An exploratory pilot study with a small homogenous sample of Christian English speaking participants provided support for an alternative research hypothesis that a Christ consciousness contemplation with Heart Prayer of HeartMath techniques was significantly associated with increasing psychophysiological coherence, sense of coherence, spirituality and health perceptions. Participants described feelings of a peaceful place in oneness and connection with Christ. Integrative findings point towards Christ consciousness as an ultimately non-dual process of sensing vibrational resonance radiating from the human heart. Implications for (...) further research are discussed. (shrink)

This integral investigation explored phenomenological and neurophysiologic, individual and collective dimensions of Christian Trinitarian meditation experiences in a volunteer, convenience sample of 10 practicing Christians, 6 men and 4 women, with a mean age of 48 years and an age range from 21 to 85 years. Participants meditated for a minimum period of 15 minutes, during which neurophysiologic data in the form of electroencephalographic (EEG), electromyographic (EMG), blood volume pulse (BVP) and respiratory activity were recorded. A phenomenological analysis indicated that (...) the meditation process generally involved a movement from body to mind to spirit as evident in reports of an increasingly relaxed, contented and focused state of consciousness characterised by Christian Trinitarian imagery, wonder, surrender, peace, bliss, openness and formlessness. The neuropsychological findings indicated significant increases, from baseline to meditation recordings, in the alpha and beta range, accompanied by increasing mean trends in the theta and gamma range, and decreasing mean trends in the delta range, EMG, BVP and respiration. Integrative findings indicated the practical theological value of small doses of Christian Trinity meditation to enhance spiritual life for those forms of waking, thinking, conscious behaviour needed in everyday world involvement and healing. Findings were discussed in relation to further integrative investigations and interventions with practical theological implications. (shrink)

The research was generally motivated by a dearth of studies on joy, and particularly inspired by a book of joy celebrating the inter-spiritual dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Its aim was to investigate whether the direct contemplation of joy would be associated with improvements in psychophysiological coherence, spirituality and various positive emotions and feelings. Integrative quantitative and qualitative findings emerging from a small pilot study, including a convenience sample of six participants with a mean age of 42 (...) years and age range of 25-69 years, supported the research hypothesis. Significant quantitative increases in psychophysiological coherence, spirituality and positive feelings were coherently and consistently supported by participants' individual and collective experiences. Integrative discussion amplified the paradoxical theme of joy through suffering in human emotional and spiritual life. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, medical ethics has gained a solid foothold in medical education and is now a required course in most medical schools. Although the field of medical ethics is by nature eclectic, moral philosophy has played a dominant role in defining both the content of what is taught and the methodology for reasoning about ethical dilemmas. Most educators largely rely on the case‐based method for teaching ethics, grounding the ethical reasoning in an amalgam of theories drawn from (...) moral philosophy, including consequentialism, deontology, and principlism.In this article we hope to make a case for augmenting the focus of education in medical ethics. We propose complementing the traditional approach to medical ethics with a more embedded approach, one that has been described by others as “microethics,” the ethics of everyday clinical practice. (shrink)

This article examines the influence of the philosophy of David Hume on Edward Gibbon’s critique of Christianity in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". The article shows the influence of Hume’s essay "Of Miracles" on Gibbon’s account of the history of Christianity in the "Decline and Fall" with a particular focus on the notorious chapter fifteen where Gibbon examines the "progress of Christianity" and applies the argumentation of "Of Miracles" to the apostolic accounts. Like Hume, Gibbon takes (...) a naturalistic approach to the study of religion. (shrink)

Although this issue of the JSE, as usual, contains a diverse cocktail of interesting papers, two of those papers are sufficiently out of the ordinary to deserve a few comments. In this issue, we fearlessly address—for the second time in the JSE’s history—one of the thorniest and most interesting topics in English literature—namely, the debate over Shakespeare authorship. As some current SSE members are undoubtedly aware, many have challenged the orthodox view that the works of Shakespeare were written by the (...) person traditionally identified as the author—that is, William Shaxpere of Stratford-upon-Avon. SSE stalwart (and my editorial predecessor) Peter Sturrock tackled the topic in the JSE in 2008 (Sturrock 2008), and then several years later followed that up with a book on the subject (Sturrock 2013). What Sturrock did brilliantly was to demonstrate how one can invoke Bayesian probability theory to challenge the orthodoxy in a compelling way. For this issue, we reprint that paper and combine it with a penetrating new work on the subject by David Roper. Roper approaches the matter from a different angle than that adopted by Sturrock. He draws on the science of cryptography to argue that the true author of the Shakespeare works was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. (This is also the conclusion emerging most naturally from Sturrock’s book.) Roper argues that Sixteenth-Century techniques of using codes and ciphers were both common and quite well-developed, and that these permitted concealing secret messages within apparently innocent passages of prose or poetry. Moreover, Roper marshals a great deal of historical evidence for the claim that de Vere and others had good reason to conceal de Vere’s authorship of the works attributed to Shaxpere. So I hope our readers will enjoy this excursion into what should be largely unfamiliar territory for most of them. I know I learned a great deal from these papers, and I’m pleased that the JSE can make a scientific contribution to this venerable debate. As I see it, the papers by Sturrock and Roper together constitute a fascinating and impressive full frontal assault on the orthodox view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of scientific (...) knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

“This is my major thesis. Mystery is inherent in both the nature of things and the nature of rationality. I will sustain this thesis by a review of some of the central issues of philosophy to elucidate their mysterious qualities. More important, however, I will develop in detail an explanation of mystery and trace some of its important ramifications.” “I will argue that an ordinal metaphysics, with its associated theory of query, provides an account of mystery that no other theory (...) can provide. “While the theory presented here is a theory of philosophical mystery, it has fundamental implications for all branches of knowledge, including the physical and social sciences. “In short, I speak against a simplistic view of the world and of experience based on a simplistic and narrow conception of understanding and rationality. Mystery calls not for veneration and awe, but for a full and complex activity of mind, broaching all established conditions in its pursuit of answers....Reason is fulfilled as completely in mysteries which persevere throughout our efforts to resolve them as in mysteries which are resolved and dissipated, passing into new questions to which we must find new answers, in an unterminating process of rational interrogation.” — From the Preface by Stephen David Ross. (shrink)

Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic involve placing huge burdens on some members of society for the sake of benefiting other members of society. How should we decide when these policies are permissible? Many writers propose we should address this question using cost-benefit analysis, a broadly consequentialist approach. We argue for an alternative non-consequentialist approach, grounded in contractualist moral theorising. The first section sets up key issues in the ethics of lockdown, and sketches the apparent appeal of addressing (...) these problems in a CBA frame. The second section argues that CBA fundamentally distorts the normative landscape in two ways: first, in principle, it allows very many morally trivial preferences—say, for a coffee—might outweigh morally weighty life-and-death concerns; second, it is insensitive to the core moral distinction between victims and vectors of disease. The third section sketches our non-consequentialist alternative, grounded in Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory. On this account, the ethics of self-defence implies a strong default presumption in favour of a highly restrictive, universal lockdown policy: we then ask whether there are alternatives to such a policy which are justifiable to all affected parties, paying particular attention to the complaints of those most burdened by policy. In the fourth section, we defend our contractualist approach against the charge that it is impractical or counterintuitive, noting that actual CBAs face similar, or worse, challenges. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assert that any moral critique or political censorship of sexually violent imagery cannot be justified with reference to participants nor matters of taste. Rather, the present paper seeks to distinguish objectification and alienation and apply this distinction to the issue of the representation of sexual violence. Alienation is the morally problematic category because systems of domination and control determine the expressions and consumption of desires, but this means that the violence in such material (...) may well be a red herring. (shrink)

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness as the fundamental (...) notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

Inspired by the philosopher Graham Parkes, this collection provides a distinctive study of aesthetics and the climate crisis. Engaging with Continental European and East Asian traditions, it challenges our definition of self in the West and asks us to re-evaluate our conventional perspectives. Through a valuable and systematic treatment of the thought of Parkes, The Wandering Dance in the Philosophy of Graham Parkes makes the case that a restoration of the intimate relation of self and nature is indispensable in understanding (...) our place in the order of things and achieving balance in the world. (shrink)

David Cooper explores and defends the view that a reality independent of human perspectives is necessarily indescribable, a "mystery." Other views are shown to be hubristic. Humanists, for whom "man is the measure" of reality, exaggerate our capacity to live without the sense of an independent measure. Absolutists, who proclaim our capacity to know an independent reality, exaggerate our cognitive powers. In this highly original book Cooper restores to philosophy a proper appreciation of mystery-that is what provides a measure (...) of our beliefs and conduct. (shrink)

The Middle Ages span a period of well over a millennium: from the emperor Constantine's Christian conversion in 312 to the early sixteenth century. David Luscombe's clear and accessible history of medieval thought steers a clear path through this long period, beginning with the three greatest influences on medieval philosophy: Augustine, Boethius, and Pseudo-Denis, and focusing on Abelard, Anselm, Aquinas, Ockham, Duns Scotus, and Eckhart among others in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

In this beautifully written book David E. Cooper uses a gentle walk through a tropical garden, the view of the fields and hills beyond it, the sound of birds, voices and flute, the reflection of light in water, the play of shadows among the trees and presence of strange animals, as an opportunity to reflect on experiences of nature and the mystery of existence. Covering an extensive range of topics, from Daoism to dogs, from gardening to walking, from Zen (...) to Debussy, Cooper succeeds in conveying some deep and difficult philosophical ideas about the meaning of life in an engaging manner, and in showing how those ideas bear upon the practical question of how we should relate to our world and live our lives. A thought-provoking and compelling book, _Senses of Mystery_ is a triumph of both storytelling and philosophy. (shrink)

This anthology has been significantly expanded for this edition to include a wider range of contemporary issues.

A giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, . . . . (Heidegger, TB, 8)the Forgotten is . . . the Law. (Lyotard, “HJ," 147)how could this thought (Heidegger’s), a thought so devoted to remembering that a forgetting (of Being) takes place in all thought, in all art, in all “representation” of the world, how could it possibly have ignored the thought of [that] which, in a certain sense, thinks, tries to think, (...) nothing but that very fact? . . . to the point of suppressing and foreclosing to the very end the horrifying (and inane) attempt at exterminating, at making us forget forever what, in Europe, reminds us, ever since the beginning, that “there is” the Forgotten? (Lyotard, HJ, 4)[I]n witnessing, one also exterminates. The witness is a traitor. (Lyotard, I, 204)The Other becomes my neighbour precisely through the way the face summons me, calls for me, begs for me, and in so doing recalls my responsibility, and calls me into question.. . . as if I had to answer for the other’s death even before being. (83). (shrink)

Explores how we might think and live in the enchantment of the secular, modern world.

Sixth volume devoted to the good. Human, natural worlds filled with gifts. Nature, general economy of the good, earth's abundance, beyond measure. Gifts and giving, beyond having. Cherishment, sacrifice, plenishment: exposure to the good. Plato. The good grants authority to knowledge and truth. Anaximander. Injustice, restitution.Beauty, truth, justice gifts from the good. Precedence in Western philosophic tradition to gathering, assembling, and having being. Love of self as having. A self beyond itself, giving beyond having. Ethic responsive to the heterogeneous abundance (...) of things in the earth. (shrink)

This book addresses the nature and injustice of authority, retracing the ideas of reason and law from ancient Greece to the present, pursuing a line of thought begun with Anaximander, who speaks of the ordinance of time as restitution for ...

This work completes Ross 's trilogy examining the inexhaustible complexity of the world and our relation to our surroundings.

Ross (philosophy, SUNY Binghamton) attempts to rethink metaphysical traditions in terms of continental and pragmatist critiques, viewing the major work in the tradition as heretical. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story, and the story that it tells is about the inseparability of these three subjects, their embeddedness in one another. (Scarry, BP, 3).

The word I means here I am, answering for everything and for everyone. (Levinas, S, 104)Responsibility carries within it, and must do so, an essential excessiveness. It regulates itself neither on the principle of reason nor on any sort of accountancy. (Derrida, EW, 272)differance, trace, iterability, ex-appropriation, and so on ... are at work everywhere, which is to say, well beyond humanity. (p. 274).

To take up only the most beautiful, as yet to be made manifest in the realm of time and space, there are angels. These messengers who never remain enclosed in a place, who are also never immobile .... Endlessly reopening the enclosure of the universe, of universes, identities, the unfolding of actions, of history.The angel is that which unceasingly passes through the envelope(s) or container(s), goes from one side to the other, reworking every deadline, changing every decision, thwarting all repetition (...) ... they come' to herald the arrival of a new birth, a new morning. (Irigaray, ESD, 15)In the absence of civil laws positively defining their real rights and duties, the only criteria women have to refer to are subjective ones....But as long as there are no laws or rules which all women-and all men-may refer to and invoke when making their decisions, there can be no democracy, however attractive the immediate allegiance of a collectivity to a proposition may be. (Irigaray, ILTY, 1-2). (shrink)

Man, in the analytic of finitude, is a strange empirico-transcendental doublet, since he is a being such that knowledge will be attained in him of what renders all knowledge possible. (Foucault, OT, 318)Man is a mode of being which accommodates that dimension-always open, never finally delimited, yet constantly traversed-which extends from a part of himself not reflected in a cogito to the act of thought by which he apprehends that part; and which, in the inverse direction, extends from that pure (...) apprehension to ... the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought .... The question is no longer: How can experience of nature give rise to necessary judgements? But rather: How can man think what he does not think, inhabit as though by a mute occupation something that eludes him, animate with a kind of frozen movement that figure of himself that takes the form of a stubborn exteriority? (pp. 322-3). (shrink)

When one is asked "What is the most important moral principle in ancient philosophy?" the immediate answer is not "Take care of oneself" but the Delphic principle gnōthi sauton ("Know thyself"). (Foucault, TS, 19)I can't as yet "know myself," as the inscription at Delphi enjoins, and so long as that ignorance remains it seems to me ridiculous to inquire into extraneous matters. (Plato, Phaedrus, 230a)I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument (...) blows, there lies our course. (Plato, Republic, 394d). (shrink)

Explores the human propensity for owning and having.

Explores themes of dispossession, shattering, and fragmentation that arise in contemporary writings from the point of view of the selves whose subjectivities and practices are said to be fragmented, shattered, and dispossessed.

Ross (philosophy and comparative literature, State U. of New York, Binghamton) explores how it might be possible to represent representation. Interpretations of a wide range of modern philosophical works combine with original contributions.

Some preliminary observations must be made concerning the nature and purpose of this study. What I have attempted here is an essay in the metaphysics of science, and not the "philosophy of science. " Rather than concentrating on the details of theory-construction and the for mal structure of scientific systems, I have treated science as an enter prise, a developing process within human experience. I have used such an approach in order to analyze science in its relationship to other human (...) enterprises, such as art and philosophy, and to clarify its unique goals and characteristics. Often the concepts employed in descriptions of scientific methods are conceived too narrowly; by broadening the focus of attention I have attempted to characterize in a fairly general fashion the goals and methods of science. This has led to formulations which may seem at first glance to depart radically from some "well established" distinctions of the philosophy of science. I hope that it will be clear, however, that such formulations arise at a different level of analysis and concern very different problems from those of the logic of science. In particular, I am concerned with the general goals of science. These must not be confused with the narrower principles of method employed in science at any given time. (shrink)

Introduction: The forgotten -- Re-calling -- Re-membering -- Unremembering -- Enlightenment -- History -- Counter-memory -- Body and image -- Past and future -- Everyday life -- Diachrony -- Inheritance -- Pain -- Disaster.

wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris [the messenger of heaven] is the child of Thaumas [wonder].1 (Plato,Theaetetus, 155d)When our first encounter with some object surprises us and we find it novel, or very different from what we formerly knew or from what we supposed it ought to be, this causes us to wonder and to be astonished at it. . . . I regard wonder (...) as the first of all the passions. (Descartes, PS, 350)Wonder . . . is the passion of that which is already born and not yet reenveloped in love. . . . It is the passion of the first encounter. And of perpetual rebirth? . . . the place of incidence and junction of body and spirit, which has been covered over again and again, hardened through repetitions that hamper growth and flourishing (croissance et épanouissement [unfolding, blossoming])? . . . A third dimension. An intermediary. Neither the one nor the other. Which is not to say neutral or neuter. The forgotten ground of our condition between mortal and immortal, men andgods, creatures and creators. In us and among us. (Irigaray, ESD, 81–2). (shrink)

The following paper investigates the possibility of an account of cosmopolitan thought inspired by Hegel's treatment of Kant's ethical theory and his associated social concept of recognition. Cosmopolitanism requires the agent to recognize themself as a global agent participating in a shared community, but conventional political strategies do not possess the resources to satisfy this demand for self-understanding. Such a self-understanding is enabled by the objective freedom of a common shared humanity grounded in rational self-determination. The paper shows that it (...) is possible to extrapolate Hegel's outline of the state in the Philosophy of Right to describe a global community coherent with such a subject. (shrink)