life, and so moves creatures to activity that the non‐reciprocal character of the creator‐creature relation is not malign but the principle of creaturely perfection. (shrink)

Reconnaissant que la foi en Dieu Créateur est un mystère qui transcende notre pouvoir de compréhension humaine et de mise en concepts, l'auteur met en oeuvre divers modèles théologiques pour jeter quelque lumière sur la richesse de cette croyance. En ce qui concerne le modèle ontologique, il a recours à la théologie de Karl Rahner pour explorer le sens de l'être-créature. De par sa constitution ontologique l'être humain est à la fois différent et dépendant de Dieu en tout acte. Le (...) modèle «fiduciaire» favorisé par les Réformateurs, insiste sur le fait que la foi en Dieu Créateur est réellement un acte de confiance en l'attention que Dieu nous porte. Le modèle eschatologique, proposé par des penseurs tels Moltmann et Pannenberg, met l'accent sur Dieu comme notre futur absolu et l'objet de nos plus profonds désirs. L'article examine également certains modèles écologiques courants ainsi que l'«ecoféminisme» qui soulignent le besoin d'une intendance de la création plutôt que d'une domination. Un modèle de domination conduit à la violation de la terre comme à l'exploitation de la femme. L'article se préoccupe principalement de montrer que la foi en Dieu Créateur dans le Nouveau Testament est toujours liée au Christ comme Nouvelle Création. L'intention divine en créant était de conduire les créatures à partager la filiation du Christ. Les créatures deviennent imago Dei en vivant la relation filiale du Christ vis-à-vis du Père. Ignace de. (shrink)

It is not often that one is graced with a mini-symposium upon reception of an article for publication, and for this I am grateful to Bill Hasker, who had to wait until after his editorship to respond to my provocative piece, and equally grateful to Richard Cross, whom Bill solicited for an assist. Since my piece called for a “radical transformation of standard philosophical strategies,” and Bill addressed that perspectival issue from the outset, while Richard focused on some axial semantic (...) and epistemological contentions, I shall begin with Bill Hasker’s overall puzzlements, proceed to address some issues on which Richard Cross and I seem fated to disagree, and close by addressing the neuralgic point of created freedom, which both Hasker and I find axial to attempting to articulate the creator/creature relation. What gratifies me is the opportunity to interact with such sterling critics, and to try to ascertain whether we can advance a discussion (as Bill Hasker suggests) of issues which no sane human inquirer can ever pretend to “get right.”. (shrink)

In this essay, I set the book of Job in dialogue with a number of films from the robot science fiction subgenre. It is my intention to show that both sets of literature are deeply engaged with questions related to how creators and created things can interact, and that they deal with these questions in ways that illuminate and complement each other. The study proceeds in three phases. First, I develop a typology of robot science fiction as I see it (...) in Hollywood cinematic presentation. Second, I turn to unpack God's response to Job's complaint in Job 38. In this section, I focus particularly on God's self-description through constructive and parental metaphors. Finally, I suggest how reading these texts together can sharpen our understanding of the way in which the biblical narrative addresses relational dynamics between a creating God and humans as created beings. (shrink)

Shestov and Levinas share a preference for Jerusalem over Athens—specifically, for a movement of spirit other than knowledge that is not oriented toward the past, as knowledge is, but toward the new. They characterize that movement differently: Shestov opts for faith and the exercise of creative powers based on his interpretation of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge, while Levinas prefers a suspension in which we marvel at the created other, an idea, influenced by Husserl on suspension, (...) which presages Levinas’s later notion of welcoming or being cored out by the absolute other. (shrink)

Cora Diamond has criticized capacity-based approaches to determining the moral status of animals, arguing instead that the morally significant fact is that we have relationships to animals as our fellow creatures. This paper explores implications of her approach to fish and the practice of fish farming. Fish differ from most other animals due to their appearances and under-water existence, and it is not obvious that fish belong to our fellow creatures, and – if so – what it means for our (...) treatment of them. In particular: if fish are fellow creatures, can we treat them in the way done in contemporary salmon farming ? Iris Murdoch points out that moral differences are conceptual differences, that is differences in how we see the world. Similarly, Diamond argues that we should not consider ‘animal’ or ‘human’ as biological classifications – they are conceptual configurations that shape the way we think and make sense of the world. In this article, we explore the implication of the fellow creature concept for the case of fish, which challenge our ordinary understandings of companionship with animals. We argue that farmed salmon should be consibdered as a special kind of fellow creatures living in water, and discuss how scientific research on biological features of fish may influence how we see them. We also sketch how Diamond’s approach implies a need for reform of current salmon farming practices. (shrink)

Atran proposes that humans have a unique, innate, domain-specific tendency to create taxonomies of biological kinds. We show that: (1) in ontogenesis, children develop a notion Atran claims to be innate; (2) what Atran claims is unique to biological kinds may be found in artifact kinds; and (3) although Atran proposes a domain-specific mental construct for biological rank, it can be explained in domain- general terms.

As a child brought up among animals, Lynne Sharpe never doubted they were essentially ‘creatures like us’. It came as a shock to learn that others did not agree. Here she exposes the bizarre way in which many philosophers — including even some great and humane ones — have repeatedly talked and written about animals. They have discussed the topic in terms of non-existent abstract ‘animals’, conceived as defective humans, entirely neglecting the experience of people who have wide practical knowledge (...) of companion animals — such as horses and dogs — through working with them. She testifies to the interesting nature of these creatures’ lives, noting that the usual narrow approach to animals carries with it also a distorted notion of human life as essentially cerebral and language-centred. (shrink)

Mark Murphy has argued that the relationship between a creator and their creatures is not a special relationship that generates new moral obligations for the creator. Murphy’s position is grounded, in part, on his claim that there are no good arguments to the contrary and that the creator-creature relationship is not a relationship between equals. I argue that there are good reasons to think that a creator and creature being equals is not required for (...) such an obligation. I offer an argument for such an obligation based on the moral significance of thrusting upon sentient or rational beings significant, unsought, and wholly new circumstances. More specifically, I argue that it is reasonable to conclude that a creator enters into a duty-generating special relationship with their creatures to promote their creatures’ well-being, when the creator is the voluntary source of the creatures’ wholly new and unconsented to circumstances from which to flourish or languish and it would cost the creator virtually nothing to promote the creatures’ welfare. (shrink)

The conception of subjectivity that dominates the Western philosophical tradition, particularly during the Enlightenment, sets up a simple dichotomy: either the subject is ultimately autonomous or it is merely a causally determined thing. Fichte and Freud challenge this model by formulating theories of subjectivity that transcend this opposition. Fichte conceives of the subject as based in absolute activity, but that activity is qualified by a check for which it is not ultimately responsible. Freud explains the behavior of the self in (...) terms of biological drives and social pressures, yet both forces are actively interpreted by the subject itself. The tensions that arise from these very different approaches show that both Fichte and Freud are trying to overcome this deeply imbedded dichotomy between freedom and determinism. Although some would respond to these tensions by trying to forge a Hegelian synthesis, such a resolution covers over the paradoxical nature of finite subjectivity. (shrink)

SummaryIn his essay on rational theology Holm Tetens broaches the issue of God’s role as creator and additionally addresses the relationship of the absolute to the contingent world in a philosophical perspective. By making this a topic, the question arises as to whether or not God’s creative activities are limited by the laws of nature. According to Tetens, God as the infinite self-conscious subject must not just considered as free from all restrictions concerning his creative activities, but rather, characterized (...) as the absolute, he must be thought of as the ultimate ground of all beings, and therefore also as the creator of natural laws. In this article I will give a brief sketch of how this task could be tackled in philosophical terms. In doing so I will both pick up some of Tetens’ main intentions and concepts and try to explore them in some detail, as well as attempt to link them with the principle of determinacy as the main characteristic of the absolute. (shrink)

In _Biocultural Creatures_, Samantha Frost brings feminist and political theory together with findings in the life sciences to recuperate the category of the human for politics. Challenging the idea of human exceptionalism as well as other theories of subjectivity that rest on a distinction between biology and culture, Frost proposes that humans are biocultural creatures who quite literally are cultured within the material, social, and symbolic worlds they inhabit. Through discussions about carbon, the functions of cell membranes, the activity of (...) genes and proteins, the work of oxygen, and the passage of time, Frost recasts questions about the nature of matter, identity, and embodiment. In doing so, she elucidates the imbrication of the biological and cultural within the corporeal self. In remapping the relation of humans to their habitats and arriving at the idea that humans are biocultural creatures, Frost provides new theoretical resources for responding to political and environmental crises and for thinking about how to transform the ways we live. (shrink)

In his _Duino Elegies,_ Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being—the open—concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges—what Eric Santner calls the _creaturely_—have a biopolitical aspect: (...) they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority. Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors. An indispensable book for students of Sebald, _On Creaturely Life_ is also a significant contribution to critical theory. (shrink)

. Stephen I Gould's notion of non‐overlapping magisteria is neither experientially supported nor rationally justifiable. Influence flows between science and religion, as when evolutionary thinking encouraged theology to adopt a kenotic view of the Creator's act of allowing creatures to be and to make themselves. Alleged simplistic dichotomies between science and religion, such as motivated belief contrasted with fideistic assertion, are seen to be false. Promising topics in the currently vigorous dialogue between science and religion include relational ontology, eschatological (...) credibility, and ethical issues relating to advances in human genetics. (shrink)

In his _Duino Elegies,_ Rainer Maria Rilke suggests that animals enjoy direct access to a realm of being—the open—concealed from humans by the workings of consciousness and self-consciousness. In his own reading of Rilke, Martin Heidegger reclaims the open as the proper domain of human existence but suggests that human life remains haunted by vestiges of an animal-like relation to its surroundings. Walter Benjamin, in turn, was to show that such vestiges—what Eric Santner calls the _creaturely_—have a biopolitical aspect: (...) they are linked to the processes that inscribe life in the realm of power and authority. Santner traces this theme of creaturely life from its poetic and philosophical beginnings in the first half of the twentieth century to the writings of the enigmatic German novelist W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s entire oeuvre, Santner argues, can be seen as an archive of creaturely life. For Sebald, the work on such an archive was inseparable from his understanding of what it means to engage ethically with another person’s history and pain, an engagement that transforms us from indifferent individuals into neighbors. An indispensable book for students of Sebald, _On Creaturely Life_ is also a significant contribution to critical theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Can Creatures Cause Forms?Aquinas on Cosmology and EvolutionLucas PrietoThus formulated, the question may seem odd. It is enough to look at nature to see that many of the relations that are established between substances are causal relations that results in the production of a form. So, for example, the fire from a match in contact with a piece of paper produces fire, in such a way that the agent (...) causes a new form because it communicates its own actuality. In this sense, at the natural level, we can even say that all production involves the causation of a form. The question becomes meaningful, however, when we distinguish between being the cause of this form inasmuch as it actualizes a matter and being the cause of the form as such—that is, between causing a particular order in a matter and being the cause of the reason for this order.1 Continuing with the example: the fire of the match is specifically the same as the fire found in the paper, so that the former cannot be the cause per se of the fire of the latter—that is, the fire of the match is not that which gives reason for the formality of the fire—because in that case it would be the cause of its own formality. The argument leads us to postulate another agent that is the cause of fire as such.So, we can now ask: can creatures be ultimately responsible (at the created level) for this particular ontological configuration? That is, can creatures cause a natural form as such? Aquinas answers yes, and his answer is of particular importance in explaining the causal order among creatures [End Page 441] and the possibility of true specific novelty in the universe. In this article I will advance how Aquinas justifies ontological novelty by resorting to intra-mundane causes and then show how this causal model allows us to understand the transformism of species (evolution) in a Thomistic framework. To do so, we will formulate our argument in three steps: (1) first we will analyze the notion of form that Aquinas handles in order to understand also how it can be caused in an individual, (2) then we will study the various ways in which the causation of a form can occur, and (3) finally, we will apply these conclusions to the problem of evolution.Form and IndividualFor Aquinas, form is a fundamental ontological principle of the corporeal entity because it structures matter according to a determined order of perfection. By the form we can distinguish between different entities because a formal perfection supposes a certain term or limit of the act that implies the deprivation of the perfection of another form. A dog indicates a certain degree of perfection, but by the fact of being a dog it lacks the perfection of being a cat. Now, in the physical world, we find an innumerable diversity of entities that differ from each other not only in their form or essence, but also as individuals, which shows that, ultimately, the fundamental distinction is not between being a cat and being a dog, but between being this cat and being this dog, or more clearly, between this dog and that dog. Aquinas holds that this diversity and inequality, both specific and numerical, is something positively willed and caused by God as first agent.2 But does this mean that the diverse structuring of matter is produced by a special divine action? That is, is the formal difference the effect of a creative act of God?In the Summa theologiae, Thomas directly addresses this problem by asking whether creation is mixed in the works of nature and of the arts, which is equivalent, in the last analysis, to the question of the origin of novelty in the physical world.3 Indeed, when an entity is generated, a substance appears that is not absolutely contained in the preceding causes. The agent certainly communicates his actuality by resembling the effect to himself, but in the effect, there is always something else that escapes the essential principles. Therefore, how can this novelty of the effect be founded? Before answering this question... (shrink)

The corporation's social role is usually presented as a cultural phenomenon in which the corporation learns socially acceptable behaviors through voluntary social responsibility, government regulations/public policies, and/or acceptance of ethics principles. This article presents an alternative view of corporationcommunity relations as a natural phenomenon based on complexity-chaos theory and a biological-physical conception of corporate values. Corporation and community are depicted as interacting nonlinear adaptive systems having unpredictable futures, the corporate social role is depicted as largely indeterminate, and competing values are (...) depicted as key factors driving change in corporationcommunity linkages. Normative duties of corporate and community leaders are described. (shrink)

This piece takes its cue from Malcolm Bowie's ‘speech creatures’, at once Aristotelian and psychoanalytic, to compare two forceful male characters in English novels who each make speeches proclaiming their own emotional reformation. Different as they are in other respects — an ex-libertine and a man of morals — Samuel Richardson's ‘Mr B.’ and Jane Austen's Mr Darcy both denounce their early parental education in relation to the humbler selfhood their wives-to-be have taught them. Such a development is both (...) like and unlike the later model of psychoanalytic re-education. It takes early emotional malformation as given, and it postulates the possibility of a beneficial re-education in later life; but it does not differentiate between the sexes, and it makes overall for a much more complete transformation and ‘cure by love’ than Freud's theories imagined. (shrink)

The article discusses the affinity of the ideas of two prominent Russian scholars N.N. Moiseev and V.S. Stepin. This affinity of their ideas is above all expressed in the global scale of their thinking, in their orientation toward the search for the ways of mankind development. Both thinkers sought a way out of the limitations and crisis of technological civilization through the promotion of basic values of harmony in the evolution of society and the biosphere. They made an enormous contribution (...) to the development of both humanitarian and natural sciences areas of knowledge related to social management and development, techonology, economics, law, medicine, ecology, education, etc. They worked in an interdisciplinary areas and were successful integrators of natural science and humanities. Simultaneously with the scientific work, Moiseev and Stepin were excellent teachers and mentors of both young and mature researchers. They have created successful scientific schools that include many dozens of outstanding scientists. They devoted much attention and much time to social work, primarily in various structures of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The affinity of Moiseev’s and Stepin’s ideas is shown in four areas of their activities: overcoming the crisis of technological civilization and the limitations of the concept of sustainable development, research into socio-humanitarian cybernetics, development of advanced education models, implementation of successful scientific diplomacy projects. The author of this article participated in joint research projects with Moiseev and Stepin, the personal communication with them and their ideas significantly influenced author’s life path, interests and research results. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of scientific development in (...) the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present. (shrink)

JONATHAN EDWARDS NAMES HIS CHRISTOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE VIRtue of humility as an "excellency proper to creatures" rather than of God's divine nature, which differentiates it from "true virtue" or benevolence. He presents the incarnate Christ as the moral archetype for humility. This has two implications for contemporary ethics. First, it suggests that we would have needed God's revelation in Christ to understand and pursue the virtues, even if the Fall had not occurred. Second, it indicates that there is a (...) necessary relation between love and humility in the Christian life. (shrink)

Discursive accounts of the body have been prominent recently. While acknowledging the usefulness of these, the author, drawing upon specific philosophers of the body and a wide range of other theorists, focuses attention on the experiencing body which she refers to as 'creatural existence’. Thinking in terms of the creatural, she argues, can better situate human beings in their environment, thus emphasizing a kind of 'ecological notion of subjectivity’, in which place-based existence is understood anew. The educational implications of focusing (...) on what bodies 'do' and not so much in terms of how they are socially inscribed, presents them as practico-sensory totalities which should perhaps be seen as systems rather than an as mere organisms or entities. Such an articulation of creatural existence emphasizes animality, and in so doing reminds us of the centrality of the senses in all knowing and doing, including crucially, in relation to those practices which we have understood as 'work'. Multi-sensorial education is a major sub-theme of the book and the author argues persuasively for this by means of a critical analysis of the ocularcentrism that is characteristic of contemporary culture. (shrink)

Scientific discoveries and the emergence of cosmological theories such as the Big Bang Theory and evolution have challenged the Christian doctrine of creation and its reliability on many fronts, because the discoveries appear to contradict the Christian account as to how creation unfolded. Hefner sees the situation as an additional interpretative task to theologians. He, however, posits that scientific discoveries are an opportunity to communicate the Christian message through social and scientific experience to bring meaning to broader society. He expresses (...) the notion that religion will remain relevant only if it measures up to science, because we are in a science and technology era. Hefner, therefore, introduced the concept of created co-creator as a metaphor and analytical tool to explain the meaning and purpose of humans within the biosphere. The concept is characterized by the ability to communicate religion through science and to relate with available models of origin. This work expounds on the concept of created co-creator’s ability to explain human technological trajectory in theology. There is also an effort to establish a relationship between Hefner’s concept and Haraway’s cyborg with an emphasis on the concept’s ability to communicate the Christian doctrine of creation through scientific knowledge and why such an enterprise is useful. (shrink)

I propose that a scientific account of perceptual consciousness decomposes into two sub-problems: the conceptual problem of reframing our internal, first-personal perspective in external, thirdpersonal terms, and the scientific one of providing a theory that accounts for the phenomenon reframed in this way. In this paper I consider both aspects of the problem, drawing on the ideas of Dennett and Metzinger. For the first part, I use Dennett's method of heterophenomenology to argue that perceptual experience should be understood as a (...) structured space of possible behaviours. On this view, each phenomenal 'detail' that we consciously apprehend is not quintessentially private, but rather a reflexive affordance: an opportunity to behave, perhaps covertly, about how the world looks, sounds, or feels from our perceptual vantage point. I then present a novel argument in favour of a higher-order, self-representationalist account of this aspect of our phenotype, along the lines of Metzinger's phenomenal model of the intentionality relation. I conclude with the suggestion that a conscious organism has a design which is distinctly Cartesian in flavour: a self-simulating agent able to observe itself perceiving. (shrink)

Belief systems of human societies are deeply related with animals, which are symbolised in traditional narratives. Here we review reported cases from around the world and our own ethnographic observations from southern Chile, to analyse beliefs associated with owls. In particular, we explore the role that owls play in traditional narratives and the likely reasons of their saliency, including their connections with the extraordinary. For the latter, we utilise the concept of “the uncanny” to analyse how owls generate a feeling (...) of something not simply mysterious but, more specifically, something strangely familiar. Owls trigger unsettling experiences of the “normal,” with the ensuing feelings of unhomeliness, which may explain their saliency across human societies. Finally, we discuss that the uncanny nature of owls is precisely what locates them in a culturally stimulating position and what should be considered by conservationists and politicians to tackle a more integrative approach to owl conservation. (shrink)

This article presents a new interpretation and critique of some aspects of Aquinas’s metaphysics of relations, with special reference to a theological problem—the relation of God to creatures—that catalyzed Aquinas’s and much medieval thought on the ontology of relations. I will show that Aquinas’s ontologically reductive theory of categorical real relations should equip him to identify certain relations as real relations, which he actually identifies as relations of reason, most notably the relation of God to creatures.

: The suffering of creatures experienced throughout evolutionary history provides some conceptual difficulties for theists who maintain that God is an all-good loving creator who chose to employ the processes associated with evolution to bring about life on this planet. Some theists vexed by this and other problems posed by the interface between religion and science have turned to process theology which provides a picture of a God who is dependent upon creation and unable to unilaterally intervene in the (...) affairs of the world and avert suffering. In the present paper I seek to critique process theism, focusing on divine action and the aforementioned problem posed by evolutionary suffering. I show that the promise of a more compelling account of a loving God who suffers with creation advanced by the process theist is illusory. Rather, the process God is less dynamic than promised. And on such an account the freedom of both God and the world are significantly more circumscribed than one may find in other forms of theism. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and Whiteheadian process thought each uniquely dismantle the anthropocentric hierarchies and speciesed constructions we have used to calculate our ethics with non-human bodies. Yet each perspective uniquely continues, despite its own affirmations, to privilege the identity and construction of the human over other bodies. In an effort to move past these shortcomings and into a more creative ethical imagination, this article reads Whiteheadian metaphysics as an affirmation of poststructural singularity, and uses poststructural criticism to deconstruct Whitehead’s subtler form of (...) anthropocentrism. By joining these traditions together, this article makes clear their respective blind spots, moves past the limited and troubled framework of species upheld in each, and advances the truly novel, creaturely relations for which both traditions adamantly call. (shrink)

The renowned philosopher and political theorist presents a summation of his influential work in this series of Columbia University lectures. A pioneer in the fields of modern linguistics and cognitive science, Noam Chomsky is also one of the most avidly read political theorist of our time. In this series of lectures, Chomsky presents more than half a century of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas. In precise yet accessible language, Chomsky elaborates on the scientific study of language, sketching (...) how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, Chomsky concludes with a philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. Demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past, he also shows its urgent relation to our present moment. (shrink)

Context: Some scholars have put forward constructivist world models in which the purported external world is constructed from experience (i.e., there is a constructive relation between them. However, scholars disagree about whether experience is generated by the brain and results from the perception of the purported external world (i.e., whether there are generative relations and perceptual relations. Problem: Do we need to maintain perceptual relations or generative relations in a constructivist world model? Method: I propose a world model where (...) our world is composed of a large number of screen creatures, and this is compared with the world model in the irrealist virtual world theory. There is a constructive relation in both world models, but only the second world model contains generative and perceptual relations. I provide reasons to doubt that the world model in the irrealist virtual world theory can provide sufficient reasons for involving generative or perceptual relations. Results: We should accept the world model composed of screen creatures as the model of our world; we do not need to retain perceptual or generative relations in a constructivist world model. Implications: This article points out that perceptual relations stem from a misunderstanding of certain correlations between experiences. This will generate some new ideas when considering the mind-matter problem. Constructivist content: This article discusses how to deal with generative and perceptual relations using constructivist world models. (shrink)

One of the most recent and original adaptations of Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is the ballet version choreographed by Liam Scarlett and performed by the Royal Ballet in 2016 and the San Francisco Ballet in 2017 and 2018. What emerges from this translation is an economical, emotionally wrenching, and visually elegant drama of family tragedy from which we can draw a cautionary tale about contemporary bioethical dilemmas in family making that new and forthcoming biomedical (...) technologies present. This performance of bodies interacting suggests the need for an ethics of acceptance and recognition as people navigate complex familial relationships involving procreative liberty, questions of moral personhood, and parental obligation. In the Frankenstein ballet, the narrative genre of dance—what I'll call “story in the flesh”—invites viewers to identify with the characters and enter into the complexity of interpersonal relations. The ballet becomes a compelling testimony about possible unintended outcomes set in motion by well‐intended fallible humans like themselves. (shrink)

I start by emphasizing two aspects of Michael Bratman's approach to shared agency and contrast it with my own in those respects. I conclude with some related remarks on the relation of morality and joint commitment.

IN THE PLATONIC TRADITION, the term "participation" signifies the fundamental relationship of both structure and dependence in the dialectic of the many in relation to the One and of the different in relation to the Identical, whereas in Christian philosophy it signifies the total dependence of the creature on its Creator. The term participation has played an extensive role in Patristic and medieval speculation.

Many enthusiasts of theistic evolution willingly accept Aquinas’s distinction between primary and secondary causes, to describe theologically “the mechanics” of evolutionary transformism. However, their description of the character of secondary causes in relation to God’s creative action oftentimes lacks precision. To some extent, the situation within the Thomistic camp is similar when it comes to specifying the exact nature of secondary and instrumental causes at work in evolution. Is it right to ascribe all causation in evolution to creatures—acting as (...) secondary and instrumental causes? Is there any space for a more direct divine action in evolutionary transitions? This article offers a new model of explaining the complexity of the causal nexus in the origin of new biological species, including the human species, analyzed in reference to both the immanent and transcendent orders of causation. (shrink)

Between 1934 and 1937 Maurice Blondel, the French Roman Catholic philosopher best known for his 1893 work, Action, published a trilogy of writings. Out of these writings came a theological ontology of tremendous force, creativity, and coherence. The purpose of the present dissertation is to reassess the viability of Blondel's ontology for contemporary theology. The retrieval begins with John Milbank's 1990 investigation of Blondel's early philosophy. While Milbank focuses on the strengths of Blondel, he also highlights some critical weaknesses. The (...) dissertation argues that Blondel later came to recognize and correct these weaknesses in his trilogy. ;La pensee, the first volume of the trilogy, discusses the nature and development of thought. Recognizing the ontological structure of thought leads Blondel to present his doctrine of the transnatural elan for assimilation to God. The transnatural desire for God is compared with Henri de Lubac's notion of naturae desiderium and then applied to the modern problem of the relationship between nature and supernature. ;The second installment of the trilogy, L'etre et les etres , explores the mysterious relation of Being and beings. Blondel situates the discussion within the language of creation, identifying Being as Creator and beings as creatures. The analogy of creation allows him to forge the proper relationship between Being and beings. After Blondel's death, two different schools of thought emerged on the mystery of being: Karl Rahner's Thomism and Jean-Luc Marion's new phenomenology. Each school is reviewed and critiqued from a Blondelian perspective. ;The trilogy concludes with a long-awaited revision of L'action . It begins by distinguishing the idea of action from action itself and establishing the ontological difference of action. Action is presented ontologically as enacted power, which is investigated in its individual, social, and metaphysical forms. Individual action is identified as making, practicing, and contemplating. Social action is studied next, with the conclusion that the social being of enacted power is determined by either a philosophy of peace or violence. Finally, divine action is evaluated with regards to the language of causality and absolute power. Blondel proposes instead to describe God's activity in terms of pure action. (shrink)

Theological discourse surrounding the environmental crisis has rightly brought to the forefront human agency as a primary causal determinant. However, this article explores a theistic divine action position toward an account of the present global precipice that the earth and all its creatures teeter upon. The first section offers a preferred view of divine action theory, Divine Compositionalism, with explanatory power to account for an ever-changing planet. Furthermore, Divine Compositionalism is used to ground the role of God as Creator (...) and sustainer of all things toward a constructive biotheology. The second section accounts for both human culpability and God’s divine action, retaining human free will and God’s sovereignty within a creation God owns and loves. The final section explores a possible remedy to the environmental precipice through the very elements of human cooperation that ensured the success of our prehistoric ancestors. A cooperative biotheology entails humanity re-claiming its inter-relation with all creatures in a world family while exercising the free will to partner with one another on a spiritual level in accomplishing God’s good and wonderful eternal ideas for the next step in human spiritual development toward earth’s physical evolution.Contribution: Drawing upon Divine Compositionalism as a new view of divine action, this article explores God’s action in the natural world as it is now and offers a biotheology that entails divine–human partnership toward an alternative future outcome. (shrink)

This work of ours is about the servant's display of behavior such as ruminating while fulfilling his responsibility to Allah. Since the verse related to our subject is in the Surah Hucurat, an evaluation will be made within the framework of this verse. During this evaluation, verses with similar characteristics that we think may be relevant will also be included. In addition, it will not only touch on the historical dimension of the issue, but also draw attention to what kind (...) of attitudes are exhibited today. Indeed, such behavior It continues in the same way in later periods as it did in the period of the Prophet. The person sent to the world for a test is responsible for fulfilling some obligations in this context. This is not a choice but a necessity. This is because man's being rewarded in the hereafter and living a more peaceful life in this world depend on this. Therefore, it is in his favor to fulfill his duty of servitude. For this reason, it is not morally correct to try to make others feel grateful for the behavior he fulfilled in accordance with the divine command. Because Allah is never in need of a servant's worship. There will always be people who will serve Him. It is the human being that is in need. Since everything he owns is at Allah's discretion, he needs Allah's help and support throughout his life, and even more so in the hereafter. The main goal of our study is to reveal opinions about how people should behave while fulfilling their servitude responsibility. In this context, the position of the creator and the issue of where the servant should stand against it will be explained. While the creator is at the highest position, man is only one of the things that he created. Of course, being given responsibility, unlike other beings, has increased the value of man in the sight of Allah. But this value is valid as long as he fulfills his servitude responsibility. Otherwise, he will descend to a lower level than all creatures. No matter how valuable a person is, he has to be aware of how helpless he is in front of his creator and that he is always in need of him. If he is not aware of this, the worship and good behavior he will perform will have no value in the sight of Allah. Because he could not behave in the way He wanted against the being he was responsible for. If he does this on purpose, of course, the price will be higher. The belief part of the issue is of greater importance. As a matter of fact, a person who appreciates Allah properly and knows His power well will need to determine his attitudes accordingly. In this context, knowing what the attributes of Allah mean and what the dimensions of these attributes are reflected in the servants will make the subject more understandable. Because the way to know Allah is to know His attributes. Another relevant issue is to show the necessary respect to the messengers sent by Allah, both in their lives and in the context of the knowledge they left behind. In this context, it will be necessary in our opinion to act with the knowledge that the hadiths that have reached us authentically are interpretations of the Qur'an. Because they are not people acting on their own, but chosen people who fulfill their duties according to Allah's orders. Therefore, disrespect to them will be considered as disrespect to God. It is seen that the Bedouins acted unconsciously on this issue that we are focusing on. These people who are new Muslims or claim to be Muslims. They had an extreme attitude towards the Prophet. This event did not occur once, but several times in similar ways. As we have just mentioned, their behavior will actually be considered disrespectful to Allah. It is known that they act with purely worldly motives. Because, instead of receiving good news, prayer and advice for the hereafter, they have revealed that they are after worldly interests in material terms. Verses on the subject have been revealed to set an example for people who will follow this attitude and show the same behavior in the future. In response to their behavior. It is admirable that the Prophet kept his calm and behaved tolerantly instead of responding to them in kind. Muslims living in later periods will also need to be more careful not to be exposed to the warning in the verse. (shrink)