Though rousseau rejects traditional versions he believes in a natural law which man can grasp independently of any knowledge of god. It is natural in the sense that in a given set of circumstances man by a combination of simple reason and conscience can know what is right and wrong, Just and unjust. However, Its obligatory character is conditional. In the one case it depends on the ascertainable fact of human enforcement, And in the other, On a strong inner faith (...) in the existence of god. If both of these faiths are in vain, The whole question of natural law becomes at best academic, And the ideal of moral freedom, Quixotic. (shrink)

Whitehead does not provide us with a systematic account of the various types of experience to which the word “memory” is applied. Nevertheless, he does provide us with a way of understanding the world, and living creatures who inhabit it, that places the discussion in a different context from the usual one: the diverse features of human experience that we call memory are developed forms of basic patterns of relationship that characterize all actual entities. I will first review the relevant (...) features of Whitehead's conceptuality, then contrast the resulting view with its usual formulation, and then speculate about some forms of memory in Whiteheadian categories. (shrink)

The idea of God’s action in history was prominent in the Biblical theology of the past generation. This theology was generally opposed to philosophic explication of its doctrine of God, and consequently it is difficult to say just what it meant by divine action. In any case, that movement faded and, with it, talk of God’s acts.

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, (...) Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 2-15 [Access article in PDF] Economic Aspects of Social and Environmental Violence John B. Cobb Jr. Claremont School of Theology I When we think of violence, what first comes to mind are violent acts by individuals or groups against other individuals. We think of rapes and murders, lynchings and muggings, beatings and armed robberies. We want the police to protect us from this violence. (...) Unfortunately, we know that police are tempted, in turn, to employ their power in violent ways, chiefly against those guilty of crimes, but sometimes against the innocent. The cycle of violence on the part of individuals and groups goes on.Bad as this violence is, it is worse when the state, instead of restricting it, supports and requires it. Political authorities have always exercised violence against their own people, especially those they suspected of being threats to their power. But in the twentieth century, state violence reached previously unheard of levels. For the sake of building a communist society, Stalin killed millions and imprisoned millions more. The Nazis undertook to purify Germany of Jews, gypsies, and other undesirables through extermination undertaken through bureaucratic processes.We Americans do not think of ourselves as having employed state power in any such way. We know that national power was used violently to drive Native Americans off their land down through the nineteenth century. We know that southern states used their power to enforce segregation and protect whites who engaged in violent acts against blacks in order to maintain total white domination over them. But we now think of the national government much more as the protector of human rights. This is not entirely false.We tend not to recognize, however, the amount of violence the national government is exercising in the wars against crime and drugs. In order to reduce individual violence as well as drug use, we have created a prison population of two million. One-fourth of all the prisoners in the world are in the United States, most of them jailed for nonviolent crimes. Although drug use is more or less equally spread among ethnic and economic groups, most of those imprisoned for this crime are poor and ethnic minorities. In the name of law and order, enormous violence is inflicted by the United States against the people of its ghettos. [End Page 3]In this same century war also took on new dimensions. It has been waged against entire populations instead of armies. The aim at total destruction came to its fullest expression when twice the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan.World War II has made all of us sadly aware of the horrors of state violence. It has turned us against nationalism. We are appalled as we see nationalism raise its ugly head again in the former Soviet Union and especially in the former Yugoslavia. When ethnic groups undertake to destroy each other, our moral condemnation is unambiguous. Personal, group, and state violence remains a problem, but at least the wrong involved in this is widely understood.In all civilization there has been another kind of violence—economic. In much of history economic violence has been closely related to the forms noted above. The rich have been able to impose their will on the poor because they could employ persons to exercise violence for them and they could influence state action. We see this glaringly in the "goon squads" employed by the wealthy in some Latin American countries to intimidate and kill those who protest their actions. These goon squads often work closely with the military power of the state.We know that in this country as well, wealth reduces the chance of conviction for crimes. It also buys influence in government. On the whole the United States government throughout history has supported the interests of those with money. Today the power of wealth in the political process is clearly evident. We recognize that this situation is corrupt, but we do not ordinarily think of it as a form of violence. This is because the violent consequences are indirect, and we are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao AbeJohn B. Cobb Jr.Masao Abe spent a year at the Blaisdell Institute in Claremont, 1965–1966. I was on sabbatical in Germany that year. On return I learned from many people that I had missed a great opportunity for an authentic encounter with a living Buddhist thinker who understood Christianity very well. Fortunately, he visited Claremont again, although more briefly, and this time I was able to take advantage (...) of his visit.I was, and am, convinced that Whiteheadians have much to gain from the encounter with Buddhists. At one level we can grasp and assimilate the idea of dependent origination or pratitya samutpada quite easily. For Whitehead too the ultimate reality consists in the many becoming one. For Whitehead human experience is an example of this reality and, indeed, that example is the one he most fully analyzed.On the other hand, we Whiteheadians incline to objectify the whole process. More often than with Whitehead himself, we are describing a process that is going on objectively out there. Abe taught me the difference. He liked to distinguish the perspective of the swimmer battling against the current in dangerous waters and observers on the bank. To understand that all unit events are instances of dependent origination is one thing; to experience oneself in that way is quite another. And what is especially important is to recognize that experiencing oneself is not objectifying one’s past or imagining oneself in the eyes of an observer. It is embodying the absolutely immediate, ever-changing reality that is experience now.Whitehead never thought of his ontological analysis as having direct religious importance. For him, as part of the understanding that all things are perpetually perishing, it constituted the ultimate threat to the meaningfulness of life. The religious dimension came as a response to this threat.For Abe, of course, the full existential realization of what we are, is in itself salvific in the sense of healing. It puts an end to guilt, defensiveness, and attachment, and it makes us wholly acceptant of whatever is. It leads to, or perhaps is, enlightenment, expressing itself in wisdom and compassion. Given the history of Buddhism, one must accept the profound truth in this affirmation, although, given the history of Buddhism, one must also recognize that matters are never as simple as this formulation sounds.I have spoken personally of an example of what and how I learned from Abe. This is a testimonial that can be matched by scores, perhaps hundreds, of others. Certainly [End Page 119] in our ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue group, Abe was the foremost teacher. My goal in helping to organize this group was to give my fellow Christian theologians the chance to learn from him and other Buddhists. I am proud of the extent to which, especially because of Abe’s gifts as a teacher, my purpose was fulfilled.Appreciating the truth of Buddhism, and agreeing with Abe that Christian theology through the centuries has been distorted by clinging to substantialist modes of thought, I was particularly eager to engage him in a dialogue about the relation of Buddhism and Christian process theology, in particular a Christian process theology that recognized and appreciated the spiritual value of Buddhist enlightenment. Since Abe felt that Buddhists had something to learn from Christianity about social ethics, the suggestions of Christian theology, including its process form, for modifications or developments of Buddhism were not wholly lost on him. He supervised two dissertations by Buddhists on this topic, of which I was the official advisor, one by a Zen Buddhist (Chris Ives) and the other by a Pure Land Buddhist (John Ishihara, now Yokota). He criticized fellow Buddhists in our dialogue group for not being as open to learning from their Christian dialogue partners as these partners were open to Buddhist insights. In short he supported real dialogue, always ready to share his wisdom, and encouraging openness to further development of Buddhism.None of us is perfect, or, at least, none of us fulfills what someone else would see as perfection. In my judgment Abe was unnecessarily wedded to features of his Buddhist tradition that inhibited learning from Christianity, particularly in its process... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious PluralismJohn B. Cobb Jr.Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism. By Stephen Kaplan. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Pp. xi + 187.Those of us who believe that religious traditions are radically different from one another are divided between two camps. One camp holds that they are simply incommensurable. Participants in this camp often emphasize the decisive importance (...) of language. They may argue that each language creates its own world within which every part of the symbolic system has its meaning in its relation to other parts of the system. Since language does not refer to a nonlinguistic reality, there is no possibility of translation among languages.Some who recognize the possibility of translation for some parts of the linguistic systems still reject any such possibility in the sphere of religion. It is in this sphere that the denial that language has nonlinguistic reference is most firmly insisted upon. It is urged that each religious system is simply what it is.The second group, the one to which I belong, holds that religious language does have referential character, and that dialogue, although complex and difficult, is possible and fruitful. But against those who hold that all religions are speaking, in their very diverse ways, of the same reality, we hold that the reality to which reference is made is multiple or diverse. It is our belief that the concrete and detailed study of religious experience and of the language through which it comes to expression enables us to distinguish these diverse references.To the best of my knowledge, Stephen Kaplan has written the first book-length argument in favor of this view. He entitles it, quite appropriately, Different Paths, Different [End Page 367] Summits. The contrast, of course, is with the common image of different paths up a single mountain to the same summit.Those of us who take this approach do not believe that every religious path leads to a different summit. Whether two paths lead to the same or different summits is to be decided on the basis of careful study of the traditions that follow these paths. Kaplan develops a threefold typology. One path is that of the theists, who seek communion with God. Another is that of Advaita Vedānta, which aims at final identity with the changeless real. A third is that of many forms of Buddhism, which seek to realize the wholly processive and interconnected character of all reality including the self.Kaplan rightly emphasizes his agreement with those who stress the importance of language and culture in shaping religious experience as well as its articulation. He does not take this to mean that we cannot discern families of experience, such as the experiences of those who seek communion with God. The experiences of those with this goal in diverse traditions differ in their imagery. The language used to speak of the experience is that of a particular community. But the judgment that what constitutes experience in multiple communities is theistic reality fits many of them. There are thus several paths to the same summit. But not all religious paths are directed to this theistic summit.Kaplan understands that a main objection to this radical religious pluralism is the deep-seated assumption that reality cannot have more than one fundamental character. If it is theistic, then the Hindu and Buddhist versions are in error. If either of them is correct, then all differing views are illusory. To adopt a radical pluralism is, then, in principle, to force a profound choice among religious traditions, holding that two out of three groups of traditions fail to provide paths up any mountain at all.Kaplan responds to this objection thoughtfully and thoroughly. He finds in David Bohm's holographic model a clue to how three very different views of reality may all be justified by one reality. Bohm holds that the hologram illustrates and embodies the distinction between the implicate and the explicate orders. The implicate order is represented by the plate on which are inscribed the results of laser beams. When these are projected they give rise to an explicate order of... (shrink)

Constructive engagement in international business practice is defined as purpose-driven behavior in which economic contributions by the foreign investor also advance social progress in the host country. This paper distinguishes between amoral and moral social agency, and proposes a model of principled constructive engagement that describes a principled constructive engagement regime enacted in a disciplined, morally-directed manner.

While working on various medieval philosophers, I have noticed an affinity between their remarks on the reasonableness of accepting propositions that are not matters of proof and strict deduction and St. John Henry Newman’s remarks that we accept unconditionally and rightly everyday ordinary propositions without calibrating them to demonstrable arguments. In particular, Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta and Blessed John Duns Scotus both claim there is a sense in which assent to everyday propositions is tantamount to knowledge, even though (...) there is no adequate argumentation or demonstrative reasoning compelling us to assent to such propositions. Newman’s distinction between notional and real apprehension of propositions, notional and real assents, and his insistence on the existence of real assents to propositions that are not necessarily proved, or in some cases provable, seem, at first glance, a case parallel to that of the medieval philosophers we have mentioned. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that St. Bonaventure’s account of angelic natural knowledge of singulars is a remote source for the doctrine of intuitive cognition as this doctrine is later articulated in the writings of John Duns Scotus and his contemporaries. The article begins by reminding the reader of the essential elementsof intuitive cognition, then surveys the treatment of angelic knowledge in Bonaventure’s predecessors and contemporaries, and ends with an analysis ofBonaventure’s own teaching. The point on which Bonaventure anticipates (...) Scotus’s teaching is his insistence that angels know truths about singulars by directlycognizing the existence and presence of singulars without receiving any species in the direct cognitive act. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LaudatioTimothy B. Noone (bio)On Sunday, July 26, 2009, the Franciscan Institute was pleased to award to Dr. Girard J. Etzkorn its 22nd Franciscan Institute Medal in recognition of a lifetime of scholarship, editing and publication of texts on medieval philosophy and theology, with a special emphasis on the Franciscan intellectual tradition. The ceremony was held in the Trustees Room of Doyle Hall on the campus of St. Bonaventure (...) University and attended by over 100 scholars, students, friends and members of Dr. Etzkorn's extended families. The award ceremony began with a personal appreciation by Dr. Thomas Shannon, Ph.D., emeritus of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA), former member during the 1960s with Dr. Etzkorn of the Sacred Heart Province of Friars Minor (St. Louis, MO). It was followed by the formal laudatio of the honorée presented by former colleague and friend, Dr. Timothy B. Noone, Ph.D., of the Catholic University of America, the text of which is printed here. The event concluded with personal remarks by Dr. Etzkorn on his life as a scholar of the Franciscan tradition."Let us praise men of renown and our fathers in their generation." Sirach 44:1The wisdom of Sirach, the last of the Solomonic books of the Old Testament, would seem an appropriate place to begin this evening's festivities. No doubt, Gerry is squirming a bit in his chair, thinking in his customary humility that the words of Sirach are a bit too high for him. But we must learn to acknowledge what is true and great wherever it is, even when (or to put the matter correctly, especially when) the truth and greatness are found in ourselves. So there will be [End Page 259] no holding back on the present occasion, since the text from Sirach points out our path.We should start with a brief sketch of Gerry's life. Born in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1927, Gerry received his primary and secondary education in Missouri before attending the University of Dayton in the fall of 1944. After three semesters studying chemical engineering, he was drafted into the military, serving in the U.S. Army as part of the occupation forces of Japan after the surrender of August, 1945. This seeming irrelevancy actually became quite important in Gerry's life, for it was during his service in Japan that he encountered the Franciscans and decided to enter the Order after returning to the U.S. Once he had completed his degrees in philosophy and theology and been ordained, Gerry was sent to the University of Louvain, where he took his doctorate, producing a thesis that contained a partial edition of Roger Marston's hitherto unpublished Quodlibetal questions.This work at Louvain presaged in many ways the bulk of Gerry's work: he edited and studied a Franciscan medieval text from Latin manuscripts and studied its philosophical and theological doctrines. After returning from Louvain, Gerry taught for ten years at Quincy College and Seminary before leaving the Franciscans in 1971. But the Franciscans and he were far from being through with each other. Within two years Gerry arrived here to work with Fr. Gedeon Gàl on the Ockham Edition, then in the throes of its labors. Initially working as an Associate Editor on the Ockham Edition, Gerry eventually became Chief Editor of the Scotus Project, the successor project at the Institute to the Ockham Edition.During his twenty-two years at the Institute, Gerry kept up a steady pace of editions, some connected with the Institute's research projects and others springing from his own interests. Among the former, we must note three volumes of the Opera theologica of Ockham and four volumes of the Opera philosophica of Scotus; among the latter, we find the complete edition of Roger Marston's Quodlibetal questions, the edition of John Peckham's Quodlibetal questions, numerous articles containing briefer editions of lesser figures, and a volume of manuscript descriptions, analyzing manuscripts never before described in the Vatican Library. [End Page 260]What I have mentioned so far would be enough for any one human being within the scope of one lifetime. But God had more in store for Gerry... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century by Bonnie KentTimothy B. NooneBonnie Kent. Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995. Pp. viii + 270. Cloth, $44.95.In this admirably written study, Bonnie Kent presents researchers on medieval philosophy with a survey of moral psychology during the crucial period (...) between the death of Thomas Aquinas and the summit of Duns Scotus’s career in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Although there have been many studies of particular issues in particular thinkers during this period and a generous presentation of texts with commentary by the great Dom Lottin (Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 7 vols. Louvain, 1942–1954), there has not been any lengthy study to date devoted to the period of the late thirteenth century that focused on moral psychology and the will. Simply in drawing attention to this period in the history of moral psychology, Professor Kent has made a tremendous contribution to the study of medieval philosophy, since she has rendered accessible authors that are more often than not neglected and overlooked. Kent, in fact, attempts something more: she places her study in the framework of the general historiography of Scholastic thought and the more recent interest in medieval ethics prompted by those championing virtue ethics.In order to highlight the distinguishing features of recent studies on medieval ethical thought, Kent reviews the established interpretation of philosophy in the thirteenth century. In the opening chapter, entitled “Heroes and Histories,” she points out the features common to the scholarly approaches of Gilson, Van Steenberghen, and even Copleston: (1) a prominent role is assigned to schools and movements, especially Aristotelianism and Augustinianism; (2) metaphysics and epistemology are the primary objects of study along with the relation between philosophy and theology; and (3) the Thomistic point of view is the organizing principle for telling the drama of the period. The last feature means that the history of the period is fundamentally told as streams of influence leading to Aquinas, followed by the golden age of Aquinas and his contemporaries and succeeded by a gradual decline after Aquinas, leading to the demise of Scholastic thought. In the context of the established historiography, accordingly, the approach of Alasdair MacIntyre represents a restatement of the common view, but one more radical in form. Instead of being merely different schools or movements, Augustinianism and Aristotelianism are different worldviews with their own paradigmatic conceptions of rationality, each of which is subsumed into the higher synthesis of Thomism. According to MacIntyre, the passage to modernity is begun by Scotus whose innovative theses in moral psychology and ethics are considered revolutionary.Kent’s stated aim is to challenge the “standard story” found in Gilson and others as well as its revised version in MacIntyre’s writings by providing a detailed study of the [End Page 462] period just prior to Scotus and establishing precisely how revolutionary Scotus’s teachings were when compared to his immediate predecessors. She accomplishes this aim masterfully in a series of chapters dedicated to the sources of medieval thought and elements of moral psychology. Beginning with late thirteenth-century thinkers’ attitude toward Aristotle in her second chapter, she shows in considerable detail that there is little evidence for any serious anti-Aristotelianism in the vast majority of late thirteenth-century authors. Indeed, the posture of these thinkers was to separate Aristotle from radical Aristotelianism and Thomism in order to claim that ancient wisdom was on the side of Christian ethics and psychology. The only exception that Kent finds to this widespread attitude is in the writings of Peter John Olivi whose hostility to pagan philosophy is clearly evident.The focus in the next chapter is on ethical voluntarism, a position characterized by the endorsement of the superiority of will over reason, the claim that human freedom resides primarily in the faculty of the will, that the will can act contrary to reason’s judgment, and that the will, not the intellect, commands the lower powers of the soul. In detailing the advent of... (shrink)