This book offers an introduction to the thought of Robert Holcot, a great and influential but often underappreciated medieval thinker. Holcot was a Dominican friar who flourished in the 1330's and produced a diverse body of work including scholastic treatises, biblical commentaries, and sermons. By viewing the whole of Holcot's corpus, John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt provide a comprehensive account of his thought. Challenging established characterizations of him as a skeptic or radical, they show Holcot to be (...) primarily concerned with affirming and supporting the faith of the pious believer. At times, this manifests itself as a cautious attitude toward absolutist claims about the power of natural reason. At other times Holcot reaffirms, in Anselmian fashion, the importance of rational effort in the attempt to understand and live out one's faith. Over the course of this introduction the authors unpack Holcot's views on faith and heresy, the divine nature and divine foreknowledge, the sacraments, Christ, and political philosophy. They also examine Holcot's approach to several important medieval literary genres, including the development of his unique. (shrink)

The eighteenth-century American founders believed that religion is special and deserves special constitutional protection, and that all peaceable faiths must be drawn into the constitutional process and protection. The founders introduced six constitutional principles for the protection of religious freedom: freedom of conscience, free exercise of religion, religious pluralism, religious equality, separation of church and state, and no state establishment of religion. Since the 1940s, the United States Supreme Court has upheld these religious freedom principles in more than 170 cases, (...) albeit unevenly of late. Moreover, in recent years religious freedom has come under sharp popular and academic attack, particularly as religious pathologies have come to light and religious freedom claims have clashed with sexual liberty claims. This article calls for a return to the first principles of religious freedom for all, at home and abroad, and for a new balance between religious freedom and other fundamental rights claims. (shrink)

Abstract. In this paper, which was among Don Browning's last writings before he died, we review and evaluate the main arguments against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the “CRC”) that conservative American Christians in particular have opposed. While we take their objections seriously, we think that, on balance, the CRC is worthy of ratification, especially if it is read in light of the profamily ethic that informs the CRC and many earlier human rights instruments. More (...) fundamentally, we think that the CRC captures some of the very best traditional Western legal and theological teachings on marriage, family, and children, which we retrieve and reconstruct for our day. (shrink)

This volume addresses whether, how, and where laws (variously defined) teach values and shape moral character in late modern liberal societies. Each author recognizes the essential value of state law in fostering peace, security, health, education, charity, trade, democracy, constitutionalism, justice, and human rights, among many other moral goods. Each author also recognizes, however, the grave betrayals of law in supporting fascism, slavery, apartheid, genocide, persecution, violence, racism, and other forms of immorality and injustice. They thus call for state laws (...) that set a basic civil morality of duty for society and for robust freedoms that protect private individuals and private groups to cultivate a higher morality of aspiration"--Back cover. (shrink)

Leading legal scholar John Witte, Jr. explores the role religion played in the development of rights in the Western legal tradition and traces the complex interplay between human rights and religious freedom norms in modern domestic and international law. He examines how US courts are moving towards greater religious freedom, while recent decisions of the pan-European courts in Strasbourg and Luxembourg have harmed new religious minorities and threatened old religious traditions in Europe. Witte argues that the robust (...) promotion and protection of religious freedom is the best way to protect many other fundamental rights today, even though religious freedom and other fundamental rights sometimes clash and need judicious balancing. He also responds to various modern critics who see human rights as a betrayal of Christianity and religious freedom as a betrayal of human rights. (shrink)

This book defends the fundamental place of the marital family in modern liberal societies. While applauding modern sexual freedoms, John Witte, Jr also defends the traditional Western teaching that the marital family is an essential cradle of conscience, chrysalis of care, and cornerstone of ordered liberty. He thus urges churches, states, and other social institutions to protect and promote the marital family. He encourages reticent churches to embrace the rights of women and children, as Christians have long taught, (...) and encourages modern states to promote responsible sexual freedom and family relations, as liberals have long said. He counsels modern churches and states to share in family law governance, and to resist recent efforts to privatize, abolish, or radically expand the marital family sphere. Witte also invites fellow citizens to end their bitter battles over same-sex marriage and tend to the vast family field that urgently needs concerted attention and action. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

When young children first come to school they bring with them a depth of being; the authors suggest that the educational community should respond to children with a pedagogy that is capable of nurturing this depth. The authors of this paper are teachers of many years’ experience. Their own work in classrooms has shown them that, paradoxically, depth in pedagogy is most surely to be found when teachers follow the light in the eyes of children. The authors draw upon a (...) selection of vignettes and narratives taken from classroom experiences to describe how this is done. They also show how children and teachers can approach the complex learning that requires transcendence of the known. Notions of relational consciousness (), as well as ethical and spiritual sensibility () are developed through reference to a range of educators including Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Stanley Cavell, Maxine Greene, Nell Noddings, Vivan Paley and Arthur Vogel. The broader educational community is reminded that school experiences should balance the measurable and the immeasurable. The authors question some aspects of the, sharing their concern that it may focus teachers’ attention too tightly on ‘that which is formed from without’. The authors suggest that the weight of this legislation may result in the neglect of some very important aspects of learning. The broader educational community is invited to consider the implications of a pedagogy of depth, to become more aware of the skill of transcending known limitations through coming to shared understanding, and to find ways to reconcile the potential violence of legislated structures with the being‐in‐the‐world of children in schools. (shrink)

Charlotte Witt has argued that gender is essential to women and men, in a way that unifies them as social individuals but precludes each of them from being identified with the corresponding person or human organism. We respond to Witt’s modal and normative arguments for this view, and we argue that they fail to support anything stronger than a moderate version of kind essentialism, which generally allows women and men to be identified with people. We finish by pointing out that (...) several of Witt’s central claims about gender roles and gender norms could be endorsed while rejecting her ontology of coincident individuals. (shrink)

In her insightful and stimulating article, The Mind of a Moral Agent, Professor Susanna Blumenthal traces the influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy on early American law. Among other things, Blumenthal argues that the basic model of moral agency upon which early American jurists relied, which drew heavily from Common Sense philosophers like Thomas Reid, generated certain paradoxical conclusions about legal responsibility that later generations were forced to confront. "Having cast their lot with the Common Sense philosophers in the "formative (...) era" of American law," she explains, "early republican jurists thus bequeathed to future generations of lawyers a problem of responsibility of no small proportions." In this invited comment for Law and History Review, I first argue that the problems of responsibility on which Blumenthal focuses our attention are not specific to Scottish Common Sense, but rather descend straight from the core of the Western legal and moral tradition. The same problems would arise if Common Sense philosophy had never existed. Second, even if it is true that Common Sense exerted a powerful influence on American academic life in the antebellum period, it still must be shown that this influence extended to specific features of American law, which remained at the time almost entirely the product of English common law. Blumenthal has not met this burden, however, because she does not identify any specific doctrines or judicial opinions that might support the conclusion that early American jurists "were steeped in Common Sense philosophy" or sought to construct "an indigenous legal tradition, built on the universalistic premises of Common Sense." Rather, her defense of this interesting claim is highly selective, resting mainly on the writings of Wilson and Hoffman. Third, although Blumenthal claims that there is something puzzling or paradoxical from a Common Sense perspective about the diversity of moral opinion, the existence of irrational or evil actors, or the fact that individuals often disregard the dictates of their moral sense, she does not adequately explain what exactly that paradox is, nor why Common Sense adherents should be troubled by it. Locke had made objections like these familiar as a result of his attack on innate practical principles in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Yet already by the eighteenth century, critics like Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Reid, and their followers had rejected Locke's arguments as based on mere confusion and fallacy. Finally, a key point that Blumenthal neglects, as does John Witt in his elegant chapter on Wilson, is that Common Sense philosophers also supplied positive scientific arguments for innate moral knowledge, based on observation and induction rather than introspection, whose intellectual worth has proved remarkably durable. We risk misunderstanding Scottish Common Sense and its place in the history of ideas if we overlook contributions like these, or remain content to think of it merely as an unduly optimistic philosophy, which relied mainly on introspection to affirm the innate goodness of humankind, but which gave way to a more accurate theory of human nature as the nineteenth century unfolded. Certainly there is some truth to this description, but it is only part of the story, and a potentially misleading one. (shrink)

Books reviewed: Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: There – Like our Life, D. Z. Phillips (ed.), (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 195 pp. incl. Index; $29.95; referred to in the text as Rhees. Danièle Moyal‐Sharrock, The Third Wittgenstein: The Post‐Investigations Works (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 225 pp. incl. Index; $99.95; referred to in the text as Third Witt. Danièle Moyal‐Sharrock (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 250 pp. incl. Index; $75.00; referred to in the text as M‐S. Reviewed by Louisiana (...) State University Baton Rouge Louisiana 70803 USA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World by Grace Y. Kao, and: Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction ed. by John Witte, Frank S. AlexanderZachary R. CaloGrounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World Grace Y. Kao Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011. 239pp. $28.45Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction Edited By John Witte and Frank S. Alexander New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 390pp. (...) $29.38Grace Kao’s Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralistic World and Christianity and Human Rights, edited by John Witte and Frank Alexander, both contribute to the growing and sophisticated literature addressing the relationship between religious traditions and human rights. Kao’s book opens by asking whether “the very idea of human rights [must] be premised upon a religious or metaphysical idea in order to be conceptually intelligible, sufficiently protected, or practically stable over time” (4). Kao proposes that this question has generally been answered in one of two ways: a “maximalist” response that identifies religion as a necessary foundation for human rights, and a “minimalist” response that rejects this turn to religion. A significant portion of the book is devoted to assessing representatives of these two approaches. Chapter 2 includes a discussion of maximalist thinkers Michael Perry, Max Stackhouse, Hans Küng, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Chapters 3 through 5 consider different forms of minimalism, including that found in the work of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum.Kao’s organization of the debate into maximalism and minimalism imposes a useful typology over a diverse range of thought while also establishing interesting points of contact and contestation among various thinkers. At the same time, because the analysis occurs at a rather high level of abstraction, it will be most useful to those already familiar with the texts and thinkers discussed. This is not a text for those seeking a summary introduction. Those less familiar will still profit from the book, but perhaps more from the opening and closing chapters than those discussed here. [End Page 187]Following the discussion of maximalism and minimalism, the final chapter of Kao’s book presents a model for moving beyond the “extremes” of these two dominant approaches (8). At its most basic, human rights, Kao argues, must be grounded in a nonreligious moral realism. This “straddling” of the “minimalist-maximalist divide” is, in certain respects, a creative and bold proposal for reshaping debate about religion and human rights. It defends the universality of human rights as being necessarily grounded in objective values but does not narrowly locate these values in religious sources. Yet, while offering some intriguing insights, the themes of this final chapter never quite come together to form a comprehensive theory. Kao’s proposal is more a selective appropriation of insights from others than a totalizing alternative.Because Kao does not fully develop her model, it is difficult to assess the particular rights claims that follow from its premises. This is evident, for instance, in Kao’s discussion of the so-called marginal cases, where it remains unclear what specific principles and methods have been employed to develop normative positions (160–61). This disconnect between theory and application limits the book’s ability to have an impact on core disputes within human rights. The most significant fault lines within the contemporary human rights debate involve the content and expanse of human rights more than their theoretical grounding, and human rights language often serves as a way to legitimize preferred political goods. Kao not only needs to defend her approach to grounding human rights but also to establish how this particular grounding informs the norms of human rights.Witte and Alexander’s edited volume, Christianity and Human Rights, addresses the relationship between religion and human rights from a quite different perspective. Whereas Kao critically assesses religion’s role as a foundation for human rights, the essays in Witte and Alexander’s book largely explore the meaning of human rights from within a Christian framework. The book does not entirely bypass questions about the warranting role of religion as such, but its concern is not to justify the role of Christianity within human rights but to develop “the budding new human rights hermeneutic of... (shrink)

Aristotle's defense of Dunamis -- Power and potentiality -- Rational and nonrational powers -- The priority of actuality -- Ontological hierarchy, normativity, and gender.

Charlotte Witt extracts from this text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Reissued here in its corrected second edition of 1864, this essay by John Stuart Mill argues for a utilitarian theory of morality. Originally printed as a series of three articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861, the work sought to refine the 'greatest happiness' principle that had been championed by Jeremy Bentham, defending it from common criticisms, and offering a justification of its validity. Following Bentham, Mill holds that actions can be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they (...) promote happiness or 'the reverse of happiness'. Although attracted by Bentham's consequentialist framework based on empirical evidence rather than intuition, Mill separates happiness into 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, arguing for a weighted system of measurement when making and judging decisions. Dissected and debated since its first appearance, the essay is Mill's key discussion on the topic and remains a fundamental text in the study of ethics. (shrink)

J.L. Mackie insists that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world. And this phenomenological thesis seems correct. When one or another variety of philosophical non-cognitivism claims to capture the truth about what the experience of value is like, or (in a familiar surrogate for phenomenology) about what we mean by our evaluative language, the claim is never based on careful attention to the lived character of evaluative thought or discourse. The idea is, (...) rather, that the very concept of the cognitive or factual rules out the possibility of an undiluted representation of how things are, enjoying, nevertheless, the internal relation to 'attitudes' or the will that would be needed to count as evaluative. On this view the phenomenology of value would involve a mere incoherence, if it were as Mackie says--a possibility that then tends (naturally enough) not to be so much as entertained. But, as Mackie sees, there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral. This clears away the only obstacle to accepting his phenomenological claim; and the upshot is that non-cognitivism must offer to correct the phenomenology of value, rather than give an account of it. -/- In Machie's view the correction is called for. In this paper I want to suggest that he attributes an unmerited plausibility to this thesis, by giving a false picture of what one is committed to if one resists it. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.