The postmodern situation has given rise to a quest for new understandings of the relationship between theology and science. Drawing illustrative material from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, I look at three paradigmatic answers to the questionn posed in the title—th modern empirical scientific, the renewed medieval, and the post‐modern—with the goal of outlining a methodological approach for an engagement between Christian theology and sciencein the post‐modern context. Drawing insight from post‐empirical philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge, (...) I argue that both science and theology engage in the task of constructing a world for human habitation. (shrink)

This article responds to Stanley J. Grenz's Templeton Lecture, “Why Do Theologians Need to Be Scientists?” published in the June 2000 issue of Zygon (Grenz 2000). In the first part I outline my reasons for finding the kind of theological reflections in which Grenz engages worthy of attention by noting my disagreement with the view that a sufficient response to theological issues can be formulated on the basis of an examination of our biological nature. I assert, (...) in that connection, the autonomy of reason as a way of investigating and understanding the world. In the second part I respond directly to Grenz by explaining my disagreement with the postmodern critique of science upon which he relies and his adherence to Christian eschatology as an answer to the conundrums into which, he posits, we are drawn as a result of that critique. I note that I agree with Grenz, however, that the activity of valuing is necessarily a forward‐looking Godlike endeavor that is not derivable from science. In the third part I suggest that we must be open to the investigation of the possible existence of an objective realm of value and that, in any case, rejection of the postmodern critique of science in many cases pro‐vides a sound basis for the disciplined resolution of factual questions that frequently lie at the base of disagreements about values. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the knowledge of Reality in the context of critical assessment of Stanley J. Grenz’s methodology. Many contemporary Evangelical scholars who study the question about our knowledge of Reality think that «critical realism» is the best model that describes the process of knowledge in the postmodern context. Grenz supports the constructivist model of knowledge. Vanhoozer believes that hermeneutical epistemology is the best rubric for discussing theological truth claims about reality. (...) class='Hi'>Grenz speaks about «givenness» to this world which is eschatological, and thus he talks only about eschatological objectivity. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, on whom Grenz’s draws his constructivist’s views, make their thesis about social construction of reality and knowledge through the language (the constructivist view). We think Grenz says that language creates our understanding of reality. The author of the article concludes that, by providing an interpretation of reality, we in some way construct it, not in a sense that we give ontological status to that which did not exist before we started talking about it, but rather in a sense of hermeneutically organizing our experience of reality into a worldview and narratives. We should conclude that the world is fundamentally given, and it is objective in a sense that it is shared by all and its truth is eloquent, though it is construed differently by those who share it. Our interpretations of reality are connected then into an imaginative projection of the world. Nevertheless it does not mean that since our projections imaginative they are necessarily fictive and do not correspond to the way things are. (shrink)

The general idea of strong foundationalism is that knowledge has a foundation in well warranted beliefs which do not derive any warrant from other beliefs and that all our other beliefs depend on these foundational ones for their warrant. Although inerrancy posits Scripture as a solid foundation for theology, the idea that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy involves a strong foundationalist epistemology is deeply problematic. In fact, inerrancy does not require any particular view of the structure of knowledge, and notable (...) sources on inerrancy tout it in ways inconsistent with most forms of strong foundationalism. (shrink)

"As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don't have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism's roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on (...) the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics--the language and beliefs that separate people into an 'us' and a 'them.' He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation's past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics--charged by rhetoric and myth--can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals."--Jacket. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the study of the philosophy of action, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. Its central idea is a radically unorthodox theory of rational action. Most contemporary Anglo-American philosophers believe that action is motivated by desire. Professor Benn rejects the doctrine and replaces it with a reformulation of Kant's ethical and political theory, in which rational action can be determined simply by principles, regardless of consequences. The book analyzes the way in which value conflicts can (...) be rationally resolved, the objectivity of value, the concept of moral personality, the principles of non-interference and respect of persons, the ideals of autonomy and community and various aspects of individual rights - focusing on the rights to freedom, welfare, and privacy. (shrink)

"This collection is obviously a labor of love. Fortunately, it is also a labor of editorial care and precision.

Proceeding on the assumption that confusion in Renaissance criticism arises from the way we talk and the vocabularies we use, Stewart investigates typical assertions in recent criticism of Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, using a Wittgensteinian method of investigation. This involves taking a thing, usually a statement, apart. If a statement, under such scrutiny, seems to make no sense, or to lead critics into blind alleys, then we must try to clarify the expression. As Stewart asserts, if we are to (...) go on together in critical conversation, then we must find a way to sort out the confusion that arises from our language. While Wittgenstein's thought has long been utilized by literary critics, this study represents the first sustained application of ordinary language philosophy to the vocabulary and assumptions of current criticism. This study is an original and important book⎯one likely to be of great interest to philosophers as well as literary theorists. While Renaissance Talk is primarily concerned with Renaissance and early modern studies, its patient but relentless exposure of what sometimes passes for scholarly criticism, along with its exemplary corrective explication of misinterpreted passages from the writings of major authors, makes it useful reading for a wide range of Literary Studies students and scholars. (shrink)

Touching on the work of philosophers including Richardson, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Dewey, this study examines the history of what philosophers have had to say about "Shakespeare" as a subject of philosophy, from the seventeenth-century to the present. Stewart's volume will be of interest to Shakespeareans, literary critics, and philosophers.

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

This new edition of Baran and Davis's successful text provides a comprehensive, historically based, introduction to mass communication theory. Clearly written with examples, graphics, and other materials to illustrate key theories, this edition traces the emergence of two main bodies of mass communication theory: social, behavioral and critical, cultural. The authors emphasize that media theories are human creations that typically are intended to address specific problems or issues.

Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either. Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career (...) but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge. By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Some fourteen years after its initial publication, this important and influential book, with a new, substantial, and candid introduction by the author, is available in a reasonably priced paperback edition. In this volume Hauerwas assesses recent interest in the "ethics of character" and suggests areas in his own work that now call for some corrective and/or further work.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a remarkable change took place in advanced theological education in the United States: the study of Christian ethics (and other theological studies as well) moved quite rapidly from seminaries into graduate programs at religiously unaffiliated universities. The birth of the "Journal of Religious Ethics" should be understood in the context of this wider shift. The consequences of this migration have been, on the whole, regrettable. In universities, styles of analysis and metaethical issues have (...) been elevated into subject matter, impoverishing Christian moral reflection, but the principal loss has been the loss of the church itself - that set of practices necessary to make ethical reflection intelligible for Christians. (shrink)

As his editor John L. Stanley points out, Georges Sorel was "that fascinating polymath." This volume, the third in his selected works in the English language published by Transaction, emphasizes Sorel's extraordinary writings in the philosophy of science, religion, culture, and art. For those who know Sorel only as author of Reflections on Violence, the present volume will come as a forceful reminder of the range and depth of Sorelian efforts to construct a world view. Sorel is throughout concerned (...) with the moral development of human beings. In this sense, his writings on politics are of a piece with his writings on religion, "facticity" of human history and society. Sorel's earliest writings were on religion, and key portions of that period are reflected in selections here. And he went on from there to study the sociology of science, the ways in which science fits into the cultural history of civilization and present day social relationships of industrial society. Stanley provides a profound framework based on two decades of close study and translation of Sorel's texts. He helps to explain how the partial theories of Sorel lead to holistic intellectual consequences, how the psychological method does not foreclose political activism, and how historical limits can be transformed against a background of aesthetics or considerations of taste. He shows that Sorel comes as a close as Manheim and Simmel and Durkheim to the creation of a modern social science--albeit he lacks the overall philosophical theorems of people like Marx and Weber. In Sorel we have a first-class mind at work. And in Stanley, we have a first-class analyst at work. Together, the volume adds up to something special for the political scientist, sociologist, art historian, theologian--in short for those to whom the ideal of a human science endures. John L. Stanley is professor of political science at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of The Sociology of Virtue: The Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel. He has written many articles and reviews on the history of European political theory. With his wife, Charlotte Stanley, he has been long engaged in the translation of the works of Georges Sorel. (shrink)

This essay asks the question “What would it mean to be a just university?” and answers to that the question may be understood in two ways. One way to understand “just” is procedural, having to do with internal governance and ensuring that a university’s policies are themselves just. The other is substantive, having to do with the university’s purpose or reason for existing. The second assumes the university is to serve some function necessary for the general good. This good is (...) often defined in material terms: fostering a stronger economy, medical breakthroughs, more efficient use of natural resources, and so on. But such a view of the university defines its value entirely by factors external to itself. Proponents of one definition of the university’s purpose typically acknowledge some validity in the other, and universities commonly strive to fulfill the claims of both definitions. But universities also have an obligation to teach the young and to do so within the context of a common set of values that both determines the setting in which teaching takes place and encourages students to develop values that will shape their own lives. Katz argues in particular that intellectuals have a special obligation to work cooperatively to eliminate intellectual obstacles that stand in the way of commensuration, communication, and comprehension globally. It is this responsibility that he calls “intellectual philanthropy.”. (shrink)